We often study a famous concept by Toyota by the name Just in Time(JIT) in our operations & supply chain related subjects. Today we practiced it.
At around 10:40PM, we had just finished watching some new movie trailers. We were discussing about watching a movie on Saturday, the next day, but certain other commitments suddenly gave us an idea. We could rush to catch the 11:10PM movie at a movie hall at least 30 minutes away. That meant that we could be cutting it to close if we wanted to get the 11:10PM movie at PVR Mulund, Piramal Mall. My only condition, the movie had to be “Safe House”. The three of us quickly changed clothes and started running out of our rooms, ran down the flight of stairs (from the 6th floor), taking 3-4 steps at a time. One of my friends, being a heavy set person, even went faster than we could have ever imagined when he took 2 steps at a time.
We got an autorikshaw at about 10:50PM. We told the autorikshaw driver that we Would pay him extra if he drove fast enough to help us reach the movie hall in time. As luck played along, all the traffic signals we encountered turned green (well except for just 1). At the only red light we encountered I threatened the guy by saying that I won’t pay him extra if he didn’t jump it. Reluctantly he did. Not my proudest actions, but in the heat of the moment, we did these things. As the auto came to a screeching halt, one of my friends stayed back in the auto to settle the fare, while me and my room-mate ran across the moderately crowded mall, pulling a lot of attention to ourselves, even dodging some kids playing, to reach the movie ticket counter which had a few people before us. I hate queues, and hated the queues even more today, because it was 11:10PM already. We quickly got the tickets, ran across through the security checks, and rushed to reach the movie hall just as the first scene started rolling.
The movie was worth the rush.
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Thursday, February 9, 2012
A Big(z) exposure to marketing through Biziga
Having strong traits of supply chain & operations in our curriculum, our institute has had very few workshops on marketing. So when we were informed of the one & a half day marketing workshop, were quite keenly looking forward to it. However I was unfortunate to have missed out the first day of the 2-day workshop that was conducted by Mr Ashish Kumar, but the second day was no a disappointment I should add.
This 26 year old IIM-Indore graduate who ventured into his own business (Biziga) of making training software, showed us how to interpret data, relate different charts, show us how to mildly predict one of the most unpredictable patterns - the consumer behavior. From what I gather, there are various different forms to the simulation software, but we were mainly exposed to the marketing aspects. The venture that Mr Ashish started along with 3 other partners has been operating for about 2.5 years now and happens to be one of the first simulation training software to enter the Indian Market. Currently, the market is having a few other MNC players who have entered, but pricing wise, Biziga probably turns out as a more viable option for many.
Coming back to the workshop, it is true that one can never predict another human’s actions, let alone a group of individuals. And that’s exactly what the simulation software did. It showed the variations in the consumer patterns, it showed how consumers respond to a stimulus and often the time factors involved. For certain stimuli, the consumer takes longer to respond, while for others he is quicker. All these factors create a lot of market dynamics when one is doing business in a highly competitive market.
That’s exactly how Mr Ashish ended up holding the workshop. He put about 10 teams in the simulation competing against each other with a lot of variations that exist in the real world.
During the course of the workshop, we were given indicators on how to interpret our results from the previous rounds (categorized under quarterly results in the business cycles) and then develop strategies for the following quarters. Within duration of about 60 minutes, we were to develop the strategies and beat the competing teams in terms of market capitalization, profits, revenue, share value etc.
The intense session was a small window to how marketing strategies need be developed considering the various performance results. Despite reading about marketing concepts, consumer behaviors and few other marketing areas, we as students of NITIE have not been exposed to these software earlier. A session of software is a must for all marketing “enthus”. We were often reminded that the consumer behavior is too difficult to accurately predict despite extensive market research information at one’s disposal, but all in all, it was a good experience as a marketing manager for a day of a fantasy company.
For some of the images from the workshop, follow LINK
For more info on the company and the simulation software, checkout www.biziga.com.
This 26 year old IIM-Indore graduate who ventured into his own business (Biziga) of making training software, showed us how to interpret data, relate different charts, show us how to mildly predict one of the most unpredictable patterns - the consumer behavior. From what I gather, there are various different forms to the simulation software, but we were mainly exposed to the marketing aspects. The venture that Mr Ashish started along with 3 other partners has been operating for about 2.5 years now and happens to be one of the first simulation training software to enter the Indian Market. Currently, the market is having a few other MNC players who have entered, but pricing wise, Biziga probably turns out as a more viable option for many.
Coming back to the workshop, it is true that one can never predict another human’s actions, let alone a group of individuals. And that’s exactly what the simulation software did. It showed the variations in the consumer patterns, it showed how consumers respond to a stimulus and often the time factors involved. For certain stimuli, the consumer takes longer to respond, while for others he is quicker. All these factors create a lot of market dynamics when one is doing business in a highly competitive market.
That’s exactly how Mr Ashish ended up holding the workshop. He put about 10 teams in the simulation competing against each other with a lot of variations that exist in the real world.
During the course of the workshop, we were given indicators on how to interpret our results from the previous rounds (categorized under quarterly results in the business cycles) and then develop strategies for the following quarters. Within duration of about 60 minutes, we were to develop the strategies and beat the competing teams in terms of market capitalization, profits, revenue, share value etc.
The intense session was a small window to how marketing strategies need be developed considering the various performance results. Despite reading about marketing concepts, consumer behaviors and few other marketing areas, we as students of NITIE have not been exposed to these software earlier. A session of software is a must for all marketing “enthus”. We were often reminded that the consumer behavior is too difficult to accurately predict despite extensive market research information at one’s disposal, but all in all, it was a good experience as a marketing manager for a day of a fantasy company.
For some of the images from the workshop, follow LINK
For more info on the company and the simulation software, checkout www.biziga.com.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Why or why not to go to the auto EXPO?
From what I gather, people go to the auto EXPO for the following reasons in decreasing order of probability
1. Site seeing activity (sometimes with family and kids).
2. Look at beautiful women
3. Get freebies – like calendars, key chains, posters, carry bags.
4. Do some networking with fellow industry people – (actually a good reason)
5. Look at beautiful cars – (seems like the most logical reason)
My experience starts with a keen interest a few weeks prior to the event turning into a form of attentiveness a day or two before the Auto Expo. Until the last day, I had been unable to arrange the auto expo passes for the Business Hour. As an auto enthusiast, had been visiting the Auto Expo for the last few years, effectively covering the last six expos held in Delhi since I was in 10th standard at school in the year 2002. I love to read about new cars and like to always look at my future purchases or so I thought until I am informed of the price tags of most cars. Hence after that the cars turn in to fantasy cars from an earlier version of dream cards.. A few years back, getting big bright posters was also high on my agenda in order to cover the walls of my room, but this year I was not worried about gathering too many posters.
As the newspapers had reported, traffic jams around Pragati Maidan (the venue for the Expo) were a major headache for people visiting the expo, hence going by the metro was the most sensible option.
My friend Siddharth had arranged business hour passes for both of us. Our visit to the expo had the right mix of preparations and precautions. We had planned our to go on a early Monday morning hoping that people would either be rushing for the offices or be indoors complaining of Monday morning blues more so during the winters. When my friend and I de-boarded the Metro, we soon realized that there was a long queue at the metro station for tickets to the auto expo.
The Business hour entry starts at 10:00AM and the general hour starts at 1:00PM. The Business hour passes that traditionally cost Rs500 and the General hour passes cost Rs200so the general mood is that the business hours session is usually less crowded. The culture that is widely prevalent is that of getting complementary passes from friends, collegues etc who work in the auto industry. With Business hour passes in our hands, we were under the impression that the rush would be bearable. Or so we thought!
Being a Delhiite, I had misjudged my fellow Delhiites. The sad part is the margin of error with which I was mistaken. I was in for a huge shock.
Though we were lucky enough to get a quick entry in the expo premises, we soon realized that we were not the early birds of the autoworms (a term I have coined recently). Some of the halls had relatively manageable crowd density, but the German automakers actually had a houseful. Let me remind the clueless reader, we are still visiting during the business hours, which primarily meant fewer crowds, hence more time for genuine visitors to spend quality time appreciating the work of art and engineering (please pardon my dramatization, I speak from the heart when it comes to cars).
There were about 60-70 people lined up in a queue that stretched about 40 meters right outside the VW hall. We both decided that though VW group under which we would see Skoda and some other brands, we were definitely not in the mood to stand in the queue for such long time. It was quite a disappointment with a realization that we will not be able to see a lot new cars. We decided to move on to the Tri-Star and the famous Beemers hoping to get a glimpse of the new ‘i’ series that was put to use in the latest Mission Impossible. The queue outside that hall scared us more. With puzzled reactions, we checked our wrist watches to verify the time. We were momentarily under the impression that the general hour had started and we had probably spent too much time in the first few halls covering Hyundai, Renault & Nissan. The dials still showed 11:00AM. Not a time that one would associate with rush hour on a weekday.
My friend and I moved on to the next Pavilions covering Toyota, Yamaha, GM, Ford and TATA. We wanted to check-out the new Land Rover Discovery concept. They were worth the detour. The two beautiful LR SUVs along with the future Jaguars show the changing ideology of the JLR brand.
Maybe TATA’s acquisition was exactly what was needed to turn the brand around and give it a image makeover. As my friend had quoted during our visit, “the Jaguar has transitioned from an Old executive or President’s car to a car for the young generation manager”.
Another thing that I noticed was the maddening rush at the Toyota counters. People were crowded around the help desks with visiting cards in their hands to hand over. My curiosity pulled me towards the Toyota desk and I realized that the help desk was giving away some freebies in carry bags in exchange for the visiting cards. I asked one fellow by-stander who had just struggled his way out of the mad queue about what was in the freebie bag. The answer I got from him was, “I don’t know”. I was taken aback and my curiosity struggled with my mental instructions. My mind telling me not to bother and move on, and my curiosity wanted to find out if they were giving away keys to a new Camry or Corolla. I wound not mind standing in the queue for that for sure. I asked the same question about the content of the bag to the next guy who came out of the crowd. The angry response from the fellow informed me that the bag had A poster, a key chain, and a diary. My friend and I simply walked away to look at the Land Cruisers.
A quick lunch followed by the final visit to the Suzuki hall took the clock hands to 12:30PM.
A mere 2.5 hours duration in the expo compared to my 6 hour visit the previous time. A disappointed me tried to find solace in the fact that this year, the cars on display were not really unique. However, this year was meant to showcase the direction in which companies believe that the Indian consumer is having high expectations. Compact SUVs, Minivans, MPVs. Just like the last expo was all about showing the small cars heading to the Indian shores such as Brio, Micra, Liva, Pulse etc.
A recommendation that I would like to put forward to Delhiites is, please visit the Expo at your own peril. If site seeing is the objective, one should go to places in Delhi that are actually meant for site-seeing. Like most Delhiites, even I have not been to historical monuments and heritage sites of our own city.
If looking at pretty ladies and taking their photographs is the objective, go online, you will get lot more photographs and in even smaller attires.
If collecting freebies like posters and key chains is the objective, look at the trade off that you have to make by spending time, effort, energy and money to come to the auto expo and then decide if the posters are actually worth the trade off.
With this, I conclude and I request the Auto expo organizers ACMA, SIAM & CII to continue the tradition of bringing together automaker from the world over to Delhi even if next year onwards I choose to visit the auto expo right from my Bedroom TV or automotive websites.
Monday, December 5, 2011
Sunday afternoon interrupted..
It started with a panicked call on my cellphone. She asked if my room-mate was around. Sure he was, he was in the washroom. Momentarily I was concerned. How else is someone to feel when you are woken up by the piercing ringing noise at around noon? As soon as I handed the cell phone to my room-mate who had just walked out of the washroom, he said those scary words, “sure,come over, glad to be of help”. I immediately indicated to him “NO NO NO”, and he quickly understood and tried to steer the venue of the meeting somewhere else. Alas, he was defeated in the logical conversation what he could not counter. His attempts show off his skills at some softwares have earned our room the status of ‘the photo and video studio of the hostel’.
Oh darn, I havnt even properly got up out of my sleep, and I get to know that 2 ladies are gonna be coming over to my room to work on some project. Why do I have to sacrifice my sleep over someone else? But then my room-mate reminded me that these are our “friends”. It was obvious that they would be staying for quite some time. And believe it or not, even I become uncomfortable doing my morning rituals when women are around, the ones that are not really my blood relatives.
So the process of us getting ready to clear our room and get ready started. The fast forward way in which we brush, take a quick shower and so on. But by the time I am out of the shower, they are there. Well only one of them was there and not two as I had feared. And my room-mate was in some sort of deep discussion. I quietly tip-toed and got some stuff and stepped out of the room. My intention was not to make any contact. Im not the chatty type early in the morning you know. And yes, despite whatever you may say, I will still call 12:30 PM early on a Sunday morning. I quickly & quietly tried to get my cell phone and take the key to sneak out of the room, but the damn keys got stuck in the lock and made a ruckus. It was enough to turn the 2 heads in the room towards me. I knew I was spotted, and so I swiftly took the keys out of the lock and as soon as the two people stared at me, I was grinning and dodging out of the room. Within minutes, I was at my neighbors and was planning how to go around doing some work. Under normal circumstances, I do not have trouble conversing with girls, but as I said, not the chatty type in the early morning. The growling stomach reminded me of the most important meal of the day – Lunch. In our case, lunch is the first meal of the day, the ideal conversation starter. I gave a buzz to a few of my friends to ask if they are up for lunch. Usually, I go with my room-mate, but it seemed obvious that his (our) lady friend was gonna be sitting put for a while. Having quickly grabbed a bite at lunch(not my favorite meal of the week though), I returned to my room to find that it was locked. An array of hope for the peaceful activities such as reading the paper, internet surfing, chatting with friends online, checking the email and so on. Sunday mornings or (afternoons) are meant for “ME” time. No miscellaneous activity, no long boring conversations of simple exchange of pleasantries, no work. AAH, beautiful. So I got in my room, went around doing some Facebooking(yes, it’s a verb now), and simultaneous watching of some action movie(multitasking is the trade of the day), and even went out for an hour to do some constructive work with friends on a case study. After a while I come back to my room only to find that my room-mate is again hand in glove with his (our) lady friend, discussing some important aspects of some project. The funny part is, the project was a video recording and the audio playback was quite amusing. This was the indication for my power nap going away, slipping like sand through my fingers, a painful realization for all afternoon nap lovers. Some may find it queer that even after waking up at around noon, I wish to have a power nap around 3 in the afternoon, but then they need to understand the relevance of a Sunday afternoon. I quietly step out to my neighbor’s room who is now a close friend and sulk over the gross injustice to me. I complain of the alien creatures occupying my land, one where mostly there is quiet, peace, mostly there is blissful silence. I love that environment. My friend smirks and offers me to sit in his room and do something while he is busy working on the laptop. But my need to sleep overpowered my hesitation to be in my room. So this time I was determined not to get discouraged by company in my room. I assured myself that despite external presence and funny noises in the background, I would be able to get a nap. My room-mate holds proof of the fact that I can sleep in the most noisy of the circumstances, but today for some reason I was heading for a surprise. I politely exchanged greetings and pleasantries with her and put in my earplugs. Turned the audio on full volume and started the Eminem album in shuffle mode. The full volume can’t hurt my ear, or so I thought, since I play the song on full while on my jog, but for some reason, when you are lying on your bed, the full volume hurts your ear(audio entertainment industry should write it on their manual, but on second thought, who reads those??). As soon as I turn down the volume just to reduce it to bearable levels, I hear pieces of conversation of absolutely no interest to me, on the contrary, of annoying nature. I hear high pitched laughter; I hear some audio recordings of her voice being played back on the computer. All in all, I am unable to drown external sounds without turning up my music volume which in turn starts hurting my ear. So I get up after lying for about 10 minutes and walk in to my neighbor’s room, only to complain that I can’t sleep. He consoles me by saying that I can kill time by watching some more episodes of some series, and then he quietly gets back to watching Big Bang Theory. I get back to my room; start to watch Criminal Minds, a renowned thriller series, but then again the background audio proved to be a distraction. I can’t find this interesting enough so I go back to my neighbor and complain again. He starts laughing. Not at me, but at Penny, the beautiful girl next door in Big Bang Theory. He looks at me and pauses the episode momentarily. I ask him which episodes is he watching, and he tells me about the initial episodes. And then suddenly I am reminded of the latest Big Bang Theory (BBT) episodes that I have not yet seen. So I quickly get back to my room and start watching those new episodes and this time, I am not disturbed by any distractions in my room. My colleagues continue work in the background, and I devoted to the series am loving BBT. Occasionally I notice that THEY are distracted by my laughter that I am desperately trying to keep in check. I didn’t want to be the distraction, but BBT is too hilarious to think different. So I take my laptop away and continue watching BBT in my neighbor’s room who is also in his own world watching BBT. This goes on for an hour and when I return to my room at around 5:30PM, I find them still working on the project. So I go grab a bite since by 5:30 PM my stomach is growling again. Well it had been growling since 4PM, but I could not get anything to eat before 5:30PM. I return only to find that the work seems to go on forever, and my roommate still working with our lady friend. I go to my neighbor again and this time I am really sleep, so I crash on his bed while he has gone away to grab a bite. While leaving, he locks me in since he had planned not to wake me up if he is back and tells me that I should give him a call if I need to get out and he isn’t around. With my mind drifting into sleep, and in no mood for any conversation, I reply to him with an affirmative response. At around 7PM when I get up after about an hour of sleep, I realize that I am stuck locked in his room and unable to get out. I call up my friend who happens to be at least 10 minutes away. I grab the opportunity to get as much more sleep as I can. By about 7:15, I go back to my room to still find my room-mate working with our friend (oh dear God, how long does this project take to get over??). I quietly put on my running shoes with a minimum of conversation with the pair and step out for my jog. The only trouble, since I had just woken up from my sleep, I was not really able to gather the energy that I needed for my run. So I strolled, walked slowly, and after about 30min, was able to take a run. My mind still imagining how my Sunday would have gone had I had it all to myself? Of course like every other Sunday, clocking close to 10 hours of sleep, occasionally getting up to curse the fact that the day would be over in a few hours to start a whole new week. Why do people have Monday morning blues when Sundays can be termed as Sunday reds? I am sure people would love to hate the only day of the week when realization hits that the weekend is almost over. Funny how our mind drifts to even the oddest questions while on solitary run. Finally by around 8:15, I was back and realized that the work was done since the duo were gathering their stuff and our lady friend was getting ready to head out….ADIOS AMIGOs.!!!!!!
We bid out parting greetings. And finally I came to peace in my own room. “ROOM SWEET ROOM”
Oh darn, I havnt even properly got up out of my sleep, and I get to know that 2 ladies are gonna be coming over to my room to work on some project. Why do I have to sacrifice my sleep over someone else? But then my room-mate reminded me that these are our “friends”. It was obvious that they would be staying for quite some time. And believe it or not, even I become uncomfortable doing my morning rituals when women are around, the ones that are not really my blood relatives.
So the process of us getting ready to clear our room and get ready started. The fast forward way in which we brush, take a quick shower and so on. But by the time I am out of the shower, they are there. Well only one of them was there and not two as I had feared. And my room-mate was in some sort of deep discussion. I quietly tip-toed and got some stuff and stepped out of the room. My intention was not to make any contact. Im not the chatty type early in the morning you know. And yes, despite whatever you may say, I will still call 12:30 PM early on a Sunday morning. I quickly & quietly tried to get my cell phone and take the key to sneak out of the room, but the damn keys got stuck in the lock and made a ruckus. It was enough to turn the 2 heads in the room towards me. I knew I was spotted, and so I swiftly took the keys out of the lock and as soon as the two people stared at me, I was grinning and dodging out of the room. Within minutes, I was at my neighbors and was planning how to go around doing some work. Under normal circumstances, I do not have trouble conversing with girls, but as I said, not the chatty type in the early morning. The growling stomach reminded me of the most important meal of the day – Lunch. In our case, lunch is the first meal of the day, the ideal conversation starter. I gave a buzz to a few of my friends to ask if they are up for lunch. Usually, I go with my room-mate, but it seemed obvious that his (our) lady friend was gonna be sitting put for a while. Having quickly grabbed a bite at lunch(not my favorite meal of the week though), I returned to my room to find that it was locked. An array of hope for the peaceful activities such as reading the paper, internet surfing, chatting with friends online, checking the email and so on. Sunday mornings or (afternoons) are meant for “ME” time. No miscellaneous activity, no long boring conversations of simple exchange of pleasantries, no work. AAH, beautiful. So I got in my room, went around doing some Facebooking(yes, it’s a verb now), and simultaneous watching of some action movie(multitasking is the trade of the day), and even went out for an hour to do some constructive work with friends on a case study. After a while I come back to my room only to find that my room-mate is again hand in glove with his (our) lady friend, discussing some important aspects of some project. The funny part is, the project was a video recording and the audio playback was quite amusing. This was the indication for my power nap going away, slipping like sand through my fingers, a painful realization for all afternoon nap lovers. Some may find it queer that even after waking up at around noon, I wish to have a power nap around 3 in the afternoon, but then they need to understand the relevance of a Sunday afternoon. I quietly step out to my neighbor’s room who is now a close friend and sulk over the gross injustice to me. I complain of the alien creatures occupying my land, one where mostly there is quiet, peace, mostly there is blissful silence. I love that environment. My friend smirks and offers me to sit in his room and do something while he is busy working on the laptop. But my need to sleep overpowered my hesitation to be in my room. So this time I was determined not to get discouraged by company in my room. I assured myself that despite external presence and funny noises in the background, I would be able to get a nap. My room-mate holds proof of the fact that I can sleep in the most noisy of the circumstances, but today for some reason I was heading for a surprise. I politely exchanged greetings and pleasantries with her and put in my earplugs. Turned the audio on full volume and started the Eminem album in shuffle mode. The full volume can’t hurt my ear, or so I thought, since I play the song on full while on my jog, but for some reason, when you are lying on your bed, the full volume hurts your ear(audio entertainment industry should write it on their manual, but on second thought, who reads those??). As soon as I turn down the volume just to reduce it to bearable levels, I hear pieces of conversation of absolutely no interest to me, on the contrary, of annoying nature. I hear high pitched laughter; I hear some audio recordings of her voice being played back on the computer. All in all, I am unable to drown external sounds without turning up my music volume which in turn starts hurting my ear. So I get up after lying for about 10 minutes and walk in to my neighbor’s room, only to complain that I can’t sleep. He consoles me by saying that I can kill time by watching some more episodes of some series, and then he quietly gets back to watching Big Bang Theory. I get back to my room; start to watch Criminal Minds, a renowned thriller series, but then again the background audio proved to be a distraction. I can’t find this interesting enough so I go back to my neighbor and complain again. He starts laughing. Not at me, but at Penny, the beautiful girl next door in Big Bang Theory. He looks at me and pauses the episode momentarily. I ask him which episodes is he watching, and he tells me about the initial episodes. And then suddenly I am reminded of the latest Big Bang Theory (BBT) episodes that I have not yet seen. So I quickly get back to my room and start watching those new episodes and this time, I am not disturbed by any distractions in my room. My colleagues continue work in the background, and I devoted to the series am loving BBT. Occasionally I notice that THEY are distracted by my laughter that I am desperately trying to keep in check. I didn’t want to be the distraction, but BBT is too hilarious to think different. So I take my laptop away and continue watching BBT in my neighbor’s room who is also in his own world watching BBT. This goes on for an hour and when I return to my room at around 5:30PM, I find them still working on the project. So I go grab a bite since by 5:30 PM my stomach is growling again. Well it had been growling since 4PM, but I could not get anything to eat before 5:30PM. I return only to find that the work seems to go on forever, and my roommate still working with our lady friend. I go to my neighbor again and this time I am really sleep, so I crash on his bed while he has gone away to grab a bite. While leaving, he locks me in since he had planned not to wake me up if he is back and tells me that I should give him a call if I need to get out and he isn’t around. With my mind drifting into sleep, and in no mood for any conversation, I reply to him with an affirmative response. At around 7PM when I get up after about an hour of sleep, I realize that I am stuck locked in his room and unable to get out. I call up my friend who happens to be at least 10 minutes away. I grab the opportunity to get as much more sleep as I can. By about 7:15, I go back to my room to still find my room-mate working with our friend (oh dear God, how long does this project take to get over??). I quietly put on my running shoes with a minimum of conversation with the pair and step out for my jog. The only trouble, since I had just woken up from my sleep, I was not really able to gather the energy that I needed for my run. So I strolled, walked slowly, and after about 30min, was able to take a run. My mind still imagining how my Sunday would have gone had I had it all to myself? Of course like every other Sunday, clocking close to 10 hours of sleep, occasionally getting up to curse the fact that the day would be over in a few hours to start a whole new week. Why do people have Monday morning blues when Sundays can be termed as Sunday reds? I am sure people would love to hate the only day of the week when realization hits that the weekend is almost over. Funny how our mind drifts to even the oddest questions while on solitary run. Finally by around 8:15, I was back and realized that the work was done since the duo were gathering their stuff and our lady friend was getting ready to head out….ADIOS AMIGOs.!!!!!!
We bid out parting greetings. And finally I came to peace in my own room. “ROOM SWEET ROOM”
Sunday, October 9, 2011
How we landed a restaurant owner in his own soup.
It all started with some of my friend and I discussing some project and at 3:15AM I suggested that we go down for a bite at the night mess. Two of my friends (Anshul and Sumar) quickly picked up some cash and got ready, but when we got to the mess, we got to know that the mess/canteen had run out of all eatables by that hour. We got the idea to explore open place outside the campus to grab a bite at 3:30AM, and the one suggestion that came from the security guard at the gate was Medu Mess near IIT. An auto driver told us that it would be open in the next few minutes, and so began our trip to the Famous Medu Mess. The one we were told about by our seniors. The one which is a legend since it is the only source of decent food at such odd hours of the day.
Little did we realize that it is located in some interior corner of some locality. Initially we were under the impression that the auto driver is taking us to some secluded location and we would be ripped off, since there was no source of light to indicate the existence of a mess or any sort of eating place. He took us through routes that I had no clue about. Finally we stopped in front of a few shops with their shutters closed and a lamp post with barely enough illumination. When we asked the auto drive where the mess was, he pointed to a dark alley narrowly lying between two adjacent shops. Somewhere inside that alley was the Medu mess. At the first glance you would easily miss the alley, but then the auto driver seemed to know what he was talking about. Personally, I was not too sure about his intentions. When we got to know that the mess would be opened at around 4AM, we had to kill another 20 minutes. We tried to chat about the weird stuff that we saw at 3:40AM when almost whole city is sleeping. We saw poultry that was just brought in for a butcher's shop , the stray cat that took a liking for Anshul, the huge houses in the neighborhood and the distant cars that were visible. Anshul even shot a video of how the chicken was offloaded from the truck swearing about how we sell our souls when we eat non-vegetarian food referring to the cruel treatment of the poultry. It was Sumar who reminded Anshul that he himself was a hard core non-vegetarian and wouldn’t even give all this a second thought the next morning.
A little while later a few of our other colleges also turned up to grab a bite. These colleagues who are from South India told us about the awesome South Indian food that the Medu mess serves. Within the few min after that, a police patrol jeep drove down the road narrow street towards us. We were all under the assumption that this was just another routine patrol and nothing really to be concerned about, but when the jeep stopped its engine right in front of the mess, we were confused. One of the police men started asking my south Indian friends some questions, while Anshul, Sumar and I were standing a bit away from the jeep. Unfortunately my curiosity got the better of me and I poked my head closer to the place of conversation. My colleagues called out to me and asked me to help in the translation considering that language barrier between the cop and my colleagues from south India. My colleague seemed uncomfortable and I thought to myself, "is this cop business really happening?" I wasn’t expecting all this to be the result of a bunch of hungry students in the middle of the night/dawn. I walked up to them as casually as possible, but in my head I said, “Oh, shit, why did I have to feel hungry at such odd hours? And even if I did feel hungry, why did I come over the most secluded streets. Little did I realize that at 4AM, virtually all streets were secluded", so my thought process was obviously overwhelmed by the sequence of events this night. When I walked up to my colleagues to ask if there was any trouble, I was least expecting the conversation I was about to have. The cop seemed to be irritated or probably just wanted to show who the boss was. I had no doubt about that part for sure. He asked if anyone knew how to speak Hindi or Marathi and I told him I knew Hindi. He asked me what time I eat food. At first I was confused, I thought he was asking about some why we were there, so I told him that we were hungry and were “Studying” so wanted to grab a bite. A few more questions from him and my responses around our forthcoming exams seemed to convince him enough to get him off our back. The next thing we realize that the cops are beating on the door of the Medu mess and talking to the meek fellow who comes out. Poor chap who hadn’t even opened his shop for business got in trouble for operating at hours outside the permitted timing. The chap was taken inside the police jeep and had a “Conversation”. The auto drive gave us a hint to get back in the auto and keep our heads down. He said, “You guys won’t be getting anything to eat for quite a while from this place today, until the chap sorts out this matter of course”.
We obeyed the saviors of the moment and followed his lead. Within seconds we had hit the street to head back to the college campus. A little while later we crossed a police check post and Sumar noticed a policeman on a bike right behind us. He told us that this time we were in some serious trouble. But just then the bike zoomed past us and we took a breadth of air to our starved lungs. At 4:40AM when we landed back in the campus, we paid the auto drive 100 bucks and concluded that the night was quite an epic one. Not only did we shell out 100 bucks, dodged nosy cops, and sleepy like hell, we were back to square one, being hungry.
PS: pardon my typos or any other errors. at 5:30AM, I am a bit sleepy to notice how my english is structured.
Little did we realize that it is located in some interior corner of some locality. Initially we were under the impression that the auto driver is taking us to some secluded location and we would be ripped off, since there was no source of light to indicate the existence of a mess or any sort of eating place. He took us through routes that I had no clue about. Finally we stopped in front of a few shops with their shutters closed and a lamp post with barely enough illumination. When we asked the auto drive where the mess was, he pointed to a dark alley narrowly lying between two adjacent shops. Somewhere inside that alley was the Medu mess. At the first glance you would easily miss the alley, but then the auto driver seemed to know what he was talking about. Personally, I was not too sure about his intentions. When we got to know that the mess would be opened at around 4AM, we had to kill another 20 minutes. We tried to chat about the weird stuff that we saw at 3:40AM when almost whole city is sleeping. We saw poultry that was just brought in for a butcher's shop , the stray cat that took a liking for Anshul, the huge houses in the neighborhood and the distant cars that were visible. Anshul even shot a video of how the chicken was offloaded from the truck swearing about how we sell our souls when we eat non-vegetarian food referring to the cruel treatment of the poultry. It was Sumar who reminded Anshul that he himself was a hard core non-vegetarian and wouldn’t even give all this a second thought the next morning.
A little while later a few of our other colleges also turned up to grab a bite. These colleagues who are from South India told us about the awesome South Indian food that the Medu mess serves. Within the few min after that, a police patrol jeep drove down the road narrow street towards us. We were all under the assumption that this was just another routine patrol and nothing really to be concerned about, but when the jeep stopped its engine right in front of the mess, we were confused. One of the police men started asking my south Indian friends some questions, while Anshul, Sumar and I were standing a bit away from the jeep. Unfortunately my curiosity got the better of me and I poked my head closer to the place of conversation. My colleagues called out to me and asked me to help in the translation considering that language barrier between the cop and my colleagues from south India. My colleague seemed uncomfortable and I thought to myself, "is this cop business really happening?" I wasn’t expecting all this to be the result of a bunch of hungry students in the middle of the night/dawn. I walked up to them as casually as possible, but in my head I said, “Oh, shit, why did I have to feel hungry at such odd hours? And even if I did feel hungry, why did I come over the most secluded streets. Little did I realize that at 4AM, virtually all streets were secluded", so my thought process was obviously overwhelmed by the sequence of events this night. When I walked up to my colleagues to ask if there was any trouble, I was least expecting the conversation I was about to have. The cop seemed to be irritated or probably just wanted to show who the boss was. I had no doubt about that part for sure. He asked if anyone knew how to speak Hindi or Marathi and I told him I knew Hindi. He asked me what time I eat food. At first I was confused, I thought he was asking about some why we were there, so I told him that we were hungry and were “Studying” so wanted to grab a bite. A few more questions from him and my responses around our forthcoming exams seemed to convince him enough to get him off our back. The next thing we realize that the cops are beating on the door of the Medu mess and talking to the meek fellow who comes out. Poor chap who hadn’t even opened his shop for business got in trouble for operating at hours outside the permitted timing. The chap was taken inside the police jeep and had a “Conversation”. The auto drive gave us a hint to get back in the auto and keep our heads down. He said, “You guys won’t be getting anything to eat for quite a while from this place today, until the chap sorts out this matter of course”.
We obeyed the saviors of the moment and followed his lead. Within seconds we had hit the street to head back to the college campus. A little while later we crossed a police check post and Sumar noticed a policeman on a bike right behind us. He told us that this time we were in some serious trouble. But just then the bike zoomed past us and we took a breadth of air to our starved lungs. At 4:40AM when we landed back in the campus, we paid the auto drive 100 bucks and concluded that the night was quite an epic one. Not only did we shell out 100 bucks, dodged nosy cops, and sleepy like hell, we were back to square one, being hungry.
PS: pardon my typos or any other errors. at 5:30AM, I am a bit sleepy to notice how my english is structured.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Managerial Hangover with Financial instability
Management is all about handling complicated situations (or in my case, certain complicated questions) and then set the results in order for the layman to understand. Depending upon the result to my financial accounting paper, I might get an answer of how good a manager I am or alternatively, would get to know how good a story teller I am.
In financial accounting, we are required to identify what kind of transactions should be placed in direct expenses; you need to also understand that there are different types of loans/debts. The only official loan I know is the one I get from the bank, and who would have thought that it would be categorized under other categories. The other two loans/debts that I know are the ones that I get from my friends, and the loan that I get from my dad, well primarily to pay off my first loan. The advantage that I have in the second type of loan is, my dad doesn’t try to blackmail me through denial of invitation to group parties.
How about looking at the picture in another way: the money I get from my friends is more of debt one that I have to definitely pay off irrespective of my personal balance sheet, where the liability factor definitely outweighs the asset factor. These people don’t listen to the fact that my cash in bank and cash in hand are next to zero and my net worth is only based on fixed assets such as the car that I bought last year and still don’t have with me in this city and hence is immovable fixed asset. Additionally, I try to gather goodwill as an asset, though right now I don’t remember if it goes under asset or liability, pardon my memory, it has suffered some shock and awe today.
As against the actual Profit and Loss account, which contains terms such as outstanding wages, my personal balance sheet mostly contains outstanding payments to mess and outstanding payments to the Dhobi. My profit takes place mostly when there is a treat awarded by colleagues and I mostly hope for a provision of bad debt from their end when it comes to my turn to treat them.
Coming back to my financial accounting papers, I was glad that I understood the first few lines of the paper which read, “Financial accounting paper for First year students, 3 hours duration, 60 marks and so on”, but after all that it was in German or Japanese with some numbers thrown in for fun. So obviously I thought that this must be a mistake, this can’t be the exam that I need to write. I had studied hard for it. I had studied one full night for this subject. Compared to the attention that I have paid in the class and the studies I have put in other subjects, this was one of the subjects that I had spent a lot of time for. Once again, ONE FULL NIGHT, of course I also grabbed a 7 hour sleep right after the midnight snack, but then that is beside the point. And I finally decided to raise my hand to ask the faculty member if he had made a mistake distributing the question paper (they are bound to make such mistakes, obviously!!). But as I was about to raise my hand, I deciphered, another line which read, “Take suitable assumptions wherever necessary”. This got me thinking, what kind of assumptions are we talking about? So began the exercise at which I am a pro.
I began developing new theories and formulas. The Einstein (or who ever is the equivalent to Einstein in terms of Finance) inside me awoke and I devised that liability and assets are equal and are interchangeable. I put values of expenses under profit and certain receivables under loss. Didn’t the line say, “take assumptions where ever necessary”?
Fortunately I was not the only one, and after the exam today, some people were desperate for a lot of liquidity, the one that drowns sorrows and is served in bars, and not the one that improves your cash and bank status. I had asked them to get me some liquidity too, though I would have been grateful for either of the two forms. Let me go out and see if there is a shop open at mid night anywhere close. Stay tuned to read more about how the Einstein of Finance proves himself in marketing. Trust me, that is another subject where customer understanding and selling of goods and services will take on a whole new different dimension.
In financial accounting, we are required to identify what kind of transactions should be placed in direct expenses; you need to also understand that there are different types of loans/debts. The only official loan I know is the one I get from the bank, and who would have thought that it would be categorized under other categories. The other two loans/debts that I know are the ones that I get from my friends, and the loan that I get from my dad, well primarily to pay off my first loan. The advantage that I have in the second type of loan is, my dad doesn’t try to blackmail me through denial of invitation to group parties.
How about looking at the picture in another way: the money I get from my friends is more of debt one that I have to definitely pay off irrespective of my personal balance sheet, where the liability factor definitely outweighs the asset factor. These people don’t listen to the fact that my cash in bank and cash in hand are next to zero and my net worth is only based on fixed assets such as the car that I bought last year and still don’t have with me in this city and hence is immovable fixed asset. Additionally, I try to gather goodwill as an asset, though right now I don’t remember if it goes under asset or liability, pardon my memory, it has suffered some shock and awe today.
As against the actual Profit and Loss account, which contains terms such as outstanding wages, my personal balance sheet mostly contains outstanding payments to mess and outstanding payments to the Dhobi. My profit takes place mostly when there is a treat awarded by colleagues and I mostly hope for a provision of bad debt from their end when it comes to my turn to treat them.
Coming back to my financial accounting papers, I was glad that I understood the first few lines of the paper which read, “Financial accounting paper for First year students, 3 hours duration, 60 marks and so on”, but after all that it was in German or Japanese with some numbers thrown in for fun. So obviously I thought that this must be a mistake, this can’t be the exam that I need to write. I had studied hard for it. I had studied one full night for this subject. Compared to the attention that I have paid in the class and the studies I have put in other subjects, this was one of the subjects that I had spent a lot of time for. Once again, ONE FULL NIGHT, of course I also grabbed a 7 hour sleep right after the midnight snack, but then that is beside the point. And I finally decided to raise my hand to ask the faculty member if he had made a mistake distributing the question paper (they are bound to make such mistakes, obviously!!). But as I was about to raise my hand, I deciphered, another line which read, “Take suitable assumptions wherever necessary”. This got me thinking, what kind of assumptions are we talking about? So began the exercise at which I am a pro.
I began developing new theories and formulas. The Einstein (or who ever is the equivalent to Einstein in terms of Finance) inside me awoke and I devised that liability and assets are equal and are interchangeable. I put values of expenses under profit and certain receivables under loss. Didn’t the line say, “take assumptions where ever necessary”?
Fortunately I was not the only one, and after the exam today, some people were desperate for a lot of liquidity, the one that drowns sorrows and is served in bars, and not the one that improves your cash and bank status. I had asked them to get me some liquidity too, though I would have been grateful for either of the two forms. Let me go out and see if there is a shop open at mid night anywhere close. Stay tuned to read more about how the Einstein of Finance proves himself in marketing. Trust me, that is another subject where customer understanding and selling of goods and services will take on a whole new different dimension.