Day 510:15th Feb, 2011 - Last exam at helL!

My last exam at helL today! :-) Leadership Discovery. And thankfully, it was a case-based open book, open slides exam :D . No pain.

And I don't know how I can describe it; but as I took those few steps away from the PGP block after my paper, there was this intense thrill and a feeling of "liberation", mixed with the feeling that it means the end is only near..

Lots of celebrations happening, some celebrating outside, and many more boisterously celebrate in hostels. I spent the sudden unexplained surge of energy with a music-filled walk around the campus. Followed it up with a mush movie - P.S. I Love You. Pretty typical one time watch, but doesn't come close to Notting Hill :-) . And special thanks to the great Bala for the choco-chip fudge dessert from Genesis!

And just before I sleep, God decides to make the day a little more special, with thunderstorms and rain :-)

Day 509:14th Feb, 2011

Heroes season 2 in one straight session \m/

PS: Happy Valentines Day! (Or all the best lookin for one!)

Day 508:13th Feb, 2011

Unabashedly, I admit to having sincerely studied for FRA today, especially given yesterday's debacle. But seems like the choice of 2 Fin subjects in the final semester might prove costly for me. Literally, since today's 19 mark FRA paper had a weightage of 60 marks overall, and the questions didn't have partial marking :-|

Had to come back and sit to complete the form for a General Management biggie. Frankly, I think that's my dream company :-) . But I really don't know if I'll even get shortlisted. Given the midnight deadline, I sat around filling the form fast, but neatly; mostly using answers that I had prepared for last year. There's one answer though which doesn't seem too satisfying, and just as I was about to copy that, I came to know the deadline's been extended :P . Good, let me think about it tomorrow!

Day 507:12th Feb, 2011

Now, in my 6th term, the third last exam of my IIM L life, if I myself come up and say I prepared quite hard for this exam, you really MUST believe it! Major fatta hua haalat, especially given the huge weightage to the quiz and very minimal weightage to project :P (and our performance in it :P). 

But eventually, when going to give the paper, I was reasonably confident of turning in a decent enough answer sheet. Except, that didn't happen. Pretty tough paper, damaging grades across the board. Of the two nuclear bombs that can spoil my future plans, one has exploded - tomorrow will know the fate of the other one.

Anyways, this was the last exam for Pachpan, and the fool immediately left for home. Well, I know he is going to be back this time, but it did put my mind on the same track it has often drifted to off late.. - that very soon, we'll all be gone, never to return (for quite some time at least). Sad :-( :-(

Day 506:11th Feb, 2011

Pretty free the whole day today. Led to me spending even more time on my laptop. Led to me finally get too irked by my "crowded" desktop, and finally I cleared out the random clutter and put the files to folders where they belong.

Pachpan had plans for a movie - Patiala House. But with the unsurmountable mountain called QAF in front of me, I decided to stay back and try and start climbing. The good thing was, there were others like me who had taken these courses with slightly ulterior motives as well ;-) . Did get around reading a bit, but didn't manage to make much sense of what I read. I guess the only knowledge I gained properly was when Pachpan arrived to explain one topic for some 30 minutes or so. But, the struggle went on (hoping for some sub-conscious absorption :D) and it's about 4.15am now. Guess I'll resume tomorrow morning, hopefully with someone to explain and make things easy!

Day 505:10th Feb, 2011 - You bet! :P

Had our Brand Management paper early in the day today. The paper was one DI problem; no issues :-) . Though I do feel it might be a good idea for profs to make it clear that the book/slides are never going to be used in the "open book" exam. Might as well save some paper & printing ink and contribute to the environment.

Followed up the exam with a movie (after a long time!). We went to see Sanctum, a James Cameron movie. Being in Lucknow, we are compelled to watch such 3D movies on a normal 2D screen; though we got to sit on 125/- seats for 100/-, thanks to the theater being practically empty :-p . The movie was OK; I guess the 3D stuff is the essence of the movie.

Had higher motivation to go to the gym today - had to win a bet, condition being I would do 3 sets of 10 reps with 44kg on the chest fly machine! And yes, I did it, rather comfortably :-p . Though from today, I have started a more disciplined regimen :-)

I have no exam tomorrow. Tried putting myself to sleep but didn't feel particularly sleepy. So some change in plans. Just spent an hour enjoying with the ipod earphones tucked into my ears, listening to some soft music and of course, regaling people around with my rendition ;-)

Day 504:9th Feb, 2011

Had our Product Management exam today. The trickiest part about the paper was that answers seemed to be only of 20-30 words, but they carried 5-10 marks. Now, our classic Indian mentality simply does not allow us to write such "short" answers for so many marks. So all effort went into inflating the actual answer to as-much-as-you-can levels :D

And very very surprisingly, I think it's around 2-3 days after which I am sleeping past midnight :-O . That's so NOT like helL, but I guess gymming takes its toll ;-)

Day 452:13th Dec, 2010 - One last time (pseudo :P)

Had my last paper of this term today. Was an open book exam. And as usual, the prof set the paper such that the book would never been opened!

Some negotiations on my cellphone. The PGP Chairman was very nice though - go it back without much hassle :-)

Anyways, time for yet another week long break. See you on the other side!

Day 451:12th Dec, 2010

So exactly how casual and careless does one get by the time they reach the end of sem 5? I even forgot to fill in my name, roll no. etc details on the answer booklet in the morning exam! That was definitely more interesting than all the literature I think I created.

Had a "pizza party" for lunch. Dada, dhams, myself and some good old times.

And followed up that morning stunt with a ringing cellphone (2nd time in 3 days!) in the evening exam! Confiscated cellphone :-( . Even the ploy of sending able substitutes didn't work!)

Attended a general session on finance by an alum. An optional lecture that I attended a day before the exam - and good I did! Was a good one.

PS: Created a new record in Crazy Taxi! + Getting hooked on to Dexter!

Day 450:11th Dec, 2010 - Crazy Taxi wars!

One of my favorite days on campus! :D

No exams today. So the day started with getting up late, then watching movie #1 i.e. Social Network, then half of movie #2 i.e. Rakht Charitra, then a snack break and chat session with Haathi and his exact physically opposite friend, then 4 episodes of HIMYM and then starting off with a new series Dexter. And whilst I was in the midst of the 1st episode of the 1st season, Pachpan came back after his BF paper. Basically the whole idea was to disturb me :-p , so he took control of my laptop, paused my show, played 2 games of Crazy Taxi, scored poorly, cribbed about my laptop and 'how he couldn't adjust to my silly space bar key' and ran off. 10 minutes after that, I was urgently summoned to his room, only to be greeted with a wide smirk on his face and a computer screen that indicated that he had overtaken my painstakingly attained Crazy Taxi score!

And then came the golden moment. Exactly 10 minutes later. When I walked back into his room - his record eclipsed and mine re-established. Muaahahahahaa!! Brilliant moment! Best part is - now slowly a lot of people on campus are realising they are extremely jobless and choosing to effectively utilise this time on Crazy Taxi! So now, it's a war out there! :D

2 exams tomorrow (yes, it's a Sunday! :-( ..) . Doesn't feel like even one. All I pray is I should wake up on time for the morning paper! Gn! :)

Day 449:10th Dec, 2010

The problem with two-papers-in-a-day is that it leaves you with zero enthu for even a little studying in the rest of the day. Especially with addictive distractions like Crazy Taxi around! Consequently, hadn't started a word for PF yesterday. And not just me, nobody seemed to be doing it! This, even though, it was the scariest mid-term paper.

But of course, that had ensured that entire morning today was dedicated to it. One more super level threat from MMR - he is scary man when he does that! As far as answering the paper itself was concerned, I had to re-play my yesterday's role of the human photocopier. But this time from the question paper itself! You may find this very very confusing - but I really seemed to think all the answers were in the question paper :-| And I made good use of that!

But anyways, it had been a long long time, and we were still to celebrate the Summers of our INDEX facchas. So today finally, we all went to this place called UV (UltraViolet). The sad part was that the place served no alcohol (.. ;-) Muaahahaha! :D ) . The starters were nice, the veg main course was average (actually a little less than average). But the best part was the whole lot of chocolate that I had - 50% (shared with others) of - Kitkat shake, nutty mocha shake, cookie monster shake, choco chip fudge and a sizzling brownie :D . And no, I am still not (even a tiny bit) averse to chocolates! :D

Day 448:9th Dec, 2010

Had two papers today as I said. The 'D'readed has been avoided in EPA. And I became a human photocopier in the open book Serv Mark exam (pr. 402 + 420 of the text book :D).

The highly irritating and frustrating and unfair thing happened immediately after my exams. As I was walking out, I casually happened to check my attendance record on the notice board. And I was shocked to find that I had been marked a horribly high number of absents in spite of honestly attending enough classes! (Ironically in the same 2 subjects that I appeared in today). A grade drop without any mistake! Tried to get some info about it, but everyone had left. Need to work on this tomorrow!

Day 447:8th Dec, 2010

Didn't have any exam today. So woke up blissfully late and in a carefree mode. 

In the afternoon, the sudden fall in markets and specifically in a couple of scripts jagaofied the trader in Pachpan and my demat account was utilized to make a phantom purchase for him. (Unless of course, I profit in which case I can be all evil and keep the profit :-P). And as usual, people generally are eternally vella and the little activity in my room magnetically pulled more people here with the consequence of the multiplier effect eventually generating even more tp.

Anyways, I have two papers tomorrow. The evening one is an open book, open notes etc marketing case based exam - so basically no issues there. The worrisome part would happen to be in the afternoon - EPA! It was an interesting course but the problem is the paper would be completely application of theory. Which implicitly requires a prior knowledge of theory. So there I have been - trying to go through the slides and making sense of all the data and hypotheses and theories. Also, since I had missed one quiz, I had to write a critical review of one paper and submit it to the prof after tomorrow's paper. But since that would clash with my evening exam, I thought of getting it done tonight itself.

So that, a lot of Russel Peters (somebody's gonna geta hurt REAL BAD :D, SS's awesome level leg-pulling by Taklu and my usual tryst with random blogs is what has been keeping me up till 5.10am! And if I don't get some sleep now - I am going to be dozing off during the papers tomorrow! Cya!

Day 446:7th Dec, 2010

Had the CBM paper today. Would indeed be shameful to waste more time after getting up at 10am for the 2pm paper. Spent the next 3-4 hours diligently trying to mug up fundas from ppts.

But when the "both quizzes and midterm topper" stays right till the end of the paper, you can take consolation assured that you aren't the only one in trouble. The problem with a lot of questions is not in solving them but understanding the question itself! In fact, that is a general problem with MBA itself. A lot of things are common sense if you kept the jargons aside. But specifically with this paper - how one earth are you supposed to proceed if you don't understand the terms mentioned in the question?!

Got myself a new 'first' though - though not something to be proud of :-P .. my cellphone rang in between as I forgot to switch it off. Luckily, it being my first mistake, I was returned the handset later after extending an apology.

No paper tomorrow! Yippee!

Day 445:6th Dec, 2010

Pretty ordinary day. Except for the slightly hectic part of writing the conclusion for the BE project report and generally formatting it and bringing it in a ready-to-print state. Got the 6th sem timetable though. Another 6 day week, even in the last term. No big deal - the time has come to experience grade drops.

End terms starting from tomorrow. The "pressure" wasn't there after the 1st term itself. But now, even the "feel" is not there.

Almost 3.30am, and I am only through half of one ppt - that's making me super drowsy :-p. Gn!

Day 417: 8th Nov, 2010

Had come to know yesterday late night that we didn't have the early morning CBM class today. What else do you want to know beyond the fact that you can sleep uninterrupted. And that is how I clocked in yet another successive day of waking up post noon :D

But this was followed by a marathon spree of classes. Serv mark followed by LTL followed by another extra class of LTL followed by an extra session on Proj Fin! 2.30 - 9.30 pm straight! :-|

And after that, a marathon designing session for INDEX! Our poor facchas are caught up in their mid-sems and so time for us seniors to pump in a little extra effort! With less than a couple of weeks to go, too much work on the publicity front needed to speeden up. Had to come up with a basic draft to get some approvals and progress; and it's almost 5.20 now doing all that. Tomorrow's first session is CBM. Am not sure if that one also has been rescheduled! Lets hope so! *fingers crossed*

Day 402: 24th Oct, 2010

Now although I had had a preliminary glance through quite a bit of the PPTs that had been uploaded, I knew for sure that I wouldn't remember anything if I didn't get a chance to revise it. Also needed to read a few handouts. With this intention, I set myself the target of waking up early. I didn't miss this target by much. However, today was one of those days when I was destined to have a slight stomach upset early in the morning and consequently all my grand plans went haywire. Just saw a little bit of some new theory and ran off to the exam. Paid the price of not going through the stuff once again. Also had a mini sense of deja vu when we got a very similar question as was in the EPA exam. Had a small conversation immediately after the paper, which resulted in an ..appointment of sorts :-P .. which I did not honour, mainly 'coz I wasn't sure where it would lead :D

In the afternoon, meddled around a little bit more with my handset. Have been trying various permutations and combination to find more details, i.e. the circumstances under which it does / does not conk off. And what I have learnt till now is that the phone seems to be working fine in the Offline Mode. In fact, even after the SIM has been inserted, the phone continues to be ON only when it is being used in that mode. 

Even while I was fiddling around with my handset, an urgent plan to watch Jhootha Hi Sahi at 5pm at Wave was hatched at 4.10pm. A really bad and unfortunate moment.. the movie must be amongst the worst I have seen! Pachpan's almost in a mood where he wants to start a blog, exclusively to categorically give the choicest abuses to this movie!

Back to the campus; had dinner in the mess. 2nd consecutive Sunday dinner in the mess! Must be a record of sorts in the 2nd year :-p . Back to my room, I was still trying to explore some new tests for my handset when randomly Vanki and Kisaan made me go all the way to 3.4, just for their "celebration"! It has started to turn really chilly outside, need to keep my pair of gloves ready at all times.

A proper "genuine" post this one ;-) . After quite some time I believe! Somehow managed to finish this post..  in between juggling with shayari-jugalbandi with Kisaan :-p . Going to get some early sleep. At 01:00 hours, bon nuit!

Day 401: 23rd Oct, 2010 - Tomorrow, it dies

Nearing the end of what would be my last mid-sem here. Have my BE paper tomorrow. Unlike most of the other exams, this one would be a closed-book one. And not a paper where you can simply 'globe around'. Realised this pretty late, and that is why I am making this post at 4 am. Tried to study a little, and tried to keep myself awake much more :-p . For a good amount of time, I have just been blasting off songs at full volume, not to mention my own vocal addition to all of them :D

But interesting day. Had SDM early morning. Took my place in the exam hall and noticed that the guy in front of me hadn't come. Made a mental remark on what kinda ass that person was. 10 minutes into the exam, the supervisor comes up to me and says - "Do you know TG?" Then it struck! Woah, the missing fellow was a wingie + friend. Gave the supervisor contacts for everyone else in the hall. Then after another 30 min, Mr. TG marches in, all zonked, disheveled and sleepy :D . Nicely took his case after the exam in our hostel corridoor. Also came to know about his funny encounter in those 5 minutes before he entered the exam hall. "Exam ke time toh aaplog bahut dava lete hai?" ROFL!

But of course, the God-giri level today was set by Bala. He has set a standard which he himself is going to find very very difficult to meet. None of us can ever forget his brilliant innovation with ICE! :D :D ROFL max stuff! Literally!!

Now I had a good bit of time till my evening exam - LTL. Nothing was to be read for that paper in any case. So decided to make maximum use of that available time and went with Kisaan for a movie :D . Saw Raktacharitra. It's an RGV movie, but quite disappointing. He has tried to bring in some of those Sarkar elements, but the movie falls flat on its face. Had to leave 15 minutes early to make it back on time for my paper. Tried a new strategy of taking some learning over phone, but didn't achieve much success through that :-p

BTW, also made a quick stopover at the Nokia outlet. Now my handset had gone for repairs for around 4 times in the past month. This time, I was pleasantly surprised to receive a new piece itself! However, my happiness seems to be shortlived! :-( . This handset is switching off by itself every now and then. :-( :-( Arrgghhh!!! When will my phone saga end!

Day 400: 22nd Oct, 2010

Wow! Some spider seems to have got really hyperactive yesterday. I saw one big cobweb from my chair to the window, even though there wasn't even one single thread till 3.30 in the night yesterday!

Holiday today, no exams i.e. Thought of watching a movie. Since long, there was this movie lying on my PC and today I finally saw it - Harishchandrachi Factory. It's a marathi movie, and traces the life of Dadasaheb Phalke, the father of Indian cinema. I would say it's a must-watch, simple because everyone must know the origins of something that has now become a multi-billion dollar entertainment industry.

But I still happened to be majorly bored through the day, for all the rest of my time. Super bored and victim of inertia. After much coaxing, I finally agreed to go out for dinner. We went to Brij (again), especially luring TG under the pretext of getting him some awesome kadhi. Unfortunately for him, kadhi was available only on Sundays! Still ended up having a good dinner, and a good time (discussion centered around Pachpan's re-kindled IAS obsession). And very heavy tummies! Super sleepy now, will open the book tomorrow in the exam! :)

Day 399: 21st Oct, 2010

Bamboozled! For today's Proj Fin paper, the whole batch had religiously understood one big excel sheet. And implicitly, what was unsaid but understood, was that any deviation from this pattern is going to result in a mass disaster. True to Murphy's law, that is exactly what happened. We got one big case, in which we had to hunt for all the numbers, and then use them to calculate some key ratios. Most people followed the strategy for cleanly writing down all the formulas once, just so that would qualify them for some marks, before they bungled up with all the incorrect number substitution! Funny how most people depended on the second globe part of the paper for actually getting marks :D . And btw, a lot of core marketing guys had taken this as the sole fin course. I truly wonder what they must be thinking now :D

Had to rush off to a place called Alambagh to meet an alum. The place is actually quite far off, but I took the peeche wala shortcut which goes to the Airport; made the trip considerably faster. And it was a pretty nice ride too (for most part). From there, I went to Hazratganj as Kisaan and Pachpan were already there. Did some local spons in that area while I was waiting for them :D . We three then went to a restaurant called Ruchika, just beyond Yoko's (which BTW, we have never been to :-| .. don't know why!). The place was the average sort.

Had a little meeting after that. After coming back to my room, had a .. memorable .. conversation on gTalk .. Loose ends, unfinished business and some pluck :D