Shifted house to Peermade.. Good Luck MBC !!

After staying in the MBC College campus in B3, family quarters for almost a year, yesterday we have shifted to a decent flat in Peermade, behind the State Bank of Travancore.

A hartal call given by BJP against the recall of Raju Narayana Swamy as Idukki dist collector and rain initially disrupted the transportation of the household items. But luckily the rain subsided and even though in the dark, we could move the items from the college campus to Peermade.

This morning, Friday, 28 September 097, kids have gone to school and I am in the college. Getting relieved on Saturday, 29 sept.

After a very momentous stint here, i am feeling bad at leaving the students here. Even though I get to teach PG students at XIME, the love and affection from the students here is something I am going to miss for a long time. The MGOCSM, the church choir, the Mechanical Engg students Association ARME, Association of Radiant Mech Engineers, Samasya , the cultural fest of MBC, I miss al those things. Also the extreme cold in the midst of tea estates. I cannot forget my ten day stay in the Sahyadri Ayurvedic hospital at Pothupara, near to our campus, for massage.

The PTA meetings of the college, the St Pius X school, the encounters with Sr Georgina etc is very fresh in my memory. The frequent trips during weekends and holidays to Kottayam and Ernakulam will be something which I will miss very much. The bad roads between Kuttikanam and Mundakkayam and the smooth road for the rest of the journey upto kottayam on the KK Road is unforgettable.

In another two days I will be packing off from Peermade to Bangalore to join XIME. I will keep coming oncxe every month to meet family.

One year of my leave from Goa is over. Another year more. The experience at XIME will be treasured for life.

If the HR policy was better at MBC, I could have continued there also motivated lot of others to stay back. Discipline is a must for good functioning of any Institute. But to dream of getting that by using the danda is an immature state of mind, that is what IO have to say to the authorities. Their planning is very likely to hit back with greater intensity.

Wish MBC and it's faculty and students all the best.

Let the Orthodox Church and it's priests be able to continue to run this Institution before somebody else takes it over. Because it is not any body's property. it is the faith and trust reposed by the millions of believers of the Indian Orthodox Church which is seeing the Institution through many difficult phases in its history and will see it through into the future.

All the best MBC.

George easaw

Transition to a business school ..

I have always wondered how it would be like to move from an engineering school to a business school ? Engineering offers you technology and what does a b school teach you ? How to do business ? Yes, that is also a tough thing. How you collect the resources and what you are going to do with them and doing it in the most efficient and cost-effective way. B-school in short teaches you exactly that.

My research and Masters degree was influenced after my industry experience to a great extent. Industrial experience and the theory of Industrial Engg taught me how important it was to utilise resources optimally. In Industrial Engineering I learnt about Industry and running it with quantitative tools like those from Operations Research, Linear Programming, Dynamic programming, Queueing theory, Game theory, Project management tools and so on. It revolved around Computer systems, databases, Productivity, Japanese Production philosophy, Supply Chains, Revenue management etc.. My pet areas where I have worked and would like to teach PG students. The opportunity to interact with industry professionals, learn from them and in turn teach them something new and consult with them is what makes a position in teaching and research exciting. Else teaching would be a very boring affair. I had started to feel traces of boredom in my present assignment already.

In an engineering school at UG we get to teach the top students. Barely five percent of engineers would like to pursue an engineering PG course as a higher qualification as most are enticed by the industry and pursue a course in business administration. We cannot blame them as that is where the money is and enough job opportunities too.

The next ten twenty years we are going to see booming business and trade opportunities in India and China and also by the developed countries with India. This needs hordes of business professionals to run the Indian economy and help it to emerge as the top economy in the world in the coming years.

By joining a reputed B school finally I get to teach high quality students. At Xavier inst of Management and Entrepreneurship at Bangalore, (Electronics City, phase II, Hosur Road), I look forward to great intellectual interactions and an intellectually satisfying work environment. Electronic City Bangalore is presently the most happening place in the knowledge Industry of the country, it would not be an exaggeration to say that it is so in the world, with all IT majors having their offices / sweatshops there. That is where the growth and action really is. As I repeatedly mentioned in the interview, I do not wish to miss out on this action.

The XIME Bangalore campus is spacious situated on both sides of the road at the entrance to Phase II of the Electronics City on the Hosur Road.. The facilities are good, the boarding and hostel facilities for the students, 240 in number and better than those offered in Goa Inst of Management, Ribandar, where I was teaching Operations for two terms in 2005. I went around the campus and the labs, library on Saturday 15 Sept .

I hope the transition from engg to business school will be smooth and cool. I am confident of jelling with the crowd here well. Also it is great to be in Bangalore, where lot of action is happening. After reading Thomas Friedman's World is Flat, I have always wanted to be here to catch a part of the action and be part of the future of India.

Planning to join XIME (www.xime.org by early Oct 2007 as their second term of this academic year starts by Oct 3rd.

With each passing day I am inching closer and closer to my life dreams and ambitions. I have to thank God almighty for guiding me so carefully and smoothly through all turbulent times in life and all my near and dear, a great supporting wife, for being by me through times thick and thin.

george..

Can India make it to the top in automobiles?

Tata Motors along with Maruti Suzuki, Hyundai, Toyota, Mitsubishi, Ford, General Motors, Skoda, Volkswagon, Mercedes are presently competing with each other for the market share in automobiles in India. Hyundai, Maruti and Tata Motors models are presently the top selling ones in the country. how long will this continue ? Will any one company be able to establish it's control over the market and squeeze the others out ?

Let us analyse the situation from a layman's perspective. The middle class is now completely moved over to four wheelers. The upper middle class had completed the transition some time back. The focus of the auto makers are now on the lower middle class wooing them to make the switch from two wheekers to four wheelers and ofering them lot of enticements to do so. The upper middle class have slowly started switching from the medium autos to the expensive, gas guzzling, luxurious ones. Some families even have three automobiles at home. As usual with economic development there is also shortage of parking spaces in housing societies / residences for parking these extra vehicles.

Will Tata Motors ever make it to the top three slot in the world by effecting a merger / acquisition of General Motors. there was a rumour onec about that possibility immediately after the Corus steel takeover by Tata steel. If that happens there will be a great consolidation in the automobile market in the world.

The present world leaders are Toyota, GM, Ford and Daimler Chrysler in that order. When will Tata make it to the top is a big question for which Indians are looking for an answer. Tata's present offering, the Tata Indica, petrol, diesel version and the Indigo coupe and Mareena hatchback models are top selling models in the market.

Let us wait and see.

George easaw

Munnar, Ponmudi and so on.. Malayali's never-ending shame ..

Munnar and Ponmudi are two instances of land encroachment and exhibition of private greed over public interests which has rocked Kerala society the past three months. The great enthusiasm and high moral ground which the former opposition leader and present Chief MinisterShri V S Achuthanandan had taken while in the opposition regarding many public issues and the present silence on these issues has dented his image beyond repair inMalayali minds.

The shameless and spineless Achuthananthan has reiterated to the poor Malayali that his popular speeches and marches then were only to while away time, and private greed and selfish party interests are what finally means to him in the race to keep his arse hot on theCM's chair. He has shown beyond any doubt that his priorities are first to the party (with allegiance to the broken Russia and the resurgent China) and only then to the poor Malayali and Kerala. A true son of the land !!

It remains to be seen when the intelligent poor Malayali inside Kerala (and the lucky ones outside) will see through these cheap games of Sakhavu and his pimps and kick them out of public sight for ever !!

george..

One day and twenty20 cricket - commercialising cricket ..

The twenty20 cricket world cup has started in South Africa on 11 sept 07. There are great hopes and aspirations of this world cup among the cricket playing countries of the world. The motivating factors behind such shorter versions of the game is the main focus of this article.

Almost a hundred years back, cricket had it's history as a pasttime being resorted to by the shepherds of England whiling away time while grazing their sheep. It then caught the attention of the elite in England with framing of the rules and the competition mode came up. The five day version was the competition mode of cricket with each side getting two innings to pile up a total alternatively and the winner
decided on who got the biggest total. The number of wickets which was lost in arriving at the total and the number of runs by which a team won were prestige issues among cricket playing nations. The traditional rivalry between England and Australia in the Ashes and the bloodline series are great events in the history of cricket. The game soon spread to the other English colonies across the world.

Around early 1980s, Kerry Packer, the media businessman from Australia running channel 9 started the limited one day version of the game exciting with coloured cricket balls used to bowl initially sixty overs a side and then reduced to fifty overs a side. The earlier white dress gave way to coloured dresses. Many an exciting contests got through and many world cups, India won thePrudential World Cup in 1983 in England ( I was fortunate enough to be in front of the TV in Trivandrum, Kerala to watch the full match running late into the night) made the game very popular in not only the cricket playing nations but across the world. With improved popularity of the game, advertisers started flocking to the people holding telecast rights and big money was there to be made. Some of the great players made enough money for at least the next five generations in a short span of five to ten years.

I was really surprised to recently hear of the still smaller version of the game, with twenty overs being bowled by each side, with a match not going beyond four hours at the most.

The test version of the game concentrated on the style and techniques of the game. The game which had no time limit was later restricted to five days with a rest day in between and later on even that was done away with. The tenacity of the team to withstand pressure, hold on and being able to play for long durations were onsidered qualities befitting a cricketer. It was very surprisingly that fortunes of the game changed. A team which was favourably placed in the morning used to get out by tea time and the opposing team used to enter the field. The play time which was restricted to six hours a day, two hours before lunch , two hours before tea and two hours before close of play of the day, had an extra fifty mandatory overs on the final day after the final post tea session. These mandatory overs saw the end results of many a game in test cricket history.

A hectic lifestyle of the people and shortage of time to watch the game for five full days led to interest being shown to the limited version of one day cricket which lasted for seven to eight hours. The latest entry of twenty20 lasting for three to four hours is a still limited version and for the first time a world cup is being organised by the International Cricket Council (ICC) to popularise this version of the game. The game is more or less acquiring the status of a base ball game, getting over pretty fast and sadly or not, the focus isgetting shifted from the techniques and style, stressing on gentlemanly qualities to the brash hitting of the ball where fitness and strength is valued more than technique, in short brains are getting replaced bybrawns.

Whether this change is for the better future of the game or whether commercial interests are corrupting the game, only time can tell.

George easaw

My writings of the past three years, 2004-07

You are welcome to go through the link given below to view the articles I have written on various topics during the past three years and which have been published on different websites and conferences. All the documents are portable document format (pdf) articles and needs to be downloaded and can be read using adobe reader.

Click here to read the articles..

Your comments are very much welcome.

regards,
Dr George Easaw

What a cricket match on Wednesday night ? 5 sept 07

The India England 6 th ODI of the Natwest Trophy was a nail biter. England posted a total of 316 in their innings and India took up the batting. Sachin blasted a neat 94 and unluckily got out. Tragic..

But Saurav and Dhoni took it over from there. It was not over yet. Robin Uthappa batted very well and was instrumental in clinching the match for India. His terrific unconventional, brave strikes for four during the last two overs was a real treat for the eyes. When the English fans looked for a certain English victory, Uthappa turned the tables and crafted a superb victory for India. Four runs needed off the last three balls and he hit Broad for a four to finsh off the match in style. The way Yuvraj was coming to hug him, even got the security guards on their feet.

The stage is now set for an exciting final ODI, the seventh at Lords on Saturday. The match starts at 2.30 PM and the whole of India will be surely watching the match. Me too..

Too hot !! Wish India all the best in the match.

george..