Week 2: May Day and Malhaar

For the Monday, it was the usual except the Branding & Communication class that really had my interest in it. The case discussed was about Snapple, where we discussed about the comparisons between conventional models of branding and cultural branding. Further the discussion went into the fundamental weaknesses of conventional models, which motivate the demand for a new approach to branding.

May Day - I had to wake up at 430 am on May 1st, which is celebrated here in Oxford as the May Day when the choir of the Magdalen College perform for 6-7 minutes from the Magdalen Tower. It was indeed a different experience for me and for all those other standing in perfect silence listening to the choir. The follow up festivities included a college breakfast and few performances along the streets of Oxford. Since had three classes, the day before and woke up way too early in the morning so decided to procrastinate for a while before getting on with the daily work. Of course, the weather in Oxford was way too nice considering how it has been acting on us during April month.

Thursday, I went to the Examination School to attend a lecture by Indian Commerce minister Mr. Kamal Nath about the Global Trade Governance project. It was quite an interesting lecture talking about how the globalised world is perceived by India and how India is confronting the challenges of the new economic architecture.

One thing I am not sure of as to whether the way I take pictures is good or the software I use to give some special effects to it that gives me that credibility... I guess its the first one, considering the pictures that I came out from other people's camera. I am not trying to brag about myself but anyways, I was invited at the annual cultural festival Malhaar-2007, organized by the Oxford Indian Society to cover the event as a photographer and seems they came out fine as per other's feedback. Here is a video clip of some of the pictures. Please note that since it was an Indian cultural nite so I did stick to a sufi song played on shehnai and flute.

On Saturday, along with Anubhav I was busy with my Branding assignment, trying to understand and pen down our thoughts about the rise of Starbucks during the late 80's and early 90's though these days they are fighting hard to keep their brand image up in the global world because of losing its touch of providing a "third place" for professionals and family people to sit back and relax. Instead it has now become more commercialized trying to maximize the profit rather than giving a cozy, quiet comfort ambience to its customer while they enjoy their cup o' joe.

Sunday was fun filled attending Aman's birthday and watching Spiderman-3. Archit, Naser, Abhishek, Swapan, and Arash went for Spiderman and were not at all enthralled by the storyline of the movie though the special effect were awesome but it was more a comedy movie rather than a superhero's movie. I wish the movie good luck.

During the week, we had presentations for our Summer Consulting Projects by different firms that included Macquarie and De Beers, which did attract me the most. I have already been selected for both the firms to form a team of 4 before we can proceed with our 'pitch' (as is called by our BPO office) to bid for the project along with 2 other teams for De Beers and 6 for Macquarie.

That was it from Week 2 and I hope I am catching up a bit on my posts and hope to be with the week-3 pretty soon.

Good Night and Good Luck!!!