The heat is on!

Lisa, my little Chinese landlord, has finally gassed up the furnace and the heat is on. The radiators are clickity-clanking. Joy. I shall be cold no more.

Moving on.

Did you know that you can get postage stamps with your bootha on them? You can. Here.

Apparently b-school students are more likely to cheat than any other kind of student. Which, I can understand. GPAs may not matter in some professions but you can't be an i-banker with a 2.7.

Oh and yeah, you did read the BusinessWeek article about how Indians are the model immigrants? Hilarious. True but hilarious.

Apparently "the level of water consumption in the UAE is one of the highest in the world. According to statistics from Middle East Electricity 2006, the UAE consumes more water per capita than any country in the world with the exception of the US and Canada." Can't say I'm surprised. Plus we waste a lot too.

Ads from India

Are very funny.

Also, Wild Wadi uses RFID tags in their water park. Tres cool.

This next link is not work friendly. It's about Remington's Pussy Parade at Kontraband. Don't even dream about clicking on it at work. No, don't. I know you're consumed with curiosity but trust me, you'll be in deep deep trouble if you do. So go home and then click on it. It's ... well.. it's strange.

Now here's a good article

Stephen Corley does a good job of asking the questions we are all wondering about but don't dare to voice. Read it at ITP - The Costa Del Chaos: Dubai's Growing Pains.

This picture is of the Lighthouse building that's mentioned in the article. Here are the details about the scam.

Speaking of scams, isn't it interesting that "a US embassy that will be the largest in the world" is being built in Iraq? No really, why is this happening? Don't they see what's going on?

It's alive!

Wolfie! You're back! You're blogging! Has hell frozen over?

Shut up. I've been busy. But I never did forget about you chickie-poos.

Sitting at Starbucks quite warm and cosy (but my feet are still cold) on this gloomy rainy day and I figured I may as well attend to the 95 emails in my inbox. Yes, 95. In the inbox, that's right. That means they haven't been read. Because, you know, I read them first and then I file them away. This way it creates a sense of urgency in me to read my email. Which, as the 95 lonely unattended items will attest to, doesn't happen very often. Stop gasping in horror. Oh yes, I know you are. Imagine the travesty, you're saying to yourselves. She doesn't read her email everyday. Nope, I don't. Deal with it. There's more to life than email. Thank you Mr. de Veer.

So back to business shall we?

P.S. What the hell is this Fusion Band business all about? Crap mostly, if you ask me. When will people realize that just by playing Da-rude-boy in the background of their tinny voices whining about their women leaving them or rain or something trivial of that sort does not qualify them to be a fusion band.

Consumer-generated content

Ok, will someone please explain this to me? Why is consumer-generate content so hot these days? Consumers are, mostly, morons. This we all know. This is why we have marketers and psychologists. It is for this exact reason that those two professions (among many others like the person who's job it is to write directions on toothpick boxes) exist. So then why, suddenly and for no apparent reason, are we all going ga-ga over content created by these very same idiots? Adrants expresses my concern about this topic brilliantly -

With nothing better to do on a Saturday afternoon, we decided to follow a link under a really crappy Jeep spoof commercial on YouTube to morbeck's Biggest Video Response Chain Ever thing. We sometimes lead a very sheltered and quarantined life here in the Adrants high rise because, well, we're just too busy finding trivial advertisms and time wasters for you to enjoy so, we end up spending 24/7 trolling the Internet for crap like this that makes you wonder why the human race has nothing better to do that act like an idiot in front of a webcam. Oh wait. Sorry, I mean join the social ecocosm, and pump out paradigm-shifting consumer-generated media which, according to A-list bloggers, is transforming the world and causing marketers to drool uncontrollably like a male ad slut watching a Flirt Vodka ad.

Anyway, this guy who's a girl who's a guy who's a girl or whatever started this Biggest Video Response Chain Ever (who also did a Hottest of Youtube 2006 Contest) and it seems thousands of people with no life...uh...people who are adopting the new social methods of communication have responded from cute college girls to a girl pretending to be Christina Aguilera in her car, a girl who wrote a song about why she won't show her boobs on YouTube to a rabbit who plays with a stuffed animal to this dude who eats breakfast while adding his bit to the Chain to this pointless waste of 35 seconds.

Fuck. We want our Saturday afternoon back. Oh, and confirming the human race is surely destined to destroy itself and has no right calling itself a superior race, we find this despicable display of idiotic schoolyard behavior and rabid fan support for it.

Fuck 'em all I say. Show me one single piece of consumer-generated "content" and I will show you people who don't have anything better to do with their time being watched by people who are too stupid to know any better. Next wave of advertising my ass.

The Hyundai robots

Check out the very cool spot with advanced CGI for the new Hyundai Santa Fe. I believe The Richards Group made it.

I had a small nervous breakdown yesterday

Which involved me bursting into tears at periodic intervals in public surroundings. I will not blog about it so don't ask me to. I just thought you might want to know that it would be a good idea to pussyfoot around Wolfe for a few days. She's a little fragile.

Help me.

Monopoly goes mainstream

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.

I meant to blog last night...

... 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.

Feeling.

Lonely today.

Do they have nanobots to scurry around and remove germs inside you?

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.

Full article here.

You know I love you

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.

I'm a guinea pig

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.

Teatime

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.

Greed makes me Google

Is it strange that I want to get on Oprah's Favorite Things show?

Wait, I am wiser

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?

Philosophically speaking, all financial assets are operating assets

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?

Quotable quotes

"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.

Strange Days

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.