Day 5 and 6

Writing the blog for two days may seem to you guys as signs of weakness :-) and you are in fact right in assuming that. I am actually finding some subjects like Marketing Research and Information systems(MRIS) and Consumer based business strategy(CBBS) extremely interesting. One good thing at IIMA is we are provided with text books for every subject and I have started reading text books on these subjects(for a change :-)). Although not many read the text books as specified by the session requirements, but having text books to refer always helps. Plus the students who are interested in reading can always go back to the text books if they are stuck somewhere. For those who are interested in Marketing Research I would recommend Naresh Malhotras book on Marketing Research. Its very easy to understand and interesting to read. The other reason I have been unable to write blog on day 5 was that the European guys on Exchange had invited me for a game of Lawn tennis. There are 2 tennis courts here in addition to 1 basketball court, 1 volleyball court, 2 table tennis tables, 4 badminton courts, 1 mini football ground, 2 gyms and numerous carrom boards. The quality of these courts may not be so good but people do have options for recreation if they wish to. You can see many students of year-2 on these courts during the evening (however year 1 students are not so lucky and are absorbed completely in studies).

Something interesting about some of the faculty here (especially the prof taking the CBBS subject). The Prof has been with IIMA since many years. What is so special about this Prof is he does not take bull shit at all. And how do you know you are giving him one? The surprising thing is he would not mince words and would straight away tell you on your face (although here the Prof does not use the word BS but uses the word "Junk"). You have to be very specific and to the point in answering the Prof. The good thing is that the Prof has been quite satisfied with the CP I and Nirav have done in the class till now. One incident I would like to mention here happened in yesterdays class. He asked a student to mention the learning's of the last session as he had not done CP in any of the sessions yet. Unfortunately he was not able to speak well. The Prof. told him to write all the points that were discussed in the first half of the class on the black board. If that was not enough once he had completed writing the points the Prof asked him why the hell was he still standing if he was done and told him to sit in his place sarcastically. This is just one incident but there are atleast 3-4 incidents in each of his session. What I learnt was that the Prof is actually treating the student well as compared to the 1st year. I was petrified to imagine the situation in the 1st year.

I would not be mentioning about the lectures on Day5-6 as we had presentations on that day and not much of case discussions. I came back home on Saturday evening and have to write a small paper on Strategy for Komatsu Japan for my CBBS group. Komatsu was No.2 in the world in Earth moving Equipment (EME) in 1981 behind Caterpillar Tractor Co. and its objective was to beat Caterpillar and become No.1. Our group has to write a 1 page describing the strategy of Komatsu for the next 3 years.