Its been two weeks since I landed in Manchester and the experience has been amazing so far. The lush green grass was a welcome sight for eyes that were used to watching sand dunes as the plane descended. I must also add that the immigration was probably the fastest one ever.
I was put up in Victoria Hall, which is a student hall of residence for the first two weeks. The room was probably as big as my bathroom back in Dubai and that is when I realized that my dream run was over. I was lucky enough to find an excellent roommate and a decent apartment. My roommate, Anoop, worked for Louis Vuitton previously and also happens to be the elder brother of one of my good friends from engineering college.
Notwithstanding the unpredictable weather, the city is superb. It is teeming with student population from 3 large universities. Everything is pretty much walking distance. In fact, you would walk more if you go out shopping to Dubai mall with women.
The B school is awesome. We are like the elite students of the university and we have several privileges which a lot of other students don't enjoy. E.g. Free copies of the FT which other mere mortals a.k.a undergrads and masters are not allowed to touch. We have a fully dedicated career management services cell all to ourselves! And I get to type out this blog from a free iPad which is provided exclusively to MBA students !
The classes have started in full swing. We have some amazing professors. There is a professor called Pete who can remember names and profiles of all 110 of us in the first class. The most interesting class I have ever attended without doubt! We have some eye opening case studies and stress presentations where 30 people are trying to tear your presentation apart and you have to defend it. I can safely vouch that even if I don't learn a thing, by the end of the MBA I will at least present well! More later.. Cheers !
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Friday, August 19, 2011
Leaving Dubai..
Alright, its time to blow some life into this long dormant blog. Its funny that I only feel like blogging after quitting a job (as you can make out from the last post) . :) Its a trend I guess but now that I am gonna be a full time student, I think it will be worthwhile to start blogging again.. and regularly I promise.
This has been a super busy week. Packing is killing me ..My wardrobe has been breeding clothes for the past two years ! Thankfully, a major chunk of it is now in the Arabian gulf on its way to Felixstowe port in UK. Lets hope the container reaches safe and sound.
My friends threw me an awesome leaving party this week. Its only when you bid farewell that you realize that you mean so much to your friends. Thank you guys for the farewell and the lovely gift. I am gonna wear that watch very very proudly :) ! and do not worry, just think of this as a long vacation that I am off to .... In the words of an ex-Governor of California, "I ll be back!" .
I was also overwhelmed by the responses I got for my goodbye email at du. I never expected such a huge response and everybody had such nice things to say! In fact a few weeks back some of them were baying for my blood because of the status of their projects :) .. I think everyone at du has got one of their brand values sorted .. "Surprising" i.e. It was a good stint at du. I am not sure if I'll miss the conference calls at ungodly hours, the bill cycle conflicts, the weekly departmental restructuring and simultaneous execution of 600 critical projects. However, there are some really nice people working there and I wish them all the best for their future at du.
Thats all for now... More to be written from Manchester.
P.S .. Apologies if this post is too sappy... I am leaving Dubai , therefore , utterly unavoidable..
Monday, April 21, 2008
Quitting while ahead
Quitting one's first job is never easy. I just did it last Friday. Frankly, I pondered a lot over it before pressing the magic button on outlook, which has got the letters "Send" written on it. I thought about my first day at the organization.. when all of us from the training batch, campus recruits or corporate virgins ( however you may call it) ,were looking at the magnificent office building in awe.. I had said to myself then that i would never leave such an awesome office. As i spent more time at work, i realised that everything was glossy from outside and rotten on the inside. The organisation does not have employee friendly policies. Majority of the people and especially campus recruits work for peanuts.. The irony of the situation is a deserving campus recruit who has shown loyalty towards the organisation is paid peanuts while losers with fake work ex certificates and third class bachelors degree are paid fat packages. Who would want to work fo such a company??
The only good thing was that i was lucky enough to get a chance to work with a bunch of really smart people.. people who are ambitious, hard working and intelligent. To all you guys with fake work ex certificates, you are gonna feel the whip soon..
The reason is simple. We , the hard working lot are ahead of you. When you were chatting away to glory on that web messenger , I was struggling to complete 50 manual sales order tests. When you were enjoying you vacations, I was working weekends to get your work done. Today, you might be having a better designation and a better paycheck but its my turn tomorrow. And trust me, you will not get an admission to a top b school with fake certificate printed at Hyderabad. You will need something much more than that.. something which you have never done in your life.. its called Hard work!
The only good thing was that i was lucky enough to get a chance to work with a bunch of really smart people.. people who are ambitious, hard working and intelligent. To all you guys with fake work ex certificates, you are gonna feel the whip soon..
The reason is simple. We , the hard working lot are ahead of you. When you were chatting away to glory on that web messenger , I was struggling to complete 50 manual sales order tests. When you were enjoying you vacations, I was working weekends to get your work done. Today, you might be having a better designation and a better paycheck but its my turn tomorrow. And trust me, you will not get an admission to a top b school with fake certificate printed at Hyderabad. You will need something much more than that.. something which you have never done in your life.. its called Hard work!
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Last days in Dubai..
Its the end of yet another project. Leaving dubai for good on the 30th of this month.I am having mixed reactions to this actually. On one hand i get to see my family and friends again buton the other i ll miss this wonderful city, the fun i had at work and of course the project.I really wish we had got the project. This was an awesome team we had over here and now we are being asked to move out when everything had just set into the correct place for the organisation. But we can always celebrate the excellent work we did over here and that's exactly what i'm gonna do for the rest of the days here :-)
Friday, March 09, 2007
Ahlan!
Hello reader.. guess what i am back! I dont know what got into me to update my blog at 3 45 am.. but i had to do it..well lot of things have changed since my last post... even i have changed i guess.. I am in Dubai rt now.. been here for the past 4 months for a project... Its a pretty nice place to be ... when its not summer.at least.. the first thing that strikes you about dubai is the number of Indians around here..its enormous!! Every shop has an indian employee for sure and i he is an indian there is an 80 % chance that he hails from kerala..
Well, before coming to dubai i had very wrong notions about the place..the image which was running through my mind was the usual one ( u know the one with sand dunes and camels and barbarians in flowing robes!) but what i saw here was exactly the opposite..Instead of sand dunes, there were skyscrapers..instead of camels, i saw a host of Porsches and Ferraris.. And instead of barbarians, i came across my own countrymen, britishers, and yeah arabs too..
Things have changed for dubai..they are bending all the rules of civil engineering to create architectural marvels ... Burj Al Arab, The Palm Jumeirah and the Burj Dubai are a few examples of this...It has undoubtedly the best malls in the world and is a shoppers paradise...Well world, UAE has arrived ... and it is ready to deliver more... so watch out!
Friday, August 11, 2006
Over n out !
Today is the end and the beginning...
Sounds corny but its true...today i have jumped off a sinking ship and i'm afloat...i lie still in water hanging to a raft... see my colleagues and friends getting picked up by other ships .. i lie in wait... i lie in wait..
Sounds corny but its true...today i have jumped off a sinking ship and i'm afloat...i lie still in water hanging to a raft... see my colleagues and friends getting picked up by other ships .. i lie in wait... i lie in wait..
Sunday, April 09, 2006
"COST CUTTING MEASURES"
Don't utter that word in front of me !!! I absolutely detest that word...not because I have got something against English language but because of the current mess which I am facing at my office. It appears that in its "quest" to become a billion dollar enterprise, my company has resorted to cheap (pun intended) tactics...Where else on earth would you find a scenario like this:
Mr. X is facing a crunch in his project. He needs an urgent Hard Copy of a very important document. He runs to the printer (which incidentally is the only printer in his wing !!) after pressing the print button on his computer only to find that there is not even a single sheet of blank A4 paper inside the printer tray!!! Mr. X is totally nonplussed. He rings up Administration hoping to hear an explanation but he gets the most astounding reply from the other end of the phone. The operator, who is rude as usual tells him that he needs to get the sheets from his Project lead or Manager and that he ll be getting them only after their approval of their document !!! As if these guys have nothing else to do other than compute weird statistics regarding the average number of reams of paper consumed per project per employee. Absolutely ridiculous !! Seriously are these folks trying to save money and get into the Billion dollar company club ??? There is no company which charges its employees for its club facilities except the one in which I am working. And pray may I know what events do you have as a part of your club activities?? A week long bogus art festival which no one except the Location head and a few other geriatric head honchos attend?? or an annual day in which even the menu is decided according to the whims and fancies of some old CEO who is not even bothered whether his employees are happy working in his organization. I think the food served was vegetarian because a vegetarian cuisine is cheaper.
Some other cost cutting measures to be implemented are
Charging employees money for Photocopies
Charging for Bus transportation.
Charging employees for stationery???
In one particular office they have even banned the use of lifts (downward rides only FYI) and the office is very conveniently located on the 4th floor of building which is falling to pieces.
Believe me this is not the way to success. You need excellent deals and excellent people who can execute them into reality. You need to differentiate between the gems and the pebbles. Hoarding up gems gives you a treasure, while you are well aware that hoarding up ordinary pebbles is going to give you nothing except a very heavily loaded box. You cannot expect to be world class , when you recruit people who don't even know how to lock a computer even after tall claims of four years of work ex. Or when you recruit guys who cant utter two straight lines of plain English. One needs to generate a thoroughly competitive and professional atmosphere, where the employees feel the need to contribute their best towards realizing the aims of the organization. This cannot be achieved by generating fake reports of being the 9the best place to work in India. One needs fresh, enthusiastic and super efficient managers to make this rusty machine get back on track again. Otherwise, there is an easier route, but this only leads to a dead end. This route is that of "cost cutting measures".
Mr. X is facing a crunch in his project. He needs an urgent Hard Copy of a very important document. He runs to the printer (which incidentally is the only printer in his wing !!) after pressing the print button on his computer only to find that there is not even a single sheet of blank A4 paper inside the printer tray!!! Mr. X is totally nonplussed. He rings up Administration hoping to hear an explanation but he gets the most astounding reply from the other end of the phone. The operator, who is rude as usual tells him that he needs to get the sheets from his Project lead or Manager and that he ll be getting them only after their approval of their document !!! As if these guys have nothing else to do other than compute weird statistics regarding the average number of reams of paper consumed per project per employee. Absolutely ridiculous !! Seriously are these folks trying to save money and get into the Billion dollar company club ??? There is no company which charges its employees for its club facilities except the one in which I am working. And pray may I know what events do you have as a part of your club activities?? A week long bogus art festival which no one except the Location head and a few other geriatric head honchos attend?? or an annual day in which even the menu is decided according to the whims and fancies of some old CEO who is not even bothered whether his employees are happy working in his organization. I think the food served was vegetarian because a vegetarian cuisine is cheaper.
Some other cost cutting measures to be implemented are
Charging employees money for Photocopies
Charging for Bus transportation.
Charging employees for stationery???
In one particular office they have even banned the use of lifts (downward rides only FYI) and the office is very conveniently located on the 4th floor of building which is falling to pieces.
Believe me this is not the way to success. You need excellent deals and excellent people who can execute them into reality. You need to differentiate between the gems and the pebbles. Hoarding up gems gives you a treasure, while you are well aware that hoarding up ordinary pebbles is going to give you nothing except a very heavily loaded box. You cannot expect to be world class , when you recruit people who don't even know how to lock a computer even after tall claims of four years of work ex. Or when you recruit guys who cant utter two straight lines of plain English. One needs to generate a thoroughly competitive and professional atmosphere, where the employees feel the need to contribute their best towards realizing the aims of the organization. This cannot be achieved by generating fake reports of being the 9the best place to work in India. One needs fresh, enthusiastic and super efficient managers to make this rusty machine get back on track again. Otherwise, there is an easier route, but this only leads to a dead end. This route is that of "cost cutting measures".
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)