Category: Business School WAG

Diversity and sorting by last name

So the wife graduated today. The graduation ceremony was in threes – three graduates were called at a time and presented their degrees (the wife now claims that she has one more degree than me, since my B-school gave me a Post Graduate Diploma and not a Masters).

It was reminiscent of swearing in of Ministers of State in India, who take oath four at a time. My graduation ceremonies, where we collected our degrees one at a time, was more like the swearing in of Cabinet Ministers. This simultaneous award of degrees worked well in finishing the ceremony in good time, though.

As is usual in such ceremonies, the graduates had been sorted by name. Except that since this is a global business school, the sorting was done by <Last Name> followed by <First Name> (at all my schools, sorting has been in the opposite order).

This related to fairly hilarious bunching of graduates from different countries at the same point in time. One batch of three was a set of three Lee’s, for example (rather amazingly, there was not a single Wang in the graduating class). They were followed by two more Lee’s/Li’s. Another set of three were three Japanese who had the same prefix to the last name.

And the wife was one of three Indians in the batch whose last name started with “Bha-“. It’s a rather unique Indian construct, and the three were listed consecutively for graduation. It was only because of a “cut” that occurred in the middle that the three didn’t go simultaneously to receive their degrees.

Different countries have different name forms and the same words might occur as a prefix of a large number of last names from the country. Such prefixes might also be unique to certain countries, thanks to which sorting by last name results in the occurrence of several “country clusters” through the course of the list.

It got me wondering if the diversity of the batch (more than 50 countries were represented in the graduating class of ~300) mgiht have been exhibited better, and people of the same nationality been spread apart more widely through the list had they done (what is to us Indians) the conventional thing and sorted by first name instead!

The Geo-Politics of Multiculturalism

My wife Priyanka‘s business school takes much pride in its multiculturalism, with students from some 60 different countries in her class of nearly 300. And on one year every day, they choose to celebrate this multiculturalism, and what better way to celebrate multiculturalism (or anything  else for that matter) than to get drunk together?

And so we had this party, not very creatively called “Multi Culti”, last evening where people from 34 countries/groups of countries had set up stalls to showcase the food and drink of their respective countries/groups. This binge eating/drinking session sandwiched a “cultural program” where a lesser number of countries/groups sang and danced, again in an attempts to showcase their cultures.

Most of the food was excellent, and most of the drink was, too. The quality of drinks on offer is borne out by the fact that despite having at least a dozen drinks of a dozen varieties last night, I was up and about without a hangover by 7 this morning – that can’t happen unless the liquor is of high quality (oh, I skipped the Old Monk on offer at the Indian stall)!

While being in business school together means you leave behind national differences (and find other axes on which you RG each other), there were some subtle (and some not-so-subtle) instances of geopolitics on display at last night’s event. I must mention that this blogpost was constructed while I was watching the “cultural program” that was sandwiched by the eating and drinking.

The most obvious display of geopolitical tension was by the Catalans, who allegedly wanted a stall for themselves, but weren’t allowed to have one by the Spaniards. So they set up this “pirate ship” (perhaps as a nod to Barcelona being Spain’s main trading port during the middle ages) which was a cart that was pulled around the area. Other secessionist movements didn’t display much creativity, though – Quebecians were happy to be part of the Canadian stall, and I’m not sure if there are any Scots in the program.

And then there was the setup of the stalls (note that these are my personal pertinent observations, and I might be drawing spurious correlations here). Mostly neighbouring countries were near each other. Japan was next to Korea. Germany next to Austria (I’m assuming it was Austria given the stack of Red Bulls). Brazil and Argentina facing each other. France next to Italy.

But some pairs, it seemed evident, were being deliberately kept away. Republic of China’s (there’s a surprisingly large contingent from there in the MBA program) stall, for example, was kept as far as possible from the People’s Republic of China’s stall. Food in the two stalls looked similar, and it’s possible I didn’t take anything from PRC since I’d eaten similar looking stuff at RoC’s stall. The shots on offer at RoC were legendary, though. Some rice wine with 38% alcohol content. Did at least 3 shots there.

The other geographical separation, possibly due to possible tensions, was a pity though. I love eating falafel wrapped in hummus and pita bread. The layout and choices by teams, however, meant they were far away from each other.

On one side of the venue was the Israeli stall, with pita bread and hummus and some incredibly delicious Israeli spice (forgot what it was called). The Israelis didn’t have falafel, though (they instead had sausages – possibly a nod to the Ashkenazi heritage). For that you’d to go to the other side where the Arab stall was located! The Arabs also had Baklava, and if I’m not wrong, also offered liquor (I kept grabbing Baklava whenever I went near that stall, and didn’t bother about anything else).

Which brings us to country groupings. 300 people from 60 countries means some countries don’t have enough of a quorum to put up a show, so you had them banding into groups to put up a collective show. The Arabs were one such collective (I’m not sure of the countries that went into that collective, but it was funny to see a guy with a red-and-white checked headscarf dance next to a guy in a Fez during their “cultural performance”). The entire continent of Africa was another (they had this little quiz where you’d to identify a randomly chosen country on the map of Africa, for which you’d get a “dessert shot”, which was bloody delicious).

Finally, a note about the “cultural program”. Most countries stuck to national stereotypes, which I think is a good thing in such context. Most of the crowd is pissed drunk anyway, and what they want is a high energy program they can connect with.

So the Indians did well with three Punjabi acts (couldn’t recognise any of the songs). Spaniards danced to Macarena. Germans danced wearing Angela Merkel masks. An Argentine wore a Maradona mask (a lot of Argentines were in Albiceleste jerseys. One wore a Boca Juniors jersey) while doing the tango. PRC and RoC put up contrasting shows. RoC did a high energy generic dance routine. PRC had an inflatable dragon and did a more “traditional” dance.

My personal favourite was the British performance, though. They chose three well-known songs by three well-known bands (Britain’s contribution to music is an immense source of soft power for them). Four of them dressed up like Queen (fake moustaches and all) to enact a part of Bohemian Rhapsody. Five guys in drag (this was most hilarious and impressive) danced to If you wanna be my lover by the Spice Girls. And the whole crowd sang along and swayed as four guys in Beatles masks performed to Hey Jude (with masks being such a thing at the festival, I’m really really annoyed that there were no Modi masks. All the Indian contingent had was Kejriwal-style Gandhi caps. Most anti-national, I must tell you :P).

 

Business School WAG series – day out with baby bulls

Ten years ago, I was studying in a business school. A few weeks before I joined IIM Bangalore, a friend told me about the concept of a blog. I was told about the existence of blospot and livejournal, and the concept of blogging seemed exciting (I’d just started writing earlier that year and quite enjoyed it). I signed up on blogspot and wrote a post perhaps in June or July 2004 (I’ve deleted the blog, and so have forgotten when). Then I found that most of my IIMB friends were on LiveJournal and I moved my blog to skthewimp.livejournal.com .

My blogging ramped up slowly during my two years at business school – the first increase in momentum was during my summer internship in an investment bank, when my readership improved. A series of fairly controversial posts in the next one year further improved readership. And then the blog did me a lot of good.

I’ve found a client and a couple of other business leads thanks to my blogging. It was also my blogging through which I got to know of the existence of <lj user=”favrito”> eight years ago. Four years ago, I married her, and earlier this year, she decided to go to business school. And I thus became a business school WAG.

My status as a business school WAG was first established two months or so ago when I got an email from “Club – IESE Partners and Families”. These business schools try to take themselves too seriously and sound too politically correct – they could have simply called it the IESE WAG Club (there is merit in the usage of the term WAG (with its origins as “Wives and girlfriends”) as a unisex term). But anyway, I’ve continued to get emails from this club about its various activities. So far none of them have impressed me, but some have freaked me out, such as “day out with kids at the beach”.

My status as IESE WAG was further enhanced earlier this week when I made it to Barcelona, albeit for a short period of time. I visited the school yesterday, where <lj user=”favrito”> introduced me to one and all and sundry, and they eschewed the “three way cheek peck” which is supposedly popular in these parts of Catalunya in favour of the humble handshake. I spent the day in the cafeteria sipping Coke Zero and Dark Hot Chocolate and watching students crib about their performance in placement tests, talk about “arbit CP” that others put in class, and indulge in the kind of nonsense that all business school students indulge in (I surely did ten years ago) which recruiters (mostly business school alumni themselves) pretend doesn’t exist. It was interesting to say the least, but not interesting enough to deserve a blogpost for itself.

I further embellished my credentials as a WAG today, though, as I accompanied <lj user=”favrito”> and some of her classmates on a sort of picnic today. There was a fair number of WAGs at the picnic today, though I suspect I was the only male WAG. And I got introduced to a new “sport” in the course of the picnic today – amateur bullfighting, or as <lj user=”favrito”> described it, “Rajnikanth bullfighting”.

So there is a bullring. And they let a bull into the ring (it was a young bull that was in the arena today). And people can get into the ring by way of a ladder. There are these hiding posts all around the ring, behind which people can stand and be safe from the bull. And more than one human being can be in the ring at that point in time.

And they taunt and tease the bull, inviting him to attack and gore them. The bull is young and his horns aren’t sharp, so it is unlikely that it will cause much damage. But the bull is easily ruffled, and he gives short chases to the humans, who having provoked the bull in the first place try to dodge and evade the bull. Some wusses run to the shelter of one of the hiding posts when the bull is about ten metres away from them. Other wusses (including Yours Truly) don’t even bother entering the bullring, preferring to guzzle on the beer and sangria available and make pertinent observations.

And so it was an unequal battle, with several humans and one bull, though in true Rajnikanth tradition only one human would physically interact with the bull at one point in time (though others would hoot and clap and jeer). I was about to use the word “grapple” in the previous sentence but there was no grappling here – the bull would charge you and try and knock you down, and you would try and evade it. Some people even fell while trying to evade the bull and got hit by it, yet seemed unhurt.

This went on for a short period, and soon there were so many people in the bullring that there was no merit in entering it – the bull would surely get confused. And then we retired to this resort somewhere else in rural Catalunya for lunch and more drinks.

Later in the evening, at this resort, I visited the urinal. It was fairly busy at that point in time, with all stalls occupied. The guy to the left of me and the guy to my right had both brought a beer bottle along – they held the beer bottle in one hand and their penises with the other as they input and output liquids simultaneously.

I had half a mind to indicate to them that they could just eliminate the middleman, but then I thought it wasn’t appropriate for a business school WAG to give such advice, and moved on!

I plan to make a series on life as a business school WAG. Not sure how regular this will be though since I don’t plan to spend too much time in Barcelona.