jump to navigation

~ The End ~ June 6, 2007

Posted by Simba in : General, Frivolous Me , 9 comments

I have been planning to stop blogging for a long time now and I guess the time is right. :) I started this blog so long ago and used it effectively (ahem!) to pen my progress, give vent to my frustration & talk in length about the MBA experience. Now, that I am officially done with MBA et al, I don’t have much to write about. I have always hated people when they stopped blogging but now, I guess, I understand. I think I will keep my life a lil private and having this blog is not helpful. This way, now, I am not obligated to write down my daily experiences & that’s the way I like for now!

And for all those who want to write to me, feel free to contact me. I will try my best to get back to you. You can look up SimbaRulez for contact info and also look up MBA Queries section. It is quite helpful. :)

Thanks for everyone for reading my blog and patiently leaving your comments. It meant a lot to me! And hey, do bookmark http://simbarulez.com, I will keep that site on! And anything interesting, I will put it on the website. :)

Adios and God Bless!

~ The End ~

simbarulez.com May 15, 2007

Posted by Simba in : MBA, General , 8 comments

Phew! Finally, I managed to build this website. For a long time, I have been planning this but never had the time to sit down and do it. Now, it is up! When I got admitted into Duke and other schools, I had almost two full time jobs - working in Reliance and other, answering queries from prospective students. I managed to pull up a lot of emails and publish them as I believe they all have tons of information. :) It is not so user-friendly though!

Check out Simba Rulez and let me know.

Sitting back… May 9, 2007

Posted by Simba in : Life Marvels, MBA, Work & Beyond , 5 comments

Ok, now, finally I am done with all my coursework and officially signed off except for the graduation bit. I haven’t blogged for a long time and I wont start making excuses. This last Term was busy as usual and I just got busy with academics and interviews. I had finally started getting some good news on the job front when the visa situation became bizarre.

For those of you in it, I am sorry - our timing really sucks! And for others who are not aware - Well, the H1B visas were all taken on the first day of application i.e April 1st. And about 20,000 visas that are reserved for all those who graduate from US Universities, they were taken a few days ago. While many with job offers played their luck with lottery, I stood wondering what would happen to me! It has always been a hard ride for me and I didn’t expect this to be any different. So, all my interviews and almost offers got stalled due to the visa situation. That truly sucks! Basically, though many companies want to hire us international students, they wont be able to due to legal restriction. I have about a year to stay here and make my stay worthwhile. I don’t think it will be any different next year or the year after till the government takes some measures. We all have been signing petitions to voice our concerns and hoping for some miracle. So, till the ah-moment, I guess I should fend for myself.

While I am not too happy to be in this position I have a feeling that things will be ok. I don’t think I would have been excited at something I wouldn’t enjoy doing for a long time. But I feel sad that I wont have a full time job and get into a comfortable life after all; after all this work! Phew! Who said life is easy, ah! Anyways, amongst some of the things I wish - more retailers on campus, more retailers willing to recruit internationals, more efforts from my side (who knew things would turn so dire so soon!) These days I have been doings ups-downs on a daily basis. I can work for non profits or keep looking for firms that will take a chance on me, But I am leaning on entrepreneurship - I plan to start my own small business, of course something to do with retail; either I go bust or make enough money to pay up my loans, only time will say! The next couple of months will be a lot of research and groundwork. Hang in there, I might just spill some beans in a few days :)

So, what happens if I go bankrupt? Ouch! I will pack my bags and go home! Now, let’s pray that it won’t be that bad….

Sweet Life… March 18, 2007

Posted by Simba in : Life Marvels, Duke, Frivolous Me , 7 comments

I was just reading a goo’ ol’ pal’s blog and realized that I have done so many things in the recent past that I haven’t blogged about…so, maybe the time is just right :)

I have caught up on some really cool movies over the last few months - Fire, Water, Salam Bombay - Half way thro, Hotel Rwanda, The last King of Scotland and Munich! In the next few weeks, I am planning on watching Syriana, Crash, An Inconvenient Truth, The Contender, Namesake etc. Many of these movies are screened as a part of Ethics Institute. I am surely looking forward to these! I have watched Crash before - it is awesome! Other casual, what I would call ‘popcorn-movies’, that I have watched recently are Salam-E-Ishq, 300, and Zodiac. Phew, never in my life have I been sucha movie buff! Well, for now, movies seem to be substituting my reading… I guess, it is a ok replacement for entertainment. :)

Haven’t had much time to read books after I started school in January. Currently I am onto Shataram, R.K. Narayan’s biography, One of Sudha Murthy’s book and No God but God. It is an eclectic collection I must say, but each of them have their own inter-woven reasons. I am extending some of these as they stir something really deep within… well, now that’s one helluva good excuse! Recently I attended Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues - V-Day: Until the Violence Stops. It was my first time and I was really amazed. I had expected a funny play but was pleasantly surprised by a very bold and empowering play! I must say, it is surely a great way to share knowledge about the trauma inflicted on women & empower people to act! I wish I had known about the organizers - SWOOP earlier. I would have loved to work with them during the time I was here at Durham!

Recently, I was at the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour who performed at Duke. Absolutely brilliant! These middle-eastern guys were amazingly funny and refreshing! Anyone who is new to comedy shows… take my word, go & watch them - they release some of those endomorphins or something like that which makes you feel a zillion times better! :D And Russell Peters.. I am a big fan of him! On a serious note though, we had Paul Rusesabagina (yes, the real man from Hotel Rwanda!) as a guest speaker at Duke. We had a house-full of audience to see him. Though I was amazed at what he had done at his time, it was kinda perplexing how he did not deliver such a strong speech. Understood, he wasn’t a speaker but he basically narrated his story - I would liked to see more to the man! Things which inspired him to stand by his people and his answers fell short when he was questioned about what he was doing currently to some of the similar problems of genocide. But I was in awe of his presence & simplicity!

And I just got back from LA & Vegas. It was great fun! I was just counting & I have already seen about 10-12 places in US in less than 2 years, quite an accomplishment! LOL! I was there to attend a career fair which showcased some retail careers! Fingers crossed! I am still interviewing and trying to wriggle my way into something I truly like… another 2 months before I graduate. Hope I have something to fall upon by the time I graduate! :) And ahoy, finally… after undue stress & hopelessly fretting about it, my grades have steadily climbed over the last few terms.. this Term I aced the chart with a straight 4.0! Whoopie! And a professor’s mail calling me “Outstanding” was like the icing on the perfect cake! :D Now, that I am slowly gearing up… I am graduating - did I ever tell you, how unfair life is!!??

Thats all for now. My last day of the last break before I graduate. School starts on Monday and back to classes, assignments, resumes & interviews. Aloha, here I come…

And then she woke up… February 18, 2007

Posted by Simba in : MBA, Frivolous Me , 10 comments

Ahhh… I hate myself for not writing as often as I would like! I have almost disappeared from the face of earth. Now, thats what I would like. Hmmph! From the time I got back and the school started, it has been BUSY! But more than ever, the feeling that I will be out of here haunts me. I will so miss the school, my friends, my life-style..my everything. Fuqua has grown to become sucha part of me that I will truly miss it.

Anyways, this Term has been a personal favorite! Probably the best one I have had. The courses I have taken are a little different and that adds the zing to the whole thing. I have taken a writing course which demands so much writing that no wonder I have not written on my blog! But still I argue, for a 2 credit course, it is way too much writing. I thought I was good at writing till I started seeing the grades for this course.. phew… the Prof ’s green indents.. ah, I hate them! And learning a foreign language is soooo cool! :D I have taken Mandarin which will last for the whole semester. Though I wont be able to do a 15 day immersion program in China at the end of the course, this has been the most satifying learning I must say.

Ni Hao. Zaoshang Hao! (Hello, Good Morning!)

I have never had a chance to learn new languages, or maybe I did, but never really thought about it! It is so awesome.. personally, it liberates me.. two weeks ago, I didn’t know anything about ‘Chinese’ language. But now, I not only know that there is nothing called as a ‘Chinese’ language… but also can read & understand a little bit of Mandarin! Thats a wow effect! I should learn more languages.. I owe that to myself!

On the job search, it has been dampening. The firms & industries I really want to be with don’t want to have me due to work authorization requirements. And that’s when I am pretty confident that life really sucks! Why did I come so far and do so many things if I dont get a chance to do something that I truly enjoy. But then again, what makes me sure that I wont enjoy other kind of work?! I dont know.. I just feel sick. I have working real hard to get merchandising, startegy, leadership rotation firms in retail/ fashion retail/ luxury brands but they either don’t need an MBA or can’t sponsor me. Boooo….

On the other hand, I am so happy for some people who are doing really well. One of them is getting married.. thats one helluva surprise. Good Luck ‘S’. :) And another has just started a new way of sending greetings - by recording your voice on the card! Now, that is fun, try Teledora What’s better? He is a Fuquan :D So thats the update for now… I will try to be more around this place… now, thats the promise I make every time, ain’t it?!

“Where do you live?” January 5, 2007

Posted by Simba in : Bookie Rookie, Frivolous Me , 6 comments

And I squarely looked at the beggar for taunting me about the 50p I gave him. He wanted a buck and nothing less. I would have happily given him if I had it but I was just taken back by the audacity with which he talked back to me. Jeez, don’t you get anything for 50p was a ridiculing question for which I was asked “Where do you live?”

Before I start rattling about my experience here, I would like to thank a lot of people who went out of their way to get in touch with me. It really meant a lot to me and hope I was able to add a cent or two to make your call or visit worthwhile :)

It has been a good self-discovering trip for me. Though I anticipated very less time on hand, it has not been the case. Just meeting a few friends here and there & eating as much Indian food I can :) LOL, I have easily put on 5 pounds in 2 weeks, thank god, I am out of here soon. Not that I am hunting for the best restaurants in the city and invading them but its been like, you go out to meet friends which extends to a lunch or a quick snack in a small fast food joint to stuff myself with the rava-idly (the south indian delicacy - winning hands down over the rest!) And living in the US, I constantly crib about the lack of tasty dosas around Raleigh-Durham and the moment my mom came to know that, she has been feeding me dosas of every variety she can conjure up, all shapes & colors & tastes. Just one word - Yum! Of course, MTR being bought over by McCormick and Co. is not easily digested by her!

Its amazing the number of people I see flocked in all the malls of Bangalore. I have tried my best to stay away from any of the malls for the lack of space to breathe freely. But this trip did a lot of good in terms of making my entrepreneurial idea much stronger. I have been thinking about setting something back in India and during this trip, I have torn down as many magazines I can to see how the retail industry has been faring. Really impressed by some of the giants spanning into retail. :) Any news about fashion & retail and fashion retail is my kind of news these days. And with a friend in tow who is into total branding, it’s a sweet deal. If I can shell an admirable amount of $ on a cool haircut in a hip hair salon here, then I think there is so much more potential around. Now, it will be more realistic planning about when I can take the leap and things I need to do before that leap. Silent prayers!

The last year has been really bad in terms of my general reading abilities. I think I had just lost it in me to read a book but this time around, I have been so into reading that I am almost impressed with my skill. Since I left home, I have finished two good books and am onto third one. 3 in a matter of 2 weeks is commendable – don’t ya think so! I was not too crazy about “The Inheritance of Loss” by Kiran Desai. Somehow the booker winners’ have failed to impress me beyond a certain point. Maybe I am not that grown enough to understand and appreciate the suaveness in them. I am more into variety now, hoarding my baggage with new authors and can anyone explain my sudden interests in reading Indian expats! I will end now… need to go out for lunch and munch on some more rava-idly with that spicy chutney and sagoo. Ha!

Homecoming et al. December 28, 2006

Posted by Simba in : Wiggles, Travel Bug , 8 comments

It is amazing how things never turn out the way you want them to but you are just happy with the way they turn out. I always envisioned going away escorted by a bunch of close pals who would mull over how much they will miss me and always dreamt of coming back to a wave of people who would be dying to welcome me back home. Neither of them happened and thank god, it didn’t! I had no plans to fly back this chilly winter but things changed so drastically so fast that I decided to book my flights in a jiffy. Yes, I burnt a big hole in the tiny teeny wallet I carry…and the only person to receive me was my childhood friend whom I woke up rudely in the middle of the night and asked her to rush to the airport. And my love, my favorite city, Mumbai just missed out on me… this time around. Bangalore it is, for me. Hmmph!
 
It’s been a queasy feeling since I came back home. I don’t mean to be difficult to anyone around me but suddenly feel out of place everywhere I go. Someone asked me how I felt about homecoming, and the only word that came out easily was, “weird”. It is like this feeling of belonging nowhere. I don’t belong there and now, I don’t belong here, that is I transcend in space.  Does it happen to all those who have live away for a while? But I was here less than a couple of years ago.

But hopefully this break will do me a whole lot of good. Finally I have gotten around reading a lot of books and spending time doing nothing. I have been running so long and an afternoon with nothing to do is almost like a dream come true. I miss the school, friends and school work almost everyday, it is sucha part of me that I feel bare without the constant running around. And getting to blog in one more interesting thing I can do… so here I am! But of course, trying to get a decent connection for the wordpress page to load is a different ball game on its own! More about life here in my next post.

This post was just a revival post to say, I am alive and kicking.

The sloppy ‘joe’… November 18, 2006

Posted by Simba in : Wiggles , 5 comments

As I was saying all through the last post, I just have lost the patience & energy to pen my blog regularly. Though I sincerely admire all the readers and especially those who wish to send me good wishes thro’ comments & emails etc. Sorry to disappoint you… I have taken off the Job-Hunt page as I figured out that I am not a good book-keeper this year :(

But that said, I am doing all I can to end up where I want to. I hope I do. And when I do, trust me to put up a nice post. :) Other things are fine but I hate this Term in school, things just seem to be moving so slow & the courses I am on right now are not ’stimulating’. A small post for now… Updates later!

Where am I heading?! November 2, 2006

Posted by Simba in : Life Marvels, Frivolous Me , 12 comments

I know it has been a while since I wrote something significant. So, today, I thought I should stop by my blog and see what I can do with it. It is amazing how things take priority in life. Long ago, I would ‘live’ on this blog constantly thinking about ’stuff’ I can throw in here & increase the counter hits. But now, I guess I am almost on the verge of giving up writing! Huh?! Nah, but you will definitely see me getting more lazy around these parts :)

I have re-started doing my job search, except that it is coming with half the interest and quarter the effort compared to last year. No, I still need a job, now lets not have any doubt about that one! I was talking to a good friend of mine a couple of weeks back and he asked “what is your alternate arrangement if you don’t get a job?” Phew, someone asking me sucha a direct question right on my face is something I still am not used to! So, my only answer was - Well, I need to get a job & there is no other alternative! Of course, it is challenging and I am not being very focussed at this point. I just had an interview yesterday which went ok but there are time when things just don’t feel right.. I still haven’t heard from them but well, I guess I have a gut about it!

But when I start thinking about the job scenario & some of the challenges, I am spooked about the amount of work ahead of me with the time running out. Seriously though, once I look back and see the quantum of things I have achieved over the last couple of years to get to where I am, I am not worried about the coming months. I know, it will be ok and I might actually survive. But, there is this deep nagging feeling that keeps reminding me of the true reason why I came so far and why I have worked so hard - Well, of course a good job with a good pay would do me a world of good as I don’t even remember the last time I stepped into a huge store to exhaust my pay chek - but I did have a good job with a good pay! My MBA was a reason to get a hold on my life, achieve my dreams, work with some of the best minds, challenge myself everyday and stress out every hour… but more to do something that I really really want!

So, that obviously takes me to the next question - what do I want to do? There was a time, not so long back, when I would keep wondering about how people would get brilliant ideas to start companies. I failed to see any gaps in the existing scenario and didn’t think I had it in me either to venture that way or be innovative! I always wanted to do something but never knew ‘what’. And I would just be amazed at things people achieve but I guess it is all one big learning experience - Life - It teaches you some of the best lessons! At this point, I have thought about so many things that I can do here, or back home in India,or internationally in many countries - I am constantly wondering how things would be different with this product or that service. I really want to do many of these things and not for the fame (if there is any!) or for being ‘cool’, but for the challenge associated with them. :)

Yeah, I know it is a great thinking but well, who will repay my loan in that context. As a small entrepreneur I really cant expect mega earnings for at least couple of years i.e ‘at-LEAST’! So, may be like the rest of the herd I should be a little more serious about job hunt and get a decent job which can pay me decent enough for me to pay off a decent amount of debt! But at the same time, I wish I could be involved with a non-profit because that kind of work fascinates me but, the inner knock comes through - How will I repay the loan and Who will process my work visa? See these are the some of the questions which haunt me through harrowed hallways and upsets me so many hours in a day & so many days in a month! So, for time being I want to be pratical & pragmatic - Go ‘for-profit’ - Fashion Retail interests me a lot but I need some one to get me in! Consulting is another great profession to be in and though the travel would get to me, I could be a good consultant but hello, who is calling me for an interview? Finance major sounds cool too but where do I start..Should I be picky about the industry or function? Wow - I think more education just makes life more complicated ;)

I think I am done with nagging for today and for a week from now, so take a breather! Get some hot chai - You are not alone. Each of us deal with some kind of stress, either taken upon voluntarily or bestowed upon!

Writer’s Block October 20, 2006

Posted by Simba in : Frivolous Me , 5 comments

I want to say so many things but can’t get anything out! This is my block, I guess!

Term 1 of Second Year - Done!

Fall Break - Almost done!

Pre-Assignments - Hmm.. lets not talk about it!

MBA Talk - Nope!

Life - Kinda wandering! Miss home toooooo much…

And yes, Diwali - zilch celebration :(

Wish you all a fully-loaded Diwali - loaded with love, laughter, gifts, sweets, happiness & sunshine! :)