Beijing Visit.. Part-1

So.. finally from the busy and monotonous worklife in Shanghai.. thanks to the "May Holidays".. 4 of us packed our bags and headed towards the capital city--Beijing... The host to "One World.. One Dream- Olympics 2008"...anticipating a trip full of adventure in a place where the few words of communication we know are "Ni Hao, Xie Xie and Mei yo rou"...and... the only guide we had with us was the Frommer's guide on China :)... well so it was... a fun-filled adventure...read on guys....

The fun and frolic started the moment we landed in Beijing and showed the cabbie the name of our hotel and address (of course written in Mandarin).. and this guy jus stopped and opened a huge map of Beijing to actually figure out whr the hell this hotel was.... and.. all of us look at each other baffled coz v had actually taken a hotel which ws like a kilometer away frm the forbidden city... so well.. finally he did manage to locate the place and v reached thr safely without further hassles...

Beijing as a city is quite an amazing concoction of colours... the ancient chinese architecture as we have seen and known from the books and pictures since childhood exists in sync with the lavish and state of the art new infrastructure and architecture... unlike shanghai which is pretty much western, Beijing appears much more chinese and colorful... neways... so tht ws the first impression of the capital city of the fastest growing economy of the world...
Before moving on... a brief introduction to the rest of the 3 wid me on this adventure... i ws accompanied by ravi and sneha (both strictly vegetarian people who dont even eat eggs) and Anna (a Polish female who eats all kinds of meat except for snakes, worms, sea horses, and the other chinese 'delicacies')

Coming back to the adventure... well.. v chked in and after quickly freshening up, ventured out around the hotel to find some lunch... lookin fr something quick to grab so v cn go to Tiananmen square and the Forbidden City...

So v entered a decent looking restaurant down the road hoping to find some vegetarian food for our veggies (btw... i eat jus chicken and eggs as non-veg)....anna and me treated ourselves to some chicken and rice as we waited fr the vegetarian dish to come to the table... well.. it thr it ws.. some delicious vegetarian fried rice... albeit with eggs... and all our further efforts to explain to the restaurant staff to make rice with only vegetables and without eggs (mei yo dan) went in vain since they dint hv nething without eggs apparently... and so... our dear Sneha and Ravi were all set to fast tht day... later v did pick up some pastries and bread fr thm which they reluctantly ate coz the pastries had eggs neway....

Well after a tough time at lunch...wid the lovely Frommer's guide in hand we moved on to the nearest Metro station to go to Tianenmen Square... and... guess what... fr all this while tht v thought tht despite the population in China... v dint c the density as at Churchgate station at 630 pm, we were in fr a big surprise.... v stuffed ourselves into the Metro packed like a can of sardines.. jus like a Churchgate-Virar fast train .. yes!!!... v were experiencing the mumbai-like crowd after long :) ... only this felt a li'l worse... the stench here ws not as bearable as a local train in mumbai....

After quite an effort, we reached the Tiananmen Square where another sea of people was ready to welcome us... Quite an interesting huge piece of land this place.. the centre of power for China housing the offices of the central government and law firms... So after spending some time with the huge crowd, we tried to take the under pass to the forbidden city where another huge crowd was building up...





Well... Forbidden City as we were about to witness is where the rich and famous chinese heritage of yore is very neatly preserved to showcase the lifestyle of the Chinese Emperors from the various dynasties...

An interesting blend of colors... and ofcourse the mythological figures of the dragon and phoenix beautifully carved on these hut-shaped palaces.....


well.. after an hour of roaming around, it did get a little monotonous... the similar lookin structures did stop fascinating me and the wonderful law of diminishing marginal utility began to float in....

But it seems Beijing does have something interesting just whn u start feeling tht things are getting monotonous... in the far horizon.. i.e. at the far end of the forbidden city... v could c a beautiful hill wid a palace at the top... apparently seemed to us like the palace of the Emperor (haha .... still dnt exactly knw wat this place was.).. after reaching the top... it presented a calm and serene atmosphere.... wid a beautiful view of the forbidden city and the surrounding area... and a beautiful statue of the Buddha....

On the whole... the three places visited were full of confusions and surprises coz... the language was a big challenge... v were actually trying to figure out where and how to go just frm the guide book v were carrying... so ... the day so far turned out to be quite interesting....



We walked our way back to Tianenmen square thereafter to witness the flag lowering ceremony in the evening... quite a farce it turned out to be though considering the publicity that was created by the locals v met on the way back... neways... it ws jus a simple ceremony where a group of soldiers marched quietly towards the centre of the Square and lowered the Chinese National Flag... v did stay on for a bit thereafter to avoid the crowd whilst going back and also to witness the spectacle of the Square under lights....






The imagery of the area under lights was like a motivational factor for our tired souls as such :)... n well ... it did turn out to be quite beautiful...

A further adventure awaited us at the end of the day... As per our guide book, there was a bustling shopping and entertainment street about a kilometer away from where v were standing... so v hopped into a cab and proceeded to find some interesting dinner in this place... well... v did find something delicious at a japanese restaurant in a mall on the street and also looked forward to the delicious looking desserts on the menu.... ordered one mountain of ice.... bt turned out to be quite not wat v expected.... it ws a dessert made up of black beans and dal fr all we knew... chk out the image alongside.. and u'll knw... wat a disappointment this thing on our table turned out to be :).. not our general stereotype idea of a dessert... this dish turned out to be nt too bad at the end f it... bt yes... a great example of "appearances are deceptive"

nw ws one more tough task... to get bk to our place of rest..locating our nest for the night... The Times Holiday Hotel...930 in the night (most of Beijing sleeps thn)...well after an arduous, tiring walk wid the map as the only aid... v did reach back to our hotel.. only after more than an hr of loitering in the streets of Beijing to find directions.... considering tht our hotel ws supposedly in a half kilometer radius this was quite a lot!!!....

after a last chat wid our families and loved ones, we crashed into bed in anticipation of the exciting climb up one of the seven wonders of the world.... the great wall.... more on that bit... in the next post..... Adios till thn guys.....!!!

The Corporate Experience so far... A Patient ride!!

Well.. here I am once again.. continuing from my previous blog... with the exploits of the corporate world post the 1 year of an amazin vacation at the GMBA program at SP Jain!!!!

I must say most of you would simply envy the tremendous amount of patience some of us who rejoined this giant organization might have... and well.. i guess we surely do :) ...

As anticipated, the adventure did not end at the twin-city model.. but continued further to the city of Mumbai as well :)

The face-off with one of the worse bureaucracies in India started in the very first week at work (after the 10-day paid holiday in "God's own country- Kerala" )when I thought of moving to the Financal Services Consulting Group from the "Office of Strategy Management" that I was allocated to (kindly excuse the jargon :) ).. thankfully.. the "CAT-1" MBA tag did its trick and I ws able to skip thru certain hurdles in bureaucracy to get an interview with the FS Consulting group head within a 3-day span (yeah.. surprisingly enuf.. this happened within this very bureaucratic maze).. and all of a sudden.. I c myself being "released" frm OSM and joining FSC in Mumbai's business hub- Cuffe Parade...

So well.. that was about me gettin into the the current team....Now..lets get to the point as to why I actually gave the mentioned title to this post...

My first assignment started about 3 days into me joining the FSC group.. the 3 days being devoted to some patient follow-ups wid the admin and the Infrastructure development team to get my system configured and ready, of course that was after some hunt by the admin to actually find me a cubicle in the wonderfully crowded office space :) ...

So the first was an Internal consulting assignment related to suggesting a strategy to my bosses to scale up the customer numbers after the merger of the FS Consulting group wid the larger Global Consulting Practice... and this is where the wonderful "gas" that we were exposed to in the Business Strategy classes came to use... well... quite an experience given the limited data availability and time constraints (always the excuse for consultants)

Along wid the above ongoing assignment.. another "unofficial" assignment was handed over to me and another of my colleague concerning the forex process mapping at the Central counter- party in India (wat!!! )... another funny experience after the pages and pages of reading and the exassperating interviews wid the contacts at the concerned client site...

now.. u guys would wonder... wats the above to assignments got to do wid patience whn it all happened so fast... well... hw it is related is this way... i wud say wat each of us MBA's would always want is to be a Profit-center and not a cost-center for the company... like wat is said in consulting jargon.. hv the maximum utilization possible.. and here I ws.. workin on internal assignments for the first 2 months of the MBA.. can get a little dicey in the head sometimes...

so thr i was waiting to finally b on a "billed" project... of course.. all this while havin hopes for some good projects given the booming financial services sector globally...and.. in the meanwhile.. doing wat v all do wid no wrk... "Developing Competencies" :) ..

eventually..the 3.5 mnth wait is lookin to end... and.. hopefully... in the next few days frm nw.. I wud b moving on to the Debt market process consulting fr a Regulator in one of the fastest developin economies of the world (not India :) )..

and... wid this optimism of finally doin some good work and gaining some visibility.. I bid Adios to u guys!!!... hope my next post would hv something interesting wid visits to new places for work and leisure... Ciao ppl!!!

Now.. The Singapore stint in retrospect!!

Well then since I had left the previous blog incomplete on jus the second month in Singapore, I thought how about writing on the remaining months straight away.. THough I must warn you people that its gonna be a really long story that u guys would have to go thru this time.. Yes.. Longer than my previous post :)



Well.. the most striking event that comes to my mind after the previous post was the New Years' bash at the Siloso beach, Sentosa... Wow waht an event it was!! The most fantastic crowd I have seen and one of the best rain dances you can ever witness... It was an experience to behold!! Alright, alright before you guys get your imagination running wild, nothing wild happenend to me that day.. No hooking up, No getting sloshed!!! :) .. was quite in control of myself at 3 am on the 1st of January, 2007 trying to stop a cab at teh Harborfront MRT after the whole party.. But as always, in the city blessed with one of the best public transport, there's this surprising problem with cabs always.. and so was it that night as well.. especially wid Mr. BG with us with a sprained knee, limping all his way!!! When v did manage to stop a cab, 5 of us managed to stuff ourselves in it, under the pretence that BG was an injured patient and v were his friends taking him back home... hehehe.. What an adventure that was!!!



Well.. The next exhillarating experience that comes to my mind were the visits to the zoo night safari and Bird Park.. Coming face to face with a Cheetah (at a distance of jus 15 feet) when the beautiful and ferocious cat is roaming around freely was one of the highlights of the whole experience.. Of course what cannot be counted out was the desperate ducking under the swooping Birds of Prey at the Bird Park as a wake-up call at 10 am.. Well that was something to behold!!



Well.. I am goin on talkin of the fun we had all this while and now u must be wondering (if u know me).. wasn't this an MBA program that I had gone for? :) .. well of course it was.. and that's where I would be mentioning about the stressful, anxious and challenging days during placements..Now.. SP Jain did not have a stereotype placement week like the one we have in B-schools back in India (given the so-called logistics issue.. hehehe ).. so. v had to go through the anxiety of getting a job not for a week, but almost for a month. I had the dubious distinction of being one the only person initially to have gone through 5 interviews without converting.. yes.. through all the posible finance profiles from equity research to Relationships Manager.. and somehow I couldn't convert ne.. I was like one of the most experienced people with interviews at that time.. well.. eventually made it back to TCS only on a consulting profile .. yeah yeah not hard-core finance.. but I guess something that would do justice to both my past and present education qualification (;))...And of course, my dubious record was broken by many others later on!!!!:)


On the whole, a scintillating one year did finally come to a sudden end on the 14th of April 2007.. After the royal villa experience of Dubai, the closely-knit hostel environment of Singapore, the experiences of living in starkly different cultures of 2 financial hubs and of course, the tremendous exposure to finance for an engineer like me, I returned back to Mumbai to await a so-called relaxing phase of a month and a half at home before entering the corporate wrestling ring once again...


Hoping to embark upon an interesting and exciting career post my MBA, I sign-off right now only to return with the experiences of the notorious corporate world very very soon!!!!


Sayonara people...!!!

The one month in retrospect.. Not a smooth Cable car ride...!!!!!

Well.. Believe it or not a month has just swept past already... and it does seem at times like jus yesterday that I had landed in this beautiful, green and clean city of Singapore!!!

Still remember the first sight of the city where we were welcomed by a site unwitnessed for quite sometimes in the arid lands of the arab world... Yes.. some rainfall.. n ofcourse greenery all over the place.. yup.. tht was the first experience of singapore as the whole gang of 31 (or should i call it the Mumbai cohort paraphrasing in Dr Sethi's words:)) ppl boarded the shuttle from the airport to the campus on the 19th of November 2006..

As we arrived at the campus, we were welcomed with the curious and amused eyes of the then "Singapore Cohort"... All trying to figure out what was this force that had the potential to take over the campus which they so love and had cherished for almost 6 months :)...

Neway... at this point cant help mention our first hand rendezvous with the food at the mess at the SP Jain Campus... This was supposed to be the beginning of the roller coaster experience of satisfying our basic need to satiate our taste buds every single day... with food quality and taste that could have angered the inmates of Tihar Jail (well.. jus an exagerration... not so bad.. but yeah.. close ).....

Well.. pretty used to the food by now goin by the slight improvement in the standards after Annalakshmi food and our rebellious batch almost put the canteen caterer almost out of his business here... oh yeah we would move on to the more benevolent side of Singapore and SP Jain Singapore in my next blog...This one's just to expose the initial days where every day was an exponential step up on the learning curve....

well comin back...cant help mentioning our benediction for food being answered with the discovery of Annalakshmi, a charitable restaurant with beautiful ambience and folk music which most of the cohort frequents especially every weekend these days... of course cant miss out the arguements between friends on hw much to volunteer to shell out after the meal.. ranging from as low as SGD1 to as high as SGD 10...and the bragging post dinner on the campus about how much food was hogged at the place :)

Well well..... as I was adapting to the life in the land of Tiger Beer and vegetarian food which includes sea food (well not everywhere :)).. there were some very interesting excursions....from the first tryst with the MRT and of course the explorations to Little India or Orchard Road;)
but given the length for which I have blabbered and of course given the final lecture on IB Strategies almost comin to an end... I think I would leave it to my next blog to take you down that road....

Adios for now then!!!!!