Adieu to my friends:

Together!!!

Crazy moments!!

Our MBA is about the get completed. We are supposed to do our final consultancy project where we need to solve the problems of a real time company. As part of the curriculum, we need to give an presentation and need to submit two reports (customer and reflective).  Once we complete our presentation we can submit our report even from our home. Some of our already completed the presentation and some even started moving back to their country. Our MBA class had students from multiple countries like Brazil, China, Turkey, Nigeria, Hong Kong and India. But with this one year, we have formed a bonding together. As we realize that its time now to get back to our real world and work it is sometime painful to see our friends depart.

We started having lot of get together and parties as this might the final time for us to have fun together. And some of my friends have group trips across UK as they even felt they might not visit UK again as they know about the work load. Earlier we used to go to pubs for such party. But recently we realized having fun in home was much better with our own preparation of food. This week alone, I had three parties and today I have one more to attend. Whatever said and done, we make sure to spend our time to the best and capture these wonderful moments.

One in our Accomodation!!

My New Home

Mouth watering Chicken 65

After a year of stay in the university accommodation, I shifted to my friends place last week.  It’s a four bedroom individual house in Chethamhill. One of the advantage of Chetamhill is that it’s an predominantly an Asian area and so you can enjoy the Indian cuisine anytime needed. And also its just ten minutes from the city centre.  I was given an individual room which has all facilities. Since my friend has been staying here for almost a year, his home has everything we looks for. But out of all, the one that attracted me a lot in the whole house is the bathtub which was not available in the university accommodation.

Jalebi after a long time

And regarding food, the most attractive shop to me was the sweet shop. Since I didn’t eat the Indian jalebi for a long time, I bought half a kg of it and had my full share along with my friends. Also today being Ramadan, the shops were all full and I need to stand in the queue to get my order of sweets. More than the room and shower, my new room mates were so kind( two of them are my MBA class mates – Phani and Richie). They started with cooking chicken 65 for my arrival and welcomed me with our home made Indian food. After lot of hesitation and mixed feeling, I came out of my old accommodation. Am more than delighted now and hope we all had a exciting stay together.  

Last Week in the Accomdation!!!

Fz 16- My Love

I was watching a short film yesterday which is about the love between the hero and his coffee. The movie was little over hyped where he becomes a psycho killer due to his obsession for coffee and starts to kill people for a cup of coffee. In spite of the director’s extreme imagination, I felt something true about all of us. We people do have a lot of love to many inanimate objects and sometimes that goes beyond an extent where we start hurting others. When I was in India, I used to love my bike so much and usually never allow my brother to ride it. (But now the bike became his possession and I can’t do much about itL). Even though if it’s not for a coffee, am sure that many people do have a great love for money atleast. And I believe this kind of love is inevitable and sometimes makes our life better (as long as it doesn’t affect others).

Recently I have developed this kind of love and bonding with my accommodation especially with my room. I feel as if I came to the university a month back where my cosy room gave me the comfort and security required by that time. After staying almost a year, it’s time now to leave this place as am in the end of the contract period. Again it’s not only the room, it’s the ambience, the independence, gym, basketball court and more than all, the friends I made which made the bonding and love. Though I might not cry when I depart next week,  am sure I will miss this most lively place.  

Anyway, in life only if we lose something we will get something better and I believe this change is also for the good. Let’s wait and see….

Hoodie

Last week UK experienced something that they never experienced before – the Riot which started after the initially peaceful protest in Tottenham. With their identity hidden within a hoodie and  kerchief, the rioters involved in widespread looting, arson and violence with significant outbreaks in various parts of London. Within few days, it spread across all major cities of UK and eventually the Manchester too fell under it.  Almost all major retail shops were broken with the target especially on the electronics and booze stores.

The strength of youth!!

But right after the day of attack in Manchester one thing was shown greatly by the local mancunions which is their united Spirit. It bought back the people and business around to life as soon as possible.  The next day, thousands of Mancunians were found coming to work, going about their business, tidying their premises. Also the police played a great part in strengthening the protection across all potentially vulnerable areas and thereby avoided all further attack. When I went to the consultancy project the following day, apart from broken glasses of the shops, I also found the ebullience and strong character of the local and their support to the community.

Earlier in Indian films, I have seen Omni van generally used by the terrorist for all their activities. Whenever I see an omni, I usually imagine of terrorist using it(usually when I was small). Now after the attack here in Manchester, I find all people (especially young person) with a hoodie appearing to be a rioter. Even though I like personally like hoodie and have a lot of them (most of them bought in the university), I nowadays found a new dislike to it. But I hope this feeling of both hoodie and the pain which was caused by the riots will be short-lived…

Fun amidst Hardship:

Final days are getting closer. Everyone is busy with their final dissertation and projects. Since we don’t have daily classes anymore, it became increasingly harder to meet our friends. My university accommodation became almost like my mini jail as I need to sit in front of the computer for almost all the time and do the work. We finally found some ways to come out of our den and spend our energy.

Common room - All for us!!

After almost 10 months, we thought of using the accommodation facilities like gym, snooker board and basketball court to meet and greet. To our luck, our friend Mahesh (who is also staying in our accommodation) turned out to be a national basketball player. With his nifty teaching style, everyone honed our skills and started to play professionally ( we believe) . Our accommodation became a meeting spot for some of our friends where we met and played funny games. And gym is highlight as it became the chat room as we were chatting more than doing actual exercise. Since almost the accommodation is nearly empty without undergraduate students, the common room and other facilities became all ours.

We all know that this university life will last only for few more days. But I believe we will rejoice thinking these small moments in the future.

Project Time:

The Law firm

After having a lot of fun in the college it’s time now to start our real time project. After learning lot of theories and case studies, now we were asked to soil our hands by experimenting in a real company as a business consultant. All our class mates were introduced to different clients based on our skill set (past experience) and our preference. The good thing for the company is that our service is totally free for them which they relish a lot (The minimum market price for a consultant like us starts with 300 pounds per day whereas we do our work for weeks and that too free). Being a win-win situation for everyone, we were all left to ourselves.

I was lucky to get to work with the largest law firm in the world (DLA Piper) where I was to fix their marketing issues. My contact point was the regional marketing manager for northwest and she was more than happy to have me to analyse the market as she is busy pitching for new customers. I was given full support by them and was provided a seat amidst the busy working environment of the company. After a year break from my IT profession, working again with professional people was too inspiring and I felt I was back to my best. Thought I don’t know much about law, the management issues and marketing problem remains universally same for all companies (whether small or big).

I am learning a lot more than my project and this experience is really boosting my confidence. I can clearly see the way ahead of my prospective future.  

Third Semester!!

Am now in the fastest and finest days of my MBA; the final and last semester. In contrast to other post graduate students, our MBA curriculum includes a final month of taught class which means we are the only few students who had taught classes in the whole university. But being the last few days, we spent our last month in a more unique way.

Preparing for the innovative pitch!!

This semester was designed so that as a MBA graduate, we get to know about leadership and build Entrepreneurial skills that can be utilized later in our life. Also the importance of innovation in business is concentrated. Almost the whole semester is so practical where we need to come up with our own idea and formulate an innovative plan which we might use in our later stage of life. The innovation presentation involves in discussing our future idea which will possibly make every one of us a multi-millionaire.  It was fascinating to hear and help friend to generate ideas. One thing was made clear from this course. Ideas are easy to generate and very easy to implement when worked together as a team.  

Our final pic!!

In addition to learning we had lot of other good moments. Being together for almost a year, a kind of bonding was built within our student and even with the inanimate objects like chairs and computers in the class. Some of my sweet friends even prepared food for the whole class and distributed during the lunch. Our last month of final MBA passed so fast that we all even felt an 2 year MBA could have been much more enjoyable (As we can be a student for an year longer J).

Whatever said and done, we had a wonderful year of MBA. We have a practical project left for the semester where we need to go to a real time company and solve their management issues with our past experience and newly acquired knowledge. A long way is there to go and I believe our MBA gave us the right signpost for a successful future.