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 512:17th Feb, 2011

Yet again I woke up at dawn! And took me a good 30 min or so to get back to sleep again. Fortunately woke up earlier than yesterday. Too much inertia though - skipped breakfast.

I seem to have made my 'casual steps' into an algorithm to pass off the day. Stuck to it. Lunch, laptop, gym, dinner. And that's a little flexible in the sense I could squeeze in 2 movies today, due to well, lots more free time. Fight Club was kicka** I thought, but Rocky Balboa was kinda disappointing, didn't match up to the Rocky series one bit.

And in the midst of all this, I found time to fill in the rudimentary details and then flunk the numerical part of this STeN-Chy online test. In a way, lucky for me; was saved from the 150 question long psychometric test which most others flunked :P

And then, I probably became the one of the only 4 PGP2s still working on a project - yes, the much discussed FRA. As noted previously, we thought we should be giving in more decent stuff. Spent around playing a little bit with some databases we have subscribed to (OK, only one database. OK, that too was done by my friend :P)

Was pretty sleepy somewhere then in between. But the night mess seems to have driven it away. And now at 5.20am, I am unfortunately not sleepy, but hungry :-S . Look on the bright side though, my sleep won't be "disturbed" at dawn :P

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 502:7th Feb, 2011

Woke up early, had breakfast! Then started getting bothered about the FRA project which was due, in 5 hours :-| . Went to the rooms of two of my group members; both were sleeping :-| . Man, term 6 is special! Anyways, one of them told me he had seen "a little" of what's to be done, and that he would come up with "something". Pretty risky terms in that statement, but I was helpless as I anyways had to attend my LD class where again our final presentation was due. That went OK. 

Immediately after my LD class, I contacted my group mates. As guessed, we were still close to have done nothing. Got an AMR guy to do "some regression" on "some data" and get "some result". Meanwhile, I even had to go to our prof to get our presentation scheduled, since we had already missed our alloted time. The good thing is profs are cooperative, definitely so in term 6 :-) . He agreed to see our ppt without any fuss, and having seen our ppt, very calmly declared the lack of effort, but fortunately he gave us another deadline to make improvements :-) 

The good part was in the small time gap between negotiating with the prof and waiting for my group to come, I managed to jump in and have some gulab jamun and Kwality ice-cream for this company's ppt which I didn't even attend. But as you sow, so you reap. The ppt that I was stipulated to attend - for the same company's IT division - didn't have attendance taken. To add salt to the wound, the next ppt which I skipped for my gym session, had attendance :-(

But God's generous. Good ending to the day :-) . Pizza for dinner - KungFu Panda's treat for his General Management PPO! And then lots of (re)Beginner's Luck at bridge! Naice!

Day 497:2nd Feb, 2011

The barrage of quizzes and projects are here, for one final time. Had 2 quizzes today morning. PM was fine, but as feared yesterday, I had to pay the price for sleeping during yesterday's QAF crash course :(

Kisaan's lying-on-the-bed-full-time-watching-sitcoms fever seems to be rubbing on me. Having bunked my FRA class (optimising available bunks :P), I had way too much time in the afternoon. And I suddenly started not one, but two new series! Two and a Half Men, of which I saw one episode and Heroes, of which I saw 8 episodes! The latter one is gripping! Even skipped gym because of that (though had a brisk walk along the campus after snacks).

After a long time, went to Brij for dinner. One place where the food is consistently simple and good! Felt really sleepy after that heavy meal, but I had a KT session with the juniors. That ran pretty much into the night, around 3.45. And now, another episode of Heroes later, I think I'll call it quits for today.

Day 496:1st Feb, 2011

Grudgingly made my way along to the early morning class; I already had 3 bunks in the subject and didn't want to take any chances. But one good thing I did - I used up that time to "plan out" my day ahead. Off late, I am guilty of wasting way too much time, but now I am back to my actual sticky notes to keep myself on track. The list did come in useful. I, especially, love scribbling tasks out of my pad and thus preparing the plan was a good way to keep me motivated.

PM lecture was fun too as I had my laptop with me. I cheated my mind to believe "we didn't have net" which created useful time to read up on some of those tabs as well as to update my previous blog posts. BTW, got our quiz 1 marks. I got 15/15 in that - how cool - last time that happened must have been in school! :P

A tiring visit to the gym, a rejuvenating shower, and a simple dinner later, Pachpan,  Kisaan and myself were playing with the huge General Awareness book that Pachpan has procured (Kisaan won the game). Anyways, Pachpan, MMR and myself just made our way to the night mess. And now, I just had a crash course on what to do for tomorrow's quiz, by finGod. Just hope I am not SO sleepy that i forget everything! :S

Day 489:25th Jan, 2011

With some enormous motivation, I woke myself up as I had 3 quizzes today morning - ProdMan and QAF and then FRA (during the class). ProdMan was OK. In QAF, I stopped reading the questions after the first page, and directly marked random answers. FRA, well, no comments.

Now, I don't know whether it is a good thing or a bad thing - but I finished off all available episodes of HIMYM and The Big Bang Theory :-|

Now, tomorrow being a holiday, I rekindled the long-jinxed Taj breakfast plans. Finally things fell in place with a lot of people agreeing to the plan. And sure as hell, I was going to be wake up on time for that. Except that, I made a cautionary call there to confirm if the facility would be open the next morning. And we were told, if at all we get a place, it would be under time constraints, which was pointless. The jinx continues! :(

Day 482:18th Jan, 2011 - Kronos is here!

The day started with the usual FRA class. What followed though was not so usual. Motivated by AdiJ's prior condition to have me as a disciple, I read up a little bit of fin (1.5 years late, but better than never). Was fun actually, and surprisingly, I did know quite a bit of it ;-)

Had the Brand Management class in the afternoon. Now that is one super fantastic prof - personally, the best we have had till now. Normally, I have a complete blackout 5min into the lecture, but this I have been able to hear for the entire 90min. Great stuff!

A batchmate and member of Team SynapsE has come up with this new portal - Kronos. And true to what it claimed in the teaser, it is going to change the way people live at helL! It is a fantastic shared calendar. Something that you see and wonder why it hadn't been done before! Hats off!

Just got back after celebrating TG's birthday. As last year, he got hyper, had a big chase with Pachpan and somewhere in between threw cake on my jacket :-S . But man, he did get some awesome beating! Thanks to a new weapon of mass destruction that has been recently discovered - Shomo's chappals!

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 476:12th Jan, 2011

I am so often super quick in taking decision and action on stuff many people would consider trivial :P . When I checked my mails in the morning, I saw that we had one from Oculus, inviting us to quickly sign up for IIMPrints - the Annual Yearbook of IIM Lucknow. The yearbook has a one page testimonial each, for all students of the outgoing batch, prepared by their friends. Pronto, I signed up to upload the same for Pachpan and Chatur.

I was happy to attend the FRA class today, since it meant I could miss the ppt I was scheduled to. Unfortunately for me, the ppt got postponed due to some flight delays. Went to my room, changed and got back - only to find out there wasn't even attendance for this one! Damn :-(

A long 3-4 day break from the gym. Definitely motivated myself to go for it today. Am also trying to see if I can go for the 10km run at Manfest. To that end, practiced quite a bit on the treadmill and cycle and a couple of other leg-strengthening equipment. Really exhausted! Attended the brand man class immediately after that, followed by dinner.

Super tired and sleepy though. Will doze off soon tonight.

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 469:5th Jan, 2011 - Life in a freezer

A surprise test greeted us today in the FRA class. Luckily for me, it was non-evaluative :D.

But the big thing to write about would definitely be the temperature here! The barometer is hitting rock bottom! I woke up at 6.15 in the morning to check why my heater had stopped working. Only to realise it has not! :-S . It is THAT cold! And the fog too! At 9am, I can't even see Umang (the sports center - easily visible from my balcony usually).

Had a company ppt to attend late evening. Inspired myself to squeeze in a quick gym session before that. Didn't feel too well though. Managed only 3 minutes on the tread mill. Reduced all the other exercises to ensure I would shave, bathe, suit up and still get to the ppt on time. Only to realize the ppt was getting too delayed. And yea, the 'last mover advantage' theory is now more wide-spread. A lot more people were willing to explore that option, even bringing themselves to face the deterring cold outside the classroom. But, jo jeeta wohi sikander ;-) and yes, yours truly managed to ace it again :D

Day 468:4th Jan, 2011

Must give it to our FRA prof for all his attempts at humour :D. First was his attempts to draw participation of the Stex student by asking him to pronounce the names of the foreign authors. Today he talked about the importance of a 'proposal' (the reference point of pun being our submission).

Spent the afternoon trying to see if I could use some opportunity for trading. Didn't seem to find a successful one. Pachpan returned after his newly attained chacha-hood and got some good amount of sweets. That was good.

Went to the gym on time today. It also doubled up a bit as a way of catharsis. Funny incident - I started using a new piece of equipment to work on my shoulders. And I was feeling all proud and happy exercising with one particular weight; until Fauji Khare suddenly came behind me and asked me to work out with 2.5x that load. And man, the first time I tried holding that rod, I could easily sense being "pullled up" instead of "pulling that weight down". 

And I have no idea why - but somehow suddenly got hooked on to yet another new sitcom - The Big Bang Theory. Found it really hilarious :D . 10 episodes on season one finished off in almost a trot! \m/

Day 462:29th Dec, 2010

Same old morning getting inundated with lectures. Seems like we also had to submit an initial proposal document for our FRA project. So sat around working on that for some time. Seems like a long time since I did anything like that. Finished that just in time to land up for the batch meet by Pcom - a small little "expectation setting" purpose. Poor guys, they really have to slog!

Went around to Dham's room later to get some feedback. Hope I get the chance to apply it too in the near future. Then went off to celebrate the birthdays of Sud and Sarin. The latter involved a couple of more "innovative" "celebrations" with Pappa employing his creativity to make a really gross 'maggi mix'! And what was even more creepy was that Sarin used that to wipe off the PINK cake off his face! :-S Eeeks!

Day 455:22nd Dec, 2010 - Suited up!

Our FRA class was full entertainment today. The prof has a weird sense of humor. First was his playing around with the a < b < c representation. Then his only and specific involvement of the Stex student in pronouncing the foreign author names. And then the interaction during attendance - "Does any friend of his know why he hasn't comes for any lecture yet? Not a single friend? Everyone is his enemy?" and in response to a guy saying someone was absent as that person had fever "Why are you feeling shy to say that? Did you give it to him?" :D

Came back to my room and suddenly it so happened a process was to start today. Had to cut short on my trading timepass in order to take a bath. My quest for hot water took me across to 3 sets of bathrooms, including the one on the floor above, but still - no use :( . This was followed by a sparse late lunch, a chai at Fauzi, a pre-scheduled meeting at the PGP office regarding my attendance (resulting in some absurd weird condition!), and some more home-made sweets at Chatur's room.

The entire evening went in the process. A small window period where a zillion possibilities were analysed. It is indeed a wonder how the brain works so fast under constraints. Eventually though, the final click of the button - whether to apply or unapply - came from the heart, MMR being a classic case in point. I hadn't been able to decide and continued being a part of the process, simultaneously making ISD calls to confirm more details. Anyways, I think I am more sure now, though with me one never knows :D. Have made it through to the next round - which happens to be early tomorrow morning. So need to wake up soon. So I better zzZZzz now. Adios!

Days 453,454: 20th-21st Dec, 2010 - Walking the last mile

Wow! Just can't believe the speed with which 5 terms have passed by!

Anyways, the combined post is because I slept off early yesterday, 8.30pm, a little too early infact for helL's standards :D. Not much to do yesterday. Finished off with the registration formalities. Caught up with a few stex-returned batchmates - finally saw the guy who lost half of himself back there! A few others who were back from stex also seemed to have lost weight, except of course for my good friend Kung Fu Panda, who seems to have gained a few more kilos of awesomeness :P + of course it was freezing cold and I had this feeling that excessive exposure to it wouldn't bode well. And hence, I just found a nice excuse to snuggle myself on the bed and get some sleep.

Today morning I attended my first class of the last term. (Even had breakfast after what seems like a zillions years!) Due to the PGP1 exams, we ended up having the class in CR103 - my old classroom. My actual seat was already occupied, so I ended up sitting one row behind. But that didn't stop me from reminiscing about all the super brilliant moments spent in that class - 3 cheers to section B for that! :-) . Then went to Chatur's room to gorge on all those sweets gotten from home. Not to mention the bonus of getting a few chocolates from the stex people nearby :D . And finally saw the movie 'Usual Suspects' - I found it OK.

Had a company ppt in the afternoon. Many more to follow. I guess a good amount of time this term is going to go this way. The funny part today though was that a Pcommer's name was called out and he wasn't there! :P . Had the burger in the mess (newly rechristened as 'Annapoorna') - seems like a 'Warm Welcome' sign with the most popular item.

Meanwhile, TG got his pappu. Spent some time talking about that, a lot more negotiating for the scale of the treat and then a lot more on random bakwaas. Which somehow ended up in the decision that we were not going to eat in the mess. And so we went to the (by now default) Brij ki Rasoi and stuffed ourselves to the max - no one else paid and it became a 'starter to the main treat' ;-)

Also Pachpan, Bala and me were riding triples and we kind of had a 'standstill skid' from the bike at 3.4 :D. Nobody got hurt or anything, but it was uncanny considering I had joked about it just that evening with a couple of other friends! Spoooky no?! :D

Slept off immediately when I came back. But then got up a couple of hours ago. Anyways, too much of pointless browsing done. It's 5.30 am now :-p . Good by helL's standards and have now more than made up for yesterday's early retirement. Time to go to sleep again so I wake up for tomorrow's class. Gn.