So there I am, at the airport, waiting at the immigration counter, waiting for the line to move, reading through a tourist guide book. The book tells me two things about Sydney. One, pick up the Sydney guide book at the airport, it has discount coupons that you may use. I look around, I find it, I pick it up. A job well done.
Two, it says, do not get into a taxi cab on a sharing basis. The taxi drivers will charge full fare to all passengers, and that’s the scam. Aha ! I think, conjuring up an image of a sly conniving taxi driver Point noted, and I make a mental note.
So I get out of the airport, and follow the signs for a taxi, and then I get into a long winded queue rails, the kind of which they have at roller coaster rides, the shape of which resembles the only way to play Snake when it gets really really long. Would have taken me around 2 minutes to get through all the turns (there was nobody else in the ‘queue’) before I realized that there was a side path that had been opened and I could have zipped right through it.
There was a notice at the taxi stand, mentioned the rights and duties of the customers. Must wear a seatbelt, can refuse to share a cab. The taxi driver did not fit the image which I had though turned out to be a smiling Korean who had jumped the taxi queue to get a passenger before anyone else did.
He dropped me home, and on the way we did pass through a bay/creek or some water body. It was night, so its fine that I could not figure out what that was, but it looked beautiful. There were three series of lights, one the lights on the bridge, second the lights of the boats and three the skyline beyond the other side of the banks, but the point being, it was beautiful.
So I got off at the exact address that I knew of (thank you GPS, and city maps) and I climbed up the stairs to the door, and I looked for an address plate to confirm the house no. There was none. So I decided to announce my arrival and looked for the doorbell. There was none. So I knocked. Then I waited. Then I knocked. Then I waited. The other two were supposed to have reached in the morning. Then I waited. Then I panicked. Note 1: it was night, and the streets were not really bustling where I could go ask for help Note 2: my Indian cell was not working Note3: I was not sure if I had given the driver the correct address (self doubt) Note4: I was not sure if I was knocking at the correct door. Note5: It had started to rain, though very lightly. Then I waited, I assumed that the both of the then would have gone for dinner or something of the sort, so I waited some more (while cursing them of course) by the clock, I would pay homage to the door every 5 minutes and knock. Finally, one guy opened the door, and it was the correct guy. My happiness exceeded the self congratulations I had afforded myself by picking up the Sydney guidebook at the airport. .
Admin information… then I took a bath after a very long time and distance, and readied the ready to eat and ate the ready to eat, and slept.
This was the Sunday night, and Monday morning I had a class, 930 AM (sharp ? ). So I put up the alarm for 8 o clock, got up and 815, got late by 900 and walked briskly in the general direction of the university, while praying that hopefully the mba school is somewhere close by. The general direction was governed by the fact that I had seen the university signboard the previous night, and assumed that forty five minutes would give me sufficient time to refine the directions the next morning. Of course, given that I had lost 30% of the time, brisk walk would be my only salvage. So I see a board of the university, see a reception signboard, and march right in to get directions. I wait there for 5 minutes, ask for AGSM (the name of the mba school) and draw a blank. I do draw out a page from their map book though, and give her other details I knew. She looks at the map, and draws a circle when she figures out where the school is, then she draws a smaller circle where I was, and I mentally draw the perimeter of the university campus, where me and the school form opposite end of a diagonal. And then instead of drawing a straight line between the two end, she draws a thick road at the perimeter of the rectangle, and that is tha path I need to take. I thank her, take the map and run !
Thankfully when I reached the school at 930, I had very little trouble figuring out the classroom, and the class had not yet started, I take stock of the situation, and smile. Then I take stock again, and frown. In a class of ~20, I was the only one in jeans and t shirt. Everyone else was in a suit ! Now I know that I had missed the orientation class a week ago (Visa issues), but even so… suits !!!
So the class goes on, and it is a fun class, I think marketing mostly is. But the first class was particularly fun. There were examples from all over the globe, and getting to one consensus was really difficult. I actively shared my thoughts from the Indian scene, and I did not share my passive thoughts on the suit and the tie and the name tags.
After the class, it hit me [because someone told me (because I asked him) ], that the suits were because those guys had a recruitment presentation to attend. Had that not been the case, I would have looked formally dressed in my jeans and the t shirt. Ah! I thought, students are always students, be it the 20 year old undergrads, or the 30 year old MBA grads. On that note, I am one of the younger ones here at AGSM, where the average work ex is 7 years. It’s is a reversal from IIMA, where I am one of the older ones.
So there is another thread in here, one different stages of life and the affect it has on people. How one moves from planning for future to thinking what did I do in the past, without a jump in the between. But I’ll humour about it later.
