Emerging trends in finance and investing

This is what an MBA should teach - read, analyze and create reports. Not tacky presentations put up in a couple of hours.

Emerging Trends in Financing and Investing in India - A report created as part of the Corporate Finance course.

The Office of Dunder Mifflin

Right now I'm watching the Halloween episode of the award-winning comedy the Office and laughing my guts out. The Office is based on a similar British series of the same name. Even though I had heard of this unique and wacky sitcom (can one really call it a sitcom?) the Office, more than a year ago, I only started to watch it last year. And I must say that the Office series is brilliant. No wonder it has got so many awards. The show even has its own website here. The unique aspect about this is that the camera is hand held and the action seems all spontaneous. The actors at times look at and talk to the camera giving an indication of a third party being present.


Each of the characters in the Office have some quirk or the other and they are hilarious in their own right. Jim and Pam's awkward and secret (or not so secret) dalliance with each other. Dwight Schrute's paranoia, his constant butt-licking of the boss, and his one-upping of the other employees of Dunder Mifflin. The never-ending jokes by the boss on Phyllis (the fat woman) and pseudo-racist jokes on Stanley - the proverbial black guy in the office. And of course how can you forget the boss, Michael Scott played by Steve Carell. He amazingly plays the irritating boss who constantly tries to put the best side of him to the camera and how he supposedly cares for the employees. His attempts at modesty and self-effacing are hilarious, partly because that is what happens in real life too. Each episode Michael faces a different situation which he somehow manages to deal with. Another interesting aspect of work life depicted in this show is the relation between the management and the shop floor. Michael Scott unwaveringly tries to try out his motivation techniques on the workers in the warehouse who obviously don't care a shit about his attempts.

Let me finish watching this episode now. Did I mention that I have a Corporate Finance exam tomorrow? Oh well. Forget F.R.I.E.N.D.S.; go watch the Office, especially if you think that after an MBA, things will be all hunky dory in the office.

Challenges in entrepreneurship, anyone?

S T Coleridge said in his immortal poem, "Water water everywhere, nor any drop to drink."

I say, "Jargon jargon everywhere, not one in my head did sink."

SWOT of stubborn and flexible people

Let's assume that all the people in the world can be divided into two categories - flexible and stubborn. This division is on the basis of their ability or willingness to learn something other than their domain of knowledge. Now, the strength of the stubborn people is their expertise and confidence in their domain. However their weakness is that they are probably afraid of failing in the other domains. That is why they stick to their own field and possibly sometimes disparage the other fields.

Now if we take the flexible people, their strength is their ability and confidence to adapt to other domains. But their weakness is a possible lack of expertise in their own domain. That is partly the reason they readily accept to try out various other fields.

I guess each has something to learn from the other

Lack of self control and what I plan to do about it

Lack of self control is something which one faces some time or the other in life. For me, it is a continuous battle. Mostly I lose the fight, sometimes I manage to save my face. Be it in anything as simple as sleeping for one hour less or not having that extra cold drink or piece of pastry, I totally lack control. I shift into short term mode and rarely think of the negative long term effects which this would have on my body.

Its funny when you read about all good habits but you lack to follow them yourself and one day you wake up and see that you have this disease which you could have avoided all the time along by practicing a little bit of moderation. As I said for me, cure seems to be the easier alternative than prevention much to the consternation of the people who care. I make up some excuse or sometimes blatantly lie about what I did or what I failed to do to prevent such an occurrence. I blame the weather or my genes if I fall sick. But I know I'm lying and I know I'm suffering. I know that my self respect will increase only when I learn to say no to things, and start doing things which are beneficial to me in the long run. So here goes nothing.

To start with I'll concentrate on what I eat. No more stuffing (junk) food into my stomach mercilessly. I eat only when required. Let's push my limits. If nothing else, I'll learn one thing from Total Quality Management. From today I follow Toyota's 5 whys approach. Before stuffing anything in my mouth, I will ask myself 'why.' On one hand while I may not be able to wait to ask 5 questions but I will definitely ask myself one the necessity and requirement of anything I put in my mouth. There are many people who can validate whether I'm doing this diligently or not. I may not lost 10 kgs (which I need to) using this method but I'll at least set an example for myself on which to test other things as well.

In related news, I came across another example which proved that getting a 9.x CGPA doesn't get you commonsense free with it.