Two things I will never forget about MBA

No matter what I take away from my MBA degree there are two things that I will never ever forget. These are: DeBeers and Boston Chicken.
These two case studies have drained so much out of me, that I barely have enough energy to finish my other courses. Funnily, I do have some time to blog about them. I will describe in a little detail about both these cases.

First up, DeBeers.

We are using the DeBeers case in our Skills for Leadership class. What I literally take from these classes is that we are being taught how to think. Really, they teach us how to think. On the firth thought, it seems funny how can you make one think by teaching, but I have discovered this course is effective and makes you look at the same problem from different perspectives. So, the case is about how DeBeers (South African Diamond Company) is trying to battle the AIDS/HIV problem in South Africa. Primarily, DeBeers focus is to tackle the problem for its workers itself and if there are funds available, then extend the cure to the community too. This is a problem of sustainability for the company as they are trying to do this all by themselves with the South African government providing no help (note that this case dates back to 2003-2006 and the South African government does have various AIDS/HIV plans in place now). So that is the whole DeBeers case. We have to study the sustainability of their AIDS/HIV program in these lights and try to solve the problem using three different thinking procedures (analytical, critical and strategic).

Next up, Boston Chicken (aka Boston Market).

Now, the Boston Chicken case is being used for our accounting course. We have been given Boston Chicken's financial information from 1994 and we have to make a judgment on whether to invest in Boston Chicken or not. So the first thing to do is look how the company is doing currently. It was a surprise to find out that the company went under in 1998 and was bought by McDonalds in 1999. Now it becomes very difficult to do an analysis after knowing what will actually happen to the company in just 5 years after this investment has to be made. It is made even worse when the case does not provide you enough information to make the investment call. I wont divulge the answer to this case yet because it is still not due for another 2 days. But what I have experienced while doing this case is so influential that I have to mention about it. It really made my accounting concepts really clear and gave me an insight into the financial analysis part of accounting.

What Reading Week?

Reading week was one adventure that I will never forget. I don\' really mean that it was an adventure like climbing a mountain or going bungee jumping. By adventure I mean there were so many high and lows through out the week. When my reading week started (October 27) I was ecstatic that I will relax and catch up with everyone. You must be wondering why does the reading week start on a Tuesday. It's weird, but that's how it was. At least I had it, so no complains on that. So, getting back to how I dreamt what my reading week will be like and how I was proven wrong.

I had so much planned out for the week and had plans to meet up with so many people. Leave alone meeting those people, I didn't even get spare time to give them a call to tell them of my situation. I talked to a few when I remembered and others, I apologize here.

I started off my Monday by taking a break. I relaxed in the evening, given that I was finished with 2 courses for the semester. I couldn't be happier. So I rewarded myself by not doing anything Monday night. o Tuesday, I started working lightly on the three major items that were due the next week. I still took it easy. I thought it is a full week away, I should be able to cover it. By Tuesday evening, I had part of my ECON covered (for which I have a mid term the coming Tuesday). By Wednesday morning, it started to hit me how much I have to cover for the week. I started scrambling to complete as much as I could and as soon as I could. Two projects due on Monday, each worth almost 50% of my course mark. One of them (IS) I had it well covered because my group had started work on it long ago and we were in a pretty good situation to finish it off well. But the other course (OMIS/quants) I was in a very bad shape. I still left it to the end to work on it with my team mates.

Coming to Thursday morning, I was still working on the ECON, trying to cover as much as I could. I knew the weekend would be when I would get most of my OMIS done and I was supposed to do write ups for IS course as well. Friday and Saturday, I worked myself off to finish most of ECON. And finally by Saturday morning, I was able to start working on OMIS assignment and found out why the others had been freaking out about it. What they had been doing for the past one week, my group was supposed to finish in 3 days. I started doing everything for that assignment. I covered a major part of it and now I am in a situation that I should have it covered.

My other assignment for IS, I got it a little easy because I was chosen not to present. That is a load off, to not practice my part of the presentation. I will just handle the Q&A. I think I have a good enough grasp to tackle that.

And with that, I ended my reading week. Where did my 6 days go by? So much was planned and came down to a nothing. I was able to give myself mini breaks by hanging out with friends. I was physically there, but mentally I was still thinking about the load of work that I had pending.

Now, its 9 pm and I have a good grasp of the OMIS assignment. I should be finished with it in another couple of hours. And then I can move on to ECON to prepare for its mid term that is on Tuesday. Wish me luck!

P.S. On my photography news, I haven't been able to work on anything lately. But I am hoping to get my studio equipment tomorrow! I had planned for a photo shoot this week, but that obviously didn't happen. Hoping I can do that next weekend. In other news, my website (http://www.rohitnarula.com) is almost complete and should be up and running in the next week. Check it out and leave me some comments if you like :)

Till next time, take care all!!

Linking to LinkedIn

Now I have recently discovered the power of LinkedIn. It is nothing like the other social networking sites I have been on (namely Hi5, Orkut or Facebook). This is something very powerful and useful, if one knows how to use it efficiently. In the new age of Social Networking, LinkedIn has taken a huge leap forward. This is not to say that Facebook cannot be used as a tool for networking.It can be, but I find Facebook to be more for just socializing. I can find people, add them to my network, but that is as far as I can go on Facebook.

What LinkedIn allows me to do is to look for people and if I do not know them directly, it gives me the ability to get introduced by someone I already have on my network. I have even gone to the extent of searching for celebrity names and the search results came back with people who have worked or work for these people. Unlike, Facebook that is probably going to provide me with fake profiles and fan pages to link to (which doesn't really do me any good).

Similar to Facebook, LinkedIn also provides facility to post and search for jobs. I haven't tried looking for jobs on Facebook, mostly because I cannot trust the source of that posting. With LinkedIn, I can see the job posting and see if I know someone in my network, who knows the person posting the job. This way, I can have a personal link to the poster and might have an upper hand at this job. This advantage comes over any job I might apply over (using any other means) and just walking into the interview not knowing the person.

I can imagine this concept similar to the six degrees of separation. I wonder who all I can contact with this website ;)

For those who are already on LinkedIn, I would strongly suggest to use its full potential to your advantage. For those, who are not there, get on it! It is not a socializing website, it is a professional website, and I hope it is not spammed like the other social websites have been. LinkedIn is a growing website and hopefully continues to be so.

And like always, I like to talk about my photography (kind of my 2nd career), I entered in the Metro Global Photo Competition. There were three categories (Places, People and Changing Climate). Here are my entries to the competition: http://www.metrophotochallenge.com/ca/profiles/rohitnarula/gallery

And to conclude it all, here is latest work that I have completed.

Around Delhi and Lucknow

I finally got a chance to get out of the house and visit family around the country. My first stop was Delhi, well actually Gugraon. My grandfather from my mom's side aka my nana lives in Gugraon. Now Gurgaon used to be a small village with farms ususally dry because of the lack of rain. The only reason the village was known was for the Maruti Suzuki factory located there. And for the information of those who do not know about the Maruti Suzuki company, it held about 80% of the car market in till the late 90's. 

Now getting back to Gugraon. The place has seen an explosion of multinational companies since the early 2000's and has been growing ever since. Just recently has the government actually put an effort to improve the infrastructure of the town, beginning with the Delhi-Gurgaon highway and now the Delhi Metro connection. The town has seen an influx of people from all over the country looking for work. People ranging from high level executives to everyday labourers. The influx of population also saw an upcoming market for places for social activities. In no time Gugraon saw 4 to 5 shopping malls pop up, all within a range of 2-3 Km of each other. The race is still on to put up more and more malls (although the more recent projects have been put on hold). The largest mall present in Gugraon is the Ambience Mall (called Ambi Mall by the local population). The mall has 5 floors and each floor has a shopping area of 1 Km each. One can find any and every brand available in the world in that one mall. How those malls survive, I still wonder. Every mall literally has the same stores and it has become customary to have a movie theatre along with it. One good thing about all this is that it has provided employement to a huge portion of the population. 

From the nice and bright life of Gurgaon, we now move on to Lucknow. Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh. I tend to call it the political capital of India. If you want to learn how to "play" politics, this is where you get your training! Right now, the Chief Minister of UP (Uttar Pradesh) is Behen Kumari Mayawati (Sister Miss Mayawati). Now this woman has some guts. She rides on the back of the SC/ST laws passed in India and can literally go through anyone in the country. Recently she has been spending a lot of money on Lucknow, not on infrastructure, but just structures. She has even resorted to putting up her own statues. Who in the world does such a thing! All the hoardings in Lucknow are about praises for Mayawati. And there are not private posters/hoardings. These are put up by the government. Publicity or waste or public money? I think that woman has a complex over everyone and lives by the rules of the past rulers of the world, which is: Do whatever you can in your life to grab attention, good or bad, you will be remembered in your future generations. If there is one person I would choose to civilize in the whole world, it would be her. Other than the Mayawati propaganda, the city has not seen much development. Although, I could not go around the town much, what I saw was nothing different from what I saw in 2004. 

So that's my 2 cent for my trip to Delhi/Gurgaon and Lucknow. I will be back with more of "What I think" when I experience such a think which needs to be given a thought about. Till then, enjoy some more work of my photography. Try and guess which is for what city.

A customary welcome

Hello and welcome to my very first blog posting. I am Rohit Narula. I hail from a small town in India called Bhopal (most of the time known only for the 1984 incident). I did all my schooling from Campion School, an all boys school and considered to be one of the best in town. After finishing my high school, I went to Toronto for my undergrad. I started off my undergrad at Ryerson University as a Computer Engineer. Mid way through the program, I realised that electronics and control systems exicted me much more than programing. So I made the switch at the end of my 2nd year and finally graduated with Honours with an Electrical Engieering degree.

That was way back in 2006. Since then, I had been working at Royal Bank of Canada (now called RBC) as a Technical Analyst in their RBC Express department. This a little thing I call the irony of my life. I started off as a Computer Engineer because I loved programming. I went away from programming, but ended up working as a programmer after all. I started work on 20th June, 2006. I started off small with very low priority projects, but was elevated to medium priority projects within 6 months. That gave me a lot of exposure into the real world of programming. Online banking is such a wide field. Any little change that one sees on the webpage requires a huge change in the background. I started getting involved in bigger projects and eventually was given the responsibility of a high priority project in the beginning of 2008. The project was called Go Global, which would connect us to banking in Europe and Asia-Pacific. I never got to know if the project was a success or not. It is just sad how an analyst never gets to know about the success of a project, but they are immidiately called upon when there is a problem.

By the end of 2007, I seriously sarted thinking about my post graduate studies. I will still unsure about my Masters in Engineering or an MBA. I was very inerested in a masters in Biomedical Engineering. But then, I also thought it has been very long since I did anything remotely close to what is called engineering. I eventually decided on doing my MBA and started working on my GMAT. By middle of 2008, I had taken my GMAT with a good score and had already decided on the schools I want to target. By late 2008, I had chosen Schulich School of Business as my choice for MBA. In February 2009, I was offered a conditional offer by York and was confirmed by April 2009. I made my decision to quit my job at exactly 3 years of my job at RBC. It was not an easy decision to make. I was too used to the people around me and the comfortable life of a working person. But I knew I had to do something more than just a Bachelors. So I moved on and decided to take a vacation before starting school in Fall of 2009.

So I am on a vacation in India, visiting home and being pampered. I have taken up my photography a little seriously these days. This vacation has given me a lot of "me" time. I like to let my creativity work when I am alone. I think I have done one of my best photography work when I am alone. Being in India gives me so many places to capture shots that I will never see in a country like Canada. Do check out my work at: http://rnarula.deviantart.com/ If you like any of my work, please do leave a feedback. I have attached a sample of one of my most recent work.

Now before I start blogging on what I think, do let me know what YOU think of this customary welcome and introduction.