Tamil Night !

It was a great night, filled with a traditional Tamil Nadu meal followed by screening of Thalapati. This was organized by the Tamil Association of XlrI (TAXI for short). Dinner consisted of avial, sambar, vada, payasam, poriyal, thoviyal et al.

Myself and few other tam's dressed up in traditional costume and served the guests (about 300 of them). Had a great time overall.

Back from a nice break

I am back to Jamshedpur after a break of 5 days which I spent in Bangalore and Chennai. It was great to spend time with my family, especially my 4-month old daughter who is right now experimenting with sitting up on her own.

Bangalore has changed quite a bit since the last time I visited there in March'06.
The peripheral ring road, new airport, NICE highway and developments around Hebbal pleasantly suprised me. Of course, the same unbeatable weather welcomed me. Hope I get a job in Bangalore itself !!

Course-wise, I am in the midst of term-2. In a little over a month, I will travel with a few of my peers to France on a study-trip....looking forward to that.

Team-work and GMP

Working in teams is a necessity in GMP.
Today was a perfect example for this. We have a quiz tomorrow and the textbook
has 12 chapters (approx 600 pages of fine-print text) devoted to the quiz topics.

Given this situation, it is impossible for any of us to do it all on our own.
The inevitable solution was to break up the task into 2-chapters per person
and do a group-sharing session (GSS) where each of us explained the chapter contents in detail. With this input, it becomes manageable to have a good grasp of the quiz
topics.

I am just back from a 5-hour GSS and feel a lot more confident about tomorrow's quiz.

1 month done in GMP

It only seemed like yesterday that the plane from Kolkata landed in JSR and I showed up in campus. But in the midst of working on my Math assignment today, I realized that it is close to 1 month since I joined GMP.

To continue where I left off in my previous post, the weekend adventure program organized by TASF (Tata adventure sports foundation) was great. On the first day, we got a chance to meet Madam Bachendri Pal, India's first woman to scale Mt.Everest. It was amazing to see the video of her Everest expedition shot close to 25 years back when Mrs.Gandhi was the Prime Minister. On a more modest but neverthless important level, in the course of 3 days, our GMP group cleared a number of obstacle exercises including rafting, rock-climbing and caving.

Courses-wise, the belt is being tightened starting this week. We have a couple of mid-term exams within the next week. Hopefully, I should do better than the quizzes I had thus far.

Last Sunday I got a chance to break away from all this sequence of assignments, studies and meetings by going to Bishtupur to celebrate a fellow GMPian's birthday.
I often refer to Bishtupur to friends and family as the "downtown" area of Jamshedpur. There is basically just one big road in the place with a few shops that vaguely attempt to capture the spirit of Commercial street in Bangalore. Of course our marketing prof might scowl at my attempt to compare two different "consumer segments", but kya kare..."Yeh Dil Mange More". Neverthless, we had a good time in the Cafe Coffee Day joint there filled with cake cutting/pasting, Freppe's and imitation acts of students and faculty alike.

Got to catch some sleep now...ciao !

First week musings in GMP

So it is close to a week now since I landed in XLRI. This time has been busy although
I wouldn't categorize is at crazily busy. That time had passed when I wasn't here, the time when my peers were going through the preparatory course.

I have settled in as far as day-to-day things are concerned, got my mobile connection with much difficulty and bought a few items from the store within the campus. This store has some basic things like stationary,snacks etc. but doesn't have anything beyond that (e.g. calculator). For these, one has to go to Bishtupur which is 10mins/Rs.30 away. I got my SIM card from a BSNL vendor there, who was quite amused when I repeatedly asked him if Incoming calls are charged (based on my US experience).

Coursewise, I am catching up with material I had missed for 2 weeks(which is a lot) and with day-to-day classes (which is manageable). Although it keeps one busy for most of our waking hours, I would say it is manageable.

Some of my batchmates will be heading for the outbound adventure program this weekend, while I will do next weekend. The campus is quite beautiful. One of my peers has captured several parts of XLRI in hig blog. Click on this link for pictures. XLRI Photos .

Over the week, I made acquaintances with several other peers of mine, including a Deputy GM of BSNL. It has been enriching to learn about the kind of work they did and their opinion of the particular industry/domain they worked in. Hopefully, I will come out of the IT shell and have a better overview of the different industries in the next few months.

Got to doze off now.....ciao !

XLRI GMP 2008 Interview

Thought I should debrief on my XLRI GMP Interview that happened this morning at 1:30AM EST !!!!

I guess the time says it all....I was feeling sleepy and dozed of at 10:00 PM. Got up at 12:00 midnight and glanced through my resume and the usual interview questions and responses that are now hard-wired in my brain.

I waited until 12:30....no call.
I got irritated (and sleepy) and called the XLRI adcom office. The person on the other end promised that I would get a call in the next 30 minutes. At 1:15AM, I got the call....finally !

Following is the interview summary :

Adcom : Tell me about yourself
Me : Very briefly talked about where I grew up and where I work. (Could have expanded a bit).

Adcom : You have mentioned GAP analysis in your resume. Talk about it and what exactly you did.
Me : Gave a bird's eye view of what I did, deliberately avoiding technical details.
But Adcom was keen on delving into very specific technical details and even asked about the choice of technology. Lasted about 10 minutes here I think, before they moved on.

Adcom : You work in Business intelligence project now. How is this different from your earlier project.
Me : raved about how I have progressed from a purely technical role to one where I have insight into how the business benefits out of the systems I develop.
Adcom really went into this one, asking what kind of business understanding I had gainied. Explained this to a limited extent. Could have picked a better example.

That's it. They added that adcom office will keep me posted on when the results will come out.

Good luck to others who are waiting for results.