The French Connection ….

Well today I will talk about our marketing prof and one of my colleagues, and well the connection they share is that they are absolutely crazily good in one of the things they do.

This guy who teaches us marketing is called Pete Naude, he has moved between Manchester and Bath during his lifetime and he has done immense amount of good work publishing papers as you can see from the link. He is equally impressive in the class with everything in command and some rules that he dictates. For a moment it felt like being in high school again, it felt as if you were being taught by a man from prehistoric times with principles as hard as the Stonehenge but then as the class progressed you come to know that he is a very cool man.

During the class he said “Exams are no good. I do not want to listen to the stuff that I have taught you.” - impressive stuff man! And stems from this is the basis of the assessment of our marketing course - completely done on case studies. Believe me this is one of the ways in which MBS makes you practice what you learn.

Other part of this connection is a colleague of mine called Lucian. He is one of the funniest man I have ever met. People having good sense of humor can be categorized based on different factors like empathizing with the audience quickly and changing your joke, witty “one-liner” production depertment, “I am Mr Sarcastic, how do you do?”, timing of the remark etc. With Lucian its not so much about his jokes or one liners as it is about the timing. He is accurate to a micro second when he passed a comment and for a moment it seems as if it was the funniest remark that could be made in such a situation and people would burst out laughing.

In one of the instances in the class, profy was talking about marketing various things including experiences and he said that watching ManU play @ Old Trafford is an experience of its own and he went on to say how he is a not a gr8 ManU fan but he would still go there for the experience bit. That’s when Lucian points to him and says softly, “How did you manage to get this job?”, everyone was rolling on the floor (metaphorical) including the professor.

Time to hit the sack folks! Sayonara ….

Cheers
KL

Experience @ Brathay ….

Still recovering from the untiring efforts put into team building at Brathay and getting high not from the beer but the amount of fun we had doing all the stuff there.

Well for starters Brathay is a not-for-profit people development organization that emphasizes on learning through experience. Every year the new class at MBS is sent over to Brathay’s center in the scenic lake district for a 3 day course in team building and bonding. I have been to outdoor learning programmes before, during my work tenure but this was quite a different experience.

All the games and exercises tie together nicely to give you an idea of working in a team and what you should do contribute more in team and make the whole team more effective. Lot of outdoor stuff is included as part of the program, right from running around the Brathay campus to complete treasure hunt to rowing on the lake on a whaler. Have loads of photos to share from these 3 days, will try and put them up sometime soon.

Cheers
KL

Always gotta keep busy ….

…. or the voices start telling me to do wild things. Read it somewhere on the internet and is absolutely not my original quote …just in case someone is preparing for a plagiarism court case.

Life has been more than busy with classes, career management and lotsa other stuff. Well a snapshot of my day from yesterday 2pm to today 2pm:

2 - 4:30 pm: Participate in the Elevator pitch competition with the team

5 - 6:30pm: Intro to various clubs and a meeting with their past office bearers. Need to look at the kind of club I want to join.

6:30 - 7:30 pm: Goto city center and inquire about the best phone plan available only to know that I will need a bank statement to get a phone contract done.

7:30 - 9:00pm: Cook dinner (egg cury in this case), and eat it!

9:00 - 10:00: Chat with Baniya on Phone and in general other intricacies of life.

10:00 onwards: Sleep!

7:30 am - Getup get ready and leave for school early to return library book!

9:00 - 12:30: More accounts

12:30 - 13:30: Lunchtime …. eat and check / reply to emails along with it.

13:30: Continue with accounts …

Hmmmmmmmmmmph, well I feel more tired after this lucid description. But then there is more coming with a Partners Event today evening and some account problems to tackle once I get back home and have a peaceful sleep …. errr ummm … wait ….. I have to make it to the IOD Networking Breakfast tomorrow @ City Center!

Holy Cow
KL

Lies, damned lies and statistics ….

Well the subject here talks about the three different kinds of lies … and lot of which we studied during the last week as an Intro to Statistics. The course covered a whole range of topics from

The whole week was considerably action packed with an introduction to Career Leader test which we all are supposed to take. The program has been designed by two profs from Harvard Business School and it supposedly guides you through different career choices. During the evening there was session of wine which we followed with a visit to the pub. Some of our seniors gracefully played hosts and so there was some more booze on the house.

Friday evening was spent bowling with MBS Classmates @ Megabowl, Parrswood. Going to see Salaam Namaste @ Trafford Center in sometime, review later.

-KL

Motivations and more ….

About to begin a intro to stats class in sometime. Well in my last post I had promised to talk about my motivation. Well the key factors in the order of preference were:

1. 50% tuition waiver given to me by MBS. Its called the Unity 2004 celebration scholarship. This was a big economic boost considering my poor status
2. The 18 month program @ MBS. Since I was looking at career change from technology domain, this slightly longish program gave me the benefit of being able to complete my internship and if possible an exchange semester whilst maintaining the benefit of the opportunity cost as compared to a 24 month US program.

3. UK rather than US, as my wife is legally allowed to work in UK while I am on the program as a student unlike US where student dependants cannot work.

4. The work conditions in UK as of this year are quite flexible with HSMP and all the jazz.

As the prof in stats class said, there are three kinds of lies - lies, damned lies and stats so do not go by the number of people telling you to join a particular school as I feel its really about your motivation and how you map to the vision of the school and more importantly how does the school map to your goals.

Cheers
KL

Bon Voyage

Started on this new journey a few days back! POA is to get an MBA degree from Manchester Business School and add a new chapter in my journey of life.

The lifetime of this blog will be the lifetime of my stay here in Manchester and the entire MBA experience. I will try and put in words my experience through the thick and thin of this MBA programme, hopefully to give a real life perspective to prospective MBS students.

Right now we are in the pre-MBA stage, as you would see the programme at MBS is divided into three stages - Pre-MBA, Diploma and MBA stage. The Pre-MBA stage is meant to give time to the entire class to settle in the new environment (considering that MBS has a mind boggling % of international students from over 27 nations). The atmo here has been relaxed till now with introduction to various services in the school including the much needed - Career Management Services
Next two weeks are going to be more intensive with introduction to quantitative methods and introduction to accounting being served with elevator pitching discussions as the sides!

In my next post I will try and elaborate on my key drivers for joining MBS! I also plan to include posts from my classmates or links to their blogs in case they come up with anything nice and juicy!

Cheers
KL