Friday, February 29, 2008

London Calling

This picture was taken by me back in 2002. It is the Royal Albert Hall in London where I saw Wynton Marsalis as part of the BBC Summer Proms Series. Why is this relevant to the HKUST blog?

Because I've been confirmed as one of the school representatives to study at London Business School in the fall.

And wouldn't you know it, Randhir and Prathap will both be joining me.

I am really excited about taking my education to Europe. Many of our classmates will be exchanging to some truly fantastic schools all over the world, and it is a testament to the rich exchange relationships that HKUST has with the global business education community.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Add oil Team USC!!!

Team USC will now be the first of many teams to go out and represent HKUST in a case competition. They will be going out to USC Marshall after spending the last month or so analyzing a case on XXX Media Co. and their windowing strategies.

I had to look this up after almost every classmates' MSN status changed to "Add Oil, Team USC". My lesson for the day to my non-cantonese readers -

add oil - It's a cheering exclamation in Cantonese. It's actually pronounced "Ka-yow"! Which in turn means add oil, not literally!

ADD OIL, Sushma, Simon, John, Mark and Sam.

And the celebration's on monday once you guys are back with the cup.

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Blogger No. 2!!!

Curtis's post made me realize I hadn't introduced myself. Doing that now, although a little late might still be ok considering that we are still not too many posts into the blog. And it gives me something to blog about. And the speciality about me, even if I don't put in picture, my post can run into pages together, especially when I'm bored to death with nothing to do.

Who am I?

This is Randhir Hebbar, born in the temple town of Udupi, near Mangalore in Karnataka, brought up almost entirely in Bangalore. I did most of my education in Bangalore (Bethany, NCJ and UVCE) and worked in the IT and ITES space for about 6 years with a 2.5 year stint in Columbus, OH, USA - Mostly IT Consulting and Project Management. I've traveled all over the US, looking to exchange to London to do some Europe traveling. My biggest complaint about myself is the fact that I haven't traveled enough in India. Curtis has seen a 1000 times more of India than I. Hope to rectify that some day.

My MBA Story?

I made it thru CAT and ditched IIMs for the US Onsite trip on the advice of a few gurus (friends) who thought an MBA before you become a manager is not really worth your time. In hindsight, I really believe that is true. You can of course disagree with me and we can have a big debate over this. But that's my opinion. So if you are less than 2-3 years work-ex and you ask my advice about doing your MBA, you know what my answer is going to be. Of course, there are always exceptions.

Finally after managing a team for about a year, I realized that I just couldn't do what I or even my immediate boss was doing for the rest of my life, needed a change for the better and applied to ISB. Just doing the ISB App helped me learn my mistakes and the HKUST App was surely a 100 times better than the ISB App. And the ISB interview was fun in hind-sight. This nerdy guy trying to prove that he was better than me and that being an ISB Alumnus made him some kind of super-human. The HKUST Interview was so much more professional and to some extent so much more easier that in hind-sight, I wished it was tougher. That would have made me feel like I'd earned it. :-) You can never satisfy me, can you?

The HKUST Experience?

It's been an awesome journey so far. I've had some super experiences, learning everyday, from peers, from profs, from alumnus and lots of crazy fun times and parties here. Just meeting people from all these countries, some really special characters, working with these special characters is something wonderful.

The Highlights: All the Free lunch/dinner/cocktail parties, Mini-Olympics, ELP/RP, Case Competition, Exam-Fever (that one dreaded week in December), the past month of crazy B-Plan work and of course that hard-work paying off.

The next big event is obviously the CMU Business Plan Competition for me. Looking forward to doing well there and coming back richer (at least in terms of experience and learnings :-)). And of course, a well-deserved potential one week break in US and meeting the Columbus gang.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

The New Guy

你好, Namaste, and Hello world.

My name is Curtis, a brand new contributor to this blog! Big ups to Randhir and Arthi for keeping it alive for long enough for me to join in on the fun.

Who I am:
I am in the FT2007 class and plan to graduate in Winter of 2009. I am a Chinese Californian born into the suburbs of Stockton, CA. I went to school at UC San Diego for my undergrad and started my "professional" life in the San Francisco bay area where I worked in the educational field. My life was turned upside down in 2005 when I decided to move to Beijing for a little while. Since then, my travels around Asia have reached out to India, Russia, Korea, Mongolia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, and plans for more in the very near future. The official reason why I came to HKUST was because Hong Kong plays such a big business role in this region. The unofficial version is that I wanted to be closer to Cantonese food!

What I bring to the table:
1) Some experience living in China
2) Native to the US
3) Experience living in the shared rooms on campus
4) The pleasure of serving my class as the MBA Association President
5) Member of the HK American Chamber of Commerce
6) Pictures(1 picture per post is usually my rule)
7) A history of blogging(www.djloo.com)

It is a pleasure to meet you all and I look forward to any comments or questions that might come about!

Curtis

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Directory of posts on HKUST

We will try and keep this as a directory of posts in the blogs of HKUST Students ordered by date starting from my Interview experience. Even though we don't have the numbers of the bigger B-Schools, this is a good start.

HKUST Mini-Olympics in pictures

The EIU ranking Celebrations

HKUST is EIU# 20

Gruelling second week in HKUST

Some pictures of HKUST

Decks cleared for entry

Randhir talks about his interview

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Cantonese Numbers Tutorial!!!

Here's your first Cantonese tutorial - A must have to eat at LG5 where they call these numbers to get your order. :-)