another anniversary !!

On 5th this month its gonna be a year since I stepped foot on Toronto. Can't believe how fast this one year has rolled by. But after having stayed away from home and been put through a grueling MBA program, this year's been replete with lessons for the rest of my life.
In retrospect, it's been a wonderful year, worth every second that I lived.

I haven't able to update blog for quite some time partly because my time management is gone for a toss (a euphemism for "I'm a freakin, lazy guy") & partly because I have my fingers in too many pies.

I'm interning at Sun Life Financial (SLF) where I'm working as a Project Manager for a $500 million outsourcing contract that SLF recently signed with IBM. Its a high visibility project both inside SLF & IBM & I get to interact with senior managers from both sides.

Besides the internship, which has been quite hectic till now, I'm working on an Independent Study Project (a graded course that's counted as part of our 2nd year elective) for a consulting firm called LPR Global. Our assignment is to conduct market research & come out with recommendations for market entry for a South Korea based consumer electronics manufacturer. My team's performance has been quite good till now. We've succeeded in selling few of our products to a leading telecom carrier in the US.

I'm the VP of the Rotman Dance Club for this year. We initially had to put in considerable effort to transform our club from Salsa Club to Dance Club, that would support other dance forms such as Bollywood, Ball Room, etc. We had to conduct surveys among the members, convince the Rotman Club Administration to rename our club. Substantial effort was also dedicated to revamp the club website. But all our work till now has been just to create the new club, lot more effort is needed in the course of the year to ensure successful co-ordination of the various activities we've planned for this year.

A good amount of my time is also being spent on meeting Rotman alumni from various industries to understand their jobs & if I'd want to be in that profession a year from now. I've stuck with technology & marketing professions till now, since these are my preferences till now. Rotman has a great program called the Mentorship program where senior alums are assigned to interested students & the mentor helps the student understand various top manager issues and shares his perspectives on several topics. I've been extremely lucky to have the CFO of Rogers, one of the largest telecom/media firms in Canada, Bill Linton, as my mentor. I've discussed several interesting topics such the role he plays in increasing shareholder value, M&A strategies of multi-billion Dollar firms, etc. Bill has also introduced me several senior executives in his network with whom I can further interact and learn from.

Despite all this work, my social life has also been quite active. This weekend was a long one & I made quite good use of the time to visit few places around Toronto. The weekend also had a wonderful ending with an evening of "rusty pelican" ice-cream at De Metre's and bhel puri with Kashmiri chai at Little India on Gerrard Street.

Looking for another fun filled weekend and an interesting week in between !!

Bye for now..