Counting your Chicken before they hatch

Why is  IIPM offering an MBA degree that nobody would recognize? muses Vir Sanghvi  in his blog recently. The answer it appears is simple though. IIPM  has this CEO who simply believes & acts  in ‘Counting  his  Chickens Before They Hatch’!

On a serious note the reality of  the matter is  that there are too many wannabe MBA institutes wanting to get a chunk of this large market and the fight between the ‘me-too’  segments is only getting fiercer. However dubious their claims or reputations may be – Vir’s well articulated article being a case in point. It’s another case,  for instance, why many colleges in Bangalore go without a single admissions in a year

My Project office lies bang opposite the Karnataka Examinations Authority office in malleswaram and I have been witness to what could be called a prolonged spectacle. That is until recently CET Counseling was in full swing here and flocking this center were hordes of engineering & other degree (including BBA - MBA) Institutes that marketed their wares in every possible way. Just passing by that road meant that you would have brochures of atleast 15 different colleges in hand before you crossed the centre.  And parking on the opposite side of the road were numerous College Vans & Buses with banners, buntings and all kind of promotional materials. 

The interesting thing is; as the days progressed and the counseling progressed to the lower rung ranks of students, newer and never-before heard colleges from far flung & beyond areas appeared near the counseling center. And many tried hard with their outdoor presentations; decent looking campuses & beaming students on their brochures & posters.

So what if one of the promoters of these colleges goes to bed worrying about the empty benches but wakes up one fine morning & says ‘lets do something different’? 

There you have another Arindam Choudhary story.

Saik it up

Captured this Sheikh pushing his cart near Corporation circle recently, reminded me of the Joke
Q: What do you call a Badam that likes to dance?
A: A Badam shake (saik)!
Notice you can also have ‘Choklate’ variety here...

Bangalore Blues...& Red & Green..

Bangalore aka Bengaluru gets its usual colour every fall; the myriad flowering trees (numbers of which are dwindling though) blossoming in a riot of Yellow, Red, Purple & White. This time though they have some serious competition; street side colorful murals depicting various facets of Karnataka & India.

The effort of the city municipal body (BBMP) that kicked off in 2009 seems to have paid off; in place of defaced public properties covered with anything from film posters to advertisements for jobs or paying guests one now finds serene pictures. Like the good old photo studios of yore, theme backdrops backgrounds in muslin or canvas where one could pose for photographs on a dummy scooter or car. Only difference is that nobody pauses for a photograph here though!

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

Courtesy my BiL and his complimentary tickets at PVR, i saw the movie over the last weekend. The sequel to the 1987 hit was not that captivating though. Imagine ketan parikh coming out of jail, his sins pardoned, to write a book called ‘Greed is Good’ and lecturing people on how and why people like harshad mehta or ramalinga raju screwed the financial market.

Gordon gekko does something similar but with a lot of panache and polish . His daughter in the meanwhile who has grown up to hate him for not only his misdeed but her brother’s unfortunate death whom she holds him responsible for neglect, stays with her boyfriend (Jake) who incidentally also happens to be a bright upshot on the wall street. They stay in plush apartment, buy expensive gifts and drive fancy bikes courtesy the fat bonuses Jake gets from his boss who also happens to his mentor at the Investment firm.

But it so happens that Gekko’s former bête noire (Bretton James) now drives Jake’s mentor boss (Lewis Zabel) to death when the Investment firm goes belly up.

Jake wants to bring the father-daughter together much to her fiancé’s consternation, who at one point in time tells him ‘Dont go back to him, he can hurt us’. The daughter knows the father too well and he lives up to his billing. Gekko convinces Jake to get his daughter to transfer $100 Million from a trust account in Switzerland that he had stashed in her name just before he went to jail . But instead of transferring the money to some company involved in fusion technology, which Jake believes is the next big idea, he pockets the same and vanishes into thin air (the plot seemed a bit far fetched though - imagine somebody hoodwinking the attorneys and amidst all the paper work in a Swiss bank involving a huge sum of money).

In the meantime Jake has joined Bretton and after falling out with him decides to deliver a sucker punch to redeem his mentor death. He sits overnight and produces some damning piece of report that sends this billionaire Wall St. hotshot into a legal & financial tailspin. In Quick time......Haha.

Gekko who has now turned this $100 million into billions (god knows how) has a change of heart and comes back to fulfill the broken promise i.e, transfer the $100 Million to the fusion company and bring the 2 together.

A kind of family melodrama where the son-in-law redeems himself, daughter reconciles, a common enemy vanquished & the wily gecko turning a leaf for the better. Good in parts and with Oliver stone at the helm you can expect a well knit movie with brilliant texture and feel to the film. Sonny & Wifi slept through the movie though.