Room 103 is the first room in college to get placed.

Akshat and me were place by November 25 and late last Thursday night, we got the good news that Aditya too was placed. In fact he’s got an excellent job with one of the highest salaries in campus

And, we are a hungry group.

So, we booked a cab on Friday night and headed out to Stone Water Grill in Koregoan Park. This was recommended to us by a friend and it was a first visit to the place. Turned out to be a really good location with great service and a good ambience.

We ate and drank and they danced and we brought up a bill that justified Aditya’s high salary.

I’ve still to get the remaining photos. I’ll upload them to my Flickr album when I do so.

Anyway, we reached college at 2.30am, which excluding New Year’s last year is one of the latest I’ve returned.

The last few days have been as lazy as it has been. One extremely irritating thing is the lack of a proper internet connection because our excellent network folks (I shudder to use the word admin) are busy experimenting with the wifi adapters. I plan on writing a really dirty post about this so called “wifi connectivity” that is promised students out here.

Made a 30 mark worth presentation yesterday for World Class Manufacturing. A day’s work that completes one half of the valuation for that subject. This week is a little tight with lectures (well comparatively)!

We decided to go to Gajalee in Seepz for a sea food dinner. The prices there have already been steep and after the makeover, its gone steeper.

However, must admit that one dish is enough to fill two persons. Ordered a sweet corn chicken soup followed by fish tikka masala and some chapatis.

Caught the 6a.m. Volvo back to Pune, which has been my routine whenever I come here to Mumbai.

Attended lectures in the evening. They are so few that they don’t seem very interesting. However, we have to attend.

Sneha’s boy was down so we went over to Mezzanine for dinner. The food situation out here seems to get worse by the day and it takes a lot of strength to even enter into the mess. (Now you know why they call it a mess!)

This situation is combated by regular dinners outside. Aditya, Sneha and me went to Tamanna on Saturday and this was followed by the same on Sunday as well and then McDonald’s on Monday.

Was summoned to the Director’s office today and two of us sent to Mumbai for placements pitching activities. Headed over to town for a quick stop at the company and headed back home.

Am going back tomorrow morning. Intend to catch the first bus out of town. Would have stayed more but carried absolutely nothing to assist me!

Marise’s friend Priyanka’s marriage was on the 15th and as part of our custom, both the bride and the groom have an individual roce which is a traditional function.

The roce was held on her building terrace in Kurla, which required me to ride in terrible traffic out there. Got there very early in spite of this.

Early did mean that I had to wait for a while before the function actually started… an hour later.

The usual dirtying of the bride-to-be took place followed by dancing. We left the place and I dropped Marise home.

The next day was rather silent. Saturday was the big day of the wedding. Being free in the morning, I decided to head over to Big Bazaar, this time in Mulund. My last two experiences were rather bad. However, since I had Rs. 1,400 in discount coupons, I had to go make and expense. Picked up a black sweather that shall hopefuly assist me this winter. I spent last winter borrowing jackets from Ravi.

Also picked up a salwar piece for Mom, who celebrated her birthday on Sunday.

Saturday evening was the wedding. The reception was held at St. Josephs in Bandra. Marise’s sister and dad were trigger happy and I was able to collect quite a few images.

For more photos check out the photo gallery.

Stayed over at my grandma’s that evening and convinced her to come back with me on the bike. That would have made an excellent photo

Sunday was Mom’s birthday. Just a quiet lunch to which Marise came over. She left in the evening.

Spent Monday visiting banks and my barber in the morning and the rest of the day at home.

Caught the first bus from Mumbai to Pune on Tuesday morning and reach here by 10am itself.

Classes began yesterday with a full four hour class from 6.30pm on Advances in Supply Chain, followed by Strategic Marketing and Advances in Supply Chain lectures today. Thus ends the lectures for this week.

Placements is just around the corner and well I kinda tensed. A well kept secret atleast on the blog was my Preplacement Offer from the company I was in for summers, which I rejected last week since it wasn’t up to my expectations. The scene is bad this year, so my fingers are crossed.

Spent Saturday, Sunday and Monday cooped up in the vipasana hall working at the helpdesk for the summer placements of the juniors.

I’m not at liberty to discuss this, but I can say that we did a good amount of work, spent a good amount of time doing all kinds of activities and lastly eating and drinking till we burst!

8th was a packed day. Woke up early in the morning to give a 7am final exam of Corporate Governance. I have no clue why we studied that subject!

Next had the FSA presentation to give, immediately followed by a Social Entrepreneurship presentation.

Following the class I had to work on the Software Project Management presentation which we did for yesterday.

Last evening and early this morning went towards the preparation of the Six Sigma event that has been going on today and tomorrow.

The rest of today has been rathe lazy. Have another presentation, this time on SAS scheduled for Monday. We have no clue what to do!

Had originally planned to come back to Mumbai on Thursday itself for Placements work. However, a thought improvement workshop interrupted these plans.

The workshop was conducted by CGN. The workshop is actually a program by The Pacific Institute. I had originally planned on going into details for the same, but I guess most of the same is copyrighted and it would not be correct. In brief, the workshop covers topics like scotomas, Reticular Activating System, Gestalt psychology. In all it was an entertaining three days. We did miss a finance test in the middle, which I would have liked to attend.

Left for Mumbai early Sunday morning and reached there by afternoon. It’s been starting to take too much time traveling to and fro between Mumbai and Pune!

My first job was to clean up the house. Took out the vacuum cleaner that I purchased oh so long back and cleaned up lots of dust from my computer primarily, and then the rest of the house.

Aditya was to stay with me for the entire week while we roamed the city visiting companies. Well, that’s exactly what we did, “roamed the city”.

The next five days were extremely exhausting, with us traveling in all directions, in buses, rickshaws, taxis and more importantly, the local trains of Mumbai. The five day first class tourist pass did not provide that much relief!

Left for Pune last Monday and took well over five hours to get back to college. The journey was extremely frustrating. Caught a volvo at about 9am, which reached Wakad around 1.30pm! I made the mistake of getting down at the Police Chowky, only to find no rickshaws. Had to climb mounds of construction work and walk a good deal to find the tumtums. Would have taken photos but I had my hands full with three heavy bags!

Walked another kilometer or so from the Hinjewadi chowk to college, wondering at every step of the way if I would make it back alive.

Reached my room only to find out that I had a class, which had already begun. Had a quick bath (it was a necessity) and rushed for the class, which was immediately followed by a test.

The rest of this week has been extremely lazy, with a good deal of electricity problems. And, it is the weekend yet again and yet again we are without power for full 48 hours!

Did I mention that in times like these I really really miss Mumbai?

Well, busy is more like it.

WebComm Team

This team was instituted after Ravi and I joined / founded it. And work was hectic the last week of August and the first week of September.

While we did get the SCMHRD site up and running, as you can see it is painfully slow. There’s absolutely nothing I can do to speed it up except redesign the entire site.

I’ve been working on a layout and speeded up the entire thing. A test site has worked decently, but I guess I will have to move away from tables totally as I do with all my other sites.

As part of the team, I spent a lot of time in the Admissions room and so was asked to join it officially…

Admissions

…which I did

And as a result, the last two months have been extremely crazily busy. We released the Admissions Brochure, which has come out pretty well. We’ll most likely release a PDF version of it for those interested.

Also been looking into the advertising in magazines and newspapers. Can be both entertaining and quite a pain at times. But, it definitely has improved my negotiation skills.

Answering phonecalls is the most painful part of Admissions. For one, most of the calls are regarding distance learning. SCMHRD doesn’t offer that and for distance MBA, you need to contact SCDL. The second set of questions are about the Management Quotas. This is handled directly by the Symbiosis Society.

The last thing we did (besides tonnes of others) was load the trucks. Between three of us guys, we handled some 2-3 tonnes of materials several times. If you’re talking TQM, we did that.

Brochures should be available in all leading career coaching institutes all over India.

College and Exams

Finally got done with the Semester I examinations! Well, atleast gave all the papers and am now awaiting the results. Studied for most of the papers on Day-1 except for accounts which began on Day-2!

As for accounts, that still remains a challenge as I got that paper to give yet again. Had expected a backlog but was surprised to have been joined by over 100 others as well!

Summer Placements

Summer Placements were painful, especially when we could see several Freshers snatching up jobs, while we work-ex people struggled to find one. I’m hoping the tables turn in the Final Placements next year.
Anyway, got placed on Day1 at eClerx, which has its offices in Mumbai

Sem II begins

We’ve selected our electives. I chose Operations Management II, Sales and Distribution and Brand Management. With these three I could cover the 8 credits that I needed to choose. It will also help me in my transistion towards an Operations Major, which I am strongly considering.

Ohh, and we’re on our Diwali break. Will be going back to Pune early Monday morning. Ravi tells me that there is tonnes of work to be done on Monday and Tuesday. At the same time, will have to juggle with lectures to attend!

Life @ SCMHRD!

Happy Diwali my dear readers