Week 5: Hell-ary

Yes... Hell-ary, that is how we call our second term amongst us. In reality, it is Hilary term. Many people question as to how your terms are named. Well, here is a short version I picked up from Wiki. The term is one of four into which the legal year is divided by the Courts of England and Wales, with Michaelmas being the first, followed by Hilary, Easter and Trinity. From Hilary, we straightway jump onto Trinity (Somehow the name has a grandiose feeling attached to it), skipping Easter for our third term name.

This week was quite an exciting one for a number of reasons such as (a) Marks for various assignments were declared, (b) Recruitment fair & related events and (c) Brazillian Carnival nite. Let's address them one at a time.

To begin with, marks for Finance-II were declared and as expected the majority was in the 60-65 pool but quite shocking was that 5% of class couldn't do fair. Seems like the debt-equity and future cashflow projects are still not flowing well through our heads. May be time will make us better and better like wine as it ages.

For DEO (Developing Effective Organization), we had London Symphony Orchestra case to take care of. With Star Wars, Harry Potter soundtrack and Deep Purple in Concert with LSO, we made an amazing presentation that was praised by whole lot of students. Some of the highlights were - Handouts in form of repertoires, ushers guiding the audience to their seats and a principal & conductor taking control of the show. We did fairly well and got away with the best marks till date though not enough to reach 70 (Actual marks - 68.75). I hate being in floating points but can't help it as it is not in my hand.

Next in line were the Marketing marks. People spent days and nights to come up with a full-proof analysis of amazing Aqualisa Shower (http://www.aqualisa.com/). But the Harvard Professor gave marks in true Oxford spirit with a proper distribution of 10% distinctions and 10% not making through. The effect of the same was quite shocking as the attendance in the marketing class went down to almost half of the class strength. Looks like Aqualisa shower did not leave a lasting impression on many of us though I wish some day I have that shower with digital touch screen and other accessories in my bath (Cost of Shower - Mere GBP 1400 approximately).

Done with the marks so lets move on to the events that took place last week. First one on cards was Tech Mahindra Ltd (TML) presentation. One of our class mates is an ex-employee of TML so on his behest many of us went for the presentation. On the tunes of "I have got the power by Snap" , the presentation started with full bass and treble in play. But when the time came for an open house, it just bit the dust. The response to the questions by students was horrible and one of the senior person of TML talked about himself rather than about TML. And to add salts to the wound, they had salary figures posted on their presentation, which was fairly low. As a standard, a company never never never tells the salary on offer upfront and is discussed only during negotiations once the placement offer is made. Looking at this, TML still seem to have to go a long way before they can put up a presentation for an international B-school.

Then we had the much hyped Oxbridge fair at the Judge Management Institute in Cambridge. After a 2.5 hrs of bus travel we reached there to meet a whole bunch of companies that requested us politely to apply through their websites and that is what we are currently in process of. The ones that appealed to me the most were Accenture, Deloitte, IBM, and Amazon (Yes... Amazon I rated above Johnson & Johnson). Anyways after an hour of talking to the prospective recruiters, we were off to a tour of Cambridge that lasted till late in the evening. A social event was organized by Judge students in our honor at "The Anchor" pub but we couldn't enjoy much out their. So Brian (My flatemate) and I moved out to a far better one, "The Eagles" telling others to inform us when they leave for Oxford. But to our amusement, the whole crowd later followed us and thereafter everybody had a great time at "The Eagles". The fun got over only when we reached Oxford while Brian played "Super Mario" on his laptop till the batteries died out.

Something off the track... My NBD (New Business Development) project, where we have to develop a full fletched business plan for starting up a new business (If not practically then theoratically...) is in full swing with research in progress. Subject of our project is "An investment fund whose primary goal seeks to invest in socially responsible companies and products." I am looking after Marketing and Sales portion of the project and currently in touch base with few of the leading SRI firms for further insights into the industry and prevailing trends of it.

Before signing off for the day, I must tell you that I managed to calculate the stock price of Alcon (A Medical Supplies company, Per Damodaran) in all the possible ways asked by our Professor as part of our next Finance assignment. I decided not to spend more than four hours on it but eventually I ended up spending almost 1.5 times of that in the hope that I will get some good marks ensuring that I do not flunk this core elective on the whole. In the end, hats off to Professor Damodaran and his website (http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/) with the help of which, along with many others who referenced it, I got the assignment finished in time.

I apologize for not mentioning about the blast we had at the Brazillian Carnival party organized by Latin American friends of ours in University. It was all fun and frolic with dancing to the tune of Samba and other Latin tunes. In short, a great way to begin my weekend that ended up wrapping Finance assignment.

Can't resist adding this photo of mine that came out better than usual (Generally my pictures don't come well mostly beacuse of person not being able to take it properly ;) ) in one of the colleges at Cambridge.


So to speak, an eventful week came to an end without any major hiccups.

Good Night, and Good Luck!!!