6-6-6: Nothing Devilish about it

It’s been 6 months since my last post and my first post after entering the corporate world. My days in employment have been pretty ‘happening’ (for want of a better word) so far, with the 6 weeks training in Kuala Lumpur being the high point. Presenting to you, 6 anecdotes from an awesome time in KL:

Dooba Dooba: 21 Hours, One crazy performance

12 Midnight – Decide to sing a song for the gala night, the token Indian “cultural performance”.

2 am – 5 Tam Brahms, 1 Guitar, 1 Flute...singers 1-2 are tired, singer 3 doesn’t know how to sing, guitarist is irritated, flutist is trying to keep the others awake

5 pm – Borrowed Guitar is taken back; flutist’s talents have been noticed, encore requests putting paid to any fruitful practice; Singer 4, the only non Tam-Brahm, enters the mix.

6.30 pm - Some rehearsal in the hall.....with permutations of singing pairs tried out. Meanwhile, the just-mollified guitarist is offered unsolicited tips on playing the guitar, and gets back to uttering expletives.

7 pm – All dressed for the “gala nite”. Guitarist pulls off a stunner and unleashes the Tam Brahm within him. An explosive mix of the guitar and the Veshti (South Indian dhoti for the uninitiated) earn him the moniker of Remo Mama 2.0.

9 pm – Performance exceeds all expectations......no need to sing at the end, for all South Asian IGs step on to the stage and join in the singing at the end. Three cheers to SAARC Unity. J

Demolition Dinner: Hotel Saravana Bhawan

A day long trip to Genting Highlands, which is like Nandi Hills, except for cable cars, amusement parks, casinos etc. developed at the peak. Fully famished and tired, 5 Tam Brahms land up at HSB for the first semblance of South Indian food after arriving at KL. What follows is absolute carnage. Within 5 minutes, the first order, comprising an assortment of the major items on the menu is swept off. The Hotel Staff run out of breath trying to catch up with our speed. The other Indian IGs, following about 10 minutes after us, are shell shocked. And to round it off, “C’mon Iyer, lets put filter coffee”.

The Indian impact: Bus delay in Malaysia

Getting taxis is pretty easy in Malaysia, in Melaka, it was not. Wait for taxi: 30 minutes. Time left for last bus departure: 30 minutes. Time required to get there: 45 minutes (accounting for an unexpected traffic jam). Amidst tension, repeated phone calls to the others, unsolicited advice to the cabbie, and of course, the final 5 minute sprint to the bus in a crowded bus station. Of course, the others contributed by holding up the bus for 5-10 minutes with repeated requests.

As they say, Indians leave their mark everywhere.

Arbaaz “Banga” Khan – The Entertainer

Never more evident than that night in Langkawi.....Banga searches for alcohol all around the place. Despite his claims of “not being high”, he barges into our (Mahesh, Bharath and I) hotel room, entertains us for the greater part of 3 hours. His antics include singing some kindergarten-ish song about dancing, sky and stars (Refer to Banga for the exact lyrics), makes us dance to the song, even though Mahesh and I are almost on the verge of dozing off. But the killer dialogue is:

Banga takes a washroom break, Bharath has ‘somehow’ dozed off, Mahesh and I are ROTFLing (ok, not on the floor). Banga comes out and asks “Kya, tum logon ne mujhe lock nahi kiya toilet mein?” [We were actually contemplating the same]. 

Surrealistic: Siem Reap, Cambodia

It’s not every day that you get to see an airport constructed to suit the traditional architecture of that country. It’s not every day that you get to visit a somewhat “off-beat” tourist location. It’s not every day that you visit the world’s largest religious structure, and be overawed by its sheer grandeur and magnificence. It’s not every day that you visit a fully functional “village-on-water”, encompassing floating shops, monasteries and restaurants. It’s not every day that you sleep off like a baby on the boat in the floating village, under the burning sun.

It’s not every day that you are unable to single out any one experience as the best in a trip. It’s not every day that you get to go to Cambodia.

Crazy Cabbies

Drinking and driving don’t go hand in hand.....try telling that to this crazy taxi driver in Phuket. Mr. Cabbie stops thrice on the way to the Phuket Airport, blabbering excuses like “drank a lot of water, gotta pee”... and still manages to get us to the airport in double-quick time by taking us through smaller roads at 120 km/hr, thereby avoiding the traffic jam on the main highway. Some roller-coaster ride it was.....and we weren’t done. 3 hours later, the cabbie in KL zips through the highway at 140 kmph.

 

Tennis Wars and the Emerging Economies

Today, Li Na, the diminutive Chinese tennis player won the French Open, thereby creating history by becoming the first Chinese and Asian-born player to win a singles grand slam. This feat is quite significant, given the fact that China has hardly any background in tennis, where players from the USA, Russia and Belgium have dominated (on the women's side) over the past decade. This victory brings to my mind a matchup between Sania Mirza and Li Na sometime in 2005, about the time when both the players had a ranking of somewhere close to 60-70. Since then, Sania Mirza has gone as high as #27 on the WTA Rankings to as low as #141, reached the 4^th Round of the US Open (2005), courted controversy over every action of hers, from attire to husband to advertisements. Her achievements pale in front of Na Li, who will now move to #4 on the WTA Rankings, and has reached both grand slam finals this year.

Somehow, the freedom of the 4^th estate has played its own part in Sania Mirza's underachieving career. From the moment she stepped on to the tennis arena, she has been followed by the media, drooling male fans, religious groups, advertising agencies and others alike. For her male following (there is at least some following I presume), it may be attributed to the fact that she is the first prominent Indian woman sportswoman in the era of the internet. She is also perceived as glamourous (for want of a better word). The glamour quotient explains the actions of the ad agencies. The Muslim religious groups have targeted her once too far, for reasons ranging from attire to playing with Shahar Peer (an Israeli) to playing tennis itself. And, her marriage to Saqlain Mushtaq clone Shoaib Malik has only added to the attention around her. And the media, for all these reasons, as also its own joblessness, has followed/stalked her.

It may be said that these myriad distractions, coupled with injuries, can wreck any sportsperson's career. Censorship in China, though a bane for that country, may have benefitted Li Na in her rise to the top, even though it may be argued that China has enough women superstars in badminton and table tennis for Li Na's rise to make an earth-shaking difference.

However, Sania's fellow Hyderabadi Saina Nehwal has had relatively lesser attention on her through her rise from the junior ranks, culminating in her reaching the #2 spot in the BWF Rankings. Even though she has appeared in advertisements for Airtel and Omega oil over the past year, attention on her off-field issues has been pretty minimal (no religious groups and celebrity marriages you see). I remember just one article in Times of India (which HAS to publish a glamorous article on ANY woman it 'deems' to be a celebrity). For some reason, Saina Nehwal hasn't been perceived to have a glamour quotient on par with that of Sania, though the reason may be due to the glamorous nature of women's tennis and the smaller following of badminton in India (Even if badminton tournaments are telecast, there is lower fanfare/marketing around them). ToI, (sigh), however would have you believe otherwise:

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-02-06/badminton/28366126_1_super-series-saina-nehwal-indian-open-grand-prix#ixzz1EA0x0T85

Whatever it may be, the lack of media attention/distraction has definitely benefitted Saina Nehwal, and India as well, for we can count on her to bring many more laurels to the Indian nation in the future.

As I sign-off, a question:

Li Na is the first Asian-born player to win a singles grand slam event. Who is the first player of Asian origin to do so? (Answers on your comments please)

 

Cheers!

 

 

TEMPLATE FOR A COMPANY PRESENTATION

20 months of B-school life has given me an exposure to an innumerable number of presentations, from peers, seniors, juniors, professors and companies. Company presentations i.e. 1 hour sessions (duration dependent on the verbosity of the presenter or the hyperactiveness of the students) show up 1-2 months prior to the placement processes. Here is how a standard B-school company presentation (ppt) proceeds:

Prologue: Students chattering outside the ppt room, while the presenters decide what to speak. A brief welcome to the company, and here we go.

Presenter (P): Thank you so much for your time..........(occasional fillers to get the audience to laugh/show interest/wake up)...........we have a ppt (file) for the presentation, but would prefer more of a discussion...........(you have the license to interrupt us and ask (stupid) questions).

NOTE: If P is an alumnus, he/she first duly mentions the same, and talks about the fact that he dozed off on the same benches as us, leading to applause.

(P resumes): We are a $xyz billion enterprise, and have a base in ____ countries. We have been steadily growing over the past few years (words like fortune 500 clients, market share along with bright colored pie charts etc).......our business model is blah blah........(high probability of words like customer/client focus, synergy, end-to-end solutions, implementation, business strategy coming in)...............

P will try to reduce the vagueness of the presentation by stating 3/4/5 (any more and it gets confusing and verbose) tenets on which it operates (which would mean words like management, quality, innovation, customer, organization etc in various permutations and combinations)

Having eulogized the virtues of the company, P now tries to ‘market’ the company to the students/prospective companies, which would involve jargon like career growth, flexibility of roles, work-life balance, challenging work, client-facing...note that the word “role” may be repeated up to a 100 times in a span of 15 minutes at this point.

NOTE: P will speak a lot more, and the talk will be 100 times less structured than this blog post, which is where the attempt at tenets comes in (refer to para above). The marketing of the company is interspersed with the rest of the ppt. However, the words most likely used still remain the same.

At irregular intervals during the talk, Hyper-Enthu Nutcases (HENs) will ask questions, which may range from perfectly relevant (salary, location, interview process) to the absolutely irrelevant (‘which product will you be launching in 2030?’, ‘Will you also conduct a case study competition next year?’). The questions flow in after the 25% duration mark, and mainly after the 75% mark, until about 90% of the ppt is done, by which point everyone would be having one eye on the door and another on the clock.

(P concludes): Any more questions? (2-3 times)...... a few prospective questions thrown in..........thank you for attending the presentation, we look forward to interviewing you/making the mistake of recruiting you/suffering the torture of working with you thereon.

NOTE: If any HEN asks a question during this phase, he/she will be subject to dangerous glares/chappal-on-the-butt treatment or plain simple ostracization, depending on the duration of the subsequent answer and also whether the student is a repeat offender.

EPILOGUE: A subset of the HENs will ask the same questions in a different manner, thereby initiating the process of ‘reverse-marketing’ i.e. marketing themselves to the company. Meanwhile, the others will walk out of the room, criticizing the verbosity of P and the hyperactivity of the HENs.

And so it goes.........

DISCLAIMER: This post is a light-hearted take for generating a few laughs. It does not point to any person/company in particular, and shouldn't be taken in the wrong sense by anyone.