Piggybacking on the brand image

Blue Steel didn't win. We didn't win so bad, we came in 18th. There are only 30 teams. This made me sad.

So sad in fact that after the final presentations, I crawled into bed at 11:30 am and stayed there until class the next day at 8 am. I was a grouch and I didn't go drinking with everyone at BU Pub. I didn't even go see Haydn at the Symphony.

Another two vital lessons learned. As a leader you don't always have to get the consensus of the team to make a decision. And don't compromise on relationships with people for the sake of the game.

Sigh. I did want to win though.

I'm wearing socks in bed

For those of you that know me, know that I abhor wearing socks to bed. So then why am I wearing socks to bed? Let me tell you.

I have a cold :(

An achy sniffly tonsil-swelling head-woozing green mucus cold. So I'm going to stay in bed all day. And since I have all this time, I'm going to update the blog. I refuse to be a statistic. So read backwards luvvies. Here I go.

Damn, they even changed bits of Blogger's interface. Has it been THAT long?!

Sunday bloody sunday

So like Marketing Simulation - Day One was intense. We met at 7:45, scarfed down donuts and got down to work. Team with highest cumulative net income wins. Product is cold medicine. Team Blue Steel (don't ask) started out being 25th out of 30 at the end of the first year. 16th at the end of the second and 8th in the end of the third. Morale is high. Competition is intense. 4th period saw us tied for 8th place again. Need to do something about this. Must win. Simply must.

Saturday was spent sleeping till 1:45 pm (the first time I've slept later than 7 am since I got to Boston). Had a strategy session with the rest of the team to figure out how to sell more cold medicine. Made dinner and popped off to bed.

Currently reading Nazi Hunter - The Wiesenthal File by Alan Levy - highly recommended. This book reads like a thriller. Provides key insights and information about the holocaust and the analysis done by Wiesenthal is mind-blowing.

Was woken up VERY nicely this morning. Have had images of samosas in my head all day. Made parathas and aloo for breakfast with black tea at 9 am, yelled at the Punjabi munda and promptly went back to bed. Woke at 4 pm. Have wasted entire day being slothful. Man it feels good. Now if I only had a television, life would be close to perfect.

Missed seeing the Blue Man Group today. Was thinking of going to Target with the Postal woman just to get out of the house (and, presumably, bed) but too lazy now. Yet still desperately need entertainment. I shall go for a late night movie!

Looking forward to Thanksgiving in EnYCee with the Goog monster and her to-be-hubby. Fun and games, luvvies, fun and games. We're going to be Japanese porn chicks with blue-black hair (with bangs, natch), checked skirts and black fish nets. Oh the fun we'll have walking arm in arm with our Bolshevic hats speaking in tongues. I'm practically giddy with glee.

Should finish brand and positioning paper for tomorrow and investigate all the big-screen options this blechy town has to offer. Pray for me. Pray the Gods of Marketing rain down manna from the Heavens and Blue Steel wins in the top three. Lord knows I could do with at least one A in my first term.

Marketing Simulation begins

Day 1 -
We met, we normed and now we're ready to storm. Donuts and orange juice. Now we discuss the case. See you in a bit.

Success will be mine!

Atlanta gets it wrong with new brand pitch

City's Joins a Long List of Meaningless and Unmemorable Ad Slogans

Check out the H1Bees

Fleece my bees and grease my knees

Bobbing along on the bottom of this grimy sea

So like I was taking a break from trying to squeeze three chapters of my very heavy and nauseatingly boring corporate finance textbook into my left ear and thot I'd catch up on Curry's, Art's, Resh's and Tammy's lives. Bad idea. It has just occurred to me that Halloween, Diwali, 2 mid-terms, 2 papers and 3 presentations have gone by and I haven't blogged about any of it. Mostly because I was too bloody tired from having to lay the dynamite for when I will explode into the post-MS-MBA world of lots and lots of money but also significantly because I was too depressed to write. But I'll be better about it. I promise.

Tammy, I love your pinks and oranges and warm glows and please send me the AB jr. collage so I can freak out the people at Kinko's by printing it out in large color glossy poster size for my bedroom wall.

Resh, condiment bowls?! Honestly. *tch* I'm so proud of you now that you're all growed-up and taking care of your vaife and living in your own apartment and all. So very proud *sniff*.

Curry, my love, wot can I say? Every post makes me wish I had stolen you off to a dark corner when we were in Dubai and dragged your pants off. Heppy Diwali. I hope it was a lovely one. Don't be homesick. I'll send you goodies from Dubai in December.

Raj, if haute bong lass won't marry you, will you live in sin with me? Happy birthday, luv. I'm sorry I missed it. I'm glad you were born.

Tamm's pinkly oranges have inspired me to unchain myself from the red and work on a new template sometime this weekend. After my corporate finance exam. Chapters 5, 6 and 7. Which I am bound to mess up because I spent most of the bond valuation discussion in a daze. I need a coffee. Off to Starbucks I go.

Venti mocha no whip in case you were wondering.

Oh and remind me to tell you about my friend Em. He's very nice. He's very tall too. We spend a lot of time together. Mostly because I bully him into carrying my heavy bags and cooking me dinner.

I didn't even tell you about Black Cobra's kacchi misri did I? Tch. I'm horrible, yes I know. But I'll be good from now on.

I strangely smell sweet and sour sauce (inadvertant alliteration). Great, that's another thing I really need right now. A seizure.

Necrotizing Fasciitis

So like, I have this odd skin condition right. Which makes it horribly uncomfortable to sit. Don't ask. I'll get the test results tomorrow. So after hopping around from seat to seat, trying every combination of leaning on one side more than the other, I've come to the conclusion that the least painful way of sitting is to scooch down on a couch in the library and put my feet up on another, appropriately draping my jacket over my skirted legs for modesty of course. This does sort of limit elbow movement and there are no power outlets where there are couches but with my excellent laptop I seem to be doing alright so far. Also there is the added advantage of having warm toes as covered by jacket which is always a plus. The only unfortunate part is that my extremely swollen abdomen gets a bit squished but there are prices to pay for even the most meager of comforts.

I am so glad that there are fewer sharp shooting pains up my legs that I just had to share this with you.

Play the Tearfund water game

Awesome Flash game that highlights issues of EU aid for water and sanitation.

Survival of the fittest "as a theory"

The rise of China and India will be better for the U.S. than the direst predictions hold -- yet worse than the Panglossian projections of boosters in America and Asia. On the upside, American consumers will clearly benefit from the availability of inexpensive goods and services. American shareholders of well-positioned multinationals will enjoy higher profits. And Americans employed in successful U.S. export sectors will benefit because China and India will buy more Western-style goods and services -- from cosmetics to jets to banking -- as they get richer and increase their consumption.

On the downside, life will be tough for those who are less skilled, less educated, and less able to adapt as the world changes around them. Even many highly skilled American service workers, from programmers to financial analysts, will suffer as low-cost Asian giants target U.S.-dominated businesses. "The individuals who are able to take advantage of the new opportunities do extremely well. Those who are poorly situated get hammered," sums up Gordon H. Hanson, an economist at the University of California at San Diego.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mr. Sexy Frenchie *hah*

Remote-controlled humans

Don't you wish you had one...

Galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS) isn’t a new technology, but it’s seeing some new application via Japan’s NTT Communication Science Labs: remote-controlled people. They’ve developed a headphone apparatus that delivers an electrical current to a mastoid worn behind the ear, which actually shifts one’s balance toward the anode. The stronger the applied current, the stronger the pull — strong enough to knock you off balance and alter the course of your movement. NTT is showing off the remote-controlling headphone system at SIGGRAPH, and has plans to commercialize the technology for use in gaming, and flight simulators.

My heart hurts

Maybe if I get back into bed and pull the covers over my head then the loneliness will go away. Maybe I'll be warm then.

I need to learn me some golf

There are thousands of corporate aircraft flying the skies over the U.S. Most companies say these planes are necessary to conveniently and securely transport employees to distant facilities or meetings. Top executives "are really 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week people," notes Mike Nichols, an official with the National Business Aviation Association, a trade group. "These are really flying offices."

But a comparison of golf scores and flight records, some of which are available from commercial aviation-data services, shows that companies also use their jets for another purpose: as airborne limousines to fly CEOs and other executives to golf dates or to vacation homes where they have golf-club memberships.

There are perks and then there are perks.

Happy Diwali

I'd post the standard requisition diya picture but that would be too cheesy.

Yes, I know I haven't written much and that people really don't care about business and stuff but life these days is buried in MBA crap. Midterms and papers and reports and presentations. Sucks out the time from one's day. Plus sometimes one just doesn't want to talk about oneself. This is a direct result of having to analyze onself, talk about oneself, assess oneself ad nauseam. I don't need to know this much about me. I wrote a 12 page paper on me two weeks ago for cryin' out loud. Nothing fun happens anymore anyway. Well, nothing that's not MBA related.

So read dem business articles I post and one day when I'm not surrounded by professors screaming at me to self-analyze I shall write a nice long one about me.

Had my Accounting team presentation today - the women were inadvertantly color-coordinated in black and tan and the men in black and blue. It's nice to wear a suit to school.

Mother leaves Little Rock for Dubai today and so, of course, self is hugely depressed.

Lots of aches and pains. Think I'm getting old.