Stuff!

The laundry list of "stuff" that's keeping me busy, not that anybody cares even though I'd like to envision my reader as awaiting updates with bated breadthand sitting on pins! Hey I can dream right?

1. First, got my hair straightened over the weekend.My stylist, correction, my soulmate stylist (every woman should have one, THE ONE and the ONLY ONE that GETS you and more importantly YOUR HAIR! more important to have than a spouse or boyfriend. Trust me!), err well, moving on, she suggested that I do a brazilian keratin treatment, and so without a second thought, I said sure, why not? Gosh, I can be so trusting sometimes. So she literally dabbed every strand of my hair with some concoction containing formaldehyde (!!!) and lo, behold, it is straight now! well almost..But oddly enough, this whole process made me reminisce about my childhood and growing up with curly hair. My mother or grandma would spend the sunday oiling my hair and in the process get to know what I'm upto. We bonded over hair and now here I am, more than 10 years later, not oiling my hair but putting some chemical through it. Made me a tad sad.

2. The search for the perfect bookcase is ruling my life right now. I ordered my bed, my dresser,my couch and my dining table in less than 20 mins but I took 3 days to search for the perfect bookshelf. Tells you a lot about me and my priorities no? I just couldn't find any that was worthy of my books. As a kid, I dreamed about living in an apt whose walls were adorned with books and beautiful book cases so this thing is very very important to me. Complicating matters a whole lot is that a lot of these needed to be assembled and I'm about as handy with a hammer as my finance professor was with stand up comedy. He wasn't. There are things that one should just NOT dabble in. So I finally lost patience and ordered one online. Fingers crossed, it will arrive soon and toes crossed, I'll be able to assemble it properly. Actually, I'll need more body parts crossed to accomplish the last one methinks.

3. So as things turned out, I used my signing bonus to sign up for a gym and trainer. Most women buy a prada or hermes bag but me? No, ma'am, I opt for pain and suffering. Again, more hint there on my wonderful clusterf**k of a personality. Actually, I'm really liking my training sessions. Although, I'm getting killed in every session because of all the workouts and yes I do go into the ladies room afterwards and sit on the toilet seat and cry for being a wuzzy BUT BUT, I feel much much stronger. Atleast I think I am and my trainer is awesome! as in, he gives me free relationship advice when I'm doing 3 sets of push ups. That's exactly the kind of thing you need to distract yourself from physical pain - relationships & dating woes. I lovee my gym too! its beeeautiful, very zen like and they have massive studios for dance and yoga classes and even a pool!! Best of all, no annoying kids running around or having to deal with cloying, closet-bullimic undergrads (aka The wilson gym @ Duke) only hot looking, broad shouldered men doing pushups. Sign me up baby! she said. And oh, they also had eucalyptus scented towels..after all, when it comes to gyms isn't that the top criteria? Hot men and Comforting Towels? losing weight is a lost cause anyway!

4. Another big to-do these days is meeting my friends and hoping they've not forgotten me after being away from Chicago for a month. For a whole month!! I helped a friend move into her apartment at evanston and also managed to have a wonderfully contentious argument with another friend over some really delicious ethiopian dinner. Aah I love my erudite friends, I feel smart just being around them. The biggest reason I miss school is not waking up everyday and going into class and being challenged to think differently. But thanks to hanging with my smart friends and co-workers, that intellectual vaccuum is rapidly ebbing. Oh I must say, that working in a tech company and talking geek feels awesome!! I even wear my tweety bird T-shirt, which says "Full of Geek," proudly to work! that's how much of a nerd I am!

So things have been rather eventful. Summer in Chicago is salubrious.Hope the weather and the Karmic Universe holds up. It would be awful if rain (or snow, chicago remember?) did stop play.

The Book Gobbler's Delish List

Just listing a bunch of books I've managed to read this year. Hoping to update this as I finish reading books. I don't get much free time, what with work starting and all, but I hope my reading list continues to burgeon and that at the end of the year, I can look at it and say, "That was not bad at all."

1. The Lost Continent - Bill Bryson
2. Help! - Kathryn Stockett
3. Liar's Poker - Michael Lewis (currently reading)
4. Kitchen Confidential - Anthony Bourdain
5. Around the world in 80 days - Jules Verne
6. Treasure Island - Robert L Stevenson
7. Adventures of Sherlock Homes - Arthur Conan Doyle
8. Dreams from my father - Barack Obama
9. The partly cloudy patriot - Sarah Vowell
10. We need to talk about kevin - Lionel Shriver
11. Blue shoes & happiness (from the series, "The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency") - Alexander McCall Smith
12. Siva Purana - Ramesh Menon

What I Learned in B-school

I was talking to a friend of mine, who is just about to enter B-school and I was dishing out advice by the droves. Then it hit me. Such gold quality insight needs to be documented not only to act as a symbolic ode to the entire experience but to also serve as a cautionary tale. Really, take your pick, what ever floats your boat.

What does a transformational experience consist of? Is this what Dickens was referring to when he said that it was the best of times and the worst of times? Can you distill the essence of a gigantic shift in perception and put it in bullet point format? After all, isn't the bullet point format one of the biggest learnings in B-school?

Be warned though, this post is not your back-of-the-proverbial-envelope-ROI-analysis on B-school, this post is reflection on how I acquired some life-changing skills in B-school, the enduration of mind numbing academic jargon and how I lived to tell the tale. Here it goes in bullet point format (obviously!):

What I learned in B-school

1. The importance of Night Mode setting of my camera, heck any camera settings at all:

For you see its impossible to go through B-school without documenting it on FB and adding pictures for proof. That's the first thing you learn - the night mode settings of your camera- at the first B-school party. Next you learn how to pose for said pictures. Honestly, I've learned my "photogenic" angles and the right amount of teeth that one should ideally show. I was actually camera shy before I came to B-school and now I've become extremely comfortable posing for pics. This is has undoubtedly enriched my future facebook pictures and how could anyone put a price on that?

2. The importance of beer pong, flipcup and *insert any drinking game here*:

Not having done undergrad here in the US I wanted an opportunity to get a sneak peek through my B-school experience. What they didn't tell me was B-school was undergrad times 2 if you wanted it to be. Thanks to this second coming, I learned beer pong and flip cup and tons of other drinking games. Now, I have a genuine drinking game mishap story that makes me a legit grad student and gives me a sort of "street cred" that is very important in connecting with other grad students. booyeah!

3. The importance of being a .ppt or .xlsm ninja:

I have learned that with the right presentation or excel skills, you can go from Captain Obvious to Captain Genius! I kid you NOT. I have sat through numerous presentations where the facts were plain as daylight but because of the wizardry of the presentation or excel sheet, got transformed into "critical insight." I even gave one such presentation a standing ovation myself. How can one NOT be swayed by flying boxes and arrows or pastel coloured, harmony inducing pie-charts?? you have to be positively soulless for that!

4. The importance of having a .ppt or.xlsm ninja in your team if you are not one yourself:

You have no idea what a boon it is to have a .ppt or .xlsm ninja in your team do you? Not only does it mean better grades, it also means that you don't have to spend arduous hours trying to come with half decent slides or models and honestly, deep down you know the team is going to end up using the ninja's slides or models anyway! what you do learn however is to play to to your

strengths. While you're effusive in your praise for your teammate's skills and encourage him to spend the night finishing that ppt or assignment, you can get back to honing your own skills in playing angry birds. Hey man, if that's not a simulation of a life and death situation, I don't know what is!

5. The importance of NOT having a .ppt or .xlsm ninja in your team if you are not one yourself:

This ofcourse means that you are terribly F@&*ed. The meetings are long and contentious,

everybody thinks they are the expert, the white board is filled with drawings and bullet points and you're no closer to the answer than when you started 13 hours ago. The worst is when teams with ninjas, walk by your team room and tell you that they finished the meeting for the case in 60 secs. The best thing to do if you're ever in such a situation, is to have a big list of funny youtube videos to cut the tension. Atleast your team will call you a "fascilitator" or "harmonizer" and let you off the hook when it its time to grade each other.

6. The importance of prayer when you're getting assigned to teams:

See bullets 4 & 5 to fully comprehend this point and yes, while praying, specifically ask for .ppt or .xlsm ninja. I'm serious!

7. The importance of following American sports:

I cannot stress this enough! This will come back to you when you're in that dreaded circle, surrounding a recruiter, trying desperately to land a job. When everyone is talking NFL or college basketball stats, you looking clueless and feeling like you landed in the planet of "What the hell are they talking about??" will NOT help you get a job. You should do what I did and get an american classmate to explain the rules of football (not soccer), basketball or even lacrosse. And then when everybody is talking about Tom Brady, you will not get the urge to ask "Who is this Tom Brady guy? is he a sports dude or something?"

8. The importance of "Depends..":

Yes, "depends.." gets a lot of flack and a lot of b-school students themselves deride this term but for me there is no greater colloquial term that celebrates the state of ambiguity as much. It connotes that, while you have no clue or opinion on the question being asked, you're also willing to say whatever it takes to get on the favourable side of the person asking the question. This

type of ambidextrous approach actually makes you sound erudite! don't ever under estimate the power of "depends." I did and look what happened in my internship, where they asked me if they should invest in a product or not, and instead of invoking this powerful ass-saver, I actually gave them my opinion and did not get the job.

9. The importance of free food in (literally) enriching your B-school experience:

As a starved B-school student, I admit to unintentionally attending lectures run by obscure clubs simply because of the free salad, pizza or burrito on offer. This is exactly how I became interested in the Net impact club and social entrepreneurship. Say what you will about the net impact club but they sure do have the classiest, freshest free food for all their events.

10 The importance of theme parties:

Before coming to the US, I solemnly swear that I had never ever been to a theme party. It was only after attending my first theme party - the 80s party, that I realized the social importance of dressing up in a weird costume and its correlation to making friends. Apparently, the more absurdly you dressed, the more friends you made or rather the more interesting you became to people. Case in point my second Halloween party. For this one, I truly embraced the ethos of

Halloween and dressed up as "Salad Dressing" - in a slinky black dress with vegetable cut-outs. I actually got asked out on a date at the party. SCORE!

11. The importance of having a high alcohol tolerance:

B-school literally is one big party with classes as interludes. True. This fact alone accounts for why other grad students don't really consider us to be truly grad students. We have smart phones, drive expensive cars, live in upscale apartments and drink copious amounts of alcohol. No tales of spending 4 sleepless nights in the library, just stories of cranberry vodka and lady gaga on repeat. Its very hard to not give in to the peer pressure and not party and drink. In term 4 of the last year, afternoon drinking and golfing became the norm, which accounts for why I got hit by golf balls when I ran on the trail surrounding the golf course.

and lastly,

12. The importance of owning a PC:

Yes, this is a shameless plug for my current employers but it is also the truth. Your life will be a living hell if Excel doesn't run on your laptop. So wisen up and use a PC!!

experimenting.. .

writing a post using a stylus tablet! This is seriously cool!!
I guess this will do what my mother couldn't. ...improve my handwriting!!

Ok, Now What?

So here I am, in an empty apartment in a chicago highrise. I just got here today with 3 bags. The rest of my stuff is on its way here. I realize I have moved every year for the past 6 years and so I've become adept at packing even though I'm still not immune to the whole process yet. I wish I was though. Its pretty hard, uprooting your life every 12 months and starting anew. So, it is with packing fatigue that I write this. If not for it, I would be very excited about the future. About the thought of working in my DREAM job, something I'm sooo excited about, that I can't wait to start already! I would also be very excited about the city I'm living in and bought my new neighbourhood. I say I would, more so because of my sadness at the ending of school.

The month of may was awesome to say the least. Celebrating the culmination of a hard-earned, transformational journey. I met amazing people from all over the world and saying goodbye was tough but I know I have a place to stay in in virtually 70 countries in the world. That in itself was one of the best gifts of this process. My parents and brother were also here to see me graduate. I'm glad they got to see my school and meet my friends and be part of the graduation ceremony. We also went all over the country after that. NY, Vegas, Grand Canyon and SF. They got to see this great country and the things that make it incredible. It felt weird to say goodbye to them at SF and come back to Durham to pack though. Wish we had more time together.

On the bright side though, I'm incredibly grateful for such an amazing experience and for the opportunity to, atleast in this moment, look in to the future with excitement and wonder about the things to come :)