Of Added Value, Lakeside BBQs And More

The following article, capturing my first couple of months at Kellogg, was published in my Financial Times blog today. Reproducing without any edits.

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Before I reached this pleasant university town of Evanston I had heard a lot about the ‘global exposure’ that a Kellogg MBA provides. However it wasn’t until the 86 of us, from 26 different countries, were put in a room that the word ‘diversity’ assumed a real form. We have an ophthalmologist, an Olympic participant, a few that have served their national armies, some entrepreneurs, a fruit marketer and a fruit exporter (they had a lot of notes to exchange), a Jeopardy champion and a crazy, funny Belgian, as well as a host of equally fascinating people among us.

Suhel Banerjee in class

Classes started where our undergrad ones had finished, conveniently forgetting the fact that most of us had lost all touch with books for at least five years! The first few weeks were spent in trying to keep terms such as “added value” and “value added” at arm’s length from each other.

We learnt how a fat boy in a hike is actually a bottleneck in a manufacturing operations process and spent time in malls taking notes of how different brands organise their clothes in stores, as well as paying attention to the distinct sounds and smell in every store. The one woman in our team of three was of the opinion that we spend a few days instead of hours in the store for best observations. She was overruled.

Personally the highlight has been that I now have friends from all over the world, including countries such as Venezuela, Slovakia and Peru, places which I mostly associated with the soccer world cup and Miss World pageants. Oh, and of course the food! How could I forget the lakeside barbecues.

This past weekend we organised a ‘Global Food Festival’ where we had food stalls from India, Korea, Israel, France, Brazil, Chile, Holland and many other countries. All the food was prepared by the students and their partners and what an evening it was! Takeaway from the evening, the Brazilians get quite mad if you call their mojitos anything but caipirinhas!

The August 2011 global cuisine festival

It’s almost surreal that we’ve already completed two months of our one-year programme, and with the end of the first quarter coming up this week we are almost quarter MBAs!

Looking forward to the coming months, and am shocked to find out that what is described as summer here in Chicago, is what is described as a mild winter in most places of India.

Restaurant Reviews: Flat Top Grill & Adis Abeba & A Dutch Barbeque

My complete absence from this social media world of ours can be attributed to the comeback of things like professors, classrooms, home assignments, all nighters and the like, and for that I apologize. Also, a piece of unsolicited advice, if you ever plan to return to books after half a dozen years, be prepared for a rough start! And with a heartfelt tribute to Jimmy Amarnath & Dada, I start this post.

Postor Shobji

Despite what's described in the previous paragraph I continue to be a believer of "Good food will keep us alive" and the past 10 days or so have been quite enriching in the culinary quotient. Our move to Chi-town started with my school friend Boudhayan picking us up from O'Hare and not just giving us shelter on day 0 at his place, but also whipping up a most memorable lunch of Bhaat (steamed rice), Doi Maachh (Catfish prepared in a yoghurt gravy) and postor sabzi (A very typical Bengali poppy seed dish).

Doi Maachh

Flat Top Grill

The 1st of the 2 places I wanted to talk about is the very unique concept restaurant - Flat Top Grill. Located right next to our university accommodation in Evanston, this cosy little eatery works on the "pick and choose your own food" idea. Quite simple really - pick up a plate and fill it up with rice/noodles of your choice, then proceed to the extensive vegetables section (most of it is boiled/half cooked), followed by the meats (chicken/beef/pork/calamari/octopus - you name it, they have it) and finally the array of sauces. And you're just one step away from your final dish. Give your collection of items to the chefs at the large open kitchen at the front of the restaurant and they will stir fry your food and it is sent to your table. I got some mushroom-asparagus-pork-octopus-rice combination in a hot & sour soup, while Veni went for her chicken-noodles variety. And all this very reasonably priced at $9/person and you can go for unlimited helpings for only $1 extra/person. The whole concept, decor, food and service was top class and highly recommended if you're in one of the places where they are located. If any budding food entrepreneurs in India is reading this then you have a business plan on your hands.

Select Rice/Noodles & Vegetables

Select your sauces & meat

Leave your bowls with at the table, to be stir fried

And see your hand picked ingredients getting freshly cooked in front of you

That's it! Enjoy your meal!

Adis Abeba

The other place was an a little Ethopian restaurant, again not too far from from McManus Apartments. I had heard a lot about Ethipian restaurants from Veni as she had visited one last year in California, and the 'No Cutlery' policy at such places obviously was an added attraction for someone like me who has used his hands for a majority of his meals. Also, was very curious to see the reactions of the cutlery bred westerners at using their hands for eating their food, and must say their enthusiasm and adeptness at the new practice left me impressed. The restaurant is somewhat unimaginatively named Adis Abeba (which is the Ethiopian capital for the uninitiated). Besides the no cutlery rule, they other intriguing custom at the place is that at every table there's only one really large plate of food that's brought and everyone eats from the same plate. Much like the communal dining tradition of the Kashmiri Wazwan. There's a large wheat & millet based fluffy bread on which a variety of meat & vegetables is served along with some Ethiopian salads. Along with this additional breads are provided in a side dish. We ordered one combination of a spicy lentil based thick paste, some minced well done steak and chicken drumstick in a spicy sauce. The bread and the accompaniments were lapped up in no time, leaving no space for the traditional Ethiopian coffee which was being eyed at since we entered the place. Again, at $20 for a meal for 2 this is a great option for good North African meals in the area.

The bread is a hybrid between rotis & appams

And that's the communal plate with the meat & vegetables

Hungry! About to dive in

And on Friday we had a Dutch Barbeque Thank-God-It's-Friday party at a fellow student's place where almost the whole of Kellogg descended. With plenty of freshly grilled meat for the burgers and hot dogs, it was an evening which is definitely going to be repeated quite frequently in the coming weeks.

The dutch party in full flow, with the flag et al

Meat being grilled by Francis from France who doesn't think much of American food

Party's complete with plastic tulips!

And that's the meat of it!

And One Last Thing

Sent this email to my colleagues earlier this week.

1 day to go. Feeling yet to sink in.

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Hello Googlers,

I know I am not particularly well known for the brevity of my emails. I have a hunch that this one won't go a long way towards changing that opinion:)

This Friday will be my last working day at Google. And I don't have a clear idea about what that feels like. Somewhat unreal and not nice is all I can confirm at the moment.

6 years can be termed as a decent amount of time in most people's careers, more so when it's your first job. When you add one of the fastest growing companies in history, a dynamic industry that reinvents itself every week and a billion plus market just starting to adopt the Internet, it becomes a heady mix of learning, development - both personal and professional and forming of exceptional strong ties and bonds. I have read many of these farewell emails where people attribute a lot of their learning and experiences to Google, I attribute all of mine. When a company has that kind of a role to play in your life, it's not easy to express your gratitude in a few words. I could say my time here far, far exceeded my expectations and I would still be off the truth by a fair margin. Overwhelmed.

Watching the Indian Internet landscape emerge from nothing to the blossoming stage it is in now, from very close quarters, has been awe-inspiring.  Moving from our '6 chairs and a table' excuse for an office in Vatika Atrium (Gurgaon) to the robust teams that we have now set up across Gurgaon, Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad has been a fulfilling journey. I take immense pleasure in the fact that I will be able to say "I was a part of that story" in years to come.

Revenue graphs going up and to the right is great. Internet users exploding is music to the ears. However now when I look back at the journey from RMZ, Hyderabad till today what really stands out are faces, of colleagues, turned friends. I have way more friends in Google than outside and the bonds that we share are among the strongest. Well, I guess the fact that one of my colleagues became my wife a few years back says it all!

If I were to make a tag-cloud of the fun times I had I guess the ones in the biggest, boldest characters would be - Dogfooding products yet to be launched to the public, Food, Offsites, Inquizzitive, Misc-India/Gur, TGIFs, Sales Conferences, Food, Holiday Gifts and the countless lunches which covered every topic conceivable and were by far the best brainstorming sessions ever. 

All this still leaves one question unanswered - what am I up to? I am moving to the US for my MBA from Kellogg School of Management, Chicago. Goes without saying, if you're in that part of the world please do make it a point to catch up! 

But of course that doesn't mean you've seen the end of me:) You can still reach me at suhel.banerjee@gmail.com and I will be happy to connect with you on social networking sites like Facebook or LinkedIn. If that's not enough you can find me quite active on Twitter and my blog as well. And if you find me too active at these places, please do remind me to go back to my books! 

Google is a world class hub of technology, a brilliant business, a caring organisation, a social revolution and most importantly Google is family.

Thanks for everything.

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Suhel Banerjee | Manager, DCS | suhel@google.com | +91XXXXXXXX