To exchange or Not to exchange

Hi
This blog's title is a shameless rip-off from Shakespeare's Hamlet (To be... Or not to be). But the trigger for this mail is original and it happened a couple of days ago. I received a mail from the MBA office stating that Micro-Economics will not be offered in the coming semester. When I joined my MBA I didn't know much about Marketing or Finance. I joined out of curiosity about Fiscal deficit, Trade Surplus, Forex reserves, etc. I wanted to know what these were and how they worked. Now, I am doomed. These terms are destined to remain 'latin' forever.

This is one of the drawbacks of the 'Exchange Program'. This blog is dedicated to those people who have/will face a similar dilemma. Deciding between the merits/demerits of the exchange program. My future blogs shall detail the merits of exchange. So, this blog is about what I lost because I went on exchange.

My biggest loss was Cerebration. This is our annual business case event which we position as the 'Biggest Business Case event' in the world. I was in Australia when Cerebration happened. It was funny seeing mails from MBA office pleading with our guys to come and attend the event. While I was desperate to attend the event but could not.

The other loss is internships/job search. Searching for an internship/job is exceedingly difficult when you are on exchange (will share my experiences in another post). There are several reasons for this - visa laws, emigration rules, culture of the place, etc.

Anyone going on exchange cannot participate in the MBA Club elections. So, anyone having these aspirations must make this trade-off. Competing for the other positions is tough as well. Because canvassing for votes is more difficult when on exchange. But we did have one exchange student winning his election.

Finally, there is a loss of friends. This is a hard one. Because for 4 months, you learn to laugh and cry with these folks. Now, you must find a new shoulder on which to vent your emotions. This is not easy in a foreign country where you meet a limited set of people, mostly in a class environment. And these folks already have their set of friends.

So, To exchange or Not to exchange. This is a choice each individual must make. For me, I was willing to accept these trade-offs. And what I got in return far exceeded what I lost.

Cheers,
Suraj

Winter Internships - A Blind Date

Hi
I begin with an apology (the worst way to begin anything). I have been extremely busy in the last one week. Due to which I have not been able to blog. Last week was also a lot of fun. Working with a bunch of consultants, I was exposed to tons of jargons - "technocommercial" "a 20000 feet thought" "sales clawback period" "biz pulse" "YTD" ... Anyway this week looks a little more sane and so I'm back.

After the final exams, we had a month's break. Too long a break if you ask me. Specially for a shortened 18 month program. Most of us opted to/had to go back home. There were quite a lot who tried for a winter internship. Unfortunately, only a few succeeded. I don't know the exact numbers. Because as the term went on, the internship search became a 'Sherlock Holmes' mystery. People didn't want to tell others whether they were applying, where they were applying to and what their status was.

The bottomline is that the winter internship is like a 'Blind Date'. You always have a shot at success. But the chances of things working out are remote. By my estimate, around 10 in the batch got a winter internship. Companies varied from KPMG, RBS, TATA and a few other small boys.

As for me, initially I applied to a few companies. Nothing worked out. And my parents wanted to come down to Singapore during December. So, I gave up the ghost. My parents, sister and uncle came down to Singapore. We went to Malaysia, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai and Macau. It was a fun trip and a great learning experience. But this trip had nothing to do with NUS. And this blog is positioned as my experience @ NUS MBA. So, I shall not delve much into the trip.

My exchange program at MBS was to start on Feb 4th. But NUS opened a couple of weeks earlier. So, it was an extended holiday for me. Whenever I went to college, people kept asking me, "What are you doing here?" And to be honest, I asked the same question "What am I doing here?". Just the after-effects of an overly long vacation.

Cheers,
Suraj

My final exams - And I'm back

Hi
I am not sure how many of you have noticed/missed that I have not posted a blog for the last few days. The reason is that the good news has finally arrived. My project has been signed off and work has begun in earnest. It has been exciting and enlightening, working with a bunch of consultants and with company insiders highly cynical of consultants. The last few days have been crazily busy and I have not had time to blog. Though I may not be as prolific as before, I shall ensure that the blog remains active. That was my promise when I started the blog and I make that promise again.

So, where are we on my little trip to the past? I think I have pretty much covered every major event during my first term. So, its time for the climax. My final exams!! After my mid-term debacle, I was prepared for this one. I had started studying continuously and taking an active part in my projects. And I got lucky with my exam time-table. I cannot emphasize enough the need to get lucky on the exam time-table. One of the sections, the FM1 guys, got a shocking time-table. They had exams on continuous days. As a result, they were screwed. FM3 got lucky - both during mid-term and during the final exams (wonder whether this is a tip for future batches or the law of averages will even things out). I had 3 days break for the economics exam. This was important for me because I was least confident about economics and I had performed badly in my mid-terms.

Exam week started with OM (Ops mgmt) exam. It was a strange exam. We had to answer online. The questions were opening up in the IVLE (our intranet) on Saturday morning. And we had to submit our answers by Sunday night. The questions were case based but tricky. It took longer to answer than we thought. For all the group work, it took me the entire weekend to answer the questions and submit them. Got a B+ for this one.

The Marketing exam was a complete lottery. Anyone taking a course with Prof. Leong Siew Meng be warned!! There is an entire book on Marketing Management in Asia to study. The book is written jointly with Philip Kotler. It makes for an interesting read. But the problem with the book is that it is superfluous. There is so much reptitive data that it gets tough to read the entire book, specially before the exam. We had the last few chapters for the finals exam (the first few had come for the mid-terms). I was in a group of 3 to 4 people who tried to split the chapters to read through. Then we would teach each other our respective chapters. All this was to no avail because of the nature of the exam. It was objective questions and they came from any sub-topic in any page. And it was virtually impossible to remember all the details. But, as I said, I got lucky. I had prepared really well and got more objective questions right than most. I got an A+ on this one (the only A+ in my entire course).

Financial Accounting was a fun exam for me. I got the cash flows right for the first time in my life. In general, the exam was a little tough. But I did decently enough. And was quite satisfied with my grades - A-

Financial Mgmt was an easy question paper with one tricky question. Again, I was well prepared and did pretty well. After all, I wanted to specialize in finance and my grades in the finance subjects were crucial. Again a decent grade - A-

And finally - Economics. I cannot explain how disappointed I was/am with this one. I studied very hard for this one. I had covered all the chapters, knew the theory inside out. I was fairly well versed with the problems as well. But the question paper had 5 questions for 5 chapters. This in a book with about 20 chapters. And we had the entire book for the exam. All the questions were problems which were pretty simple. I was so shocked with the question paper that I forgot how to solve the problems. But as the exam went on I recollected my composure and managed to answer the problems. MBA exam grades are relative in nature. Such an easy exam meant that most people did well in the exam. Though, in general, this is good - it wasn't good for my grades. I had screwed my mid-terms and needed a decently tough paper to get back. It didn't happen. Got a B+

This is also one of the paradoxes of the MBA grading system. Though you might want everyone to do well, if everyone does well you are screwed. Chances are you will be middle of the pack.

All in all, I got a CAP (cumulative score) of 4.25 out of 5. I don't know where this stands among the batch. I was to learn later that asking about the CAP is a highly sensitive topic. It took a few snubs for me to learn this lesson. As a friend candidly asked me, "Would you ask for the CAP if you had done badly?" And I think that is a fair comment. I would not have ventured about the CAP, if my score was below 4. It was selfish of me to ask others about the CAP when their score could have been lower. It wasn't intentional but it was wrong. And that is my tip for future students. CAP is a sensitive topic better left alone.

I was pleased with my performance in the final exams. It took me to the top tier of the b-school batch. I was a long distance off from the topper (CAP of 4.7) but I was there where I belonged. I was back!!!

Cheers,
Suraj

Project and Deadlines; Deadlines and Projects

Hi
I was caught in the midst of a heated discussion today at the breakfast table. The topic was how to make Tata Indicom the premier mobile operator in the country. The only way the Tatas can achieve this is through churn (acquiring the customers of a competing network operator). Now, this is not easy. Because if a customer churns why should he come to TATA and not go to Vodafone? Besides, why should a customer churn? Bharti, the country's premier mobile operator, owns a powerful brand, Airtel. It is incredibly fast to the market. They came up with their m-commerce ads (currently running on Indian television featuring Madhavan and Vidhya Balan) a couple of days after the RBI gave the green signal to mobile commerce. The recent acquisition of Spice by Idea demoted us from being the 5th largest player to the 6th largest. So, the business case is dire. And the people on my breakfast table were the cream of the company. One of them is part of the core strategy team in the Corporate head office, another is a core member of the marketing team of a "to be launched" new product division and so on. Bottomline, these guys could make a difference in the organization. Yet, for the last one month I had seen this topic being debated and debated. The people on the breakfast table changed but the arguments remained. And everyone had differing views on how the growth could be achieved. But they kept talking and nothing was being done. It reminded me of that IBM ad "Stop Talking, Start Doing." This makes me ask a controversial question? Are we management folks more inclined to talk rather than execute? Certainly, IBM thinks so!

The Business case above represents a sample of the business cases we had to handle for our first term projects. Personally, I love these projects. I believe that is what makes b-school life interesting and differentiates it from an under-graduate experience. B-schools believe that these projects simulate a business environment for students. Agreed, except with one big difference. In projects you have nothing to lose. At a maximum, it will effect your grades. But in business - politics, livelihood, greed, fear - all play a part. There are a whole gamut of emotional attributes at play. A b-school business case or project cannot simulate these emotions.

The one emotion that they can simulate is fear of Deadlines. And I faced plenty of it during my first semester. My first project submission was Statistics. For stats, we were given the option of choosing our projects. We had to take one key decision for the project - did we want to do primary research or did we want to download secondary data. We settled for the latter. Mostly because of the amount of work involved for primary research and the unreliability of the data. There were some teams which opted for primary research but eventually had to manipulate their data to achieve the conclusion they wanted. But we found it incredibly hard to find relevant secondary data. Most of the secondary data suffered from insufficient data points required for a regression analysis (on which our project was based). Finally, we settled on a project about the 'Crime patterns in the United States'. We got the data from the Department of Justice. Our team's magician was Fred. He drove the project and did the core work. If not for him we would have struggled to finish the project. And even today I don't understand the tables that went into the project. But Fred knew what he was talking about and that is what matters.

In a generic sense, team-work is great for projects and helps divide work. But I have seen projects completed with the dazzle of that one "magician" in the team. Subsequently, these magicians are either in great demand or scorned upon. If he is a magician and can still work in a team (not as easy as it sounds), he is much in demand. If he is a magician but thinks everyone else is shit and cannot work as a part of the team he is scorned upon.

The project I enjoyed most was Marketing. We had to create a marketing plan for "Formula 1 -Singapore". The project was exciting and it was the only one where I put my heart into it. Different teams put in different levels of effort for the project. There was one team which commissioned a market survey to understand the F1 customer. They actually paid outsiders to conduct this survey. While there were other teams, which started work with barely a week remaining. We were somewhere in-between having started work with a month to go. And I truely believe that we had the best caption among the teams - "Racing into the night". It reflected our positioning for Singapore having the world's first formula 1 night race.

Our accounting project was due to be submitted on the same day as the Marketing project. We had a fun time that night. Our Marketing and Accounting teams were working till 5 in the morning. I remember shuffling time between Marketing and Accounting during the previous evening and well into the night. At times I wondered what was I working on - Marketing or Accounting. While my Marketing project had taken a decent shape, our Accounting project was a mess. We were supposed to compare the Financial Statement of HP and Dell and evaluate which company was better poised for delivering 'shareholder value' (another buzz word!). The basic criteria for the project was to compare like firms from a list of firms populated by the professor. And we had one team which wanted to prove that HP and Dell were not like firms. So, our project had to first prove that they were like firms. Only, if we did this, would the remainder of the project be evaluated. The problem with our Accounting project was that it was 'nobody's baby'. So, it stayed incomplete till the last minute. We had to submit the project by 12 noon. We had our marketing class from 9 to 12. I remember working on the Accounting project right through the Marketing Class. I exchanged mails with my team members through the class. We even discovered a major blunder half-way through marketing class. With 10 minutes left, we submitted our Accounting project which I will best describe as 'half-baked'.

We had two projects to submit for Financial Management. One at the mid-term stage and one at the final stage. The first project was about finding NPV (net present value) of a particular project. I knew nothing about this project. I had an excellent team which didn't need my contributions. The second project was about calucating the WACC (weighter average cost of capital) for two firms. This was a pretty simple project which we finished in a day. By this time, I had suffered my mid-term exam catastrophe (to read about this, click Mid-term catastrophe) and thus actively contributed to my projects.

The final project was Operations Management. We did a project on the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) of Singapore. This was quite a simple project which was done in a couple of days. Some basic shit about the ICA and how they could improve their operations. That is the great thing about strategy. You can write any 'shit' about it. Trouble is, very little of the 'shit' works!

Economics and the intensive modules did not have projects. The other sections had economics projects. So, I guess we got away with one. Though I would have loved an economics project. It is a wonderful way to round-off all the theory you have learnt.

During the course of these projects, I met some wonderful people. And typically, project members become the best of friends. And after some time the cycle reverses. The best of friends become project members. Projects are where diversity in backgrounds really helps. During our Marketing project, Anh came up with the idea of dividing our marketing plan across phases. And these phases would overlap each other to save time. She showed this diagrammetically which made our plan easy to understand. This was possible because she was from a Marketing background. This was all new to me. All in all, the projects were a lot of fun and a lot of learning.

And once the project were done, thats when the real fun started. The final exams were due in a week's time. And there was no break in-between.

Cheers,
Suraj

How I got my internship???

Hi
Let me begin with a caveat. This is not one of those "How to get rich in 30 days" theories. In fact, I don't even believe this is a reflection on how to approach the internship search (for that refer to my earlier post Career Connexions, Internship profiles, Career switchers). If anything, this post exposes how lucky I got. And how that source of luck became my source of limitation.

When I learnt that the TATAs were coming to campus, I was caught in a dilemma. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to apply or not. When I had come to NUS, I was firm on a couple of things. I didn't want to go back to software (two years of work-pressure had killed me) and to a lesser extent I didn't want to go back to India. But my circumstances had changed after coming to NUS. I was going to MBS during the second term. I knew that getting an internship during the second term would be tough game. So, I needed to secure one as soon as I could. I was confused at that point in time. The sub-prime crisis added to my doubts and uncertainty. Initially, I didn't apply to TATA. But I changed my mind and applied. I sent my application a day after the deadline but luckily the registration was still open.

Ever heard of the term, "One man's meat is another man's poison." That was exactly what happened to me. The TATAs came up with a very funny filtering criteria. They wanted people with less than 3 years work experience. Which in our batch was very limited. Among those who applied for TATA, only 8 were left.

All the big boys from TATA had come for the recruitment. TATA IIP (International Internship Program) they called it. Heads, Presidents, CEOs were all there. The 8 of us were put in a room with a couple of the big boys. The GD (Group Discussion) lasted an hour. It was a marathon by any standards. Each of us had to chair the GD for 10 mins. The topics ranged from management issues to HR issues to supply chain issues to ethical issues. I was mentally exhausted by the end of the GD. Four of us got selected for the interview. Three girls and I was the only guy.

The interview was a schocker. I was ripped apart. I had not practised for an interview in months. My rustiness showed and was completely exposed. There were two in the panel and nothing I said could convince them.

"Why do you want this internship?"
"We don't think you are right for the job."
"We think you are lying"
"What will your father say about you?"
"What do you think about the Indo-US Nuclear deal?"
"What do you expect from your life partner?"
"What can your life partner expect from you?"

The questions rattled on and on. At some point during the interview I lost interest. I didn't care about the job any longer. I just wanted the interview to end.

I was extremely disappointed after the interview. I thought that I had thrown away my oppurtunity. I wanted to get away from civilization for some time. I was on the bus back to Boon Lay when the call came. I had been selected. It was a pleasant surprise. Apparently, the interview had been equally draining for everyone else. Two of us stood amidst the ruins. We had won the battle of attrition.

The TATA internship offer created a couple of problems. These are problems/issues which all of us face. I was the first to secure an internship in the batch. That was not necessarily a good thing. The better companies would be coming later on. I didn't have access to them. It was the classic dilemma. Wait for the better companies and risk not getting anything or get placed earlier and forfeit the better companies. I chose the latter for the reasons I outlined earlier.

This situation also created an ethical dilemma. I had accepted the TATA internship but I wanted more. I wanted to get into a better company - something related to core Finance. This meant that I had to apply to other companies even though I had accepted TATA. There isn't an easy answer for this ethical dilemma. I can give you a hundred reasons for and against the argument. I did apply to other companies. But I couldn't go through the CSO. Essentially, one of my major routes were cut-off. Applying from Melbourne didn't help my cause either (I shall explain the impact of exchange on the internship search in a later post). So, nothing materialized.

TATAs finalized the project in the first week of May. It was as related to Finance as I could expect from a TATA group company. They had lived up to their word. I decided to live up to mine. I stopped applying to other companies. It was TATA for me.

Cheers,
Suraj

FT rankings - A Pandora's Box

Hi
FT rankings are always a hot topic within the b-school confines. NUS was ranked no. 81 the year I joined. By the time the 2008 rankings were released, we were out of the top 100. It made huge news. Everyone, from students to staff to MBA office to the Singapore media had an opinion on it. Here is my take on it.

These rankings impact three groups of people. The alumni (to a limited extent), current students (bigger impact than you might think) and prospective students - they can be grouped together as 'Students'. The b-school and its management is the second group of people. The ranking agencies (FT.com and KPMG in our case) whose reputation and ultimately profits depend on these rankings.

The centre-piece of the whole show is the rankings themselves. I believe that rankings play a disproportionate level of importance in a b-school's life. It puts b-schools at the mercy of rating agencies. This is ridiculous when you consider the assumptions and limitations of any ranking model. The perfect case in point is in the differences between b-school rankings in FT.com ratings and the Businessweek.com ratings. The FT.com ratings show that an ISB graduate has a higher weighted salary than a Harvard graduate. I wonder where that one came from! The bottomline is that any ranking model can be ripped apart as inaccurate in terms of its assumptions. Unfortunately, this inaccurate representation has become the centre-piece of the b-school world.

WHY WERE WE BOOTED OUT OF THE TOP 100?

Apparently there was a technicality wherein not enough of our alumni responded to the survey questionnaire sent by FT. Due to lack of data points, we were not considered for the rankings.

This argument is great, maybe even understandable, within the confines of the b-school. But try explaining it to someone outside the system. The first reaction you will get is "WHAT A LOAD OF BULLSHIT!"

The blame game followed the release of the rankings. The students blamed the MBA office, the MBA office blamed our alumni. The alumni could not be reached for comment. Somewhere within this vicious circle lies the truth. Let us start with the NUS Business School and its management.

The reputation of a business school ("Brand" in b-school terms) hugely impacts its growth. I believe that this is the second most important element for a b-school after alumni network (the quality of which is dependent of the "Brand" of the b-school). It should be the prime focus of the management of a b-school to sustain and enhance its Brand. One of the ways of enhancing Brand (maybe the most important way) is the b-school rankings (specifically FT rankings). A climb in the rankings generates a huge amount of PR (Public Relations) which is a "free" way to enhance your Brand (ISB is a case in point). NUS has positioned itself as "Asia's Global Business School". To support this positioning, it has to be ranked no.1 in Asia and among the top 50 in the world. To let the ranking slip below the top 100 is a huge failure on the part of NUS MBA office. Somebody must have been sleeping there. And to blame this failure on the Alumni, is like a child crying after his lost candy. We should have been after the alumni to send their responses and done everything ethically possible to ensure a high ranking. B-schools are not about Brick and Mortar. They are about the Brand.

This ranking debacle has a huge impact on prospective students. I have seen a lot of posts condemning students who select b-schools on MBA rankings. But I have a different take on this. Take a student's perspective. He has very little on which to compare b-schools. Sure you can do some research on the net and even talk to people within a b-school. But it is nearly impossible to determine which b-schools are better. So, b-school rankings offer the best means of comparing b-schools and determining which ones are better. They are perfectly right in doing so (except for the fact that the rankings themselves are inaccurate!). NUS is not Harvard which has a 100 year history backing it. Our descent out of the top 100, puts doubts about our credibility in the minds of prospective students.

For the current students there is a huge reputational impact. But there was a grave near-term effect as well. It turns out that recruiters look at the FT rankings for recruitment purposes. And some of them will go to schools only within the FT top 100. The alumni who are well into their careers suffer the least from all this. But for some of them there could be reputational impact.

As for ranking agencies, I think its ridiculous that they boot a college out because of lack of data points. Would they have done the same if the college was Harvard? Techinically, this is the same as defamation. Obviously, the ranking agencies couldn't care less. These rankings are about building their brand. The FT ranking build up the FT brand as an expert in disemminating business information (think about what Fortune 500 does for Fortune magazine). Once the brand is built, the sales can be reaped. The greater the controversy generated by the rankings, the more the PR, the bigger the brand. As long as the credibility of the rankings ("Brand") is not impacted, it is a win-win for them.

Thus this vicious circle of business, dreams and lives come together every year. They will be back in 2009 as well. Hopefully, this time NUS will be in the top 100. No matter what the ranking say, based on my experiences at MBS (ranked 75), I firmly believe that we are a TOP 50 school.

For FT.com ranking, click http://www.ft.com/businesseducation/mba
For BusinessWeek.com ranking, click http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/rankings/
For Anshuman's (NUS MBA alum) view of the FT ratings, click http://anshublogsat.blogspot.com/2008/01/ft-rankings-are-outwe-are-out-too.html

Cheers,
Suraj

My mistakes on the road to MBS

Hi
"It is a fool who learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from others' mistakes". I read this quote years ago and it has stuck with me. Primarily because, time and again I have been foolish. When I got the admit into MBS, I thought that my job was done. Everything else was a formality. But what followed was what Shakespeare described as a 'Comedy of Errors'. I have kept this comedy of errors a closely guarded secret. I reveal it now in the hope that those reading this post will learn from my mistakes on the road to MBS.

After confirming my exchange university, I was asked to immediately start my visa process. I ignored that valuable piece of advice. I was extermely busy with other things during that time. And I thought that I knew better. How difficult can it be to get an Australian visa!

In the middle of October, I realised that I had still not started my Visa process. Others, specially those applying into the US, were already processing their application. That freaked me out. I acted fast. I called the Australian embassy and asked them what documents they require. I arranged for those documents within that week. And next Monday, I was all set to submit my application for an Australian Student Visa.

The Australian Embassy was located on Napier Road. It was heavily guarded and no electronic components were allowed inside. Upon getting through security, I awaited my turn to be interviewed. My turn came and I submitted my documents.

"Sir, where is your IELTS score?" the interviewer asked me. I explained to him that I had written the TOEFL which was the equivalent of IELTS. He wouldn't listen. He insisted on an IELTS score.

I had known that IELTS was required for an Australian university. But I had assumed that it was not needed for exchange into an Australian University. Neither NUS nor MBS had informed me about IELTS. So, I thought that my assumption was right. I never called the Australian embassy to confirm whether IELTS was required. That was a huge blunder.

The British Council stood next to the Australian Embassy. I went to ask them the next available date for IELTS. That was when the gravity of the situation hit me. No dates available till January. The Student Visa took 30-45 days to process. I would miss the Feb 4th deadlines for joining MBS. I was shocked.

I went to the NUS MBA office office for help. Zahira, was our exchange co-ordinator. Her support and encouragement during these tough times was amazing. She got in touch with MBS to see whether anything could be done through them. She got in touch with the Australian embassy to persuade them to accept my TOEFL/GMAT score.

The Australian embassy took time to reply. Once again I went to the Australian embassy to put my case across. This time I was mentally prepared with my answers. The interviewer was a lady this time. She seemed new to the job. She immediately took my documents and asked me to pay the fee. I was delighted. I didn't expect things to be so easy. But she came back in a couple of minutes with another officer. He said that the IELTS was required for processing my Student Visa. No amount of reasoning from Zahira or NUS could convince the Australian Embassy. I was back to square one.

Amongst this chaos, I got my lucky break. The Australian Tourist visa has a provision that we can Study in Australia for 3 months. My exchange program ended exactly in 3 months. I thought that I could enter on a tourist visa and then extend it during my stay there. Zahira was once again helpful in making the required docs.

I got third time lucky. On my third visit to the Australian Embassy, I got my visa. But it came with a catch. I had to sign a clause that I would not extend my visa during my stay in Australia. My visit was curtailed to a maximum of 3 months. Me getting the visa was only half the story.

I was not completely confident that I would get the Tourist Visa. So, I had made a plan B. Since all IELTS dates were booked in Singapore during December, I searched for places in Malaysia where dates were available. I came across a place called Kuching. I had never heard of this place before. I remember trying to verify on the net whether such a place really existed. I searched for Kuching on google maps. It was in the island of Sarawak in East Malaysia. Without any other option, I booked for the IELTS exam in Kuching. This was the start of my troubles.

I scoured for flights from Singapore to Kuching. Unforunately, I couldn't find any within my price range. I had to book an Air Asia flight from Johor Bahru (a Malaysian city adjoining Singapore) to Kuching. My next problem was finding an hotel to stay in. All hotels were booked for that weekend. I made a flurry of calls before I found a hotel called Singasanna Lodge to stay in. It sounded like a shady place but I didn't have an option.

I was scheduled to travel the day after my Tourist visa interview. Once I got the visa this exam became redundant. But I had made all the arrangements and none of the money was refundable. So, I decided to go. It was an hour's travel from Singapore to Johor Bahru. Johor Bahru could not be a greater contrast to Singapore. Struggling with poverty and under-development it was a shadow of Singapore. Kuching turned out to be a much more developed and vibrant place than I had expected. Singassana Lodge was a quality budget hotel. And the IELTS exam went smoothly. The hard part was getting to the exam; the exam was easy enough. The results arrived a month later. I had more than exceeded the qualification criteria. But it was all pointless. Talk about rubbing salt into your wounds!

Cheers,
Suraj