If Monopoly constitutes a reflection of contemporary U.S. culture, here's the world we now live in. Most of the game's famous tokens are reemerging as branded products. They include a Toyota Prius (TM), a New Balance sneaker, McDonald's (MCD) French Fries, a Motorola (MOT) RAZR, and a Starbucks (SBUX) coffee mug. The three nonbranded tokens are a laptop computer, an airplane, and a Labradoodle.Full article here.
... but I fell asleep waiting for my snooze to alarm. You see, I had Marketing Research last night and this post-grad doctoral student of suspicious origin (either German or Cambodian, I couldn't really tell) was droning on and on about one-way ANOVAs and Tamhane's T2 and estimated means of scores. Deep down inside, I'm sure all she wants is to be loved but I still maintain that taking it out on us with regression analysis was not the way to endear herself to the masses. So I staggered back home and worked on my Database Management project and then I read for my IMC class and then I turned off the light and I couldn't sleep so then I switched it back on and read about ODBmesses and then my alarm went off at 6 am and then I thought I'd just lie down for a minute or three and next thing you know, it's 7:32 and I'm going to be late for my 8 am.
It's been a long day. Mondays and Tuesdays are long days. I'm in IMC now. I'm supposed to be paying attention but it's hard to do. Don't get me wrong, profitability reflections of promos are very interesting but I've read the damn articles and this isn't adding any value.
Had the first meeting of the BU Energe club. The distribution of solar energy panels for luxury homes project is on hold because I have no time for it right now but I still try and work on it sneakily on the side.
The prof. just said something about fatness of margins. It sounded key. I should listen.
In a cluttered laboratory on the outskirts of Paris, Gustavo Luengo peers at a human skin cell under a microscope so powerful that he can view individual atoms and poke at them with a remote-controlled probe.
The beauty products business as a whole is making a big bet on nanotech. L'Oréal, which devotes about $600 million of its annual $17 billion revenues to research, is the industry leader on nanopatents. But rivals such as Procter & Gamble, Estée Lauder (EL ) of the U.S., Christian Dior of France, and Japan's Shiseido (SSDOY ) also incorporate nanoparticles into their products.
I have tonsilitis again. Sucks.
Here's this term's schedule. Not very busy you say at first glance. But let me show you.
So if we take an average day to be from 7 am to 10 pm we have approx 50 hours of work time available for 6 days of the week (hey, a girl needs her coffee breaks and power naps). The 7th day is reserved for me time. Removing 10 hours per week for the stupid internship (see post below) and 10 hours per week for the research project gives us 30 hours. For each class we need about 4 hours of preparation time and I have 6 classes. That leaves us with 6 hours of available time. Per week. To be in meetings with team members, read industry journals, attend information sessions, go to interviews and eat lunch.
Which is why I haven't been reading your blog. But I will. Soon. Someday. On that insomniac night when I don't want to learn how to value patents. I'll prop myself up in bed, in my pink pajamas with the tele tuned to the infomercial channel and I will read all about your life. But until then, give me my 6 hours. To be in meetings with team members, read industry journals, attend information sessions, go to interviews and most importantly, eat lunch.
So apparently for the MS-glorious-MBA I am required to work on a project for a company. For which I don't get paid. I provide MBA consulting services for free. With no benefit to me. They have no statistics on past classes if students wanted to work for these companies full time after graduation or if these companies wanted to hire these students. And I can't work anywhere else because this will take up all my time. I get this sneaky feeling that I'm being jipped.
And the professor, when I asked about this, basically told me to fok off. Nice.
Nothing like dunking matris into nice hot sweet tea and watching those little bubbles fill up with tea and take a big bite and feel them explode hotly in your mouth.
Yum.
As I said to Mum this morning - we quite often tend to force our obsessiveness onto other people. Quite frankly, they couldn't care less and they won't do it our way anyway. And it just makes everyone unhappy. So we must try and not do that as much.
On an unrelated note, Em called to ask wot 'detergent' I use to clean the bathtub with. I freaked him out by suggesting that the same brush used for the pot (or commode as it is also popularly known) can be used for the bathtub if washed properly. He squealed in disgust. It was fun.
Does this qualify as potty humor?
Here's a tip - if you want a job done right, do it yourself.
Took Lionel (the moron) with me to photocopy 30 odd cases to make packs of 5. The simplest job ever. An autistic child of 5 could execute this mission flawlessly. But not Lionel (the moron), no. He proceed to mix up all the papers and then I have to cart it all back home and spend 5 hours sorting the mess. Loser.
And then people complain to me that their pages are all three-holed punched on the wrong side. Get a life people. Punch it your own damn self. You didn't have to spend 2 hours at Staples with Lionel (the moron) who decided that the instructions for putting in paper face up was merely a guideline and not a strict rule. Moron.
School's in. One week done. Had my first Strategy Implementation class with Hatten this last week. He asked us to come up with the 10 rules we live our (professsional) life by. It took some thinking but here are my ten -
1. Integrity is important. Always do what you say and honor your commitments. This builds trust with your team and helps them help you when you’ve dropped the ball.
2. Responsibility is key. The only person responsible for your actions is yourself. You must always own your work. Not doing so is not only detrimental to the project you’re working on but also on morale.
3. Act towards others as you would prefer them to act towards you.
Everybody is busy and has tons of emails to attend to. Make sure you give people the time and attention they deserve. Not doing so, not only leads to poor morale but also could make your team lose faith in your managing capabilities.
4. Always fully define the terms and expectancies of your engagements – both in professional and personal life. When working on a project with a number of people, make sure that everybody is aware of what the other team members are doing. Not doing so, will lead to a chaotic project and stressful work environment.
5. Don’t sign up for something just because everybody else is – be convinced that that is the right thing for you. When someone is trying to sell you something, if you don’t make objective decisions about whether that is good for the project, the team and/or the company, question it. This includes directives from upper management.
6. Always research as comprehensively as possible before you make a decision. Then rest assured that you have made the best decision you could under the circumstances and don’t stress about it. Due diligence is important and the devil does live in the details. However, after you’ve done your due diligence, have faith in your skills and abilities to be able to follow through on the decisions you make.
7. Trust in God but tie your camel. Or alternatively, it’s ok to fail once in a while, but don’t make a habit of it. Have faith in your team’s abilities to deliver but don’t leave it entirely up to them.
8. Be nice to your family and loved ones. They deserve better. Working hard is nice and has its rewards but always have time for your family. They are more important than a paycheck.
9. Work hard, party hard. Always take the time to remove yourself from the project. This will help you and your project when you return to the job.
10. Don’t be self-destructive. Given your personality, you probably will be. But try not to. While company loyalty is a good thing, try not to be so loyal that you lose sight of your personal development.
I don't really feel much wiser after penning that down. Maybe it'll all come to me over 12 weeks.
Mum's here for the week. Black Cobra came down too. We spent Saturday shopping. Got me some nice suits at Filene's Basement. That place is awesome.
Here's another tip - don't pump petrol into your car while the engine is running. This could cause air to get into the innards of your machine and that, apparently, is a bad thing. This was determined by Black Cobra after spending $89.99 on a check up because her 'check engine' light came on right before her return to NY.
Took Mum out today. Went to Daph's to drop off nicely sorted aforementioned case pack and then to lunch at Super 88 for a large bowl of Viet Pho's noodle soup and a coconut drink. The soup was nice. The drink was not. Then to Shaw's for some fruit and back home. She's napping now, all curled up in my blue blanket, looking small. I'm lying here on the couch, trying not to bore myself with my Database Management book. Later I shall to school for a MEC meeting. Ah, the life we lead.
So, wot did you do this glorious Sunday?
"Cirque du Soleil is like Broadway." This one made me shudder.
"I was reading about India. Apparently all the businesses are going global. And the overall small time businessmen are getting out or run over by big US companies. So I can see US making world more global and making most chunk of the profits in the next 10 years. Since you are the major B school student with current information - what's ur opinion?" - Actually Niku said that. I'll blog about my opinion right after class today.
"Does anyone have OnStar in this class? No wonder GM is going out of business."
"Culture is power that is invisible."
"The rule may be fundamental - the speed makes it chaotic."
Also, if Mum bugs me about putting my profile up on shaadi.com, I shall do this - "Prefers food to most social interactions. Preferred mate must be an out of work chef. I am intrigued by fish filleting. My skin is strangely inept these days. It can't seem to absorb the meanest amount of cream. Must be all that drinking. Does alcohol close up your pores?"
"India - where sublime wisdom and supreme idiocy exist at the same time."
"They should make ties with mesh pockets so you can carry around things in it. I mean its just hanging there not doing anything, you may as well put in a few post-its and a muffin." - I think a professor said that.
"The CPU is the one that does the stuff to the bits." - says my Systems Architecture professor.
"Philosophically, the patient owns their own data" - Mickey Tripathi
"What do you call a professional Cro-Magnon? A Pro-Magnon."
"Privacy is a risk. It needs to be addressed. I'm going to punt on that." - also, I think Mickey Tripathi.
"This isn't flying. This is falling. With style" – Buzz Lightyear
"Sometimes the problem is the interface" - same Systems professor
"I can clean my carrots" - says my Financial Statements Analysis professor.
"Making turkey in 20 minutes is not relevant to anyone’s lives" - from my Integrated Marketing Communication professor.
Chew on this. I have to go to class.
Did I tell you about Walshy's blog? He's got one. Check out the Strange Days of Hunter S. Walsh. Good writer. Brilliant wit. I'm glad I... sort of... know him. He used to listen to my drunken ravings over long-distance. Now THOSE were Strange Days.
He's also bloody goodlooking. But don't tell him I said that.
These painkillers are making me nauseous. Maybe I should lie on the floor.
Hello darlings. Sorry I've been away. Life gets in the way sometimes. Let's go back in time then shall we?
So work at the Hive is done and I was very gleeful about it. It may be for good, unless I take them up on the Director-ship suggestion. It felt good leaving a job on my own terms for once without the smell of burning bridges haunting me. Black Cobra and Mum came up from NYC for a rainy weekend. Cobra and I spent a lovely 6 hours in Harvard Square soaking up the intellectualism and bought 8 (yes, eight) books. Because, you know, I'm going to have so much time to read them. Bumped into Khan and that woman from Ukraine or some other Eastern Bloc country who Cobra (bless her) instinctively dislikes because her underwear was showing. To be frank, I instinctively dislike those people too.
Off we went back to the Bronx. Spent almost a week there. Was tres boring. I did make three pairs of earrings and rest my feet and read 3 books but it was bloody boring. Oh, and I wrote my internship paper. They make you write an internship paper if you're an F1. 8-10 pages. Would've been helpful if I had started working on it during the internship but then again, if I did everything when I'm s'posed to do it then where would be the challenge?
Have signed up for yet another research project involving mobile marketing with Prof. Venkat at school. Looking forward to it as it is EXACTLY the sort of project I've been looking for. Should be fun. Also, Khan and I and two other chaps were thinking of getting a task force together to try and come up with a commercially viable business idea. I mean, if you're not going to start a company while you're in b-school then well, wot's the point?
That was last weekend. Then last week happened. And I twisted both my ankles. Not together at the same time, you understand. One after the other. First one and then the other. I place the blame squarely on those blasted Payless sandals. So I threw them out.
Then Khan and I had a fight. Well not exactly a fight. More like a dissatisfied howl at each other. I'd been getting strange vibes from him all week (which is odd by itself because I'm hardly the most sensitive-to-other-people's-vibes sort of person) and his aura was decidedly blue. So while we're out illegally photocopying course packs (wot?! You'd do it too if they cost $140 a pop and you had to get 6. Don't judge me. HBS has enough money.), we howl over it. It made me quite sick. I hate relationship issues. This is probably why I should never EVER be in one. We talked it over at Espresso Royale and decide that it'd be best if we parted ways (actually, he decided that, I didn't). So that's wot we did. I went to the clinic and he went to rent a U-Haul to help Shipra move.
No, I'm not sick. I just had to get my shots. MMR, Td and Hepatitis B Part I. Remind me in 4 weeks to go back for Part II. Hurt like the dickens. Arms all sore. So I came back home to lie in bed and moan. Then Khan called and bribed me with icecream to go for a ride with him in the truck. Over some horrificly bad driving, we decide that we're not in fact going to part ways (actually, he decided that, I didn't). So that's wot we did.
Ordered dinner in from the shady place (of shady Middle Eastern origin) around the corner from Khan's place. He had a veggie pizza and I had a lovely chicken shawarma plate. The hummous was lacking but the lovely garlic lemon butter was excellent. But, horror of horrors, the jalapeno poppers were made with cheddar cheese and not, as they should be, with cream cheese. But still, they will get our repeat business.
After an extremely disconnected and large lunch at JMP, D'vya and I headed out to procure textbooks and course packs and other essentials for skool and I'm afraid I overdid the walking. By the time, I got home at 6:30, I was screaming in pain. But I'm a trooper. Put on my lovely new earrings and tottled off to Prithvi's for kababs and Bacardi (which I couldn't have because I was up on pain meds). Then, in the rain, on the way back, I stepped on a pebble. The pain was excruciating. And I may have been a leetle big mean to Khan. Which would probably be why we had the big howl at each other earlier. Right. Prolly shouldn't do that.
So I've been sitting on this couch since yesterday with my feet up and I'm bored stiff. I've got 85 pages of financial reporting and valuation to reach but I'm too bored to study.
The new roommates have moved in. They seem nice. Relatively normal. Keep forgetting to lock the front door thereby scaring the bejeezus outta me everytime I pad across the flat to go to the bathroom and see the front door gently swaying in the breeze. But normal. Hopefully I will not be murdered in my sleep.
