Day 268: 29th Mar, 2010

Want to know how to incur the wrath of 130 of your batch mates? A perfect setting - an open book (book, notes, printouts, etc etc) MIS exam - basically something which you can survive without much prior input. But then Mr.I-am-so-smart sends a mail to the prof which says 

"Sir,

As it is an open book exam, why don't you allow laptops? Otherwise students take a lot of printouts and paper gets wasted."

He goes on to give this amazing statistic

"Even assuming each of us takes 100 prints (why would you!), it will be 13000 prints. blah blah"

Now no problem with the intention of the mail. Except that games are not to be played at such critical junctures. 

Pat comes the reply from the prof

"Mr.suddenly-conscious-of-the-environment (or is it Mr.you-just-finished-your-print-balance?),

No, LAPTOPs are NOT allowed."

so far, ok, but, it didn't stop there..

"But just to make things simpler, let's NOT have anything apart from the book i.e. NO printouts."

And this came at 10 in the night when the world was just heading towards the Computer Center to take prints! Needless to say, all plans go haywire. 2 sections full of angry people. The guy would have been lynched.

Fortunately, our CR's negotiation skills came to the rescue! And the prof agreed to the original clauses. Normalcy, you are most welcome!

PS: Just a note about the SCM paper - ctrl C, ctrl V :D

Day 267: 28th Mar, 2010

A day of celebration for around half the batch today. We had our FM2 paper today - which, for those anti-fin junta, would happen to be the last paper they would ever write in Fin.

Now, FM is one of those subjects where you have to read up something before the exam. But I woke up at 10.40 in the morning. And that too thanks to my wingie who walked by! And I didn't even realise exams were going on when I woke up, just wanted to continue sleeping :-| .. And usually the paper takes up all your time (and leaves you wanting for more). But, "the great ME" finished the paper a good 35min before time. But also, in no way is it supposed to indicate anything about the performance :-p 

In a way done with my exams. The remaining line up is:

SCM - open book

MIS - open book

HRM - even an open book won't help :-p

So I went and played some badminton today. (Haha.. excuses!). Didn't enjoy it too much, partly because the energy was missing and partly because I lost :-p

Prepared better for the open book exam this time. Went to the CC and took all printouts one day before! super improvement ! :D

Day 266: 27th Mar, 2010

Funnily enough, I suddenly realised it's been many many days since I ever mentioned running for breakfast. Well, that's partly/mainly because even that's a give up case now. Today, finally, I went to have breakfast - must be around after 2 weeks! :D

Funny supervisor we had today. Innovative way to keep indicating the time - he was burping every 5 min!

Had a limited open-book MM exam, in the sense only one book was allowed of the two books we had. It now seems (after the exam) that we should have been allowed the other book instead of this one.

Day 265: 26th Mar, 2010

Boring ADA paper. Finding it tough to motivate myself to spend 3 hours in the exam hall... The questions were pretty similar to a question paper discussed just 45min before the exam, but the little difference was all that was required to make it.. well.. undoable!

Indi room allocation @ the mess. For a change, didn't get a bad number in the random list generated.. "lucky number 7" !

Day 264: 25th Mar, 2010

Had our last class of PGP1 today.. I woke up at 10:01 for the 10'o clock MIS lecture. But I did want to attend it.. confirmed with Dhamdhere if he was coming. Reached class at 10:20 :-p .. luckily Sir didn't say anything. Captured a nice 8 min video :) And took the last snap in CR 103 for 2009-2010... a pic of the now empty classroom..

From there, yet another farewell.. to Pravin, who was finally leaving campus. The fellow would have stayed on if he could. Loaded with more stuff now - the best of the lot - speakers! :D . The speakers, though seem to have a little bit of Pravin's ghost or something.. as soon as I connected the speakers, I heard the 'Tum Mile' title song 3-4 times continuously. (Pravin used to hear the song in an infinite loop for days on end :-| .. much to the chagrin of his neighbour :D ..)

Two quizzes one day before the exam. Two ways to look at it:

a) Silly to bother us with this a day before the exam :-S

b) Good match practice, let's crack this one!

But people like me follow philosophy#3 - it's called "kya farak padta hai !"

Trying to study ADA since evening. I realised hearing about stuff from people isn't really working. So now I have been trying to go through the slides by myself.. 

Also had a refreshing entertainment session at the night mess - small drama over the room allocation thing. It was indeed funny the way some silly points were being thrown around by people, with super-animated pappa trying to fend it all off :D . As my friend Deepak said - "that's what happens when you put too many 'intelligent' people together".

Day 263: 24th Mar, 2010

Many of us 'slums' people were in a very Inqilab Zindabad sort of mood since yesterday over the room allocation thing. Multiple emails in one fiery thread discussed new alternatives and strategies. Heck.. we even had a small precursor meeting to the batch meet in the afternoon.

Never mind all this turned out to be a damp squib eventually, but still, I enjoyed taking a stand and voicing an opinion. You might think everyone would do this if it concerned their interests. Unfortunately though, it's not quite true... a lot of people just do not participate in such activities!

The effect of this was yet another huge 'game-theory' based activity. Lots of number-crunching all around - how many groups are moving, moving where, will we get rooms and many such questions being discussed. Man, choice does become boring!

PS: my late sleeping saga continues.. comparatively slightly early today - just 4.45 am :P

Day 262: 23rd Mar, 2010

I have an alarm set at 5.45am. Why so early? I don't know. But I like to have it then. Interestingly, for the last one week, that alarm has primarily been responsible in alerting me that it is time to go and sleep!

As I said yesterday, submissions were due soon and today somehow was that day of the term when all your submissions need to be completed in those few hours. So there we were, sitting in the library till around 3-3.30am putting things together. (It's still an improvement over our first term performance when we used to sit till 6-7am.)

Once we had finished off with our MM (donnn), ADA (the jugaad) and FM (Golden GLOBE nominee), I left and came back to my room with the intention of doing the HRM project (which was again to read those never-ending cases and summarise them).

But the night was dark and beautiful. The silence was soulful. It needed a melody. So there I was - earphones plugged in, listening to some nice soft numbers. Awesome!

Never realised the time go by, until of course, my alarm reminded me that it is time to go to sleep..

PS: We also had an FM quiz today - 10min was the time limit. Everyone came out and complained about the lack of time to arrive at all answers. By the way, I had finished it in 8min flat. This way or that way, atleast I know to respect time :-p

Also, mass mobilisation in progress to argue over the proposed 2nd year room allocation procedure. More on that tomorrow. So long then!

Day 261: 22nd Mar, 2010

As usual, the last few days before the exams see a lot of quizzes and submissions. The latter we haven't started off yet (!!), but the former's kicked off. Had our MM quiz today - nice paper - all MCQs :D

Yet another ADA lecture in the morning! Seems like we are having infinite lectures in that subject!

Interesting INDEX meet today - we paused our meet for the first time, thanks to the mosquito interference. Which was followed by Kisaan espousing on the correct way to use HIT! After which our arguments resumed, and continued and continued :-p . Then me and Riza met Praveen (ya ya.. he's STILL on campus ;-) :D ) for a little bit of Ops KT. Gave my hdd to him. Finally going to get all the pics and vids!

Day 260: 21st Mar, 2010

A Sunday - and one with 2 classes of ADA! :( . Though I shouldn't really be complaining because I (and most of us) never attended the morning ADA lecture, thanks to the great gamble yesterday.

Lunch in the mess were interspersed with discussions about the hot topic - who got which course? It's funny how we keep discussing things that we know cannot be changed.

Resumed the 11.00pm meets. Kisaan brought up "one little thing" to discuss in between and we ended up spending more than two hours arguing about it!

Day 259: 20th Mar, 2010 - boli lagao!

360 students .. 1000 points .. and mayhem! That was what today was all about!

There have been days here about which we have heard stories from seniors, but still the intensity dawns only when it actually occurs. We had our electives selection day today - and the frenzy has been unprecedented! Till last year, the choice was mainly dependent on the concentration of courses. This year, we had the added element of 'bid points' which made the whole thing .. well.. interesting!

Game theory was at its best - every student making his or her own strategy to get the courses of choice. Expecting a lot of people to bid in multiples of 5 or 10, the smart ones placed bids ending in 1s and 6s. The smarted ones, anticipating the move by the smart ones, put bids ending in 2s and 7s :D . 

Every year, there are always a couple of courses which get into a massive bull run. This year, the courses in high demand were SBN - closing bid 302 (good course, chill exams) , MSD (great prof!) and AOC (ideal filler :D). But the show stealer was a course called FIRE - closing bid 364! - in which students would be taken to a resort for a week and have 6 hours worth of 'discussions' each day - and that's it! Ironically, this highest bid course was a half-credit one!

Without getting into too much detail, my own bidding strategy was OK. Fortunately I made a couple of important changes in the 5th round, failing which I would have found it difficult to get my choice of specialisation! I did end up losing three courses of my initial choice though. Atleast I was aware of it - unlike Chatur who realised the shortfall only on fortunately bumping into a group of friends at the mess!

Anyways, not getting everything in the first stage didn't turn out to be so bad. Did another couple of hours worth of timepass to the game to which many of us were now addicted :D . Took a couple of arbit courses..

What would be really interesting is to think - one year down the line - was it really worth the 8 hour (10pm to 6am) fiasco?! I may not be sure of that even then, but one thing, it was surely a fair bit of fun :D

Day 258: 19th Mar, 2010

Oh, I don't know how I forgot to write this yesterday! Some more raid on seniors - this time the target being Pravin. I took a tennis racket and a TT bat from him (for now .. more to follow in a week). Kisaan took away BOTH his badminton rackets and pachpan also took away his tennis racket. Man, this is fun :D

I continued my exploitation of the high attendance resource piled up by sleeping through the FM class (in the room i.e. :-p) . Went for the HRM class in which this funny thing happened - the prof made a statement which, thanks to the wonders of the Queen's language, can be interpreted in an altogether different meaning - "... the same applies to sexual harassment. You must have experienced that in your Behaviour In Organisations class". After that, sat down all by myself and did the SCM Nike assignment. That felt nice :)

I seem to have lots of time right now. Just saw The Dark Knight again. Read quite a bit of Calvin and Hobbes. And a little bit of Harry Potter. And all this conveniently sitting on my bed, thanks to the extra long LAN cord given by Sanghvi! :D . It's 5.30am now and the charge on my laptop is almost out. Guess I'll treat it as a sign and sign off for the day (or night.. or the next day.. arghh!). Chalo guys, cya tomorrow and have a nice weekend!

PS: the last 2 words reminded me that we have tons and tons of extra lectures of ADA lined up in the next 2-4 days..!! shucks!

Day 257: 18th Mar, 2010

How many times do you think to yourself that you must backup your data? And you never do it. And then one fine day your PC stops working and you curse yourself.

Similar thing. Somehow, my appointment with some personal IT issue never ends. It has often been due to my desktop, sometimes due to my phone and these days with my laptop. Yesterday after watching the movie, as I was closing all the folders, suddenly my OS hung and Windows Explorer service stopped working. I wasn't in much mood to explore it so I slept off. Unfortunately the problem continued today as well - so I spent the whole morning and whole afternoon trying to take backups, as I thought I'll have to reinstall the operating system. And since I could not open any folders - I had to share stuff on DC - then run all the way to Praveen's room (wake him up!), and transfer data. And miraculously, after all this running around and effort, my laptop started working fine :| . The good thing is atleast I have substantial backup now!

Went ground hunting in the evening. Some real quick action required there!

Came back to be a part of the game the entire PGP clan was playing - the dry run for the electives allocation. Am choosing a lot of 'nice-sounding' courses as of now. I am still not sure if they are the ones I'll take up after 2 days. Lets see..

Day 256: 17th Mar, 2010

Gone are the days when I used to get a bit late and had to run for grabbing that bite before the first lecture. Nowadays,  I sometimes wake up so late that even after missing the first lecture, I have absolutely no time to have breakfast.. I find myself rushing for the 2nd lecture. Fortunately for me, I have a huge cushion of high attendance that I am making good use of now. We had a marathon 3-hour FM guest lecture today - which I bunked - and even my dark complexioned friends could not stop the envious shade of green from showing on their face :D

Just finished seeing a movie called Identity. Pretty interesting movie, a thriller - I recommend.

Day 255: 16th Mar, 2010

Millions of mosquitoes all around. I have just been transformed into a lean mean mosquito killing machine. Am sitting here in front of the table/laptop with all corpses strewn around me.

Mosquitoes here are quite smart. They seem to have learnt some important mba attributes like:

-hiding source: God also may not know where they keep coming from.

-targetting customer when he or she is most vulnerable

-high efficiency of operation

Had Vigi's KT session. Post which I got my snickers - for the room booking thing :D

Day 254: 15th Mar, 2010

Got myself an extra long LAN cord  in the Maha Room-Clearance Mahotsav. Plus another mattress. Another couple of racks (which got claimed immediately!). Many many hangers and clips, surely more than the number of clothes I have! The INDEX room has once again transformed into a storage room, with each of us claiming a corner.

Our sports center - Umang - is finally active. Need to start using it soon!

I seem to be getting back to the days of late sleeping. Perhaps it has something to do with the weather. (It's no longer cold). Have just been trying to put some pages together for the INDEX brochure. Have got a start, will do the rest tomorrow(or should I say later today?). For now, my clock says it 5.35am. Let me try and beat the sunrise.

Day 253: 14th Mar, 2010

I am definitely not the emotional sort of guy; but I do feel bad for a lot of seniors as they leave/get ready to leave the campus. They all seem to really miss the place, running off almost with an escapist attitude, trying to minimise the pain of staying and being reminded that the stay won't be long..

Day 252: 13th Mar, 2010 - A Thousand Splendid Suns

Spent the first half of the day in trying to organise the pics and videos I have captured from my cell. (Half from when I woke up, 'coz technically half the day was already over by then :P)

Saw the great IPL match between MI and Rajasthan Royals..was awesome fun! Then went to the convocation. 320 proud graduating students. And even more proud parents of the students. Everyone's face beaming with pride and joy - A thousand splendid suns gleaming with the dazzle of happiness. Mr. Damadoran (the person credited for turning UTI around) was the chief guest. He spoke about the importance of values and about having noble means to attain a noble task.

And finally - at night we had our section party. H4,5,6 common volley court. We had SUCH a great time, words and all absolutely won't suffice. We danced like crazy (that's obviously a standard :P), danced more. Had a prize distribution ceremony - full serious business - getting certis signed by our CR! :D . Then we gave our CR a t-shirt (Sud's idea, my desigining, Ayan's acronym generation and AdiJ's printing). And then raising a lot of toasts amongst all of us. Followed by Nishant's superb video! Then dance again, dance again. Bonfire. Music. Silence. Music. Friends... :)

Went with Shreyas to GnB. Bought a Nimbuzz and parted. I then went to the fountains at Fauzi and sat there alone for say 15 min .. Just me and the sound of the water flowing from the fountains.. beautiful!

And last, but not the least, stopped by the INDEX room on my way back - to see Core2009's message :)

So, what's the time today? 7am in the morning :D . The sun not only has thrown its first rays, but it's now kinda showing off its glory. The rays crowding my window. Need to close by eyes, block all the light and get some rest. Enjoy folks!

And my final message: All the very very best to PGP24!

Day 251: 12th Mar, 2010

I don't know why.. but for some strange reason I woke up thinking today was a Sunday. (It's only Friday, not even Saturday!) Maybe it was because lectures started only at 10. Which I eventually bunked exercising my luxurious attendance backup.

We had a section photoshoot today. We did have one a few months back - but that was the official one. And not all of us were in it together. This time, we planned and coordinated to have everyone together :D . Some great pics & videos have come out, which I'll cherish for years to come.

Met Mr. Psycho in the mess. He now seems to have graduated to psycho^2 levels. Attended PGP day - a function to commemorate a lot of students for the various events as also to award trophies to the various departments at IIM L. Shruti gave a nice speech on behalf of INDEX. Then took a 'peanut butter sandwich' treat from Shanky @ Just Tea and we three had a nice looooong chat in the backdrop of the convocation dinner and the fountain :)

Day 250: 11th Mar, 2010

Predictor variables:

1. Theoretical subject 

2. Buffer attendance

Dependent variable: 

1. Sleeping in the class

2. Attendance in the class

Add to this the following,

1. subject: SCM

2. time: Immediately post lunch!

3. Term is almost ending

4. ADA quiz lined up in the evening

No wonder - SCM lectures immediately post lunch are not attended by students, but by corpses :-p

The ADA quiz had a first of its kind feature. Absolutely not required feature. What? Negative marking in the objective section!! :O

Last couple of days of PGP24. I saw a senior friend of mine taking arbit campus pics. Suddenly, capturing and updating IIML related pics are the craze. Facebook under siege!

Day 249: 10th Mar, 2010 - 'Pen'sive

Just yesterday I was happy that we were group 8 in ADA and it was only the turn of the 1st group to present. But as luck would have it, in an absolutely random manner, Sir simply called out one arbit group number and that turned out to be ours! :-S The funniest part was the prof even contemplated asking us to present stuff in the 4.00 pm lecture.. luckily the lecture was at 2.30pm leaving us with very little time, but a very big excuse.

Consequently got to present it tomorrow. Along with MM research assignment. And MIS. And SCM :-| . Not to mention the ADA quiz to be held in the evening. Practically the whole of section B was at the library today. Our group divided the tasks pretty neatly I would say. It's around 3.45 now and I just about came back from the lib some 30min back. Will sleep now - 8.45am lecture tomorrow. And I have work lined up to do in class. Like tweak the MIS assignment. And modify the hitherto-kept secret design :D

PS: Came up with a poem. Check it out at http://casualchronicles.blogspot.com/2010/03/pensive.html

Day 248: 9th Mar, 2010

Well now, I am myself bored about writing about my sleepiness but what to do - my circadian cycle's totally gone bonkers. 

I slept off at 7.30 in the evening, woke up at around 11.30. I called up a friend to check if the INDEX meet was still going on. I was asked to come, only so that they got the sadistic pleasure of wrapping up the meet within a minute of my arrival. I shall have my revenge :D

No wonder it's 6am now and I am wide awake. And what have I been doing? There is a high speculation of a 'surprise' ADA quiz tomorrow. And I am trying to study. (the input variable though would be statistically insignificant). 10 slides in the past 3 hours. Not that I went very deep into the subject matter, on the contrary, I strayed myself into the usual random browsing territory. Came across this nice speech by J.K.Rowling at Harvard, as also reading random news, as also bargaining for stuff from seniors :D . Got myself a mattress and curtains today from Swetha, in addition to the two racks from Shady :D

'Nuf said.. I am just going to crash myself into the bed now. That was a part of the plan even as I began this post ;-) . Oh man... the first rays of the sun have come down!

PS: It's suddenly pretty cold here. The Chill before the Warm!

Day 247: 8th Mar, 2010 - Dont feel like it?

I don't know whats gotten over me these days, have been super sleepy. The most alarming thing about this is the fact that I just don't realise the alarm ringing. Snoozing the alarm was a regular thing, but now I am in a different league altogether!

Had our FM quiz today. 5 questions - each with 5 alternatives. I inky-pinky-ponkied and distributed a,b,c,d,e amongst those 5. No alternative should feel left out na?

Inspired myself with this post. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/03/i-dont-feel-like-it.html 

A couple of days back, randomly these GPRS settings arrived on my phone. Now being a student (not a great one but still) at an MBA course, I understand a bit of how these things work. I am quite conscious that all these schemes are disguised to appear very helpful - but behind the mask they just remain new revenue generation streams for those telecom companies. But the human mind is human for a reason - it voluntarily chooses to remain stupid at times. Consequently have been using my phone apps more. The upside of course is I am finally utilising the more powerful features of my phone, downside obviously is the money that I keep giving for every service :P . Am quite impressed with a couple of apps I installed - the Opera Mini browser is really nice! Much much better than the default browser. Also installed this cross-platform IM app called Nimbuzz. Seems nice.

Went off to the city to get some INDEX work done. Had a meeting again later in the night - partly KT session and a little planning ahead. The only thing on our minds is to make INDEX 2010 bigger and better. And we will.

Time's running super fast even as I am awake. It was 11pm a few minutes ago and it is suddenly 3 in the morning :-/ . Let me put myself to sleep. I need to give a decent chance to the alarm to wake me up tomorrow.

Day 246: 7th Mar, 2010 - Choices!

Choices. Life is a lot about choices. Either crying over the lack of any or complaining about the presence of many. Today we had to choose electives for the 2nd year - in the field of your interest. Field of interest - an option that I had asked myself when I filled the CAT entrance forms. A decision I was quizzed about in my mock and the actual interviews. A thing I repeatedly thought about during the summer placement process. I only went on being more unsure. And so I still had to think today. And that's not the worst part. Worst part is - I am not yet done thinking about it at all! (And I doubt if I ever will be :D).

Continued with my sleep marathon today too. Woke up at 12.45! That's sleeping through the extra alarm that I had set. Continued to be docile and sleepy. Dealt with a small stomach upset I had (most probably 'cos of yesterday's visit to Ma Durgama), skipping lunch. Transferred a few more songs to my ipod shuffle, though unfortunately I couldn't find time to hear them, thanks to the elective choosing session that followed.

Had a nice long chat with Sud - pretty cryptic conversation for most part of it. One that I am especially bad at. Something for me to improve upon. (Amongst a lot of others..)

Day 245: 6th Mar, 2010 - Ruk kyu gaye, bajao!

It's 4.15 am. I am not at all sleepy. And this is even after returning to my room after 3 hours of non-stop dance and fun at the insti party we had today. Can be partly attributed to the fact that I have a feeling that I am in an inebriate state of mind, though not with a drop of alcohol. My mind is suddenly filled with lots zillions of random thoughts. And for the same reason given to you in the line above. Though I am not sure which is the cause and which is the effect.

Anyways, continuing the rant.

A random gtalk conversation suddenly shifted to a question in which I sat down to think of a reason for some action. And I suddenly realised I didn't have any. Things didn't end there. I thought of a few other things I did today. No reasons. Don't jump to conclusions and declare me to be a man devoid of logic and one who takes only emotional decisions. No, not me. But strangely enough, everything I did today was without reason. 

My day began with blissfully sleeping through multiple alarms and being a little late to class, mainly because I was finishing up an assignment. (in which, later I realised, I had written answers to the wrong Qs!). Anyways, I sat for 75 out of 90 minutes and did not get attendance. But I still sat. I had better things to do, but I saw LOST. I wanted to go to watch a movie, but I didn't. I didn't feel like attending the insti party, but I did (thankfully! :P). Basically you get the gist.

Ok, so? Well.. nothing. And that is why NOT having a reason is irritating.

Coming back to the insti party. (I already told you it's a rant). Am glad I went. Danced a lot, but we did not have a great DJ, so somehow seemed less active. 2-3 full sized people sat on me randomly, even as a classmate pressed my nostrils tight :D . Worst part was that this insti party got over at 2 am (even worse than the fact that those fatsos almost killed me ) !! Can you believe that.. !! as early as that..!! To whomsoever concerned - we haven't even warmed up guys!!

And ya, the promised book yatra. I completed '2 states'. :) Not that I wasn't able to locate a few of my own! :P . Anyways, his previous two books sucked, especially considering the standards set by five point someone but this one has that nice wry humor about it. I would definitely recommend a READ.

Day 244: 5th Mar, 2010

Am having marathon sleepy sessions these days. Slept sometime just before 12 yesterday and woke up only at 11 in the morning. Luckily for me our first class was only at 11.45, so I survived.

I still didn't have my specs; and as I couldn't see the board, I thought I would rather read '2 States' by Chetan Bhagat. (sorry for the sad excuse. The book just came on to me and I started reading it, considering it a wiser means of using the limited resource called time.) It's a typical Chetan Bhagat timepass read. The premise of the book is rather simple - North Indian boy falls in love with a South Indian girl @ IIMA. But being in India, love is not reason enough to get married. The book narrates how the two people try to go about getting their families to agree and give their consent. Not yet done with reading it so I'll reserve my reviews till tomorrow.

Went to Saharaganj today with Ghate. I needed to collect my specs and he needed to buy new shoes. I got done with my errand, he didn't find anything :D. Had Chilly Garlic noodles at Yo! China. The quantity is perfect for two people with little appetite :-p , especially when they have eaten the jumbo sized roadside panipuri (oh and btw, in panipuri here, every dip of the puri is in a different flavoured pani such as jaljeera, hing, teekha khatta, nimbu, meetha khatta. Nice and tangy!)

Day 243: 4th Mar, 2010 - Aaraam :D

Am wondering how days are SO free suddenly. Had only ONE lecture today, and I bunked even that one to get some extra sleep. Went to the city to get my specs repaired. Played a round of pool at H11. Continued the sporting equipment hunt ;-) and then played around 15-16 games (!!!) of TT with Kaushik :D. Then saw 3 episodes of LOST and am now done with season 3. Followed that up with dinner and some hockey action in the mess followed by an exploratory walk around the campus. Back to my room and I hear we have only 2 hrs of lectures tomorrow. 

C'est la vie!

Day 242: 3rd Mar, 2010

One problem with breaks and trips is the momentary change they bring in your expectation level. And consequently the routine looks duller than before. As I find myself trapped in the web of performing mundane activities, I find it hard to push myself out of my state of inertia and start towards finishing the activities I have marked on my yellow sticky notes. One of those boring days when all you want to do is watch the clock ticking by. And be aware that the clock is ticking by.

This Praveen took my bike keys with him when I went for a trip. And before I was back, he himself went for a trip! I broke into his room today to get back my bike keys :D

And sometimes just when you feel things are cruelly boring, funny things happen. Am writing this small post at 4 in the morning, and just by chance, I see this latest mail sent to the ENTIRE batch :

"Hi council...

It is observed that mosquito has increased a lot in hostel  . I request student council to take initiative ASAP. To save us from this menace. 

Regards 

XYZ"

Woah, plenty of laughs still out there eh :D . Touch job, council :D

Day 241: 2nd Mar, 2010

Arrived back on campus today morning at around 6. Back to lectures. Took a risk taking a small nap at 7.30am but fortunately managed to wake up on time for the 8.45 lec.

Have been really really desperate to see Karthik Calling Karthik ever since I saw Deepika Padukone in it. My only complain about the trip was that I would not get to watch the movie first day. So the natural course of action was to watch it as soon as I was back i.e. today itself. So Pachpan, Vanki, Chajju, Ghate and me went to catch it at Wave.

I was pretty happy that the movie churned out the one thing I wanted from it - not a single still in the movie where Deepika looks anything less than awesome! The fact that I personally also found the climax interesting was only an added bonus. But mind's back on Deepika. Overdose? Should I discuss something else? Oh but how could she be so beautiful man! ... Guess not much scope for that right now.

Days 237,238,239,240: 26th Feb - 1st Mar, 2010 - Uttarkhand Trip!

Finally a trip !

Would be toooooooo long a post for this blog. And toooooo long for a lazy bum like me to write, atleast as of now. Might probably pen down a few things someday when I am in the mood to do so and then link it up here.

Till then, broadly the itinerary we followed was :

25th night 

>> departure from Aishbagh, Lucknow >> MAFIA! >> 

26th Feb

Lalkuan >> bus >> Bhimtal, Naukuchiyatal >> paragliding/trek >> reaching Gwaldham by night >> 

27th Feb

sunrise @ Gwaldham .. orange rays on the snow capped peaks >> loooong bus journey >> stopover @ Bageshwar >> reaching Munsiyari @ night >> bonfire

28th Feb 

trek >> snow >> valleys >> snow wars! >> Holi >> bonfire >>

1st Mar midnight 00.00 hrs 

resume journey back >> morning stopover to avoid Holi mandalis >> random trek >> playing in the river >> Nainital detour >> Kathgodam >> train >> MAFIA again! >>

Was one super awesome trip :D

Day 236: 25th Feb, 2010

Sorry for the loooooooooooooooooong delay! (Not that I expect many people to be following my blog, but still, to whomsoever does do it)

We had an extended weekend, thanks to Holi falling on a Monday. So, 18 of us (17 from my section + makdi) had been on a 4 day trip to Uttarkhand. Will give those details in another post.

Just trying to recollect what I did on this day.. hmm.. not much, but still my afternoon schedule was quite packed as we were to leave in the evening. Significant thing: I remember using the common hostel washing machine for the first time! .. just so I could have extra clothes for the trip. Even did some last minute INDEX work - final touches on the convocation poster. And from the trillions of chocolates owed to me by people, finally got one Crackle from chatur :D