Packing, Printing, Preparing :-)

Well, tomorrow I have a trip planned, so today, most of the day was spent in printing out the tickets, doing the necessary shopping, preparing the travel bag, packing the things I need including my Camera of course and yes eating and sleeping :-)

Sometimes I think, whether I should really be writing these 2-3 liners everyday anymore, considering that all my classes are done and I will go back to school only in about a weeks time for final exam related work, but then, I think every day spent in Madrid, is in itself bringing new things for me, so why not :-)

A walk down the memory lane

While I did some minor job browsing and a couple of cases, spent most of the day reading past blog posts I have written here and getting nostalgic.

Past one year went by so fast, and now, this last month in which I chose no classes, has been so very slow in its pace.
Also went to the Circulo de Bellas Artes rooftop and spent a couple of evening hours, watching the skyline of this beautiful city Madrid, trying to figure out different places from the buildings seen, and trying to run down the memory lane about those areas.
While my classes were done on 9th April itself, as many people are finishing theirs today and tomorrow, there is a race on facebook among those who want to update their status of MBA last class done, and that race is making me drive through these memories even more !!

Hope to get back in action with some activity or other real soon :)

Chores

It has been a while that I had cleaned around my house, and so today was the day spent for doing all the chores from cleaning to shopping to laundry.

And also, now that I have caught up with the most recent episode of the Game of a Thrones, I finally had no reason to NOT do some cases :)

Today passed by really quick as there was some or other thing coming up one after other and I was busy doing many different things and yes, I did wish happy birthday to one of my childhood friends, and welcomed a couple of tourists to Madrid today :-)

Shooting Guapas :)

Today, I had booked my time for outdoor photoshoot of models, yes models showcasing the besabijou jewellery. So, from 11 AM in the morning until 4:30 PM, I was busy taking pictures of three beautiful girls or Guapas as they say in Madrid. And then spent the remaining day with my IE family, enjoying a pizza, some sangria, the amazing Spider-Man and some chitchat.

A good Sunday :)

Case Solving Prep

Spent the day browsing the case study prep material and watching season three of the game of thrones. Yepp, by the end of tonight, I will be catching up with the latest episode that was aired :)

I mean if all that there is to do is case prep and job applications, there is plenty of time for things like television series. I like the pace of this all :)

Another round of the job hunt

All those job hunting sites, they take a couple of days to have a fresh lot of jobs published. So, last couple of days, I had to just sit back, as most of the jobs available were already seen by me.

Today, I found a couple of new ones though, and did the necessary applications. Also practiced some cases and created profiles in a couple of places.

All in all, a day well spent. Now planning to watch the game of thrones in the night :)

The Game of Thrones

I have to say that in these past few years, moving around from one place to another, with different local languages, my habit of watching TV series has been long lost. Add to it, there is enough entertainment and engagement online these days from social networks to the movie streamings.

But then, there are a few series that I am hearing about so many times, that I finally gave in and decided to watch at least one of them - the Game of Thrones. One of my friends had DVDs of season one and two, so borrowed them from her, and starting watching the series at around 11am. I must say the series is addictive, as by the time, I went out for a Korean dinner at 8:30 pm, I hardly moved away from my PC and till then had already watched all of season one and first two episodes of season two.

After returning from a good Korean dinner at restaurant Maru, I am already too exhausted to continue with the series, so time to publish the post of the day and sleep :)

Sit-in .. And that changes the last class

Well, my Nigerian friends were going to make a presentation about Nigeria in their Africa, Poverty and Development class. They had been talking about it so many times, that I got tempted to attend this one class and be an audience to their presentation.

So, today at 4 pm, I went to the classroom, asked Gayle if I can sit-in in this one class, even though I have not taken her class as an elective and she said yes.

And this is how, today between 4 pm to 7 pm, I attended the Africa class, and this class is now officially the last class I took in IE, instead of the Corporate Governance class that I attended long back on the 9th of April.

Enjoyed being a spectator in a class and being a part of MBA learning yet another time :)

Back to School

Well, this morning as I was walking towards MM31, it felt a little different - As if I am doing this after a real long time, although its been only 10 days of vacation in between.

Spent the whole day in launch pad, browsing job postings, preparing job applications, solving a couple of cases, all-in-all the day has been spent well - as per the plan, so I can relax and have a peaceful sleep tonight :-D

Indian Food Fiesta :-)

Today being the last day of our Easter vacation, we all got together to have a good time, at my place. Me and Hitesh cooked a few of varieties of Chicken recipes and it was a day spent having loads of fun. Also went to a long walk around central Madrid in the evening and enjoyed the great Madrid weather.

Tomorrow the school re-opens and I need to get my act together and start applying for jobs again. Going to bed early tonight to start fresh tomorrow :-)

Happy Easter :-)

Well, a friend of mine Jeanine, said this morning, considering that I have attended all the processions that take place in the Easter week anyways, it would be a good idea for me to also attend the Easter Mass, to know the entire set of rituals and ceremonies that take place for Easter. So it was that today I went with her to the 'Our lady of Mercy' church in Madrid - the only church with English-speaking services and attended the Easter day Mass.

Another first, and it was a good experience - the whole atmosphere was full with hope, happiness and delight and the vibe was positive.

Spent the rest of today partying at her place with couple of other friends - the Easter celebration, if you want to call it :-D

Anyways, to all my readers out there, Happy Easter :-)

El Escorial and the Valley of the Fallen

Spent the day today in a beautiful small town of El Escorial and its surroundings. This place is famous for its Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo, which was both a palace and a monastery in its early days - and is now a collection of museums and a monastery. The collection of paintings and tapestries in this place is too good - but more than all of this, what I enjoyed was the time I spent outside, in a small restaurant terraza as they call it here - there was a peaceful calmness in the atmosphere, a couple singing and playing soft music on the street, good Sangria and some finger food to go along, and we didn't realize how two hours passed by.
Next up was the valley of the fallen - another great scenic marvel - a giant cross constructed here on top of the hill can be seen from as far as 30 miles [in fact, I have seen it before while going to Toledo] and the monument constructed here is a marvel for its architecture, its design and the way it has been created in a tunnel of the hill.

Returned to Madrid around 8 PM, uploaded the pictures in FB and will go to sleep now in some time :-) A good day today :-)

Viernes Santo

These days are so much dominated by the fact that it is the Easter Holiday going on, that I cannot help myself write names of the same days here in the subject line. I mean all that I did today was to watch some movies, browse the internet, check facebook and then attend one of today's processions :-)
Not like I am complaining, but I can see that pretty soon, all this leisurely vacation time will need to be covered for, in kind :-)

More of the Processions

The highlight of today - went to the Plaza Mayor neighborhood for watching a couple of yearly Easter week processions, with a group of friends and ended up having a good time until past mid-night. Took some great pictures to add to the collection that I have started on Sunday. All of them are in my Facebook :-)

Vacation mood .. Yaawn !!

It's hard to get rid of the vacation mood when you know that there is no work to be done for next 5 days. Today, I fell prey to this mood completely. Spent the day watching movies on Youtube, even the ones that I had prevented to watch for last 2-3 years, just because I had so much time today. Also read a book about MBA of today. The only time I did something was when I cooked some pasta for lunch today :-)
Happy Holidays everyone :-)

Hanuman Jayanti Wishes to all

back home, in our courtyard, we have a small temple of lord Hanuman and today, we are celebrating 25th year of Hanuman Jayanti in this temple - Hanuman Jayanti is the birthday of this Hindu god - I was on fast since yesterday like every year, and after completing some tasks in one of the government offices here, had a sumptuous Indian lunch in late afternoon.

By the way, no matter how much fun people make of the speed of work in offices here and the ahora and the siesta phrases used here, my personal experience today was too good. I needed some document and despite me not fluent in Spanish, I got all the help, right in time, to get this document. In fact, while I was speaking in English, and they were speaking in Spanish, people were friendly enough to complete all the procedures based on all the paperwork I provided, and give me the documents in two days. I have become a fan of the government system here - yes, it is not as automated as in Singapore, and not equally customer-friendly as in Tokyo, but it is something - it is in a state where Indian red tape of government offices can target themselves to be, in a few years time.

Anyways, went to MM13 this afternoon to scan these documents, met some familiar faces there, and have made a half day trip plan for tomorrow. Lets see how it goes !!

For today, Hanuman Jayanti wishes to all. May lord Hanuman bless everyone with strength, courage and happiness in life :-)

Monday without an Alarm

Just yesterday I read a post on my facebook news feed - Blessed are the days when we sleep knowing there is no alarm to wake us up :-)
And the blessing effects gets doubled if this day is Monday :-)

Anyways, lazy day spent at home, doing nothing but movie surfing for most of the day, and taking siestas :-)

MM31 will be closed for the whole week starting today - MM4 will be open for some time though - but then it is a little far away for me than MM31, so less incentive to walk up to MM4 everyday, just to be in the school. Let's see how the week unfolds :-)

Domingo de Ramos

Domingo de Ramos or Palm Sunday - that is the day of the Easter week or the Semana Santa today and there was a historic procession around Opera that I had planned to go for.

Started in the afternoon, had a few stops on the way in 100 Montaditos, and after reaching the place of procession, took a lot of pictures. This time around as I am in Madrid for the entire Semana Santa, plan is to see all the processions that go around and capture the moments of Easter week here in Madrid.

Spent the night till late editing pictures on the laptop, while watching Hindi movies after a long time, on the iPad.

Not really a day related to IE by any way - but then, I am here in Madrid, courtesy of IE ain't it? :-)

setup time

What do you do when you know that you are just done with a major assignment? you start looking for a new one - or if you have already got one, you start working on it - but then, in between these two, just like any production line, you need to have what we call in operations management as a "setup time" - to get rid of things that are no longer relevant, to bring in things that you will need for the next job and to align for the next level of work.

That is exactly what I spent my day today in doing - from the stuff in my room, kitchen and living room, to the material on my computer, to my thought process, it was a setup time for all - to eventually transform from the MBA learning mode to the next level - for an assignment that I have in mind, and that I will be working on in these few days, and for post-MBA job search.

And while I woke up only at noon, by the time I was done with all of this, it was already 8:30 PM. A busy day, when I didn't even realize how time went by :-)

Just did it !!

That report I was writing, finally got submitted at 4 AM this morning. And because I was all awake trying to review it and to make sure that the last submission that I make has no issues, once I was done and I tried to sleep,  couldn't - not until it was around 5:30 AM.

And then, as a friend and his family were leaving Madrid for good, I woke up again at 8:30 AM, got ready and went to see them off. After all the packing and re-packing and stuff, they finally took off in their car at 2 PM.

By then, I was completely exhausted - got some take-away food and came home to have a siesta - a real long one. When I woke up again at 8 PM, I started thinking of what to do and suddenly the feeling sank in - I am done with my MBA - I mean yes, there is this final presentation on a case in May, but apart from that, all the classes, all the submissions, all the learning, it is all done. Couldn't help myself from saying - Just did it :-)

Wrapping it all up ..

Spent most of the day today helping a friend wrap up his belongings in the house as he is leaving Madrid with his family tomorrow.

Spent the evening in a siesta and planning to sit for whatever time it takes, to wrap up the corporate governance report. I have been dragging it for too long, but considering that the deadline is tomorrow, there is no more of such luxury to sit on it available to me anymore anyways.

Need to also prepare for the fellowship meeting tomorrow. Let's see how the night unfolds :)

the Future ..

last class of Corporate Governance .. last class of the term five .. last class of the International MBA .. mixed feelings and an eye towards the future. It was only appropriate that today's class of Corporate Governance was all about the Future of Corporate Governance and during the class Prof Nieves also showed us a video where a group of MBA students go to a Jail for white collar criminals and listen to people who have been sentenced to prison for committing corporate crimes.
No matter what you do, do not fall for shortcuts and fraudulent practices, was the overall message that came out. And then, Prof Nieves also showed us a general survey in US about how much people trust various professionals and Business Executives came in way below ranks, lower than many others and only slightly higher than the members of the congress. To change this image is the challenge for future generation of executives and this challenge could not have been posed at any other time than today - the day of my last class here at MBA :-)

Anyways, still working on that report for Corporate Governance class and spent rest of the day working on it. Its not that the report is too complex, its just the last one I will write, so no matter how many times I come back to it, every time, I want to add some more to it, make it a little better and in this rush, I am spending more time than I had ever expected to write this one.

After this report is done though, I will have no excuse to not give my hundred percent in job hunt - so, lets see what the coming days bring.

Future awaits :-)

Before it all ends ..

Yes, before it all ends, lets write this one final report, lets have this one lunch together, lets all meet one mroe time and have a good time together.

Sounds poetic ain't it? Well, that was kind of theme for my day today - I had invited Hitesh and his family for a lunch at my place - cooked some Pav Bhaji, Chicken Tikka and Chhole and had a good time.
By the way, an article about start-up of Hitesh was published recently in the Businessbecause.com website.
Here is the link for it:
http://www.businessbecause.com/news/mba-entrepreneurs/2495/entrepreneurs-tech-startup-shines-stockholm

After a long siesta that the good Indian lunch fully deserved, came back to school to finish the corporate finance final report, which has been dragging for a couple of days now. Plan is again to finish it by end of the day - lets see how things unfold :-)

And yes, tomorrow is the day when the Corporate Governance Class will also wrap up - looking forward to the finale :-)

Operating Leases are back with a bang !!

Well, today's Corporate Governance case was about Restoring Trust at WorldCom - So, apart form the Richard Breeden's recommendation report and its various aspects, Prof Nieves also discussed what the accounting scandal was all about - and then the topic of leases came up.

The question that the discussion eventually landed was : when even today many large corporations put their long term leases as operating leases and this is not just airline operators, but also banks and other firms alike, are we still providing loopholes for scandals to occur?

Of course, Prof Nieves was kind enough to discuss the differences between capital leases and operating leases with the class and remind us of what we had seen previously in term one class of financial accounting, but at the same time she also discussed the current state of regulations in this regards, and what the authorities are working on currently to address the situation. The Right-to_use clause among other things was mentioned.

And then, during the last session of the Real Estate Investment class today, where Prof Cristina discussed about various financing options for Real Estate Projects, this same topic of operating leases again came up. This time, to discuss advantages of the Sale-and-Lease-back method of financing, that many firms use. In fact, we ended up discussing the benefits of operating leases in this regards :-)

Two different perspectives with respect to two different arms of a corporation, by two different stakeholders - yet the central issue was the same today - operating leases :-)

Still working on the Corporate Governance final report, and I may take a day more to make it submission worthy - nevertheless, a good start of the week, I must say :-)

The Season of Farewells begins ..

Today, I woke up late, thanks to the late night yesterday, and by the time I got ready, I realized that I need to email the final exam, feedback and assignment to Dr Jaime Alonso for the International Business Strategy and Modeling class.
So, after reviewing and updating a little all the documents one last time, I sent out the emails, got ready and headed towards Plaza Callo. Today, me and a few friends had planned a lunch with Hitesh and his family, as they are leaving for good in four days.
Spent a good four hours at the Gourmet Roof-top Food Court of El Corte Ingles at Callao and had fun chit-chatting and treating ourselves with the gourmet experience.
One thing that was most discussed was the plan everybody has after graduation, along with other aspects from jobs to future commitments, etc
All in all, the season of farewells has already begun and I know there will be more of such lunches and dinners going forward with a lot more people, as everyone winds up at their own pace from Madrid.
And yes, people have actually started to like it here, no matter what their view was when the school begun last year :-)

Lets do this !!

One essay, one final report of five pages, one case to read, and one submission of final exam which is now almost done writing - that was the amount of work outstanding for me this morning and I came to school with an agenda to complete it all.

One final lap, one long day and night, and I had a feeling, that I can finish it all - so by end of the day, now I stand to yet finish one report of 5 pages and one case reading - need to keep working. It's time to say to myself "Let's do this" :-)

The IE Doctorial Consortium 2014

Today, I had no classes and so I had decided to join Prof Alvaro and Manan in the IE Doctorial Consortium, where Manan presented our research work [as part of my fellowship] to the panel we were included in.
And this panel was about Risk Management. What I liked the most about this panel was that even though all four research works, three from IE and one from Universidad Carlos III were based on the theme of Risk management, they were all so different and unique with respect to each other. The first one was in field of Risk Hedging in Commodities Market using Financial and Operational metrics, the second one was ours i.e. risk management of crowd funding platforms using CORAS methodology, the third one was Risk management for near-miss events, and was based on behavioral and decision theory research and the last one was CEO-risk taking analysis for family firms.

I think you got the vibe by now. It was an exciting two hours, with each topic being presented for twenty minutes followed by a QnA for 10 minutes. Got some good feedback and some guidance for future work during our presentation and I am happy about it - this feedback is going to help us improve.

Although the event was all day long, instead of sitting in more presentations and discussions, I headed back to MM31 to complete the final essays and assignments that I have for various classes. Got really tired at around 10:30 - luckily, I had picked up some food from the newly opened Lunch&Dinner outlet across the street - so after going home, all that I had to do microwave the food and eat it before writing this post and falling asleep :-)

T minus fifty :-)

Well, its that day of the year, when we had our opening ceremony last year. A lot of exciting memories of the day, and before I could finish reflecting on the days that are past, it struck me that today is in fact the 366th day of the IMBA, which leaves 50 days now before gradaution.

Mixed emotions about the countdown and too many thoughts cropping up in my mind - from learning that I had in my MBA to the job hunt progress that I need to make and from life here in Madrid to thought about returning to the real world - yes, that's the real world which is out there - this here, being back to school/college after 9 years of work has been more of a dream run - too fast, too elusive, too glamorous and a so much fun than the real world.

Anyways, I had to take care of a few errands in the morning and by the time I returned, it was already afternoon. So spent the afternoon working on my fellowship project - we are now making a good progress in terms of generalizing our findings, our framework adaptation to different platforms, and use of CORAS methodology in general. This was followed by a meeting for discussing our progress.

Prof Alvaro, Manan and myself -  we also spent some time towards discussing the way ahead for our research. It was a good meeting today in terms of coverage we had about various topics.

Came back home for a siesta, as last night was a long one, and then after a late siesta of around 2 hours, I am here, writing this post, and planning to complete the International Business Strategy and Modeling related work I have after this post is published. Another long night in front of me, yet I am all charged up thanks to the siesta I just had :-)

Anniversary celebration by passing on the baton :)

Today I complete a year here at IE - 365 days of MBA journey and another happy coincidence is that today I went along with Hillary to the new April intake for sharing our experience so far. A presentation on IE, Madrid, Spain and then a QnA with lots of queries, questions and comments.

It was an enjoyable experience and fun to knee all the new faces that have arrived here with all the enthusiasm and dreams of a better future ahead.

As for the rest of the day, there was a double session on Corporate Governance today, where-in Prof. Nieves discussed some executive compensation practices with us. The second session was dedicated to the crisis of 2008 and we discussed whether the compensation that executives got at that time was really appropriate. Highlight of the day was a short video that Nievas showed us about the Britsh comedian duo Bird and Fortune, who described th whole situation in a comical and sarcastic way - making people understand the issues and make them laugh at the same time.

Will spend some time in the evening for working on Real Estate investments final submission and then will have a good night's sleep :)

No hay clase perro mucho trabajo

Well, that is about the level of Spanish I can speak and understand - the basics of it, so don't get your hopes too hig :-)

Yes, I didn't have any class today, but then the deadlines of various group works, final assignments and take home exams are approaching closer and so, the entire day was spent doing a lot of work, for a lot of classes; not to mention, I also went through the presentation that I have prepared for tomorrow. Yes, the New April started today and so we are all now - the "Old-Old-IMBA" as we used to call the folks from April intake prior to us :-)

Time moves on .. that's the way it is, ain't it?