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...!!!