just like that

"Be the change you want to see" - Mahatma Gandhi

When I first landed in bangalore to do my summer internship, I was looking forward to a lot of things. The most important among them was how this stint is going to help me make that important decision about my career. At the end of my first year of MBA, I still wasn't sure what I wanted to take up - Finance or marketing (or probably systems). These two months were supposed to throw some light on it.

First day at office - After the introductions were over and I had settled down, one of the managers explains to me about the entire concept of radio and advertising. It all sounds very exciting. Alas, the excitement didn't last long. As part of my work, Iam made to go all around the city and take a list of all the hoardings in the city. Roaming all day in the hot sun, stopping at every hoarding and making a note of the hoarding - it was a really miserable two weeks. The worst thing is the look you get from the passersby. Why is this idiot looking at the sky, thinking about something and writing it down! Anyways I was a releived man when my guide told me there would be no more field work ( a small pause - Am I unconsciously getting the feeling that sales is not for me or was it just the kind of work I did which was making me think like this?

Over the next one and a half months I have done a number of things as part of my project - noting down ads in newspaper, acting as telephone operator, arranging visiting cards etc . To top it all, one day due to a series of unfortunate circumstances, I become the peon who goes and gets photocopies done. To be fair to my employers, they are in the middle of an important transition phase and Iam anything but a liablity. The real learning for me happened watching all these people work - how they went about selling their product to advertisers.

Now even as I near completion of my two month stint, Iam as confused as I was at the beginning about what to choose. Sales & Marketing seems good but then is it something Iam going to be good at? Probably time would tell.

P.S. - I didn't mean to end on a philosophical note :)

It's been more than a month since I landed in Bangalore for my summer internship but I haven't quite had the opportunity to explore it. After going home to chennai for the last 4 weekends, I decided I will stick around this time. Hence, the last saturday, after the morning and afternoon were spent peacefully eating and sleeping, we decided finally it was time for some action.

It was a cool saturday evening when me and my friends set foot on the Forum, a shopping mall. Although I had paid a fleeting visit to it earlier last month, this was the first time I was exploring it in detail. With Mcdonald's in the front and KFC in the rear and many more biggies in between, the Forum is catering to the new, emerging class of young Indians who are increasingly willing to pay anything for what they consider fashionable or the 'in' thing. The Landmark shop was the highlight. You can get lost for hours together in the maze of books. My favorite pastime when I was in chennai was to get in there and keep reading sections of many books without actually buying anything. Anyways, since we had better plans that day, we just moved on after buying a purse for my friend. We then proceeded to check out the movies at the PVR cinemas and as expected all the night shows were full. After window shopping for some more time, we finally settled down in McDonald's. The transparent glass meant we could look at the entrance of Forum and the best time of the evening was there. For nearly an hour, we kept looking at all the girls who were passing by. It was a throwback to the good, old engineering days when we used to do the same sitting in bus stops and railway stations. Of course, the worrying thing for us was that most of the girls were accompanied by their boy-friends. There were also rare moments when we did catch a couple of girls all by themselves. At the end of the day, it was a very satisfying outing :)

Overall, a few things I have observed in Bangalore are:
1) The auto-wallas can speak in Kannada, Hindi or English. They understand Tamil and Telugu as well. They are more honest than the chennai autowallahs but still some way to go before they can catch up with their mumbai counterparts.
2) The roads are always congested and the infrastructure is poor - desperately in need of a good mass transport system.
3) The most obvious - highly cosmopolitan.
4) Cost of living is pretty high - only slightly less than what it would take you in Mumbai if you are a bachelor.

All in all, it's a nice place for bachelors to be, particularly if you are in the right places at the right times :)

About this blog

A blog struggling to keep itself alive as its writer juggles his life between selling paints and playing poker!

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