Day 531:21st Mar, 2011

A pleasant and early wake up call from my parents and sis to indicate they had reached the city and were on their way for their first visit to my campus. Excitement at both ends :-) . Also realized Pachpan was supposed to be have been back by now. Sure enough, I found him in his usual elements in his room, uninhibited in his praise for himself for his 'packing abilities' :D 

Quickly got ready and ran down to the guest house to meet my parents. Got them settled = dumping luggage in the room, so we could go down for breakfast. Showed them the "basic utilities" of the campus - the mess, Fauzi, JustTea, GnB ; made me remember my own first day when I consciously had to try to NOT get lost :-P . Since we were supposed to have rehearsals for tomorrow's event in the afternoon, I had my parents visit around the city + shop in that time period. The rehearsals themselves were a pain, mainly because of the afternoon heat (the free tropicana didn't help much :P). Trying to 'blast' the empty tropicana packs were a lot of fun though :D

After a brief period of rest (skipping PGP day occasion), I went off with my friends to the High Tea. Had a nice time there - generally talking amongst ourselves and also meeting a lot of my friends' parents. My parents came in halfway through (chikan shopping had taken priority :-p), and then it was my turn to introduce them to my friends. Luckily, there was enough mutual consideration to ensure appropriate behaviour :D

Went back to my room but was still pretty bored. So back to Fauzi with Pachpan and Shru. And that is when one of those absolutely random things happened which would become life-long memories. Arora had his car, and along with Buddhi and Kisaan in full flow, we went for a drive. An awesome drive, going to random places in the city (including DM Sahab's ghar), with Arora engaging in absolutely random but highly entertaining conversations with people. Of course, a special appreciation for his one-track mind :D. At one point, we were just 4 seconds away from consciously driving down a flight of stairs :-p . We came back for yet another round of the campus, even stopping to get pics clicked in front of our Diro's residence! Also saw for the first time Bodhigraha-2, the extension of the existing PGP block. Seems well made. A place that will soon beckon a lot many students in the coming years.

One of the craziest nights I have had in helL!

Day 529:6th Mar, 2011 - The mandatory trip!

And this is when the time comes when all PGP2s realise their next 2 week vacation is a long time away! At the same time, there comes this mixed feeling that you won't meet with a lot of your friends who would go on other trips. With this in mind, I didn't wake up too late. Made the most of my time by finishing up with some basic packing (including washing some clothes to accommodate the long trip). Met up with some friends, finished some formalities regarding my parents' stay etc.

And now, it's time to meet another friend or so, before I leave for a 2 week long Sikkim trip with my section B mates! Adios, will be back, one last time... :-)

Day 522:27th Feb, 2011

Spent quite some time watching the match today. India batted first against England, and posted a pretty good score, though definitely less than what it should have been :-S

Shortlists for most of the impending processes tomorrow (the top marketing and GM profiles) are out. Didn't make it to any :-( . Still don't know why that happens. Hopefully it's not an impending sign of times. 

And since I did not have anything to do (and because the shortlist gave me no motivation for any more studies :-p) , trudged my way back to the gym, mainly to get some endomorphins alive and kicking. And then a little more tabbed browsing :)

Day 519:24th Feb, 2011

Feels so nice to wake up on a day, and find out you don't have any ppts lined up :-p . Did have one form filling to do. Was initially happy since the company had come during summers, and I had all the answers ready. Turns out the questions were different, and also more in number :-S

Finally finished with my KT session for the juniors. Gave this half with Pachpan; I think it's a good idea to give it in groups. You can remember more by bouncing thoughts and opinions off each other.. INDEX is definitely in good hands though :-)

Quickly finished off whatever was left of the form (thinking and filling two answers at super speed :P) to make myself free for the hostel party! Had good fun there :-) . Just like it marks all special occasions, it rained even on this night, to make the senseless dance a senseless rain dance :D

Had a really long and really random bakar session in my room after that with Pachpan, Kisaan and TG. Always so worthwhile to talk and enjoy for 3 hours on topics right from 'biology' to engineering days to stuff here :D

Day 517:22nd Feb, 2011

Woke up (at noon :D) to find the adjunct student finally back on campus. Which meant sweets + tp (including fooling him about the "insti party") + lunch at Fauzi + pulling his leg by drawing attention to his Pcom group mates :-p

Spent the afternoon trying to rank companies. Made one initial list. Tried doing it on an excel first, then figured it was pretty useless to do that. Directly did it on Aghanim. Came up with a preliminary list - first cut, ranking around 70 companies, many of which might not even come on campus :D . par umheed pe toh duniya kaayam hai

Pachpan keeps complaining about always feeling pressure only on his biceps and forearms, whatever exercise he does! Finally today, he realised the importance of doing the exercises right rather than trying to be all macho and add high weights, thanks to your truly and one junior. And sure enough, the 50kg on the triceps press came down to 32kg :-) ..and still had him gasping and clenching his teeth :-p

Post dinner, sat down to finally finish off with the rankings. Came to know Ms. "sincere-as-ever" Chatur ranked 170 companies as against my 95 :D . In spite of having every DayZee shortlist! :D . Talk about confidence :-p . And then, for some strange and still inexplicable reason, started reading some fin at 2.30am :-| . And surprisingly, have sustained myself in that activity till 5.30am. Guess that's enough of being a Valuation God. For now ;-)

Day 516:21st Feb, 2011

Had been trying to get a room booked for an alum since 3-4 days, and somehow has been a little extra painful this time. Luckily, got it done today morning after one (short and sweet) ppt of a media company recruiting for their OOH division. Got to learn a little about a completely new industry.

Was due for another ppt in the early evening, as some of my group members weren't on campus. This one turned out to be very bad. Firstly, it got delayed by 45 minutes, then those Red and Blue telecom people took some 15 minutes "doing some setup". And then gave a ordinary ppt for 1.5 hours. I am mainly super irritated because I missed the chocolate pastry in snacks :-(

Spent around an hour at night giving (mostly just trying to give) some pep talk to a friend, who was worried about the way preparations were going for all the DayZee shortlists held. I congratulated myself for not imposing such problems on myself :P

Day 513:18th Feb, 2011

Woke up (pretty late) to find that I needed to give the final touches to the FRA document. Got that done just in time to have some (crappy!) lunch, and then dashed off for the Jack&Jill ppt; only to find the guys walking in a complete hour late :-x . And then break the promise of finishing off the ppt in an hour. (No, the few soaps and lotions that were distributed did NOT compensate!)

Some intensive chest exercises at the gym today. Also spersed with some triceps exercises and a 3km run :D . I can feel my muscles getting tougher now ;-) . Might be a little biased though :-)

Had kutte jaisa bhook and even the dinner at the mess was really sad. Kisaan had gone to play a cricket match for sikander and so poor me had to go all alone to Fauzi. But then, you just need to sit at Fauzi for two minutes and you are sure to get company :D . Had dinner with cyberKGP and my Bridge colleagues, funnily over giving some Fin electives' gyaan to some facchas. Had a marketing session scheduled just after that; attendance wasn't mandatory for me, but I figured I wouldn't be doing anything productive anyways. With that simple logic, I went along. Don't know what I learnt, but I know I didn't lose anything.

The night mess visit that followed suddenly left me with a new brainwave - we get brownie there, heated up, with chocolate sauce. How about buying an ice cream from Guptaji to have some home-made (not so) Sizzling Brownie?! Definitely an idea worth a try I guess!

Went to my INDEX junior Mak's room to collect KungFuPanda's sweatshirt. Also ended up giving a little electives' gyaan to him as well. Poor fellow reminded me of the crossroads I was standing at last year...

I think I need to start locking my room when I leave. (Have I mentioned I (and many others) NEVER lock the door of the room while going out?). Yesterday had the instance of a friend randomly posting a status update from my FB account, regarding the way my name is (mis)spelt. Today, I suddenly saw my USB mouse was missing. My detective instincts told me the suspicion would be on Bala. And then, true to his remarkable style, Bala gave yet another demonstration.

Me: Do you have my mouse?

Bala: No, it's with Kisaan

Anyone reading the above statement would infer Kisaan came and took my mouse. But no, the great Bala came, took my mouse, went to Kisaan's room, gave my mouse to him, and took his mouse. And on my quizzing a little more about this 'arrangement', I was (in his characteristic style) "ordered" to use my "hands" till my mouse is available again :-S . The e-sikander AOE addiction :-S

Anyways, my intentions of sleeping early have gone bust big time. Been randomly reading stuff (as usual). 4.20 am now. Just read a random mail from some committee on campus who (God-knows-why) called someone, and now we all mandatorily will have to attend that. Arghh!!

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 493:29th Jan, 2011

In spite of sleeping at 6am yesterday, I managed to wake up on time for the 9am class. Initially snoozed the alarms, then stopped them. Got up from the bed. Even applied toothpaste to my toothbrush. And then Pachpan told me the futility of attending the morning class (our group presentation was not happening :-S). And just like that, I went back to sleep :D

Attended LD. And then attended QAF after God knows how long. Nice prof though! I learnt I had exhausted the number of bunks available :-( . In the prof's own words, I need to "be more organised while indulging in this exercise" :D

The boring dinner at the mess (almost an everyday phenomenon now :-| ..) was compensated by some good company, parathas from Fauzi (speeding up the process by collecting them and taking them to my friend's room) and songs on youtube. Back to my room and a little more of Fountainhead. Will have an early Sunday tomorrow, got a presentation, it seems.

Day 487:23rd Jan, 2011 - A Tick on my Checklist :)

So finally another tick on my long-term checklist. I wanted to make myself marathon-capable in these 2 years. Am nowhere close to that, but at least in the past one week, I have made myself capable of running some respectable distance. Today I finished the 8km run successfully. First time I realized and felt how a change in conditions can affect performance. In campus, I trained in the late evenings, when it was quite cold. Today though, the run was at 9am, and the sun was out and bright! And man, does that sap energy or what! But anyways, I am happy. I was only competing with myself ... and I won :-)

Was dead tired after all that. But somehow managed to stay awake. In fact I even attended a ppt for a GM profile from an energy major, which was looking forward to hiring from B-school campuses for the first time. Most noteworthy about that presentation was the presenter ;-)

Didn't have anything to do post that. Met Chatur during snacks and then spent some time watching the informalz. The arm wrestling match between the ladies was super tp :D . It almost always never reached towards a result. Either all girls are equally very strong or equally very weak. (Am not passing any judgement :P). And of course, I would like to remember the one microsecond worth sneak-peek memory that I got in between.

Evening was Bollywood Nite with the famous music duo of Salim Sulaimnan giving music to a scintillating (and raunchy) performance by Neha Bhasin (of Apple Bottoms fame). This was then followed by the (rebellious) party, with drinks NOT being served at the party ;-) . The party was awesome. I tried not to exert my super tired legs, and for a good one hour sat on the stage, using only my upper body for any dancing activity. But couldn't resist the high-energy atmosphere much. I went back to my room, got the red devil horns and the Caribbean cap, and there I was - scorching the dance floor with my moves :D . Both the props turned out to be super hits, with almost everyone borrowing them, eventually even breaking the horns. But I guess it served its purpose well :)

Post some 'conflict resolution', Pachpan, Kisaan (in the angry young man mode), GD, QuizChamp and myself spent some time at Fauzi, generally chatting away. Back to my room and it's almost 5.30am now. My body's seems to be absolutely broken :) . Lets see what happens tomorrow :D

Day 481:17th Jan, 2011

Apart from one FRA class in the morning, spent mostly the entire day in the process. Pretty long one that. First a one-hour handwritten analysis on a 16-page case, followed by a discussion on that same thing. Next up was a kind of a soft skill activity, crafts more precisely :D. And last of all, a preliminary assessment interview, which I rocked so much! :P

The good news was that my good friend Haathi really truly aced the process, and was the sole guy on campus to end up with an offer. Awesome! This post is dedicated to him \m/

Pretty exhausted from the whole thing though. Will get some good amount of sleep. Retiring for the day @ a super-early 11.00pm. Cya!

Day 479:15th Jan, 2011 - Triple Thrill

Brilliant day!

Was just another ordinary day until I decided to turn things around. (Ok, that was a little too sensational :P).

Thrill #1

As I have said, I have been trying to get myself to be fit enough to run 10km. With just a week to go, I decided to practice running on the road rather than on a treadmill. So there I was - out with my jogging shoes, with the initial target of running one entire round around the campus (2.42 kilometers). No sooner had I run the first 200 meters was I exhausted, but I kept going on and on until I finished one round... and then still kept going on and on to finish 2 rounds! :) . Proud of myself :D . (And special thanks to Shankar Mahadevan for the fantastic Lakshya title track!)

Thrill #2

Three wingies (who stay in adjacent rooms) - Shomo, Bala and ChocolateSupplier got placed in the same company :D . Good for them!

Thrill #3

Confirmed that South Africa's cricket team would have the worst set of chokers. We won a fantastic match against them, by just 1 run. Was fun to watch it in the mess with so many others. What better way to end the day! :D

Day 478:14th Jan, 2011

Interesting incident in the LD class. As an activity, each team had to draw and depict a particular scenario. The catch was that the team members would take turns and individually contribute to the drawing. Was fun to observe the complete lack of any artistic ability in any of our team members :D 

Just like the financial world has a new definition for New Year as "April", cine-goers have a new definition for the beginning of the week - Friday. Today being one, we made our way to Wave for Yamla Pagla Deewana. Probably amongst the worst 1st half ever; and if you do manage to make your way through it, the contrast effect stands useful and helps you tide over the 2nd half.

Went to the Hazratganj Aryans from there - the fourth Aryans that I have been to. Definitely the worst. Very average food - only the paneer peshawari was good. Even the chole wasn't nice :( . The good part was the entire evening was converted into MMR's treat :D

Came back to get on to my "routine" of Big Bang Theory. Came across a .mkv file and one thing led to an other, and I downloaded and installed the latest VLC player, and next thing I know I was playing the .mkv file of Terminator 2: Judgement Day! And that is one super classic movie. Which meant I just had to watch it entirely once again \m/ . And now at 4.35 am (after 2 more episodes of Big Bang Theory), I finally call it a day (or night).

Days 474,475: 10th-11th Jan, 2011 - Inverted Circadian Cycle

One thing I feel genuinely proud of is the fact that no matter how late I go to sleep, usually I somehow manage to wake up on time to attend the morning class. Funny how I can manage to take pride in such things while entire sections on my HR forms remain empty :P . The FRA class, observing the bloodbath on Dalal Street, and some more of Big Bang Theory easily saw my afternoon through.

Had a ppt to attend in the evening, about a highly sought after profile offered by the most trusted brand in the country. That was followed by 'High Tea' which basically was all about a bunch of B-schoolers hogging up free food :-)

Now yesterday when I went to Kisaan's room, I realised of this new type of time pass - entering into the imprompto online quiz-types competitions of Manfest. There are only few of these - I had already missed the one yesterday - so today I made sure I signed up for it along with Chatur and Shanky. Call For Arms - definitely good tp. What was even better was it lead to even more tp after the event. We first saw a movie Fighter in my room. The movie's about a boxer, I found it extremely average. Then time for a night mess break, after which we started off with yet another movie. This one - Remember the Titans was much better. 

By then it was around 4am. Now we had a quiz 'the next day' (technically that same day) at 9am. And by experience, we all know this 5 hr window of sleep if super dangerous. Hence we decided to pull an all-nighter, chitchatting our way through the wee hours. Of course, eventually I was the lone man standing even as the others dozed off. They did wake up on time for the quiz. Shanky - in that sleep induced state - leaned on the side of the bed and the furniture broke :D

By the time I had given the quiz and struggled myself awake through FRA, my circadian cycle had inverted itself. Came back and fell flat on my bed and dozed away in full glory through the entire day :D

Woke up around 6pm, remained dazed for another couple of hours. Some aloo parathas for dinner at the morning adda, a little more tp, and I finally am going to go for an early sleep. Preferably waking up with my body clock on usual mode :D

Day 473:9th Jan, 2011

Good Sunday! Woke up to two plans. First was a call from home asking me to book their travel tickets for my convocation. Having partly acted upon it (booking the urgent train tickets), I switched over to plan #2, which was a call for a movie - The Tourist. Another emergency call that couldn't be refused. Improved on existing plan by adding a lunch at Aryans. Those guys should seriously considering prefixing "Awesome" in front of Chole. 

Went from there to PVR - finally those guys have gotten some sense and made some shelves where visitors can keep their bags/helmets. (Believe it or not, this system wasn't there at least for the past 1.5 yrs, and they used to turn away people who couldn't find alternate arrangements for their baggages!) The movie had an interesting plot, but became slightly predictable towards the end. Warmed ourselves up with some hot coffee and chocolate pastry at Barista. And I purchased some cold protection cosmetics before setting off against the super chilly weather. 

Had seen only 15minutes of Shutter Island a couple of days back - so came back today and finished it. Once again, I found the end to be slightly predictable (am I too sharp :P) but good storyline. Definitely worth one watch. And now, a few more episodes of Big Bang Theory, time to put myself to sleep at 3.30am.

Day 459:26th Dec, 2010 - Miss :-(

Shit shit shit! Once again, I missed Taj breakfast! :-(

And this in spite of all the effort I took to wake myself up. Which included not having my blower switched on in this cold weather. And also drinking water to "build up pressure" :P . I don't know which of these worked, but disastrously I woke up only at 10.15 to a song that runs as "spiderman.. spiderman.. tumne churaya mere dil ka chain"! (Watch the link below at your own risk)

Congrats if you have indeed survived beyond that!

Woke up to realise not everyone had missed the breakfast ;-) . But anyways, I had the Dexter episodes. And a lazy Sunday got off to a murderous start :-P

Luckily, decent lunch in the mess. Mooli parathas, but more importantly they were well made. A couple of more episodes later, made my way to the Brand Management class. Nice prof. Our institute should get more of them to neutralize the location disadvantage. And to that the fact that they finish off their sessions in that one week :D

Day 457:24th Dec, 2010 - Of Free Time and Flop Timing

Just another day - waking up late, and eventually having to rush even for the noon class. However, even as I was attending class, kisaan and TG made plans and booked tickets for Tees Maar Khan. So Budhi and myself needed to rush to Wave immediately after our class. And as luck would have it, everything that could go wrong did. In spite of a billion kicks (and cleaning of the spark plug by a nice auto-rickshaw walla present), my bike just refused to start. Spent around 10min arranging for another bike - got Dham's bike. Just as I sat and started it, Chugli pointed out that the back tyre had totally punctured! And finally, in that urgency, we had to fall back on Shakti's savari - Hero Honda Splendor! (In a way, the bike is good in such situations - you can't speed even if you want to!) But wait, this wasn't the end of the story. In my two years of extensive bike rides through the roads of Lucknow, never before had this happened - but today - we were stopped by cops! The only thing that didn't happen was that the bike didn't run out of petrol :-| . And I guess because we were going for a Hindi movie, we managed to have a happy ending - in the sense that - as usual, WAVE started the movie a little late, and we made it there just on time.

The movie was a typical Farah Khan - super high on all the filmi masala and overacting. Extensive reference and potshots at old and contemporary actors, not to mention a blatant reference to tonnes of cliches in Bollywood. The movie overall turns out to be OK, not as good as her previous two films. (Katrina Kaif is serious eye-candy though!)

Anyways, super duper free suddenly. Seriously need to plan activities to use my time more productively! To take a break from the heavy-duty Dexter, I even started off with another light comedy series - Modern Family! I should not be going down that lane, so fast!

And now, suddenly, for the past couple of hours, I have got myself involved in downloading a few more apps for my cell! And unknowingly it has taken me past 4am. Which means it is now 25th! Merry Christmas guys! Will go sleep now and hope Santa leaves me some presents :-P

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 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 443:4th Dec, 2010

Woke up pretty late today. The good thing about that is it leaves you with that much less time to think and wonder how you will spend it. Not only for the time you were asleep, but for the next couple of hours spent away eating, bathing and generally in a state of laziness, drowsiness and inertia.

Late evening, when some senses were about to hit me and prompt me into some action, a movie plan came up. And off went Pachpan, Shomu, Chatur and myself to wave to watch Phas Gaya Re Obama. Now suddenly these kind of movies are being made these days which concentrate on one simple plot and weave a humourous story around them. And just like the rest, even this one turns out to be a pretty decent plot. Has a pretty ingenious climax too :D

We thought of watching one more movie straight. But didn't have enough time. So we just had dinner outside at the eatery in the lane behind Wave. For those who don't know, it is a pretty nice place. Very cheap, and good stuff. I had pav bhaji - they make it well here, but couldn't help remembering that I'll be having the authentic version in 10 days! :-)

Somehow, when Pachpan came to my room at night, the conversation restarted from where we left it yesterday. Discussions ranging from foreign profiles to money to entrepreneurship to career options to career goals to feasibilities and such arbit stuff happened in quick succession. Unintentionally took up quite some time.

Anyways, remember my CV work? A couple of people told me my 2 page CV is twice as weak :-P . So right now, I am remaking and remodeling it to fit it in one page. Using the great MMR's CV template - so well structured that I am finding it difficult to modify it :D. Finally getting to understand that thing though - more than anything, I keep learning a little more about MS Office through these little experiences. Anyways, have done some bit on the CV to get it down to one page. 4.30am now. Will get some sleep. Have a quiz at 8.15am! :-S . Hope I wake up.