I had my Group Dynamics Session today. Two study groups were asked to discuss together on a topic given. The entire discussion was video recorded and reviewed back. The analysis and observations from the video were helpful to an extent. We need to have more of such sessions to really see some benefits.

I collected my trial lens today. It fits perfectly and vision is very crisp. I have a cylindrical error in vision. So I have to wear torric(?) lens. Now, I am happy with the lens. Will have to wear full day tomorrow and try it out.

Series of presentations happened today. “How to survive academic pressure?”,”How to ace I-Banking interviews?”, “Sports club and music club”, “Placement committee reports” etc., were presented. One of the presentations was presented by Siddarth Sinha, he is supposed to join as COO of some firm (Apollo hospitals? I am not sure). His gyaan and presentation style was impressive. To my knowledge, he was the only person who received a standing ovation and long-lasting applause among all other presenters. Amazing composure..

Tonight, we the class of 2006 are throwing a big party to the class of 2005. The alums have taken lot of efforts in preparing presentations and providing clarifications on all aspects of ISB. They were of very valuable help. In recognition of their commendable efforts and appreciation of their tremendous help, we are providing them unlimited supplies of you-know-what today..As usual danced exactly for 1 hour and came back. Have classes tomorrow morning.

I have to catch up quite a few pending work tommorrow. Definitely, reading the class materials is the number one priority tommorrow.

The place is rocking with disco beats as I am writing this, right next to my room! Boom..boom..boom…hope this puts me to sleep.

Forgot to call home yesterday and didn’t call today Definitely the first job tommorrow is to call home..

I had my team-building activity today. It was conducted by a Professional group from Hyderabad. They split around 80 odd people into batches of 9. Each batch was asked to undergo 3 activities. It was a great fun, and helped us to know more about each other. There was an exercise to remember the names of other guys. I managed to remember almost all of them! Cool…

All the team-activities were recorded in Video and shown to us later. The facilitator correlated the happenings to the real-world corporate scenarios. It was a good learning experience.

There are loads of readings assigned for the first class. Around 300 odd pages needs to be read for the first day. I have started reading from today.

Now, I know around 220+ names and faces in ISB. Still 130 more to go!! Well, I will not worry about that, things will iron out automatically…

To be honest, I was really overwhelmed and overly worried about the competition here. By doing that, I am easily losing my focus and purpose here. So, Every now and then, I am taking one step back and looking at the bigger picture and checking my situation. Comparing to some people here, I am lagging in interpersonal skills. I have a perception about inter-personal skills, and I am trying to live up to that. The best thing is the ability to recover fast and ability to learn from mistakes is deeply embedded in me, and definitely that will carry me further when chips are down..I have set some goals in the inter-personal skills front and will work towards that. This is too early to discuss such things, but that’s me…..

Found another blog…Boy o boy…this is getting interesting…blogging is definitely becoming a dominating media!!! Happy to see lot of bloggers in ISB..

www.livejournal.com/users/nishnt

UPDATE: Ramkumar sent me his blog address.
http://ramsabode.blogspot.com/

One of the ISB’s flagship course, as part of PGP, is the Leadership Development Programme [shortly called as LDP]. LDP spans 3 terms and will cover all aspects of soft skills like Personality analysis, Listening, Group Dynamics, Presentation Skills, Meeting skills etc., The group discussions will be recorded in video and will be used for improvement and identifying areas of improvement. The course started off with MBTI personality type analysis. I had already blogged about MBTI.

Coming to the academics front, the number of students this year is 27 higher than expected. According to official explanation, the yield has been higher this year [up from 75% to 77%]. Which means, the classroom needs to be fitted with extra seats. A lecture theatre here can hold 80 students. The seating arrangements are also fixed for those 80 students. Due to the increase in strength, around 6-7 extra seats needs to be fitted in each classroom. These seats will not have LAN slots and power slots. In an effort to comfort the students, management has come up with a smart idea. To give away Rs.10,000 to students who volunteer to take those seats. If many people volunteer, the allocation will be done on lot basis! Now there is demand for those seats ..If I get Rs.10,000 per term extra, then why not opt for those seats!!!

Slowly the sense of community is building among ISB students. There will be strong bonding as the Terms progress.

Nothing much to blog now-a-days..You can follow the fellow blogger’s post to get more details of day-to-day happenings in ISB. We are planning to have a blogger’s meet in ISB. We will brainstorm as to how to effectively channelize the energy and enthusiasm of ISB bloggers, towards increasing the awareness of ISB in India.

The second and final batch of students have registered to ISB. The total number of students this year is around 340. Large number!

I went to Punjakutta, a nearby city on Saturday along with 3 other friends. It’s a decent shopping center and everything is available there. I purchased some stationeries and groceries, and went to a optician to re-check my eyes, as I am having some problems again.

I also signed up for a post-paid cellphone connection from IDEA.

Quite a few alums are in the campus for the orientation week. Everyone is easily approachable and attentive to our questions. The alumnus of ISB is one of the best factors. Everyone is eager to contribute to the school and make ISB a global brand. They rock!! cheers to them..With so many impressive guys in the corporate world, our placement season will be definitely better.

Wild dancing and drinking parties have been organized for yesterday and today. I missed the party yesterday, so went to the party today. Even though I didn’t drink, I Danced wildly for around 1 hour and came back…FUN, FUN, FUN…Now, these parties are yet another distraction that I have to fight with. Striking a balance is the key..

Orientation week starts tommorrow. Leadership development programmes, Team-building activities, Talent shows, Welcome dinner, loads of presentations and Q&A sessions awaits us. The most awaited session is on CAS. Everyone is raring to ask questions about placements during that session. The published statistics doesn’t paint a true picture, so hoping to get an accurate picture soon.

We will be getting access to alumni database soon. Eagerly waiting for that.

Accounting Pre-terms have come to an end. I really liked the subject. The professor was excellent, knowledgeable and very passionate in teaching.

Played volleyball for sometime in the evening.

People have already started forming groups. The groups are mainly based on some relevance like same company, same college, same place etc., I think each one will be part of a core group, a support group, a group to lean your shoulder on when you are down. You need it.

Today the fourth roommate for our apartment arrived. He is VinGmat, who has 780 in GMAT! He is a blogger as well!

Bought the books required for First term today. Total expense came to around 1500 Rupees. Signed up for ICICI Life time free credit card, with limit of Rs.75,000/=. I will get it in 21 days time.

My digital camera has arrived. It’s Canon A95. I will shoot some shots on the beautiful campus.

One more ISB Blog..

http://isbdays.blogspot.com/

Blogstree India has listed my site as the “Blog of the day”

The pre-term in Introductory Accounting is very interesting and addictive. We have been given some homeworks in pre-term too!! Well, lots and lots of questions and doubts in mind..If I take the book, and search for explanations it might take years to find answers..So, I sought the help of my good apartment mate G, who is a CA. He gave some very good insights and, bingo..we were able to solve and understand the balance sheets in a better and much quicker way.

My other apartment mate A, is IT guy, and he is more like me, gadget-lover, calm and reserved. We both worked together to solve the assignments given today. After completing it, we verify it with G, and he will provide more insights. So far so good. I am happy with my quadmates. Waiting for the 4th person .

This time, there are lot of females (around 80) and almost all of them are good-looking. I am not flattering, it’s the reality. The guys are not less in anyway, there are some hot guys around too..Definitely a colourful and brilliant batch.

I met with some of the yahoo group friends and good to meet them in person. I was happy to see my name more familiar amoung fellow admits. Blogs and activity in yahoo groups has helped gain that visibility.

Spent some time in ISB fitness center for the first time. Gym facilities are sufficient. Swimming pool is just 5 feet deep, so I can safely jump and learn swimming. Need to buy swimming trunks soon.

The week-ahead is tightly packed with orientation and lots of presentations. The orientation week will be more fun though. After that, the roller coster ride starts!

I found this blog while searching for ISB blogs..Nice one..

http://autography.blogspot.com/

On Sunday, towards the end of Savita Mahajan’s Q&A Session, one good friend asked

“Ma’am, is the water from taps drinkable?”

Asst. Dean replies “Yes, absolutely. We have our own water purification and filtering plants. The water you get in the taps is equivalent to mineral water.”

The student replies “On all the taps?”..After a brief silence, there was such a huge laughter in the class including Asst. Dean. This is what I call timely humour

Well, I had the first glimpse of how an MBA class will be. Even though it’s just the pre-MBA course, the number of questions and kind of questions that students were asking is staggering. The facilitator did well to answer all those questions. Sometimes, the class was deviating. For example, the class was on Introductory Financial Accounting. So she mentioned about the roles of Auditors. Suddenly lot of questions were fired like “Who certifies Auditors?”, “Is the Auditor bound to the organization?”, “Should all companies in India need to audit their financial statements?” etc., The role of Auditors and process of Auditing is a big chapter in itself, so the facilitator stopped the flowing questions and brought back the focus on Financial Accounting.

I didn’t ask any question. Am observing the kind of questions the students are asking. Looks like, I should not worry about the quality of my question and the relevance of the question. I will just try to shoot whatever question comes to my mind today.

We had our first of the “Introductions” from ISB on Sunday. Savita Mahajan gave a brief introduction about Pre-terms and finally answered all questions posed by students. The questions were mainly focussed on placements, food and infrastructure.

So far 373 students have paid the 1-lakh deposit and enrolled into the course. That’s 53 more than the announced intake! According to the asst. dean, only 90% of the admitted students join the class finally. So the class strength is expected to be around 330+.

The whole batch is divided into 4 sections with 90 students in each section. That’s a big figure for a class size. Class participation is going to be a challenge now!

The Study group list is also been provided. My group has 3 from chennai. Since we had frequent meetings before joining ISB, I know these two guys well. I am wondering on what basis the study group allocation was done. After seeing the composition of other study groups, my case seems to be an exception. I am yet to meet the other 3 guys. It seems 4 out of the 6 in our group are from IT background! My apartment mate’s study groups also has the same ratio..Extrapolating, I guess 65%-70% of this year’s batch are from IT. But I need to wait before knowing the official figure.

Many of the students have left hopes of remembering the names and faces of other fellow admits. The number is overwhelming…I guess the study groups will be a good starting point, and then sections and then like minded people..It will take time before really knowing each other.

Yesterday, the first ISB pool dunking happened! A girl from Goa.

The class schedule for Term1 was published today. I have the classes from 8:30-13:00. So need to get up early! Section C and D have classes from 14:30-19:00. This will change every alternate terms..

I have my first lecture experience tomorrow in the form of Pre-term in Accounting.

Blogging from ISB, from my room. A wonderful feeling that cannot be described through words Am officially part of ISB now!!!

Reached ISB on 15th of April noon. The Air-deccan travel was quite smooth. It was a no-frills aircraft, so no complaints on facilities. I had to pay for excess baggage of around 17 kgs. The flight reached Hyderabad on schedule. The weather in Hyderabad is pretty dry and hot. In chennai it sweats a lot but you don’t find the heat. Here, I could feel as if I am in furnace.

The ISB-meet-and-greet service arranged a cab for us in discount (Normal rate is 350.00, for ISB students 270.00). After 35 minutes travel by car, I reached ISB. At security, the guards told my allotted student village and room number. My accommodation is SV2 - I12. After reaching the student village, there were bearers who assisted me in carrying the luggage to my room. Unpacked my bags and went to have my lunch. The lunch was quite good. (4-star level).

The interaction with fellow admits started from cafetaria. Different profiles, different faces, different behaviours. Interesting. Very tough to remember the names and faces. So far I have said “hi” to 130+ guys. I remember only 50-60 names now. I met some fellow bloggers. Sandeep Jha and Thought Leader. They were very different from my imagination. It was good to meet them in person. I like both of them. Hoping to see more familiar names from yahoo groups.

The whole campus is quite beautiful, just as I imagined (from photos). BEAUTIFUL, BEAUTIFUL, BEAUTIFUL…

I completed my registration on 16th. Everything was organized very professionally. The whole registration process took around 1 hour. They gave us pre-term materials, pre-term and orientation schedule, a short-kurti with ISB logo, telephone access code, student ID card etc., The laptop configuration took nearly one day. I received it only today morning, So I couldn’t blog yesterday.

I also opened an ICICI bank account. They opened the account in 5 minutes and gave me the debit card, cheque books and other details too. Cool!

Received the ISB Planner today. It’s a calendar with space for marking appointments and
events.

Today, there is a introductory speech by Savita Mahajan, Assistant Dean.

The pre-term classes starts Monday…

My brother had his operation day before yesterday. The doctors have fixed the bones using screws. He was crying involuntarily due to the heavy pain after the operation. He has been advised to rest for 3 weeks. Today he is doing fine. A relief for me.

I will get my Digital Camera in a week’s time. Once I get it, I will take some pictures and upload it.

Today morning we received a phone call from my brother who is staying in a rented house in other end of chennai. He had badly twisted his shoulder and couldn’t move an inch and was suffering from extreme pain. He had his shoulder dislocated many times in the past and he will relocate it himself bearing the extreme pain. Inspite of my repeated warnings and forcings, he didn’t come to doctor.

The shoulder dislocation that happened today was much worse and he was crying on the phone at 3 a.m. in the morning. Immediately we hired a car and went to his place and admitted him the hospital. His friends helped in carrying him to the hospital. He was crying due to the excruciating pain. While travelling in the car, a sudden jerk put his shoulders back in position. We anyhow admitted him to the hospital and the doctor suggested an immediate surgery to strengthen his shoulder and fix the relocation problem. He will have his surgery tomorrow.

My parents were pretty upset. Thing is my brother has suffered heavily in his life, especially the last 7 years. One can’t imagine the hell he went through..I am happy about the way he has recovered and fighting the odds in his life..And once-in-a-while he will face these sort of problems..Hope this surgery is the last of his struggles..

I had to come back from the hospital as I haven’t started an inch of packing. I almost completed the packing just now. Tomorrow morning I will make a visit to the hospital and then head towards the airport.

Mood is pretty sober and not an ideal way to start ISB .. All the enthu I had the day-before is absent today.

A fellow ISBian has started a photo-blog. He will upload pictures of ISB, seen through his eyes, in a regular basis. An effort different from other regular and conventional ISB bloggers. Good luck to you ISBinPic (Hope you disclose your identity to me when we meet in ISB!)

http://isbinpics.blogspot.com

Just noticed that Gmail has offered 2 GB of storage space to many users. Interesting thing is the storage limit is increasing like a super-fast ticker in the login-page of Gmail. It’s like interest accumulating on a Fixed deposit. Cool! I have 2087 MB of storage space…I guess I will never have to worry about storage space

The ISB official placement reports are out. The placements this year has been phenomenal. But still the placement reports are not that detailed as I expected. Hoping to get a more detailed statistics once I join ISB.

Some links on Placement reports on ISB’05:

“ISB graduate bags Rs 80-lakh job!”
“Global biggies knock at ISB doors”
ISB’s official report

Fact sheet: ISB placements 2005

Salary

Record international salary : $181,000 (Rs 80 lakh)
Average international salary : $100,000 (Rs 44 lakh)
Highest Indian salary : Rs 20,00,000
Average Indian salary : Rs 10,01,539

Placement statistics for Women

Total number of women : 48
Total number of offers : 63
International offers : 4
Highest salary for a woman student : Rs 20,00,000
Average salary for a woman student : Rs 9,20,000

Percentage up in salary over 2004

International : 19%
Indian : 11%
Offers

Total number of offers : 344
Number of Lateral offers : 333
Number of International offers : 31

Placements summary

Total no. of firm that participated in the placement process : 149
Total no. of students who participated in the placement process : 251 out of 273

Leadership Positions in companies

COO
Director - Operations
International GM
Division Head
Associate
Senior Associate Consultant

Days are moving in fast pace. Even though I am not doing many things, I am finding myself busy.

I co-ordinated an ISB students meet last Saturday. Around 20 people turned up, including recently graudated ISB students. It was a relatively sobre meeting. Interactions were mainly one-to-one. Prithvi was pretty active asking many questions. Since I have been asking doubts and discussing things since January 15, I didn’t had many questions left. Still, it was interesting to hear some gyaan from previous batch. Talks centered around life in ISB, Placements, study groups and other mundane things.

I saw Raja Banerjee for the first time personally. He is pretty silent and cool guy. He looked younger than he appears in the photos.

My contact lens have arrived and I am finding it tough to use it in a regular basis. My eyes ache after long usage. So, I guess I would have to use spectacles and contact in alternate basis.

I will start packing things tomorrow. Looks like I will exceed the weight limits of Air Deccan by miles. A consolation news is that extra cost per kg is just Rs. 20. So, I can carry extra 15 kgs by paying Rs. 300/=.

My DD for the first-installement has arrived. The moments when I ordered my DD was pretty intensive. I have never taken a DD for a sum of Rs. 6,55,000/= in my life. Almost everything is set for ISB ride…

Got this link from Ashish Blog. Based on my answers, the site says that I am a Life blogger..Very true…

You Are a Life Blogger!

Your blog is the story of your life - a living diary. If it happens, you blog it. And make it as entertaining as possible.

Purchased a Blazer yesterday. It’s a two-button, royal blue blazer from Raymonds priced at Rs. 3,100 (after 25% discount). I will be using it only on a very few occasions. I need to buy a white and cream formal shirts to match the blazer.

Color of blazer.

Also bought couple of books. Snapshots from Hell & 10-day MBA. I have started reading Snapshots from Hell and I can perfectly relate to what the author is describing. Very interesting…

Yesterday I was chatting with one fellow ISBian. The talk centered around the learning in the upcoming one-year. How can anyone learn the subjects in 5 week period? (6th week is exam). And the number of subjects will be 5. The learning will be pretty shallow. Now, I am feeling more greedy and want more time to learn the subjects… But, that’s the whole point of one-year MBA..to save time. The whole talk started when I mentioned about the detailed syllabus provided in IGNOU distance MBA. There are 100’s of pages for each subject. It’s going to be a monumental challenge to cover so many concepts in such a short frame of time.. By the end of core-term, I think I would have mastered the art of absorbing the concepts in limited time..

I remember a current student’s view on this. He mentioned that the one-year MBA gives us exposure to all subjects and concepts. We should build and expertise on the items that we are interested in later…

10 days to ISB venture..

Today a close relative of mine made a surprise visit to my home. Unfortunately, I had an appointment to meet the ISB admits around 11:30 a.m at Saravana bhavan hotel. If I have to make it to the location at the mentioned time, I have to leave my home by 9:30 a.m, as it takes around 2 hours to reach the place (My home is around 26 kms away from chennai city). So I spent around 1 hour with the relative and promised him that I will be back by 5:00 p.m. He said he will wait for me till 6:00 p.m and then he will start back as he had some work.

I decided to leave by 9:30. I started having breakfast and switched on television, only to see Indo-Pak One day cricket. Alas, how did I forget this?? Now, I was even more pressed to stay back..I controlled my urge and headed to bus-stop and began my travel and reached the place at 11:35 a.m. Not bad!!

Around 8 guys made it today. Vijay, Karthik, Krishna Tata, Ram, Raman Bharadwaj, Arun neelakantan, Deepak and myself. It was good to meet all those guys. 4 were from IIT (50%). 6 were with IT background (75%). I think the actual ratios would be same for entire strength of this year.

Then Vijay and Karthik accompanied me to spencer’s plaza for helping me in choosing blazer. I tried out couple of blazers and liked only one. I will make the decision and purchase next week. Bought a shoe from BATA. A model without lace. Goes well with both formals and casuals. The shoe costed around Rs.2000/=. I was short of cash and Karthik was kind enough to lend 500 Rupees to me. Proof of ISB bonding!! This is the first time I am meeting him..

Came back at 5:30 and my uncle was waiting for me. Spent 2 hours with him. Heard from my father that India had a very good victory..Hmm..will try to catch up highlights tomorrow!

Borrowed some management books from my neighbour who is doing MBA from IGNOU. Very difficult to concentrate more than an hour..Lots of ground work needed to get back to the academics mode!

Went to eye-test yesterday and ordered a pair of contact lens. Will get it by Tuesday..