Year 2008
Year 2008 has been awesome, its undoubtedly one of the best years of my life.
2008 taught me the true value of friends, it gave me the opportunity to work with some of the most wonderful professionals, I forged great new friendships during the year, three of my closest friends married this year, my old friend presented the best gift (an MBA) that I could ask for, I can now cook! and my mom learned to use computer and she began learning music, I’ve visited the place I would dare call paradise and I have been learning something new everyday since august 20th. Its been a wonderful year; fun and more importantly meaningful. So much so that I decided to make a photo journal about it!
As clichéd as it may sound, I cannot help but feel that I’ve had such a great year only because my dad is watching over me and my mom prays for me everyday.
European flowers
This is an odd post.
I regret the day that we removed the jasmine plant from my house; the smell of jasmine brought freshness automatically everyday.
Well, I dont mean to sound nostalgic, but I just realised that I have absolutely no memory of smelling flowers in Europe. I have spent a while here as a tourist and now as a temporary resident and the place is filled with flowers. Every window of Ireland, every street of Annecy and Keukenhof are all completely filled with the most beautiful flowers and yet, I have no memory of smelling flowers!!
I wonder if the flowers were odourless or if its my memory?
Yup.. it sells indeed
(this is continuation of the post called “sex sells”)
Here are the stats from wordpress.. fairly self explanatory… Dec 23rd is when I received most number of hits ever on this blog : )
Sex sells!
I just noticed that our first class after the christmas break is Marketing. Ofcourse, we will learn about value proposition and market segmentation and tons of interesting stuff. We will probably even touch on the Long tail concept.. but, my experiment with this long post is fairly simple… does sex sell : ) well, actually it sure does… the question is how much does it sell… So, here’s a post about sex, and we’ll see how many hits it receives !
Sex Creates Diversity!!
“On human nature” is a pulitzer prize winning book by Edward O. Wilson which gave birth to the field of evolutionary psychology. I’m not sure what made me buy this book back in 2005. It gathered dust on my book shelf for 2 years because it was beyond my comprehension, but all that changed once I stumbled upon the chapter called “sex”… lol. Its amazing how sex can put things into context more quickly than the speed of light. Here is a transcript from the book. not sleazy, but still an interesting read.
“Sex is central to human biology and a protean phenomenon that permeates every aspect of our existence… its complexity and ambiguity is due to the fact that sex is not designed primarily for reproduction. Evolution has devised much more efficient ways for creatures to multiply than the complicated procedures of mating and fertilization. Bacteria simply divide in two… If multiplication were the only purpose of reproductive behavior, our mammalian ancestors could have evolved without sex.
Nor is the primary function of sex the giving and receiving of pleasure. The vast majority of animal species perform the sexual act mechanically and with minimal foreplay. Pairs of protozoan form sexual unions without the benefit of a nervous system… Pleasure is at best an enabling device for animals to copulate, a means for inducing creatures with versatile nervous systems to make the heavy investment of time and energy required for courtship, sexual intercourse, and parenting.
Moreover, sex is in every sense a gratuitously consuming and risky activity… They are energetically expensive and even dangerous, to the degree that the more ardent are put at greater risk of being killed by rivals or predators…
Thus sex by itself lends no straightforward Darwinian advantage. So there are good reasons for reproduction to be nonsexual: it can be made private, direct, safe, energetically cheap, and selfish. Why, then has sex evolved?
The principal answer is that sex creates diversity”
All for a good cause
Just before Christmas, one of our classmates organized a fun mustache competition. The proceeds were donated to UNICEF. This is what the competition did to me : )
Design
I find it strange, if not scary, that I cannot stop admiring the design of this webpage.. So much that I’m actually publishing this post.. I absolutely love blue and minimalist designs.. but still.. I wonder if this says something about me… well, I’m pretty sure it does.. I wonder what it says about me : )
The page is trailer of the movie Duplicity…
No fairy tales
As the MBA year progresses, we realise there are no fairy tales in the MBA case studies. Every case study has a hidden conflict or “issue”. Even if everything seems to be fine, we find out during class discussion or later that there was an issue that we missed. It makes sense since problem solving and decision making is a big part of the MBA learning.
However, there are times when the last thing I want to see is conflicts or issues. Today, I’m supposed to read a case about entrepreneurial venture and even before I read it, I know there is a conflict. One of the partners wanted to sell off the company or may be there is a price negotiation or may be the bank does not want to provide a loan… I know there is something in there…
After the attacks in India on 26/11, I felt may be this MBA wont make me thing about it too much.. but the fact is that it occupies my mind most of the times. Its depressing… truly depressing
leave a comment