Day 354: 30th Aug, 2010

2 things that I absolutely wasn't prepared for. One easily guessable answer of course is my Prom Strat paper - why and how did maths enter the picture?! Half the subjective part was calculations, based on formulae no one would ever have any use by hearting :-| . Though, this wouldn't really be a shocker or anything.

What was actually a bit of a shocker was this phone call I got in the morning. A random female suddenly told me  that my flight had been cancelled due to "operational reasons"! Spent SO much time on this through the day. Before my exam, after my exam, evening etc etc. What is most amusing is how they seem to think that they are doing me a lot of "service" by giving me multiple "options" such as "free" rescheduling on "select flights" OR a refund (when ticket prices would be double). Finally at midnight, came to an option that is 'workable'. But I'll have to spend the entire night at Delhi airport :-(

Int Fin tomorrow. Hardcore numbers - no globe :) 

Day 353: 29th Aug, 2010

Absolutely lost track of Sundays! Just by coincidence, I didn't have any exam today (again! :P). Luckily the day felt a lot more free :D. Made good use of it by finishing of season5 of HIMYM. And no - we still don't know who the mother is :-S

Can't remember the last time we had dinner in the mess on a Sunday. As I have ranted before, it's mainly because of the mess conspiracy to encourage people to dine outside sometimes (that we do it often is a different thing :P). But this Sunday was different. Almost all of us are bankrupt. Kisaan decided to stretch his credit and we (+ Chatur) had dinner at Fauzi - the usual tried, tested and safe fare :D

Day 352: 28th Aug, 2010

Sorry for the delayed post. Yesterday night the net conked off abruptly for a few hours.

Can't help but rave about what a brilliant course Team Building is! :D . What else can you say when you can coolly play Bridge for 3 hours, and directly go give your paper! And me being me, even managed to finish the exam and submit the paper in an hour. (Sadly (?), I don't have much globe-ing skills.)

Restarted HIMYM! (Why do such things happen ONLY during exams?!) Had reached some place in season 5, continued from there on. Saw a few more episodes; it's watchable ONLY because of Barney now :D . Oh, and Robin ;-) . I thought I'll finish off with Season 5 (that's the end, right?), par mere saath dhoka ho gaya! Turned out episode 22 which I downloaded didn't have the sound working properly :( . And as I said, no net - so this is put off for tomorrow.

Day 351: 27th Aug, 2010

So my first paper - conB. Was an open 'textbook' exam - so strategically read up on the polycopy chapters first.  Went to Ray's room to get some gyaan on the cases; though what I remember most is laughing a lot on Ray's definition of a TV geek :D . In accordance with Murphy's law, got that part of the case which we hadn't read. Didn't really make much difference though :-P

I must admit life's intriguing when you actually have to coax people to go out for a party! That too for reasons ranging from a quiz (which had been postponed, for which you already studied) to studying for the exam that was day after (because you are afraid of flunking in spite of coming 3rd in midsems :-| ..). Finally did manage to get everyone on board. Except the big guy. Saala he ignores us full-on these days. Anyways, rest of INDEX went to Lounge54 ( b'day boy Kisaan joined in directly), hukkah being the motivating factor. Baaton-baaton mei worked up a whopping bill :D . Going to go back bankrupt :D

Day 350: 26th Aug, 2010

Exams from today - though I don't have any :D . Read a lot of arbit blogs. Absorbed some arbit gyaan. Pity none of that will be useful tomorrow. But when has that bothered me? :)

Played bridge after many days! Came back before midnight to hit Kisaan. (his b'day, obviously). Poor guy got beaten an extra time - thanks to a slightly high Tiwari. Followed of course by one session in the hostel and then one from INDEX. Highlight being Body-builder's kick. Saala no follow through, but one super shot :-| . Need to get him banned before my birthday! :-|

Day 349: 25th Aug, 2010

It's 4 am now. Exams for PGP2s starting from tomorrow. See how I made you think nice about me :-p . Actually I don't have any paper tomorrow. Then why am I up? Precisely, that's why!

Attended conB in the morning - the last lecture at IIM L by the prof. He's definitely one legen-wait-for-it-dary person @ helL! :D . Post that, have been spending a lot of time on YouTube. First I got hooked on to this show founded by Stan Lee (co-creator of Superman, Spiderman, etc), which is basically is a quest to find actual superhumans. The first two episodes which I managed to find covered people who could do all sorts of things, right from conducting high amounts of electricity to generating force greater than a 30 miles/hr car from within an inch to accurately firing multiple targets within 1/10th of a second to lots more. You can check out the episodes here -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Om7mcIYONkI&feature=related

The other super-interesting thing I came across was this set of episodes on morals and philosophy, conducted by a Michael Sandel, Professor of Government at Harvard. From the website:

"Justice is one of the most popular courses in Harvard’s history.  Nearly one thousand students pack Harvard’s historic Sanders Theatre to hear Professor Sandel talk about justice, equality, democracy, and citizenship. Now it’s your turn to take the same journey in moral reflection that has captivated more than 14,000 students, as Harvard opens its classroom to the world.This course aims to help viewers become more critically minded thinkers about the moral decisions we all face in our everyday lives."

I heard out the entire first episode, spanning 54 minutes, and every minute was worth it. I have always found the concept of philosophy interesting and intriguing, and the approach that is adopted here is engaging, simple, yet effective. I would definitely suggest it to all of you!

And finally of course, the most important thing - finally done with the infinite book! Atlas(t) Shrugged!

Day 348: 24th Aug, 2010

Nice religious start to the day. Had the annual sacred-thread changing occasion of Avaniyavittam today. Followed my usual shortcut of chanting the Gayatri Mantra 108 times and a couple of other prayers and then change my poonal (that's what it is called). Turned out my big achievement for the day was in giving one to Vanki to wear, which he later told me, he did after some 5-6 years. Made his mom very happy :D

Went to this place called Brindavan - for some South Indian food. By car, btw ;-) . Food was better than the rest of Lucknow, but definitely, Das Prakash is better.

Day 347: 23rd Aug, 2010

Today marks the celebration of one AWESOME year of being an INDEXian! :) :)

Sometimes, somethings are memorable forever. They need not always be big things. For eg., this short SMS that pachpan received - 'Pls meet the prof for your conB viva'. And the guy had no clue that the rest of his group (including yours truly) had already met the prof :D . Super devilish that was! :D

Was also the savior for my SM group. Had made the complete ppt and mailed it across to them, but they just didn't happen to take it in a pen-drive. Rushed to class (15min late!!) with the presentation on my hdd. Got blamed for not getting along the word doc :-| , as the others hadn't read up on the parts on which they were supposed to speak :-| . The presentations were a little fun too, especially the recommendations part. One of the groups actually said - "Should gain market share". Hello? Who wouldn't want to?! :D

Day 346: 22nd Aug, 2010

♫ "Woke up this morning, Got up with the fear of SM!" ♫

Needed to start (and finish) the SM project in a few hours before it was time for the extra lecture in Retail (on a Sunday, yes, :-( , sad, I know). Sud seems to have gone off the map, so I guess another consecutive ditch putting all the load on me. Never mind, taking a "cosmos" point of view, I think I'll balance it out next term (INDEX term!). Finished that thing.

Next up was a guest lecture by the founder of Crossword - R Sriram. Luckily, that lecture turned out to be nice. One of the things I found interesting was this thought he gave on rules; most organisations make rules for the 1% who are the outliers, people who'll do silly things. But what you can do instead is to relax those rules, make life more comfortable for the 99% and treat that 1% as a business cost. Point to ponder.

Next up was our conB viva. As I keep saying always, the prof is too good, really nice person. In his email informing us about the viva, he wrote - "my request is all of you should come with pleasant faces" :D. The viva itself went off smoothly, thanks to Bansal ji. 

Sunday dinner in the mess is made to push you to go out and enjoy :) . And of course, such things are to be followed. Off we went to Richi Rich - last minute ditch by Vanki, not sure why/for whom ;-)

Days 344,345: 20th-21st Aug, 2010

Shared responsibility is nobody's responsibility. Now that Pachpan ran off to his hometown, his ditching act inadvertently put the workload of getting the surveys filled on me; but I at least I knew I was to do it. That was my biggest incentive to go to Friday's prom strat lecture - got the surveys filled through my friends in class :D . Of course, equally troublesome was the part where I had to manually feed in the hard copy replies into excel. And bored of having the work pending against my name, I came up with an "innovative" solution for the problem ;-)

After I came back from my dinner, birthday-boy-Bala came and told us that we are going out :-S . Apparently Shomu's persuasion. We (expanded to Ritzee, Kisaan, Vanki, TG for the free food) went to Genesis, highlight being we managed to jugaadofy one car! Didn't eat much, kept nibbling on the Peanut Masala. Had the choco-chip icecream for dessert - its awesome !

But, that wasn't the end to the day. Came to know that iBrand'10 was witnessing unprecedented enthusiasm :D . Excess of anything of course, brings its own set of interesting and unique experiences :D . My room has suddenly become the discussion hub :-| . Consequently, even as I tried working on some projects, facchas kept coming and discussions kept happening.

Finally, found my peace at 3am. A knock on my door at 7am (actually it was a violent push and a loud shout) interrupted my dreams. Realised it was two of our facchas. Poor fellows had stayed up through the night :D . Nice practice for INDEX I say! ;-) . Went with them to the mess and stayed there for a couple of hours, had breakfast and slept off again.

Spent the afternoon mainly trying to come up with something substantial for this inter B-school competition - iCreate. Didn't really manage to do much, so dropped it halfway. 

Had missed going to Lafangey Parindey yesterday; and not wanting to delay it any further, we made arrangements to go tonight. That got interrupted through some nice negotiation practice. Anyways, dealt with that (or so we thought) and we left for the movie. Wow, again in a car! :D . Sudden rise in status over the past 2 days :D . Or is it because Pachpan isn't here? :P . Some more interventions during the movie (sorry Deepika!) happened, but finally reached one acceptable-to-all conclusion. Peacefully saw the rest of the movie.

Came back to see my room wide open. Saala once again full kabzaa by everyone. Quickly, some little analysis and explanations and then sabko bhaga diya :-P . Sat down to start work on my Strat Man part. Too tired now though. Put it off for tomorrow morning. So long, for now, its bon nuit.

Day 343: 19th Aug, 2010

Woah, it's a bonus to get yet another ultra-awesome dialogue, once again from our conB prof :D . It all started off when sir asked the class about the quiz.

Class: "Sir, please take best of two"

Sir: (smiling) "I want to torture you. I will take the lowest of two and give marks"

:D :D

Fachas has the iBrand auction today. It started off with a pretty nice video. Good job by these guys. But, for sure, I missed Shanky's AWESOME commentary! :D . The max fun part was of course, ahem, the bid on certain "popular" places on campus :D

God knows why I decided to do some CSR for Vanki; went all the way to 3.4 in the drizzling dark night just for his sudden urge! :-S . Also, celebrated three birthdays in one night - pretty awesome!

Day 342: 18th Aug, 2010

In our conB class, under a sudden bout of frustration, our prof's golden comment: "You should all commit suicide and then come to class" :D ... LOLmaxxx!

Day 341: 17th Aug, 2010

Finally ... Win 7... and that too a licensed ULTIMATE! edition!! Yeyyyyyyy!!

Rained like crazy for two hours today! Full flooding in the area near GnB, thanks to the construction work and the awesome drainage system :-p . Consequently, myself and pachpan found ourselves in a starvation crisis as no body was reachable to place orders... until an angel came along with a flask full of hot tea. Came to know he was from Just Tea - another entrepreneurial venture on campus. The nice fellow even took an additional order and delivered it within 15 minutes - super!

The campus looks super green and beautiful though :)

Day 340: 16th Aug, 2010

Fortunately, I came to realize that I had wrongly been marked absent for 2 sessions of Retail Marketing, one of which was a graded field visit. Got that reversed (much needed, considering other factors).

Another thing that I seem to observe about myself is that my efficiency is exponentially proportional to available time, albeit (unfortunately) - negatively. When I do not have much time, I sometimes amaze myself with the work I do. Sadly, today I had ample time, and I was most inefficient in terms of return-on-time-invested, in my job of preparing a simple brief for INDEX. Very bad, I must improvise on this.

Day 339: 15th Aug, 2010

First things first,

Wish you all a very Happy Independence Day! :)

Managed to wake up well in time today to attend the flag hoisting ceremony. In fact, even managed to squeeze in my breakfast before the 9am event! :D . Pretty ironical, considering I miss my breakfast on most weekdays even though I have morning classes; but managed to have it on a Sunday.

The event was immediately followed by another irony, as 60 students (including yours truly) lost their freedom to a project submission. One of our group members took ill, so we had to patch up his part too. The even more difficult part was in finding somebody who had an active print account (most 2nd year students had exhausted their balance!). Then, as expected, caught a facchi who was kind enough to consent to an expense of 23 Rs. (yes, this is exactly why 2nd years don't have any balance - they get looted off by "smarter" classmates and "lesson-learnt" seniors).

As soon as I came back to my room, I somehow slipped into a nice loooong siesta. Remained dazed even as I went to have my dinner and stuff. That's the side-effect of a long sleep - keeps you in a stupor.

The only time I managed to come out of it was when we suddenly put some thought on getting our conB work done. Went to the night mess, from there to the CC. One useful tip: it pays to have a multi billionaire in your group ;-) . Thanks to the great Vanki, we took 160 printouts - 40 copies of a questionnaire, 4 pages each. Half the job done. The other half - getting them filled! ;-)

Anyways, that's for tomorrow. Getting back to my tryst with the Sleep Goddess for now. Can't even afford to miss Retail lecs anymore!

And yes... Jai Hind! :)

Day 338: 14th Aug, 2010

One of those days when I had nothing much to do and I sincerely stuck to doing just that.

Sikander - the inter hostel sports meet is ON. Today in fact was the finals of football (H 14 v/s H 1,2,3) and it turned out to be one helluva match!! Went right up till the penalty shoot-out, and H 14 won only when the very last show by the striker hit the outer face of the side of the goalpost and deflected away. Really unfortunate for them.

Day 337: 13th Aug, 2010

One super nice thing that I have done is I got a White Board fitted in my room. Am finding it nice to track schedules, and follow up on things/targets/hobbies. Somehow, it also gives a nice 'feel' to the room.

Had gone to the city with Vanki for some INDEX work. Had to rush back again for some other INDEX work! Saw one of the worst traffic jams of Lucknow today :-S ..some rally I guess.

It is actually quite satisfying when you pursue something and take it to a higher level. Went to play Bridge at the Lucknow Bridge Club today, along with Tiwari, Ghate & Kunja. It was a completely different experience playing in that sort of a 'professional' setup. Of course, I must also acknowledge the help, courtesy and support that the members have extended to us to help us develop an interest in the game - they keep giving us tips during the bidding and after the game play; and even waive the entry fees for us :)

Had dinner at this place called Indian Coffee House. I don't know how I missed even seeing this place! Went on to watch Peepli [Live] at PVR. Really nice movie - a superb satire based on the farmer suicides issue - highly recommended!

Super late to sleep even today :-| . I have no idea how the clock has suddenly struck 5.35 am :-| . Realised it only when the darkness totally escaped from the sky! And the weirdest part is that I am not sleepy at all. Anyways, will put myself to sleep, else will doze off the whole of tomorrow - and that I definitely don't want!

Day 336: 12th Aug, 2010

Mannnnn.. Team Building is SUCH an awesome course! :D . To any faccha who's reading this, please bid for this course next year, it's worth it! Today we were shown a movie (Chak de India!) for 3 hours, and asked to write an assignment then and there, on the various challenges faced by the team and the roles/qualities of a leader. Awesome!

Had a not-so-short (high euphemism) afternoon siesta today. The peculiarity of today's sleep was that my dream/semi-reality state seemed to have suddenly been influenced by the infinite book - Atlas Shrugged. The book espouses on Ayn Rand's philosophy of Individualism. And that the society exploits the brilliant mind on their very virtues. So every time I felt like waking up, I remember telling myself that I am going to get exploited by the world, and so I would go back to sleep! Weird, and convenient ;-)

Alas, these siestas get negated by the fact that I am sleeping pretty late these days. It's 5 am already. Once again, my room was subject to a raid by the INDEX facchas - a little bit for work and a little bit for CV verification. They are doing a decent job of both.

Days 334,335: 10th-11th Aug, 2010

Now this is simple inexcusable. I missed yesterday's entry out of sheer laziness! :-(

Wasn't the best start to the day, as I missed yet another session of retail due to oversleeping. I can't understand what the problem here is. Sleeping late is definitely not the ans; have slept late and woken up early many many times.No use pondering, but I do need to know the reason soon so that I can avoid it! Definitely can't afford to take grade drops and all.

The highlight of yesterday of course was the complete kabzaa of my room that INDEX facchas had done. They have just started working on a PGP1 exclusive event, and I did not have the heart to drive them out of my room as they did INDEX work for the first time together (with 2 of their men down!); guess I would have sacrificed any of my personal activity for facilitating that.

Just realised another WOW thing. I had dinner from outside on both these days. Yesterday, we went to Richi Rich (our 3rd visit in 2 weeks!) and had the veg kebab combo. All 6 of us ordered the samn thing :D . Today, we had pizza from Domino's - except that it was made right at the mess where they have put up a temporary outlet.

Now for some strange reason, our SM prof decided to ask us to submit an assignment - which would be graded, to make it a best 2 out of 3 scenario. I took Kisaan's assignment - to make changes in his - and submit mine too. Found out he had akso got a lot of stuff from a document on docstop!! Sat in the afternoon and read and analysed the whole case myself! :)

Day 333: 9th Aug, 2010

Woke up exactly 8 min before my Retail class. Even got ready pretty quickly, and then realised I don't have my bike, and it's too far off to run. So skipped it :D

Contrast this with the conB extra class in the evening. Fought against sleep, boredom, disinterest to sit through 1.5 hrs. And then came to know there is no attendance for this session :-(

Life is cruel at times!

Had our first official meeting with the facchas. Gave them some dope on an immediate action plan for them. Very nice bunch of people - you can feel assured they'll make INDEX bigger and better when they get the chance :)

Day 333: 8th Aug, 2010

Heee haw haw haw! Super funny incident - I was lying on my bed in the afternoon when all of a sudden Vanki comes up and asks this -

"oyee.. what do you call an umbrella in hindi?"

:D :D

Apparently, he wanted to communicate something with one of the fellows at (the Awesome) GnB, but couldn't get his point across for want of this :D

Spent a good amount of time on the Retail Marketing Final Project. But the problem is, having people like Sud in my group is super helpful, but in a weird sort of manner, also a little painful. She has just completed her internship at PUMA - and all the knowledge which I discovered and documented after these long hours seems peanuts for her :-( . Sheah - have promised to put in some more time and improve my deliverable - hope to get that done asap.

Our Ops guru is on campus (yet again! :-p). We all met up at Fauji, along with the facchas and did some tp. Then had the laugh of my life as he showed me one particular pic that was taken last year during recruitments - hahahaha! Some people are just so weird!! :D

Day 332: 7th Aug, 2010

Swam 6 laps at a stretch today :) . Have now become successful in implementing my own simpler version of the backstroke :-p 

The advantage of having attended multiple insti parties is that you start learning to enjoy yourself even in adverse conditions - this time defined by a hopeless DJ. But we just kept on going - we being Vats, Mandals, Vivek, RK, myself and a few others - right till the end! For me, it is as usual :) . The innovation this time around was the new act of forming a sitting circle on the dance floor and singing/shouting those old slow songs. We really wanted the DJ to take the hint :P, but also got a lot of audience attention ;-)

5am now. The sun rays aren't here yet. Will put myself to sleep now. Expecting a Volini week ahead :)

Day 331: 6th Aug, 2010 - (Post)Midnight (Post)Movie Masala!

Wow, a movie even after you walk out of the theater is pretty awesome! Especially when you are playing the lead parts ;-)

Let the story evolve.

Scene 1: As usual, sticking to our new faith of watching every movie that releases, we go to watch Aisha at WAVE - night show. Super unrealistic movie - but theek hai :D 

Scene 2: Shomu and Madman race ahead on their bikes, with their pillions. Sticking to a moderate speed, me (with Vanki) and AdiJ (tripling with pachpan and Chajju) are going at our own pace. AdiJ suddenly realises his  bike is running out of petrol. But a petrol pump is right ahead. So I race ahead anyways.

Scene 3: I don't know at what pathetic speed they pushed, but we were almost near our college when the call came that that particular petrol pump was closed! And so was another petrol pump right ahead.

Scene 4: We go back to get petrol for those fools. It first set us off on a hunt for a bottle to carry the petrol, at a time when no shops were open. Finally we caught hold of an autowala who said he'll ask someone else, and 4-5 of us were hunting for a bottle in the parked autos. Luckily, found one by the roadside.

Scene 5: Back we go to hunt down these idiots. Amazingly enough, they managed to be super brilliant and find a dark spot where they just could not be spotted. Luckily for me and Vanki, we identified the petrol pump...

Scene 6: Here comes the pain! The entry of Mr. Policewalla.

"yeh kya chal raha hai yahan?"

"kuch nahi sir. picture dekh ke aa rahe they.. petrol khatam ho gaya."

"kaun ho tumlog?"

"sir, students..."

"students ho toh padhai karo. raat ko picture kyun dekhne jaa rahe ho. bass tumlog chain kheechne ya !@!$$ karne yahan ho. thane chalo sab samjhata hun."

"sir, students hii hai.. "

And then we show the great one's (me of cos) ID card. 

"theek hai, jaldi niklo."

And in this situation, Chajju even wanted to walk away stealthily, so that the policemen don't seem them riding triples!! 

Heeeehahahha! Some experience :D

Day 330: 5th Aug, 2010 - The Wait is Over!

Yeyyyy!! Released the first INDEX MR brief to the batch!

The wait is over!!

Day 329: 4th Aug, 2010

I was quite proud of myself and also a little surprised when I first managed to wake up at 6.something. Shamefully though, I just didn't manage to wake myself enough and ended up missing the 8.15 Int Fin class! Later on heard, the prof was really curious to see the new celebrity of the class - Pachpan! :D 

Have had about 3-4 sessions of Bridge by now, but I haven't improved my awareness levels as much as I should have. Especially considering that's the essence of Bridge. Desperately need to internalize the bare minimum act of keeping count!

A slight improvement in my swimming record - did 4 laps continuously! But I think I must start setting higher targets. In fact I'll do it right now - 10 laps at a stretch, by mid September!

In the midst of this all, continuing the infinite coupling - reading Atlas Shrugged and watching LOTR. And btw, the latter seems to be a more painful indulgence!

Day 328: 3rd Aug, 2010

The mess lunch was SO boring today (even as per me :-p) that I had to try out Tarun's combination - sasta Veg roll at IET corner + Garlic bread from Dominos :D . Pretty good combination, I must confess!

Had a ..hmm.. sine-curvish experience today. Came back and checked my mail - and the curve suddenly dipped to the trough, but then again, by evening, another piece of mail sent it back to near the crest :)

Had to make a trip to the city. As I was coming back on my bike, I suddenly felt a very very sharp prick on my right arm. And a shooting sensation the very next moment. My first ever bee sting! Now I know why it's so scary. Immediately found a paanwala and applied some chuna over the sting. There's a small mark there, but I like it for now - serves as a little piece of an adventurous memory :-p . Though I sure want it to go away soooon!

Day 327: 2nd Aug, 2010

One of those typical days.

Was pretty tired yesterday, so happened to doze off comparatively early. Woke up today at 6. Stop alarm. Then at 7. Stop alarm. Then at 8. Stop alarm. Then at 9.30 - Get alarmed about missing the lecture and RUSH for it! Missed breakfast :-(

A very interesting incident happened in the Strat Man class - I suddenly saw the usually docile Tiwari furiously scribbling away and making notes in a book :-O . I was super amazed, and wanted to ask him about his actions, in a manner as if he had broken some unspoken brotherly code. I forgot about it at the end of the lecture. I only had to wait for another hour though - when I went to play Bridge in the evening, I realised he was jotting down relevant stuff!

To give company to the infinite book (Atlas Shrugged), I have also started watching the infinite movie (LOTR 2 - The Twin Towers). There seems to be no concept of 'finite' for these two things!

Day 326: 1st Aug, 2010 - Khel Khel Mei!

Super fun Sunday - had our Outbound session for Team Building. Basically you would be involved in a lot of group activities, and through these interventions you would be able to practically realise and apply the theoretical concepts in the course. Simplified - Basically you get 3 lectures worth of attendance for enjoying :D . For the people who also have SBN, it was a killer - they would get another 3 lectures worth of attendance!

But attendance was no big deal. The experience was superb. A team from STEP Consulting had come down to arrange the whole thing. We played a lot of fancy games; and all the games had fancy names (show-baazi)!

1. River Crossing:

We had to go upstream (against the slope)/downstream (along the slope) on a rope, suspending ourselves upside down, gripping the rope only with our hands (unlike a monkey crawl, where we also use our feet). Puppa decided to forsake the toss and go first - turned out to be a wrong decision :-P

2. Chair Making and Selling

Resources given - wood, nails.

Bid for: A saw

Objective: Win a saw. Build a chair. Sell at a profit.

Simple enough. Revisited the workshop experience I had during engineering! 

I was basically hammering the nails; even hammered my own thumb once.

3. Rappelling 

Needed to be done individually. Long wait for the turn, but the 2 floor climb happened too quickly. Not as exciting as I would have liked it to be.

4. Magic Mats

All the team members had to get across from one side to another, always stepping on the tiny mats provided, without ever coming into contact with the ground (otherwise the whole group has to restart!) and without losing contact with any mat (lest it would be taken away!). Showed how your mistake can harm the entire group!

5. Free Fall

Now this one was real fun :D . A group of people standing opposite to each other would keep their hands parallel to the ground, close to each other, forming a "web". And one person had to "free fall" backwards on this web - basically an act in which you trust your team mates to come to your aid. I was really surprised as to how some people just could make themselves fall properly!

6. Perfect Square

Find out a piece of rope on the ground, make a perfect square of it and have all team members standing on its side. Sounds very easy right? Oh, I forgot to add - everyone was blindfolded :D . And what a mess it was! Though I guess we did a decent job :)

7. Brick Mines

A little similar to Magic Mats. We needed to step on some bricks, and also have constant human contact with a brick. What created chaos was that 4 groups were asked to do it simultaneously!

The set of activities started off at 9 am and went on till 6.30. Pretty tired by now! Guess it's time to hit the bottle (I mean Volini) again.