Ajay - On the Road called Life!

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.

Fourth semester at SCMHRD is one of the most relaxed semesters. We have Neev just around the corner and so I am relatively free. Decided to go to church today. Maria was pleased since she has been after me to do so for a long long time! Am sure my Mom too was pleased.

Today was the feast of Christ the King as well as it happens to be my brother’s birthday. The feast of Christ the King marks the end of the liturgical year. This is usually a big event in my church back in Mumbai. Next Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent. I can finally start playing some Christmas carols

We took the 5.05pm bus to Atur Center and then went to the Food Bazaar at Pune Central to pick up some eatables and other essentials.

Mass at St. Anthony’s in Model Colony was over an hour. However, it was filled with singing, something that I haven’t indulged in a long time.

Met quite a few other Catholics of SCMHRD of both the juniors and senior batch who landed up for mass today.

Caught the 8pm bus back to the campus and grabbed a simple dinner of double full fried eggs in the cafeteria.

We have a company on campus tomorrow morning. Have to attend the pre-placement talks before I decide if I should signup with them or not.

Wish me the best of luck. Will provide details tomorrow or day after. I plan on going home on Tuesday since the rest of the week is relatively free. Also have to pickup my final installment demand draft.

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My last post was in Mumbai. And here I am back again posting from my home city.

Returned to Pune after Diwali vacation on 30th itself to make sure that we study for the Corporate Finance and Software Project Management exams on 1st. Well, study we did, but managed to mess up SPM

The rest of the week passed by with some good, some bad and some really really ugly papers. Well, January 3rd is the tentative date for the results.

Had originally planned on leaving for Mumbai on 10th itself. However, I had to attend a student interaction session by the NAAC team. Symbiosis International University is currently being accredited by NAAC.

Namrata and me set out for Mumbai by the 7.15am bus. The driver refused to take it through Parihar Chowk and insisted on taking the bypass route. The drivers can be really frustrating at times.

The MSRTC bus turned out to be full, which is rather suprising for a Tuesday morning. Anyway, got into the Neeta bus which got to Mumbair rather fast. Ended up watching Tashan on the bus. I really wonder how they allow some Bollywood movies to be made!

Got down at Santa Cruz and picked up my bike from Jana who studies in NMIMS. The bike runs well, but as usual I plan on getting it serviced tomorrow. Have a lot of riding to do this week.

Not sure when I’m heading back to Pune. I’ve got to start studying for my upcoming placements.

After Twinkle Twinkle Litter Star by kids, this video gives you a total remix of the rhyme that we learnt while growing up!

My experience with Big Bazaar during Diwali remains unchanged. Three years back I had a horrible experience at Big Bazaar and this year it just worsened.

As I mentioned yesterday, I intended to go shopping to Big Bazaar at Lower Parel today in order to redeem some discount coupons.

Considering the Diwali season, Big Bazaar has tonnes of sales and offers to entice the Diwali shopper. It is also the time the store is extremely crowded.

However, I was hoping that I would find atleast a single pair of shoes since that is currently a necessity.

Found one, a Puma model. However it wasn’t very comfortable. Hunted throughout the store for anything worthwhile and gave up!

Dropped into the Barista in Phoenix Mills itself where we spent an hour before I found my way home and she to her Aunt’s place.

I intend to go shopping in November when there will hopefully be no sales and hopefully they have something to buy! A lot of hope…

Finished off my FSA paper on 23rd and awoke early Saturday morning for some last minute preparations for the SAP-BIW paper.

This turned out to be a very comfortable paper to write in 90 minutes. Had a quick breakfast and got down to packing for my journey to Mumbai. I love travelling light and infact that is what I did. Picked up my laptop and a few essentials and caught an extremely crowded 11.15am bus from college to Aundh.

Was fortunate enough to get a Metrolink volvo to Dadar immediately. Ticket prices were hiked considering that everyone is rushing to Mumbai for their Diwali vacations.

The bus was quick and we got little traffic on the way back and was at Sion in about three hours. Caught a rick from there to Bandra to my Grandma’s place. Had plans to meet Marise in the evening.

Met up with Marise and her sis and went to 5 Spice in Bandra. The prices have been jacked up there as well and it’s definitely more expensive than the one in town. We did eat and drink well, paid well and got back home. Was so zonked that I crashed almost immediately.

Awoke early morning (well not that early) to go for mass at 10am. Mass has become a lot shorter with shorter sermons

Marise came over for lunch and spent the rest of the day with me before she had to leave for a wedding reception.

The next few days are packed well. I really hope to get some studies done, but vacation can be a real big hurdle to cross when you want to study!

Have plans to go to Big Bazaar tomorrow to shop for anything I can lay my hands on. Got to redeem my Rs. 1400 in gift vouchers. So, what should I buy?

Have spent the last two days working on a SAS presentation that is scheduled for this evening.

Our topic is Business Decision Making in FMCG industry using SAS Enterprise Miner.

Everything would have been fine and hunky dory, except that we do not know anything in SAS! So, the last two days has been a desperate attempt of learning Enterprise Miner. SAS and Enterprise Miner are both extremely complicated softwares to work with without formal training.

In addition to this, we had to find our own data. Are we in MBA-II or is this self-paced learning?

The funniest part of the whole exercise is that his part is supposed to be a portion of the syllabus of SAP-BIW!

Off to the lab now to finalize whatever we plan on presenting. The future is bleak…

Mentioned the schedule for the week yesterday. There are two major changes. Firstly, the learn by rote Corporate Governance exam has been postponed to the 7th. And, the scarier SAP-BIW exam has been scheduled for Friday

Woke up at 6.45am today to give the Supply Chain Modeling FCQ. The exam started at 7.15am amidst confusion and clarification over the 1st question. This turned out to be the easier and the solvable one for me. I knew the solution for the second one on paper but had absolutely no clue how to convert the solution into Excel

Whichever subject I choose, operations research follows me :’(

This followed by a quick breakfast and then a Social Entrepreneurship class in which we gave a presentation on Ibrahim Abouleish and Sekem.

Have been working on Financial Statement Analysis. Our topic is Jet Airways.

Don’t know when exactly I’m going to hit the bed tonight.

Came across TwitterCounter.com a while back and I think the badges out there are really cool. It helps to indicate to your visitors the number of followers you have on Twitter as well as provide an easy way for users to signup for the same.

I contacted the author Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, who was extremely helpful in providing all the information I need to release this plugin and for also testing the same on his blogs.

Hence, was born TwitterCounter plugin for WordPress.

The plugin integrates the badges on TwitterCounter.com to display the number of followers you have on Twitter. You can choose among the four available badges.

You have two options of displaying the plugin.

1. Add <?php do_action('echo_tc'); ?> where you want to display the counter.
2. If your theme supports widgets, then add the sidebar widget to your theme’s sidebar.

Read more and download TwitterCounter Plugin for WordPress