the entrepreneurial rhythm

early morning 815 am class on entrepreneurship concludes with this song.. interesting enough to post it here for memory and for referencing it to multiple situations in life.

And now, the end is here

And so I face the final curtain

My friend, I'll say it clear

I'll state my case, of which I'm certain

I've lived a life that's full

I traveled each and ev'ry highway

And more, much more than this, I did it my way

Regrets, I've had a few

But then again, too few to mention

I did what I had to do and saw it through without exemption

I planned each charted course, each careful step along the byway

And more, much more than this, I did it my way

Yes, there were times, I'm sure you knew

When I bit off more than I could chew

But through it all, when there was doubt

I ate it up and spit it out

I faced it all and I stood tall and did it my way

I've loved, I've laughed and cried

I've had my fill, my share of losing

And now, as tears subside, I find it all so amusing

To think I did all that

And may I say, not in a shy way,

"Oh, no, oh, no, not me, I did it my way"

For what is a man, what has he got?

If not himself, then he has naught

To say the things he truly feels and not the words of one who kneels

The record shows I took the blows and did it my way!

Yes, it was my way

- Frank Sinatra

phoneless

is like being on vacation. in fact it is the new vacation. i was phoneless for about ten days after a streak of crazy running around months and i felt.. free...

being busy is always a rant we students have here. i have to admit its a matter of having a lot of things to do, of treating fun also like serious commitment (which makes it better) and of procrastinating. i wont go too much into the details, but i was managing 100 emails a day on top of classes, assignments and meetings and even kept a 50% attendance at BOW t not make it look like the DGDW team was dying of work pressure. personal side, i have my pillars - my parents, brothers and close friends and it kept me going. looking back, i will definitely say i enjoyed every moment of it and given a chance will do it all over again.

but this period also made me a blackberry addict. i was always checking it, having the unread mail sign on the main screen made me fidgety. most of my communication happened on mails and blackberry messenger parallel to other things ranging from sitting in classes to walking back home. and it was essential because it helped me keep up with it all because being fast in my responses was critical here. one day i left my phone at home, and despite logging in from school from time to time on that day, i didnt have access to emails from 1530 to 1730. i missed three appointments and two tasks could not be completed because i hadnt approved. and because it was a friday, it got stuck till monday. on the two days of the conference in fact, i was at three places at the same time all thanks to the blackberry!

and then on the second day after the last speech, i went to stage to close the conference and handed my phone to my teammate ana - just to make sure i dont lose it - and then never saw it again. nakis (nilli's sister) comment will never leave me - it was divine intervention, was too much to be just a coincidence! you two girls are not supposed to be using one anymore... i literally took that as my reality for the next ten days. plus my housemate's was left behind in skiese the weekend before, so he was using my laptop while i was in the conference and recovering after. so basically i had no phone, no emails, no messages, no connection to the virtual world, except for real people around in school. and i felt so much lighter and freer. the next weekend was multiculti - where i had both new highs and lows but also begin to lay the tracks to put my life into new gear for the journey ahead. managed to clear up pending confusions and created new one.. but we'll come to that later.

the december india trip was a bb-less time too first because of international roaming and then because my bb threw a fit and wouldnt want to start unless it came back to barcelona. but at that time i was officially on vacation, and travelling around was a good enough reason to be less communicative. before that the summer vacation was phoneless and this time purely because of international roaming and because i couldnt get a local sim on a locked bb. and then let me also admit about the time when i lost my one-month old nokia in pune and only gathered the courage to get another one 6 months later. and of course how can i forget my phoneless adventure in third year engg when i lost a borrowed phone.. yeah its been a whole range there :)

but vacation is a break and can never be a constant state of existence. should not be. i have to also say that after recovering from the multiculti party i did go and get a rented phone. that was the job search week and with everybody outside school i realised the power of virtual presence and connectivity. there is only so much that you can bank on with physical presence these days.. the mind and heart stay connected but thoughts need to transmit too.

the cat story

like most other stories in my life, this one began on a whim too. call it instinct, or stupidity, but i promised myself i would get a dog if i got a job. and then it became an adventure. i had never had a pet really, well excepting the fish in pune, which was colourful enough to compensate for completely ignoring ad not talking to me at all times. so i started researching in full sincerity, how much time investment is required, what are my constraints, what are its demands etc etc. i found out that it was indeed as difficult as having a child to have a pet dog. and it does not clean itself, which means i would have to handle shit. literally. that was the first deterrant.

then i got to know about my friend ana's cat. it is clean, independent, and affectionate. 2 of my housemates have had cats as pets in the past and they absolutely adored the idea. so the training began - tips and tricks, food and habits, names (i had already picked chiringuito), buying cat litter and food, rescheduling social events at home so that in future a cat might not get too disturbed, identifying list of shelters to pick the animal from, getting my landlady's approval, making trips to the shelter to pick one up and then... the shock of it all. the trip to the shelter itself took place after ample delay - months of procrastinating and planning, trying to find the ideal muhurt. i even fought the idea that getting a cat with 2 months of barcelona left, a possible 2 months in kabul and then later life in london will be hard on the cat. i can deal with change, and so can my cat, right? (wrong!! but i was to realise that soon enough before doing any damage) i picked a cat on a website, but at the shelter i found it was sick. another one was friendly enough, but that the day the director was not in to do the adoption formalities. next week i had to ditch sara at calcotada to go to the shelter with a bad to finally get the cat, but couldnt find the one we liked the previous time. further this time, i liked three cats one after another and each had a problem. i like to call it the problem of the smelly cat, wild cat and sick cat. the first one had shit all over its rear, the second one didnt like human beings and the third one would have to be put under medical observation for two weeks before it could be adopted because it had parasites in its intestines. i gave up the idea. no getting a cat in barcelona before the end of the mba. maybe i will get one when i go to london. maybe not, who knows who i will live with, where i will live, and if i will find anyone to guide me on living with pets like my present housemates. que sera sera.

maybe after all i am a dog person then. maybe i am not a pet person at all. maybe i am just solving the wrong problem. i was probably fantasizing about having a dog which would be my very own attention and affection machine. yeah right it at the core of it, it really is that lame. and then when i realised a dog will need affection than i will probably be able to give it, i switched to cats. coz cats can take care of themselves, while i get used to having pets, but maybe that just means they aloof. which then defeats the first purpose. phew! what a dilemma!

affection is not to be found outside, and cannot be planned. you have to first be the one who can give limitless affection and then it will just automatically bounce back at you. you have to wait for it, and realise that it could all be a mistake but even that in the end will leave you with a learning, with a happy memory and a lesson to keep. do i really want to be with someone? have i faced myself yet? do i understand what it means to be single and then acknowledge being attached again? it is a task to let yourself go enough to get attached and one can only deal with that if one doesnt have expectations. if you are attached and you have expectations basically you are screwed.

at this point to end on a positive note, i would like to quote a couple of dialogues from a movie i watched recently. (yes it is a stupid romantic movie) "losing your mind is not a luxury for the middle class..." and "if we are all alone, then we're all together in that too..."

P. S. I Love you

just like that

the mba changed my life.

this theme might have appeared several times before and will continue to appear in the future also. with less than a month left for the mba program to be finished, i am now gearing up into nostalgia mode. never again can i be the person that i used to be two years ago. mba was a dream i had been chasing for a while and had always heard people say - those were the best two years of my life, - those 2 years changed my life. and i would say, yeah yeah, i know, big deal. but i didnt know. its only now that i do. cant even begin to start counting all that i have learnt. can almost say it sounds cheesy - but wait a minute. even the meaning of cheesy i only figured out after coming here.

from the more day to day things of living in a different country like the world of fork & knives, differentiating between types of glasses for drinks, giving up wearing open footwear so that i could stay warm, finding 18C temperature pleasant and 32C hot, enjoying the simple flavour of pan con tomate, getting used to jamon in the supermarket, seeing more cars than people on the streets, being discreetly polite with strangers, all of this and more trying to blend in.

then the journey began. courses like abp, marketing, accounting in the first term to entrepreneurship, geopolitics and economics in the final term, it has been an eye opening experience to see the world in a new light. what i will miss most is the discussions with fellow students and just observing your own thoughts to put it into words - because the way you think is indeed different and is indeed valuable. even random discussion such as about the japan earthquake can turn into advanced analyses and opinions. i would sometimes read a case only for the general awareness about that company - apple, ducati, walmart, you name it and we have assessed it to some extent or the other. something tells me the number of cases we do in 2 years is around 700..

and then the perspectives it brings. why did you join the army? why did you leave it? why did you go to brazil for your undergrad? how did you learn so many languages? where all have you travelled? just by asking people about who they are i got to know so much more about the world. for my parents and friends back home, the world is still us and uk. for me it is much more, it is not shameful to have an accented english, to make mistakes, and to forget words, to not be able to understand english songs and movie dialogues.. it is just different and hence completely acceptable. and as a result your expectations will always be so low - because what you are expecting could be wrong.. to put it in a better way, it could be just different and its nobody's fault or responsibility. almost as simple a matter as you like red and i like white. who is right or wrong then?

and i realised the importance of maturity. i dont say this because i am arrogant, but i am grateful for my upbringing and for people who have influenced that i have the level of maturity that i do. i am not my favourtire person, but now i am definitely i know the most about. with my weaknesses and with my abilities and with being able to clearly state what is in my mind. there is still a level of hesitation, the need for framing it all in a politically correct way. but then now i have also trained myself to call spade a spade and stop carrying the load of disenchantment when there is not recourse. to go out and take risks. explore, fall down get hurt and try again. like it felt on the first day on the ski slope. when i would go down, i couldnt control the speed or my direction and i would go faster than i wanted to. and of course i would fall. sara meanwhile, who had started with me, would cross my fallen self in a few minutes shaking her head. i would eventually get up, zoom and down and see her shake her head as she would cross me again.. the next day, i didnt fall, but i have realised that i have to accept that speeding, falling, getting hurt and then learning lesson - that is how i live my life. and the mba has taught me to not be afraid of making mistakes, because sometimes these mistakes turn out to be the right things in hindsight.

when i did my personality assessment, i found out what i already knew that i was risk averse. but i also found out that i was more scared of people's judgement of me and hence determined a lot of my actions based on what people would think rather than what i really wanted to do. in the past i can think of the iim incident when i didnt think like this.. but maybe somewhere down the line, i lost that.. and life brought me all the way here to figure it out again. i tried it and believe me it worked like a charm. you do what you feel is right. if people care enough you will find out, but mostly they dont care as much as you fear they would.. and the biggest lesson i have learnt is about relationships. they are not perfect, if they seem to be then you rather put them to test and believe in the perfection if they succeed that test. i guess i needed this test and figured out that the reality was different from my perfect story. and similarly in creating a new story no one can plan it either. you have to fall, get hurt and learn. the reward is worth all the trouble and the trouble you take will definitely have its reward too. trust your instincts, keep your eyes open and take the plunge. you will at least enjoy the weightlessness if nothing else.

and the mantra that took me through all the stress - its ok its ok its ok :D

the economics of life

ever stopped and looked around you wearing the glasses of an economist? i have tried it, after taking the third economics course in these last terms. i didn't have a background in economics, but i absolutely devoured the classes that my grandfatherly professors conducted. (even though i was never really sincere with my readings.) but anyhow, here are some key terminologies to start with:

growth matters - its all about positive sum game. living conditions around the world are improving. there has been tremendous growth and innovation based expansion and its fascinating to see such changes even in our own short lives so far. thinking of an example, the first thing that comes to my mind is internet and mobile is a close second. what seemed efficient then, can be done so much more efficiently now! the impact has been top-down, the learning has been transmitted through exclusive exposures percolating down generations, and from experiences of growing up to adults surrounded by these advances. we can debate endlessly about the cons also, but i have come to believe that its not all a trade-off, the impact has been far more positive than negative and that is why these advancements continue. those that are more negative, in fact become obsolete and very quickly too. the current hot debate is about measuring progress through happiness rather than gdp growth. that happiness of others makes us happy too and it has to be a collaborative environment rather competitive one - and this to me is evolution too. once we can stop worrying about meeting basic needs we need to meet higher needs and the first step is to be able to measure that.

comparative advantage - as i said above the evolving trend is about collaboration. but then there is the undeniable truth that everyone is not equal. capitalism does work on the principle of survival of the fittest, but the uncompetitive segment has yet not been eliminated. and the competitive segment has a certain air about it, almost like chauvinism. who is more productive vs who is expected to be more productive by society. if you look at the north and south of spain, you see the difference in productivity. catalunia, madrid and basque country are the industrial hubs while andalucians drink sangria and dance flamenco. same principle can be extended to other european countries and even the north and the south countries in europe and in the general the northern and the southern hemisphere. the logic is simple, when you have a snow-covered half of the year, you work double in the sunny half to provide for the harsh times. wage becomes a defining element here and the results of the hard work and high wages show. this gradually leads to a classification of labour, where the technologically more sophisticated work gets concentrated in the north, while the more labour intensive work gets relegated to the south. whereas those who have sun the whole time, work and make merry and to make it sound nicer have an active social life too and know how to have fun. so the north is more productive - maybe the ego is justified then. even the paternalisitic behaviour of developed world telling the developing what they should do.

incentivising behaviour - just as an example continuing from the above point, the stark difference in living conditions incentivises people of "higher productivity" to move to the north. and with the same logic, cheap labour from south also moves to the north, thus still keeping some labour intensive activity in the north. now lets look at another example - traffic in India. people are incentivised to break lane rules, jay-walk and jump lights, because it helps them beat the system, even if at the cost of some others. the concept of competition is so strong in the absence of sufficient resources, that the rabbit who is fast will win - because he is conscious that he cannot take a nap anywhere. in some ways i can still say that sheer size of the population is a hindrance, but more than that the attitude is the problem. the attitude of crab mentality - you can leave crabs in an open basket and they will not let each other escape - they will spend their time pulling down any crab who might try to climb out of the basket. and this can then be extended to everything - looking for shortcuts is the norm and this is incentivsed first because the rewards of following rules are not lucrative enough and also because the punishment of not following the rule is not harsh enough. again going back to the size of the population - how many resources does a country need to devote to punish the wrong-doer?

it all comes down to discipline then - to focus resources on innovation, to work hard for progress and to follow rules for the bigger good of the world. think of a sector and this will apply - movies, streets, schools, businesses, sports, politics. and on a personal note, that is what my religion teaches me too. religion translates to dharma in hindi which then translates to discipline also.