On a bike ride in India

In a land where motorbikes are meant to transport entire families, I had the opportunity of going on a dirt bike and traveling around 6 kilometers on it! Dinner at the F Cafe & Lounge was great, and so was the ride. Here's my view of the road.

Solstice is special

A lot of interesting things, good and bad, have been happening in my life in the past few weeks. But nothing has given me the urge to immediately blog about... except THIS!

So what is this thing that has made its way into my "MUST BLOG" list? Nothing but the simple pleasure of having great (and I mean GREAT) food at the Goel Dining Hall. Granted that this meal cost me twice as much as the usual, the food was definitely more than twice better! I'm partial to it for the lack of spice... but it's mostly because I took small portions at a time and didn't taste the spice.



For those who have been here and have left... just view the photos and you'll see.

It's a Small World After All

I did not meet another Filipino in India! That's weird! Seems like apart from India, I meet at least 1 Filipino no matter where I head to. Just think, 3 months in India = 0 Filipinos. 7-hour layover in Singapore yesterday = at least 30 Filipinos.

So why do I say it's a small world? East Asian faces were a luxury during my stay at ISB so imagine my surprise when I saw familiar non-ISB faces at ISB! Those who were at the Asia MBA Camps (1 & 2) will remember Professor Gilbert Bok from SKKU... and those at the 2nd camp may remember Hoo-suk & Sung-ho too!



Turns out, SKKU has arranged a South Asian trip for their Asia MBA students and ISB was one of their stopping points. So we caught up on what everyone's been up to, obviously, a few of us are still completing our MBAs, but most of them have graduated and found great jobs. So I should be looking forward to job hunting...

The Caves @ Ellora

I can't believe I haven't blogged about my Ellora trip!
**Jovi, what's up with you?**

Three weeks after arriving in India, I was ready... ready to see the world beyond Hyderabad. I joined Katja, Fabrizio and Simran on a scenic and cultural tour through Maharashtra and was perfectly happy to let them make the plans (c'mon, too many people planning just makes things more complicated).

(L-R) Katja, Jovi, Simran & Fabrizio

October 31 8:00pm
With a Toyota Qualis, an Indian driver (who doesn't speak English) and our bags, we embarked on our journey and there was no turning back. Dinner at a roadside restaurant showed us how there were more Indian options than what's available at Goel (the ISB cafeteria). Per special request, non-spicy Indian food was served and they were yummy (and affordable too)!

November 1
Dark, bumpy roads in the late night and some "creative" Indian driving had our solitary Hindi-speaking friend, Simran, sacrifice sleep to keep the driver awake. The persistent mosquitos cut short the driver's pre-dawn sleeping break by an hour and saw the girls stranded (as the boys gave up on sleeping earlier and headed to a nearby temple) with no cellphone reception. Reunited at 4am, we continued on our journey and some three of us went back to sleeping state.



We woke up to a great scenic view of Indian sunrise, sprawling greens and beautiful mountains. Still, after a night of sleeping in the car, finding shelter for us to wash up and rest became the top priority. Trusting Lonely Planet's recommendation, we made inquiries with 3 hotels, but finally found one that wasn't in the list. Hidden one minute from the main road was Hotel Peshwall, a nice little hostel that provided value for money.

The unique shower and toilet implements had Katja stumped for a while, but her adaptive German nature helped her (and me) find out how to use everything... the boys weren't as lucky as I was, they left thinking that the toilet bowl had to be flushed using a pail of water. Learning India's electricity sharing policy by having our enjoyable TV show cut was a bit depressing, but it did give us an early start to Ellora.

The Ellora caves are among many man-made, hand-carved caves in India dedicated to dieties from the main religions... Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism. A picture is worth a thousand words, so have a look at the slide show to see more of Ellora.

My current Facebook photo may be quite deceiving to some of you... I look like I'm at the TajMahal. But in reality, being in Aurangabad gave us the opportunity to go to Bibi Ka Magbara, India's mini-Taj Mahal. I was told that it was a poor imitation, but it still looks great in photos!

November 2
A new day has come and adhering to the Chinese tourism motto of "getting value for time & money by going to as many places as possible", we headed to Shirdi hoping to see Shri Sai Baba, a highly revered holy man in India.

Mobile phones, cameras and shoes aren't allowed in the temple so we had to deposit them with a shop. Walking barefoot on asphalted & cemented streets isn't my idea of a party, and while someone else was worried about his poor socks, I was worried about my poor feet... they were getting dirty, and from living in the Philippines, we know that there are just tons of stuff you can pick up walking barefoot on the streets! Long lines and bad timing had my poor suffer through the burning heat, with no avail... our consolation, we were able to see Shri Sai Baba from a TV screen.

Next stop... Chateau Indage, a vineyard that accounts for 75% of Indian wine exports. A tour through vineyard grounds made for great photo ops, but the wine was found to be wanting in comparison to European wines. Still, a great experience overall.

Heading back to Hyderabad was a bigger adventure. We got stuck in a 3kph traffic for more than an hour and were starving when we got to Pune, some great Indian food out there! And then, it was a series of overtaking the bigger trucks in a two-way two-lane road through counterflowing... the main philosophy, "Will I get in front of the next truck before the car coming from the other direction gets there?" A one-hour rest-stop at a gas station made me realize how widely practiced Yoga is... truck drivers practicing Yoga near the gas pumps (that should wake them up)!

November 3
Then came daybreak, our driver went as fast as 120kph! Back in ISB at 10am, I will remember the weird, great and tiring experiences of the weekend, and say my short prayers for the casualties (mosquitos and ****).

Bureaucracy & Inefficiencies @ Hyderabad

POLICE STATION

I was accompanied by ISB's Praveen and another exchange student on my first rickshaw ride when I went to the Cyberabad Police Station to get myself registered during my first week in India. Biometric ID in this tech city is done via the scanning of one's irises (it takes some people a long time to complete this process, I for one had to get my eyes scanned 3 times before it was successful), but this is done only after a preliminary internet registration and recurring documentary checks by 3 police officials. So it took around 2 hours to navigate around 10 square meters of office space and complete our registration (which could've been done in 30 minutes if they had been efficient). The bad news is, we have to go back to register our departure before we leave.

ICICI Bank

After getting our resident permits, we immediately proceeded to the ICICI Bank branch in ISB. Apparently, the branch was not ready for new account opening and did not have application forms for such. We had to make an appointment with a man named Santosh, who always missed appointments because he was busy (coming from another meeting). Ultimately, he left the documents with the branch manager, who allowed us to fill the forms. Here's the timeline:

OCT 17: Account opening at ICICI Bank, informed that account opening procedures will be completed after 7 business days.

OCT 29: Date of collection of welcome pack (which did not happen because they just kept the documents at the branch without looking at it even once), we were told that some documents were missing and that the procedure has changed in the past week due to the financial crisis (erm... highly doubtful).

OCT 30: Proceeded to branch to meet Santosh, who asked us to write a letter to the branch manager signifying our intent to open an account and detailing our stay in India. 5 more business days before we can make our deposits.

All in all, it took us more than 21 days to open a bank account. So in case you won't be having any money remitted from overseas, opening a bank account is too much of a hassle and is not worth your time.

Classes, Parties & Everything Nice!

Two academic weeks have just gone by at a blink of an eye... not that it's been a walk in the park, academics are demanding and with the tons of activities organized by the students, prioritization skills are a must!!!

Let me take you through the first two weeks.

The Academic Services and Administration (ASA) Office inducts you into the ISB system (of terms lasting 6 weeks each) by giving you a nice Planner Calendar. Course packs are also provided in advance so that students can read the required readings for the first day of class and participate in case discussions on the same day. I've elected to take 5 courses and you can see that I have 6 volumes of course packs for my Term 5 classes. Courses are held twice a week on 2 hour time frames and exchange students are allowed to take 1-5 credits based on their own requirements.

As an exchange student, it hasn't been hard for me to join groups since friendly and warm ISB students are extend invitations to us (special thanks to those who have extended invitations to me... it made my life a lot easier). Group dynamics are quite crucial since everyone's operating on a 6-week term where case discussions and lectures are interspersed with mid-terms, projects, presentations and final exams. Attendance is taken at every class and class participation (CP) could either be arbit or voluntary, depending on the professor. Funniest thing is, I think I speak more when it's voluntary.

Now that I've established that there's a lot of academic work that needs to be done, it ain't over yet. How come? Well, the Graduate Student Board and the various student clubs have organized a lot of activities for students, including exchange students. Events so far? Let me see... we had some non-professional activities such as:

1 The Hookah Welcome Party (started at 11pm and ended at around 6am) --> me sitting on the grass, Angela doing the Hookah!
2 Mehendi for an Indian tradition (don't worry... it's Henna! I don't even have it now)
3 Doing the Dandiya! --> a group of adults decided to play with sticks.
4 Expressions, a showcase of theatrical, dancing and musical talent
5 Diwali dinner with a local family & festivities at school

There have been a host of Pre-Placement Talks hosted by the Consulting Club (McKinsey, Booz & Co., AT Kearney, Parthenon Group, Deloitte... among others) as well as other professionally oriented whole-day activities such as the Social Responsibility Conclave (hosted by the Net Impact Club) & the Energy Conclave (hosted by the Energy, Manufacturing and Operations Club).

UP NEXT:
More on my adventures in school and outside... and the challenges of Indian bureaucracy.

Rock On!!!

Every time I notice something new, I'd always think "this is something I have to put into my blog". Each time, I'd file it at the back of my head hoping that I could find some time to sit down and just share my experiences chronologically.

I just realized that if I kept waiting for the right time, more and more things would have come up and I'd just end up with a blog that has little detail and misses out on what I felt when each event happened. I'll just have to commit to write about the first two weeks sometime in the future.

It is my fourth outing since arriving on campus and save for Hyderabad City Tour , this is farthest I've been from ISB. We had lessons on how to squeeze many people into a small car, learned of a great place to eat, "Our Place"... it had great ambiance too!

The highlight of the evening was our trip to the cinema. "Rock On" became my first ever cinematic experience in India and it's also the first time I've seen ticket prices comparable to the Philippines (Taiwan, HK & China have significantly more expensive rates). The chairs were quite comfortable and shifted into a slightly reclined position so I just relaxed while watching the movie.

Today, I learned and proved to myself that true art, when properly done, transcends cultural boundaries and languagebarriers. The dialogue on "Rock On" was a mix of 85% Hindi and 15% English. Majority of us were able to understand and appreciate the story despite there being no subtitles. I was so touched by the film that I didn't need the "Don't Download, Buy the CD" reminder they had at the end of the movie to convince me to get the soundtrack. I'm hooked!

The only thing I can say is... "Rock On"!

Hyderabad City Tour

An "instant immersion" tour with the International Club.

First stop... the Salar Jung Museum featuring 35 galleries of historical art and other items. We visited around 6 of the galleries and I can't believe how they handle the preservation of the artwork and sculptures there... no photography, no boundaries.

Next up, a visit to a temple dedicated to one of three major dieties, Shiva. As the place required visitors to go to the temple barefoot, I stayed behind because I had issues about how clean the floor was and later found that my concerns were well-founded. Still, the temple looked great from the outside and even being outside afforded a great view of Hyderabad.

I've never thought much about forts and mostly wondered why such places could be designated as tourist spots. Now I know why... the Golkonda Fort was just breathtaking!

The old part of Hyderabad is supposed to be very traditional, with some people living their lives the way their ancestors did hundreds of years ago. I hope I'll get the chance to visit these places.

Simply amazing

The past few days have been a whirlwind of activity for me... exchange student orientation, Hyderabad city tour, academic orientation, course sampling, and pestering the IT Customer Service center for internet access! A lot of catching up to do now, since my experience has simply been amazing so far.

I'll most probably have to post my thoughts in separate pieces because there's just so much to show and write about. First things first, accommodations! I stay on the first floor of a block with 6 quads and should theoretically share my restroom & bathroom with another person.

As you can see, my room is quite spacious and there a place for everthing. Staying at the ISB student village is like staying one step up from a hostel, I've got my own room and someone comes to clean my room everyday. My cupboard doesn't have locks. I've been told that it is quite safe to leave your things around, but it's definitely better not to tempt an honest person into sinning. So I usually take my valuables (that are smaller in size) around with me.

You may have noticed that my bed is fully cushioned and another perk is that the cleaning service also takes care of my bedding and blankets so I come home to a clean spread of bed everyday. The pillow may be a bit old, but I just found out that the Student Board has arranged to have it replaced with new ones. I'm excited!

9 hours into my stay in Hyderabad, I realized that I didn't know where the exchange student orientation was going to be, and without internet access, searching information from my computer proved futile. I just went to the main campus and ambushed the first non-Indian person I saw, Katja. Luckily, she has been on campus for a few days so she knew where the orientation venue was. It's a great coincidence that we have a few friends in common, one, I knew about because of Facebook (the mutual friends feature) and the other, simply because she mentioned that she's from CEIBS and had some Filipino classmates there.

Orientation was quite informative with Srujana giving us quite a few tips on the "need to know" on campus. Paaras & Abhi were there to give us a crash course on surviving on campus. Key takeaways?

• Always ask when you don't know.
• ISB is but a conduit to the "real" India.
• The housing service is always happy to help, just call.
• There are cleaning ladies who can wash your clothes for a nominal fee.
• Water on campus is safe.
• MORE is the inconvenient convenience store. But there's definitely stuff you could buy for daily usage.

Information overload!!!

I have arrived...

D-Day
October 10, 2008

My flight arrived a bit later than scheduled… but airport immigration was quite efficient and I didn’t really have to wait in line too long. It seemed as if the immigration officer didn’t even check for a visa. Hmm, I wonder why. I had to wait for quite a bit before I got my luggage. I went to check the exchange rates at Travellex (just for reference) and it seemed quite reasonable at INR46.06 for US$ notes. Upon exiting the terminal, I homed in on the driver with “Indian School of Business, Jovilyn Cotio” on his placard and we went ahead to the parking area to get going. He estimated that it would take around 45 minutes for us to reach ISB from the airport.

11:15pm (1:45am Manila, Taipei & Singapore time)
The journey from the airport began. There were a lot of ads of different colors along the two-lane “highway” and the red Airtel signboards just kept on coming, but the further we got from the airport, the less ads there were… must be the target market. About twenty minutes from the airport, we turned into a side road and soon, Hyderabad gave me a distinct impression of being a “two-lane” city. No matter where we turned, it would be another two-lane street waiting for us.

My driver kept rubbing his eyes and appeared to be sleepy. He would occasionally drive in the middle of the two lane road but I was glad that we were travelling at a leisurely pace of 40-60 kph even if there weren’t any cars ahead of us… it pays to be safe than sorry. Contrary to what I’ve heard about Ahmedabahd, I didn’t see a lot of people until 40 minutes into the trip, when a ‘road runner’ person came out of nowhere to cross the road. We had to do a sudden break. Other than that… it was quite an uneventful ride.

We arrived at ISB at the late hour of 12:10am. My driver asked for directions to Student Village 1 and the man at the guard post showed him a map and gave him instruction on how to get there (in a language I couldn’t understand). It was great that he drew out the path on the map while he was talking to the driver because they had a misunderstanding. My driver stopped his car at another student village, which was quite far from mine if I had to drag my bags along… and I was in doubt. Luckily, a man came out of the building and I immediately asked him whether the building was SV1. We were told that it wasn’t and he gave more instructions on how we could get to SV1. 12:10amGlad to be safely at ISB, I checked in. For those who knew me back from HK, some may remember me saying that my room (C626) was in the New Territories, while others were in Kowloon or Hong Kong Island. Well, housing here at SV1 is comprised of small buildings with a few flats that have separate rooms in them; I’m assuming 3 flats on each building as each building had three floors. My flat is on the H block, which is “Shenzhen” if the check-in area was used as an indication. Luckily, I live on the first floor! My staying in shared accommodations meant that I shared a common area with four other persons and had one of the four rooms in the flat. I should say that in comparison with the “dorms” I’ve previously stayed in (4 different dorms in 3 countries), the fifth is the charm… I am staying in a “SINGLE” room that is quite spacious and has a real bed! After cleaning up for a bit, I realized that it was already 4am Singapore time… I’m exhausted! Have to catch some shut eye and make sure I’m not late for the exchange student orientation.

A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins...

... with a single step; and mine began in Singapore.


It was my second time to step into the Singapore Changi Airport, but everything was as it was, clean and organized. Going through immigration was swift but it took me a while to get my checked luggage. They're most probably trying to make sure I don't smuggle in anything illegal... like a pack of smokes, or some meat products maybe.

Travelling from Changi Airport to where my hosts stay was quite effortless, for me at least, and there didn't seem to be much traffic (in comparison with Manila, HK & Taipei). Over the past few days, my gracious hosts William & Jye have shared with me a lot of the great food, places and experiences that Singapore has to offer. I've also met with some of my friends from NCCU & CUHK. This short stopover will be a fond memory of how Singapore has made me fall in love with it once again.

Prep: Currency -- The Rupee

The Rupee is the currency used in India. I've done some research and found that they read figures differently once your reach the a hundred thousand (which they call a lakh), 10 million (which they call a crore) and 1 billion (which they call an arab). Luckily, I won't have the need to familiarize myself with that means of measurement since I'll only be there for three months and won't be using that much money.

I've searched for places in Taipei to get it but was told that none of the Taiwanese banks held this currency (not even the Bank of Taiwan). I was advised to get US$ instead and just convert it when I get to India.

I realized later on that there are quite a few places where you can get Rupees in Singapore. It's always safer to have some local currency with you when you arrive at a new place, so I went to the Mustafa Center to have some money exchanged. I'm going to check out the actual exchange rates made available by the bank in India and update this blog with information on which option is better. NT$ --> US$ --> INR or NT$ --> S$ --> INR.

Course Selection @ ISB

The tentative course list was provided to us together with the "welcome letter" and courses fall under the various areas of concentration available at ISB including Analytical Finance, Entrepreneurship, Information and Technology Management, Operations Management, Strategic Marketing, and Strategy & Leadership.

September 10, 2008
Srujana (our exchange coordinator) sent more details on the resource site for exchange students and the course selection process. The resource site (The Atrium) provides information on the various courses offered and their related concentrations. It also includes the syllabus and former students' evaluation of the professor (if he is a returning professor).

Course selection and enrollment is done based on a bidding system. Each course will be offered in 1-4 classes of different schedules. Each class will have a maximum of 55 ISB students and 5 exchange students. Exchange students are allocated 1000 points per term to bid for the courses they desire to take. Depending on the number of courses one wants to bid for and the number of exchange students "competing" for the slots, this could be a strategic exercise in itself. How many courses will I be signing up for? How many people would want to sign up for the course? Which courses should I prioritize? What would be the widding bid?

Bidding comes in stages and so far, I've only been through the 3 phases:
1. Registration Phase (30 days to go): When you bid for your desired courses.
2. Pre-Sample Drop Phase
3. Section Switch Request Phase (23 days to go): When you submit a request to switch sections for a course you've already successfully signed up for. You will not lose your original slot in case the switch is unsuccessful.

In the case of Term 5, no exchange student was waitlisted on any course. 5 more phases will follow and I shall write about them as I do them.

Prep: Air Tickets

I got my air tickets 3 months before departure date and I'm spending at least 30% more on them because I didn't do research.

There are no direct flights from Manila / Taipei to Hyderabad. The common transit points are Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. Thai Airways, Malaysian Airlines and Singapore Airlines all offer the Hyderabad route at grossly differentiated prices (from Taipei).

On the other hand, I had decided to fly from Manila and the price difference across airlines was just around US$ 60 so come October 5, I will be taking Singapore Airlines. I hope the experience is worth the price I'm paying!

Prep: Getting an Indian Student Visa in Taiwan

July 16
86 days to ISB

ISB sent the 3-page exchange student package to Cherry (NCCU Exchange Coordinator) in mid-June. The package included a 'welcome letter' and the acceptance letter needed to get an Indian visa.

I headed to the India-Taipei Association with my required documents: (1) Acceptance Letter, (2) Visa Application Form, (3) Photo, (4) ARC and (5) Passport, paid the NT$ 2,500 fee and went ahead to run my other errands. I returned two days later to get my passport only to find that I was given a 6-month multiple-entry visa. Pity I won't be travelling in India before I go on exchange. The visa stipulates that "Registration required within 14 days of arrival in India for visas valid for more than 180 days", so I'll have to go through the process when I arrive in India. I'll have to post an update later on.

Additional Info:
India-Taipei Association
Rm 2010 333 Keelung Road Section 1, Taipei, Taiwan
(886) 2 2757 6112
Office Hours: 9:30~12:00 and 14:30~17:00

Prep: Exchange Student Registration

The NCCU nomination for exchange was sent to the ISB exchange coordinator in May 2008 and she confirmed receipt of the nomination. It was more than a month later when I received my first official correspondence from ISB.

I had to register online to ensure that my "exchange status" was confirmed and sent over the required CV & photo that allowed ISB to provide you with the necessary invitation letter to get my Indian visa. I also informed them of my housing requirements and my tentative flight schedule so that they can use this as future reference for airport pickup arrangements.

The correspondence also provided a useful website for me to learn more about the exchange program, http://www.isb.edu/inbound/index.Shtml, an exchange fact sheet and a list of courses they will be offering during the elective terms (Term 5~8).

A Lot of Catching Up To Do

I recently realized that I should have started my blog as early as the stage when I was nominated for exchange, which happened in mid-May, 2008. There's just so much to share! Keeping a blog should provide future exchange students with some useful information on the "technical aspects" of going on exchange to ISB and a more vivid description of my day-to-day experiences in India.

I'll have to catch up with details on visa application and course selection soon.