Day 527:4th Mar, 2011 - 'The Dhol' & INDEX Farewell!

So as so often and so easily, once again the Circadian cycle seems to have been inverted. Woke up pretty late and very hungry. However, was in no mood for lunch at the mess and all the 'other' places seemed "too usual and boring". That is when we decided to do the bike ride, all the way to the much acclaimed Break Point dhaba. And the long ride (with innumerable stops for directions) turned out to be worth it.

Got back and spent around an hour chatting with Chatur. In the evening, we had plans to go to Genesis for our INDEX farewell. But then, word got around about The Return of the Dhol! To celebrate the placement of the entire batch before the end of the placement week, the legendary dhol accompanied by some really wild dancing was organised. No way we could miss this one. One of my best times as PGP2 was that enthusiastic hour of energy in the mess, with so many of us dancing in the water thrown by the people of the mess, tearing each others' shirts off and gyrating our topless bodies :D

(Uploading the part before the shirt tearing spree started :-p)

And then - back to my INDEX farewell! Just my statement that the farewell beat even the Dhol must be enough to describe it. Since we couldn't go to Genesis, we had our own little setup in the common room of H11-H12. Some awesome home-made DJing by Kisaan, some great food from Aryans and unhindered dancing and masti by a group of very very very close individuals = AWESOMENESS! One of my best nights ever, right from the celebrations to the (extremely fantastic and well though out) gifts given by our juniors to Tila. Ending our journey at the exact same spot where we started :-)

Day 525:2nd Mar, 2011 - Pappu place ho gaya!

Had to reach early since I had one early morning quiz for a trading profile. Really nice quiz - only some quick calculations to do :-p . Not too surprising that I got shortlisted to the next round.

Had a nice breakfast after that; and it was only then that I came to know that it was Maha Shivratri today. My annual fasting event :-) . Didn't want a short-term thing like placements come in my way, and hence I decided to hold my fast anyways. 

Quite a few processes then to keep me busy for the day. For the first time, I experienced being dragged out of one process to attend further rounds of another particular process, indicating an interest in me - feels good :-p . Also had a very interesting GD round of a South based leading telecom player - we argued (sensibly!) for a good 15 minutes on a topic which NONE of us were sure what really meant :D . Truly, I think that marked the end of our MBA journey :-p

By late night, I came to know I had an offer from that fin firm for the next best position than the one in which I was more interested (in which unfortunately they had frozen recruitments). A tick against the last item pending on the MBA list :-) 

At 2am, was celebrating at Fauzi with the INDEX gang (me only with a cup of tea) when I came to know I also had received an offer for the trading role I had tried for in the morning. (The subsequent interview just had one puzzle and some basic questions - was pretty short for me). Never expected to face a problem of plenty in this context. Some thinking and greed-based analysis later, I opted for the trading one. Don't know how positive the final payoffs will be, but it's now time to take some risks ;-)

Day 524:1st Mar, 2011 - Udhaar khatam

Had quite a few shortlists today. Found the interviews to be quite entertaining ;-) Increased my knowledge base during interviews ;-) . Surprisingly, all but one of the shortlists were from fin. And in the one mark shortlist I had, a few GD crashers did the usual :-S

You get this feeling of tending to move towards being an outcast soon, when you visit the vendors on campus. Credit accounts for PGP2s have now been frozen. Was super hungry towards the end of the day, and realised I was short on cash. Luckily, had just about enough somewhere in my bag for a paratha and a pack of peanuts.

Anyways, new day tomorrow :-) . Cya on the other side.

Day 523:28th Feb, 2011

The much awaited placement week begins. There has been a lot of apprehension and speculation on how things will pan out. Have waited a long time at the edge of the cliff, contemplating whether we shall be able to fly. Time to jump.

Of course, was a pretty chill day for me. And like it was the Rocky series in my summers, this time, it was all Heroes. Some interesting stories did come out though, as well as some interesting results. Right from one guy who had the balls to reject the top 2 offers on campus to the guy whose risk worked out very well in his favour to Pachpan's awesome case-study topic :D . But one thing, really ruthless the way these companies operate.. :-\

Day 522:27th Feb, 2011

Spent quite some time watching the match today. India batted first against England, and posted a pretty good score, though definitely less than what it should have been :-S

Shortlists for most of the impending processes tomorrow (the top marketing and GM profiles) are out. Didn't make it to any :-( . Still don't know why that happens. Hopefully it's not an impending sign of times. 

And since I did not have anything to do (and because the shortlist gave me no motivation for any more studies :-p) , trudged my way back to the gym, mainly to get some endomorphins alive and kicking. And then a little more tabbed browsing :)

Day 520:25th Feb, 2011

Woke up.. no no.. was woken up at 1.30 (yes, in the afternoon) and rather abruptly by a group member insisting there was a ppt to attend in 30 minutes. Didn't even shave, secretly hoping I would get kicked out :-p . Alas, luck was not to be. Neither did I get kicked out, nor was there enough people to seize the last mover advantage, and worst of all - there wasn't any attendance :-(

After a long time went back to the Friday tradition of watching a movie - Tanu weds Manu it was, at PVR. OK movie, easily a one time watch. Also helped avoid the dinner in the mess :D . Had a little something at Yo China! in the food court and followed it up with some awesome sizzling brownie and chocolate fantasy at CCD! God bless the inventor of chocolate :D

The night mess session has almost become a mandatory practice of whiling some time of the day, and so be it today as well. Made and had some plans to study, but kinda sleepy now. Will look into it tomorrow.

Day 519:24th Feb, 2011

Feels so nice to wake up on a day, and find out you don't have any ppts lined up :-p . Did have one form filling to do. Was initially happy since the company had come during summers, and I had all the answers ready. Turns out the questions were different, and also more in number :-S

Finally finished with my KT session for the juniors. Gave this half with Pachpan; I think it's a good idea to give it in groups. You can remember more by bouncing thoughts and opinions off each other.. INDEX is definitely in good hands though :-)

Quickly finished off whatever was left of the form (thinking and filling two answers at super speed :P) to make myself free for the hostel party! Had good fun there :-) . Just like it marks all special occasions, it rained even on this night, to make the senseless dance a senseless rain dance :D

Had a really long and really random bakar session in my room after that with Pachpan, Kisaan and TG. Always so worthwhile to talk and enjoy for 3 hours on topics right from 'biology' to engineering days to stuff here :D

Day 518:23rd Feb, 2011

These days, the body clock of all PGP2s has adjusted itself to a new external factor - the ppt schedule. Some 20 minutes before some ppt is scheduled, you could see all soggy eyelid-heavy faces going to the bathroom for a quick wash, and in extreme cases a quicker shave. 

So was it with me. Was glad I managed to wake up on time for the 1.45 afternoon presentation. Was infinitely more glad, when the last mover advantage played out and I could manage to stay outside the classroom and get attendance for nothing :D 

But just like two days back, this was avenged too. We had this presentation by one global bank. And another at around the same time by a local Indian bank. As per sat for the ppt, we saw from the back windows that pizzas were kept outside, and became all happy (free food some how has that effect), especially because, no way would a local Indian bank spend as against a global giant right? But Murphy's law won, mocked at us fair and square, through the pizza stuffed mouths of the students who went for the other one :( . BTW, should we take it as a sign of changing times? :-)

Some more wrap-up work w.r.t. INDEX. Had called an old vendor for some "negotiations", thanks to some things that weren't delivered as promised. As expected, didn't reach a definite conclusion, but made some headway in better understanding some points. Missed dinner (and apparently, one awesome new dessert :-( ...) and subsequently fell back on Fauzi. Had a nice time recalling and remembering some of the kaand that happened till now :-)

Have just spent some good bit of time mechanically reading and consciously closing the too many tabs that had been opened up on my browser. And now, one Contra session, TBBT episode and night snacks @ Fauzi later, it's time to bid good night!

Day 517:22nd Feb, 2011

Woke up (at noon :D) to find the adjunct student finally back on campus. Which meant sweets + tp (including fooling him about the "insti party") + lunch at Fauzi + pulling his leg by drawing attention to his Pcom group mates :-p

Spent the afternoon trying to rank companies. Made one initial list. Tried doing it on an excel first, then figured it was pretty useless to do that. Directly did it on Aghanim. Came up with a preliminary list - first cut, ranking around 70 companies, many of which might not even come on campus :D . par umheed pe toh duniya kaayam hai

Pachpan keeps complaining about always feeling pressure only on his biceps and forearms, whatever exercise he does! Finally today, he realised the importance of doing the exercises right rather than trying to be all macho and add high weights, thanks to your truly and one junior. And sure enough, the 50kg on the triceps press came down to 32kg :-) ..and still had him gasping and clenching his teeth :-p

Post dinner, sat down to finally finish off with the rankings. Came to know Ms. "sincere-as-ever" Chatur ranked 170 companies as against my 95 :D . In spite of having every DayZee shortlist! :D . Talk about confidence :-p . And then, for some strange and still inexplicable reason, started reading some fin at 2.30am :-| . And surprisingly, have sustained myself in that activity till 5.30am. Guess that's enough of being a Valuation God. For now ;-)

Day 516:21st Feb, 2011

Had been trying to get a room booked for an alum since 3-4 days, and somehow has been a little extra painful this time. Luckily, got it done today morning after one (short and sweet) ppt of a media company recruiting for their OOH division. Got to learn a little about a completely new industry.

Was due for another ppt in the early evening, as some of my group members weren't on campus. This one turned out to be very bad. Firstly, it got delayed by 45 minutes, then those Red and Blue telecom people took some 15 minutes "doing some setup". And then gave a ordinary ppt for 1.5 hours. I am mainly super irritated because I missed the chocolate pastry in snacks :-(

Spent around an hour at night giving (mostly just trying to give) some pep talk to a friend, who was worried about the way preparations were going for all the DayZee shortlists held. I congratulated myself for not imposing such problems on myself :P

Day 514:19th Feb, 2011

Since quite some days, there was this one tab that I hadn't managed to close. It was a youtube video, part 1 of a 6 part series. Finally saw it out today. Came to know about this solo adventurer called Mike Horn and the amazing challenges that he has conquered - covering the equator, travelling the entire length of the Amazon, going around the Arctic circle, etc.

Had missed out on donating blood the last time around, wasn't going to miss it again. Felt good. Got quite a bit to eat as well :P

Skipped gym to instead settle for some Bridge. Mr. Tiwari was leaving for his hometown and hence the request had to be honoured. Didn't play too well though, probably the lack of practice :( . Went to the mess for dinner; found it to be so bad I settled for a glass of milkshake instead. A little more form filling after that - today was a short one from this paint company. Squeezing answers in a small box with a small font was fun :-P , even wrote a couple of new incidents!

And magically, it's 2.40 now. I just don't seem to have a clue on what I do to make time pass by this way! Do I need to get checked for a multiple personality disorder? :P

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 500:5th Feb, 2011 - Five Centuries :)

Woke up comparatively early (8.30 is early dude), partly because I still had to finish the LD report by noon, and partly because I had to be (nominally?) present in class for our QAF presentation. Worked around these two conflicting interests by taking my laptop to the QAF session :P

Much of the day was spent filling the application for this multinational FMCG; more specifically in coming up with answers for three HR questions. Each time this happens is like suddenly hitting the 'Pause' button in life and trying to think of what you did. Has the potential side-effect of making you think you live a rather shallow and empty life, hardly doing anything beyond the mundane. But given the fact that we are MBA students, that cannot be true ;-) and thus you keep thinking and re-thinking and writing and re-writing, usually till the deadline appears. I had to attend a game+learning combo session by the same organisation in the evening, and by then I came up with what I thought were pretty decent answers.

Got back to my room and suddenly entered into a Reformist Mode. Day before yesterday, a particular incident happened regarding the way a certain amendment was done. I personally thought the process was unfair, and have been trying to mobilize opinion. All I want to do is have the batch re-think over it :-)

Just got back to my room after a night mess session. Pachpan just got a huge download of politics, scams and other GK stuff from his KGP batchmates and we sat around discussing that for some time. And yes, the deadline for the application has been extended; yes, as usual, the answers were kinda trashed by Pachpan; yes, will give it a re-visit tomorrow.

And yeah, 500 days in helL, every single day on this blog :-) ! Three cheers! :-)

Day 499:4th Feb, 2011

Woah! Seems like someone forgot to tell the fog that winter's over! I woke up pretty early today, at 6.30am the first time. As I stepped out of my room, I saw that the dense blanket of morning fog is back. I hope it does not bring along it's friend - Mr. Cold.

Had made a lot of plans yesterday on what to do today. But eventually, the first thing I did with the extra morning time (apart from breakfast :D) was finish season 1 of Heroes :-S .Couldn't help it, but at least now there is some closure on that front (pls God, don't make me start season 2).

Spent the early part of the evening doing some pending INDEX work. Post that I had one company application which I wanted to finish - 3 HR questions for a major FMCG company. But I had already missed gym since two days, and for sure I knew if I skipped it today, I'll fall out of the habit. And thus the choice was made - I even added a complimentary run around the campus to make up :P

Post (yet another) dinner at Fauzi, my room was raided by INDEX juniors trying to reconcile accounts :D. Now now, that part is going to be fun for them :-P . I have a report to make by tomorrow noon, analyzing the leadership styles of 2 people from the industry. Still deciding whom to choose so I can make optimum use of resources ;-) . Add to that I am feeling all tired and sleepy... may be ... tomorrow morning...

Day 494:30th Jan, 2011 - INDEX 2010: The End

Successfully made it to class for the presentation. That may partly be because of the early morning call I got from one member of my group to wake up Pachpan for some inputs for the presentation. But when we reached the class, and showed it to the prof, he said some additional things needed to be incorporated :-( . Task unfinished.

But none of that was really important. Today was to officially mark the culmination of one long journey - we had the final presentations and results of INDEX 2010 today. That made sure our afternoon was totally engaged, collating the results. It's really sad to see some deserving teams lose out very closely, but I guess that's just an unavoidable part of the game. It's harsh, but you got to do what you got to do! My heartiest congrats to the winners - Team S.I.G.Ma (Special Interest Group in Marketing) as well as to all the other teams for all the fantastic effort they put in.

After resuming my gymming, it was now time for some celebration! We went to this new place Cassia - a buffet kinda place (modeled on BBQ). The chinese was good. And desserts are always good :D . And the best part - it was converted into a treat from Haathi, Kisaan and MMR for their placements! :-)

Day 491:27th Jan, 2011 - Biographer Mode

Woke up early morning 10 minutes before the quiz. Went to wake up Pachpan. Some quick logic told us a 30min paper would not be objective based, and consequently attempting anything with our preparation (??) would be futile. Went back to sleep.

Pretty high pressure day though. Today EOD was the deadline for submitting IIM Prints. Although I had quickly given inputs to quite a few people, compiling thoughts from others and third-person-izing them was a completely different deal. Halfway through yesterday night and then through today morning, I managed to finish one draft for Chatur. I casually showed it to her during LD class, and unfortunately it was trashed :( . Fortunately, Pachpan did approve the one written for him.

So spent the evening in renovating the sad version. Viewing it from a different 'perspective' altogether helped :D (This is when Pachpan gives short but very useful insights). Worked on it at a stretch post evening, even skipping dinner in the process.

And just when all this was finally almost done, came the deadline extension mail! After a mandatory visit to the night mess, I started working on a cover letter for an application. It's funny, but I had to run a little 10 minute search on the intention of a cover letter, and as it happens so often, ended up with links to contradictory views! :-S . And now, back to my own judgement :)

Day 487:23rd Jan, 2011 - A Tick on my Checklist :)

So finally another tick on my long-term checklist. I wanted to make myself marathon-capable in these 2 years. Am nowhere close to that, but at least in the past one week, I have made myself capable of running some respectable distance. Today I finished the 8km run successfully. First time I realized and felt how a change in conditions can affect performance. In campus, I trained in the late evenings, when it was quite cold. Today though, the run was at 9am, and the sun was out and bright! And man, does that sap energy or what! But anyways, I am happy. I was only competing with myself ... and I won :-)

Was dead tired after all that. But somehow managed to stay awake. In fact I even attended a ppt for a GM profile from an energy major, which was looking forward to hiring from B-school campuses for the first time. Most noteworthy about that presentation was the presenter ;-)

Didn't have anything to do post that. Met Chatur during snacks and then spent some time watching the informalz. The arm wrestling match between the ladies was super tp :D . It almost always never reached towards a result. Either all girls are equally very strong or equally very weak. (Am not passing any judgement :P). And of course, I would like to remember the one microsecond worth sneak-peek memory that I got in between.

Evening was Bollywood Nite with the famous music duo of Salim Sulaimnan giving music to a scintillating (and raunchy) performance by Neha Bhasin (of Apple Bottoms fame). This was then followed by the (rebellious) party, with drinks NOT being served at the party ;-) . The party was awesome. I tried not to exert my super tired legs, and for a good one hour sat on the stage, using only my upper body for any dancing activity. But couldn't resist the high-energy atmosphere much. I went back to my room, got the red devil horns and the Caribbean cap, and there I was - scorching the dance floor with my moves :D . Both the props turned out to be super hits, with almost everyone borrowing them, eventually even breaking the horns. But I guess it served its purpose well :)

Post some 'conflict resolution', Pachpan, Kisaan (in the angry young man mode), GD, QuizChamp and myself spent some time at Fauzi, generally chatting away. Back to my room and it's almost 5.30am now. My body's seems to be absolutely broken :) . Lets see what happens tomorrow :D