Day 355: 31st Aug, 2010

Just when we all thought 2nd year exams are chill (at least those of us who didn't have CorVal had rights to harbour such thoughts), came along this sinister paper to mock at us all. The only thing I can be confident about is the few numbers that I had taken apriori on the textbook :-P

MadMan as usual lived up to his name. Today suddenly we realised the dude hadn't booked a ticket home because he had other "plans". Yeah, right! Thanks mainly to Pachpan's drive and my resourcefulness, we did manage to cost-effectively route him to where he should belong!

Celebrated BigGuy's birthday, a day earlier since most of us are leaving in the day tomorrow. We had a guest today for celebrations - Chote. And let the name not fool you, the hardest hits (by far!) came from him! Anyways, lucky for him, some hard hitting batsmen weren't there today. Anyways, the dude is set in for a separate dose from the Tam Gang. Ah, being the president of such a community, sometimes it is not just your shoulders where you feel the pressure :-P

Day 329: 4th Aug, 2010

I was quite proud of myself and also a little surprised when I first managed to wake up at 6.something. Shamefully though, I just didn't manage to wake myself enough and ended up missing the 8.15 Int Fin class! Later on heard, the prof was really curious to see the new celebrity of the class - Pachpan! :D 

Have had about 3-4 sessions of Bridge by now, but I haven't improved my awareness levels as much as I should have. Especially considering that's the essence of Bridge. Desperately need to internalize the bare minimum act of keeping count!

A slight improvement in my swimming record - did 4 laps continuously! But I think I must start setting higher targets. In fact I'll do it right now - 10 laps at a stretch, by mid September!

In the midst of this all, continuing the infinite coupling - reading Atlas Shrugged and watching LOTR. And btw, the latter seems to be a more painful indulgence!

Day 292: 28th Jun, 2010

Lots of classes today! Attended Barood's NVP session, then the session on Retail Mark, the Strat Man session and an Int Fin extra class. The Int Fin class was particularly interesting. Shruti was sitting with Pachpan's best friend - Mr. Khadiya :D . Anyways, as the class started, Khadiya left to the sit with Sudeep in the adjacent row and Pachpan shifted ahead. And then began the exchanging of love notes between the two :D . Kids man these MBA grads are :-P

Went to Barbeque Nation :-D .. Chatur and Psycho's treat! Had a real nice time out there. Cursed the mad man initially for delaying the outing :-p And of course, the brilliant tashan shown by him towards Shanky for lifting off the helmet :D . Vanki saala is still refusing to acknowledge 'the secret'. Need to get the cat out of the bag. Of course, even he couldn't stop blushing when his alleged date walked in to the table right next to us :D , and that too along with someone who owes his establishment a good sum of money :-P . And yes, I lived right up to my sweet tooth reputation by having around 10 angoori gulabjamuns, dipped in ice cream :D

Had an english play by Abhivyakti - the theatre group on campus. The play was crafted around a mystery, and although I couldn't see the whole of it, whatever I saw was pretty nice.

Day 288: 24th Jun, 2010

So Pachpan decided to remain all rolled up in his bed, banking on a proxy for his first class. I had already refused to do this (seriously, no giving/taking proxy from/for me) and therefore the focus was shifted to Vanki. At the last moment, he felt it was not possible. And it was fun (a little sadistic :-p) to see Pachpan's reaction at this discovery in the next class :-p

Spent 3 whole hours in the afternoon getting the INDEX room cleaned. Was a major cleaning exercise. Disposed off a whole lot of old redundant stuff ! The room looks super spacious now. And eerily clean :-p

We had our team building class in the evening today as we were supposed to have an outdoor activity. And man, what an activity it turned out to be. Basically, we were divided into teams and each of us had to go from A to B WITHOUT any member's feet touching the ground. Before you start imagining us doing Rajnikanth or Mithun da level stunts, let me tell you our modus operandi. We all had a limited number of thermocols, newspapers, etc. and we make our way by stepping on these. Now, if you can imagine this happening, the first person bends a little, puts something ahead, steps on it. Everyone in the middle just take a step ahead and pass the sheet coming from the back to the front. But the last person has to completely bend after every step, reach out and pick the material left behind and pass it ahead. So you can imagine - for 200 odd steps in our path - that person had to do some 200 quick and successive sit-ups along with other movements. I guess by now you would have understood I was the last person in my team. And in short - totally lagg gayi !

But the post-activity analysis had 2 useful things that I came across:

1. For all members of a team to give their best, there has to be a strong sense of a Common Purpose.

2. It is very essential (and practically quite difficult) to identify the weak link (may be a person, activity, process anything) and give it support.

Had the presentations today in the induction. They sure are fun :D 

Also celebrated the mad man's birthday. The fellow got bashed up, but I guess still much less than what he does :-p . 

Day 287: 23rd Jun, 2010

So there it starts - the waking-up-late-to-miss-breakfast-before-class saga. Woke up at 8.08 for the 8.15 Int Fin class. Luckily for two aspects a) my bike and b) our prof , I didn't have too much of an issue attending the class. 

Spent the other classes of the day with some help from the book - 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist' by Mohsin Hamid. A slightly weird kind of a book. It is a monologue spoken by the author to an American visitor in Pakistan. The good thing is it's a short book. So I'll finish it before I start getting too bored :-p

As usual, with yet another thanks to the mess, I report yet another dinner at Fauzi. A very small discussion on what to order eventually reminded us of the futility of this activity, as once again, we ended up ordering the same standard fare !

Had a small INDEX meet after that. I am sometimes (more frequently these days) surprised on how small points suddenly become the focus of a discussion and take up so much time! 

Went with Pachpan to watch how how day 2 of the induction is going. Not very interesting :-S