Week 5 - Committe elections, Coca cola CEO and Could do with some sleep!

Oxford -- week 5

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First up, do not let the sleep deprivation in the blog title not give the wrong impression. It was a good week :-). There were a few positives...

After the low of last week, not getting on the Entrepreneurship OBN, I got on the committee for Alumni relations role for the student advisory board for 2007-08 and also the External relations role for Oxford Entrepreneurs -- one of the biggest student run organizations in Europe. I am looking forward to the Student advisory board position as that will allow me to actually do some thing to fix the almost non-existent alumni relations channel at SBS. The Oxford Entreprenur role excites me no end as this is a organization with 4000+ members and the committee comprising mostly of very very bright group of young individuals (mostly undergrads) is doing some great work and are getting better. Check them out at @ -- http://www.oxfordentrepreneurs.co.uk/

Must say a special thank u to a dear friend and Mentor who had told me after my last week's dissapointment -- "so what did u learn grasshopper?". I got the message and and it reminded me that there are no failures -- just learning opportunities! Thanks Marc.

Also marks for the first group assignment were out. My group got distiction which was real cool. Only 4 / 13 groups in our section got distinction and 8 / 36 across the entire batch. So it was good worthy effort I would think. We need to ensure though that we look to improve as a group and always finish strong to continue this good start.

It was a special week as my bua (paternal aunt) visited me. She has come from india to visit Deepa (me dear cousin) in Birmingham. Its a pity that due to my packed schedule I could just be with them for half a day, but we had a great time never the less. She liked Oxford quite a bit. Some great pictures of ChristChurch and myself :-) attached from her trip. A good friend had requested pics of Christchurch -- so maddy here u go! Will be putting up pictures for the Harry Potter hall soon.

Hmm what else. Oh yeah, the (one of the) highlight of the week was the visit and talk by Chairman and CEO of Coca Cola -- Mr. Neville Isdell at Said Business School. It was a great talk focusing around coroporate responsibilities and role model corporate citizenship being very important for Coca-Cola. A truly exceptional person, his reference to Nelson Mandela being his hero struck a chord with me as Mr. Mandela is my childhood hero too! I had the good fortune of having some personal face time with Mr. Isdell as I was one of the people organizing and helping out with the event. Attached is a picture of the help group with this truly distinguished gentleman!

The week ended on a great note too. Friday night I was invited over by Larry to his College, New College, hosting a formal dinner night open to limited guests of the college members. It was a grand affair and truly memorable. This is really what seperates Oxford from any other institute in the world. 1000 year old buildings, the tradition, history of presidents, nobel laureates having eaten where we were eating. It was a goosebumpish (did i just make up that word?!!) affair! Thanks Larry!

Saturday night was Oxfords first house party. Hosted again by Larry and his flatmates (Nick, Tian, Vicky) -- the party was called "The Botley (street on which they live) Bop (a term used for parties hosted by colleges in Oxford) Antifusc party". It was a roaring success I felt and personally had a great time. Thanks guys!! Attached are a couple of pics which might give you an idea of the wild night that was.

Sunday night, after a day reading at the library, was Id night hosted at Somerville college (this was the college of former Prime Minister of India -- Late Mrs Indira Gandhi). Was good food and some decent entertainment!

So there...quite a week. Next week will see 3 assignments and as soon as I upload this post I will be reading for atleast a couple of hours giving me a good 4.5 hours for sleep (lucky me! )..

Next week...same day...we will be at the halfway mark for the semester. How fast are we moving....vrooooooooooooooooom!

Week 4 -- Garba, Group Study and 'The Grind'!

Garba 1




Garba 2




No laughing matter -- fooling around with Larry




Garba, Group Study and 'The Grind'!

Week 4 over....2 weeks of studies over. So in a way 25% of my first semester is over (8 week semester). WOW.

Dunno if i am getting used to the pace of 'the grind' or all I did was work this week, but it was a relatively sedate week. Lectures were on in full swing. My reading was hardly up to the mark. Infact I am seriously seriously lagging with daily readings of text and case studies. But i think an MBA teaches you to learn to priortize and pick your poison..literally! So I am zeroing in on Finance and Economics as the ones for which I will try to keep my eye on the ball. I am hoping keen participation in class and relative ease of curriculam for the others (decision science is quite a lot of statistics, financial reporting is very new to me but a purely quantitative subject which i think should be leveraged for pulling up overall grade, strategy is well strategy -- anything flies, org behaviour is lot of fluff) should help me tackle them right before exam.

Had a disappointing start to the week as I lost out on 'chair' position for the Entrepreneurship business Network which I was eyeing. There was election by show of hands and not many people turned up. But I think a great guy won so it should be an interesting OBN(Oxford Business NEtwork). I though am on the Marketing OBN which should allow me to help with some of the events too.


We had two group assignments due this week. A Strategy case study on Robert Mondavi and the wine industry -- was quite a tough one as it required industry analysis. The other was a relatively simpler Organization behviour case study dealing with different personalities. While on personalities, we did one of these personality test in class which then gave results for analysis. Was interesting actually -- I am supposedly a laid back relaxed guy who is pushy and competitive -- whatever that means!! Also I am reactive and very much an explorer (a day dreamer who seeks to always explore more ) -- though I kind of agreed to the test on these two counts! And lastly on the project, I must add I personally think we have a great study group team. We are the 'Assasins' - yup we have given ourselvs a name and all. I shall soon update pics of my team mates -- Adam, Chris, Gary, Michelle, Vikas and myself!


I had the first of my improv workshops this week. We had a decent turn out - 9 people showed up. Sarah (a MFE student), Phil (a great improv ) and myself (with my humble improv experience) orchestrated the workshop with few 'yes and' games and C.R.O,W scene work. Was a lot of fun. We need to come up with a great name for the group and also get into logistics of when do we aim to have our first public performance. I have a good feeling about this one!!

Also this week we had our first peer support sync up meet after 2 weeks. It was absolutely fantastic meeting up with 10 friends who had shared a whole week before classes started. We caught up on whats been going on and how each was dealing with the madness of the first two weeks. We shall be meeting up for dinner the coming week. So look forward to some snaps and updates next week from this corner.

The week ended with two major events on Saturday. First up, the rugby world cup final (rugby is huge in England. The game was invented here and whats more like a true world up this one happens once every 4 years). England vs South Africa. The other was 'Indian Garba Nite'. Unfortunately they were both at the same time. I was dressed in my white showing support for England and carrying a India 'kurta' in the hand. But ultimately being from gujarat, my genes got better of me and I opted for the dandia. It was a great decision. Bonded with quite a few indian friends and had great fun. Good times!!

Sunday was subdued. Went for a run through the woods behind my apt with thames running by the side. Shall update pictures of the same soon. Beautiful place. Then went to a faraway Tesco (Tesco is like the biggest grocery supermarket chain in the UK) for groceries. Back to school and read up the Microsoft vs State case for the Economics class tomorrow. No prizes for guessing the topic here - Monopoly!

Its an easy week before the storm the week after ( we have 4 group assignments due then which is like impossible). I hope to use it to catch up with my reading. Let there not be a lull before the storm!!! Back to 'the grind'!

Week 3 --Classes, Case Studies and Comedy!

I will go on record and say this was one of the busiest and shortest week of my life (though it felt like the longest as I was speeding through it!). I always knew it will be tough to get back to classes and student life. Boy did I underestimate!! Tough does not even start to describe how difficult I found coping up with this week. Picture the following -- 7 3-hour lectures, 4 3-hour career events, 2 3-hour Improv auditions, 2 Bop parties, 3 hour formal Matriculation, 2 group assignment meetings, unending reading lists (none of which I could get to), peer support pizza party and couple of dinner with close friends most of whom I did not see all weekend as we have been spread over different sections -- what a week.

Needless to say I am really really short on time. So I will be brief but will compensate by loads of pictures!

Matriculation was undoubtedly the highlight of the week. A very formal latin ceremony officially inducting us to oxford. As one of the friends rightly likened it to the march of the penguines. INteresting read @ http://picasaweb.google.com/shahaoneal/MatriculationAtOxford

It was truly a spectacle though. Proud moment to be part of a 800 year old tradition in the worlds greatest and oldest University!!

I also auditioned for the Oxford Imps -- the only improv group in Oxford. Go through the first audition and got a callback audtion where I was cut. But here is the good news -- of the 17 who were called for the callback audtion -- only 5 got through. The rest of us are going to start our own improv group!!! The first workshop happens on Wednesday. Look out for updates on this in future weeks.

After the long study week (the gory boring details of which I shall spare you), weekend was lotta fun. Long happy hour on friday -- the night ended at 1 am. Saturday early am was the matriculation and sat nite was dinner with bunch of good friends (the ones have bonded with most as they ve been around longer and had come to oxford earliest when I had too). Sat night we went to the 'sexy sub fusc party' @ St. Cross college. Wild night ended @ 3 am.

Sunday was some imrpov, reading for the next week and ended the week with some dinner with Larry, Katy and Aashima -- buddies @ OX (since classes have started and we are in different sections we try to meet up couple of times a week!).

Enjoy the snaps...

Week 2 -- Formal Induction, Freshers Fair and Family time!

Here we are again. Its been 3 full weeks now that I have been in Oxford.

This week as expected was loads of fun and not too much serious work. It was a roller coaster allright. As they say around here, let there not be a lull before the storm i.e. the classes which get kicked off tomorrow.

The highlight of the week without a doubt was my inducation and the formal dinner at my college -- ChristChurch. The induction was a semi formal event. All the freshers (juniors and graduates) assembled in 'The Hall' -- yes of the harry potter fame. We were given the Oxford rules and regulations bible -- a big, bulky multi purpose tool that could be used as weapon of mass destruction and sleep inducer. Each one of us was then called upon to shake hands with the Dean, collect our college ID and then head off to the Medical Registration. The NHS covers all students free of charge for medical purposes. The doctor assigned to you is from the college you belong too. The evening dinner was a grand spetacle! A full blown formal affair, we were required to be in a formal black tie full suit with the gown (which everyone then removed after the first couple of minutes). After meeting our advisor (each college assigns its students a college advisor who is there to monintor general and academic well being of his/her students) over a few drinks, all proceeded to 'The Hall' for dinner. Boy was it pretty!! It was as if Hogwarts had come to life. Hordes of students with their formal suits and black gowns, assembled in the huge hall with 1000 year old paintings of the likes of Lewis Caroll(author of Alice in Wonderland) staring down at you and a 3 course meal being served by equally well attired steward/stewardess! There were 4 glasses for -- a pre-dinner white wine, red house wine with dinner, desert wine and liquor -- just to give an indication of the elaborate setting! Fish for appetizer, partridge in curry sauce for main course and strawberry cheese cake for the desert (true to tradition, ChristChurch food S****d). There was some decent company at my table too. A couple of my SBS batchmates, a delightful coversation with a local Brit miss who was there for some graduate teaching course and some spiritual discourse with a chaplain.

I learnt some things about ChristChurch too. Lewis Caroll was good friends with Alice who was the daughter of the dean of ChristChurch. He was inspired to write 'Alice in Wonderland' based off Alice's antics.
The dean of ChristChurch is someone elected directly by the Queen of England.
ChristChurch was the first and the oldest cathederal and hence it is called ChristChurch and never ChristChurch college.

Onto other events during the week. I attended the Freshers Fair. A 3 day event with all the varied societies and organizations in Oxford showing up in booths and stalls at the Examination hall trying to pitch to the freshers. There were some really funky and innnovative ones besides the usual suspects like rowing club, cricket, ethinic clubs, drama societies etc. The one that really took the top honours in out of the box concept was a club called 'The Oxford Guild of Assasssins'. What it is is a society whose members play a real time game wherein each one of them is a assassin out to kill the others. The goal is to survive all attempts at your life which maybe in the form of paper bombs in your mail box, water spray guns and a whole slew of very innovative killing techniques!

There were the official Said Business School information sessions for the first two days of the week for various things as Career Services, Library services, IT facilities, General safety and Group building excercises.

We were also divided into 3 sections this week. Had some of my good friends get seperated to different sections though quite a few of whom I know well are still with me. Also means a great opportunity to get to know others as well. I also got introduced to my group of 6 -- i.e. study group. Each such study team has to submit their group assigments over the next 8 weeks and 6 courses together. We had our first team meeting also and it seems like a bunch of great people. A couple of Americans, couple of Indians (including me), a Taiwaneese and a local Brit. All with diverse interesting background and great personalities! It should be fun working and getting to know them better.

Ended the week by another visit to Birginham. My bua (paternal aunt) was visiting from INdia and knowing that things were going to get very hectic starting tomorrow, I figured this was the best chance to meet up with her and also have some chill time with family before the shit hits the ceiling. Was a chillax weekend -- lots of talking, good food, movie and couple of games of pool (tho my bro-in-law kicked ass on both the games!).

So here we are friends. The journey truly on its way. Not enjoying the fact that classes start tomorrow and the library today had people studying preparing for class tomorrow. Friends I have seen partying, chilling and socializing are actually getting prepared for their academic odyssey about to commence. The game about to begin. Let it be a good one!

Week 1 -- Peer Support, Pursuit and Partying

If Week 0 was fast, week 1 has been an absolute blur!! I had signed up for the Peer support program -- a student welfare initiative introduced at the Said Business School last year. All this week I was attending the training sessions for the same which were from 9-5 Monday thru Friday pretty much. As the name suggests, the programme is designed to train a group of students in basic listening skills so that they can provide support to those of their peers experiencing difficulties. It is a great platform to meet and bond with a small group of people (fellow peer supporters) and go through some interesting interpersonal and listening exercises. But as the training schedule suggests, it is a weeklong commitment and hence advisable only for those who get to oxford early enough or can work within the framework of the commitment. I had the opportunity of being part of a fantastic diverse group and that has made it a super experience.

Also this week there were a few career events. First up was my CV review session with a sector consultant for Finance. As was expected and was the aim of the exercise, I was advised a boatload of helpful changes that I needed to make for my resume. These changes had to do with my experience in the finance sector being minimal to the fact the each demographic usually requires a slightly different CV format and I had to tune mine to UK format. I also had lunch with Alasdair Bell, President of Oxford Entrepreneurs Society, a student run society. Alasdair came across as exceptionally bright young Oxonian and I look forward to being involved with the society in some capacity in near future.

Then there were a few guest speaker/seminar sessions. The first was from Morgan Stanley group with a few analysts and associates sharing their experiences and insights with regard a career in Investment Banking. I thought it was an extremely informative session. Later in the week was a talk by George David, Chairman and CEO of United Technologies Corporation. This was a great talk by a great individual -- very insightful, crisp and authoritatively delivered -- in short very American! He also raised an interesting debate with his comments over the Indian and Chineese markets by not mincing words in suggesting that he believed the Indian market and economy was going nowhere unless there was some consistency with their foreign policies. I as a few others though begged to differ on this count.

We also had a few introductory workshops. One each on finance and consulting. They again were insightful and it was enlightening to see the different demeanour, tone and effect of a finance person from that of a consultant. The finance sector consultant team were very aggressive in their presentation and making the point that the profession is not for the faint hearted and requires you to be very much on the top of the game. Though I feel their hostile style might have scared away a few fence sitters considering finance (me being one of them), I feel they provided an honest picture of things as they are. The consultant sector group had a more open and friendlier feel to their pitch. Also the fact that the consultancy companies shall come for placement in the next semester as opposed to finance whose placements will be done by November, meant that there was some more breathing space.

Lastly not to miss out on the fun, there were some great parties. The Said business school had arranged for 'Oxford Pursuit' -- a hunt via clues of the oxford city in groups of 5 which were randomly selected. I had a great time. I got one person on our group I knew from peer support and 3 new people I met. It was lot of fun though we didn’t fare as well :-). Following the pursuit, we had the informal meet and greet party at the 'Oxford Retreat' -- a great pub right by the Hythe Bridge -- literally a few feet away from SBS. Me along with 3 other friends had been arranging for this get together earlier this week and had got a great deal on drinks and reserved area for the 220 SBS students. IT was a fun fun night!! Had a great turnout, the place was awesome with outside and inside areas and I hope all there had a good time. Special thanks to Vebster and people at the Oxford Retreat!

This afternoon we had the Oxford Reception -- a formal lunch with all SBS students and their families arranged by the Business School. I just came back from a friend’s place where we had a dinner for 7-8 of us. It was a perfect end to a long day. No networking, just relaxing, great food and casual banter. Just loved it!! Thanks to Pushpak and Alka (the hosts) for the same. I am already beginning to feel the pinch of 16 hour days with work, networking and partying!! And classes haven’t even started yet.

Overall an unbelievable week. But one thing that stands out is the unbelievable diverse set of people I am going to share this year with. Americans, Indians, Canadians, South Africans, Spanish, Norwegian, Danish, British.....the list is endless with regards the different nationalities I met who are going to be with me for the course. Even more diverse were their back grounds with doctors, army men, civil engineers, IT professionals, non-profit and a lot more. Add to that the overall diverse culture and ambience of the world’s oldest and most premier Umbrella University -- Oxford and that makes it an invaluable experience.

Coming week is gonna be crazier -- its the induction week so there are going to be lot of college events (Christchurch events as that is my college), fresher’s fair, formal introductions at Said, more peer support training and definitely more partying! Hold on...here we go!!!

Week 0 -- Clubs, ChristChurch and Chandni Chowk

Week 0 -- I am finally in Oxford and have settled in. Has been almost a week. Boy its been a crazy one !! Being here is almost like being in a time warp. 800 year old buildings, week long wait to open bank accounts, seperate taps for hot and cold water, beautiful colleges, awful weather, great students, some uptight locals, great pubs and expensive drinks. I love it!!!

I know that was too cryptic but it was what first few days were in a nutshell. I have been meeting current batch mates who are already here. Bunch of great people. We ve been out bonding over drinks pretty much every day this week. Attached is a snap @ a pub called 'Kings Arms'!

Also visited business school and my college ChristChurch. ChristChurch is one of the oldest, popular and one of the most beautiful colleges at Oxford. Oxford has a collegiate system. Every student at the Said Business school has to be member of some college.

Christ Church has traditionally been seen as the most aristocratic college in Oxford. It has produced thirteen British prime ministers which is more than any other Oxford or Cambridge college (and two short of the total number for the University of Cambridge, fifteen). The college is the setting for parts of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, as well as Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. More recently it has been used in the filming of the movies of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series .

I got my keys to the GCR (graduate common room) which every college has and is accesible to all members of the college. I am though still waiting for my student id -- which is something the college provides to the student and not the business school.

Over the weekend, visited my cousin in Birmingham. Being in birmingham after a week in oxford was like being back to the 'real' world. Birmingham is the largest of England's core cities, and is often considered to be the second city of the United Kingdom. I thought the city was like any other modern day city from what I saw of it. I visited the famous SOHO road -- a strong indian community base. Had some decent desi grub at a aptly named place -- 'Chandni Chowk'!

More coming next week. The oxford ride is just about to begin and I cannot wait!!