Gandaki - IESE MBA 2007's blogs

Sad Plight of Nepalis in Dubai Airport

2008-11-01T12:10:00.003+01:00

30 Sep 2008 - On the way to Egypt in the Dubai Airport, I saw many people sleeping on the way to the Departure Gates. On closer look, I thought they could be Nepali and I also overheard someone talking in Nepali. I went and talked with some of them. They said some of them have been stranded in the airport for more than 30 days. They left Nepal to work on various positions in Iraq. They were supposed to meet someone in the Dubai airport who would then charter a flight to Iraq. The person was not there to be seen at the airport and they have been left stranded in the airport ever since. Apparently, they were tricked by the agent who flew them from Nepal and/or the agent who was supposed to pick them up.

They hadn't washed their clothes or eaten properly for more than a month. Some of them looked very depressed and some were taking it easy for temporary relief by playing cards when all the options had run out. A sad story when one human being cheats on other and plays with someone's life for greed of money. The workers had dreams, to work, save some money and send it home so that their families live better life. Not of being stranded in a foreign airport where there was no one helping them out.

I was there in Dubai, but I was helpless. I was flying to Cairo the same evening. I gave my numbers to them asking them to call me (if they think I could be of any help) after a week when I am back from Cairo. Some of them had a prepaid simcard, so they were at least able to receive calls and make some calls. One of them said they had already called the Nepali Embassy in Abu Dhabi which was also of no help.

Trip to Egypt

2008-11-01T09:32:00.013+01:00

In front of the Giza Pyramids near Cairo in Egypt

On the week long holidays of Eid (after the month long Ramadan period), I flew to Egypt as it was just about 4 hours away from Dubai and that was one country I always wanted to go if I got a chance. On top of that, my good friend from IESE in Barcelona was there in Cairo living like a king in his grand apartment. That meant I would visit a good Brazilian friend of mine who would take me around Cairo and rest of Egypt and I would also save on accommodation cost. So it was an event where I did not seem to lose. :)

Based on the information of the websites, I was happy that being a Nepali, I could get the visa on arrival. Apparently that was not the case. When I reached the airport, the airport officials made me wait at not-too-exciting place for about 1 and half hours and finally said 'Welcome to Egypt" and let me enter the country. It was a small adventure already.

Overall, except for the visa adventure, I really had a good time there. We first visited the famous Pyramids in Giza. Unlike taking a camel to go there, we rode horse this time. Having come from Nepal, it is probably a shame to say this but it was the first time I rode a horse. Horse riding was a lot of fun. At one point, we were going quite first and I didn't quite manage to synchronize with the jumping up and down and you can imagine what happened to me next day when I got up.

Seeing the 4500 years old Pyramid was really an amazing experience.I felt very lucky to have been able to see the only remaining ancient seven wonders of the world. I recalled the moment Srijana and I had been to the historic Taj Mahal together. It reminded me of the similar time except that I was seeing something very very old.

In front of the The Great Sphinx of Giza, next to the Pyramids

Next day, we went on a Felluca ride on the Nile river. This was also a lot of fun. Felluca is a local name for the local sailing boat. The breeze was cool, the water pretty clean, and the felluca master was mastering the direction and the strength of the wind to position the sail. Amazing how you can use the strength of the wind to navigate through water. We were told that people probably used huge Fellucas to bring the stones for the Pyramids 4500 years back.

Wesley, my IESE classmate and Brazilian host and myself enjoying the Felluca ride

Christian, my "English" colleauge from work and Wesley, my IESE classmate and Brazilian host enjoying the Felluca ride

I also went to the famous Egyptian museum in Cairo. I got to see the famous young king Tutankhamun's mask, and two layers of mummy case all made of mostly gold and precious stones. I also dared to see about 3000 or more years old dead bodies (mummys) of the Paroah kings who used to rule Egypt.

One day, we went to the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, founded by the Greek Alexander the Great. Saw the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the re-constructed version of what is now considered the oldest library in the world. The interior and exterior design of the library is really awesome and unique. Kuods to the Norwegian architects who designed it.

Along the dates trees in Alexandria

The highway to Alexandria from Cairo are all lined up with billboards, probably every 50 meters. I thought they spoiled the beauty of the place but I guess they are probably generating income for the maintenance of the highway.

Although I was happy going through this precious place on earth learning about history of human civilization, I was saddened about the lack of environmental awareness among the locals and tourists alike. It was common to see the litters like above near the beautiful shoreline of Alexandria. All the white plastic was coming from a local fast food shop just across the street. It was also not uncommon to see people just throwing away Coca Cola cans into the Nile river. I wsih no cans were sold in Egypt and only bottles (which were collected by the soft drink companies) were allowed.

paperwork tips: IESE graduates moving to Dubai to work

2008-08-16T12:44:00.002+02:00

Since I went though a painful paperwork experience to be able to work in Dubai I thought I would share some of it so that you don't probably have to go though the same thing.

[Rules change very quickly in Dubai so this may not apply any more.] To work in Dubai, as a foreigner you will need a work permit. The company you will be working for will process that for you. However they will need the "attested" original educational certificate from you. The attestation has to be done by the U.A.E. consulate of the country where the certificate was issued. So in the case of IESE graduates who will be attesting their MBA degree certificate rather than their undergrad certificate, this will mean you will have to go to Spain for the attestation process. If you are already in Spain or nearby, it may not be a big issue, but if you are in a far away country from Spain like USA, India, Nepal, Australia, etc, it is painful first to actually have to travel to get a piece of paper attested. So the steps are:

1) Get your original certificate. Too bad if you had it proudly framed on the wall of your house (as it was the case with me).

2) Find a notary in Spain who will make the photocopy of the certificate and attest that the photocopy is the true copy of the original. I think the original requirement is to have the original certificate attested by notary who recognizes the signature of IESE signatories. For this you will actually have to go to Barcelona and ask IESE for the name and address of the notary who can do it for you.

However attesting the photocopy seemed to work for me. In my case, all the notary was saying was the photocopy is the true copy. He was not verifying any signatures in the original. You can already see the stupidity of having to attest your certificate here. The notary I went to was:
Prada, Pizarro, Notarios C.B.
Bravo Murillo, 297 Portal 1 - 1 Derecha
28020 Madrid ( 91 579 4444)

3) Now somebody has to recognize the signature of the notary. The notary will probably mention the name and address of the notary organization he is a member of. You will have to take it there which will verify they have recognized the signature of the notary. The one I went to was Decano del Colegio Notarial
Ruiz de Alarcon, 3
28014 Madrid
Phone: 91 213 00 00
It is located close to Paseo del Prado, the famous street where Museo Prado is located.

They will only give back your documents the same day after 2:30 or the other day. Make sure you mention it is urgent so that you can have it processed the same day, although not before 2:30. This is all to get a stupid signature and stamp. This means you have to wait next day for actually having your process completed because UAE consulate accepts the documents for attesting only until 12.

4) Next, Justice Ministry has to recognize the signature of the Colegio Notarial. So take it to Ministerio de Justicia located in C/ San Bernardo 45 . The entrance is located in Calle De La Manzana. (Phone: 91 390 20 11). Luckily, the Justice Ministry is quick. Once your turn comes in the queue, they will instantly stamp it for you.

5) Next take it to Ministry of External Affairs which has to recognize the signature of Justice Ministry. Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores is located little far away from Justice Ministry. The address is
C/ Serrano Galvance 26, Edificio "Torees Agora". (Phone: 91 379 16 06 /09)
Luckily they are also quick in putting the stamp.

6) Now wait for next day and at 10 ( up to noon) in the morning, take it to the U.A.E. consulate located in c/ Capitan Haya 40. Tell them, its urgent, they will charge you extra for this and at around 2 pm or later, finally you will have the photocopy of your degree attested and ready to be submitted to your company's HR so that they can submit it for work permit.

I think it took more than 2 weeks to get the work permit once the paperwork was submitted by HR.

All the best and let me know if you have any questions.

( I recently found out from my friends that there are companies in U.A.E. that can do the attestation for you. I do not know the names and the fees they charge)

in Dubai now

2008-08-16T12:24:00.002+02:00

I have moved again. This time I am in Dubai. Its already been 2 months I am here. I have to admit the timing was not right in terms of weather. Last 2 months including these days have been very hot and humid. Even in the evening, the air is hot. So we spend most of our time indoors where there would be some air conditioning.

I am still working for the same firm in London. Because of the arrangement of the program I am in, unfortunately I have not been able to take advantage of the sweet "no income tax" feature of United Arab Emirates. I still get paid in the UK and hence have to pay tax. However I have been provided a good accommodation. Considering the rent is very high (even higher than what I found in London), its not bad to have this option, I guess.

I am also getting used to changes in the life style here. I used to take the subway(tube) in London to commute to work. Here I am taking a cab to commute. Interestingly, the cab option is less expensive than my tube option in London. The difficult part is getting a taxi in the rush hour. At times I have been lucky to have found a taxi on time. At times, I have waited up to half an hour. I have been told, during the shopping festival in Jan or Feb, waiting for one hour is common.

At work, there is a cafeteria which serves South Asian food and Lebanese food. However the dal or curry seems to be very oily. They also have a salad bar which is not bad. Its a place with good value for money. Many people tend to order food from their favorite restaurants in Wafi mall, which is just 5 minutes away but in the summer heat, it is not always a preferable option to walk there.

Hopefully I will write again soon.

Some videos of Saara (Paaru)

2008-05-17T17:58:00.002+02:00

Paaru, Paru and Siru

2007-12-03T15:01:00.000+01:00

Paaru happy and awake after a bath from grandmom

I don't know what she is smiling at. I think she finds us too childish!:)

Naming ceremony with a Nepali Priest in London

I am not happy mom and grandmom! Dad, please help me!

On bhai-tika day: With Siru's cousin

Life has changed - I am a dad now

2007-10-19T00:15:00.001+02:00

I think the arrival of a new baby is an auspicious occasion to start writing again after some hibernation. On Tuesday evening, Srijana gave birth to a healthy baby girl at St Mary's hospital in London. I am a happy dad, who has luckily got 2 weeks of paternity leave. That means I will be a nice dad and when I am not changing nappies, may be I can continue blogging. Will post photos soon.

Pradeep

sad countdown

2007-03-06T23:18:00.000+01:00

We have only 24 days remaining to complete our MBA. Then most of us will be traveling here and there and coming back to the graduation ceremony on April 27th. After April 27th, many of us will again be again heading to various destinations in different corners of the world. I am already feeling sad that we will be going our ways very soon. It seems like lately, we have all been hanging out with each other more often by going to dinners, BOWS or just chatting in the cafeteria.

Keeping in mind that we will soon be alumni of IESE, we had a presentation from IESE Alumni Association today. We learned about how big the organization is, where the alumni chapters are, how we can contribute to the Alumni association, how we become paid members and what the benefits are. If we do not become paid members, from June onwards we will only have limited access to IESE emails, i.e. we can have the emails forwarded but we cannot access the emails directly from the IESE server.

I am enjoying my classes. "Financing Entrepreneurial Opportunities" (ENFI) is one of classes I am enjoying the most. Rob Johnson, visiting professor from LBS and Heinrich Liechtenstein teach the class. Since Rob didn't teach other classes at IESE, I never knew him before I took this class. He is amazing. He is also an experienced entrepreneur and an investor. I now know one more person who I can talk to to build/expand my network when I am looking for investors to invest in my future company.

Because the class is so popular, double classes are offered, so that more students can be accommodated. In some cases, the primary person who started the company or did the "Management Buy Out", "Management Buy In" or just invested in the company (that we are discussing in the class) is actually present in the class. Sometimes the professors do not make us aware of this. And after we discuss the case, (during some discussions, we even suggest to fire the person), we are introduced to him/her. As you can imagine, the class becomes even more interesting after that. The guest then talks about his experiences, comments on our comments and answers questions we may have. Really cool to hear from the actual person who executed the deal! One of those guests was the person from TPG who was the primary person involved in buying Ducati.

This past weekend, we organized the Doing Good Doing Well conference. I was primarily involed with finding the sponsors. The conference went smoothly. One company Vectrix even offered to put their Electric bikes for display. I thought, why not a photo riding the stylish bike?

Week of highs and lows

2007-01-16T00:52:00.001+01:00

Last week was an interesting week. I got to see the King and Queen of Spain when they came to IESE to inaugurate the new campus. I also had a minute of fame when my brief interview was shown in a big screen for the VIP audience including the King and Queen in the new auditorium. The article on the inauguration can be read at
http://www.iese.edu/aplicaciones/news/view.asp?id=1022&lang=en
and the video can be seen at
http://www.iese.edu/aplicaciones/news/popflv320x200.html

It was also the week when I failed DIEN for the second time. My Spanish professor's view was I climbed all the way but few meters to the top and then said, "nah! I am not gonna climb anymore". I got close to reaching the threshold but didn't reach it. That means I won't be able to take classes offered in Spanish this semester. But when there is a will, there is a way, right? I am thinking of at least "auditing" the classes.

Classes started from the middle of last week. I am taking 3 most popular electives at IESE this semester among others. They are "Globalization and Strategy", "Financing Entrepreneurial Opportunities" and "Managerial Decision Models". For each of the first 2 subjects, there are 2 classes offered to cater to about 140 students who want to take the class. That means we have about 70 students in each of those classes. Pankaj Ghemawat is teaching the " Globalization and Strategy" class. There was a lot of news coverage at IESE when he joined us full time this year. At his class this morning, there was a 3-members camera crew recording the class, from the center and the two corners. When I entered the class, for a moment I wondered if a mini concert was taking place when I saw lots of wires lying around on the floor.

we now have a water fountain! hurray!

2007-01-10T01:38:00.000+01:00

Update on Jan 16, 2007:
Photos of the water fountain

Ashwin was the first one to pass me the news that we now have a water fountain at IESE. We can now use it to drink water directly or refill bottles. Its located in the cafeteria in between the water vending machines. (Strategic location, I think ! :) ) I am so glad that we finally have it as we have been pushing for it for a long time. I didn't take my camera today to take a photo but as soon as I have one, I will post it.

I hope we will buying less water bottles and hence throwing less of them in the trash.

Thank you IESE Administration for listening to the students and the Environmental Group
(Responsible Business Club) .

DIEN exam! one more time!

2007-01-07T19:19:00.000+01:00

At IESE, if you like to take MBA classes that are offered in Spanish, you need to pass the DIEN (Diplomas Intermedio de Español de los Negocios ) exam. The concept is similar to having to get certain score in TOEFL to take classes offered in English.

My DIEN exam is coming up, in fact it is taking place the day after tomorrow. Last time I took it in November and I failed. Later I found out that I did very bad in the reading comprehension. So you can guess, I am just reading business articles in Spanish whenever I can to improve on it. At the same time I need to make sure I remember the grammar that I knew before the holidays.

If I pass it, I can then take MBA classes offered in Spanish this semester. That would be really awesome. Thats one of the unique offering of IESE and I really want to take advantage of it. I wish I was wiser to have learnt more Spanish before I joined IESE. If I had done that, I didn't have to wait until now to take the exam, pass it and take MBA classes offered in Spanish.

There is also one more advantage of passing the DIEN now. If I take at least 2 classes offered in Spanish, I can then have a bilingual degree when I graduate. This is less important to me than the fun/challenge of taking class in a language you have learned in less than 2 years. But it would still be nice to get a bilingual degree. So If I pass the DIEN, I will definitely go for 2 classes offered in Spanish.

If I fail this time, I may have more opportunity to take DIEN before I graduate but I won't be able to take MBA classes offered in Spanish as the last semester starts from Jan 10th. As you can understand, the risks are high and hence I am back "para practicar mas Español ".

Adios JAJAH

2007-01-06T15:49:00.000+01:00

I had become a super fan of JAJAH.com to call home in Nepal as it gave me the slightly better rate than the calling cards and a reliable quality. It was also an innovative concept allowing people to call from phone to phone but initiate the conversation through internet. And I didn't have to bother about going to La Ramblas and buying the calling cards, I could just add funds to my account using the credit cards.

But sadly, the new year was not a a good news regrading jajah for people from small and commercially unpopular countries like Nepal. It increased the rate to call Nepal from 19 US cents to a 25 US cents a minute.

I am back to using calling cards now which are designed to fool people with weird combination of rounding and connecting charges but at least gives me, overall, better rates than JAJAH now.

Adios JAJAH.

New Year 2007 in Lapland

2007-01-04T17:17:00.000+01:00

We celebrated our new year in Lapland with 25 other friends, mostly from IESE. For me, to have experienced a place north of Arctic Circle like lapland where I can see light ony for 4 hours during a day was something priceless, like they say in a "mastercard" ad. I had only read about such things in my geography books.

I also got to meet for the first time the real "Santa Clause" in Rovaniemi. Rovaniemi is also the town in Lapland which crosses the "arctic circle".

There were many "first time" events for me that took place during this trip. I drove a snowmobile, experienced reindeer sledding, did sauna of about 100 degree C and then went out and slept on the snow naked for few seconds (Finnish style), all for the first time.

Thank you Juha for organizing the trip and hosting us in your grand winter house.

Some photos from the trip:

driving a snow mobile

Pulling Siru on a frozen lake

Santa Clause Village. The line above us is the line to mark the arctic circle
although it doesn't always fall exactly on the line.

Feeding reindeers in a reindeer farm

Off to Lapland

2006-12-27T11:55:00.000+01:00

Juha, our only Finnish friend at IESE, is inviting 20 of us from IESE (inclduing partners) to his home country for the New Year. We are meeting in a town north of Helsinki called Rovaniemi on 29th morning. From there, we are going to take a bus, see Santa Clause ( I didn't know Santa Clause is originally from Finland) and then go to his winter house in the evening.

Six of us including myself, Srijana and Sarita are taking a night train from Helsinki at about 7 pm and arriving to Rovaniemi at 9 in the morning. I am really looking forward to this trip. It will be my first time in Finland and the first time experiencing -30 degree C cold and also the Northern lights ( http://www.northern-lights.no/english/what/index.shtml ).

Prospero Ano Nuevo , todos!

vodka evening

2006-12-24T16:11:00.000+01:00

When I was in middle school in Nepal, I first knew that vodka originated in Russia when preparing for the Quiz Contest programs. Time has changed. I actually get to experience and discuss/validate those theories nowadays. Just before the final exams, my Russian friend Evgeny invited me for an evening dedicated to Vodka. Evgeny, Wesley and myself ready for the vodka evening

Spicy vodka from Ukraine
Russina Vodka

The vodkas were authentic(at least thats what he told me before he started drinking). There was also an Ukrainian spicy vodka. I had no idea, vodkas could be spicy too. It was a fun evening. I was also trying to make sure I can handle the string alcohol content by eating as much food on the side and drinking a lot of water.

EEA Seminar

2006-12-23T10:49:00.000+01:00

On Dec 15 and 16, we had the final seminar of the European Entrepreneurship Accelerator (EEA) course in Barcelona. INSEAD students and professors, IESE students and professors, entrepreneurs of the companies we worked with this semester and the sponsors were present during the conference.

I really enjoyed listening to some of the successful entrepreneurs who built their ideas on what looks very simple and persisted on their goals. It was encouraging to see that some of the entrepreneurs were very young, which reinforced my feeling that it is not too early or late to start a new business on my own. For now I have accepted an offer to work in the financial sector in London after my MBA, but my idea/passion of starting something on my own has been further strengthened by this course.

The stunning but partial view of the new IESE campus from the top of the building. We gave a tour of the new campus to our guests , friends from INSEAD and the entrepreneurs.

Max, Lutz from INSEAD and myself with the Barcelona city view in the background from the new building.

Punishment for missing a class

2006-12-11T00:40:00.000+01:00

On the Friday Nov 17th when I went to Zürich for a meeting and presentation related to my "European Entrepreneurship Accelerator" course, I missed one finance class because of the schedule conflict. (And I forgot to notify the professor that I was missing the class.) It so happened that about 20 students missed the same class the same day. Apparently, many didn't come to the class because of the random-dinner and BOW effect. Random Dinner is an annual event at IESE where Ist years are assigned randomly for dinner to the second year hosts (and vice versa, in the next semester). And BOW is the weekly "Bar of the Week" event which only starts from around midnight like any other Barcelona night life event. But there were also people who couldn't come to class for reasons like job interviews.

And guess what, there was a guest speaker invited for that class on that day. So the professor got understandably upset and gave all of the people who missed the class a report of minimum 4500 words (with 50% weight on grades) on a valuation of a company to work on. When we talked to him on why the students who had good reasons to miss the class were also punished, he had this line of reasoning:
Like with everything in life, there are innocent victims. If the whole class believes in a team, those people who didn't have a good reason to miss the class would offer to do the report for the innocent victims as well.
Apparently, some people did offer to do the double reports, one for himself/herself and one for one of the innocent victims.

So here I am today, just starting to work on this project after working on "Options and Futures" submission, Marketing paper and ENTAC presentation this long weekend. And it is due this Wednesday by noon. Wish me all the energy in completing the paper on time. What a coincidence that I had to miss the class on the same day when 20 others missed!

Don't Disturb Max

2006-12-10T00:13:00.000+01:00

I knew my friend above (name unknown) didn't like to get disturbed when he is doing some research work. I didn't know he had already communicated that to the restaurants in Zürich. When we went to a Mexican restaurant in Zürich, I was surprised to see the sign below on the wall. Quite influential, isn't he? I am impressed, my friend.

Anil Kathuria!

2006-12-09T20:44:00.000+01:00

When we were visiting Trogen, a beautiful village in Switzerland, Anil Kathuria, my Indian friend from IESE looked much happier. I wonder what he was imagining. Is he meeting "special someone" when he is going to India this winter?

Being an example!

2006-11-13T02:11:00.000+01:00

IESE hosts the conference "Doing Good Doing Well" every year. But its a pity and shame that we do not even have recycling bins on campus. There are very few printers that can print automatically on both sides of a paper. And there is no water fountain yet, so every student who wants to drink water on campus generally buys a bottle of water. So at least 200 empty water bottles everyday is not uncommon to see.

This year, I am leading the Environmental group of Responsible Business Club and with this, I even feel more responsible to change the status quo. I am talking with the Administration on the issues I mentioned earlier. At the same time, my friend Javier Morales and I made this video on how IESE MBA students can start being environmentally friendly from today!

We showed it to the first years and at some of the popular classes of the 2nd years. And I have already seen the effect. There are less plastic bottles which are not crushed, students are printing Powerpoint files in multiple slides per page and in the cafeteria, there are many trays without the paper to be wasted. Thank you IESEians for supporting us. I will try to take photos that can show this effect if possible to post it next time.

Where was I?

2006-11-05T12:29:00.000+01:00

When I was in the first year, I was told that 2nd year would be much more relaxed and a lot less work. For me, it has turned out to be opposite. May be because I am doing many of the things of my own choice (all the subjects are electives in the second year) rather than having to do some of the things that I was not "really" interested in ( all the subjects are pre-determined by the MBA committee in the first year).

Being in second year perhaps means more responsibility with the student clubs as well. I am leading the "Environmental Group" of the Responsible Business Club and the Sponsors team of the "Doing Good Doing Well" Conference of 2007 and thats keeping me busy. As part of the Environmental group, Javier and I made a video on how to encourage students at IESE to be environmentally friendly and showed it to the first years with the messages like
1) crush the plastic bottle before you throw them
2) Turn the lights off when you leave a room
3) Turn the projector off when nobody is using it
4) Use printers that can print double sides automatically
5) Print PowerPoint and PDF files in multiple slides
I now have to show it to 2nd years this week.

Halloween Party:
Last week, we celebrated Halloween at the residence of "three witches" as they liked to be called themselves for that night. Seeing all the friends with different masks and dresses was cool. The best and the most surprising moment came when Anosha and Gaurav unmasked themselves at midnight. We were all wrongly guessing who those 2 people could be with those scary masks. It was a SHOCK when we realized it was our lovely amiga Anosha. Some photos from the night:

Juha de Finlandia y myself

Marc, Mark and Komal

Juan Ma with his Cuban cigar trying to get the attention of the pretty 2nd years who are on exchange to IESE from LBS, Cornell and Kellogg respectively:)

Climbing Pic D'Estats:

Last weekend, Adventure Club organized a trip to climb Pic d'Estats, the highest mountain in Catalunya region. We were 15 altogether. We left Barcelona on Saturday at around 2 in the afternoon and reached the "refuge" at around 6:30 by car where we stayed overnight. I had rented a car for the team, which meant more practice of my manual car driving.

On Sunday, we started our trip. The trip, I would say, was not easy. At one point, the route was just very steep and most of us were taking a lot of breaks in between. I myself thought of "giving up" if it was not for the continuous support of first year's Maite.

The path(marked by red) of the hike on the uphill part was the tough one. We then had to circle this mountain from the behind to get to the peak.

You forget all the pain and the hardship once you reach the top, right? On the top of Pic d'Estats (Height: 3143 m)

On the way back, having fun with some snow that was left on the top

Who says you cannot read Financial Times at more than 3000 m? :)

Career Forum:

Oct 23 and 24 were Career Forum days at IESE. I was pleasantly surprised to see my own photo in one of the posters. I didn't waste any time taking a photo with my own photo.

Who is it in the background?

Mediterranean Coastal drive in Spain and France :

On the long weekend starting from Oct 12th, Srijana and I went on a Mediterranean coastal drive of Spain and France. It was the first time I had rented a car in Spain. On the day we left, the drive along Costa Brava was beautiful. However, at times, the beautiful scenery was combined with curvy road, which was not helpful to Srijana's proneness to motion sickness. We didn't realize we had to pay so much road toll on the way. I used eaycar.com to do the rental. With no gimmicks, unlimited mileage, basic insurance coverage and good rates, I was happy with the rental.

A beautiful scene along the Costa Brava

A beautiful town along the coastal line in France

Srijana with some grape vines in the backgroud in France

Dashain festival in Barcelona:

Unlike last year, where we didn't even have the red powder to make the tika, this time we celebrated Dashain relatively better. I got the tika from Mukti dai of the "Mukti and Survival" band at Dashain celebration organized at Kathmandu restaurant. Mukti dai has been living in Spain for the last few years in Barcelona. Many of the Nepali we met during the party had Spanish 'significant others". I thought for a second, they applied the lesson I was told in one of my first Spanish classes in Barcelona "If you like to learn Spanish faster, find a Spanish girlfriend/boyfriend".

Received tika from Mukti dai, a popular singer from Nepal

A cultural mix: Spanish "significant others" of some Nepali living in Spain

Anil, Srijana and myself celebrating Dashian at home! Dashain is one of the big festivals of Hindus

Zurich trip (Oct 6, 2006):

As part of the European Entrepreneurship Accelerator course I am taking along with 2 other IESE students and 2 INSEAD students, we flew to Zurich to meet the CEO of Thommen Medical which is the highly growing company we are assigned to.

Switzerland is indeed very beautiful, as I have seen in many Bollywood movies. I took one quick photo from the inside of our car.

After the meeting, we were so hungry (we didn't have any lunch till 4 in the afternoon), we stopped by a restaurant to have some food )

It is always good to have a good network of friends wherever you go. Geetha, my good friend from University of Bridgeport who is working in Zug, showed me around Zurich, Zug and other cities around Zurich. Thank you Geetha.

Wedding in Deutschland

2006-09-11T15:42:00.000+02:00

This weekend, Srijana and I went to Munich, Germany to attend my friend Freddy and Tina's wedding. Freddy and I are on the same MBA program at IESE.

It was our first time in Germany. So it was also a cultural, geographical and educational experience for us besides the experience of attending a German wedding for the first time. We arrived to Munich on Friday and rented a car from the airport. (It was also the first time I rented a car in Europe.) We arrived at our hotel and rested for a couple of hours. We then went out to see the small village where we were staying just outside of Munich. In the evening, we got together with Freddy, Tina, and the other guests for an informal dinner.

Cathy, Andrew, Margo, myself and Oriol during the dinner on Friday, the evening before the wedding

We went to church around 1:30 pm for the wedding on Saturday. The wedding was fabulous. Freddy and Tina looked gorgeous and looked like a couple made in heaven.

The happy and gorgeous newly wed couple

Till and his gf on the left, Oriol on the right on the wedding day

We felt like an old couple, 3 years have passed since we married! :)

On Sunday, after having farewell brunch with Freddy and Tina, we headed out to see Munich for a couple of hours as our flight was in the evening. But after spending about an hour in the Munich centre, we were told that Pope will be visiting the city centre and hence most of the roads would be closed. We were aware that Pope was attending a ceremony little outside Munich but didn't know that he would be visiting the city centre on Sunday. So we headed out of the city as soon as possible and on the way to the airport, stopped by the Allianz Arena. The stadium was , wowwwww...impressive.

We saw the World Cup only on TV but I don't feel bad because only a few months later, we went inside this newly constructed fascinating stadium where the World Cup opening ceremony was held!

Summer in London

2006-07-09T20:30:00.000+02:00

Summer in London is going fine. Let me share some of my experiences.

Food: London is great for the variety of food it offers. As someone who is tending towards becoming a vegetarian, you get so many choices in London. In Canary Wharf, where I work, there are lots of sandwich places which have plenty of veg choices. Even for other sandwiches, they know that putting some tomato and lettuce besides chicken or jamon is something that makes a sandwich more appetizing. Don't take me wrong, I like Catalan food in general, but I think some improvement can be done with the "bocadillos" especially at IESE where "bocadillo con queso (cheese sandwich)" was unfortunately the only choice for the vegetarians most of the time when we wanted something quick.

On the other front, as there is a big Indian community here, Indian food is very easy to find here. It is not uncommon to find sandwiches with "chicken tika" By the way, I forgot to tell that even at my work, there is a restaurant inside where you get a variety of food, including Indian food. They also offer good breakfast, cereals with milk , scrambled egg, different versions of potatoes, mushroom, and many more for a very reasonable price. For a student who is just making some money during the internship, it is a good deal.

Commuting:
Traveling in and around London is very convenient because of the extensive network of subway system, bus and train. Its interesting how a subway system is called differently in different places. Here it is famously called "underground" or "tube", in Boston it is called "T", in Barcelona, it is called Metro or FerroCarril (for certain routes).

But I have to say that it is expensive to travel in London relative to Barcelona (not a surprise, I guess). Basically, if you somehow travel through the centre of the city (marked zone 1), you pay a heavy fee. For a day travel card to use during the weekdays ( from the center to zone 2), it costs about 9 Euros which can buy you 2 day travel cards in Barcelona.

Work:
Work is going fine. For reasons obvious, I will not be talking much about work. For someone who had always worked for startups, I have found it interesting to work for a multi-national company. When I once went to Grand Central in New York, I used to be amazed when I saw hundreds of people in dark suits rushing out of the trains and heading out of the station. It is the similar scene here at Canary Wharf station except that I am also part of it.

Hanging Out: Its been fun to meet other Summer Associates from other MBA schools. On one Friday, we went to LBS to have some drinks on what they call "Sundowners". Sundowners is something similar to BOW (Bar of the Week) we have at IESE except that the drinks are free and the event is held on campus. At IESE, we have the event in one of the many bars in Barcelona and the drinks are not free but generally discounted. It was nice to see LBS campus and experience the hospitality of my LBS friends, especially Paul and Regina. It was also great to meet IESE friends working for other companies for the first time after the first year ended at IESE.

Last Friday, I met more IESE friends who are working for other banks in London at All Bar One, the bar right next to Canary Wharf Tube station. It was fun to share our experiences with each other. It was also nice to meet with variety of faces from other banks.

(By the way, I am watching World Cup Final as I am writing this. It was sad to see Zidane, on the height of respect from, I would say, the majority of football loving people all around the world, to hit one Italian player with his head in anger. It was so unexpected from someone like Zidane).

Will write more on my sightseeing activities next time.

doing fine in London

2006-06-20T23:11:00.000+02:00

I am doing fine here in London. As I have a long commute to work, I haven't got the motivation yet to write something after I come home. I will write more during the weekend. Hasta luego!!!

crazy week

2006-05-31T17:39:00.000+02:00

This week and the next will probably be the busiest weeks of this year. I have papers, individual projects and team projects due this week and next week. For Corporate Finance, our team is playing the role of AT&T and we have to decide whether to buy McCaw or not. For competitive Strategy class, we are analyzing the world's second largest shipping company MSC. For Operations Strategy class, we are analyzing El Corte Ingles, one of the most popular supermarkets in Spain.

On top of that, I am taking exams earlier so that I can start work in London without missing the orientation. Those of us that are involved in clubs are also finalizing what needs to be done before the summer break starts. I thought I have managed the first and second trimester fine, so this should not be that bad. Not really!!

May! where was I?

2006-05-28T01:38:00.000+02:00

As I have been very slack on writing regularly, I think an update of this month wouldn't be that bad:

May 23: Tapas with Prasanna and Deepti:
Prasanna and Deepti, my Nepali friend and his wife, had come to visit us from the US where they are currently working and studying respectively. We took them to this famous Tapas place "Cerveceria Catalana" recommended by my Catalan friend Oriol. The tapas were indeed very good and freshly made. Did you notice the empty plates? Yeah, with someone like Prasanna next to me, there was no chance we could wait for a photo before the food was gone. :)

Besides tapas, we took them around the city, to must-visit places like Olympic village, Montjuic, Magic Fountain, the church in Tividabo and the Nou Camp stadium. They loved it.

May 17th: watching the Champions League final together with other IESE classmates:
About 60 of us went to see the final of the Champions League between Barca and Arsenal. Fernan organized the event at a bar near Barceloneta. It was fun to watch the game on a huge screen with the people you know. On top of that, some of my friends from UK and Madrid were supporting Arsenal. So we had a larger group of people supporting Barcelona (of course) and a smaller group supporting Arsenal and it was hilarious to see the hooting for both sides during the game.

After the first goal from Arsenal, the majority of us were quiet hoping Barca to make a equalizer. And that indeed happened during the last 15 minutes of the game. And another winning goal happened within the 5 minutes of the first goal. When the Barca equalized Arsenal, this is how the scene was:
Apart from the excitement in the crowd, do you see something different from the first photo when we were all "tranquilo"? If you take a look at it closely, you will see the the projector has fallen off. The projector was very loosely tied to the ceiling and when the guys got excited on the first goal from Barca and stood up, they hit the projector with their head. Luckily, the projector was not seriously "hurt" and we continued watching the rest although the image was somewhat blurred this time. But in that state of the euphoria, nothing really mattered.

May 14th: Nepali dinner for French/American couple:
Fabrice and Teresa were at our place for dinner on Sunday. We had a great time with them. They liked the chicken I cooked, and at least it was not "super hot and spicy" like it was when we hosted random dinner. By the way, if you meet Fabrice, ask him about his unique skills on opening beer bottles without any opener.

May 13: German dinner:We went to Freddy and Tina's place for a German dinner. Freddy's apartment has a nice ambiance. The walls were painted in bright and beautiful colors. With some classical music in background, we had a great time chatting about their upcoming wedding and learning that there is no typical German food as it differs greatly from region to region.

May 7: Barca celebrates the winning of Spanish league:
My wife and I went to see the victory rally of the Barca team outside Nou Camp. It was the first time we had seen a victory rally of a team as famous as Barca. And it was absolutely amazing. The whole city was together to celebrate. What a great display of love and unity to a team that means so much to everyone in Barcelona!

idration..what is it?

2006-05-05T12:20:00.000+02:00

I went to a doctor on Friday. He offered me a lotion and he said it will do the "idration" for my skin. I didn't understand what he meant. He was one of the doctors who could speak English. I found his name from a list of English speaking doctos in Barcleona given to me by the American Consulate.

Only later I realized that he meant to say "hydration" because in Spanish, "h" is pronounced silent. A spanglish visit, I should say!

Diesel and the 200 Euros Jeans

2006-05-01T00:16:00.000+02:00

We recently analyzed a case on "Diesel" store in our "Competitive Strategy" class. And learnt that one of Diesel's strategy is to price things really high to get rich customers. By making them very expensive ( and trendy on the fashion side and of course, long lasting), they let the customers have that notion of "I am special! Nobody else is wearing these cool jeans!". And there are people who want that.

So Diesel is growing and making a lot of money. But Diesel doesn't grow by attracting more and more customers, because if it does that, the whole "exclusivity" effect would go away and nobody would want to pay high price for a jeans everyone in town is wearing. It attracts the same high-end customers more frequently and perhaps increases the prices even more if there are too many customers who seem to afford the current level of price. What an idea on fooling the rich customers!

This Saturday, I went to a Diesel store in Maria Christina. And checked if the prices are indeed as high as I learnt in the class. Oh! no doubt! I checked a pair of jeans and it was priced just about 200 Euros! :)

Sant Jordi, a festival of roses and books

2006-04-23T23:57:00.000+02:00

Today is Sant Jordi in Barcelona. It is a festival of roses and books. Guys are supposed to give roses to girls and the girls are supposed to give books to guys. The rose part is the Valentine's day equivalent in Catalunya region but you may be wondering how the tradition of giving books is mixed in with the giving of roses. This is because this is also the day when Miguel Cervantes and William Shakespeare died. This is what we learned in our Spanish class.

Expectedly, I saw lots of people and stores selling roses and books today. But I had never seen a blue rose before. A new "rose" experience indeed!

blue roses along with red and pink roses

There were book stalls everywhere in Barcelona today.

Easter holidays and the road tour of South of Spain

2006-04-14T23:26:00.000+02:00

After the Mallorca trip, the long waited Easter holidays are here. Srijana and I, four Indians and four Japanese started the holidays with a road trip to the south of Spain. We went to Zaragoza, Cordoba, Sevilla and finally Granada. It was a long trip but a beautiful one.

In Zaragoza, we visited the most popular church called El Pilar. It was a beautiful and a very huge church. Myself, Srijana, organizer Aalok, sentimental Anil, and passionate Srini
outside El Pilar in Zaragoza

After visiting El Pilar and having an "okay" lunch, we drove towards Madrid and stayed in a hotel in a place called Pinto outside of Madrid. The plan was not to visit Madrid. Madrid was just on the way. After having a quick dinner and some drinks, we went back to the hotel. Pinto was a small town and seemed beautiful but we didn't do much sightseeing there.

The next city in our itinerary was Cordoba. The drive to Cordoba was awesome. The landscape was beautiful. It felt like the landscape was actually designed by someone and the lush green fields were mowed everyday by the local people. At times I felt like I was driving between the rocky hills called "Bhalu Pahad" in Shyangja, Nepal. On the way we stopped at a rest area surrounded by small hills planted with olive trees.
We also encountered a businessman who had brought horses with him. He apparently organizes some horse shows. Having noticed some Japanese with us, he was quick to recognize the marketing opportunity and gave us a DVD that had the details of the horse shows he organizes. He said he could do that in Japan if opportunity existed and gave us his business cards. I wondered he must have taken Marketing classes in a MBA school like ours. :) Sato from Japan, Nori from Japan, Myself and Srijana with the horse of the horse-show organizer

We reached Cordoba in the afternoon and parked near the famous "Mezquita". Mezquita means "mosque" in English. It was actually both a mosque and a church. According to http://www.andalucia.com/cities/cordoba.htm, previously, Cordoba was ruled by the Muslims and later on conquered by Christians. The Muslims built the beautiful mosque and the Christians, mesmerized by the beauty of the mosque, built the church in between the archs and columns. So it is both a mosque and church now. When we visited "mezquita", we realized how beautiful it was. We also saw a procession of Easter when we were about to leave Cordoba. It was amazing to see how much work they have put for the chariot.

After another beautiful drive, we reached Sevilla. Because we got wrong direction from the online map site, we got lost for more than an hour. Finally, after asking some people on the street on how to get to the place where our hotel was, we reached our hotel. Thats when I realized we should buy a local map of every city we are visiting. That way, even if we are lost, we can quickly find our way though without having to rely on people on the streets. Sevilla seemed like a party city. There were a lot of youngsters who all seemed like they were heading towards dance clubs.

One of our lead organized Junko (from Japan) had suggested us to go to a Flamenco show called "Los Gallos". It was supposedly the very best in Sevilla, or perhaps Spain, for authentic Flamenco dance shows. Some of us reached the show late as we had to park our cars and find our way through the small streets in Plaza de Santa Cruz. For those of you who have been to Kathmandu, it reminded me of streets of Ason. The Flamenco dance show was indeed amazing. Just with a guitar and the sounds from the foot steps, it was incredible on what they could do. The 2 hours of the show felt like few minutes.

Flamenco dance show at Los Gallos in Sevilla

Next morning, we visited a famous cathedral called "Giralda" in Sevilla. We went to the top of a tower (felt like climbing Dharhara in Kathmandu) and got a good view of the city. Like with the earlier mosque we visited in Cordoba, the cathedral was both a mosque and a church with similar story. Until I came home and researched on the church, I didn't realize that it was indeed the largest church in the world.

In the afternoon, we left for a picturesque town called Olvera. The way to Olvera was the best drive so far. We were going through these small towns which all looked white and hence called white villages. When we were about to reach Olvera, we were mesmerized by how beautiful it looked.

The housed in the village were all painted white except for the roofs.
In the evening, we reached Granada. It was already late by the time we reached there, we had some quick food like "doner kabab", as most of the restaurants were already closed. Next day, Srijana and I went to see the famous Alhambra palace. We only saw it from outside as we had to buy tickets early in the morning. We were not brave enough to get up early and stand in the line to buy tickets. Supposedly, it is the most visited monument of Spain.

From Granada we could see the beautiful snow-capped Sierra Nevada mountains. They looked very close to Granada, yet it must have been very cold there for the snow not to melt in the mountains. In the afternoon, we left for Granada for a long 14 hours drive back to Barcelona. It was a pleasant, short and memorable road trip. Thank you Aalok and Junko for organizing it.

trip to Mallorca

2006-04-13T21:20:00.000+02:00

Let me first briefly write about my Mallorca trip on the weekend of Mar 31st. It was a great trip to have fun and know more about the most popular island in Spain. We were altogether 17 people. We boarded a huge ship from the port of Barcelona. You can imagine how big the ship is by looking at the picture below. There were at least 30 big trucks and many small cars inside the ship. Our indian friend Anil, who worked as a ship engineer before he came to IESE, was very helpful in describing various aspects of how a ship works and sharing the stories of how interesting and boring it can become to travel in a ship continuously for 15 days, take a few days break and travel again.
Once inside the ship, we had a nice lounge to relax and sleep if we liked to. Mimi wasted no time to teach us how to play poker. I had heard about poker a lot of times but never played it myself. So it was not just a fun trip, it was also a learning trip. We only played with fake money just to make sure some of us do not run out of money to come back from Mallorca. After we got our rooms in the hotel, we went to a nice beach called "Llombarts", had our lunch in a beach restaurant and enjoyed the sun. Some of us dared to get to the water which was very cold.
One thing I found in Mallorca was many of the tourists and local residents were German. Menu in the restaurants were in German, Spanish and English. A quick Google search on "Mallorca and German" was good to find out why there were many Germans in the Spanish island of Mallorca.

Off to Mallorca and Londres

2006-03-31T19:49:00.000+02:00

I am off to this beautiful island called Mallorca and my wife is off to Londres. I wish you all a "buen fin de semana".

It is already the third semester: we are flying!

2006-03-27T01:19:00.000+02:00

Well! the exams of the second semester were over on Friday. It was a relief to be done with the exams. The final exam for Section A turned out to be really stressful. It was a Managerial Accounting exam. Even those who were renowned to finish the exam in half the time were in the classroom until the end of the exam. It was a very number crunching exam with a lot of time pressure, I felt like I was taking a GMAT again, especially comparing the time pressure.

One of the nice things about IESE is the bar in the school offers beers and wines. No sooner the exams were over, the majority of the first years were out in the sun enjoying the lovely weather with a bottle of beer with them. A picture speaks for itself:

Komal, Carl and Bein were no exceptions:
Our popular Mexican friend Rafa even brought a set of speakers with him to listen to music and enjoy the beer when the exams were over. Here he is with Gustavo:

what are you "sinking" about?

2006-03-18T13:13:00.000+01:00

I got a chance to see this funny video making fun of a German speaker who pronounces "thinking" as "sinking". You will understand what I am talking about by watching the video from here:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-163084588584062 5774

My wife and I were going through our pictures and I came across this one where I wanted to ask my classmates in the photo: What are you "sinking" about?

Finals are here!

2006-03-18T13:09:00.000+01:00

Finals for this second semester are coming up next week. Many of the hard working IESE students are busy valuating bonds (Capital Markets), playing with supply and demand curves(Market and Managers), calculating transfer prices (Managerial Accounting), finding bottlenecks and managing queues (Operations Management) this weekend. With just a weekend off, our third semester is starting on Mar 27.

I think I am saying I should get back to my books!

See you soon!

"Doing Good Doing well" conference

2006-03-17T13:37:00.000+01:00

"Doing Good Doing Well" conference took place 2 weeks back in IESE. Because I was a lazy blogger, I never got a chance to write about this event which rocked. The event really widened my horizon on what some nice people have been doing for the overall good of the community while at the same time making money. It was interesting to listen to Ms. Kresse Wesling from Canada who talked about how she has convinced businesses that they would indeed save money by using recyclable materials and in doing so, doing well in here business. She started her business in HongKong and and she has now expanded her business to UK.

It was also inspiring to listen to Madhura Chatrapathy from India whose organization ASCENT has helped shoemakers in India run a sustainable business by creating a collaborative called ToeHold Artisans Collaborative. The shoes, some popular ones like Kohalpuri, manufactured by the collaborative have already entered the international market and are in hot demand by international fashion houses. The collaborative has the artisans as the shareholders. The artisans then share the profit among them according to the number and quality of the shoes they make over a period. This has also helped them feel proud in what they do. My wife and I took this photo with her along with some friends. Top row: Kapil, My wife Srijana, Madhura from ASCENT, Anil, Oriol
Bottom Row: Aalok, myself, Anjanay Borwankar (IESE alumnus and founder of Adopt-a-Business)

There were also some IESE alumni among the speakers. One of them was Emma Coles of FreePlay, whose company was making self-rechargable radios available in the African markets for people who didn't have electricity or couldn't buy batteries easily.

More on it can be read at
http://www.iese.edu/aplicaciones/news/view.asp?id=829&lang=en

Thank you Responsible Business Club for organizing such a great conference.

Random dinner hosting the 2nd year students

2006-03-16T14:43:00.000+01:00

Last semester, the first years were invited by the second years "randomly" for a dinner. This semester it was our turn on Mar 9. Kris Wiljanen, Alex Recoder, Damien Perillat, Dasha Smirnova, Marc Rodriguez and Billi Desai were our guests. Srijana, Kapil and I were the cooks.
This was the killer moment when I was adding chili powder to the chicken: I realized later I added more chili powder than I should have added. The chicken curry was extremely hot, even to myself. Dasha, from Russia, had tears in her eyes.

As I said in the caption of the photograph, the chicken curry, which I cooked, turned out to be really hot. But the funny thing was it was the first thing to be finished during the dinner. Except for the hot chicken curry, we had a good time chatting about Exchange program and things in general. With our 2nd year guests, Kris from US, Dasha from Russia, Billi from US, Damian from France, Alex from Spain, Marc from Spain, myself, Srijana and Kapil from India(behind Marc and I)

I am back with photos

2006-03-01T02:06:00.000+01:00

After some hiding, I am back with lots of energy (not as much as I want to as I think I am getting sick).

Last weekend, I flew to Boston for my sister's wedding. It was great to meet my sister Pushpa, brother-in-law Yogya, my parents, cousins, bhaujoo (sister-in-law), niece and Yogya's parents and relatives. It was also great to meet my friends from Boston who I had missed a lot. I don't have their pictures yet. This was the first time I was there after I left Boston in Oct 2003.

(from left to right, top row) My cousin Ananda, Yogya's brother-in-law, dad, sister Pushpa, brother-in-law Yogya, myself, mom, Yogya's dad, Yogya's mom and Yogya's sister
(from left to right, bottom row) My niece Niti, sister-in-law Sarmila, and cousin Deepak
(photo credit: Expert Arnico Panday, a genius PhD from MIT)

Today, we went to SEAT car assembly plant located near Barcelona. The factory visit was part of our Operations Management class. It was amazing to see a new car being produced every five minutes or so. I saw advanced robots in actions for the first time in my life. We couldn't take pictures inside. But here is the one I took inside the bus we took.

Coincidentally, today's Financial Times carried an exclusive coverage on the car industry. It mentioned about SEAT as well. I was enjoying reading FT this afternoon after the visit as the weather was gorgeous.

In the evening, my wife had a dance practice in Komal's place for the multicultural night thats taking place tomorrow. She is dancing on 2 songs. I was kicked out from Bhangra dance because I didn't practise as I was in the US during the weekend. Pobre me!!

talk session with the founder of Loquo.com

2006-02-14T00:07:00.000+01:00

This afternoon (technically yesterday as it is already past midnight), IESE High Tech club organized a talk session with the founder of Loquo.com Ubaldo Huerta. It was one of the best sessions I ever went to. He had this fantastic story to share with us, how he left his high paying job in Silicon Valley and moved with his savings to Barcelona to start a new life. After that, the idea of Loquo.com was born. Similar to other great examples like how Microsoft and Google started, the work of Loquo.com basically started in his apartment. Until sometime back, he was actually hosting it from his apartment. He told us about how his wife and most of his friends thought he was following a stupid idea and how he sometimes wondered if they were right. He warned us that starting our own company is basically deciding to be our own slave. Although you are not working for anyone, you can't afford to go for a day in a beach because you feel the inward pressure from the things in the "to-do" list you haven't completed yet. He also told us about the tough negotiation phase when he was approached by Ebay for the acquisition of the company. I could relate his experience of how as a seller, he had to start of with a maximum and then lower it down to some practice sessions in our negotiation class. A great success story indeed!

I was at times comparing his story to mine. I also have this site vanasthali.org which I, along with my friends from my high school, started as a networking site for alumni of our high school. This site was born as a part of my senior project of my undergraduate program. And it flourished and had more than 1500 members. Last time I was in Nepal, I met 4 smart students from a top engineering school in Nepal and had them work for this project. I covered all the development cost. After few months of work, it was live. It was hosted by this company called supplehost.com. Since the last few months, the site has been down, I have not been able to contact the people from SuppleHost via phone or email. I have a feeling they went out of business. And along this, I have learnt an important lesson the hard way. I did not have the latest backup of the site before it went down. In fact, I think I only had a backup copy just when I started hosting with them. I will wait for few more weeks and start all over again with whatever data I have. My high school friends have contacted me saying they are willing to host the site, so hosting would not be a problem and it would be in safe hands as being alumni, they would understand the value of keeping the site live and kicking.

Finnish and Japanese dinner y golden birthday

2006-02-06T18:19:00.000+01:00

This weekend was a party weekend. As much as I wanted to study for my Spanish exam, the dinners were too fun to miss. First one was the one at my only Finnish friend Juha's place. His girlfriend Mari cooked wonderful Finnish food. Mari spent at least 3 hours to prepare the wonderful food. We were really lucky. I was always asking for "mas" food. Before we left, we made sure we sang "kiiiiiiitos Mari". "Kiiiiiitos" means "Thank you" in Finnish. Here is the photo.
From the left, Madhur, Carol, Juha, Mari, Anosha, myself and Noshaba at Juha's place. My wife took the photo, so she is not there.

Then on Saturday we had a Japanese dinner at Dom and Atsushi's place. Dom, Ats and Kyoko had prepared at least 15 items, sushis, teriyaki and what not. Ats and Dom were in kitchen most of the time to make sure there was enough varieties of food on the table. To add to that, Satoshi brought some "saki" to make the perfect combination. I thought Saki had a high percentage of alcohol, only then I realized that it had "mas o menos" same percentage of alcohol as in wine. Later on we sang songs from different countries. I sang this Nepali song called "aama ra babu le rojeko" which everyone knows that it is the only song I know how to sing.
Japanese dinner: Thank you Dom, Atsushi and Kyoko!

And yesterday was my birthday. My wife gave me a pleasant surprise. Now I am also eligible to become a member of "golden club" in IESE. I will be playing bingos.....yeahhhhh!!!!

Today, we took a group photo of MBA 2007 Section A today. The main photograher was in the centre but Misha who took the picture with my camera couldn't be in the center to take the picture. Here is the corner view:

"P&L" preview of last week

2006-02-03T19:04:00.000+01:00

Thanks god, its Friday. Second semester is really taking its toll. I haven't been blogging lately. It has been exactly a week since I last wrote something. I don't really have any excuse.

I seem to be preparing better for my classes this semester. There were times when I didn't even use to read a case last semester. This semester I have at least been able to read the cases if not analyze them before the classes. This helps in not getting lost during the entire class. I have been loving Managerial Accounting the best. More than the subject, it is the Professor who is really really amazing. He is confident, articulate and has a very good ability to explain something.

Now that my internship search is over, I am thinking of getting active in different clubs. Theater Club is the one I think I will be joining soon. I also like to start my own Environment Club. I am hoping to start my fresh campaign in getting some initial core members next week.

I am also enjoying reading Financial Times these days. (We all get a "free" copy of Financial Times at IESE.) In the first semester, except for the political news, I didn't use to understand much of the core Finance news. My friends now ask me why I am reading Financial Times as I already have a banking internship. I tell them that I just enjoy reading it. I guess its always easy to enjoy doing something when you are not doing with a direct target/result in mind.

I have also joined a health club this time. Its 15 minutes walk from my house. These was a waiver of the "joining fee" of about 65 Euros if we signed up during January. It was a sweet deal and I didn't waste any time in taking advantage of the offer. I mostly enjoy swimming. It helps me energize after a long day of class.

why waste so much paper?

2006-01-27T21:30:00.000+01:00

You can see that I am a person who hates resources being wasted. With regards to this, I wanted to mention something that I have noticed for all these days in IESE. In the cafeteria, when we go for lunch, one is supposed to take a tray and put a sheet of quality paper on the tray. On top of that, you are supposed to put your plates.
Does it look nice? Yes.
Is it necessary? Absolutely not.

Everyday, we waste at least 400 (counting at least 300 MBA students and 100 other members of IESE) sheets of papers. One sheet equals 4 A4 size sheets and is the same quality, if not better, as the one we use for printing. So, it is equivalent to 1600 sheets of A4 size paper every day. A picture would explain it better, here you go:

The rational behind wasting these sheets, I was told, is to make the tray look nice and keep the tray clean if you spill something on it. But guess what, the trays are washed in the dishwasher anyway, so whats the problem if it spills on the paper or on the tray itself? It is just basically wasting tonnes of paper, just for the "feel good" effect. I definitely didn't feel good when I saw this wastage.

I don't use those sheets myself, ( it would make no sense to rant about this if I continue to use it) and I have convinced few of my friends to not use those sheets. I am yet to convince everyone. So I am actually pondering if I should start a Environmental Club and make IESE community aware about these issues with the full force of a club rather than just one individual.

information for prospective students to IESE

2006-01-23T20:00:00.000+01:00

The following is an edited version of my emails to some prospective students from non-EU countries which others may find useful as well. It was helpful for me when I received such kind of information when I was applying last year.

Social culture: I felt that the class might be a little too european and the country difficult to live in - in terms of language etc. But your blog seems to suggest you are doing just fine. I'm a little introverted myself, so socialising might be a tad more difficult for me. What do you think?

It is very international, many Europeans, many Americans(US), South Americans but not many Asians except few Indians and Japanese and one Nepali (in MBA 2007).
Yes it is important to know Spanish to get around in Spain but they have intensive Spanish course as part of MBA if you are interested in learning a new and "very important" language. I took it more as a challenge than a hurdle. I know many "not so extrovert" people in IESE who are doing fine, so you should be fine.

Career in finance: It is pretty clear that non-EU citizens find jobs in london. How difficult is it turning out to be? How have other non-EU citizens in your batch fared in their internship hunt?

For banking jobs in London, non-EU citizenship is not a problem. It may be a problem for consulting jobs which are mostly located in countries where you also need a second language like Italian, Spanish, German, Dutch,French, etc. I know friends from US, India, Russia, Brazil and
Hondurus who have got internships in banks this year.

Financing studies: It's nice that IESE has an assured loan that covers full tuition fee. But I need funding for my living expenses as well! What other loans have non-EU citizens taken? Can't seem to find any other loan made available through IESE. This is a BIG CONCERN for me. Need to be assured of a loan for living expenses. All my other applications are to universities that provide for this. Of course, I'm looking at options from my home country. But bank loans from my country have very high interest rates.

Yes, this is the bitter part. I wish they had it too. Many of my friends from your country have taken educational loan to cover their living expenses.

==============================================================

How is the class profile andhow international is the student & faculty body? How is the learning experience ?
The class profile is very international. We have students from more than 40 countries, I believe. There are many students from US, Europe,Mexico and Latin America and only few from Asia (except India and Japan). One of the reasons there are many from Mexico and Latin America is because the language in Spain is also Spanish like in their countries. There is also a section in which the classes are taught in Spanish (although I think this is going to be discontinued from next year).The faculty is also very international. I do not know the numbers but it should be in IESE website. Many of the professors are IESE alumni and have PhD from leading schools in the US.

How is the student and work life in spain ? any language barrier ? cultural barrier ? any other barrier ?
Student life is fantastic here. I do not know how the work life is as I haven't worked in Spain. If you do not know Spanish, language will be barrier for you.Learn as much Spanish as you can before you come to IESE (if you decide to). I still regret on why I didn't spend more time taking Spanish classes in Nepal before I came here. There is not much culture barrier, Spanish people are very friendly and smiling all the time. Not to mention Spanish girls are generally considered hot (matters more if you are single). :)

How is the job market post mba in spain ? How is it in other western european
countries/latin america ?How soon can we hope to bag a good job ? any
constraints to bag jobs for foreigners ? any work visa problems ?
Job market after IESE is good if you like to be a banker. Most of the banking jobs are based in London and you won't need a second language besides English for most of the banking jobs. Almost all the top investment banks come here for recruiting. Most of the top consulting firms also come to campus. However if you like to go to management consulting but if you don't have a second language like Spanish, German, Dutch or French, it may be difficult to get in as most of the positions are for European countries where the language of the target country is a must to have. I do not know of many people going to consulting in Asia orUS from IESE.

Lots of pharmaceutical companies come here as well. But if you want to work in "industry", IESE doesn't seem to be as strong as it is with banking and consulting. But it could also be because the companies in industry don't generally have formal MBA hiring programs and they generally start late (Its only January now). If you need to work in other countries besides UK, I think work visa could be a problem. In UK they have this program where MBAs from top 50 schools can work without permit for the first year. I think they take Financial Times Global ranking as their basis. IESE comes around 12th or so in the FT worldwide ranking. In rest of the countries, I believe it depends on how "big name" the company is you will be working for. Many of my classmates are now in the process of confirming summer internships with investment banks and management consulting firms and some are going through final rounds of selection process.

How reputed is IESE outside spain/europe ? How strong is the alumni
network ?
IESE is extremely popular in Europe, alongside INSEAD and LBS. But unfortunately, it is not much popular in US or Asia. I myself didn't know about IESE until last year. But it seems like the latest Economist ranking of IESE as number one may have helped strengthen the IESE "brand" in Asia,especially India. Being such a wonderful school, I do not know why it is not very popular outsideEurope. Alumni network is quite strong. I have encountered them mostly as recruiters from banks and consulting firms. They said they really loved their time in IESE and they seemed to be keen in helping IESE in whatever way they can. In the entrepreneurship area, the alumni network is even stronger, specially in Spain.

I read that IESE has tieups with Banco sabadell for
offering loans to International students. How does the process works and
how easy is to get the loan ? Any other financial aid ?
Banco Sabadell loan is a guaranteed loan, as far as I know. They might have something in fine print, but I don't know of anyone who is rejected. So if you are admitted, you can have the loan to cover tuition expenses. Just to be in the safe side, apply for the loan as soon as you are offered admission. You should know whether your loan application was approved in a week or so. They also have some half tuition scholarships.

Admission Tips: Read Richard Montauk's "How to Get Into the Top MBA Programs" book. It was extremely helpful for me.You should be aware that IESE is a "general management" MBA program unlike LBS which is considered to be focused on "Finance".

I am in Madrid again

2006-01-20T19:23:00.000+01:00

I am in Madrid again, but this time with my wife. And I didn´t forget my camera either. So you will see a lot of photos after I am coming back home tomorrow night.

We were here to apply for yet another visa. This time, it was to the US to attend my sister´s wedding. It was approved with almost no questions (I think IESE brand name and the fact that I was in the US earlier for about 8 years helped). And guess what! I have got another good news. Along with me, my wife now has a job. She is starting this Monday as a Research Assistant at IESE. So I will be seeing her even at school.
Fantastico!

I will be sharing more on my second time Madrid experience once I get back home.

could it be better?

2006-01-17T23:57:00.000+01:00

I have a summer job now. It is with a big bank in London. You might think I have become an investment banker, it is not exactly like that. It is more of a what I like to call "a job in a financial sector which also gives me a feel of working in an industry". I would be making creative financial solutions, selling them to clients and maintaining relationship with them. Sounds interesting eh!

I had my interview on Monday. I flew to London on Sunday and stayed in a nice hotel near Canary Wharf. (It was a smart move on my part to have applied for UK visa during the break, wasn't it?) The travel and hotel expenses were covered by the bank I was interviewing with. This was the first time I had been flown to a different city/country for an interview. On Monday, I had an all-day interview schedule. I had three interviews, one case study and one presentation on the case. I felt I could have done better with some of the questions in the interviews. I was wondering, perhaps I might not pass the final round. Three of us from IESE were interviewing that day.

I was with my friend Fernan in the Heathrow airport after the interviews were over. Fernan and I were interviewing for the same job. In few minutes after we checked in, he got the good news. Immediately I thought, I was right, I didn't perform good and didn't get it. If I were to get good news, I would have gotten it right then. Oh well, I guess it wasn't meant to be. I was sad, although without any doubt I was happy for Fernan. There was this completely two opposite sides of human emotions: one person extremely happy on getting a job for the summer and calling his parents, girlfriend and friends AND the other person putting his head down, not knowing what to think, not knowing how fate takes its turn and how he was going to tell his wife that he didn't get the job. When I was analyzing each and every minute of my interview wondering if I smiled too much, if I didn't make good eye contacts, if I was talking to much and if I talked too little, I got a call. It was from a "private" number, generally calls from the offices are private number. Wasting no time, I picked up the phone and yes it was the good news. Oh I would never want to have those tortorous moments I had in those last 20 minutes. I can't imagine how happy I was. Did I say no when Fernan asked me if I wanted another pint of beer? Of course not. What an eventful day was it?

It certainly feels good to know what I am going to do in summer which is still more than 4 months away. And not only that, it is not bad to get paid well while doing some interesting work in a new field, is it? Thank you Finance Club, Anubahv, Nicollo, Ermias and everyone else who guided me through this journey.

the best Spanish law ever passed

2006-01-12T09:11:00.000+01:00

Because of a new Spanish law, nobody is supposed to smoke inside places like educational institutions and workplaces effective Jan 1, 2006.

So if you are a non-smoker, you will be pleasantly surprised to see that nobody is smoking inside the campus. This is such a good news for someone like me who used to hate smoke when going to the cafeteria or when meeting someone who smoked inside his/her office. Once I went to Banco Sabadell office, I think it was the second day I was in Barcelona. I was really surprised then to see people smoking inside the bank. Well, not anymore. I think this is fantastic. I haven't analyzed other Spanish laws but this may probably has been the best law ever passed.

But I think it went little too far by not allowing smoking even in the open space inside an educational institution. I don't mind people smoking as long as it is not in a closed space. People can't even smoke now in the gardens inside IESE. That was little too strict, I think. pobres amigos, they have to go now outside the gate to smoke. If you take it in a positive way, it may actually discourage people from smoking because they have to make an effort to walk all the way outside the main gate to smoke. I know one of my heavy smoker friends who wants to quit and is trying to quit is happy that he doesn't see his friends smoking which would entice him to smoke. He has already cut it down to 5 per day from his usual 15.

Bravo my friend!

visit to Real Madrid

2006-01-06T15:14:00.000+01:00

The day before yesterday, I went to Madrid with my IESE friends Abanish and Kapil who are both from India. The main purpose of my visit was to apply for visa to UK. This means, if I get lucky to get to the second round of banking interviews which generally take place in London, I don't have to worry about having to come to Madrid by missing at least a day of classes. It is also nice to be able to go to London whenever I wanted to go (during the next 6 months as the max "visit" visa I could apply for was a 6 month visa)

We flew to Madrid with Spanair, a low budget airline and reached Madrid in 1 hour in the afternoon. It was a relief to not worry about 2 new languages like in Barcelona. I could be sure that whatever is written, it is written in Spanish and not Catalan. Madrid airport seemed to be modern and clean. And it had a nice "Metro" connection unlike in Barcelona where you have to take an "airport bus" to get to the Renfe station and change train one more time to get to Catalunya, the center of Barcelona. But as we went towards the city center, the stations were dirty and the trains(Metro) were smaller and looked old.

We got a nice hostel at the center of Madrid. We didn't book it online, we found it through a recommendation of one of the hostels Kapil had shortlisted to enquire. No rooms were available in that hostel and the guy from the hostel recommended the one we eventually took. The price was a bargain. The room was nice and clean and had an ensuite bathroom. I took a single room for 17 Euros and they got a double room for 13 each. Amazing rate for something in the heart of the city. I forgot to take my camera, so I couldn't take any picture. The name of the hostel is "Narancho" and is located at Pubela 6, Piso 2 . I will put down the phone number when I find it.

We later then went to what I was told the "must see" place in Madrid, the Museu del Prado. Abanish and Kapil felt like they came to the wrong place as they got bored with paintings there and they felt they would rather go out and enjoy the hutsle and bustle of the city. I thought about it differently. I can always enjoy the city life that evening or in the afternoon the other day and didn't want to miss the opportunity at hand. I had heard a lot of good things about this museum. I spent about 3 hours enjoying the paintings there, especially the ones by Goya, Velasquez and Raimundo de Madrazo.

One of the pair of paintings I liked most was "Las Majas" by Goya, one with clothes and one naked. (No wonder, hmmn!) The audio guide mentioned that there have been never ending speculations about who that beautiful lady in the painting is. Apparently, to make sure nobody would recognize who he painted, he changed the face in the painting later on. It does look like an amateur "Photoshop" editing in the painting where the head and the rest of the body is aligned. A quick google search on Las Majas can point you to the paintings I am talking about.

The next day, we applied for our visas. One tip for you if you are an IESE student and need to apply for UK visit visa! Make sure you take a letter from Student Affairs which says that you are a current student at IESE. I had that letter but they didn't. Luckily, it worked out at the end after they submitted IESE "place conformation" letter. By 1:30, we collected our passports with the visas stamped.

More on the trip in the next posting!

We were busy (and/or stupid).

2005-12-31T01:15:00.000+01:00

For more than a month, we were having a water heater problem. For some reason, the water heater only worked when we opened the tap nearest to the heater. So whenever we had to take a shower, we would go to that tap, turn it on, come back to the bathroom, turn on the shower, go back to the tap again and turn it off and come back to take a shower. It was a pain but at least we were able to take a hot shower which mattered most at that time. We were also wasting a lot of water because if we dared to turn the shower off while we were shampooing, we would need a lot of luck to get hot water again. Basically we were having the "jumpstart" problem. (Once we jumpstarted the car, it worked but as soon as we stopped, we had to jumpstart it again.) At least 4 weekends passed, but the problem didn't get fixed. We called our rental agent, she said we had to fix it ourselves. She didn't give us any hint on what could be the problem. My flatmate Walter checked with a plumbing agency, we got an appointment for 2 weeks later. Two days back my second flatmate Kapil along with our friend Anil looked underneath the heater and found a small box. He wondered what it was and guess what, it was a battery placeholder. So he suggested we could change battery and see if it works. Yesterday, Walter got 2 new batteries, changed the old ones and voila! the water heater started working again. For a simple thing like that, we waited more than a month and always dreaded to enter a shower wondering if suddenly we could get no hot water.

Yesterday we also fixed one another problem. After we got internet at our flat, I was not able to access it from my room because it was supposedly not in the range of or blocked from the wireless router. So whenever I wanted to use internet, I would either go to living room or our study room. We thought about putting the router in a different location to have access from my room but in those locations, we didn't have either a phone outlet or a power outlet. I could have put the router in my room, but then then we couldn't access it from our living room. It didn't sound logical not to have internet access in the living room as we all would be using the room time to time. Then few days back, I got a long RJ45 cable to hook my room directly to the router (ie without using wireless). When I was thinking of how to take it to my room without making the corridor look cluttered and without letting it get snapped by our doors, Kapil thought about taking the telephone connection from my room and using power outlet in his room. (Only my room and the living room have phone outlets.) Kapil's room is in the straight line view both from my room and the living room.

                      _______________________
       kapil's room* |                  *living room
                     |   _________________
                     |   |
                     |   |
                     |   |
                     |   |
                     |   |
                    my room

That idea worked. Although his room looked cluttered from phone wire, at least, we had wireless access in all the rooms. Even better, he found that there was a phone outlet in a "nobody would know" point in the study room. Since the study room was closer to my room, I was able to get wireless access in my room. Bravo Kapil! we got the best solution after one semester was over.

In retrospect, we were just tired or didn't have much time to explore all these options but perhaps we were stupid too not to figure out these options earlier!! What do you think?

winter holidays in Barcelona

2005-12-28T16:39:00.000+01:00

My friend Sandeep and his wife Biparna came to visit us in Barcelona during the Christmas break. Sandeep and Biparna are both medical doctors. Sandeep and I did my A levels together in Nepal. When your friends come to visit you, then you will have a very good excuse to visit places you have been waiting to visit. It applied to us as well. Together with Sandeep and Biparna, we explored Barcelona and the outskirts.

They loved Barcelona as soon as they landed here. It was expected for someone coming from the cold England to the warm Barcelona. They had actually visited Paris before coming to Barcelona. It seemed like they enjoyed the romantic and artistic city Paris but they hated the cold Paris.

First we took them to the famous Park Guell. How could we not? I don't think I would ever say no to visit Park Guell anytime. They loved it as well. Plus the weather was fantastic that day. They had already become fan of Gaudi by the time we showed them La Sagrada Familia and Casa Batio. The funny thing was, following Gaudi's style, Sandeep had also started to hate straight lines and structures.

We also visited Magic fountains of Montjuich. They were truly beautiful. Although it was getting chillier in the evening, we just didn't want to leave the place. The views of the fountains which change color with the tempo of the music played are really breathtaking.

On 24th, we went to Sant Sadurni D'Noia of the "Penedas" region to tour the "wine country". Unfortunately, everything was closed as it was the day before Christmas. We had a feeling that they would be closed but we took the chances anyway. Nevertheless it was our first train trip to the south of Bartcelona. We hadn't taken Renfe trains earlier. Next time when we have guests we can take them easily to wine region now. This time we had to do some research and "adventure" to find and reach our destination.

Our last visit was to Montserrat mountain. It was 1 hour west from Barcelona. The small train ride across the mountain was impressive. We fully enjoyed our time there.

not good..

2005-12-20T20:46:00.000+01:00

Financial Accounting turned out to be tougher than expected. I at least expected some questions of the same pattern as in the past papers. And I was really ready to answer questions like "What is the loss on disposal, what is the account-receivable write offs, prepare a operational cash flow..blah blah". Guess what, we didn't get any of those questions which seemed very likely to come (they were asked in all of the 3 past papers from 2001, 2003 and 2004). But like we learned in our Decision Analysis class, even when the percentage likelihood was high, it was still possible to not get it. A true real life example of what I learned in Decision Analysis class.

We had Decision Analysis exam today. I think I did bad as well. I thought I was better in this than Financial accounting, but as soon as I walked out of the exam, I realized that I might have done worse than I thought. But I never seriously walked though the questions again after I walked out of the exam. I was "sort-of" confident on my logic during the exam, so it could still be the case that I was right. But chances are, no matter how likely or unlikely they are, I could be wrong, at least in my first question with the heavy weight of 35%.

Tomorrow we have Marketing case, I am not even sure how to approach my final day preparation. We have to analyze a case, so I am just going through some "case analysis" guides I found in the IESE Consulting Club website.

great documentary startup.com

2005-12-16T21:54:00.000+01:00

Today was the last day of classes for this semester. At the end of the each class, we gave a long applause to our professors.

Before the lunch break, we had a great Comment of the Week presentation by our friend Rafa from Mexico. More on it can be read at calatrava's blog.

During our lunch break, Theater club presented a fantastic play in the main auditorium. It was houseful and was broadcasted live in another auditorium. The lesson of the play was we should have a balance of work life and family life and not get carried away by the money factor alone. Kudos to the members of the theater club! You guys did an amazing job.

After the lunch break, in our OB class, we saw this documentary called "startup.com" which is a story of two entrepreneurs building a startup, reaching the highs and then falling apart during the dot com crash. As someone who has thought of starting his own company, it gave me good insights on what it is like to start a company (regardless of the outcome). The company not only fell apart, but the relationship between two high school buddies was also at stake. More on how the company went bankrupt can be read at
http://www.atnewyork.com/news/article.php/559531 .

We have finals on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. The first one is Financial Accounting. After doing first few problems of a practice set "mas o menos" correctly, I am feeling motivated to do more exercises. I hope I will maintain my motivation level throughout the weekend.

Learning a lot at IESE

2005-12-12T23:56:00.000+01:00

I remember the days when my friends and I used to have a round table discussion on a great idea we had. We would then think of establishing a new business. We even started writing a business plan but we didn't calculate any "break even" or "expected value". We didn't do any "sensitivity analysis". We didn't talk about accounting issues like how our first year balance sheet or financial statement would look like. After preliminary, what would be a very incomplete business proposal in retrospect, we would talk about what we could do to raise money and then didn't use to progress much.

After 3 months in IESE, I can proudly say I am learning a lot here. I now know, although in a very basic way, how to critically look though balance sheets and income statements of companies. I know of different factors we need to take into account when making a decision from Decision Analysis course. I could relate to many things that happened in my past workplaces when going through the cases and discussion in Organizational Behaviour classes; for example, how one of my ex-boss who also had a huge stake in the company was acting more from a stakeholder perspective than a manager perspective. Just before I started writing this blog, I was reading a HBS case on "Accounting Fraud at Worldcom". I could very easily relate the analysis to what I have learned in Financial Accounting on how financial accounts are prone to manipulation. The case itself is very nicely written and I believe I got a complete and well rounded picture of the fraud that took place in Worldcom. The list of what I have learned at IESE goes on.

I also learned to be careful when reading my mail in Spanish today. I got a mail from Career Services saying "Los alumnos seleccionados para las entrevistas del dia 17 de enero, ya han sido contactados." I read the word "entrevista", saw the date, noticed that the subject was the name of the company I had applied to, so I immediately thought I was shortlisted for interview. The congratulatory emails we receive when we are actually shortlisted are generally "short". (It makes sense, short-listed and hence short email, right?) So, I was happy that I was shortlisted and told some of my friends. They all congratulated me, one of them even suggested that it must be for London position as they haven't yet heard about the positions in Spain. Only after I came to my flat and shared the news with my flatmate who also received similar email, I realized the true meaning of the sentence. I know I am to be blamed for making a wrong interpretation but couldn't the email have been written to give the intended message without mentioning the date?

my longtime enemy

2005-12-11T12:15:00.000+01:00

Just when I need to study more, my longtime enemy called "sinus" comes by and says hello to me. He not only says hello, he hypnotizes me. He captures my head, doesn't let me do any thinking, makes me unable to concentrate and challenges me on whether I can win him. I sure can win him, but not in a minute. It takes me at least a couple of hours to win him and say bye to him temporarily.

I think I know why he is visiting me lately. I have been drinking "cafe con leche" (coffee with milk) in the past few days although I am aware that my longtime enemy loves leche. He gets excited when he gets his favorite leche. He should be happy and just be "tranquilo" when he gets his favorite food, but he gets excited. And he comes and plays the game with his host. How selfish are you? Leave your host alone, just say "thank you" and sleep. Go somewhere else, and leave the host alone, damn it!

Update 4 hours later: After taking some hot lemonades, I think I have been able to fight my enemy off, at least for now. So this is the good news.

preparing for finals

2005-12-09T23:30:00.000+01:00

This is the last stretch of the first semester here in IESE. We have finals coming up in 2 weeks. The main subject in which I need to catch up is Financial Accounting. I will be dedicating my weekend for it.

I got the DVD of my sister's engagement today. She got engaged on Thanksgiving day. This is a picture of her and her fiance. I wish I was with them during the engagement ceremony.

ABP report, holidays and summer job

2005-12-06T09:09:00.000+01:00

Most of this last weekend was spent on writing the ABP report. I was working on it until 2 AM on Monday. I felt like I didn't manage my time properly but when I found out that some of us were working until 8 or 9 AM on Monday morning for the paper and some even skipping the morning classes, I felt better (I told you! its all relative). So if there were others who didn't stay later than me, I would have felt bad. There is something wrong on the way we judge ourselves, don't we?

Time flies by so fast. We have only 2 weeks for finals left. Luckily, today was a national holiday in Spain. I both like and dislike the holidays in Spain. I like them for obvious reasons, I have more time to prepare for classes, spend time with my wife, go out, have fun, blah blah. I dislike them because most of the shops are closed on holidays. So this means I couldn't go to groceries to buy food nor to mall to do any shopping. I am supposed to do shopping when I am the busiest. I am aware that there are some grocery stores/supermarket that are open 24 hours but I know for sure they are not near to my place. But perhaps with an extra effort, I can find them.

On other updates, I got shortlisted for a summer internship in a company where I really want to work. This is the first step, I now need to pass my first interview on campus. Then if I pass that, I will have to pass second interview in London to finally have the job. I will be talking with second years who are going to work there and get ideas from them on what I could do to do well on the interview. But the slightly scare news is that I am not shortlisted for any other companies so far. I know that not all the companies I have applied to are done with their first round selection but there are already 2 or 3 which are done with their selection and I was not on their list. I am not expecting to be shortlisted by all the companies but that relativity comes into play again and makes me scared.

My friends are coming to visit me in Barcelona during Christmas. They will be here for a week. I am not sure what I am going to do after that. I may just go to my classmate's house in Finland. That would be fun, wouldn't it? I like to go to UK to visit my friends and some relatives there but I have yet to apply for a visa to London. I may end up going nowhere as I need to prepare for the interviews. Since I am a career changer, I really have to prepare myself and convince them that I can do the job and I am really interested in doing it.

I also have to apply for a visa to the US. I have to go to US sometime in next couple of months for my sister's wedding. The date of the wedding is not confirmed yet and hence I said "sometime in the next couple of months". Otherwise you might be wondering how come I am not even sure of my sister's wedding date.

empty water bottles everywhere

2005-11-30T23:42:00.000+01:00

Most of the trash bins in IESE have lots of empty water bottles at the end of a day. Since most of them have lids open, it is not hard not to notice the empty bottles. Is this a problem? I think it is a problem because we are generating too much waste which can be reduced by more than 50%. Second, we do not seem to have any recycling bins, so they are not recycled and hence become a burden to the landfills, or basically to our mother nature.

How can it be solved?
1) By having recycling bins. I will suggest this idea to Student Affairs. Generally they are very receptive, so hopefully we will see recycling bins at IESE in the future.

2) By reusing the bottles. I frequently reuse my water bottles. If there are "20 or so liters mineral water jars" dispensers in common places, I am sure many students would opt to refill their bottles as it would save them time of going to the bar to purchase a bottle, money as you have to pay something like 1 Euro to buy a 1 liter bottle in the bar and of course personal satisfaction in contributing to less plastic waste.

On this topic, I think even "tap water" dispensers would be better than having nothing. It may sound awful to some students, but I drink tap water in Barcelona. In the beginning I didn't like the taste at certain times, but nowadays I am used to it and it tastes just fine. And I am told that it is safe to drink tap water in Barcelona. If it was Kathmandu, I wouldn't be drinking tap water directly.

my camera slapped me on my face

2005-11-27T00:48:00.000+01:00

I realized today how important it is to have a good camera with you. I have this Canon A20 camera, more than 3 years old. The lens cover is half broken. It is bulky, looks awfully antique compared to slick cameras you find today. It generally doesn't take good pictures if there is little light, even with its flash. But it was working. It was taking good pictures for me for most occasions. It was way much better than the cameras you get in the mobile phones. Few months back, it stopped working for half a day but after that half-a-day glitch, it started working fine again. So I never bothered to buy a new one. Or just waited to buy a new and fancy one when I have a good summer internship or when I know about a good paying job after my MBA graduation.

But today it slapped me on my face. It dinged me. It broke the trust that we had with each other. My wife had invited two Spanish friends and their Portugese boyfriends for dinner today. We took some pictures. It worked fine. Then my wife brought them to her room and dressed them up in Sari. They looked very beautiful. That was a special moment to have Spanish girls dressed in Sari. My wife and I tried to take pictures and thats when the camera said "adios". It acted like it was working. The flash worked, but it didn't capture the picture. What good a camera is when it cannot take a picture when we need it most. So I am taking the memory card out and then dumping the camera. If you want to try to play with it, let me know. Or I will put it in Ebay for 1 dollar for those who want to break it apart and want to find out how a camera works (or doesn't work).

Few weeks back, we had a marketing case about Kodak films. Kodak saw its market share of Kodak Gold film decreasing because of cheap films coming out. But Kodak didn't really decrease the price of the Kodak Gold film and the main message it wanted to give to customers was "Kodak Gold is for special moments". You are right, Kodak. I couldn't agree more after what happened to me today.

I am attaching the picture my flatmate took out of his PDA. Its not the best quality one, but its better having something than nothing.

status of my midterms

2005-11-24T21:16:00.000+01:00

I did well in my Financial Accounting. For someone with no accounting background, I am happy with the grade I got. But I would like to do better in the finals. (of course, who doesn't want to?) Lets hope that I will put more efforts in doing the FA cases/homeworks regularly. I am also saying this because I think I got more marks than I deserved. There was one question where I practically bullshitted. But it turns out that I actually answered part of that question correctly and got 66% on that question. Using the knowledge from Decision analysis class, I can say that the probability of me getting lucky like this again is not high. So I better get my act together to prepare better for Financial Accounting. That includes doing homework for tomorrow. :)

I did even better in Decision Analysis. I am doing "okay" in Organization Behavior and ABP. But one class I am not doing good is Marketing. I haven't had guts yet to actively participate in the marketing class. For the class which puts 75% weight in class participation, I should be participating more than I should.

I became sick because I didn't write a blog

2005-11-24T20:30:00.000+01:00

Last few days have been very tiring because of classes, homeworks, and applications for summer internships. The weather is not helping us either. It has been getting really cold lately. Its not the sunny and warm barcelona anymore. Many of my friends are sick because of the cold/flu. We can notice the empty chairs in the classes. I have also been "under the weather" since Monday but it hasn't got much worse. Nevertheless, today I felt like it was getting worse and didn't go to my classes after the first one and came home to take rest, have hot lemonade and hot soup. This way I will not let it become worse. But I felt bad for missing my ABP, DA and Spanish class. I was feeling guilty when I was staying at home sleeping. But I think it is the best strategy, missing a day of classes now rather than missing more classes later on after I get more sick. I am already feeling much better now after taking the much needed rest.

But I have another hypothesis. I think I became sick because I was not writing my blogs since Nov 16. Thats already 8 days. After writing a blog, I always used to feel very good. My stress would go down. But I didn't have the privilege of wearing my stress down earlier because I didn't write blogs. And hence I got sick from the accumulated stress.

Will be blogging regularly for the reason I just mentioned.

dark suits

2005-11-16T20:28:00.000+01:00

I better buy a dark suit soon before I feel like the odd one out again in a cocktail organized by a big name bank or consulting firm. I have been procrastinating so far, but when you are one of the only 2 or 3 students who is not wearing a dark suit during a cocktail event, you definitely feel odd, which is how I felt yesterday during an event. Pobre Pradeep, you should have done it when you were back home where it was much cheaper compared to Barcelona to buy a suit.

mock interviews and class presentation

2005-11-16T01:04:00.000+01:00

Monday and Tuesday were eventful. Monday was more eventful than I wanted it to be. We were supposed to have mock interviews with various companies on Monday. I signed up for a bank interview. I got an email from the Career Services that I was in the group that was supposed to be interviewed in the first half of the day. Everyone was supposed to get a slot of half and hour, of which 20 minutes would be for the actual interview and 10 minutes for the feedback. Since I was the last one in the group, I calculated the time I was supposed to be and went to college half an hour before my actual time. Right after I reached the room where I was supposed to be interviewed, things started falling apart in front of me. I saw all of the rest of my group in that room with an interviewer. For the whole time, I was thinking that it was an one to one interview. I was wrong. It was supposed to be a group interview and everyone would get a half an hour slot in that group interview.

I panicked and quickly went to meet someone from Career Services to explain my problem. (My flatmate who I met in the hallway suggested me to do that. Thank you Kapil!) Career Services was very helpful and got me hooked up with a bank representative who was free. In the end, I got a chance to have an one to one interview with the bank representative from the department I was most interested in. The interview went well. I was calm. I got good feedback. It is indeed right when they say "everything happens for our own good" , isn't it? I am so glad that the disaster that was unfolding was prevented for something better to come. And yes, I suggested Career Services to be more explicit next time because it wasn't obvious from the email that it was not a one to one mock interview. I met some other people who felt the same but were lucky enough to reach the campus before the group interview session started.

Today I had a class presentation in my Managerial Communication class. This was not something I was really keen on doing but I did it because somebody from our "group" had to do it and there was basically no one else to do it. I prepared for a presentation on why high tech companies from Spain should have an offshore operation in Nepal rather than the popular destinations India or China. I was more nervous than I normally would be before the presentation. I am not sure why. I need to avoid this in the future. Perhaps I was not as much prepared as I should have been.

But after I reached the podium in the class to make my presentation, I calmed down and wasn't as nervous as I was before coming to the podium. The presentation then turned out to be really funny for the class, especially when I compared Nepal to the core of a sandwich in which the two pieces of bread were India and China. That whole example made everyone laugh and that made it easier for me to continue with my presentation. At least I was able to capture the audience. The feedback I got was great. One suggestion was to have a balance of humor and the serious stuff. It was a great presentation for the class but might not have been great for the potential investors. I also mentioned some negative press images of Nepal and made some arguments to clear away any doubts but I was suggested that it could backfire. In any case, I am glad the presentation is over. It was a good learning experience.

TGIF

2005-11-11T22:37:00.000+01:00

It is indeed going to be a relief weekend. This weekend, I would like to relax and then spend more time researching about companies I like to apply for summer internship. The deadline for most companies offering internship opportunities for IESE students is Nov 21st which is coming very close.

Midterms went okay. I was very confident in the morning before the Decision Analysis exam. But in the exam, I was nervous and rushing most of the time. I would have liked myself to be "tranquilo". Perhaps, it was my first exam after my GMAT which I took many months back. But the exam in itself went okay. I know I didn't answer one "calculation intensive" question correctly. However, there was no weight specified for the questions, so I am not sure how that is going to affect my overall score. Nevertheless, I am not worried too much. Even if it went bad, I can always try to do better in the Finals as the final grade takes into account the exam in which I did the best.

Contrary to Decision Analysis, I was not confident on Financial accounting. This is the first time I am getting introduced to Financial Accounting subject. However, I was "tranquilo" most of the time in the exam. ( I adapted positively from the exam yesterday.) I think I did the first 2 questions with 60% weight pretty good. I though I did those 2 questions really well but you know how it is when you get out of the exam and talk to your friends. I realized that I didn't do as well as I thought I did. No wonder, one of my good friends used to advice me "Never ever talk about the exam right after it is over." He is right. It is just going to ruin the weekend if we realize that we did worse than we thought. So heeding his advice, I didn't talk further about the exam.

By the way, I must mention one person who is super smart in Financial Accounting. When I was just finishing up my 1st question, Gabriel walked down the auditorium and submitted his papers. I was super surprised, but now that I know how smart he is, I shouldn't be surprised anymore. He comes from Texas, US.

After the exam was over, I headed home. My wife had prepared wonderful Nepali lunch. Wow! that was fantastic. Lucky me!! After lunch and a siesta, my wife and I went down to La Ramblas for a walk and to do some shopping. It was great to spend some time with my wife after many busy weeks.

Many of my friends from Section A and Section B are going to a dinner organized by student representatives. (Our class of about 220 is divided into 3 sections. The language of instruction in Section C is Spanish.) I couldn't go due to a prior commitment. I am sure they are all having a nice time there.

midterms

2005-11-08T23:56:00.000+01:00

We have midterms this Thursday and Friday of Decision Analysis and Financial Accounting subjects. For those of us like me with no FA background, obviously this will be a challenge.
However, Decision Analysis doesn't seem to be that bad compared to FA perhaps because I come from an Engineering background. But it is not that easy either.

On other updates, marketing cases have become more interesting nowadays as we discuss more strategic issues with less number crunching than in earlier cases. In the earlier cases, we just had too many tables to refer to and make calculations from. Today, we had a case about the company who created the SpiderMan character and it was quite fun.

I love Skype

2005-11-05T20:37:00.000+01:00

Everyday I am loving Skype more and more. The sound quality is awesome. As I do not have many friends using Skype yet, I use SkypeOut service to call PSTN numbers mostly in the US and UK. It costs just about 2 cents a minute to call those numbers. I don't think it can get any better than this. But more and more of my friends are now using Skype after they are impressed from my marketing pitches. In fact, last week I was pitching a customer service lady from a bank on Skype describing how amazing it was. My flatmates were laughing when I was doing that. I think she was impressed and at least, she is not new anymore to this brand called Skype. But ironically, I don't think I am doing good in my marketing class. I need to be better prepared with my marketing cases.

Skype is way above all the other VoIP services I have used. I think Vonage is very good too, but it doesn't have this free computer to computer service.

frustrations

2005-11-03T22:10:00.000+01:00

The disadvantage of having a public blog is that I have to be very careful when I am venting out my frustrations. I should not use any names as Google can cache my blog for decades and one of those unlucky ones I mentioned my find out my gripes in days to come.

Yesterday, few of us were having an informational session with a bank. Then suddenly one guy came in late. He was not dressed properly (we were all required to wear suit and tie). Then without wasting a minute, he started asking questions to the bank representative. He was asking all sorts of complex questions, and didn't pause between asking questions. He acted as if he was the one taking interview of the bank representative. He seemed very cold, with no expressions in his face. And guess what, he left as soon as he was done with his questions. I am not sure what he thought of himself. That was so rude on his part, both to us and the bank representative. I think that kind of attitude also gives a bad impression of IESE to the recruiters. I am not sure how the hell he was thinking of scoring on his personal skills if he were to apply for a job. Luckily, the representative was an alumnus of IESE. He was very approachable and down to earth. After that rude fellow left, we got a chance to ask at least some questions in a comfortable environment. In Nepali we rightly say, "सन्तान थरिथरिका" , which translates to "different people, different behaviors".

a long and busy day

2005-11-03T21:31:00.000+01:00

Today I reached college at aorund 8 AM. Caught up on details of some cases before other group members came. Then had the regular classes before lunch break. I had two presentations I had to go to during my lunch time. During one break between the classes after the lunch break, I was finishing off my Spanish homework. Spanish homeworks are now the last in terms of priority after the regular MBA classes started. I feel bad but I have no choice. But, unlike some students, I haven't bunked any Spanish class and I still enjoy it a lot although it is the last class of the day. And I also do my Spanish homeworks regularly( except in few occasions when I am really tight on time).

Right after the Spanish class, I had a group meeting where we discussed a OB homework we need to do as a group. I still think our group has a long way to go in terms of being really organized. We tend to cut off other members, side talk with someone, talk really loud, among many other things. I think we have too many "aggressive" members. I hope we will learn from our past mistakes and the classes and make our group the best.

It was already 7:30 pm when we were done with the meeting. Came home, had some biscuits and juice and just relaxed. What a long and busy day it was!

Random Dinner on Thursday

2005-10-30T23:07:00.000+01:00

Thursday nite, Srijana and I went to a "random dinner" hosted by 2nd year students. As the name suggests, the first year students who signed up for it were selected randomly to different 2nd year hosts (matching dietary preferences, if any). Our hosts were Steven from US, Andre from Poland, Alankar from India and Dhawal from India. Rest of us who were invited were Roman from Barcelona, Kendra from US (exchange student from Kellog) and Alok from India. Kendra arrived late as she got lost because she first went to a street which had the same name except for one letter. That gave us an excuse of creating some Kellog jokes until she came.

The hosts were all really nice. The food was great. We had Indian, Mexican and Polish dishes. I think I saw huge lettuce wraps for the first time. The idea was to make something like a burrito using the lettuce wrap and different items prepared for our wonderful dining experience. "Raita" was very tasty. I also took some shots of sweet liquor made of "swanf". I am not sure what "swanf" is called in English. It is that mouth freshner you can get in an Indian/Nepali restaurant after you have dinner. Thank you Steven, Dhawal, Alankar and Andre. We had a great time. It was a lot of fun to hear your your first year stories.

The only drawback to going to the dinner was not being able to prepare for the classes the next day. Luckily, I didn't get any cold calls in my Financial Accounting class. Few of my classmates were missing in the first class on Friday. Many of them also went to the BOW(Bar of the week) on Thursday after the random dinner. Perhaps that was the reason why some of them couldn't make to the class. Thanks God I didn't decide to go to the BOW. I would have ruined my Friday if I had gone. Although I hadn't prepared much for my ABP(Analysis of Business Problems) class and OB class, I think I participated more than I used to do in other days.

career forum over

2005-10-29T16:49:00.000+02:00

Overall, career forum was very good. There were many top ranked banks, consulting and pharma companies represented. It was good to hear how the banks differentiated from each other. Citigroup and Google's presentation were popular. We had a houseful auditorium during their presentations. Lehman Brother's presentation was impressive. The top Lehman guy from Spain and Portugal region gave a convincing pitch. Barclays' presentation was very good too. The key speaker was an IESE alumnus and he explained more about why we should try banking if we are really interested in it, not just for the sake of working for a big firm. His main message was that one has to have a real passion to do banking, otherwise it would be a waste of resources both for the bank and the employee. He later on pitched on how Barclays was different from other big name banks.

There were many big name management consulting companies but most of them were recruiting for countries like Spain, Portugal, Germany, Netherlands or France where you would need to know the local language. Since I do not know any of the languages of those countries, I was not really interested in them. We could apply to UK office or other offices around the world through them but I am not sure how effectively the applications get forwarded to the other offices. At least for banking, most of the recruitments are done for the UK offices, and hence langauge issue and work permit issue do not come into play. UK has a special program that lets you work in the UK with mimimal hassles if you have a MBA from a top 50 school.

There were very few companies from technology industry (not counting pharma). Google, Schneider Electric and Philips were some of the companies representing the technology industry. I was told by career services that we will have more technology companies like Yahoo, EBay on campus later in January.

We had a cocktail reception (with real cocktail) on Monday evening by Lehman Brothers. It was good to hear the experiences from the people working there. One of the representatives was a LBS alumnus. He was good in explaining different facets of working in the Investment Banking Division, especially M&A. (For those who do not know much about investment banking, Investment Banks do more than "investment banking". They have other divisions like Fixed Income, Private Equities besides Investment Banking division. They however are loosely called Investment Banks) I however was very tired from the earlier day when I had to finish my ABP paper . I wish I was not. Perhaps I could have enjoyed and concentrated more on the presentations and asked the representatives much better questions.

Tuesday was better for me. I had a good sleep. Then in the morning I had an informational session with a prestigious investment bank. I asked them why members of IBD (Investment Banking Division) have to work more hours than members of other departments like Fixed Income. I got a good and convincing answer. I also asked him whether M&A would be a good fit for my background in managing operations of a technology company.

Overall it was a good opportunity to know more about many big name companies from banking, consulting and industry.

PS On Monday afternoon, we had a "lunch" sponsored by a big name company. But that was a shame in the name of a lunch. That experience was analogous to when I learned the new meaning of cocktail a month back. The lunch was nothing more than the so called cocktail we have at times that included some nuts, tiny sandwiches, orange juice and cocacola. Since this was a cocktail organized during the lunch time, perhaps they called it lunch. And we actually had to send our resume and sign up for this lunch.

Let me stop here on commenting about minor things like the lunch. That was not my real concern in the career forum. I was there to explore my career opportunities.

long weekend is here

2005-10-29T00:51:00.000+02:00

We have a 4 day long weekend starting tomorrow. This means I will have enough time to catch upon many things including updating my blog. I will do so tomorrow as I really need to first catch up on my sleep.

Good Nite!

Career Forum coming up on Monday and Tuesday

2005-10-24T01:56:00.000+02:00

I have been very busy this weekend working on a case of "Analysis of Business Problem" subject. We actually have to write a report on the case which counts 25% of our grade. So it is an important paper although if we do bad in it, we have a chance to make it up with our final report which we have to do at the end of the trimester.

On top of that, I had some career events going on. Today, I had a sailing event with IESE alumni who work for Barclays Capital. I had a great time both personally and professionally. This was the first time I had been in a sailboat. I actually took control of the rudder for like 15 or 20 minutes which was fun. Towards the end, I was getting sea sick but the trip ended before it got worse. So nothing bad really happened. On the professional front, it was amazing to chat with former IESE students and get an inside view on what it is like to work for a high profile investment bank like Barclays Capital. They were very amiable. Perhaps this has to do with the fact that they are IESE alumni, I didn't have any hesitancy in asking my questions to them. I didn't have to worry much about how my questions would affect my application position in the near future. I am really liking Barclays now. Lets just hope that rest of the people in Barclays are like the representatives I met today.

After the sailing event, we went to a restaurant in Port Olympic. I don't remember the name of the restaurant but the food was good. I enjoyed the lunch very much. I thought "there was no such thing called a free lunch" but I was wrong for the time being. :) One thing which bothered me in the restaurant was they had a large statue of Hindu god Ganesh in their restroom. I thought that was very disrespectful of them to do that. I didn't get a chance to complain about this. I have to tell the manager about that.

In the evening, we had a cocktail reception with Morgan Stanley in a hotel right near our campus. It was an opportunity to network with IESE alumni as well as other recruiters from Morgan Stanley. I love the IESE bond. The alumni were very supportive. I am really starting to believe that the alumni connection of IESE is very strong.

I came back home and started wrapping up my report of ABP due tomorrow. I wanted to do more online research on the companies that are coming to campus tomorrow but its just getting too late. Its already 1:45AM now. And I have to go to a breakfast sponsored by CitiGroup tomorrow at 7:45 in the morning. Is it just me or are other students in the same boat like me?

Good nite!

Huy is great...

2005-10-16T22:27:00.000+02:00

I had asked my groupmates what case we had to study for tomorrow's OB class. Huy, my friend from Vitenam who grew up in Alemania(Germany), was the only one who answered. Huy, you are the life saver in our group. Bravo!

In case you are wondering what OBI is, it is an acronym for Organizational Behavior. I didn't know what OB was until few months before I was applying for MBA. So don't feel bad.

a very busy week

2005-10-16T12:14:00.000+02:00

Last week was a very busy one. As usual, we had three cases to study every day. On top of that, we had a deadline to finalize our resume during the last week. Companies would start looking at our resumes after the deadline. So I passed my resumes to my friends who were good in giving suggestions and making corrections. They pointed out many things which I was not aware of until I showed my resume to them. I must have spent many hours going through my resume over and over.

We luckily had a holiday on Wednesday. I spent almost the whole afternoon understanding and solving one problem of Financial Accounting. But in the class the next day, our professor didn't even go through the problem as it was something of a "quite" new concept, according to him. Don't you hate that? I was hoping to feel good, confident and ready to answer any question on that problem when he would go through it. Oh well! At least I learnt something new. After all, we are all here to learn something new, aren't we?

Yesterday, I spent much of the day preparing my cover letter and resume (yes, again) for summer positions. Since I am a career changer, coming from a very technical background, I had to come up with some convincing points. Now I have to show it to my friends for their inputs. I don't know when I am going to read my cases for tomorrow.

veg food available in the cafeteria

2005-10-16T12:09:00.000+02:00

One good news for the vegetarians is that the cafeteria in IESE now has a vegetarian item everyday for lunch. So when you get to the counter, you just ask for the veg item of the day, it is done on an order basis like the grilled items.

I tried one on Friday. I forgot what it was called, but it was good. Good job Cafeteria team!

Dandia party and Navaraatri

2005-10-10T21:38:00.000+02:00

The second event was the Dandia (stick dance) party organized by Indians in Barcelona on the occasion of Navaraatri. Navaraatri is a 9 day Hindu festival culminating in a big fiesta on the 10th day called Dashain (Dashera in Hindi). As an analogy, you can compare it to Christmas where everyone of your family comes home to celebrate time together. We also get blessings from the elders on the 10th day. I am missing not being with my parents, sister and other relatives at this time. In India, however, Diwali is considered a bigger festival than Dashera.

There was a "Puja" ceremony in the beginning and then the Dandia dance began. It was good that they actually taught us how to do the Dandia dance. It was very fun. We had two circles, one of guys and one of ladies. Guys would move anti-clockwise and the ladies clockwise, and hence you get a chance to do the Dandia with everyone else in the other circle. I had a lot of fun. It was the first time ever I had done a Dandia dance. I wish I had taken some pictures. I couldn't use my camera as my batteries were dead and I couldn't buy replacements in the last minute. Pobre me!

the famous Bar Crawl...

2005-10-10T21:08:00.000+02:00

Well, this was the first weekend after the regular classes started. I already had 2 fiestas lined up for the weekend. The first was Bar Crawl, organized by 2nd year students for the 1st year students (2nd year students were welcome too). So the idea was to go to different assigned bars in a group, the same group you are part of for the 1st year of your MBA program and take part in different surprise competitions. We have 3 sections in the 1st year, and each section is divided into something like 8 groups. Each section was assigned a theme for dressing up during the Bar Crawl. Our theme for dress was Punk, section B's was nerds and section C's was 70's. The Bar Crawl would start at 8 pm on Friday.

I was actually not keen on going to the Bar Crawl as I was tired from the first week of intensive classes. On top of that, Srijana was not feeling well. However, it was a well advertised party, special one as it is organized only once every year, and meant to foster team spirit within teams in a non-academic way. Everyone in my group except one (who had flown to the US) was going. And it seemed like everyone else I knew was going too. So I changed my mind although Srijana couldn't come with me. She actually suggested me to go. But then the problem was in dressing up like a punk. I never wanted to be associated with a punk and here I was trying to dress like one. But when there is a will, there is a way, right? Since I had piercings in my ears from my childhood when my mom used to put small rings on my ears, I borrowed Srijana's big ear ring and put one on my right ear. Coupled with that,I "gel"ed my hair to give it a weird look. So here I was, a partial punk ready to go Bar Crawl.

It was a fun event. I agree, it brought my group members more closer than before. I got to drink a free beer, I stole one from the beers we provided to judges as bribe. :) Actually I am glad I did it because the judges didn't give us good points in the bar where we bribed them by buying 5 or 6 beers. We also got to see Huy's flat where he invited us to have some drinks. He has got a very beautiful flat, with 2 big balconies for a very good price. He is good in deal making, I guess. Huy is a Vietnamese but grew up in Alemania(Germany). But I decided to return early as Srijana was not feeling well. I think everyone went to a dance club later.

Congratulations to the 2nd year students who organized it. I had a lot of fun.

menu items in the Cafeteria

2005-10-08T16:14:00.000+02:00

The cafeteria in IESE has good foods in a reasonable rate. The staff are very friendly. However, I wish the menu specified the type of meat some of the food items consisted of. It is generally diffcult to ask those questions as the line gets very long during the lunch time. On top of that, most of the staff who serve food do not understand English.

As I don't eat beef and pork, I like to know what types of meat a food item consists of if any. As I have found in other countries, sometimes a seemingly vegetarian soup may also have some meat in it. That was the case sometime back when I asked a lady in the cafetria if there was any meat in the soup they were serving that day. I think I said "hay carne en sopa?" And guess what, the soup consisted of some disguised pork(jamon).

I can imagine how vegetarians must have felt about lunches in the cafeteria.

My comment was voted second in the COW competition

2005-10-08T15:58:00.000+02:00

In my marketing class, our professor gave an example of Mariachi when we were discussing a case. I didn't know what that meant. Like I always do, I asked the professor what Mariachi meant. Most of the students in the class laughed. Apparently, what it meant was a Mexican street band. I have seen many Mexican bands playing on the street but I didn't know they were called Mariachi. Did I mention that one of my flatmates is indeed Mexican? Shame on me, Pradeep!!

But its always a good thing to know something new in a class, isn't it? Actually, it was more than learning something new. I actually almost won a competition. :) NolliBoliie and her group had started a new ranking on comments called "Comment of the Week(COW)". The ranking would list the three most famous comments from the class and would let the class vote at the end of the week. Guess what! The comment I made in my marketing class was voted second by the class. The comment which ranked first was something like "I don't like Mickey Mouse" when we were discussing a Disney related case in the class.

getting a phone/DSL line in Barcelona is a long wait

2005-10-08T15:39:00.000+02:00

We finally had Internet access in our flat on Friday. That was a long wait to get your flat hooked up to Internet. We had to wait almost a month to have it. Telefonica, the company which provided the internet for us, is extremely inefficient. Telephone companies in Nepal, a developing country, are more efficient that they are here in Spain. I am surprised. If we didn't have Walter, my Mexican flatmate, with us, we would probably have never been able to order the phone line and internet as we would face language issues. Thanks God! We have someone who speaks fluent Spanish staying with us.

We found out that the reason we couldn't get the DSL router to work on Wednesday was because we didn't press the "reset" button thrice consecutively. That would have reset everything. If we did it just once or twice, only some partial features would have been resetted. How the hell were we supposed to know that? I bet I didn't find that when I skimmed through the Spanish manual. I am sure I would have noticed the word "tres".

Our landlord replaced the bed frames, gas stove and oven as well as the dining hall chairs with new ones during the last week. So the last week was a special one. We had most of the things we needed in our flat. It was the same week when our classes started as well.

Regular classes have already started

2005-10-04T19:01:00.000+02:00

Regular classes started from this Monday. Everyday we have (mas o menos) 3 cases to prepare. I am slowly getting used to this case study method. Worst of them are the cases from Marketing Management as there are many pages to read for each case. I think they are more interesting than the other ones but just too long and hence takes too much time.

The professor who teaches decision Analysis is very good in explaining things. So far most of the cases in Decision Analysis involved probability and he has been explaining them great. I am generally bad with probability, but I am able to understand the problems explained in the classes.

Yesterday I didn't manage my time properly and couldn't read all the cases properly. What happened was we got our DSL modem yesterday in our flat and hence got excited to install it myself. However, the manual and the setup files were all in Espanol. That gave me a hard time installing it. Once I was lucky to set it up properly, at least for wired connection but then I did something to nullify that good luck. But guess what, that excitement took like 2 hrs of my precious time yesterday. So I read some cases that night and read one case in the morning. I had to get up at 6 to catch up with my case this morning. I still wasn't able to fully analyze it.

Today was a cold day. I had already stepped out of my flat when I realized that it was cold outside. I didn't go back to my flat as that would take another 5 or 10 minutes. But in retrospect, I should have gone back and put a sweater or a jacket as the wind effect made this morning quite chilly.

Learning from yesterday, I am preparing all the cases today before even going back home. That way I can just relax at home. The few hours of sleep from yesterday have made me tired but I am not going to repeat the mistake I made yesterday of not preparing all the cases before going to bed.

Before I sat down to write this blog, I finished preparing one case. I did it with my team and that was a good experience. At the end, I could compare my results with my fellow group mates. I have one more to go. But at least, I don't have 3 cases to prepare for tomorrow. But I guess we still have to do some reading instead of a case for the class which did't require us to prepare a case, but that would be easier than analyzing a case.

Mike Rosenburg and Andrew J Lothian rock...

2005-10-02T20:18:00.000+02:00

I am already lagging behind when it comes to updating my blog.

We had a career workshop and "orientation days" last week. On the first day of the career workshop, we had a session by Mike Rosenburg, a professor at IESE. He is probably one of the most engaging, fun, exciting professors I have ever had. (My Spanish Profesora was another one I was really impressed with). He rocked. His session on when we should do the preparations for our summer internships and full time jobs were very insightful and at the same time, very entertaining. I love a professor who can add some humor to his/her lecture. I think students can focus exponentially when there is some sense of humor in a lecture. Otherwise, some students will just be taking their seistas, as I have already seen some of my friends doing that in a couple of classes. (I am one of them, but not as bad as the rest of the siesta team, I think).

To add to that, we had another wonderful session from Andrew J Lothian, the CEO of Insights.He basically explained us about the different types of personalities and what makes those personalities different from each other. On doing that, he actually acted like the 4 core personalities which he described by colors. There wasn't a single moment when I felt lost or bored or not wanting to listen to what he had to say. He was amazing. We laughed so much during that session.

In a very simplistic "Insights" way, a person who is commanding, fun-loving, caring/helpful and detail oriented is denoted by red, yellow, green and blue color respectively. Guess which color I was! I was a mix of mostly yellow and green. I think the Insights evaluation described me well. My wife was actually very impressed by the evaluation. "How did they know something that I thought I only knew? Perhaps future husbands and wives should do an Insights test before marrying each other. This would tell so much about each other's personalities", she said. I was glad I didn't take that test earlier and showed the evaluation to her because she doesn't like some of my habits which she only got to know after we got married and started living together. :) You know what..I think it is a good business idea, I will propose future couples to do the Insights test and make a deal with Insights to take a portion of the revenues generated from my referrals. My regular MBA classes haven't started yet and I am already acting like an entrepreneur.

a new definition of "cocktail"

2005-09-28T13:25:00.000+02:00

Apparently, in IESE, a cocktail doesn´t mean a drink with some amount of alcohol in it. It means orange juice, water, coke (coca-cola)* and probably some other sodas. I am not kidding people, it is true. We were supposed to have a cocktail sponsored by a big bank yesterday at around 6:30 pm. I was all excited to cheer myself up after a long day of CV workshop. To my disappointment, there were no cocktails (as per my definition). And on top of that, there was hardly any food except some potato chips and pieces of cheese.

There was a welcome reception for 2nd year students not far from where we were. I think I saw cocktail and some real food being served there. For a moment, I thought of joining them by removing my tag (none of the second years had their tags, obviously), but decided not to as I thought that day is not that far away. I know one year will fly by very soon. :)

So future 1st years, don´t have high expectations on a cocktail reception sponsored by a big name company.

*In Spain, you don´t say Coke, it means something else. Always say "cocacola". :)

Visit to Park Guell

2005-09-25T02:36:00.000+02:00

Today Srijana and I went to Prak Guell, a beautiful park in Barcelona architected by the famous Gaudi. It was indeed amazing. It was quite a uphill walk to get to the park. There were some elevators but many of them were not functioning.

This time we managed to take some pictures. I like to post one today in the blog. This would be my first photo posting in the blog.

One interesting point, I checked out Noelle's blog just now. And guess what, she was also in Park Guell today. But I think she went there earlier than us.

Pre-courses...

2005-09-23T23:57:00.000+02:00

Today was the last day of the pre-courses week. We had “Financial Accounting” and “Quantitative Methods” classes for our pre-courses. While “Quantitative Methods” was relatively easy, Financial Accounting was a completely new subject for me. So obviously, it was not easy for me to understand everything in the class. And the class seemed to go very fast as well. But partly I was to be blamed. I didn’t read all the chapters I was supposed to read and I didn’t do all the assignments I was supposed to do before the classes started. But I am not the only one who is in this boat. I think there are plenty of other people who are in the same boat.

Today was an interesting day for another reason. There is a big festive weekend called La Merce in Barcelona starting from today. And basically most of the businesses in Barcelona are closed during this festive weekend. Consequently, many departments in IESE were closed as well. Cafeteria was the one among them which was half open. Only coffee, croissants and sandwiches were available. So today, most of the students who were in IESE for pre-courses had sandwiches for their lunch.

Yesterday was the last day of class of our favorite professor of Spanish.
Everyone in the Spanish class misses her. As I said in my previous blog, she was one of the best professors I have ever had.

Intensive Spanish Classes

2005-09-14T22:43:00.000+02:00

I never got a chance to write about my Spanish classes that I have been attending since Sep 5th. We have classes from 9:45 in the morning to 6:15 in the evening except for some breaks in between and 1 and half hour long lunch break. As you can see, the classes are intensive. The classes are indeed long and at some days, there is too much to grasp. However, our professor ( or “la profesora”) in Espanol is very lively. She doesn’t let the class be boring at any time. She is a good professor, sensitive to different cultures and very humorous. In fact, there is not a single day when we do not laugh a lot in the class.

I agree, it gets tiring towards the end of the day but it is a wonderful class. Our class is very international. In a class of 10, we are from Japan, Finland, India, UK, US, Belgium and Nepal including me. Because of the interactions we are asked to do in the class, I now know something about Finland and Belgium that I didn’t know before. One interesting thing I found out today about Finland was the cops charge you for a misdemeanor like speeding according to how much you earn. Apparently in Finland, the salaries of people are public. That is very interesting.

Minister Mentor of Singapore in IESE

2005-09-14T22:42:00.000+02:00

This was the first session I ever attended in IESE. My expectations were high. The speaker was His Excellency Lee Kuan Yew, the Minister Mentor of Singapore. He was the ex-Prime Minister of Singapore and someone who kicked off the development revolution of Singapore to eventually transform her from a developing country to a prosperous one that we know today. So there were a lot to learn from his experiences.

The summary of the things he mentioned were
1) Emphasized the importance of English to Singaporean people on how it would open endless opportunities to them.
2) Opened up the country to multi-national companies (MNC) that would bring a lot of jobs and transfer of knowledge. This was something other neighbors like Malayasia and Indonesia had not done.
3) Made sure the quality of education is the top notch one. Every Singaporean would then be prepared to take the jobs the MNCs had to offer.

Overall, he was a very confident and eloquent speaker. His experiences were more interesting to listen when he answered the questions from the audience. Previously, he was just reading off from something he had prepared earlier. The prepared speech was informative as well, but not as interesting to listen to as the question and answer session.

There were English to Spanish and vice-versa translators on the scene behind the auditorium. I could see them when I turned back from my seat. At one point, the voice of the translators was louder than the actual speaker, which I found to be a little weird. However it was fixed quickly. Bravo to the technical team of the auditorium. The auditorium is quite sophisticated. I am impressed.

So yes the speaker session was up to my expectations. Bravo to the ‘Continuous Education Program” who organized it. It also gave me an opportunity to see our Dean Prof . Jordi Canals in person. I had seen his photo in our brochure but hadn’t seen him in person. He was the moderator of the event.

The first road race I participated in

2005-09-12T13:32:00.000+02:00

Yesterday was a special day. I took part in a road race, organized in the outskirts of Barcelona. We were like 10 of us including 3 Spanish friends I got to know yesterday. We reached the place around 9 in the morning but the race would only start at 10:30. But that gave us plenty of time to chat with each other and practise some of my Spanish with my new Spanish friends. The race was of 5 kilometers. The town was very beautiful and picturesque. I would call it 'muy bonita' if I were to use my limited knowledge of Spanish.

The organizers were, I should say, well prepared and sophisticated. They had laptops to enter our names and gave us a radio chip that we would be tieing with our shoes. The radio chip would let the organizers know when I started the race, the points I crossed and the time I finished the race, very high tech indeed.

I did okay in the race. 332 persons finished ahead of me and 34 persons finished after me. So now you understand what my definition of 'okay' was. It is always relative, isn't it? Since it was my first race, I didn't feel bad. At least I was not the last person to finish. My shoes turned out to be not comfortable during the race. But I didn't want to quit the race in the middle even after I the shoes became uncomfortable. When I checked my feet after I reached home, I noticed some blisters. Oh well, I think I should be fine in a couple of days.

I forgot to mention that we also got to have water, sandwich and a tshirt after completing the race, all for free. I think that was such a nice deal. And our friend Noelle actually won a trophy in the race. We were so proud of her. Its funny that she was in fact thinking of not joing the race earlier.

So that was the first running race I ever participated. Lucky me, I was destined to take part in a race in Barcelona, a wonderful city with wonderful weather.

Spanish Embassy in New Delhi

2005-09-02T19:37:00.000+02:00

The Spanish Embassy in New Delhi reserves a separate blog for all the good work it has been doing. Because the embassy staff don't believe in the modern form of communication, they don't have a website and they don't answer the phone. In case you are ever lucky to get hold of one of the embassy staff, the staff hangs up the call before you are done talking. That was so nice, wasn't it?

After getting some information from the partners who had applied for dependent visa in the IESE forums, we went to Delhi to apply for our visa. We reached the embassy at around 11 pm. For a reason I will mention later, we were able to apply for our visa the same day. However, this was not how the things normally worked. If you wanted to apply for a visa, you would have to come at around 4:30 in the morning to be in a line to get tokens. Supposedly, they only allow 15 or so applications per day. Since there would be more than 15 applicants, it would be first come, first serve system. But guess what, even if you come to the queue at around 4:30 in the morning, you are only going to get your token at around 9:30 in the morning. So you would be standing in queue for 5 hours in a place which doesn't have any restroom or a canteen to have tea/coffee. Don't you wish they had a reservation system where they would give you a date and time to apply for your visa? In this regards, I think the American embassy is very efficient. They give you a date to apply for your visa. After the interview, if you are approved for your visa, you get the visa stamped in your passport the same day.

After applying for the visa, then you would have to wait for a month or so to have your visa approved. Since I was aware of the time taken to approve a visa, I was okay with it. It would have been nice to have it approved sooner, but since they tell us in advance about the wait, I don't have much to complain on this. But I still like to make comments about the system they had to find out the status of your application. The Embassy in New Delhi gives you a number of the "visa section" to call to find out the status. But guess what, nobody ever picks up the phone. Never..ever....Why do you want to give out a number which you are never going to pick up? That was so annoying. Then I called the direct number of the embassy where I was told to call only after 2 on Mondays and Thursdays. They didn't give this information to us earlier. Still no luck calling the visa section after 2 on those days. So I had to call the direct numbers of the embassy (not the visa section) to ask for status.I guess they also realized that they don't pick up the phone in the visa section and hence agreed to note down my application number to check my status. At least it was better than nothing.

You thought that was the end of the story. No that is not. After we had our visas approved, we came to the embassy to have our visas stamped. Guess what, the lady who was supposed to have the visas stamped was out on vacation. So there was basically no one else to do her work. Thats what we were told by the security guards. I saw people coming to the embassy for "at least" 5 consecutive days to have their visas stamped and still didn't have any luck. I saw one guy who was already late attending his classes in a school in Barcelona. What a pain? What an inefficient embassy which can't even put someone else for the work when one person is on vacation? Again, with pure luck, Kapil and I were able to have our visas stamped by the third day. I think Kapil waited one more day than I did.

So that is the story of the Spanish Embassy in New Delhi. Let me make it clear, this is nothing against the Spanish people, I have found them to be extremely friendly and helpful to me. But something needs to be done about the visa section of the Spanish Embassy in New Delhi, India and Honorary Spanish Consulate in Nepal.

first day of school

2005-09-02T12:11:00.000+02:00

The first day was exciting. I had to get up early in the morning , around 7:30 AM, unlike other days when I used to get up at 9 or so. We were going to have Spanish test, so I reviewed Spanish grammer at the last minute. Then headed to school with my other flatmates, one from Germany and one from the US.

In the school, we all got into the big auditorium. It was nice to see a lot of new faces, who I will be interacting with at least for the next 2 years and for years to come. We had the head of Spanish program say something in Spanish, I just didn't understand anything. So I raised my hand and used the famous phrase "No Entiendo". Everybody laughed. It was a funny moment. She then asked where I was from. When I said Nepal, she then said she was not surprised tha I didn't know Spanish.

We then had grammar test. I did ok. Actually less than OK but I am not worried because it is not like I knew a lot and did bad in the exam. I just didn't know a lot, so didn't expect to do good. The oral part was even worse. I hope, in 2 years, I will be able to nicely converse with someone in Spanish.

I met people from Portugal, France, US, Ireland, Greece, Lebanon and many other countries. It is truely a diverse class. Reminded me of my undergraduate college where there was such a diversity as well.

Spanish consulate in Kathmandu

2005-09-02T11:10:00.000+02:00

I got the information on the paperwork I needed to apply for my visa from the Honarary Spanish Consulate in Nepal. The secretary who works in the consulate in Nepal seems to have problems helping other people. When I asked her to give me more than one copy of the application form, her answer was not of a usual kind "I am sorry, our photocopy machine is not working or we are not supposed to give more than a copy of the application form". Her answer was something along this line "Copy it outside" in a very rude manner. I used to assume that Nepalese people, no matter where they are working, would be nice people. I was wrong. When I asked her about what kind of visa my wife would be applying, her answer was "tourist visa". When I said I wanted her to apply for something similar to a dependent visa, her answer was there was no such thing as a dependent visa. According to her, my wife could only go as a tourist visa if she were to accompany me right from the start. She seemed very confident on her answer and she didn't have any time to explain the reasoning behind her answer.

She also seemed to be busy chatting on phone and from my intuition, it didn´t seem like a conversation related to office. We felt like she cared more about her phone conversation than helping some people who wanted to go to Spain for further studying. I wonder why such an incompetent person is hired in the consulate. And guess what, she doesn't know any Spanish. And worst of all, she couldn't even suggest a place for us to learn some Spanish. Come on, I think a member from a Spanish consulate would be able to recommend the best, if not, just name a few places to learn Spanish. I wonder what she is doing in the consulate. The consulate doesn't process any visas, hence its name "honorary". I also wanted to meet with the honorary consular Ambika Shrestha. The secretary noted down my name and the number, but I never got a call back. I suppose, if only a few people ever visit Spain from Nepal, it wouldn't be a difficult job to meet the consulate. But I was wrong in my assumption.

found a place to live..a great relief

2005-09-01T20:19:00.000+02:00

We have been looking for places last week to find a place to live this year. The one where we are staying is a temporary one. We finally found one. Kapil from India decided to take another room and the third room is still not occupied. But we are confident that we will find a person for the third room very soon as there are so many people who are still looking for a room.

One part I didn't like about renting this flat was we had to pay one month's rent as the fee for the rental agent. That is a huge amount just for finding a place for us. I wish we had found a place from an agency run by former IESE students. The agency doesn't charge any rental fee for select clients that include IESE students. The fee was 1200 Euros. If you are someone who has just come from Nepal with an exchange rate of 85 Rupees to 1 Euro, you don't even want to think about converting it to Nepali rupees. Now I wish I had come directly from the US where I was working before I spent 2 years in Nepal.

Initially, we were thinking that we would just take a room offered by others who already did the hard work of finding a place. But it seemed like many people don't like to share a flat with a couple, even if the room available was big enough for a couple. Oh well, didn't understand why that mattered. Perhaps there is this stereotype image of a couple who spend time just kissing each other in their room and never getting out of the room to share time with other flatmates. But we were different. Both of us wanted to live with other people in a flat, first just so that we don't feel bored in a new place and second, it would save us a couple of hundred Euros per month.

One great thing about the flat we are going to rent is the distance to walk to IESE. It takes only about 10 to 15 minutes. It doesn't mean I can avoid the uphill path to IESE but I think it is still more convenient than taking a Metro and walking from the last stop to IESE which is Reina Enselida. Just about everybody I have met do not seem to like the uphill path to IESE. It gets worse in hot days, like the one we had today. Talking about that, the last three days have been hot here, little past the "perfect" weather I have been calling.

I wish....

2005-08-29T23:11:00.000+02:00

I wish IESE had some arrangement with some hostels like YMCA or a big hotel who wanted to capitalize on the IESE brand to let incoming students stay for at least 2 weeks or so in the beginning of the MBA program. As the first day of the Intensive Spanish course comes closer, I can see many students looking for a flat. Some don't even have a temporary place to stay. Paying 100 bucks per night in a hotel is the worst but might be the only option for some of these people.

I am sure the "pregunta" of planning comes. In case you are wondering what a "pregunta" is, its a Spanish word for a "question". You can see, I am building up my Spanish vocabulary. The problem with planning a place to stay comes with the uncertainty of the length of time in getting a Spanish student visa. If you happen to apply at an extremely inefficient and un-cooperative embassy like the one located in New Delhi in India, finding a flat is the last thing in your mind. The infamous Spanish Embassy in Delhi deserves a separate blog. Will write that blog soon.

packing stuff in supermarkets

2005-08-27T21:25:00.000+02:00

One new thing I found in Barcelona is that you have to put the groceries in the plastic bags yourself. I am not annoyed by it, I just found it strange. In the US and Nepal, I never had to do that.

The first visit to IESE Business School

2005-08-27T16:34:00.000+02:00

Finally, we went to see IESE Business School on Friday. Kapil, my friend from India, accompanied us to the school. I had been waiting for that moment for so long as I was not one of the lucky ones who got to visit the school before they applied or before they made a choice to go to IESE. It was like a 10 minutes walk from the nearest FGC station. FGC is one of the subway systems that take you to different parts of Barcelona.

The school was smaller than expected in the beginning but I guess for the size of about 400, it is not that small. I made an analogy to a small doll beautifully decorated with every detail given full attenton. The lawns were nicely mowed. The famous building that I have seen in the pictures looked same, if not more beautiful. We went to the bookstore to check out the price of a book we needed to buy for our pre-courses. Unlucky me, I should have bought the book back in Nepal where it is much cheaper. I have asked an Indian friend of mine to bring one book for me, lets see if that will work out.

Some classrooms and the cafeteria were under construction. After spending some time seeing the school where I will spend 19 months of my life, we were walking out. We wanted to take some pictures with the front view of the campus but the security guard
didn't let us do that. It was surprising that I couldn't take the front picture of my own school. We did however take some pictures inside the school. It was just near the gate that we were not allowed.

My first few days in Barcelona

2005-08-27T16:23:00.000+02:00

My wife Srijana and I are now in Barcelona. We arrived here fine
on Wednesday.We had some language issues in the airport when taking a taxi. The taxi drivers didn't know any English at all. So we had to ask a lady for help who knew both English and Spanish.

The first day, we were very tired. With our minimal language skills,
we were able to find a grocery store and an electronics shop. We bought juice and water from the store and a power socket that fits into the Spanish system from the electronics shop. We needed that power socket to hook our laptop. Luckily, this place is steup with wireless internet connection, so we were online by the same evening.

On thursday, we got our phone from the same place from where most of the IESE students get their phone. It has a minimum charge of 6 Euros a month and the simple Nokia phone is for free. We don't get charged for receiving calls. Outgoing calls are 5 cents a minute to same service users and 10 cents a minute to other users in Spain. In the evening, we went to the most happening place in Barcelona called La Rambla. It was a very crowded and fun street, reminded me of Harvard Square and the walkways near Charles river. The weather is perfect here. It is neither too hot or nor too cold. At 10 in the night, we went to the "Bar of the Week(BOW)" event organized by 2nd year students. We met some 2nd year students and many 1st year students there in a bar. Srijana also met some partners of the students going to IESE. It seemed like she was busy chatting with them and enjoying the talk.

feeling tired today

2005-02-11T06:09:00.000+01:00

My teeth are hurting today. I am not feeling like doing much work today.

May be I would have felt better if I had some exercise this morning. My wife has a teaching job. She had to prepare for her class today, so she couldn't play with me. I just read newspapers and watched TV.

I hope tomorrow will not be like this.