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 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 286: 22nd Jun, 2010

The effect of 800 students and an under-construction mess was at its fullest potent. There was so much crowd that myself and pachpan went off to Fauzi for lunch. Had the standard fare - roti, dal, aloo jeera, dahi. This is definitely something which does not go wrong at Fauzi.

However, this 3.45 timing for the SM class is turning out to be a major pain. Invariably, the free time post lunch happens to be an extremely sedative-oriented hour. But it is such an 'in-between' time that we can't even enjoy a proper siesta. Took 2 alarms (and 2 snoozes!) to motivate me into going for the class.

The induction session for the fachchas has started. Was pretty surprised to see that it ended as early as 12.30am :-O ..A far cry from the niteouts we had last year. This timing should definitely be extended in the coming days if they are to be introduced to the rigour that lies ahead.

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 193: 13th Jan, 2010 - Aal izz helL!

This sleep thing has already cost me my breakfast over the week. Today, it almost cost my first absent mark of the term. After snoozing/closing a billion alarms right from 6 am to 8 am, I tried to satiate my greed for further sleep by lying in my bed for a few more minutes. Or so I thought. Until eco stud Pindyck (whom I usually wake up every morning!) bangs my door at 8:54 shouting "abbe saale, 6 min mei class hai". And that the first lec was from a professor who was pretty strict about the timings. Managed to finish off the most basic routine actions and run my way into the lecture in those 6 minutes.

Profs here sometimes show a really nice sense of humor. It so happened that the FM 2 prof used a chalk which was a little light in colour and so a girl from the last bench requested the prof to use another colour chalk. With a nice smirk on his face, the prof walks and picks up a PINK chalk and asks "Is this fine?" :D

In one of my earlier posts, I made fun of people who sleep late making a presentation and consequently miss the class the next day. Happenstance - the very next day I slept off and missed a quiz. Yesterday I made fun of all the Lost and Found mails. Today, temporarily, my bike went missing! Fortunately, did happen to trace it to some other location where it was parked :-p

And this one is the biggie of the day. Even before coming to helL (just IIM L then :p), I had wanted to do these 2-3 things. One was to maintain a daily blog - check. Other was to indulge in something like jogging to build my stamina. Finally, I have a start in that direction. Jogged today, must be around 3.5-4 km.. but sure seemed A LOT more ! BTW, inspiration for this sudden act was a denim which seemed to have become tighter than ever before :D

And finally trying to take part in one of these competitions. Brainstormed (I like the word :-D) a little with Meenal and Pankaj. We got really happy when we came up with what we saw were some cool novel ideas. But bloody every idea seems to have been thought of previously! It is but a small world..!

Back to my room and some music later, I realise it's 4 am now.. Class tomorrow @ 9.. sigh! Aal izz helL!

Day 184: 4th Jan, 2010 - Term III starts !

And so the grind begins (again!) ...

I don't recollect the last time I woke up to a pleasant alarm tone. Typically, I would use the alarm feature of my motorola C-150, specifically a tone called the burning train or something. Trust me, it could wake up a corpse :D . A new year, a new term and more importantly a new cellphone ensured a more calm wake up today. But this works only in ideal scenarios where I am mentally aware of the need to sacrifice sleep and rush to the class. And doesn't work in situations where I actually need to depend on some external intervention. And that is why I now have the Tipu Sultan tone as my alarm tone. And yes, this one can make a corpse on Jupiter wake up :D.

We seem to be having a number of GLOBE courses this sem. However, had 3 lecs today and it does feel like the profs this time are nice. Vinod (b'day boy today!) got christened as 'Chatur' in HR's HR class :-p

Finished off the registration stuff in the afternoon. Collected the usual truckload of books from the program office. Those books only seem to be helping in exercising my biceps and triceps once in every 3 months.

Spent the rest of the day majorly watching LOST. That's a new series that I target to finish this sem. Collected the manfest sweatshirt during dinner. Pretty cool one, this as well. Anyways, continued with a little more LOST post dinner.

It's midnight. Pretty early for helL standards, but am dead sleepy. Not sure of what I am writing. Will read the post tomorrow. Good night guys!

Day 170: 15th Dec, 2009

Lag-g(u)ard alert!

So here's a situation we are all familiar with. You have a small piece of work which you put off for later. And then, in a couple of days, you have another small piece of work which depends on the earlier work. So you think to yourself you will do both of them together real soon and put them both off for that moment. Thus begins the pileup of activities. It eventually becomes the size of a huge mountain which even the most enthusiastic trekkers amongst us wouldn't wish to climb. This is what is happening with my 'The Economist' subscription. Even before I have finished the first copy of the magazine, two subsequent copies have also found their way through my door!

I think the world's best alarm clock is the one inside you. NO other alarm clock is as effective as that. Today I somehow woke up at 7.30 am even after sleeping really late yesterday. Paradoxically, the same alarm clock is also the world's worst. I so didn't want to wake up early today, but the darn internal body clock just doesn't allow my brain to control it !

My getting-caught-inspite-of-not-doing-anything phase continues. Even as I stared at the QAM answer booklet, the QAM prof caught me and started asking questions. The whole thing looked so silly to me that I did not say the answer even though I knew it :-S .

Made a visit to the library after a long long time. The intention was to do a little bit of reading for the QAM quiz tomorrow. Have not been too successful, mainly because of lack of good reading material. (and the inability to take good notes - a condition I share with most others). Anyways, will get a couple of hours tomorrow after classes. Should be more than enough. Time to sleep now - with the undying hope of having conquering control on the body alarm clock :-p