From Jamshedpur to New Orleans

The 44 hour long journey with parts of it spent on chair car in trains, domestic flights, international flights and domestic flights with a few breaks in between got us to the brink of crashing. But this journey cannot be termed as a strenuous journey alone because when a batch of 48 GMPians, just out of the exam mode, come together on the journey, it could only be an awesome experience with lots of fun onboard. Just like a local bus journey the journey of some GMPians ends at O’Hare Airport, Chicago and finally the 28 GMPians took the flight to reach their destination, their home for the next 3 weeks. After this fun-filled yet tiring trip, and on reaching New Orleans, the Queen sized beds at the Staybridge Suites, Tchoupitoulas seemed very inviting and everyone finally retired for the day with a few late night owls still roaming in the city.

The next day began with a gourmet breakfast at the hotel and a pleasant walk to the Idea Village with Daryn Dodson, the Director of University Partnerships at the Idea Village. The Idea Village is a an organization with a mission to identify, support and retain entrepreneurial talent in New Orleans by providing business resources to high-impact ventures. This organization works on a very basic mantra: “Trust Your Crazy Ideas.” The Idea Village follows the POPCORN STRATEGY where you start with some oil in the pan, add popcorn and then sit and wait patiently all ears for the noise of the puffing up of the popcorn. In the organization they gather the entrepreneurs, with innovative ideas, support them by providing business strategy, marketing support and financial direction and then wait patiently for the growth of the ideas and retention of high impact entrepreneurs.

The Idea Village supports high impact entrepreneurs with innovative solutions that fuel long-term and sustained economic growth and those with the ability to become role models that encourage others to innovate and take risks. They do not charge the entrepreneurs upfront rather wait for them to contribute after they achieve success, even if the gestation period of the project is too high. They believe that failure is good and that success which comes after failure brings with it a different kind of kick altogether.

Then we marched towards the bus for the city tour. We went to see the area which was devastated by the Hurricane Katrina and has still not recovered from the same. Now the houses, there, are built on stubs, at least to give them some additional height to fight smaller water tables. Then we went to the rather developed areas where the construction could be briefly described as revival of Renaissance and Gothic Architecture with a few delightfully colonnaded mansions and villas. All this seemed to be a treat to the sleepy eyes of the long lost architect within me.

The City Park was untouched by the hurricane and so had massive sized Oak trees all around. The garden also accommodated few beautiful white and black swans in the free flowing lake, botanical gardens, story-land, museum, sculpture garden and few facilities for the visitors like boating, golf, tennis courts and Park view cafe.

The ride through the city also took us around the French Quarters, the Jackson Square, the St. Louis Cathedral, the World War II Museum just to name a few. How can the city tour be complete without a mention of the City of the Dead! Sounds scary... it’s actually a beautiful city with above-ground tombs in the cemeteries. The sun bleached tombs had beautiful rusted ironwork which decorated the entry to the tombs, the crosses and the statues adorned the roof tops. These tombs have vaults that house coffins of all the deceased of one family. Actually not the coffins of all members but something similar to that, let’s not get into the details which might give some eerie feeling. It is said that the Cities of the Dead is alluring to the eyes but dangerous.

Finally we head back to the Idea Village to meet the Entrepreneurs for whom we all, in groups of 7-8 each, are supposed to work. Since I am not supposed to reveal the details of the project let me just say that it is a related to the R&D of a health care product. And then at last we are free for the day at 5.00 p.m. and we head back towards our hotel rooms. Everyone gets connected to the whole world online and also make plans for the long evening. Some head towards Walmart for grocery shopping, some march towards Harrah’s to play gamblers for the night and some relax for the evening and then head towards the French Quarters for a few drinks.......

The Term that it was

"Only those who are asleep make no mistakes." And as I did not intend to make mistakes, I slept the whole of yesterday. Actually that’s not the sole reason, the other reason being the completion of the second term and here I am with nothing to do at all or rather with lots of planning to do for the forth coming international immersion trip to New Orleans, USA.

The second term flew by from not only my life but also from the life of all the GMPians and now we can call ourselves half MBA’s. The GMPians life was filled with a lot of action for the last two months... Life seemed hectic from day 1 with loads of case studies and tons of reading handouts given for every alternate day’s lectures, sometimes even for the next day’s lectures. From the first week itself every GMPian started the midnight walk to the XLRI night cafe so as to take a break from the intensive course contents. When some of the GMPians felt that ‘The most wasted of all days is one without laughter’, to get back what everyone had lost, they planned for Durga puja holidays. And that was the last final days when I remember sleepingL.

The Mid Terms started and along with that came the key responsibility of the GMPians; organizing the Dow Jones CEO meet. On the event, Mr. Christopher Mitya New, Managing Director, Dow Jones India delivered a talk on "Corporate Turnaround at a time of Economic Turnaround". The lively and intellectual interaction between Mr. New, the faculty of XLRI and the GMPians was the take away for all the attendees.

How can I forget to mention the quiz after the CEO meet!!! Though it was a cake walk for many, others still felt distressed at the end of the day. There is a saying, ‘All’s well that ends well’ but probably it is not made for the GMPians and at the end of the very same day we all realize that there is one more quiz lined up for the next to next day. Then finally the end term begins and guess what we get to know, our USA visa interviews are scheduled in-between the exams.

The discussion on the second term of GMPians cannot be ended without the mention of a few, the cute professors who took pains to teach us (the GMPians) and the sweet professors who used to get pained when we gave incorrect answers (NO!!!!!!!!!!!), the professors who made the most boring subjects fun and the fellow GMPians without whom this journey would have been very tough.