There's been something or the other going on pretty much every weekend this term at AIM (Asian Institute of Management). Finally Rachna, Shibani and me got down to getting some serious work done for our Walkabout.
A walkabout is kinda like an initiation ceremony that Australian aborigines go through to prove their coming of age... here at AIM it assumes alot of significance coz it has been adapted to the business-world concept. In fact our Associate Dean, Prof. Ricardo Lim spoke about the walkabout being a unique feature of AIM when interviewed by one of the leading MBA websites, pagalguy.com. (Check here for the full interview http://www.pagalguy.com/index.php?categoryid=51&p2_articleid=1506). Each student here has to do a 'walkabout', in the sense, not necessarily go off into the wilderness (although we were contemplating that) and 'survive' but do something that we've never done before, something that stretches us, something that changes us, something that makes us grow.
There are two ways of looking at it... one just do something you haven't done before or do something that you've always wanted to do but haven't had the b@#%%s to do before...
Our plan is to have a 'chai' stall right here on campus from late evening to early morning - why coz there's a need in the market for this product, at this time, done this way (I like using 3 adjectives, reasons etc... it feels poetic to me) - a good cup of tea (or is it a cup of good tea) can solve anything. (I agree with you Katti on this... we will forever remember our chai sessions by the poolside... won't we). As a rider, I want to add that I also think beer does the same thing.
We're nervously excited about it coz we're gonna have to micro-manage (bleccchhh) and time-manage (wow... if only I could do that).
Up until today we were figuring out what we wanted to do exactly with the stall and now that we have a fair idea we went in to 'source' our requirements.
Usually when you goto a shop, negotiating comes naturally to you... what happened today was that now that I knew we were being MBA-esque, part of me was doing it and the other part was observing, relating what we were doing to what we've read or studied and getting supremely amused.
Honestly I feel there's nothing new that you learn in an MBA... its primarily things you have been doing... it's just a shift of perspective to making it more non-mundane.
Anyway, coming back to our sourcing exploits... we've managed to get a good deal (cannot be disclosed... confidentiality and all that jazz ;-)) on raw materials as well as capital investment...
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