Week 1: Oxford - Cambridge Varsity Day and other events

Week one is when our classes officially begin though this term a couple of classes were held last week to adjust for the classes that will not take place during the MBAT weekend. MBAT is the sports tournament organized by HEC Paris business school for the students from international business schools.

I have three classes scheduled every Monday from morning 9 AM till evening 8 PM. But the subjects are interesting so they don't really make me complain about the busy day. Amongst Restructuring & Implementation (RI), Branding & Communication (B&C) and Managing Project Portfolio (MPP), I like the subject of Branding the most. The first class was setting up the basic concepts building on what we learnt in Marketing course during the last term. It was quite fascinating to take a plunge into understanding as to what can happen to the image of a brand in consumers mind, with a slight change in the branding strategy. Restructuring & Implementation talked about the problems associated with Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A's) whereas during MPP class, discussion was based on managing a project using the cass study of "Mission to Mars".


Tuesday was fairly relaxed with no classes to attend though the day went by in catching up what was taught the day before. Along with Puneet, I attended dinner at my college where I got the chance to meet the Chancellor of Oxford University, Lord Chris Patten. Incidentally I knew about him before coming to Oxford just because of the fact that his daughter Alice Patten played lead actress role in a Hindi movie "Rang De Basanti". Alas, she did not turn up for the dinner...


Just before going for the dinner, our Corporate Valuation group comprising of Chad, Janis, Puneet, Saptarshi, Vijoy and myself met to discuss about giving the finishing touches to the first assignment of Corporate Valuation.


Wednesday was all about "Retailing" and the "Walmart effect on society". With the increasing FDI in India, and big retailers trying to step into the budding retail market of India, this particular subject was of a primary interest to me. Also had to work on my other assignment about "A prior negotiation experience of mine". Sometimes these topics are easier said than done and it took me a while before I could gel my personal thoughts about negotiation with the theories provided in the book.


Thursday class of Corporate Valuation was spent discussing the contract of A-Rod with Texas Rangers, who paid a whopping USD 252 million to him though further transferred the contract to New York Yankees only after the Rangers agreed to pay $67 million of the $179 million left on Rodriguez's contract. In the evening began the class of my final subject of "Strategic Decision Making in Dynamic Environment (SDMDE)", which indeed is a very long name for any subject. Anyways, our first three classes for week 1, 2 and 3 took place in week 1 only, discussing how to successfully negotiate the deals with the party sitting on the other side of the table. The exercises conducted were fun to attend but occasionally we all felt if there was a need to take up this course instead of taking an elective on "Negotiation Skills".


So my Friday afternoon and Saturday morning went into attending the SDMDE class performing roleplays involving different kinds of negotiation situations.


Saturday, we had an Oxford Cambridge Varsity day and students from the Judge Business School of Cambridge University came all the way to Oxford to attend a day of sports and other fun-filled activities. Our guys did put up an excellent show and thrashed the Cambridge team in all but one event of Rowing. In cricket, Murtaza played an inning that reminded me of Adam Gilchrist and Sanath Jayasuriya. evening saw the dodge ball event in the courtyard of SBS followed by a late night party. The pictures from the event are posted in my photo album on Picasa, the link to which is available in side navigation bar. And yes, Australia continued to perform like a champion to lift the ICC World Cup Cricket Trophy for third time in succession.


I declared Sunday as a complete holiday to myself and did nothing except procrastinating all day long, though had to do some reading later at night for the busy Monday that accounts for three classes. Will get back with week two pretty soon...


Good Night and Good Luck!!!