Today evening, I went to meet my distant relatives. My dad's buaji and her family, they had been here since 1970s before moving back to India a few years ago. Since then, they have been coming to Oxford to spend a month during summers every year.
This was the second time I was meeting buaji and Sunil in my entire life! And the first time I was meeting uncle, Sonia, Shivani. I had a really good time, they were very welcoming and I immediately felt a part of the family. The first time I was meeting an Indian English family where we were mostly coversed in English - that was the only peculiar thing in the setting :)
I stayed there for 4 hours, and the discussion revolved around a lot of things - Indian summers, traffic, tax evasion, salesmen in Indian malls who always flock you if you make the mistake of entering at a non-busy hour (apparently, the family went for shopping the morning and were still in the shopping mood), IIT (ha ha ha, uncle had done his graduation at IIT D - the moment I got to know about that, I felt even more comfortable talking to him, he was a participant in the first IITD batch, and yes we talked a lot about IIT :)), sai baba and puttaparty (the family is a great devotee of baba and are now settled at baba's ashram) and so many more things.
I didn't realize that time went by so quickly. It was already 3 hours when buaji asked for dinner and then I had the time of my day - karhi, paneer, salad, puuurrrrriiiiiiiiiii. Desserts including strawberries, mangoes (Indian mangoes), ice-cream and hot love (some fudge which Sonia/Shivani had prepared from ice-cream, cream, and some more stuff - i didnt have it). Really good food and again we had a very good discussion over the table. One thing which really stood out during the entire 4 hours was that kids and parents were debating on a whole lot of issues - uncle, buaji, sonia, shivani and sunil - all were talking about regular day to day things and ne'er seemed like stopping and taking a break :) As I now know, this is quite common in an Indian English family.
Back home, I still have kaju ki barfi to gorge on. Buaji gave me a box of barfi before I left. Indian sweets are just too good - I miss them.
Saturday 26 May 2007
Friday 25 May 2007
Strategy Consulting Project
With the term (last at Oxford) nearing an end, things are getting less ambigous now. Now I know where I will be spending my summers for the Strategy Consulting Project (SCP).
The SCP allocation is a long process in which the companies had started presenting the projects right at the start of this term. There were not many good projects on offer but those which were good attracted a very strong competition. My eyes were on Macquarie, Lloyds, Standard & Poors (in the order of preference).
Four teams bid for Macquarie and we lost that bid (Team included Robin, Diliana and Kian) to a better team. Allan made a lot of difference in the two teams and the result was known and obvious to everyone in the school even before the teams presented their bid.
Lloyds also was a tough nut to crack. Here my team included Angel, Cesar and Fernando. We did a fair bit of job on building the presentation as I could extract some ideas from my Macquarie presentation. The other two teams were equally strong if not more. But I think what really clicked in our favor was the team dynamics we were able to pull out during our presentation to the Lloyds team. I led the presentation effort and it was a very good experience; before we ended, we knew that we had put across a very good effort and communicated all our ideas strongly to the panel. They called us after all the three presentations were over to tell us they want our team to work on the project. It was quick!
Now only a few more weeks of class room study is left. Or, its already over? with students already bunking most of the classes to explore job opportunities or just enjoy the Oxford experience. But yes, the assignments never seem to end. Somebody somehwere had told me that Trinity Term will be a walk in the park - it remains a distant dream, atleast for now.
Any case, I am already looking forward to the Lloyds consulting project. And yes, we may go punting sometime soon!
The SCP allocation is a long process in which the companies had started presenting the projects right at the start of this term. There were not many good projects on offer but those which were good attracted a very strong competition. My eyes were on Macquarie, Lloyds, Standard & Poors (in the order of preference).
Four teams bid for Macquarie and we lost that bid (Team included Robin, Diliana and Kian) to a better team. Allan made a lot of difference in the two teams and the result was known and obvious to everyone in the school even before the teams presented their bid.
Lloyds also was a tough nut to crack. Here my team included Angel, Cesar and Fernando. We did a fair bit of job on building the presentation as I could extract some ideas from my Macquarie presentation. The other two teams were equally strong if not more. But I think what really clicked in our favor was the team dynamics we were able to pull out during our presentation to the Lloyds team. I led the presentation effort and it was a very good experience; before we ended, we knew that we had put across a very good effort and communicated all our ideas strongly to the panel. They called us after all the three presentations were over to tell us they want our team to work on the project. It was quick!
Now only a few more weeks of class room study is left. Or, its already over? with students already bunking most of the classes to explore job opportunities or just enjoy the Oxford experience. But yes, the assignments never seem to end. Somebody somehwere had told me that Trinity Term will be a walk in the park - it remains a distant dream, atleast for now.
Any case, I am already looking forward to the Lloyds consulting project. And yes, we may go punting sometime soon!
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