Philosophy of Life

What is life? Is this all there is to life, 9-5pm and then live for the weekend?

Is this all life is?

Poignant reminder of life!


A boat docked in a tiny Greek island.A tourist complimented the local fishermen on the quality of their fish and asked how long it took them to catch. "Not very long." they answered in unison."Why didn't you stay out longer and catch more?" The fishermen explained that their small catches were sufficient to meet their needs and those of their families. "But what do you do with the rest of your time?" "We sleep late, fish a little, play with our children, and take siestas with our wives. In the afternoons we have a snack at the beachOr go into the village to see our friends at the Kafenio, have a few drinks and play tavli.In the evenings we go to a taverna play the bouzouki andsing a few songs, maybe break a plate or two. We have a full life."The tourist interrupted, "I have an MBA from Harvard and I can help you! You should start by fishing longer every day. You can then sell the extra fish you catch. With the extra revenue, you can buy a bigger boat." " And after that?" "With the extra money the larger boat will bring, you can buy a second one and a third oneand so on until you have an entire fleet of trawlers. Instead of selling your fish to a middle man, you can then negotiate directly with the processing plants and maybe even open your own plant. You can then leave this little village and move to Athens or even London! âFrom there you can direct your huge new enterprise." "How long would that take?" "Twenty, perhaps twenty-five years." replied the tourist. " And after that?" " Afterwards? Well my friend, that's when it gets really interesting, " answered the tourist, laughing. "When your business gets really big, you can start buying and selling stocks and make millions!" "Millions? Really? And after that?" asked the fishermen. "After that you'll be able to retire,live in a tiny village near the coast.Sleep late, play with your children, catch a few fish, take a siesta withyour wife and spend your evenings drinking and enjoying your friends."

Lek Interview

Lek interview

So for the L.E.K. Interview it consisted of two interviews of lengths 45 mins and a numerical test of 30 minutes.

The application process was relatively simple - cover letter, and cv. I received an interview invite on late November for their January recruitment.

Yesterday I was invited to a closed presentation whereby candidates involved in this round of interviews attended. At the presentation it was attended by roughly 30 or so candidates who had the first round interviews the next day. The candidates varied from art students & engineering / science finalists to phd's who were applying directly for a specialist health life sciences.

The presentation was just lek sucking up to themselves telling us about the company and 3 people from different ranks talked about their experiences.

Then we had a networking time drinks with buffet snacks and wine being served, I talked with my interviewers for tomorrow potentially.

So the first round consisted of 2 interviews and a numerical GMAT style questions with half the Questions being sufficiency type.

The first interview started with motivational questions:

1) so looking at your cv what is your best achievement
2) why lek
3) why management consultancy

Then the question was Market sizing.

Estimate the Market siZe for baby powdered milk. So I did the standard analysis assume population is uniformly distributed etc

Also then if 1 percent of the babies was allergic to the standard baby milk --> I
Was asked to explore this

The second interview

Why management consultancy?

Then the case was to estimate the number of new rubbish collector trucks that would need to manufactured in a year ( assuming - the life Cycle of one is 8 years) - he gave me some numbers with respect to how much waste is produced, how much each person produces in year (500 tonnes) and assuming 12 tonnes of waste carried with 80 percent capacity used.

After he asked about the effects of changing from wholly waste to splitting this into two streams ie recycled and non recycled and the effects on the capacity.

Then he asked if one should invest in technology to manage the downstreaming and automate waste management ie fixed cost vs variable cost argument

Then got me to draw a graph of unit price vs volume of waste.

Games Maker Olympics Interview - Spectator Team Entry

So I went for the spectator entry games maker role. I applied in October 2010. Just standard applications process, no cv.

I had not heard anything for several months and in November 2011, I was an offered an interview for the spectator entry games role.

When I turned up for the interview in early December. They were approximately twelve other candidates waiting also to be interviewed for the role.

Firstly we registered and they took a picture of us and checked our id. After we were asked to look at an exhibition of the vision of 2012 Olympics along with the history of the Olympics containing various facts.

At the briefing after the exhibition. We were informed we were fortunate to be here and 250k has applied and 100k would be narrowed down on the basis of the interview.

The position itself had its name changed from spectator entry to venue entry.

The interview itself was one on one and it was very much competency based.

Questions:

Time when I have worked in a team
Greatest achievement
Time when I have helped someone
Time when I have shown leadership

I have subsequently been offered role for the Paralympics approximately 3 weeks after i applied. It was an exploding offer and I had two weeks to accept. Initially I was not as happy as I have not yet been offered a role on the main Olympics but the good thing is that I was enjoy the Olympics from the comfort of my home on tv and not worry too much about working / volunteering.

I look forward to the training given to us. Hopefully this would be good.

Barcap phone interview

Barclays capital telephone strength based interview questions :

The questions that I can remember are:

1. You organise an event and more people than expected turn up what do you do?
2. What motivates you?
3. How do you motivate others?
4. If you were in a good performing team but thought something could be done better what would you do?
5. Do you like proof reading and paying attention to detail?
6. How to you build friendships or rapport with people?

Actual trading interview questions:

Brain teasers:

Calculate the equivalent interest rate of the following :

Hsbc have an offer whereby they will give you £1,000 up front if you give them £11,000 and after one year you can withdraw your original deposit.

Another brain teaser:

The interviewer asked what is the probability that he could guess my phone number given he couldn't just look at my cv.

Another teaser was just to express the reciprocal of 2x2x2x2x2 as a decimal.

Hitting the winter sales post xmas

I am meant to be doing some shopping today. I woke up and its 9.45am ideally I want to hit the sales early and drive to the local town centre.

Considering the plan is to leave and be there by 9.30am it is looking more unlikely. I am favouring the whole get up quickly and get act together. I do not really like shopping but it should be still interesting to check out the sales and see what goods are on offer - for future reference.

There is not much I want to buy but I guess I can be tempted to part with some of my cash, I could do with new trainers but if I really wanted something these days I tend to buy if online - the only disadvantage might be the postage cost。

So it's 10.55 and we are leaving now heading to town. My mum has instructed us to buy something for her and her petrol is low in her car so looks like we will have to buy petrol。

Off to my brothers friend house, played lots of tekken and FIFA. Off to sainsburys and then home！

Hitting next sale a bit late IMHO