Posts

I had a bet with Kalidas about which of our pages would get more web hits in October. Of course, October isn’t over yet, but with 12,740 on mine against 2,234, I think I have a decent chance of a pizza.

We’re doing a course on Dynamics of Strategy, and using some system dynamics software for this. Vensim and Ithink are powerful simulation tools to think about business.

Life Magazine has picked the best photos of the year. The squeamish may wish to avoid the Science section featuring the birth of Sarah. You have been warned.

Word detective traces the origins of strange words. For instance, Yahoo means an ignorant brute. Hamburgers have nothing to do with ham – they’re so called because they come from Hamburg, Germany. Beefeaters are the guards at the The Tower of London (Yeomen guards). Word detective doesn’t know why they’re called that, but I can confirm first-hand that the Yeomen guards don’t know why themselves.

I haven’t done ANY work in the last week, except play Moria. I’ve deleted it. But not before I got to Level 26, could cast a Fire Bolt spell, and slayed a few dragons.

We visited Oxford in the morning. It was a tour with the Indian YMCA. Though I slept through most of the beauty of the English country side, Oxford itself was a classic example. We went up a tower from which we could see most of Oxford. It was a small town, (about an hour-and-half from London) with lots of spires and quite an old architecture. The Oxford University is split into many colleges, Magdalen (pronounced Maud-len) being the most famous of the lot. Lewis Caroll (of Alice in Wonderland) and Tolkien (of Lord of the Rings) hailed from here. We went first to Christchurch college. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything as beautiful as the grass there, with the possible exception of Hampton Court Palace. From there, we took a walk along a river to Magdalen college. ...

After lazing around the whole morning, I went to the London eye this evening. The London eye is this huge giantwheel that’s probably one of the tallest structures in London. When on top, you’re supposed to be able to see all the important places in London. It was arranged by the LBS for the exchange students, but not many had turned up, since it was raining. So we got on, and despite my fear of heights, it was a nice experience. You do get to see quite a bit. The only problem was that it got over too soon, and since we didn’t have a guide, I didn’t know what most of the buildings were anyway. I did spot St. Paul’s Cathedral, which looks lovely, and another building which I’m told is a famous gay club (of which there are tonnes in London). ...

The McKinsey presentation was this evening at Lord’s. Yes, that’s the Lord’s Cricket Ground. So at 7PM, there was this huge crowd of people strolling over to the Nursery Pavillion, wondering why Lord’s had a square cricket pitch. Google and AskJeeves haven’t given me an answer yet. McKinsey’s presentation had two high points. First, it was mercifully brief. The entire presentation was for 2 or 3 minutes, and all that this partner said was, “Hey, we love LBS. You know about us. So we’re all standing here, here, and here. Come over and talk to us.” ...

I had to attend the Bain presentation today at 10AM, so I tried getting to LBS early. I started at 8:45AM. But for some reason, the train crawled on. The engineer couldn’t figure out why himself. Anyway, as a result, the train was nearly half-an-hour late. Now, if the Bangalore Mail came in half-an-hour late, I’d be thankful. But here, it’s gotten to the point where one makes appointments relying on the efficiency of the British Rail. Well, it’s a lesson, I guess. ...

Since 1995, I’ve been playing a game called Moria. It’s based on Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. It’s a text-based game, but it’s amazingly addictive.

There’s a stall that sells theatre tickets for half price at Leicester Square, so I went there in the morning. It opened only at 12 noon, so rather than waiting, I just bought tickets for the balcony. 15.50 pounds didn’t seem to much. The musical was “The Phantom of the Opera”, running at Her Majesty’s Theatre. There were 6 of us, and we went to the show. That was when I realized why the tickets were so cheap. They were on the second row of the third floor. Which meant that we had to crane our necks to see anything. What made it worse was that the lady in front of me refused to sit still. But after a while, I got used to it. ...

Yes, I haven’t been updating for a while. Problem is, I’ve been doing too much and writing too little. Let’s see if I can fix some of that now. First of all, people can’t seem to tell where I’m from. This is despite the fact that I’m the only one with a moustache in the whole batch, and am therefore the one person whose name no one forgets. I mean, I lost my name card after the very first class. Yet all the Professors talk to me like long-lost friends. Anyway… ...

OK, it’s not in chronological order. So what? Some of us decided to go to The House of Mirth. Figured it might be worth watching a movie at London. May as well see what the theatres are like. Besides, Gillian Andersen would probably be worth it. (Incidentally, I learnt that it’s pronounced ‘jillian’, not ‘gillian’ with a hard ‘g’. While we’re on the subject of pronounciations, I may as well admit that I learnt ‘buffet’ rhymes with ‘ooph-hey’, ‘genre’ is pronounced ‘jaan-ra’, ‘Renoir’ is ‘Ren-wa’, ‘deluxe’ is ‘deloo’, ‘Nice’ is ’niece’, ‘rendezvous’ is ‘rondevoo’, and so on. England does teach one how to pronounce French :-) ...

A busy weekend ahead. A night of Antakshari, followed by a day at Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square, an evening at The Phantom of the Opera, and to cap it off, Madame Tussauds and the London Planetarium!

I hope to tour Europe next week. The Backpack Traveller tells me about rail travel, and Eurolines about bus. Of course, there’s a lot to see in London.

I had the courage to walk into Harrod’s today. Rather silly of me, really, since I had about 250 pounds in my pocket, and was wearing an IIM-B jacket with my backpack. As soon as I walked in, a guard came up to me and said, “I’m afraid you’ll have to carry your backpack in your hand in this store, sir.” Struck me as slightly crazy. What, is it a measure against shoplifting? Or is it like you’re supposed to wear suits in some shops? Or did he just want me to feel uncomfortable? If so, he succeeded extremely well. It’s painful to carry a backpack in your hand, even if it’s got next to nothing. ...

A rather tiring day. 09:00 am: Wake up, and still feel sleepy. 10:00 am: Leave for LBS 11:00 am: Reach LBS. Check mails. These days, it takes a couple of hours. 12:30 pm: Attend India Club meeting for Diwali celebrations. Very well organized. 01:15 pm: Presentation by Booz-Allen & Hamilton. Pretty good. Manage to stay awake. 02:15 pm: Eat lunch. Stupidly eat prawns without seeing the labels. Almost vomit. 03:00 pm: Group meeting. Discuss Dell. 04:15 pm: Fall asleep in AT Kearney’s presentation. 05:15 pm: Stay away from anything that looks non-veg during tea. 06:00 pm: World economy class. Excellent professor. Terribly funny. Everything makes sense. 07:00 pm: Guest lecturer. Fall asleep. 08:00 pm: Back to Prof. Scott. Wake up and listen. 09:00 pm: Answer more mails. 10:00 pm: Chucked out of computer center. Go home. 11:15 pm: Have dinner. midnight: Crash.

Business Week’s B-School rankings ranks LBS as the #2 non-US school (behind INSEAD). IIM-A is not listed even in the third tier, while IIM-B is not even included in their survey.

A whole new range of domain names, ranging from .museums to .sansansan have been bid for. I wonder who .biz and .xxx will go to.

I had my first case interview today. Four of us (3 exchange students and one LBS MBA grad) sat together and tried giving each other cases. It’s an excellent learning experience. Had I gone in for a case interview without this preparation, I’d have flunked. Our class on Financial Analysis was good fun – and an exposure to yet another illustration of internationalism. Prof. Higson (in his perfect British accent) mentioned that he was part of a programme on TV for some society of animals. (Not as a caged animal that looked sorry, he assured us. He was talking about stocks – no idea why.) We were discussing the ‘Body Shop’ company (the one that sells natural cosmetics), and apparantly this company was blacklisted by the programme, for failing to be ‘animal-friendly’. Prof. Higson was mentioning that one of the reasons for Body Shop’s success was the British obsession with being kind to animals. He suggested that, therefore, Body Shop may not have been as successful elsewhere. ...