My First Trip to Shanghai

**post backlog**

Early December of last year, I had the opportunity to head to China for a work-trip. My first time on the mainland (I have been to Hong Kong before), I wasn’t sure what to expect. Other Indian people at work in Redmond had told me to be prepared for the difficulty of getting wholesome vegetarian food and the difficulty to explore the city on my own without being able to speak Chinese. Both were great advice but not as optimistic as I’d hoped. Thankfully, only one of them proved true when I visited.

I was impressed by the infrastructure in Shanghai and also by the fact that there were SO MANY people everywhere! We landed there late Saturday evening and headed straight to bed. The following morning, my manager, who also travelled with us and had been to Shanghai a few times before, showed us around the city. We walked miles and travelled even more miles on the subway which he expertly navigated. Shanghai is a bustling metropolis that, like a lot of Indian cities, manages to be cosmopolitan and traditional all at once.

A few truths:

1. Subway can get you anywhere. For the rest, there are cabs. It helps to be planned and prepared and to carry the little cards with addresses written in Chinese (and carry extra cards)
2. You need to haggle. It’s amazing how with zero common languages between you and the storekeeper, you can still score a great sale.
3. Food- okay, this is tricky. There are vegetarian food options; you just need to know where to go. If you’ve got a local with you, you’ll do fine. On your own, you need the cards (that say “I do not eat meat”), some patience and a little bit of spirit of adventure. Since it was my first trip, I was cautious about not wading into fried-lizard territory for fear of being (physically) intolerant.  Maybe next time… I also carried a bunch of protein bars, ate lots of noodle soup (delicious), steamed veggies and rice. On my last working day there, I managed to get the office cafeteria to custom make veggie-egg fried rice for me all on my own. If that’s not a win, I don’t know what is!
4. The teas are really awesome. And yet, you’re more likely to find Starbucks and other coffee stores and Lipton tea bags. I fell in love with this bottled sugarless Oolong tea and I don’t know what it’s called. It helped me quench thirst when I was out of my bottled water.

A few reflections:

1. There is definite westernization happening in Shanghai… more pizza joints and Italian restaurants.
2. People have their noses in their phones ALL.THE.TIME even while crossing the road
3. Roads bring me to traffic. The traffic is all kinds of chaos. And like India, it all seems to work.
4. The people I met at work there seemed ambitious, eager to learn and very hard working.
5. People love to sleep on buses. Employees carried neck pillows to sleep on during their commute. I thought that was a little unusual.

                                          The Shanghai skyline in the night

On Being Thankful

**Post backlog**

Thanksgiving is huge in the US. Every year, Thanksgiving officially ushers in the holidays, the lightening of the wallet, the heavying of the closet and the weighing scale. Having no family in the US, Thanksgiving offers me an opportunity to squeeze in a trip since it’s a day more than a traditional long weekend.

This year I decided to head back to the Bay Area to meet all the friends I have been missing since I moved to Seattle. Also, the weatherman called for clouds and rain here (surprise!) and beautiful summer weather in SF. It was a no-brainer! I hung out with the bestie, meet up with OR and NR and their adorable 7week old K! I also drove down 101 to meet AC and her adorable new baby, L. Both my girlfriends make beautiful, natural mothers and it was a pleasure watching them in this new role.

My last evening in SF, the bestie and I ate at one of our favorite joints in Burlingame, where they still recognized and remembered us. We talked about the things we can’t tell anyone else, fears, hopes, dreams, insecurities. We talked about being thankful for each other and the life we were given.

Back in Sao Paulo!

When I took on my current job, I was told that travel would be an important part of it. It took a while for me to get my travel papers in order but I finally got that done on my trip to Canada over the summer. So I was ready to hit the road… er the air.
Work took me back to Sao Paulo a couple weeks ago. A bit of visa drama later I showed up at our SP office in the middle of the financial district of the city, groggy and ready to take on the week. After sleeping through most of the afternoon meetings and going to bed at 8pm, I was alright for the rest of the week.

This time, my trip was zero touristy and 100% work. But more interesting to me was to compare and contrast the Brazil of 2009 with what I saw this time. If it is possible, there are more cars on the road and the traffic gridlock is frustrating… makes you wonder how people drive at all. I remember taking the underground train last time but most ppl I spoke to at the office there seemed to think of public transport as a non-option. As the host of the World Cup and the Olympics later, I sincerely hope SP does something about the traffic and the stress its people undergo in their daily commute.

The trip was not without its share of adventure though! While being on the 31^st floor office for the week had its perks by way of gorgeous views (read daydreaming fodder during meetings), a fire drill in the middle of the week had us walking down all 31 floors. Without lunch.

It was great being back and re-familiarizing myself with the little observations I had the first time around. I was once again struck by how much like India Brazil looks and feels – though perhaps cleaner. I’m pretty sure I’ll be going back again and hopefully next time I’ll be able to take a couple days off to visit Rio.

Caipirinha count on this trip = zero

Fresh fruit count = insert some large number here (happy me!)

Longest car trip on SP roads = 4hours

View from our office in SP

Butter cookies I couldn't get enough of

And the Groom Wore Flip-flops!

Post backlog...

In February, I headed down to the Florida to participate in my first American wedding, to be a part MV’s very special and very beautiful wedding. It even ended up being a reunion of sorts! A bunch of us from the Bay Area met up at SFO and flew in to Fort Lauderdale together. From there we drove down to Islamorada, the venue of the wedding and the resort where we were to stay the weekend. There we met up with classmates from different parts of the country. And best of all, we had friends coming in from London and Paris too! It felt like Beach Week all over again – lazing by the pool, Bloody Mary’s for breakfast, beautiful sun and ocean… and I even saw a Jelly Fish (now I know what they look like!)

MV, a fellow section D’er is the epitome of grace and everything that’s classic and timeless. And her wedding was just an extension of her personality! The night before the wedding was a barbeque by the pool where the guests mingled with the couple and other friends. It was great catching up with people I haven’t seen since graduation, finding out about their new post-Darden lives and exchanging stories… People seemed happy in their new routines and yet nostalgic about their time at school. The wedding was beautiful; the couple took their vows as the sun set and a gentle breeze blew in from the ocean. MV looked more beautiful than ever, if that is even possible! She was radiant in her wedding gown. The groom wore a casual khaki suit and flip flops! After the ceremony, we gathered at the pier for a picture of the couple with their Darden friends. The couple took the floor for their first dance to lit sparkles and warm fire on the pier. And then a lovely dinner, where MV and CG had ensured that the vegetarians had enough options. Dancing followed and then we hung out by the pool one last time before we left after breakfast with the couple the next morning.

My first American wedding was more enlightening than I’d ever imagined. I don’t know any two people who are as good together as MV and CG. I was touched by their warmth to their guests despite it being their special day, touched by their thoughtfulness (welcome packets of aspirin, beer, granola bars etc) and as always, in all admiration for their beautiful ceremony.

It was a wonderful weekend, one that I’ll remember for a very long time. Best wishes MV and CG! Here’s to a life full of happiness, laughter and love.

A Lament on Leaving... and Arriving

Since I last wrote, I’ve disposed of more than eighty percent of everything I owned in Charlottesville – things known and unknown – having managed to fit the remaining twenty percent into two suitcases and backpack and made my way across the breadth of this country to California. I miss Charlottesville and everything about it, most of all, the comfort of putting one foot before the other and knowing exactly where I am going.

And then there’s California! Although it’s always great to go back to the Bay Area, SoCal’s a whole different ball game altogether. Hanging out with family is always great and is the reason I’m here to start with. I’m also having a ton of fun playing tourist and although I’m yet to spot a celebrity I take comfort in the fact that I wouldn’t be able to distinguish a celebrity if I sat next to one in a restaurant, since everyone here seems so umm… dressed up all the time! My need to disconnect (something I’d been wanting to do since I got back from Beach Week) has resulted in me not having contacted my friends in the area yet, but I’ll get to it eventually I know.

I’ve been trying to acclimatize myself to normal life, whatever that means. Actually that’s exactly my problem, I’m not sure I know what normal life means. I tried picking up my reading habit again, except that in the two years I’ve been out of the books-scene, it seems to have changed a whole lot. I am trying to get my hands on some fiction because I don’t want to read anything that reminds me of a HBS case, and I can’t find anything on the bestsellers list that doesn’t involve vampires and murder. I think I’ll eventually give up and read the Niall Ferguson book, The Ascent of Money, that’s staring at me from my sister’s desk.

I’ve enjoyed exploring Los Angeles and the surrounding areas and seeing a lot of places that are familiar from the movies. My Universal Studios visit is still pending (the sun here has been scorching), however I have enjoyed going to the Walk of Fame area immenseley (and went there more than once!). No prizes for guessing which star had the most number of visitors around it at any given time.

(End of a) Beginning of the End*

For the past week or so I have been living the retired life right here in Charlottesville. Well retired might be inappropriate, more like the job-seeker’s life. Every day I drink my morning tea in front of my laptop as I catch up with email, make my incredibly long to do list and post something from my apartment for sale on craigslist.

I experiment with my breakfast – because it’s my favorite meal of the day – and a good breakfast of pancakes and fruit puts me in just the right mood to tackle the day. And then I come to my “office”. There is a bunch of us that comes to school every day religiously to hole up in an LT room and work on looking for work. It’s like going to the office – it builds the discipline of sitting in one place for hours to get the job done, and on coffee breaks I control the calories by walking past the classrooms and the tables laden with delicious food for the MBA for Execs people and hanging out with the other office-goers.

Allow me to whine a little please. I hate packing. Phew, there it’s off my chest. I love travelling don’t get me wrong, and I would happily brag that I can pack real quick when I have to do a trip. But packing for moving is absolutely a nightmare, no matter how many times you’ve done it before (and I have unfortunately done it too many times). I also have started to believe that perhaps my suitcases shrank while they were in the closet these past two years!

I leave C’ville at the end of this month because my lease ends and it doesn’t make sense to hold on to this place any longer. Everyone’s leaving and it makes me sad to watch them go… with some people I feel like I may never see them again and it’s scary and sad all at the same time. I am heading to SoCal first to spend some time with my sister and hope the family-treatment will help settle the chaos that my mind has been these past few weeks. I always have fun when I hang out with my sister and this time we’re planning a west coast road trip which will be great. I’ll move to the bay area next month and just take it from there.

But before all that is the mammoth weekend of packing that’s coming up tomorrow. Wish me luck.

*inspired by this Bon Jovi song called Welcome To Wherever You Are.

Beach Week at the OBX*

*post backlog - late post
I spent the last 5 days of my Darden life at the Outer Banks in North Carolina on the Darden week-before-graduation tradition known as Beach Week. The whole class heads down to Nags Head and rents houses by the beach. It’s a week of relaxing, partying, hanging out with classmates for perhaps the last time. It’s the last week of the crazy lifestyle that business school has been. And it didn’t disappoint. After the mad pace of the last two years, my five days at OBX were just the opposite, from early morning tea on the patio gazing at the sea, to late night movies and wine with breakfast!

I was in a five bedroom house with a few other people. We had a large living room, fully equipped kitchen, a pool, hot tub and plenty of great views of the ocean. We spent our time between the various houses, cooking and eating and hanging out by the water… One day we went to explore some sand dunes but for the most part we lay by the waters (pool, hot tub, beach) and hung out in other ppl’s houses playing board games or cooking/eating.

While the first few days were cloudy, rainy and gloomy – best way to enjoy a seriously dangerous LASA party – the last two days were beautifully sunny and going by the tan I returned with, we really made full use of those days. By the last night at OBX, my housemates and I decided to skip the last official Darden party at the Pit, and stayed home for a pyjamas and movie night.

We drove back via Richmond late on Thursday and stopped for dinner at the Capital Ale House – a place I highly recommend for their large variety of beers. We also decided to surprise a friend’s boyfriend at the airport.

My folks get in town Friday night, just as graduation festivities begin at Darden. Graduation! Can you believe it? I can’t!

Getting inside The Circle

Last Monday I did something I’ve never done before! I rushed home from class last Monday, ate a tub of Yoplait Lemon Parfait for lunch as I walked from my apartment to that of the Costas – I was a bundle of excitement, that’s for sure!

The Costas, Nacho and I were heading for DC to watch Bon Jovi perform at the Verizon Center as part of their The Circle tour. We recruited one more SY to come with us and headed to DC from Charlottesville. We parked close to the Verizon Center and the overwhelming majority of men in the group ensured we headed to Hooters for lunch – I’d never been there before and as the Costas like to joke, my American experience was incomplete without a visit!

The concert itself was fantastic. In fact I have no trouble admitting it was the best concert experience of my life! Jon Bon Jovi was my first crush – and I cannot watch the music video for “Keep The Faith” on YouTube without literally holding my breath and reliving that sense of awe I felt when I first saw it way back in 1992. Back then, Jon Bon Jovi and the crew – funky hairdo, pierced ears, superman tattoo, skinny jeans and Richie Sambora’s guitar solo on Brooklyn Bridge – represented everything cool in the world! That crush on Jon Bon Jovi stayed true despite the many hairdo changes, and evolution of their music from hard hitting head banging rock to ballads and back again to the guitar-resurrecting new album. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see these guys in flesh and blood, as you can probably tell by now!

Bon Jovi played in Milwaukee a couple of weeks after I landed in Madison a couple of years ago. At the time I couldn’t go for a bunch of different reasons – so I made sure I got inside the circle this time, buying my tickets well in advance! The venue was packed and the crowd was on its feet the whole time – Jon made sure they stayed that way. If there was ever a thought that they’d gotten old, I think this concert just proved it wrong.

I became a Bon Jovi fan all over again! The hair's still cool and so are the tattoos - what's cooler is the music!

Set List: Happy Now, We Weren’t Born to Follow, Bad Name, Whole Lot of Leavin’, Born to be my Baby, Lost Highway, When We Were Beautiful, Superman Tonight, We Got It Going On, Bad Medicine (with a Roadhouse Blues interlude), It’s My Life, Lay Your Hands on Me (by Richie Sambora), Hallelujah, I’ll Be There For You, Something for the Pain, Someday I’ll be Saturday Night, Keep The Faith, Work for the OWrking Man, Who Says You Can’t Go Home, Love’s the Only Rule
Encore: Runaway, Wanted Dead or Alive, Livin’ on a Prayer

And here's the video that started it all for me!

SF again - Darden West Coast Job Trek

I obviously have some kind of major love affair going on with San Francisco! In just over a month of being here for Thanksgiving, I am back in the Bay Area, this time as part of a team of students from school doing our annual West Coast Job Trek. The trek is for students (FY and SY) interested in making a career in the Valley in tech companies and is our way to show interest and build relationships and contacts for our job search. Add to it the brilliant weather here after the bitter cold back east, and you have all the trappings for a great one week at CA!

This year we went to a bunch of really great companies and were hosted very warmly by alumni in most places (Darden and other UVA alums) and by non-Darden folks in others. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the majority of MBAs at these companies come from schools in the backyard (Stanford, Haas), but there are some people from east coast schools as well. From a chance to shop at the Apple store at One Infinite Loop to a gourmet lunch at the Googleplex, we had a host of experiences and had the opportunity to learn just a little bit more about what these fantastically interesting organizations are up to, from people who not too long ago were in our shoes!

I had a great time visiting companies and hearing about the work they are currently doing. I also had a really good time getting to know alumni from the Bay Area at a networking reception held in one of the pubs in downtown SF. The more time I spend talking to people in tech or visiting the Valley, the more convinced I am of my choice to head to this industry post-Darden… the internet and e-commerce space is exciting and there is plenty of opportunity to make lasting impact right from Day 1. In fact, I even mentioned it to an alumni, in response to why I wanted to settle down in the Bay Area, that I am so excited about the space that I am willing to go almost anywhere if the right opportunity came along, the Bay Area is just one stop.

It hasn’t been all work though! I took a day to spend time with friends here and among other things, had the opportunity to take a drive up/down Lombard Street! I have to mention that the best thing about this trip to San Fran has been flying Virgin America and having the wifi internet on the flight (thanks to Google!) I’ve managed to get SO much work done on the flights, especially since the alternative is to sleep (badly) and land at my destination feeling groggy, cranky and with a crick in my neck!

Do I dare look back?

Long post coming up...

I did not want to do the customary year-in-review, but then thoughts, they come and go and what is this blog for, if not to capture them before they run away? So I plod on, in a stream of consciousness ramble that is a function of a heavy tummy from too much food and heavy eyes from little sleep!

So I proudly celebrated a full calendar year of being vegetarian this year and I’m really proud of it. I am not counting in all those accidental meat tastings… the only half-full outlook to those incidents is that I am now super conscious when I am ordering food and make sure to mention my preference for absolutely no meat or meaty broth in my food. Technically I’ve been veggie for more than a year now, but one full calendar year makes me feel so good about myself, that I have decided to remain veggie for as long as possible. And it’s been easier than I thought!

I travelled quite a bit this year – maybe not as much as I would have liked but I did go to some really interesting places and that’s what counts, right? Right! So let’s see… Washington DC, India, Brazil, California – see it wasn’t much. But my trip to Brazil was most memorable and it’s gotten me on the track to planning another trip to the continent – more on that as it unfolds. Another serendipitously good trip was the summer in India. Weather aside – it was either incredibly hot or annoyingly wet! – I went to places that I couldn’t point on the map before the summer and all of it in the country I profess to have spent the first twenty something years of my life and profess to have travelled extensively in.

I spent a fantastically ups-and-downs filled year at business school… and since this blog has been all about business school for the most part, it would be unfair to talk more about it. It would suffice to say that I saw way too many ups and downs this year… there were times when I thought I wouldn’t survive and other times when I just wanted time to stop and hold on to the moments. I found out much more about my friends here and made a whole bunch of new ones too. Like a database keeping up with times, I purged and I added… and then some more. Over the months that passed, I saw different facets to the people I thought I already knew well, some pleasant some not so much.

One thing that I did consistently through the year was to look for a job – first the internship and then full time. I wish I could say I rounded off the year in style with a fantastic big bucks offer, but sadly I cannot. However, I have hope – green shoots and all that, so maybe in next year’s recap, I’ll be able to write all about what a fantastic journey it had been… and why not? Believe it or not, looking for a job – and the inevitable rejections that come with it – are enough to teach you a lot about yourself as it taught me this year.

Which then brings me to my things to do next year. As always, it’s to lose weight. I know I know, it comes back every year to haunt me, but this year I’m really going to do something about it – starting from January 11th (this is SO not a good way to start on a resolution!) - and since I've already begun last year, it's off to a start of sorts already! Other things I want to do are remain vegetarian, get a few more stamps on the passport, oh and get a job! Some other plans for the year are to experiment with cooking – especially baking – and to make sure that my experiments are all given away to others to eat! I also really want to get back to reading – and maybe once I graduate, I cannot cite the three-cases-a-day excuse for all the things I’ve missed out on and the people I’ve not given their due attention to last year. This year I just want to be a better, happier person... not such a tall order is it?

Oh and this year I also want to figure out what I want to do with this blog – that’s right, sweeping changes await this space. Happy new year!

Playing catch up on Thanksgiving

So I know I have been quiet on the blog space these past few weeks, blame it on writer's block and celebrate the come back now!

I had a great Thanksgiving break in California with family and friends. It was great catching up with some friends from work and high school in the Bay Area - although we couldn't really have all the long deep conversations on all that we had missed out in each others' lives since we last met, it was enough to pick up the threads and move on to more current stuff. Or maybe no one ever really attempts to have those years' worth of conversations...

In the short time that I was there, I was able to fully appreciate the garage-to-fortress rise of the technology companies that give Silicon Valley its name. Highlights of my trip include walking along the Golden Gate, riding a Christmas train to Fremont with my young cousins and a tour of the YouTube office in San Bruno!

Another thing that I was really thankful to technology for was free wi-fi (Thanks Google!) in the airports! I had a three hour layover in Charlotte on my way back and used the internet fully to research a project and create a deck to present in class the following morning.

A little bit of Virginia

It was with some vengeance that I was completely unproductive this weekend. I went down to Maryland/DC for a day. It was a beautiful day, just a touch windy and was perfect to walk along the Potomac as we stopped by the Indian embassy for a friend to get her visa to India. I had never been to Georgetown before and so the rest of us spent some time exploring the area on foot – while the aforementioned friend stood in queue at the embassy and concluded that the process could do with some Kaizen.

I love the DC area and every time I visit, I am struck by just how pretty it is and that I’d be more than happy to be able to live there after school (sigh). We spent the rest of the day helping N shop for her wedding, which pretty much killed my feet! I also indulged in my favorite shopping activity of getting perfume samples – I know what my next perfume purchase is going to be! If I had to pick the best part of the whole trip it has got to be the dinner at Amma’s Kitchen in Vienna VA! It is an all veggie south Indian restaurant and the tam-brahm in me was delirious in the aroma of sambar and dosa!

I was exhausted by the time I returned to C’ville and promptly crashed! The next morning it was time for a drive/hike at the Shenandoah National Park. I had never been to the Skyline Drive before and couldn’t pass up the opportunity to check out some fall colors. I don’t remember fall from last year - probably because it was in the midst of Black November - so it seemed like a great excuse to further the cause of the unproductive weekend. After a scenic drive up to the national park, we found a trail we wanted to hike along and set out with good spirits and cameras for company. The colors were beautiful and the ground just a bit damp from the rains. Our hike was followed by a late lunch at the Downtown Mall and then back home.

When you think about it, there is a lot to do at Charlottesville. The first year of school doesn’t leave you with too much time to indulge in day long activities around town. I’ve figured out how this works though: The first year is meant for you to explore everything around the Corner and the Downtown Mall; and the second year is for rest of the countryside!

I expected to feel guilt ridden about taking the weekend off like this, but surprisingly, I don’t. I managed just enough will power to prepare for my classes today, but that’s about it. This break was long overdue.

View from the top
The lady bug that got pally with Sania

Freedom is...

...a word that we throw around to justify bad behavior, short skirts, hurtful words, jumping signals in the night…

Every year Independence Day becomes a time to reflect on the importance of where India is as a nation today. Having grown up in urban India, I have known freedom since I was old enough to yawn. Freedom meant that I could choose to wear the kind of clothes I wished, wear my hair short or long, black or red… It meant that I could play cricket with the boys as a 12 year old. It meant I could choose the books I wanted to read, the amount of religion I wanted to practice, the languages I chose to learn or not. Freedom meant that I could choose to study a branch of engineering as the only girl in that department, and no one stopped me. Freedom means that I can proudly go to a country on the other side of the world to get an advanced degree… because I want to… at which age, my mother had already had me. Freedom means that when I marry, it will be to a man of my choice, after my mind is ready to accept him as a partner. But this is not just me; this is every urban Indian man or woman.

Freedom is what I saw in rural India this summer. It was where a woman could walk around in her community, doing door-to-door sales, unaccompanied by any male member of the family. She could be an entrepreneur… and a mother… and a cook, homemaker, a wife, a daughter-in-law. And freedom meant that she could juggle all of these roles with WonderWoman-like dexterity. Freedom is where the son of a single mother from a small time town in rural Tamil Nadu could dream of getting an MBA degree from India’s premier business school… to achieve and then go on to start his own firm.

Freedom means that we no longer have the benefit of someone else’s wisdom, that we go on to make our own mistakes to learn from them. That we fall and get up and fall again. That we chart our own course, take our own risks, with no template that we have to follow, with no comfort of knowing how it all will end. Freedom is knowing that life comes full circle, but meanders in ways unique to each of us, to the choices we make, the heartbreaks we endure, the sacrifices we make, the successes we earn. Freedom is blooming where we’re planted. Freedom is, but only, a state of mind. Freedom is… everything we want it to be.

To India, Happy Independence Day.

Internship - the last mile

I’m on the last week of my internship here. While work has gotten less exciting in the past three weeks (i.e. no traveling), it’s been information overload. I had one really slow week that frustrated the hell out of me – it’s hard enough to wake up in the morning, even harder to make it to work when it’s pouring outside – the least I expect is to be busy for the nine hours I’m at work. Instead, I had enough work for about an uninterrupted half day and then I’d wonder what I should be doing. Not that I minded it so much. You see, sitting in the middle of the action, you pick up stuff just from hearing and seeing. So although I didn’t get an opportunity to work with as many people as I would have liked to, I did get to learn a lot from observation (kind of like the way I learnt to cook!).

But that was just the one week. The one after that has been pretty busy. My final deliverable is a creative brief to an ad agency, one that encompasses a number of brands. After some analysis on the regions we are piloting this initiative (that I’m working on), we came up with a few brands that have the highest salience (how’s that for jargon?). I have spent the better part of last week meeting with the brand managers of these brands and studying brand materials I have obtained from them. While I have enjoyed meeting these people and learning about the brands and how they have been designing the campaigns that I see on outdoor overheads (OOH) and commercials (TVC), I wish they had time to talk to me about other stuff… like what keeps them here, what they like about their job, what their career graph has been etc. Basically the typical networking buzz except that I actually really WANT to know this about them. More than just an exposure to the workings of a typical CPG firm, I am using this internship to evaluate whether I want to return to India after Darden. Unfortunately, people here have been way too busy and I am constantly aware of the long hours they put in everyday, including Fridays.

On Saturday morning I return home for a few days before I have to leave for VA again. It feels like my ‘vacation’ is ending. It was great having free evenings with no cases to prep for the next day. I am actually reading – the newspapers, magazines, books… I have enjoyed walking around Nariman Point in the evenings after work, looking at headquarters of a lot of major corporations. It’s been a welcome change to be able to watch Sunday night movies on tv, with nothing to ‘study’ for Monday morning. But I’m ready for this to end because I really want to spend some time with the family, not just hurried weekends like I had over the past two months. In the meantime, I have this week to get through.

More reflections from rural India

Last week I returned from another 6 day trip through rural India. This time I went to markets in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. The idea of going to these markets was to have more one on one conversation with rural customers and since I am fluent in Bengali and Tamil, these two regions seemed ideal.

I started off with WB, in an area that is about 3 hours drive from Kolkata city, where I was staying as a base. I was visiting Kolkata after many years so I was quite excited about this visit. The markets I went to were very poor with poor infrastructure from the main roads/highways to the interiors where the villages were located amidst paddy fields and the occasional betel leaf plantation. In all the markets I went to, I had to walk a good bit to reach the village since the car would not go in beyond a point. Here I found villagers needed a lot of counseling on basic healthcare. It was sad to see that these people were almost stuck in their way of life and could not hope for change for a number of reasons, primarily because of the hand to mouth existence. I came away realizing that the little kids I saw playing in the mud would grow up in that same atmosphere, without clean sanitation and drinking water, that there was no hoping that the village would change in a few years. I suppose I shouldn’t say this, but I felt that they needed clean facilities more than premium laundry detergent, but that’s just me.

Next I went to my home state, TN. My Tamil is not the best, since I’ve only ever spoken urban Tamil, so I was a little apprehensive. But what I saw in rural TN totally blew me away. I went to a few villages outside of Madurai, a bustling temple town south of Chennai and en route to Kanyakumari, India’s southernmost tip of land. Here the villages had excellent infrastructure and facilities. People were very aware of products, their benefits and of the tenets of basic healthcare, sanitation, and hygiene and overall healthy living. All homes had at least one television and cell phone, all in the same mud-brick houses with thatched roofs. All homes also had cable, which meant that my grandmother in Chennai and the Shakti Amma’s mother-in-law in rural Madurai watched the same soap every afternoon. I saw one house that had a complete LG home theater system – my apartment in C’ville does not have a tele! A number of village men were in the military and deployed in places as far away as Punjab. The biggest surprise however came from the products that sold in these villages. I went with the Shakti Amma from home to home in the village, as she sold Unilever products in the tiniest packaging I’ve ever seen. She sold Dove and Pears and all varieties of laundry detergent. She even sold fabric softener, how do you like that?! That morning, she sold 15 sachets of fabric softener in 4 homes. And none of these homes has a Laundromat. The fabric softener has a very soothing scent and so after soaking clothes in a bucket full of softener in water, the leftover water was used to sweep the floors of the house! Smartest thing I ever heard!

Having seen villages in 3 different zones of India – west, east and south – I am really confused about how I would describe rural India to an outsider. I’ve seen the poorest ones where I needed to advocate the benefits of using a toothbrush. And I’ve seen ones where they want me to explain the differences in the 3 different types of Kotex sanitary napkins available in the market. But this I know, there is a huge untapped market just waiting to devour all the aspirational consumer products that they are watching on the television commercials. No more low cost and rudimentary advertising for these people.

Some interesting articles from Outlook Business magazine on rural consumerism and how microfinance is helping:
http://business.outlookindia.com/newolb/article.aspx?240795
http://business.outlookindia.com/newolb/article.aspx?102052

Mahayatra through Maharashtra

Tomorrow I leave for the first of a few trips as part of my internship (refer to map of Maharashtra state). I leave early morning for Aurangabad where I will spend the day observing Project Shakti in action in the villages around the city. The following day I will travel to Shirdi where once again I will get to observe Shakti Ammas as they go about their duties. And finally on Day 3, I will be in Nasik where I will get to interview some Shakti Ammas and understand what the missing links are.

I’m very excited about this trip not just because I’ve never travelled to these areas before, but also because of the sudden attention that rural India has been garnering in the media. I’m referring to two much emailed articles that came out in the WSJ and Mint newspapers today (Mint is a business newspaper that partners with WSJ). Rural India has been untouched by the recession and continues to consume and purchase more consumer products in the market than urban India. In fact, sales from rural India account for more than 50% of Unilever’s total sales in personal care products in India. Rural India has accounted for 50% of Vodafone’s new subscriptions for cell phone connections in the last year, and just today, the Indian prime minister has said that the economy will target for 9% growth rate, fuelled no doubt by the growing consumerism in the robust rural economy.

To know more about HUL’s Project Shakti, try this and this. This project has been successfully implemented in countries in Asia under Unilever Bangladesh (UBL) as Joyeeta and in Unilever Sri Lanka as Saubaghya.

Legend:

Mahayatra: long journey

Amma: mother

Soccer, Azul and the Beach – Brazil Diaries

Concluding part...

I thought it’s high time I wrapped up the Brazil diaries! So I’ll try to cram everything else from my week in Sao Paulo on to this one post.

One of the interesting exercises we had was on negotiation and this was on day 2 of classes at IBMEC. Although I didn’t really get much on negotiation from it, it was interesting in that it required us to go to a local grocery and produce market to buy a set of ingredients on a given (tight) budget. Language is such a big barrier in Brazil and that’s what made this exercise challenging for most of us – I had 3 Spanish speakers in my team, hence the “most of us”. Although our facilitator for this exercise claimed that the team with the woman had the most advantage, I can safely say that I had no hand in my team’s success – except perhaps photo-documenting it! But it was a fun exercise – we brought back all of our supplies to IBMEC and feasted on them for afternoon coffee!

Day 3 was probably the best day we Sao Paulo – actually it could be Day 4 too, I’m having trouble picking! On day 3, we visited the offices of Azul, founded by David Neeleman of Jet Blue fame. He has got to be the most down-to-earth CEO ever! He personally showed us around the facilities he had there, and spent time talking to us about what made the Brazilian market different and why Azul’s success was so hard to achieve. That evening, we got to watch Ronaldo take his team to victory in a football game: LIVE! The stadium was packed full and boy, do the Brazilians love their football or what! I’m no big football fanatic, but just that energy and the hype and the way the crowds went crazy every time Ronaldo’s shoe came in contact with the ball – I was jumping out of my seat in excitement! This was hands down the best experience ever!

On day 4, we went to the Embraer factory, which included a tour of the shop floor. It was exciting to see that stuff, especially since I had studied that during undergrad. And then there was the program in the evening. See here’s competition for that game. Symphony orchestra. Not just any orchestra, but Brazil’s best. We got tickets to go this orchestra where apart from watching a breathtaking performance, we also got to hob-nob with some of Sao Paulo’s Page 3 personalities. The performance itself was beautiful; I was captivated by the skill and verve in the music. The whole theater seemed to come alive to the tunes of Mozart and Beethoven and the stillness in the audience was in stark contrast to the spirited performance of the conductor. The person on the saxophone got four encores!

The next day we went on a day long trip to the beach, about 2 hours from Sao Paulo. While friends who went to Rio after this would write this one out, I had a lot of fun here. Since I’m not normally a beach person – I went with a big tube of sunscreen – when I say I had fun, you can tell I had fun! We had a good lunch at a beachside restaurant and soon the whole bunch was in the water. I had a long walk and great conversation with my professor as we walked along the water. The evening came too soon and we headed back to SP, playing card games on the bus to keep us awake.

We flew back to DC the next evening, and so spent the morning going shopping for famous Hawaiianas - actually we just needed an excuse to use the subway!

The week was over in a flash. I think I left a piece of me in Brazil. I loved being away from the Ville, away from email, job search, resume drops, exams, cases… it was the first time in months that I felt free and at peace. I look at pictures from that trip now and we all look so happy. I learnt so much about this country in that one week; in the classroom there was the technical knowledge – monetary and fiscal policies, sustainability… outside of it, I observed people and a different way of life and attitudes. It was exciting. For once, I wasn’t happy to be back in Darden, to the reality that awaited.

Sustainability in the Amazon - Brazil Diaries

First part...

We had an eventful journey from Dulles to JFK to GRU, Sao Paulo, Brazil, which included having a Darden impromptu reunion over dinner at JFK, with the team going on GBE to Buenos Aires and the vegetarians in the group chomping on homemade masala bajji and medhu vadas (all in the waiting lounges at JFK), we finally arrived at Sao Paulo, Brazil – tired and sleepy. What hit us first was the humidity – it was like being back in Chennai! Actually all of Sao Paulo reminds me of India – including the bikes on the road. I am beginning to think they’re like some standard characteristics of emerging economies!

Day zero, the day we landed, was spent in taking a long shower and going on an afternoon tour of the handicrafts market in Embu, an hour’s drive from Sao Paulo. After walking around the place and getting a taste of Brazilian beer, we headed home, tired and hungry. The Darden contingent is being hosted by Sao Paulo’s premier business school IBMEC and they hosted us for dinner on Day zero evening at the swanky rooftop of a 41 floor restaurant. The view of Sao Paulo was breathtaking and we spent more time standing outside taking in the view than actually sitting on the table. But oh wait, we had enough time to down a few Caipirinhas the Brazilian national alcoholic drink (think Mojito with a little more sugar). Since I’m such a Mojito fan, I was all for this drink!

Day 1 morning we went to take our first day of classes at IBMEC. We had discourses on Private Equity in Brazil – an interesting insight into the Brazilian capital markets and the fiscal/monetary policies, Culture in Brazil – an engaging lecture by an American psychology professor and finally, the best class of the day, Sustainability in the Amazon.

The Amazon is 60% of Brazil by area and yet is fraught with social and ecological problems. Our professor was a knowledgeable woman from IBMEC who had spent many years studying and working at the Amazon region and was well versed with the culture and society of the Amazonians. She talked about the extreme poverty of the region and how the rainforest and its rich biodiversity has become a political hotspot in the country. She talked about how there has been rampant deforestation by mining and manmade fires and how a series of policies in the name of agrarian reforms put the rainforest on the road to destruction. After all this bad news, she took us through the case of Orsa Foundation, one of the few Brazilian companies that are working at sustainability projects in the region. It was heartening to hear about the work they had done and were continuing to do to ensure the natives learnt to live with the forest instead of being forced to destroy it for money.

After a Peruvian lunch at IBMEC – with fried bananas! – we headed off to Abril Group, Brazil’s second largest media house that had footprints in the ink and digital media. As someone from the technology industry with a keen passion and involvement with ink/internet media, I found this visit extremely engaging. Abril group was like a case straight out of strategy class – the new media wave was just washing over Brazil and abril group wanted in, but did not know how to adapt their existing business model to play in this new market, where the blurry lines included behemoths like Google, MSN search, Yahoo search in the playing field.

After a cocktail party at the mezzanine and a tour through the extremely lively-looking offices (complete with Portuguese sponge bob caricatures on the elevator doors), we headed home. Not one to call it a night so soon, a bunch of us headed off on foot to find a mall and a place to get some beers. A few buckets of beer and fantastic conversation later, we’re home and hitting the sack. Day1 and a number of road crossings later, Toso (my Japanese classmate) is still safe and sound – he needs watching when crossing the road!

Story so far - Muito Bon!

PS. It’s hard to get by if you don’t know Portuguese or Italian. But you learn soon enough because the Brazilians are amazingly friendly.

Exhausted but excited

Finals are finally over! Our last subject, management communications or MC, is a paper that we have to turn in by tomorrow. I had grandiose plans (of course what else?!) of writing that paper before finals week and turning it in as an early bird. Predictably that did not happen. So this evening, when I was exhausted from giving my neglected apartment some much needed attention, when I should have been and could have been relaxing and taking a nap or catching up with friends, I was laboring through that 4 page MC paper. And what a time to have writer’s block! That 4 page writing was my most agonizing writing yet! This was more agonizing than when I would go for those creative writing competitions where there was nothing creative because you had to write on a given topic – and I would rebel on the grounds that creativity could not be contained in boundaries (topics) and so I would not write with my usual enthusiasm.

Tonight was a section D reunion – one I’ve been waiting for – and I didn’t go. I was just too exhausted, I fell asleep fully dressed. I would have probably slept all night if the phone had not woke me up. I spoke on the phone for a very long time with an old friend today. I had not called him since I got here and I had not realized how much I’d missed out on in these months that I’ve been living inside the Darden bubble. I love this place, but every time I re-establish contact with the outside world that I lived in before I came here, I feel guilty about how I’ve cut myself off. I left one rat race behind only to join another one. I sometimes wonder why we, as people, do this to ourselves.

I haven’t packed or anything for Brazil… which is so unlike me. I’m a compulsive list maker and take a fair amount of time getting ready for a trip. This is why I’m sitting here, sleepy and exhausted, with the idea of writing out my list, but instead typing out a post. I am not even sure what our agenda in Sao Paulo looks like. I am just glad that I’m getting a break from here – these past few months have been exhausting, physically and mentally. Sometimes I feel like I’d rather be spending this coming week sitting at home in the ville and being a vegetable, I know that looking back, I’d kick myself for doing that.

Here’s to new experiences… after all, that’s what this life is for!

End of Q3, Start of Spring

This week saw the wrap up of Q3 of the first year. The quarter flew by faster than anyone expected and I guess before I know it, summer break will be here too but let’s not go there.

Once we got over the initial bewilderment of new sections and new faces, this quarter proved to be great fun. I learnt a ton, and actually started falling in love with a few subjects that I was absolutely petrified of earlier. Finance this quarter was great fun and I can’t wait for second year when I will hopefully get to take the Valuations elective – I envy the folks that are taking that elective next quarter because the professor is one of the best in Darden. Another subject that I kind of got my head around was DA – something I’d struggled with in Q1. Econ for this quarter was extremely informative and I wish I could have taken the elective next quarter but that’s choc full. All in all, we had a great couple of months and with finals next week, I only hope I will do justice to all that I learnt. We wrapped up classes with the social reps organizing lunch after the last class yesterday. And another great way to wrap up the quarter was the election of LP, my Section D and Section V superstar, as the DSA President and K-Mart as DSA VP and special congratulations to fellow blogger Jackie for NAWMBA President.

This quarter is also the last one where learning teams will meet. Next quarter onwards, because of electives, most learning teams choose not to meet. My own team chose not to meet this quarter, but we kept the support going for the most part through emails and exchanges of information. A couple of team based simulation exercises brought us together a few times this quarter and each time it’s been a ton of fun. Most LTs had LT corridor parties – all the teams in a particular corridor had beer + snacks parties. Tonight my team is meeting for dinner at a new Thai place at Barracks and I am really looking forward to catching up with the gang.

With the end of this quarter I guess it’s also the end of winter in some ways – it’s 6pm and there’s still light out. With the fantastic weather we’ve been having over the last couple of days, I’m feeling strangely relaxed. I’m just hoping it doesn’t lead to complacence because there’s a lot of cramming I need to do over this weekend.

Same time next week I’ll be done with finals and packing up to go to Brazil on my GBE. I’m SO excited!!