The current financial crisis has definitely all of us worried irrespective of our specializations. We had HSBC CIBM, Bangalore on campus.

They came in early and gave us a presentation detailing the job profile and compensation. They had openings for Equity Research and Investment Banking. The first part of their process was conducting the aptitude test. We had 30 questions of finance, five of quant, five synonymns and ten of data interpretation type questions.

Gave the test my best shot and it paid out when I made it through to the next round of group discussions.

If there is one thing I think that should be eliminated from a selection process is the group discussion round, however the folks from HSBC made it extremely clear that they were looking for a discussion not a debate. Yours truly was able to put in one statement during the entire GD. The statement did make an impact because, to my surprise, I made it to the Interview round, along with twelve others.

My interview was conducted by two persons from the Investment Banking division and it was the last of all the interviews, which meant a slow patient wait.

The results were out rather quickly and hey! Surprise! I was selected for the Investment Banking division

For truly, nothing is impossible with God! Reminded me of my Larsen and Toubro Interview where I got placed in the first company that I applied to.

Akshat had got placed on Sunday, or more like early Monday morning and so the two of us took Aditya, Namrata and Sneha out for dinner to Kiva, The Lounge. Here are some photos from the dinner.

Will get the remaining photos soon. We got back post 11.30 and after finishing my regular blog posts dropped off to bed.

Woke up early this morning to catch the Volvo back to Mumbai. I caught a Dadar Volvo (the first one there0 from Wakad itself, followed by a train to Andheri and a bus back home. Ordered pizzas from Garcia’s for lunch. Hadn’t got much sleep the previous night and so crashed peacefully for a few hours.

I plan on going back to Pune on Monday.

I haven’t had much time to get down to blogging what I have been upto in the past month. Having celebrated my birthday in Mumbai, I headed back to Pune to get on with life.

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?