Day 267: 28th Mar, 2010

A day of celebration for around half the batch today. We had our FM2 paper today - which, for those anti-fin junta, would happen to be the last paper they would ever write in Fin.

Now, FM is one of those subjects where you have to read up something before the exam. But I woke up at 10.40 in the morning. And that too thanks to my wingie who walked by! And I didn't even realise exams were going on when I woke up, just wanted to continue sleeping :-| .. And usually the paper takes up all your time (and leaves you wanting for more). But, "the great ME" finished the paper a good 35min before time. But also, in no way is it supposed to indicate anything about the performance :-p 

In a way done with my exams. The remaining line up is:

SCM - open book

MIS - open book

HRM - even an open book won't help :-p

So I went and played some badminton today. (Haha.. excuses!). Didn't enjoy it too much, partly because the energy was missing and partly because I lost :-p

Prepared better for the open book exam this time. Went to the CC and took all printouts one day before! super improvement ! :D

Day 264: 25th Mar, 2010

Had our last class of PGP1 today.. I woke up at 10:01 for the 10'o clock MIS lecture. But I did want to attend it.. confirmed with Dhamdhere if he was coming. Reached class at 10:20 :-p .. luckily Sir didn't say anything. Captured a nice 8 min video :) And took the last snap in CR 103 for 2009-2010... a pic of the now empty classroom..

From there, yet another farewell.. to Pravin, who was finally leaving campus. The fellow would have stayed on if he could. Loaded with more stuff now - the best of the lot - speakers! :D . The speakers, though seem to have a little bit of Pravin's ghost or something.. as soon as I connected the speakers, I heard the 'Tum Mile' title song 3-4 times continuously. (Pravin used to hear the song in an infinite loop for days on end :-| .. much to the chagrin of his neighbour :D ..)

Two quizzes one day before the exam. Two ways to look at it:

a) Silly to bother us with this a day before the exam :-S

b) Good match practice, let's crack this one!

But people like me follow philosophy#3 - it's called "kya farak padta hai !"

Trying to study ADA since evening. I realised hearing about stuff from people isn't really working. So now I have been trying to go through the slides by myself.. 

Also had a refreshing entertainment session at the night mess - small drama over the room allocation thing. It was indeed funny the way some silly points were being thrown around by people, with super-animated pappa trying to fend it all off :D . As my friend Deepak said - "that's what happens when you put too many 'intelligent' people together".

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 258: 19th Mar, 2010

Oh, I don't know how I forgot to write this yesterday! Some more raid on seniors - this time the target being Pravin. I took a tennis racket and a TT bat from him (for now .. more to follow in a week). Kisaan took away BOTH his badminton rackets and pachpan also took away his tennis racket. Man, this is fun :D

I continued my exploitation of the high attendance resource piled up by sleeping through the FM class (in the room i.e. :-p) . Went for the HRM class in which this funny thing happened - the prof made a statement which, thanks to the wonders of the Queen's language, can be interpreted in an altogether different meaning - "... the same applies to sexual harassment. You must have experienced that in your Behaviour In Organisations class". After that, sat down all by myself and did the SCM Nike assignment. That felt nice :)

I seem to have lots of time right now. Just saw The Dark Knight again. Read quite a bit of Calvin and Hobbes. And a little bit of Harry Potter. And all this conveniently sitting on my bed, thanks to the extra long LAN cord given by Sanghvi! :D . It's 5.30am now and the charge on my laptop is almost out. Guess I'll treat it as a sign and sign off for the day (or night.. or the next day.. arghh!). Chalo guys, cya tomorrow and have a nice weekend!

PS: the last 2 words reminded me that we have tons and tons of extra lectures of ADA lined up in the next 2-4 days..!! shucks!

Day 256: 17th Mar, 2010

Gone are the days when I used to get a bit late and had to run for grabbing that bite before the first lecture. Nowadays,  I sometimes wake up so late that even after missing the first lecture, I have absolutely no time to have breakfast.. I find myself rushing for the 2nd lecture. Fortunately for me, I have a huge cushion of high attendance that I am making good use of now. We had a marathon 3-hour FM guest lecture today - which I bunked - and even my dark complexioned friends could not stop the envious shade of green from showing on their face :D

Just finished seeing a movie called Identity. Pretty interesting movie, a thriller - I recommend.

Day 247: 8th Mar, 2010 - Dont feel like it?

I don't know whats gotten over me these days, have been super sleepy. The most alarming thing about this is the fact that I just don't realise the alarm ringing. Snoozing the alarm was a regular thing, but now I am in a different league altogether!

Had our FM quiz today. 5 questions - each with 5 alternatives. I inky-pinky-ponkied and distributed a,b,c,d,e amongst those 5. No alternative should feel left out na?

Inspired myself with this post. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/03/i-dont-feel-like-it.html 

A couple of days back, randomly these GPRS settings arrived on my phone. Now being a student (not a great one but still) at an MBA course, I understand a bit of how these things work. I am quite conscious that all these schemes are disguised to appear very helpful - but behind the mask they just remain new revenue generation streams for those telecom companies. But the human mind is human for a reason - it voluntarily chooses to remain stupid at times. Consequently have been using my phone apps more. The upside of course is I am finally utilising the more powerful features of my phone, downside obviously is the money that I keep giving for every service :P . Am quite impressed with a couple of apps I installed - the Opera Mini browser is really nice! Much much better than the default browser. Also installed this cross-platform IM app called Nimbuzz. Seems nice.

Went off to the city to get some INDEX work done. Had a meeting again later in the night - partly KT session and a little planning ahead. The only thing on our minds is to make INDEX 2010 bigger and better. And we will.

Time's running super fast even as I am awake. It was 11pm a few minutes ago and it is suddenly 3 in the morning :-/ . Let me put myself to sleep. I need to give a decent chance to the alarm to wake me up tomorrow.

Day 221: 10th Feb, 2010

Life here is becoming more and more random! Today somebody played a prank - and what a prank :-| - by creating a very authentic looking marriage invitation card celebrating the bonding of two batchmates and .. you guessed it .. mailed it to the entire batch! And mailed it by somehow getting access to the said person's gmail account! Ridiculous!

Had our FM paper today - 3 questions, 10 marks each. Read this line from the second question - "the sales will increase at the rate of 10% each year for another four years but the sales will erode at the rate of 5% p.a. in year three and four". Whatever are you supposed to make of that?! :-O . And the entire sum depended on this interpretation :-S

Day 219: 8th Feb, 2010 - Monkey Management!

Our section is quite (in)famous for asking for deadline extensions. True to the record, a few guys had been asking for postponement of submission of a couple of assignments. The efforts did pay off - the boring HRM journal reading task had been extended. But our FM prof's style of putting through the same point for his subject was awesome :D . His mail -

"The date for the first assignment submission is extended to 16th Feb 2010.

A line of advise for the lobbies. No more extensions on any course related matters will be entertained. You manage your monkey and I will manage mine.

Cheers until then "

Allowed myself to bunk a QAM class in the morning today to enjoy the luxury of some extra sleep :D :D

The next MIS class was the usual - scrambling to copy the assignment in the first 5 min, listening as the prof whiled his time (and ours) rambling on something that has no coherence or relevance to what he should be speaking on. Doesn't seem to be a good course at this juncture in the first place. Would have been much more logical to have a strategy course now and keep this as an elective next year.

INDEX room is now spacious, thanks to kisaan. Poor fellow had to become a mazdoor to unload the boxes at the shop :D . Had the extension of yesterday's meeting today. Things came to a logical conclusion.

Have my exams from day after. Doesn't seem like that at all. I have friends who are worried about tests a few days away.. and here I am to restore nature's balance.

And just as I finish writing this post, it's started to rain. Wonders never cease!

Day 199: 19th Jan, 2010

My classmate and hostel mate, ADJ, is ironically, not in control of his sleep durations these days. So I have this deal with him where, every four times I wake him up, he treats me with a choclate :D

As usual, today morning, 5 minutes before the lecture, I was doing my usual run to the mess to grab a bite before continuing the run to the classroom. I stopped to make the wake up call...

Me (banging on the door) : "Chal uth saale.. paanch min hii hai"

ADJ (sleepy and half-closed eyes) : "arre aaj toh 9.45 ka hii class hai na?"

Me : "Haan toh ho gaya na 9.40!"

ADJ : "Huh?! Abhi ek minute pehli hii toh 9 tha"

:D :D

Golden dialogue in the FM lec: 'Cases are like vegetables.. yeh khaana zaroori hai..! '

We had some presentations in the HR class where each group was asked to come up with suggestions on how teaching in a particular course could be improved. Pretty good concept I would say! What was (selfishly biased towards it) most satisfying to me that the batch thought of INDEX as a pretty useful idea. Definitely encouraging!

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 157: 2nd Dec, 2009

What a useless start to the day. Even before I could put my bag down and take my seat, there came the announcement of yet another surpise quiz in MANAC :-S . I guess 80% of the class did not have any clue about 80% of the paper. Not that it matters much anyways.

Well, in this cruel world of academic reality, I must also mention that projects and submissions still exist. Just that I am yet to get into them. Had our FM submission today, and my good hearted group allowed me the task of taking printouts and submitting the report. (I later learnt some other groups had members who didn't do even this on time, so yea, that way I did score :-p). I did do a decent job of it, even searching for a new image for the front page, replacing it with the old pixellated SpiceJet logo and taking a new printout, all within the last 15min of submission \m/

Oh yea, and another of those awesome things happened, which wouldn't have happened but for the IIM brand. The Media Relations Committee on campus got a deal with which we could get copies of 'The Economist' at just Rs.20/- !! Which is 10% of the actual price! Good job MRC! :)

Day 137: 12th Nov, 2009

I don't think the profs are setting papers for this mid-semester (trimester?). The script seems to be right out of a Quentin Tarantino movie! Bloody and gory, leaving behind a lot of dead bodies!

Had I even had an inkling of the type of FM paper that was to come, I so would not have put up the struggle(!!) I did yesterday. A random 100 mark paper, with 50 marks on a case! :-S . And the two formulae I learnt at the remedials didn't come at all :-( . And all this for a half-credit course! :-S Not even a chance to make up in the end terms (NOT complaining :D).

Economics tomorrow. Have kind of started going through the slides. Seems to make more sense than Eco-1. And has far fewer graphs :) :)

Day 136: 11th Nov, 2009

Had QAM today. The surprising thing was no one in my class knew the answer/approach to a few problems that were given in the class worksheet! :-| . The question paper was disappointing - one question on F-distribution and six marks worth of theory!! I guess the QAM dream run comes to an end here.

Had pizza for dinner. Am having too many pizzas lately :-| But this one was free as I am going to bill it as a part of Saurabh's Mckinsey party ;-)

The after effects of this heavy cheesy dinner was more daunting. Went to attend the FM remedials. I think I set a record of being the first person to sleep during remedials :-( . Nothing entered my head, except some silly equation to determine optimum cash balance. Went to the mess to study so that I have access to a continuous stream of tea. Even that wasn't helping much. I could probably have poured the hot tea on my head and still fallen asleep :-|

Luckily the yellow spectacled Fin God came along and took me to his study circle @ Aarti's room. That time turned out to be more productive and I finally managed to grasp a few concepts. I just hope the time value of knowledge does not depreciate before the next few hours :-)