Day 178: 23rd Dec, 2009

Multiplier

Here's the situation. You know that the weightage of some paper is going to be only 40 marks. But yet, you are answering a 100 marks paper i.e. multiplier is (1/2.5)x . So whatever you gain (or lose), only 40% of that is effectively going to matter. But still, it feels bad to lose 10 marks than 4 marks no? Was asked a question about one Johnson's algo for 2 machine scheduling in the quiz, and I didn't know it then. Had prepared for it today, but today he asked that algo for 3 machines :-S (not even in the book!). tragic!

Eco tomorrow. Was a bit of my achilles heel last term. Macro-eco is a lot more interesting though. Lets see if it translates into marks!

Day 171: 16th Dec, 2009

Owlery

A new eco(logy)-friendly initiative @ L ! We are making better use of wildlife now. A path breaking pilot project has been started by one of the groups here. They are testing how owls are used as a medium of communication, especially in the world of magic! :-O

Ok, I took it too far :-p . Owlery is actually this great new initiative from Team SynapsE to show your blogs to the rest of the world (well..not the world.. just us IIM L people..oh ok..the world :-p). You just add your blog link on your profile and lo and behold.. it automatically pulls any content that you post on your blog. Pretty cool na?

Yesterday's late night sleep took its toll. After the first lec (MANAC), I went to the library. My plan of action was to sleep for 15min, study for the QAM quiz for an hour (missing OM) and come back for the MM lecture. As always, things happened in exactly the opposite manner. I collapsed on the first floor couch (what a demand they would have if that section was open during the night!!) and woke up after a good 2 hours.. missing all the remaining lectures :P. On the bright side, my mind was more fresh and I could spend an hour studying in the library post lunch. Menghani came by in between... but had to leave because NOBODY in the entire library had an extra pen :D. He did teach me an empirical formula though, which had application for one entire section.

The problem with QAM actually is not knowing the formulae; infact, the prof gives out all the formulae in the question paper. The problem is in trying to realise which formula needs to be applied for which problem. I blanked out in the first 4-5 min, but eventually did decently, though I could not finish for want of time.

The more interesting thing happened immediately after the quiz. Actually I had, by mistake, carried my bag into the examination hall (**not allowed**). Nobody (that includes me, my friends, supervisors) noticed the act. Things would have passed away blissfully except for the fact that I forgot to collect my bag while leaving. So I had to go back to claim it. And unfortunately now I came in exclusive observation. So I had this small encounter/debate where I was cited examples such as ticketless travelling and so on, all to which I replied using different permutations of 'yes sir', 'right sir', 'sorry sir' accompanied by a sorry-for-the-act face.

Did a good bit of INDEX work in the evening. Designing some certificates mainly. I don't even know why I tried to do it with MS Word. Just could not get things to align there! Came back to good ol' photoshop .. smooth!

It's 3 am now. What am I doing? Jo pachees baras mei nahi hua, woh ab hoga. Finally watching Deewar :D . Feels insane? No, feels just helL :D

Day 163: 8th Dec, 2009

Today's post would be interesting in the sense that I am getting it from one of the (very) few freshers on campus - Shantanu. I, for one, am waiting to see whether the fact that you have landed here right after college makes any difference to a 'normal' day!

-------------------

My Day.

It is for the sixth time in 20 minutes that my phone, which is usually quiet, starts blaring ‘Arriving Somewhere but Not Here’ by Porcupine Tree. I open an eye and see 9:10 a.m staring back at me. I hear Sarin, my neighbour, banging on the door. Since I have come to IIM Lucknow, I have required an increasing number of alarms in the morning to wake up. Initially, one would be enough. Then two, then three. Well now when I sleep, I have alarms set for 8:45 a.m, 8:50 a.m, 8:55 a.m .. Well, you get the point. And yeah, I have a Sarin too.

I run to the mess and run to class holding my omelette and bread in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. That run is complete in exactly two minutes, but those two minutes make my day. Basically, they get me ready for one drilling class after the other. That is the thing with an institute like ours. You not only have tight and impossible deadlines, you have OVERLAPPING deadlines. You find yourself competing with yourself to do a hundred things in, well, no time. The first class is Management Accounting which includes stuff like cost analysis, variance, absorption and what say you. Prof. V is one of the straightest and probably the best professor we have had yet. He is a taskmaster and his classes are good. The Math professor is busy cracking jokes half the time, the Operations professor walks a record 7 km in one teaching hour and the Marketing prof comes with this minion whose only job is to sit in a corner and note down the class participation. Honestly, I am yet to see a more boring job. And a bigger loser. After 4 long hours, classes are done.

This is when my day starts. I have my lunch and rush to office. A million thoughts rushing through my mind. A million things to do. Let me explain. I am a core committee member of Manfest, the Annual International Business Conclave of IIM Lucknow slated to happen in the next 40 days. As you can understand, time is tight and we have loads of work. More so because the senior Manfest team is busy with exams, and hence we are doubly loaded. I meet Karthik and Sharath in the office and we get down to business. Every minute, all we think about is Manfest 2010. Through the exhaustion and moments of give up, all that drives us is the dream of a spectacular Manfest 2010. We make mistakes and face horrible moments of self doubt, but there can be no learning experience greater than this. Being at the centre stage of a body which organizes an event budgeted at 96 laks and more is something no classroom or even prof. V can teach you.

I did forget to mention, in between all the work there was an Operations quiz at 5:30 p.m. That went OK. Or maybe I just have stopped caring. We have reached a stage where marks and grades no longer remain significant. Or more rightly framed, relevant. There are bigger things to do, bigger things to worry about. Marks will take care of themselves.

Post dinner, I work in the office for a while and at 1:00 a.m trudge to the mess. A soldier, tired and bruised. But alive. Smiling. After breakfast, this is my second favourite moment of the day. Just as the run from the mess to the PGP office takes two minutes, this peaceful march of mine takes 20. A cheese toast in hand, I make my way to room 707. I drop my bag on the bed, sit on the chair, turn up the music and check my mail. There are so many new ones. Didn’t I just check it 30 minutes back? 17 new mails at 1:30 a.m in 30 minutes? I accept that it cannot be a lie and carefully read each one. Replying where necessary. Meeting at 3:00 a.m? Why? I feel my eyelids dropping. Heavy. I feel my nose connecting with my keyboard.

‘Wake up Shantanu!’ Bang Bang! It’s Sarin.

-------------------

Hahahaha. Must confess one thing here... this blog is almost a day late :-p . And poor Shantanu has kinda combined the two days here :D Hehehe. Won't blame him! It could just be another day.

Another interesting thing happened today. Our OM prof had yesterday sent back two students as they came to class a minute late - as they went to quickly compensate the lack of breakfast with a cup of coffee. Today our prof gave them their attendance, saying (in retrospect) it wasn't really their fault (which is true considering the prof for the earlier lecture had extended the class!). Anyways, I liked that gesture.. it's in keeping with my general idea about people who are ready to take a step back and accept their mistake - not an easy thing to do na?

And yes, today our mess served GAJAR HALWA during dinner! It was just DIVINE!! :D . Way to go mess!!

Day 135: 10th Nov, 2009

Midsems started. Many firsts;

- First time we have 2 papers in a day here

- First time we have an open book exam

And to top it all,

- First time I went to an exam without opening the book even once :D

It was humanly quite impossible to read through both the subjects. And I thought reading MM superficially wasn't going to help. Don't think I was too wrong in my thinking - we had only one case to be analysed, for 25 whole marks! Opened the textbook directly in the class. Went straight to a couple of frameworks/diagrams and fit whatever I could in those boxes. Lets see how successful this method is.

OM was all about revenge. Revenge for all the sleep. Revenge for all the inattentiveness. Revenge because the sun rises in the east; make your own reason. Random cases demanding random analysis. My favourite part in the paper was when I managed to work out a formula for a particular term (takt time!) after looking at the data given in the next question :D

Day 134: 9th Nov, 2009

Came to know only in class that Soumen has also got placed. That completes the quota for our bench. Time to redeem the party promise. Souvick, being the first one placed, gave a pizza treat! (For now I have paid for it though :-p). The pizza was surprisingly hot, and the cheese was still dripping :D

And who would think mid sems are starting tomorrow. No wonder seniors are so chilled about their exams. It's just term 2 and we have stopped bothering. But I don't think it's time to opine yet. This maggu batch won't give up without a fight. Lets wait and watch! 2 papers tomorrow - MM & OM. Got to buy a new pen... on second thoughts... I don't think I'll run out of ink in the near future :p

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 67: 26th Aug, 2009

Today's 8am ITC session was cancelled. So got that little extra blissful minutes of sleep. Got yesterday's test results. Got 7.5/10 .. I think that would be the class average or a little less. But I lost one mark for the silliest reason - not showing calculations! :-S .. The last time that happened was in school!

Worked for more time on my CV. This thing really takes time! Need to get some more reviews on it from seniors and all..

Myself and Tarun had fetched a nice cool cake :-p . And that too, brought it on Praveen's bike. It is a superb vehicle. So what if the bike has no mirrors, a gear box which supposedly is not in sync with the clutch, an accelerator which should NOT be used while turning, a silencer that may blast anytime, wheels that are not aligned properly and a speedometer which does not work. Rest everything is great.

Had our first Index meet today. Venue was the Index room! The place has such a nice casual feel to it. We need more chairs though :-p . Meeting was basically about the agenda ahead. Some brief points. Celebrated Ashish's bday then! Then celebrated 2 other birthdays in the mess. So basically lots of kicks flying around.

Day 66: 25th Aug, 2009

We were to have an OM quiz today morning. I tried to study for it yesterday in the lib. But I was SO sleepy that although I was looking at some scribble and alphabets on the textbook, they just wouldn't form sensible words or sentences in my head. As usual, slept off without putting in much of a fight. Woke up today morning and studied an hour for the test. A couple of good classmates had solved some sample problems neatly, taken photographs, uploaded it on the comp and emailed it to the class :D.

Test itself was OK. Seemed like everyone was having the same paper. One person on my bench copied an answer from his neighbour because he saw that it was different and he had more confidence in anyone else than himself :p. But after the test, the prof told us that around 6-7 different sets of Q papers had been circulated. Major remorse for that guy :D

Pcom work is showing its effect. Dhamdhere was dozing off all through the lecs. Au contraire, and very surprisingly, Kaushik and KR seemed to be wide awake today! :O

Am still majorly stuck up on the CV thing. Worked on it a little more. Thought it got better, but a review said it still has a lot of redundant stuff :-S

The struggle with misspelt name continues!! Pcom numbers list is out and my name is misspelt there as well. I so hope I could find out who the person was who made the initial master list, without even asking for a verification! I could just murder that person!! Bloody the mistake just cascades everywhere!

Meshed came up. He wanted some help with photoshop. Something I didn't know how to do, so struggled on that for quite a lot of time. Came up with multiple colors etc. I think eventually came up with something respectable. But apparently it didn't prove useful :-(

Day 58: 17th Aug, 2009

Considering the fact that I had not slept the previous day at all, I had good reason to catch up on a siesta. But there seemed to be something mystical. I don't know whether it was the lecture or the weather or what.. but EVERYONE just seemed to be dead sleepy. As soon as the lec was over, all the heads tumbled in meek submission to the Goddess of sleep.

Beauty is some one non-sleepy classmate happened to take a pic of the moment. And trust me, it is NOT staged even a bit :D.

Had our intersection skit in the evening. Practiced all afternoon for it. Balanced it with some preparation for the Manfest group review that I had later in the night.

Met up in the evening. Dhamdhere had brought costumes and all! There is always a first time for so many things in life. Today was the first time I wore costumes in a skit. The only "skits" (read HardSell :p) that I had been a part of never required any costumes and all. I played a Devta. Felt really excited to wear those flowing robes and fake hair and stuff :D. The skit went off pretty well! The jokes were well appreciated by the audience and there was good coordination amongst us as well! But apparently, the judges were looking forward to some sort of "message" :-S ... so we didn't win. But still, I will remember it as an experience which we enjoyed! Right from making the script to all the acting including the dog barks :D.. hehehe :D!

Had dinner and went back to my room at around 9.45. Thought I'll take a short nap to recharge for the Manfest group review at 12.20 midnight. Next thing I know is my hostel neighbour was waking me up and the time was around 12.40!! Shucks! Had badly overslept.. and my team members were all frantically trying to call me! Finally they traced my neighbour's number and had him wake me up! I rannnn all the way to the PGP block. As soooon as I entered the room, had to go on stage and deliver the presentation on my part. And the sad part is.. as I was giving my presentation, I realised the concept was good with nice potential to be developed.. just wished I had worked more on it! But anyways, thanks to my semi drowsiness and the run, I could deliver only a just-average presentation. Darn.. I also missed out an apology for the delay at the start of the presentation ..!

Day 53: 12th Aug, 2009

We have a new subject - Operations Management - for the post midterm schedule. On day#1, at the start of the session, I wrote on the top of a fresh new page - "10/08/09 OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT". And now after 3 days, that is all I have written in the notebook. Some serious random globe seems to be going on in that lecture.

Towards the end of the lecture today, we were asked to read a case and discuss a little bit. The case was primarily about a reduction in productivity and we were to analyse the reasons for the same. Some CP desperate people kept giving random solutions and we had already overshot the lecture timing by 5 min. At this point, the guy next to me (S) just stands up to leave for the break. And gave a CP remark which was just out of the world! :D

Prof : Some people seem to be eager to leave the classroom.

S: Sir, actually if we look at the case, one of the major reasons for fall in productivity was that the workers were made to work overtime and that is always a major demotivating factor.

Needless to say, that was the last statement of the lecture :D

Also, had a 'Fun Quiz' in MANAC. Not fun as in what-is-the-longest-a-snake-can-grow type questions. Probably the explanation would be that it was NOT a "serious" quiz. Here again, S answered the first question in a flash. We stayed quiet and mum for the rest of the quiz, smartly avoiding any negative points. This conservatism approach paid off well and we eventually stood second in the class, earning a valuable 1.5 marks :D