The snack shack

Today I went over to the inauguration of a bakery opened by my friend along with some of his school mates as partners. It's a bakery shop located adjacent to the PSBB  k. k nagar school campus, chennai.
I must say the pastries and cup cakes are really good and to add to that, they are homemade by an aunt he knows. Besides that, the snack shack, as what they call it, also serves a variety of sandwiches, burgers, milkshakes and mocktails.

The location they managed to get is awesome! right next to a school, they'd get good business in the evenings as children would eventually make it a hangout place just after school and in the mornings too as the heavy sandwiches offer to make great breakfasts.

Yumm!

The shop is open from 7am to 10pm and does offer take away facilities and they aim to pose as an equally healthy alternative to breakfast at home.
That would greatly help working parents and kids who are fussy with what breakfast they want, they can drop by at the snack shack before they get to school and pack their break and lunch boxes with food.

Cupcakes!

I see it as an amazing opportunity for my friend who sees himself owning a successful business like his father so such a venture would definitely teach him first hand what he must do to successfully start off a business and sustain it profitably. He sure would get a idea where to invest in, what risks can be taken, what not to assume, learn from mistakes, its all working out to be a practical MBA and a really cool way that too!

He's got a good business minded friends too and that's help his cause and it's a great potential step to making a good start to a business career. If all goes well, I see really good profits that they can use to comfortable establish more branches, possibly even in some of the upcoming malls in the area and get first hand info about apparent research that may go underway in choosing an ideal shop location and space, this being important as it's food related shop and quality maintenance is of utmost importance.
Anyway good luck to him and  his future ventures

Do check out their facebook page as well:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.183050235120679.43066.168851219873914&type=1

At the fork

Everyone in life will or have come across situations where one has to make crucial decisions. We all tend to ask everyone around us for advice on how to go about it. Some encourage a certain decision others discourage, some end up confusing you even more. You tend to value a more learned or elderly person's advice more, but it still remains your decision to make no matter what.

Gathering all the advice you sit down and assimilate what you have heard and draw a conclusion and analyse it again and again to see whether everyone's opinion was taken into consideration.

Many a time, we consider others' advice and suggestions so much that we forget to respect our own opinion on the issue. This is quite sad. And it is as though it hardly matters. But one can be so wrong. If we look at how people resort to giving advice is by telling you how they would decide to act upon the choices they have been given or that fork on the road where they have to choose a path. At times the advice they give can be so impractical yet it value it more than ours.

I right now am faced with a situation where I have graduated from college. Got placed in a IT company that recruited me from the college campus placements but have been delaying the date of my joining for just about have a year now. I should admit I am no extraordinary student, I have decent grades but feel this is not the way to start my career, waiting indefinitely for an offer. I resorted to try other companies and have got a job at a small  IT firm of just over 50 employees doing some financial sector software product business.

The company I got through college is an IT giant, offers standard pay, insurance and other benefits, stable job, not so great on the learning curve but compensates quite well with other facilities. This small firm offer, the pay probably is much lesser, can't expect a perk filled benefit package, another unprecedented recession will wipe this company out. The only advantage that has a lot of hidden potential is the fact that the office is very near where I stay so I can save on travel time and expenses.

My parents expressed disapproval and said jobs got in campus has added value and that it was best I wait, but the very same day I got a letter from the IT giant that my wait can extend over another 5 months or so. They asked me to decide upon something by myself because either way there is something to lose. But I didn't believe it was that pathetic.

Plus points in my small firm job is that, it is run by a bunch of IT veterans as you can call them, went to the US during the IT boom, made a lot of money, now settled down with an IT company within walking distance from their homes. I only see it an opportunity to grow and learn from these pioneers in the field. The company has been around for around 13 years and that didn't sound bad at all.

It is a big question, a big risk that I am taking, will I benefit from a decision of choosing  David over Goliath? Will I be in a better position than my big company peers, at least at par if not more? How big is the risk that I am taking? How much can I bank upon the fact that my learning curve will be robust and steady. Obviously I'm looking at two years maximum three in this company but it is crucial as it defines how the rest of my career will be shaped in a big way. My choices will be scrutinised.

The fact that worries my parents are that small companies can be so unpredictable, they can go bust in a matter of a string of bad decisions in a week. And close down in a month. But if I take that risk and go for it then all I can do is gain, and gain in a big way considering the exposure, the experience, the responsibility and this happens to be a research and development division of it's parent branch in bangalore so that's another big plus point.

Taking chances can work both ways. If it works fine, then there is much to gain from the fact I willed to take that risk.

Since all I want to see myself do is go with flow once something has been decided. Following the path I have chosen,if into the road  less taken i tread, then maybe, maybe, there may be a day several years from now, when I look back and reminisce that I saw, 


two roads diverge in the wood, and I took the one less travelled by, and that made all the difference.

The first step to studying abroad- an insight into an educational fair

I happened to go for a Education fair organized by Edwise which features universities from UK Europe Canada Australia and Singapore. The visit to the fair was quite useful in a way that I got an idea why people go to education fairs in the first place. According to me it is just meant for people who have enough money to spend and are desperate to show to progress education-wise so they tend to join colleges at random without any insight into what they are actually doing. However by accusing a certain set of people of such foolish decisions I am only referring to a particular section of students I saw at the fair. Others are parents with a mindset to get some info on how to send their children off abroad for higher education. If one wants to find the real focused student groups who have a firm resolve and purpose of going abroad to study one needs to look very closely into the crowd as this category of students would have done their research at home and shortlisted schools they would prefer to join and only attend briefings by those universities that are in their list. However the main thing was that generally the universities that come to fairs are those which are not popular names in foreign countries or those which are new to the foreign student enterprise. There are few universities that come with the intention to boost their brand image, more likely to officially sponsor the whole education fair to emphasize their purpose, one can try to apply and get through at these universities. Coming to what I learnt about universities in the U.K are that most of them require IELTS and decent academic credentials. That's it. Application processing takes a whale of a time so it is best to apply  at least 8 months in advance. Quite a lot of importance is given for good profiles with paper presentations. So I'd say don't go to a fair if you are just desperate to do something about your career because they are more likely to push you to make a decision in a matter of 3-4 hours.. that's not exactly advisable. I'd say if you feel all confused then go to some free counselling centre, I believe the counsellors at Edwise itself are quite good themselves, and sort out what you really want to do. You need to decide keeping in mind your academic background, what your field of interest is and what sort of coursework you want to study and the exposure that you want to get. Define a set of colleges that have prospective courses you can apply for and get. break into top class intitutes, gettable institutes and sure shot colleges. Go to a fair now after you have done all this and ask about how good chances are of securing admission and then apply. 

Such an effort ensures you are not stuck with a course that you had no interest in doing and to make matters worse, in another country altogether just because of a hurried decision made in a couple of hours.