Starting of MAP and initial Hiccups

March 16th – Although MAP had started from the day the orientation was done, our MAP officially kicked off today with our meeting with J&J team. As Sanjoy and others took us through the various aspects they want us to cover for the Nursing home division in India, the facts they were stating in the healthcare sector were nothing but alarming. Can you imagine that only half a percent of total deliveries in India use absorbable Synthetic sutures, yes that is 0.5%!!! Most of the population is still being served by midwives and the 3 A’s of healthcare in India – Access, Awareness and Availability still remain a challenge for a company of the size of J&J!

Anyhow, went through the initial HR stuff till the evening and headed to the guesthouse that J&J had arranged for us. I went to Olive right after putting my stuff at the guesthouse and joined the IIT gang for the remaining of the night.
March 17th – It was only in the morning that I realized that the team had some problems with the guesthouse (see pictures) and they shifted to a hotel in Byculla overnight (1:30 AM to be precise). It was hilarious to me to say the least but then looking at the seriousness on most of my MAP teammates, I was better off being silent. Things were really hot still as some of the teammates were still not happy with the affairs of the Hotel we were staying currently and I could see this as one of the biggest jolts to the start of any team exercise. Almost everyone in Ann Arbor was watching this development closely and I was starting to get worried with e-mail exchanges from faculty, sponsors, and MAP staff.

Changes amidst stagnation

I was in the hospital for most of my time on the last few days in Delhi, until Deepu called me to be home. Reached home pretty late in the night but not before experiencing the Bus services from Delhi to Bahadurgarh. It was after almost 4 years that I was standing at this place again and it is funny to see how certain things never change!

It was the second last day for me in Delhi and still there were so many things to do. Went to meet relatives in Bahadurgarh and then to Delhi. Again that strange feeling of “same yet different” kept hitting me. On way also passed by our village and I was surprised by the way city has almost engulfed the while area. Something do change!

On my last day in Delhi, I rushed to Gurgaon post afternoon and reached Evalueserve around 4. Met with some of the old gang, but there was hardly anytime to really catch up as I was rushing to catch my flight. Just when I was about to move, I heard the news of a 1600+ strong Evalueserve team, with operations starting in Chile as well. Call is change or just stagnation?

As I flew back to Mumbai, here is the summary of the mode of transports I used – my car, an airplane, a taxi, local train in Mumbai, a rickshaw, an auto-rickshaw, finally a bike to get some groceries. Phew!

…and I was home finally

March 8th – What to say about my preparations for India! In the excitement to be back home, I checked my passport too while I sat in the taxi on my way to Detroit airport… alas I forgot my I-20!!!

Shopping? Well the list wasn’t too long and all I did was to pick as many brands of chocolates as were available in the Wal-Mart. Finally as Nitesh and I traveled together to fit everything in a Lincoln, I started thinking of home. Since I wanted it to be a surprise back home, I didn’t tell it to anyone but to my dear cousin Gaurav. Theoretically too, I don’t think I could have told it to anymore people, given the way the plan was finalized in the last minutes and my own schedule. Met Anjani and Sidhura in the plane and I decided to see some movies to catch a breather finally. Saw Rocky Balboa and felt a relief that I didn’t spend my precious dollars to see this one in theaters.

As I caught some sleep on my way to Mumbai airport, I think I dreamt about home almost all the while. Getting out of Mumbai, I saw my friend Amit waiting for me and to me this was the first welcome from India!!!

The taxis from the Airport zoomed their way to Andheri and I was re-introduced to the chaos that I had so long not been used to. Whatever time you have spent in India, if you are not used to Mumbai, it’s autos, taxis and trains can surprise you every time you are here. I spent the whole night discussing the old tales with Amit and watching his wedding album.

As we talked the whole night, I spelt just 5 minutes before starting my journey for the airport again. Good thing that Nitesh and Anjani were there to wake me up. Funny thing I was mumbling something like “Negative 1” in my sleep I was told!!!

Reached Domestic airport well in time and met Antra for the first time. The couple (Nitesh and Antra) were very shy to talk anything about themselves and to me they certainly didn’t look like they were getting engaged in 3 days. Anyways, Nitesh can actually be very funny in his own ways. I called mom from the Airport only to find that Dad is hospitalized due to high fever and blood pressure. Man, I was not looking for this in my surprise package.

Anyways, reached Delhi and called Gaurav to know his whereabouts. The poor guy was thinking I will be coming in the night and then was waiting outside the international terminal for an hour. In the meantime, I was also introduced to Delhi heat outside the Palam Airport. Reached home at around 2 and mom and Meenakshi had these looks of disbelief on their faces! I think I managed to surprise Nana Ji also this time! It worked!!! Had a quick lunch and started for the Hospital to meet Dad. He was still running high fever and it became clear to me that he won’t be home before 3-4 days at least.

From hospital, I went to meet my relatives. One funny thing that I was not able to come to term with was the level of difference or indifference I had to show as I am back here. People aspects you to have undergone a transition and at the same time they want to see the past of you as you walk side with them. I seriously think that having spent some time in a different land may have disturbed my driving skills a little bit but besides that I am still the same person as I was 8 months earlier. An MBA may have changed my perspective a little but certainly not my stay at Ann Arbor. I think it is high time people stop looking for that change in me J… anyways as the day was not coming to an end, my eyes gave up and I slept while talking to everyone on the couch itself… see same old me!The next morning, I went back home and I think I am coming in tune with the fact that I really need to unlearn my Michigan driving and keep that license I am so proud of in the boot for a while. As I managed to zoom past my way across those crowded roads to be back home and then to meet old IIT friends, I think I was able to make the much-desired transition.

Holi-celebrations in the School

After taking charge of the ISBA, celebrating Holi was going to be our first opportunity to showcase the energies and enthusiasm of the new team and I don’t think we disappointed anyone here. Swapnil really took a lead in making sure all of us start an early preparations and Jayant took charge of execution to near perfection. And if the support from the board members was not enough, a lot of people came out on Sunday evening to help us with the decorations for the next day. The operation machines started carving out paper water-guns (pichkaaris) to decorate the Executive residence and a lot of the better halves gave their dupattas and saris to help us decorate the hall. Chits and I took the responsibilities for the posters and we were able to do some good stuff at the end. The end-result at 2:30 in the morning was looking really good and all we desired now was a dissent turnout for the function. With most of my day spent in shopping for the event and finding colors for the Rangoli competition, and night being in the executive hall, I was in two minds with regards to next day’s MAP orientation. But I did make it to the hall, only to perform my way to glory. This was by far the maximum reach I have head with respect to head turns in my life as I slept on the last seat making four rows turn towards me with my snores!!!

After catching my sleep in the Rackahlm Auditorium, it was time to wait and see the effect of our hard work… we were also worried that because of the first day of MAP not many people would come to celebrate Holi with us… all speculations came to an end as I reached the Executive residence and seeing all those Desis in their colorful Indian outfits made me really proud. As I went to take part in the Rangoli competition, the crowd build-up really put up a stamp of success. The food, the colors, the rangoli, the decorations, everything generated enough curiosity among our class. Even the name that Ross is so proud of, a la (C.K.) Prahlad helped us in our cause! The hero of the festival was reminded to many who had not even heard of the festival.

As the day closed, we went to see “Rang De Basanti”, a special screening in the school to showcase the colors of today’s and yesteryear’s India… and as I watched the movie, I missed my India all the more… good thing is that this time the wait would not be too long.

The worst exams ever in five years

It was the third week of February and as I was going for my finals for Winter A there was just one thought on my mind, why didn’t I take this stuff seriously. As I studied overnight for my accounting exam or did those operations exercises overnight, I felt a sense of guilt deep with-in. I should have studied harder, more and should have enjoyed these subjects all this while. I felt sorry for those professors, the hard working Michal Matejka, the passionate Eric Svaan, and that know it all Cindy Schipani.

Anyways as the day passed on, I was thinking more and more about the spring break ahead and my India trip just after that. So much so that I lost all my hunger to perform even during the exams. The exam on Legal Aspect of Entrepreneurship was the worst of all. I just could not jolt enough fire with-in to study the subject. Very much like my mid-term paper submission. Wish I had some more time with this one particular subject, but then things were too far now. Having said that, I think I performed well with the other two exams. Just that I knew my class participation would be a null pointer in most of the subjects besides operations.

Another thought that kept my enthusiasm dull was the fact that this was going to be my last exams before September 2007.With Winter B being all about MAP and then a Summer project in line I could not have asked more to revive my thirst to perform better.

Good-bye classrooms for a while now!!!

Elections and some responsibilities

The second week on February was full of elections in various clubs at Ross. Looking at the shear number of clubs, I would be surprised if any of us would be left without being a VP of any clubs… especially if you really wanted it to shine on your resume J… jokes apart, I just thought to concentrate on my dear consulting club and Indian Subcontinent Business Association (ISBA). As the elections approached finding two dear friends going for the same president position in consulting didn’t help me much. Anyways, I decided to stay away from dirty blame-game and to concentrate on the dirty and yet fulfilling job of our casebook. So stood for the VP of casebook and thanks to support of dear all, made it to the board rather easily.

However, ISBA was a different story. First of all, it was the passion for the club that I wanted a key position and secondly I not only wanted a key position but to go with a team that will change the way ISBA performs and operates at Ross. Having made this clear to my fellow Desis, the difficult part was to convince them to be a part of this change management team. Anyways, thankfully we were able to gather a few good men (and a woman) in our team with I going for the president’s position.

Another good news for the community was to have Abhishek Gopalka and Sonal Singla as the presidents of Consulting Club and Finance Club respectively. With this team of MBA1, I am sure the next year will have a great time here. Good luck to the newcomers!

Chicago – the windy-city; Austin – the sunny side

One good thing about the whole recruiting process was that I got a lot of opportunities to travel with the firms. Call it bad luck or luck, the location of Ann Arbor is so isolated that we have to travel far for most of our recruiting activities. With a couple of second rounds scheduled in Chicago, I was fortunate enough to visit the always honking downtown, enjoy the skyline and even have some Indian delicacies at Devan Street. Having spent some considerable time in Ann Arbor and the only big city around being an old and sparse Detroit, it was a good break to get back some urban (in)sanity around.

If I liked Chicago for its rushing running pace, Austin gave me a welcome break from the Michigan or Illinois cold. After what may seem like an age, I was welcomed by warm Texan breeze. The sun was refreshingly hot and the shiny to almost blind me. Sixth street had its own flavor as I roamed around this university town in its full spring glory. The trips organized by Dell with-in their premises and outside were really amazing and I must also add the hospitality of the town was equally warm.
My only wish would have been a company in Texas from Michigan. Alas! Even with a lot of offers to fellow Rossians it seems I would not be having a lot of people from there. Also, with the temperatures going in above 100 ranges in the summers here, I am not sure how much of this I am going to enjoy once I am back here. Just keep reading here as the event unfold :)

MAP (Multi-disciplinary Action Project) – Hello India

Now before I start talking about MAP and the things related, let me talk a little more about MAP for people who are not from Michigan or haven’t applied here J

MAP happens in the second quarter of our winter semester in order to prepare students for the various aspect of real-business problem (remember Action Based Learning). It is the flagship program of Ross and of course you can find more about this at the MAP webpage but to me this is a great time to prepare yourself for the summer internship and gives you a great exposure to the various aspects of the business.

The process to pick-up MAP is also interesting. Students first go through the descriptions of over 100 projects. Having done that they give their top 10 choices to the MAP office. As iMAPs (International MAPs) are very much in demand every year there is an allocation issue with regards to iMAPs. So after all the students send in their choices, MAP office finally allocates the projects to various students depending upon the team structure and the individual capabilities.

I picked 6 of my 10 MAP bids in India. You can choose 7 iMAPs at the maximum and I chose Papa New Guinea as my seventh choice. No particular reason beside the desire to be back at home, so I chose the one with the longest time in India plus a travel opportunity to Delhi as my top choice. Until the results were announced, I was keeping my fingers crossed. Thankfully, I got my first choice at Johnson & Johnson Medical India and an opportunity to spend 5 weeks in India. The euphoria was further extended with the extended time in India (around 6 and a half weeks) and announcement of sub-teams with my team spending most of the time in the North-India, Delhi included!!! This certainly was the best news thus far for me in the month of Jan. What a relief to go back to India and relax a little in the warmth there. Mann I miss my country all the more now.

The longest month of my life

The bad part about IIT experience was that I never had to undergo a recruiting process as such. Applied to 3 firms and before I knew I got in one of those. Story ends… over here things were very different. January started on a good note and thankfully I managed to get in to a lot of close-lists. Surprisingly enough, not many people I thought networked well got in the final call but then they had a choice to bid… most of them did. Even I had to bid for 2 of the consulting firms here, but overall I was left with a lot to spare in the end.

With recruiting taking the fulltime focus, classes became increasingly boring and sadly I decided to miss them to gain that extra inch in the interviewing process. I am sure they chose the subjects too accordingly. The operations management was all about primary mathematics and managerial accounting, although an interesting course, was made to feel like to most boring classes to go to, specially on Monday 8 o’clock. Surprisingly enough, I didn’t find the elective on Legal Aspect of Entrepreneurship to be interesting either.

In addition to classes and coming back to an all-important recruiting, I lost nerves too once in a while. While I made it to second round of some very good consulting firms, I was never sure of myself in the second round and I think the lack of self-belief did cost me a great deal in the end. Also, all these trips to Chicago and overnight stays at various hotels made me think about consulting as fulltime career a great deal. The worst was at BCG Chicago, where I simply could not sleep the whole night and made a complete mockery of myself with the partner. So this guy was an Aussie and anyone following Indian cricket knows how much we hate the people from down under. Besides the point, I was asking some stupid questions on Mathematics Olympiad and likes… gosh I knew I am done there. Goodbye consulting! OK, at least for the summers L

What was even more interesting about the whole month was to see was the changing colors and behaviors of the fellow-classmates. A minute before sad and out fellow turned in to a near-celeb with just one phone call. Asking about the internship became a norm and even then people without an offer thought it to be offending at times! Good that I didn’t crack this way and had a nice time overall. Managed to get some good offers and decided on product management at Dell. Also, once I froze my choice there was no fishing for some more bucks for me. However, all said and done, some of feedbacks were really humiliating and I felt like giving back some harsh comments once in a while. Thankfully, I didn’t let these comments bog me … for example “Manish, you are probably the best profile, but we are looking for brand ambassadors for the summers” gosh I could not stop laughing over the poor guy… just cause I am not from a specific color or sex that they want to make ambassadors the fellow is making this up and expecting me to take it good humor I guess!!!
Anyways all said and done, it’s going to be Austin for the summers and I am really looking forward to it now.

The real celebration of the New Year

The real celebrations started with Raka visiting us in Ann Arbor on 28th Dec. Started the long party on 29th night, continued on 30th night, 31st morning and then in the night as well. With a couple of MBA1s preparing in this semester break for the coming recruiting-month, it was easy to get along with a few on the 31st night and we had some good time together. Raka also introduced me to the Glen named drinks and am I impressed with the choices… you bet!!! The smell, the color, and the taste… three things that distinct the great drink from others, if you leave the hangover part aside!!!

Had some long overnight parties and the hangover didn’t go until the school started again. With Amiya out of town in London, I was very much to myself for most of the time and spend much of that in preparing cover letters and running through the close lists. It was also pretty difficult to take on phone calls wishing you new year on 31st starting 5AM in the morning until 12 PM from different parts of the world… just another skewed problem with the globalization… and about those avid Orkut users, people get a life outside sending the damn messages to everyone in your friend list… you might just be offending people like me who are not really celebrating.
Good thing about this whole break was that I am an official driver now, much better than I had expected out of myself and I have continued to improve my squash skills. So far so good!

Sunny Christmas

I know it’s been long due and that I had not been regular off late, but then there are situations that demand time and resources and then there are situations that command time, energy, focus, resources… whatever it takes. Anyways, without beating around the bush, let me straight come to the postings and to start with we had a warm Christmas and a warmer new year in Ann Arbor!

I used to wonder how someone can think about weather so much so to start every conversation with that. Not until I came over here. Recalling my time in Berlin, I think we had some great time there as far as weather was concerned. German summers, with sun blazing, breeze blowing, and walking next to Spree were Almighty’s gift. No more so here at Ann Arbor. The snow has grown over and over and the atmosphere is gloomy to say the least… and it does impact you, your energies, even your thoughts. However, there was a ray of hope this winter as we were reminded of Aussie summers this Christmas and January 1st.

So what did I do then? Well I prepared my cover letters to be submitted during December-end and January-beginning. Also, did more and more case practices with other MBA1s searching for life in Ann Arbor. With the sun heating and healing in here through out later half of December, the plans to go for Skiing went down the slope! My long due visit to New York remained longer due now. Thought of going out on Christmas night but alas! Not a single shop was open the whole day (not even a café)! Thought of going for some shopping in the evening but met with the same fate. The plans to go to a Church were also remained mere plans… Hey by the way, I got my driver’s license done in the break and also got this 2000 Mitsubishi Gallant finally.