Day 88: 16th Sep, 2009

Yesterday I was a little worried. I was wondering if one is divinely alloted some fixed quota of GLOBE for an exam. I had unexpectedly used up much of it in ITC. Would there be enough left for BIO then?

Thankfully, I din't have any such issues. I think God has been kind to bestow an infinite capacity to GLOBE in MBA students. Used generous amount of it in today's paper :) . I even drew a diagram.. WITH pencil ! \m/ And made up for the absence of the scale by using the metal end of the thread to tie the paper :D

Now the not-so-good part. For all those aspiring acad secys (pronounced acad-sec-ees .. stands for academic secretary) reading this, please ensure that you never have BIO and Economics back to back. Have been sleeping all evening into the night after all the mugging for BIO. Finally pushed myself to wake up at 2. Now I am sitting with a can of Red Bull, sincerely hoping the Rs. 75/- drink does not become a sunk cost. Am wayyyy behind the syllabus. Just like my good ol' days! :D. 6 hours left. Lets do it.

Day 82: 10th Sep, 2009

Yesterday if there was one thing that I regretted most about missing the class was that I also missed giving the feedback form. I really wanted to write a loooooong feedback on the ITC course that was taken! :-S

Had our BIO presentation today. Was put under major pressure by the group to come in proper formals. Had to shave and all. Took me around 5 iterations of shaves and around 10 minutes to get rid of all the hard work I had put in to cultivate my stud beard. Too bad... but kuch paane ke liye kuch khona padta hai. What who gained or lost is still a mystery though. When I reached class, I realised I had to speak on the theoretical OB concepts related!! :-S .. But anyways, I have become immune to all this by now. I think this would be true for most MBA students. Within a couple of months, they would have gained the confidence to deliver a slide - even if they are looking at it for the first time - without much of an issue.

Btw, it is 07:50 in the morning right now... :-p . Sitting in the library for the Eco presentation that we have today (just can't write tomorrow now :D). It is not that we are still working, but the problem is these stupid rains are conspiring against me for the last couple of occasions. Every time we intend to leave at around 3.30 - 4 am .. it begins to rain .. and doesn't stop till morning! :-S . Had a BRILLIANT time collating the final presentation for this though. I think we had a joke over almost every slide. First of all, no clue as to who is going to speak. Then no clue about who is going to speak on which slide. And in any case, each of us is just going to read out from the slide. But funny things that came up like incomplete bullet points, small fonts, untitled slides just adding to the confusion. There was one slide whose title was initally 'High Demand'. For the same data, we modified the smart art and changed the title to a totally contrasting one - 'Unmet Demand' :D. Right now... just listening to songs on my laptop and whiling away time... all set for a siesta tomorrow ... oops .. today! :D

Day 77: 5th Sep, 2009

It's hel(L). It's hectic! I had this whole list of things to do when I started the day:

-Work on the CV proofs (for all you people who aspire to get in here, please make sure you have proofs for ANYTHING that you are going to put down on your CV. Really strict about that)

-Modify the CV

-MANAC project. Read/analyse the balance sheet

-Start studying atleast one chapter in atleast one subject of the multiple quizzes lined up on Monday and Tuesday

But I was so tied up with other things that came up that I couldn't do even one of these things :(

Had this ITC project submission before 5 pm. A couple of team mates of mine had done a good amount of work on it. Thankfully. My job was to collate the final info, check for any errors, reformat some stuff, take prints and submit. That took up afternoon.

Simultaneously had a BIO meet. Was present there physically only :-$ . But saala ... in return they assigned me with the toughest part of the BIO project submission - some multivariate analysis on the data collected!

Today the junior core of INDEX had its first outing :) . Went to the city to check out this ground and make some observations and stuff. Then went to eat - the non veg junta went to Dastar Khwan and we, the veggies, went to this place Royal Cafe. Boy!.. was blown away with this Lucknow food thing. Finally I saw why it called the Nawabon ka Shaher. We started off only ordering masala papad and some veg seekh kabab as the starter and 1/2 soup. Simultaneously ordered this basket chaat. And when they came... mannnn... what quantity! The masala papad was papad in the form of a cone, with all the masala stuffed inside. The basket chaat was again super tasty. I was really glad to eat some good chaat outside Bombay! And the soup... their half itself was easily double the quantity of a normal full soup I have had anywhere else! Needless to say, our tummies were full there itself! :D Never got around having proper khana.

Day 75: 3rd Sep, 2009

We had this super fun thing in our BIO session today. Simple funda - the class was divided into teams of three. Each team had one leader, one follower and one observer. The follower had to be blindfolded and the leader had to give proper instructions and guide the follower through some obstacles, while the observer ensured that rules were followed and made some other key observations. No big deal.

I got to play the blindfolded fellow. My closed eyes helped me see things in a new perspectives. I was totally dependent on the instructions that I received. Did a pretty good job of clearing the obstacles placed. After completing the task, I opened my blindfold to check what exactly I had done... and I saw that it was a 1 minute task with open eyes that took me around 30 minutes with my eyes closed. Thanked God.

Also had a MANAC test. First time after after 2 months that I gave a decent performance in this subject. **self applause .. (you are free to join in :p) ** Had plans to study for the Eco quiz tomorrow. But before that went to Gupta for some timepass. And ended up sitting there for around a good couple of hours :D . Nothing that gives more happiness than joyfully chatting and whiling away time when you know you are neck deep in quizzes, assignments, submissions and you haven't even started anything :D

Day 72: 31st Aug, 2009

It is raining surveys! Anyways we get a barrage of mails from a lot of different sources. To add to this pain, people are randomly spamming the group with links to their BIO project questionnaires! Every time I do a send-receive on my outlook, there are a dozen new survey links in my inbox :-S . Because of this volume, the effect is just lost. I am personally just deleting those mails now. I doubt if anyone else is doing anything different. But wait, how do I confirm that? A new survey perhaps :-p

Had an event called Finrush. A treasure hunt where the clues are accounting problems and the solutions would turn out to be places you need to run to next. Usually I am good with treasure hunts where the clues are puzzles, but was MANACally handicapped in this case. Had a couple of other studs in my team, so we did OK. But didn't win :( Only lots of running around. Apparently I was the lucky guy (303) with the 1st clue, but then our luck ran out there I guess :-p

Got marks for 2 more subjects - Communication and QAM. Comm marks have been totally arbit. Ranging from 32-35 for most people. I am 33, might be a mark below the class average, but never mind. Holding on to the average in QAM as well.

Day 62: 21th Aug, 2009

There are some things that you think are humanly impossible till you actually see a human doing it. But then again, they have risen from being mere mortals to being an immortal God in the art. As the first inaugural event of SPIC MACAY - IIM L chapter, we had a performance by Pt. Vishwa Mohan Bhatt on the Mohan Veena (his creation!). He was accompanied by Pt. Ram Kumar Mishra on the tabla. And boy, it was just awesome!

Now don't jump to conclusions and think it is because I am overtly involved with such stuff. No, am just another average guy, with just a general interest in most things. Infact, I hadn't even heard this person's name before! But he is a famous fellow, has won 3 Grammy awards and stuff, so the buzz was high. All I did was go there with a fresh open mind. And heard some absolutely brilliant music. I had learnt the word 'enthralling' years ago, but experienced it yesterday.

Btw, presentations in our BIO class are showing a larger element of fun (and boldness) nowadays. Last week, we had a presentation on the topic of child/adult something where there was a 5 min role play. 'The Rock' comes for his part, and in that 1 minute, takes super duper potshots at the three famous incidents of our class - Dhamdhere's OM remark, the why-dint-I-get-beer mail and Mr.Clear & Concise. But the fun was when the audience reacted with increased questions such as - so what if the person is like A Rock , will it still hold true? :D . I had bunked today's BIO session. We had a presentation by the class accountant TG wala group. But apparently in their example, they pronounced this chick of our class as sister to Mishra's underwear-alter ego pseudonym :-p .

Had my final INDEX presentation today. The last effort from my side for the committee tasks. Am happy it went off decently well :) .

Day 48: 7th Aug, 2009

Had a paper in engineering for which I mugged like crazy the night before, only to experience a total blank out during the exam :-| . History repeats, a little moderated this time though. Super GLOBE-ish BIO paper. Later realised (when pointed out to by someone else) that we were supposed to be brief in our answers or else marks may be deducted. I hope I haven't written so much gas that I end up with negative marks :D.

Have my last paper - QAM - tomorrow. It is supposed to be easy for engineers considering their "strong previous mathematical skills". A pseudo engineer like me would beg to differ :) . So yet another struggle! Am typing this post at 6 in the morning! With a substantial part of the syllabus yet to cover. And this includes learning the subject only theoretically - haven't solved any problem by myself!

Adios... good night... err... good morning?? bahh!