Days 90,91: 18th-19th Sep, 2009

Missed out on a post yesterday. Had my last exam - Operations Management (OM) - in the morning today and was left with minuscule time to even have a preliminary glance through the book. So the delay.

First about the QAM paper yesterday. Had heard that end term papers are usually easy in this subject. But as demonstrated earlier, all positive notions are gleefully proved untrue by the powers that be. Every question in this paper had some twist about it! While solving I often felt I am not getting even a single answer correct, but post exam analysis says I have done pretty OK. So no QuAlMs! :-p

As with my daily routine, did a little timepass after the exam and then slept off. Where I erred was in not realising that the next exam was in the morning at 9.30. Started off with OM pretty late (around 2am), stayed through the night somehow and tried to read stuff. Result was that I was pretty sleepy in the exam. On a couple of occasions, when my sentences were making any sense (not even grammatical sense), I just put my pen aside and slept off for 5 min.

The highlight of the exam of course was this encounter. There was this one question which I just didn't understand. I mean, I didn't even know what to do with it. So I called the prof and actually asked him - "Sir, are we supposed to solve this sum or just write some critical observations?!" :-| .. moment of stunned silence .. The look on the face of the prof was just legendary. He looked at me as if I have committed the ultimate sacrilege to his academic religion and replied in a high pitched tone "Of course you have to solve it!!" Poor fellow must have really wondered if anybody even heard anything in his class. How else could a student even get this kind of a thought?! :D

Slept off BIG time after coming back to my room. Suddenly I realise my phone is ringing. Before I could get to it, it stopped ringing. Ah well, peace. But then the phone rings again. I pick it up to hear "Where are you?" .. oh o - sudden jhatka! .. it was 5pm! Time for my bus to the airport! I had just slept off like a log without realising the time. Woke up and sprung into super fast action. Finished packing for a one week visit back home in 10 minutes! Had stalled the bus for sometime (thanks Sudeshna!) but then just when I came down, the bus had left! Saw a biker coming along (Bajaj Discover it was!! - mera wala bike :p). Frantically signaled for him to give me a lift and chase the bus :D . The good guy - Nilangshu I believe - agreed. As we reached the gate, realised the bus had just taken a reverse, exclusively for me :D . Was a nice filmi moment.

Anyways, a (self proclaimed) well deserved break for us now :D . 8 days of bliss awaits! Back to home sweet home! :) Yooohoooo!!

PS: A break for the blog as well. Will resume when I reach campus again! So long!

Day 89: 17th Sep, 2009

The eco paper was pretty interesting. Actually the paper wasn't, but the situations/dialogues preceding and succeeding it were. There is always this class of people who study hard but feel they have done nothing and their polar opposites who hardly study. The interaction when members of these species come against each other is pretty funny, usually loaded with sarcasm from the latter kind (probably because they have nothing better than sarcasm to offer :-p). Sample these dialogues from today:

- "Yaar, I haven't done Prisoners' dilemma... " .... [ oh shit! you mean you missed one topic in the whole book? How could you!" ]

- "Acha hua objectives tha yaar... bach gaye!" ... [ "umm...ohkkk! :-/ " ]

- "I actually had to guess seven of those twenty objectives!" ... [ "padhke aana chahiye tha na!" ]

One section mate (also my hostel wing mate) , who usually is pretty senile, has become a little bit of a psycho :-p . And that is because he lost a WHOLE 4 marks in the paper! And then there are souls who are dancing with joy, realising that a portion of their answer is correct and they will get some marks in it !

Celebrated with pizza for dinner. Celebrated what? Well, if you need a reason:

- life

- 4 exams, 4 nightouts (not everyone's cup of tea :D)

- only 2 more to go

- 2 days to go home!!

Get the drift? Celebrate, then find reasons. Had the company of Shreyas, Kaushik, Meshed (special thanks Meshed for the time :-p) and 55.Saurabh. Discussed some pressing issues amongst other things. Had a chill time.

Still got 2 exams though. Will remind myself in some time about it. Time to take a small nap now. Bon nuit.

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 87: 15th Sep, 2009

What pains more? Forgetting to write about the 3 marks you knew.. or bullshitting your way through the remaining 47? I knew one answer in the ITC paper today but was unable to recollect a couple of points, so I thought I would come back to it later. And eventually forgot about it :-S . Not really cribbing for the marks per se, but for the act. Ok, now a little more about the paper. I have previously grudged about the assessment pattern of the subject. On how silly it seems to evaluate an excel/access applications course on paper. But today we reached a new level. We had an 18 page supplement with the ITC paper and we were supposed to read those articles and answer questions :-S .

Day 86: 14th Sep, 2009

The issue of scalability is not just restricted to technology. It manifests in quite a profound manner in MANAC, typically during exams. I solve all those mini problems and have my concepts pretty clear (or so I delude myself). But in the exam, you get one big 10 marks problem and bamm! I think I can do better in that subject, then again, it may just be some hindsight bias :) Anyways, am not going to get the chance to prove that again... hopefully!

Memory is another weird thing in life. Met pachpan and Harlalka at the mess during dinner. Harlalka has 2 papers tomorrow, LAM and ITC ( MUAAAHAHAHAHHAHA @ sec D,E,F). And pachpan seemed to remember practically the entire LAM paper that we gave over a month back. I couldn't even remember the questions in today's paper :-p . hehehe. (@pachpan and Harlalka... you got your mention :-p).

Anyways, ITC tomorrow. That silly concept of a computer technology subject on paper comes again. Standing in the class is not too great. Will tomorrow bridge the gap or widen it? Wish there were some technology to answer that ... or wait... good there isn't :-p

Day 85: 13th Sep, 2009

CV verification today. During CV reviews, was asked by a lot of people to put numbers and quantify statements. Now ironically those same numbers may have to be deleted :-| ..

Anyways, end terms starting from tomorrow. Starting off with MANAC ! Started studying pretty late in the evening... wasn't able to do much myself. Then later on, Mr. pachpan took a few 10 min sessions that were more productive than the many hours I spent staring at the laptop. Anyways, back at my room now. We got exams in the morning so need to get some rest. It is only 4.30am today. I think I will finally beat the sunrise :-p !

Day 84: 12th Sep, 2009

FOURTH consecutive day (err.. night?) when I am sleeping AFTER sunrise! Today I tied a handkerchief around my eyes so that I feel it is still dark :D **lol** :D . The devil this time was the CV.

BTW, I fell victim to the risk assessment theory I put forth just yesterday. Had the ITC presentation at 10.00 and realised my mobile was ringing at 10.05 . Rushed off for the presentation. Not much of an issue though since the time was given by us anyways for the preponement. Full timepass in the presentation as well. Some imaginary question not present in the case should have been solved it seems :-p . And of course, the tossing between solver and data table.. hehehe..!

Had the money kannon presentation today... which looks for all those bullets. That took up afternoon. Then the CV struggle started. The bloody dispatch office was closed, adding to the complexity (and wasting Blue Dart money). But anyways, I think finally, I have more or less decent stuff here and there in the CV. Finally uploaded the CV at 05:58:00 for the 05:59:59 deadline. Afghanim ji .. iss CV ko freeze kiya jaaye..! .. But is this the sahi javaab?' .. Will know in course of time!

Day 83: 11th Sep, 2009

Reached my room at 8.30 in the morning and had the presentation at 10.00. The temptation to use this 1.5 hrs to squeeze in a small nap is the riskiest one, since you just don't wake up on time! I fortunately woke up at 9.45 and rushed to the class; only to find none of my other group members had come. Immediately started calling them. One smart guy had not slept, so he was safe. Two of them somehow woke up when I called them and rushed in a few min. One poor guy could not be reached and he dozed his way off and missed the presentation. Talk about a hard night's work wasted!

BIO presentations as usual continued with the madness of extra comments. Today saw a nice little goof-up by one of the groups. Even as the presentation was going on, suddenly the slides started coming without any content in them :D . Apparently they had opened some wrong file or something!

You might start wondering if we are all machines to just go on without sleep, but it is more about balancing sleep a little. You either make up on the lost sleep yourself or else it will catch up with you. I chose today afternoon to sleep. And guess what, slept from 3.45pm - 11pm - for a good 7 hours - in the day :D

Was woken up by an INDEX mate. Ran a little late to the INDEX room for the meet. Right after that, got a call from a classmate. He called to inform me that the ITC presentation had been preponed to tomorrow morning from tomorrow evening. Apparently the prof sent this mail at 11.45 in the night :-S. Back to the library to debug our excel sheet and then make the presentation. So here I am at 04.00 am, at the library again, this time for some other reason. Lucky me for having had my quota of sleep! Time to leave now(no rains today thankfully!) and get some sleep. Have sufficient buffer to get some sleep before the presentation :-p

PS: last day of lectures for term 1 done!

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

Days 80,81: 8th-9th Sep, 2009

23:50 hrs. Everyone is neck deep in work. Suddenly Shantanu sends a mail to the class: '2 Birthdays today. Guys come down to the mess in 15min'. Majority junta keep their work aside and more than half of section B is in the mess. After around 5min, everyone is impatient for the cake cutting/smearing ritual. Suddenly, the realisation dawns that no one has ordered the cake! Needless to say, Shantanu became the scapegoat and got his share of bumps. Celebrated with aaloo toast instead.

After a long time missed posting on the blog. The obvious reason is a complete lack of time. The last 2 days have been EXTREMELY busy. A quiz everyday AND project reports AND project presentations AND some INDEX work AND some assignments.

Have been working on the BIO report/presentation since yesterday. Today's entire evening on it as well. It is a funny subject. Working backwards redefined!

BTW, don't you love it when time gets created? confused? Well, had to attend some subject ppt today, but it got cancelled :D .

Oh shit, totally forgot to write about this. A week back the some seniors (most of them) left after their exams. Campus used to look pretty deserted then. Now they are trickling back. Guess the dustbins in the mess need to be replaced by bigger ones.

Day 79: 7th Sep, 2009

My mom would often remark in the kitchen and wish that she had three hands. Slightly extrapolating that a little further, I wish I had a zillion minds and a zillion hands and a zillion laptops to finish the gazillion number of tasks that are staring at me.

It is kinda 8th Sep now.. 06.30 in the morning. The alarm is ringing. Usually used to wake a person up. Giving quite the opposite signal right now. Am going to sleep. Good nite. Rather, good morning.

Day 78: 6th Sep, 2009

There is complete chaos, what with all the submissions, quizzes, assignments, projects, etc. My friend Sumantra had this wonderful gtalk status - "Complete Madness:learning marketing in ITC, excel in BIO and ECO, maths in MANAC, operations in maths, philosophy and BIO in OM" :D And mind you, I haven't even included anything about studying for the end terms next week!

In the midst of all this, had a three hour INDEX meet in the afternoon to evening. It was a good productive meet. Had snacks at the mess and went to my room.

Then I did something only I am capable of doing. Just ignored this truckload of stuff that was pending (I have 2 quizzes tomorrow - OM, QAM), took my ipod shuffle and went for a walk around the campus! Spent around an hour listening to music. Came to my room and chatted for around another couple of hours. Went to the night mess with a couple of friends. (The mess was EMPTY! :O:O) Back to my room and I am finally thinking of opening the book. How many pages will I turn before I doze off? Will know tomorrow!

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 76: 4th Sep, 2009

Slept off yesterday after all that tp. So, bunked the lectures today to study for the Eco test. As usual, studied a little; and majorly ended up reading a lot of xkcd (check it out! nice dry and sarcastic humor based comic strip) and Calvin and Hobbes. Wondered if I had read anything at all when I saw the quiz paper, but then, never mind.

Got our ITC marks. I have not done well as expected. But the marking gave a STRONG indication that the current pattern of assessment needs a MAJOR revamp. Guys who have been using a lot of excel and are pretty proficient with it haven't really scored as much as they should have.

Played some pool. Gave a practice apti test....... Got a little delayed there. Tried working a little bit on the ITC assignment. Where can I get there though? Might just do good by not interfering. Had a meet after that. ABS Vanki didn't show up his a-s-s. Guessing Friday night fever.

Thought of going back to the lib to work on the ITC project. Laughed at myself inside my head. Back at my room :D.

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 74: 2nd Sep, 2009

They say, as you sow, so you shall reap. Quite the opposite happened. Yesterday, we made the mistake of forgetting Sankar's bday. But today, we celebrated it with a cake and he had to bear an extra round of kicks :D

Today's OM lecture (which I bunked) was apparently full of CP, with Kaushik majorly doing all the redirection work. All random people throwing in random points and walking away with a few brownie points at the end of the lec.

Back to those late night blogs btw. It is 04:45 hours now. MANAC quiz tomorrow. Trying to put things together. Point is, you feel you have understoof stuff, but then when you try to solve something by yourself and construct a cash flow or something, bamm!.. :-S

Got the timetable for next term. We have 2 classes on Saturday as well :-( . AND an extra fin subject. That should be fun! :-p

Update: it is almost 6 and still stuck in the lib!! It is raining since the last 2 hours, can't go out with the laptop and all! :(

Day 73: 1st Sep, 2009

Usually we always hear about the 'icing on the cake'. Yesterday, encountered a new thing - 'icecream on the cake' :D . What happened is we majorly bungled up and (shamefully) forgot about this guy's birthday. Not to be outdone, Praveen comes up with this radical idea of putting together sandwiches in a special arrangement and topping the centre with an ice cream :D . Looked cool though.

Had a poll today on the section tee. Finally final now!