"The year gone by" : 08- 09

I have chosen deliberately not to write posts about "ME" if they do not signify and help proving a point because I know none of you will be quite interested in that. But this one time, I would like to make an exception for my yearly report. I know that it is four days too late for the report to be published, but better late than never :)

So here goes some major developments over the last year.

Major events professionally:

• Organized the Supply Chain case study event at SIBM Transcend 08. It took awfully long time to design the case study and organize other related things but in the end just few praiseworthy comments from the participants made all the effort worth it.

• Did my summers at Max New York Life Insurance. Got a Pre placement offer from the company. Overall a decent learning experience though could have been much better.
  

• Got Second prize in M&M War Room Business Strategy Competition. Most of the work was rip off from the work done on another case study on related sector

• Knowledge Management case study for HCL. The solution given was directly deploy-able as commented by the Director of Knowledge Management, HCL. The understanding of KMS at MindTree helped a lot in this respect.
  

• Finally wrote an article on "Innovative Marketing" for Forthright - the Research Magazine at SIBM. This was a long due task being rescheduled a million times.

• Completed a course on Innovation and a consulting project for KayaLife through Marico Innovation foundation
  

• Got placed in Cognizant Business Consulting on 11th December 2008 at 1605 hrs. This was the second interview, after a failed telephonic interview and noisy Group discussion. Though not a great achievement per se but given the situation of the job market, it was close to satisfactory. Since a lot of effort went into the preparation for the same, the results were not proportionately adequate. But then its human Psyche not be be happy ever with what you get.

Major developments personally:

• Living in a residential campus has its own advantages. Got to know many more people and created a life long bonding with some of them.
  

• Got a totally new perspective of life because of the prior point. The sense of pragmatism which I was lacking before will probably dawn upon me looking at people around. Personally I don't think I have become any wiser in worldly matters over the last year.
  

• For few months towards the end of the year, I was on cloud number nine but I have come down owing to the bitter reality. It was nice to be there. But I guess everything that goes up comes down. :)

• Definitely improved my informal debating skills as most of the time went in fighting over insignificant and irrelevant issues just for fun. Long discussions which stopped only when both sides would "Agree to disagree".

• Started blogging much more regularly as there is plenty of time to kill. Consequently, I have started thinking about things differently. There is a definite intent to take keep blogging even when there is less time at hand.
  

• Physically, I have become much more active because of all the outdoors - badminton, cricket, football etc. Again thanks to a residential campus, you tend to pander to such desires given the facilities. To beat all records, some days I have even gone for a morning jog :)
  

• The coke intake has risen significantly. Though many have shown their own concerns in this regard, I do not feel its taking any toll on my health. Don't know about the future though.
  

• There was a deliberate attempt to reduce the non-veg intake towards the later half of the year but there is only so much you can do when the tempting dishes are right in front of you. Though definitely the intake has gone down.

• Visited Dehradun, Haridwar, Akansha school, Shirdi, Singhgarh fort, Kashid beach, Nagaon beach, Kihim beach, Murud Zanzeera fort. It was a much needed break from the routine. The highlight was para sailing at Nagaon beach and spending time with children at Akansha school.

• My belief that MBA has no value except from the glamor quotient was further strengthened owing to various experience in and out of the college and corporate world.
  

• I hate my college even more now having spent close to 1.5 years in this college and knowing how ineffective the management of this management college is. (This calls for another post)
  

Though there were many other things over the last year, these seem to be the major developments this year as far as I can recollect. This will be a regular feature every year on my Web log. And by the way if you did not like this post, don't worry too much, it is a head fake (i.e it is meant as a record for me and not for you). The subsequent posts will not be so much about ME.