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 435:26th Nov, 2010

Day started off pretty early as I had a CBM quiz. The main reason I went for it is because it was going to be a MCQ paper. And didn't see any harm in trying out my luck :D

Time for a new activity from now - trading :D . I finally have a properly functional demat account. And apparently I had to make a trade in the first one month. So there I was, trying to see in that complex maze if there is a path to make some profit. Gladly did manage to find one, and walked off with a princely profit of Rs.100/- .. :-)

Treat plans once again disintegrated due to miscellaneous reasons. We went out anyways - and this time, for the first time in 1.5 yrs - to Yokos for some sizzlers. And we were all left wondering why we had never been there before! 'Coz the ambience and the food both were excellent (sans the chocolate pizza :-p) ! Definitely needs a revisit.

Day 419: 10th Nov, 2010

So in the midst of all this, we even had a CBM quiz today. The system to be followed was best 2 of 4. As I had done OK in the first two (+ had absolutely no time to even find out the syllabus of this one), I decided to skip it. And as luck would have it, the quiz apparently turned out to be a cakewalk! :-|

Now, my closing remark yesterday was that I wasn't sure how the new hoarding design would be received by my team people. Turns out - not so well :-p. And so immediately after my morning classes, I had to spend a few more hours modifying it. A few more calls and a few more mails took up the remaining afternoon-evening time.

Today we (senior core) decided to go out and enjoy. Work hard, party harder types. TG and MMR happened to have a very long, frustrating and not-so-positive day "in office" and therefore decided to take rest and not join us. We left with the intention of going to BBQ (after long! nice!) but mid-way, plan changed and we went off to Genesis yet again! :-S . It happens to be a nice place though, had a nice time, and got some nice pics clicked with Kisaan's digicam, instead of just my cell, the result being I am in a lot more pics than usual :D

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 404: 26th Oct, 2010

Woke up to find this mail from Pachpan.

Subject: "Kal subah 8:30 class hai .. so jao .."

Content:

Last mail sent :

Pachpan: 4:02

Me : 3: 54

Chatur : 3:50

Consultant : 3:49

MMR : 3:36

Kisaan : 3:25

Haathi : 3:20

One of the advantages with our CBM class is that the prof allows you to attend any of the sessions held during the day. Due to that, Pachpan has stopped attending the 8.45 am class since ages. Today, even Vanki adopted to that strategy. He blissfully slept off through the early morning class. So seems like Chatur and myself are the true champions - slept late, but still made it to class :D

Lately, my blog seems to have become a rant about my handset, but what to do. Every fault needs two visits to the city, once for depositing the handset and once again to collect it. This time, the new piece given also started giving problems. Went today and deposited my "new" handset back - waiting time two more weeks!

From there went to check on the status of an MR project. Happiness met tragedy. The good part was that I didn't even have to go up and meet the person. I got the required info at the reception itself. Now the bad part was that in those few minutes, my bike seems to have committed suicide :-( . Suddenly, it's self-start and horn stopped working  :-(

INDEX is coming near, quickly! A long list of tasks, only getting longer by the minute. Finished off some of them today - collecting some bills, meeting a vendor, arranging permissions. Allowed myself a little sleep after that as we had a meet at 01:00 hours, to draw up a tentative budget and a little bit of short term planning. Ended up spending quite some time on the former, peppered with some random deviations ranging from parties to PPI/PPOs to stuff on DC ;-) . It's 6.15 am now, and complete daylight. I have a class again at 8.45 am tomorrow (today??!). Will I make it? :-)

Day 396: 18th Oct, 2010 - Why's the blog private?!

CBM paper today. A typical fin paper. One where you look at the practice examples and feel all confident that you are going to 'crack it'. And then, the tryst with reality where a minor twist in the question brings your dream down like a pack of cards :D

The paper was in the noon. I had missed my lunch as I had squeezed in the 5 minutes I had spared, to complete some formalities required for opening my demat account. So I was quite hungry after the paper and had a samosa and Amul Kool and came back to my room. But very soon, the news started pouring in from all quarters that awesome burgers were being available in the mess! Now when words of praise start coming from stark opponents of the mess, there obviously was a strong urgency to get the burger, lest it runs out. Of in spite of not being very hungry, I went to the mess. Met Chatur there, and had a mini spicmacay/music discussion. Then walked to the main gate ATM, as I wanted to test if my SBI card was working (yes!). Took a small shortcut walk around the campus, and then made my way back to the mess to take extra burgers back as parcel for Pachpan & Kisaan. The only person who didn't like the gesture seems to be Vanki; competition for his "restaurant" you see! ;-)

The saga of eating out continues! Today, on Vanki's request, we (also Pachpan + Kisaan) made our way to the no-longer-jinxed Brij-ki-rasoi. The highlight was Vanki's super-awesome hindi usage at one point. He actually used the word "yadi" in a sentence rather than the commonplace "agar"! I really wonder where he heard that word in the first place. And as for food, we had a quick, tasty and typical dinner - Rajma for Vanki, aaloo for Pachpan and one standard Paneer dish.

Pssst. It's my birthday now :-) . But nobody knows ;-) . I don't want external sources to provide this data, and so am off the social radar. No etrigan, no facebook, and hence, no blog :-p . Lots of calls from outside IIML though. Had a Skype chat with my folks at home. They cut a cake in my name! :-) . No wonder I love technology!

Day 395: 17th Oct, 2010 - Last mid-sems! :D

Woke up pretty late today. Late considering the fact that I did sleep comparatively early yesterday :-p , and early considering it's a SUNDAY! Breakfast of course was a distant dream. Settled for an early lunch at Fauzi. 

The afternoon was any other lazy one :D . Was listening to songs. Made a playlist after a long time.

Well, finally, something tangible indicating that we are inching towards the end of our course... From tomorrow, our mid-sems start. And this will be the last mid-sem here. Writing this sentence suddenly put me in a little bit of a flashback, my feelings about my first mid-sem here. Not that I was a super stud or anything, but for sure I definitely wasn't tensed even then (not even for the dreaded MANAC!). But I do remember putting in (a lot?) more effort :D . Including night-outs in the library! And not just me; the whole gang comprising also of Dhamdhere (teaching LAM to Mommy :-| ..), Vats et all. Memorable days for sure! And compare that to today, when we (Pachpan, Chatur & me) wrapped up studying for CBM in all of 2-3 hours :D . Smart work! :-p

By the time we finished, it became pretty late and nothing was available in the mess. So Pachpan and me went to Richi Rich. It was super crowded. So we had a pani puri while we waited outside :D . But still no vacancy. So we went to Zaffran. Sat there for 5 minutes, and then the waited told us they would take at least 15-20 minutes to serve any order! :-S . Back to Richi Rich! Luckily, we got a seat without any more to-and-fro trips. In retrospect, all I am wondering is - with infinite time ahead of us, why really were we being impatient? :-|

We had called for a small session with the Ops team. Although it was to be driven by the juniors in my team, I just went to see how it goes. Mostly just a nominal presence to boost their confidence :-) . All I did was narrate a couple of incidents from last year and ensure the team realises it's a happening place to be :D. Similar to what my senior did last year :-p

Day 392: 14th Oct, 2010

Had a quiz at 7.45am! Trust me, it is mentally more intimidating than 8am :-p . Yesterday, as I said, had such an awesome dinner that I immediately slept off after coming back. I thought I'll probably spend a few minutes reading up early morning, but managed to wake up just in time to give the quiz. How it went is beyond the scope of this post :-) . The good thing is that it is a best two out of four system for this subject; so there is still a next time :D

One of the problems of being in a system/environment with many like-minded people is that it distorts or at least narrows your perception of reality. Generally having been in the company of nice people, I often expect people to be honest, open and frank. That is why I just cannot understand at times the kind of life some other people lead. Today we had to meet a guy for some INDEX fair work. So, Vanki, Ashat, TG and myself went all the way to a place near the airport. And the man we met really seemed to be one who promises to build castles on a foundation of air. And when the foundation seems to be a little shaky, the castle becomes a slum :-p . Seems like I wrote something pretty difficult to decipher, but I'll know what I meant. 

Took 3 whole hours. And we seem to have wasted that time! :-S . Nothing productive seems to have come out. Except for one idea. If that works out, I'll forgive him :-p

Came back only at 3am. Was pretty sleepy in the car, but not sleepy now. Have just been randomly browsing stuff. Watching videos of Milgram experiment (Very interesting! Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment) on YouTube. It's just beyond 5 am now. I guess I'll go get some sleep, lest I sleep through the afternoon class tomorrow.

Day 376: 28th Sep, 2010

So now comes along the first bombshell to be dropped this term. Our CBM quiz, the first one of the season, has been announced. Need to find out what's going on.

The LTL class today was fun :D. Cold calling would definitely be one of the biggest weapons profs have, and that proved itself today. One of the groups was arbitrarily called out to present their viewpoint on a couple of aspects of the book 'Siddhartha'. Turned out the two people who had worked on their ppt were absent! The remaining guys didn't put in much fight to even read out from the slide :D

Had a warm-up meeting with INDEX facchas. Time to set the gears in motion.. \m/

Day 362: 14th Sep, 2010

Woke up really early today - 6 am! Mornings are really beautiful :-) . Listened to music for a good 2 hours, side by side finishing off some pending work.

Had a productive CBM class :D - I drew caricatures on my INDEX core friends :-p . Whatever anyone else may think, I felt very proud of myself ;-)

It is funny the way paradoxes keeping popping up. I just finished my Service Marketing class and went to the local SBI branch to get some work done. And felt 5000% that the fellow on the opposite side should be attending the class :-S

It is equally funny (but not surprising) how everyone is always available for a treat :D . Becomes so very difficult to get everyone's approval for a party or a meeting, but mention a treat and wagging tongues show up in no time :D . The occasion was the celebration of Chatur & Kisaan's PPO/PPI (resp.) in INDEX - with Vanki's addition today! We went to this new place called Zaafran, which claimed to specialise in Mughlai cuisine :-P . Didn't seem like that, but the place was pretty ok. Super quantity though! Not having looted the treat givers enough, we made our way to CCD. Unfortunately, my recently discovered chocolate indulgence Dark Passion wasn't available :-( . Settled with Devil's Own. Not bad ;-)

Got back and we had a small INDEX meet in my room. Few updates, few plans, few arguments. That ended at 01:00 am. 

But now it's 3.40 am. And guess what, I am ending my day exactly as it began - another 2 beautiful hours of music. C'est la vie!

Day 361: 13th Sep, 2010 - Ink wars!

My timetable for this term is bad!

From Mon-Thu, I have the first class of the day (8.45 am), the last class of the day (4.30-6.00 pm) and one random class in between. Which basically means a lot more sleeping - what else can you do during those short periods of rest? :-p

The Service Marketing class has turned out to be a surprise packet. The prof kicks ass! :D . The guy has industry experience, and spices up the class with a good number of real life examples and jokes. A sample - try figuring out what USA and OUU can stand for in Consumer segmentation (TG: SEC A, 35-45 years)!

Pachpan's finally back on campus. So as always, my white board and laptop became entertainment hubs. And all of a sudden, in spite of my warning, they pulled out the plastic wrapper on the sound panel. That set off similar triggers as on this day. Today's weapon of my attack was this bottle of INK I found in Kisaan's shelf. Splashed a little in both their rooms :-p

After an exchange of promises of revenge :D, Kisaan, Pachpan and me went out to get our handsets repaired (weirdly, everyone's piece had a problem). After a Lucknow tour by Kisaan (which I don't know whether it was a part of a plan to frustrate or not), finally only Pachpan managed to get his charger. Went to Dasaprakash for dinner - it lived up to its reputation. Revenge for yesterday :D