Day 530:20th Mar, 2011 - Guess whoz back \m/

Back after an awesome trip to Sikkim, and a (mandatory) impromptu deviation to include Bhutan, thus ensuring my first foreign trip :D . In keeping with the mandate of this blog, won't talk about that trip here though.

One thing is for sure though - wherever you go, nothing like home. And for now, no home like helL. Made our way back to the campus at 8am. After a little email and facebooking, I went off to get some breakfast, trying to stay away from all the pakka colors being used in the Holi celebrations. Of course, didn't manage to do that entirely, and consequently was forced into having a nice early oil bath. All this ensured a nice little afternoon siesta to get me kick-started.

Although I didn't really get what the kick-start was for. Most of my friends still weren't on campus and I mainly stuck to downloading stuff from DC and watching Heroes. No dinner in the mess today, and unfortunately all PGP2 bikes had been packed and sent off. Big bonanza day for Dominoes, including some little contribution from us. MadMan, Shomo, Bala and me had a pizza treat and a random discussion.

Met up with Kisaan at night. Made a visit to Gupta to compensate for the lack of night mess. And then, a little more Heroes to end the day.

Day 521:26th Feb, 2011

Spent the entire morning through noon "trying" to wake up early. Started with targeting breakfast, ended up with almost missing lunch :-p

Since I had already read up a little bit of fin day before yesterday (cough cough), I thought I might as well get a bit more acquainted with marketing. Even sacrificed meeting up with a close friend who had come down from IMT G for that! Luckily, I did manage to get through quite some portion of that ppt, side by side enjoying the live streaming of the world cup.

The good part of the day - had pizza for dinner. Seemed like ages, mainly the delay due to extreme poverty :-p . Got some funds from dad (thank God we live in India), and celebrated with a double burst pizza, treating Pachpan as well. Felt really sleepy thanks to that, but somehow crossed that dozing off threshold. Trying to read up a little more on fin, but as usual, ended up reading a lot of random tabs! 5.30 now, time to get some sleep!

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 490:26th Jan, 2011 - Happy Republic Day!

Although we tend to remain free almost all the time these days, it's still pretty nice to have an official 'holiday'. It's like having a license to kill (time, in this case). After a late, lazy morning, I simply did not have the mood for lunch in the mess. And so with, Shomo and Disha, I went to have some of that awesome chole at Aryans. It was nice and sunny, and I even took my own bike (after a long time, as it refuses to start easily in the cold weather). 

Seemed like providence wanted to compensate me for the Taj plan not happening. So even for dinner, Dada agreed to give us a pizza party! That was a good call, especially given the mess food was ultra boring :-S

At night, I decided to start up a bit on the pending IIMPrints thingie, but randomly, I first thought I'll just check out who is writing for whom. And there I realized there were still quite some people for whom no one had signed up yet! I didn't like that at all; due to oversight or whatever, this should not happen! So I sat down, noting down all ids who were left, looking up their etrigan details, trying to find out common friends and get someone to register for them :-)

Day 485:21st Jan, 2011 - Manfest 2011 starts!

Wasn't feeling too good when I got up. But still somehow went to the LD class as we had a presentation today and I was playing a substantial role this time, answering 2 out of 3 questions about the case. Had to leave the lecture midway though. Turns out it was just a case of a slight tummy upset :P

After a string of bad movies, we were really looking forward to see Dhobi Ghat, especially given the fact that it starred Aamir Khan and that the trailers were very promising. Could not have met with a bigger disappointment :-| . It definitely can't be called a "movie". At best, it was a stitch of 3-4 extremely amateurishly shot videos. The first time I actually experienced absolutely not understanding when the movie ended - suddenly the screen blacked out and names started rolling. Makwana's surely not getting the money back for this one! :P

Anyways, our annual management fest or Manfest is here! Today started off with a performance by Rahul Sharma on the santoor. (As expected, Vanki didn't even know that instrument :D). Good performance - these instruments have such a pleasing sound! Pachpan, kisaan and myself had pizza for dinner, sponsored to us by Manfest's Mr. Olam :D

As usual, lots of alums are here. Nice catching up with them. In fact, was about to get some sleep at around 2.30 when this bugger Jiggy came up. Some general chit-chatting and the usual 'corporate' cribbing and now the time is 4.30am. Sigh, just can't seem to avoid it.

Day 480:16th Jan, 2011

Wowie - managed to wake up so early on a Sunday that I had breakfast! How awesome is that in term 6 :D . (Though of course, truth be told, I had to finish a psychometric assessment for an application :P)

Now that I was up early, I continued my stint of repeat-watching movies. Started off with Unbreakable today - that's my favourite Shayamalan movie, even more than the popularly accepted The Sixth Sense. Went for running today too. Found it easier to run those two rounds today. Fell down while running though :-| . Didn't get any bruises, but slightly twisted my finger while trying to balance myself. And damn! it hurts in this cold!

When I came back to my room, Pachpan informed me I had been shortlisted for a process tomorrow (GM profile). That was indeed surprising, considering my track record during Summers and the brilliant stuff I pulled out during their psychometric test. But I guess the two things aren't really that connected.

Sunday dinners are usually horrible. Combine that with a little celebratory mood for pizza and that seals the deal. That guy came very late though :-| . Thanks to that though, we got to have pizzas (+ garlic bread + choco lava cake) for 200/- bucks :D

Day 470:6th Jan, 2011

CV time again. Somehow, in spite of working on it for HEPP, and a little after that for finals, it is amazing how there still was something to do just before submission deadline. Did that have something to do with the fact that I still hunted around for projects to put on my CV? ;-) . And making multiple versions of it out of thin air? :-p

Started watching Shutter Island, recommended by Kisaan since a long time. However, got interrupted in between by a dinner plan for pizza. Somehow (not exactly somehow), it became a treat by Chajju for Pachpan, Chatur, Kisaan and myself. Followed that by a movie Mirch, based on adultery by women. The movie has 4 short stories and each story has some amazing though by the female protagonist on getting away! Scary for menfolk! ;-)

Thought of resuming Shutter Island, but then swapped that for Big Bang instead. A little light humour before sleep :D

Day 456:23rd Dec, 2010

The day began pretty early as I had to go for part 2 of the process. I overslept a little (was calculated though :P), but hey, nothing more important than a relaxed mind :D . No hot water anywhere in the hostel (including the bathrooms in the top floor!), so I had to make-do with a shave. Reached the pcom office pretty much on time, as it seemed like the interviewers also preferred a little extra rest after the longish night :D . The process was like any other - sitting and waiting for your turn, whiling the time, trying to understand and probably figure out the kind of things being asked to others. Came to know the chit chat basically happened on the HR questions, and that is what happened with me too. (Except for the one binomial expansion!). All in all, I though it went OK.

Came back to my room after the Leadership Discovery class and caught up with the sleep missed out earlier. Woke up and called up AP to find out that only two people made it through, one of them a friend who had got an extended shortlist. Good for him! (No suspense, the other guy wasn't me :D).

Didn't have much to do again. So back to the new addiction - Dexter. Just as I was starting up on that, MMR came up and told me that "as committee members", we had to attend a session (mandatory!) for some event that was being conducted. Didn't turn out to be a bad deal for him - he ended up winning a Blackberry! And not too bad for us - we got free pizzas!

Day 451:12th Dec, 2010

So exactly how casual and careless does one get by the time they reach the end of sem 5? I even forgot to fill in my name, roll no. etc details on the answer booklet in the morning exam! That was definitely more interesting than all the literature I think I created.

Had a "pizza party" for lunch. Dada, dhams, myself and some good old times.

And followed up that morning stunt with a ringing cellphone (2nd time in 3 days!) in the evening exam! Confiscated cellphone :-( . Even the ploy of sending able substitutes didn't work!)

Attended a general session on finance by an alum. An optional lecture that I attended a day before the exam - and good I did! Was a good one.

PS: Created a new record in Crazy Taxi! + Getting hooked on to Dexter!

Day 444:5th Dec, 2010 - Lucknow Mahotsav & some Fog!

While I woke up real late yesterday, had to wake up really early today (Sunday!), thanks to the SDM quiz that we had! Indulged in the good takeaway i.e. breakfast. And then got back to my room to resume my siesta. 

Slept right through most of the early morning and noon. Woke up at around 2pm to find TG knocking for my bike's keys. Now, I had come to know that today was the last day of Lucknow Mahotsav, an annual cultural fair than happens here. Couldn't visit that last year, and it would indeed be a shame to not go there in our 2 years of stay. So somehow, alongwith Pachpan convinced him too to join us.

But first, hunger pangs had to be dealt with. So the four of us (Mr. Happiness too) first made our way to Dominos for some of that awesome double cheese burst pizza. And then we rode and rode and rode and rode. And finally reached the Mahotsav place.

But guys, for those of you reading this, you must visit this if you are going to study at IIML for 2 years. The kind of crowd there was at that place was awesome! Super traffic - couldn't find parking space - till literally God came to our rescue and people started parking their bikes inside a temple close by! :D . The fair had that proper feel that you are so often shown in Hindi movies, a kind of place where you could easily get lost (BTW, it did happen amongst us too - twice). There was a big replica of Rumi Darwaza created as an entrance. And so many of those little toys - we bought all of them - the hooter, the horns, the bow and arrow, bubbles and a parachute! :D . It was super duper fun to keep playing with the hooter and try hitting each other :D. Saw the Maut ka kuan game after many years - so risk those guys take! The ferris wheel ride (somehow keeping just the 4 of us instead of the usual 6) was awesome too, mainly because of TG getting scared :-p. Lots of food items too, a tad expensive though, compared to the other items at the fair. There even was a concert by Sonu Nigam - free! And even before he had come, the crowds had gone berserk at the performance of one local singer - and it was at that moment that we got a substantially better idea of what the local Lucknow junta exactly wants ;-) . No wonder that Planet Salsa show used to be such a hit :-P 

The return journey was no less eventful. We took the shortcut route that goes to the airport. And maybe because of all the open space around it, but I saw fog so dense I had never seen before! Or rather never imagined could be! In fact, the fog was so thick, that at so many points, our shadow due to the lights from vehicles behind us, was being formed IN AIR! It was almost as if a wall of fog was in front of us. The visibility was so poor I could hardly see 2-3 metres ahead of me, that too with great difficulty! :D . So basically, summing up, AWESOME bike ride! :D . Need to have a couple more of these! :-p

Day 437:28th Nov, 2010 - Double Mazzaa!

It would be criminal if I diluted today's super divine incident with anything else!

A few months back, I think I somewhat got an idea of how an orgasm would be when I had my first bite of sizzling hot cheese burst pizza from Dominos. Relived that moment today - seems there is a new thing on the market - DOUBLE cheese burst pizza! It has 2 layers of molten cheese, one the usual and another with a slightly sweetish tinge to it. 

Mahhhnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn .. simple AWESOME!! Special thanks to AdiJ and his other half Hansie for insisting on the pizza part. Thanks to Ghate for initiating the outing (and the Richi Rich panipuri). And Chatur and Sud, thanks jlt? :-p

Day 433:24th Nov, 2010

Am now reaching new levels of nonchalance. Had an EPA quiz in the morning. Woke up, even physically got up (yes, they are two different things) and then, in some 30 seconds, inspired myself to go back to sleep. The reason - a 5 mark quiz for which I haven't prepared wouldn't serve me from either the knowledge point of view and definitely not from the CG point of view. Even skipped the next 2 morning lectures to wake up at an extremely lazy 1.30 in the afternoon. (Later came to know the proj fin lecture was officially cancelled. Yey!)

As I said, day before yesterday couldn't catch up on HP 7 on account of Guzaarish and now it was time for amends. Made it a 'Bunk-all day' by skipping the EPA class. Saw the afternoon show - movie was OK types  though, probably a little slow. Spent some time in Landmark where Chatur exhausted her 'Topper's Gift Voucher'. Such a pity you can't buy chocolates with that voucher! :-p . A discounted cappuccino later (thanks to a free voucher), went to Brij where and had dinner with some more from the INDEX gang. Awesome time!

Day 406: 28th Oct, 2010 - Bbrrrrrrrrrr!!

A sudden chill has descended on campus. The temperature on campus is usually a (tangible) few degrees lower than the main city. So much so that a few days back, when I was coming back to campus, it was actually warm outside the gate. And just when I came inside, it was cold! Pretty early onset of this level of temperature though.

However, what's heating up the campus is that the Summer Placement season is ON. I seem to be hearing that new decimal systems are being introduced now, what with Day 0, Day 0.5 etc. proving to be insufficient to describe the latest scenarios. And the more it happens, the more I think it's all a farce. The short-lists that you are going to get, the filtering that is going to happen, the final selections, all of that is going to be quite random! And almost 99% of that has zero correlation with your ability and the final kind of work you are going to do. But I know for a fact 2 days into this, a lot of people are going to break down. It's almost a pseudo-caste system. And I strongly think a better alternative needs to be put in place.

Went to Pizzaport for dinner. (I don't seem to be eating in the mess at all these days!) The new thing we tried this time was the dry manchurian. And I must say it tasted pretty good! We originally had plans to take a "sizzling-brownie" diversion at CCD on our way back, but considering the way we raised funds for our pizzas, we had to have a change of plans :D

Day 367: 19th Sep, 2010

And of course, today was a Sunday, which meant even more free time. I even woke up a little too soon (10.30 am! :-P). It is getting even more difficult to while time away. I saw Toy Story 2 & 3 . Very nice series :D . Went swimming in the evening later on. Good fun, more importantly, good tp :D

Another thing - It's suddenly raining marriages! Even as we came back to campus after this term, I got the news about a few more marriages-to-be. And then, just yesterday a school friend called to tell me he is getting hitched (officially :-p). One of the protagonists of this entire episode is our dashing hero Shomu Da. With him, we made a deal, which incorporates a certain budget for party, and instead of blowing it all up in one shot, we'll go out on multiple weekends :D . Today was the 1st of those, and we went to Pizza Port. Had pizzas after a long time! :D . Followed that up with a Sizzling Brownie and Chocolate Fantasy at CCD :-) 

It was raining when we came out of CCD. So we took refuge under a roadside roof. That is when India's great dichotomy greeted us. Two small kids (12 years & 8 years respectively) selling Balloons. They made around 100-120 rupees amongst them combined. Dad worked as a cycle rickshaw driver and mom as a domestic help. Man, life is so tough for some people...

But somehow, such feelings are always sublime. We were totally drenched on our return journey and these troublesome thoughts had left my mind even before I had changed my clothes...

A small unplugged singing session at Kisaan's room. Came back and started watching episode 2 of the Harvard Justice series. But pretty tired and sleepy now. Will finish the rest tomorrow. Good night :)

PS: Blog now available at http://iimhell-2009-2011.blogspot.com/

Days 334,335: 10th-11th Aug, 2010

Now this is simple inexcusable. I missed yesterday's entry out of sheer laziness! :-(

Wasn't the best start to the day, as I missed yet another session of retail due to oversleeping. I can't understand what the problem here is. Sleeping late is definitely not the ans; have slept late and woken up early many many times.No use pondering, but I do need to know the reason soon so that I can avoid it! Definitely can't afford to take grade drops and all.

The highlight of yesterday of course was the complete kabzaa of my room that INDEX facchas had done. They have just started working on a PGP1 exclusive event, and I did not have the heart to drive them out of my room as they did INDEX work for the first time together (with 2 of their men down!); guess I would have sacrificed any of my personal activity for facilitating that.

Just realised another WOW thing. I had dinner from outside on both these days. Yesterday, we went to Richi Rich (our 3rd visit in 2 weeks!) and had the veg kebab combo. All 6 of us ordered the samn thing :D . Today, we had pizza from Domino's - except that it was made right at the mess where they have put up a temporary outlet.

Now for some strange reason, our SM prof decided to ask us to submit an assignment - which would be graded, to make it a best 2 out of 3 scenario. I took Kisaan's assignment - to make changes in his - and submit mine too. Found out he had akso got a lot of stuff from a document on docstop!! Sat in the afternoon and read and analysed the whole case myself! :)

Day 321: 27th Jul, 2010

Back to the sleeping at sunrise phase. And of course, only for INDEX. Had our final presentations today. People like to keep speaking about every single bullet point they have on their presentation; no wonder, we were running pretty late! We started off at 6 in the evening and finished at around 4 am early morning! Got some new and interesting data points though. Some tough calls need to be taken...

Much unlike the weather, which (at least for now) seems to have shed off its coat of cruelty. It was raining/drizzling all day - so the weather is nice and pleasant. Consequently, indulged in some khushiyon ki home delivery - Dominos! And even extended it a step ahead by bunking the strat man class. Would have been criminal to stay in an artificial AC environment in such awesome weather! :)

Day 284: 20th Jun, 2010

Boy, people here (UP, I mean) are hard-working. Yesterday evening, I called the bike servicing guys. And today morning (mind you, it's a Sunday morning!!), they were here. Woke me out of my nice little extended slumber. They made a preliminary examination and I asked them for a quote. May be it was the hot sun or what I don't know, but for sure his brains had been fried when he gave me an estimate of Rs. 4000/-. I asked him to give me a breakup of all the things - and he started listing some 15 billion items that needed to be fixed/changed/modified. After cutting off a lot of items from that list, I gave my bike to him. The chap came back yesterday evening itself. Final cost, after some super duper cost cutting - Rs. 1500.

What's priceless? - I am reunited with my bike !!! Wooohhoooo!! :D

Pravin gave us a pizza treat in the afternoon. I think more than the pizza, we were thankful for the AC room at Patanjali ! :-p.. Kisaan displayed a lot of brilliance during the lunch - especially with his repeated attempts to dip the garlic bread into the cheesy dip. "Dhakkan" saala! :-p .. Of course, also very memorable was Mr. Psycho's remarks and outbursts :D . Man, he is one of a kind :D ..As for Pravin himself, his interrogation sessions just don't seem to end :-p

Had the deadline for the INDEX team submission today. Had a whopping 26 registrations!! Woahhhh!! *Drum Roll* ..INDEX 2010 is going to be AWESOME!

Day 269: 30th Mar, 2010

Wrote a loooooong MIS paper today. Must admit it was an interesting open book exam; you had to do your bit of work to get the answer required.

Since most of INDEX core is leaving early tomorrow, we had a pizza session in the INDEX room. Finally got Vanki (or rather Saurabh :-p) to come out with the little secret :D

Last paper tomorrow - HRM. It must suffer being the casualty that the last paper turns out to be. Even more so considering it is the last paper of PGP1! Am not studying anything at all! Even went to the mess twice - once for celebrating Venkkatessan's and Bugger's birthdays (badly beaten!) and then once again to meet Dhamdhere and Maanas. It's now almost 4 and I have kinda yet to start. Am going to pull an all-nighter today (rather tonight). Have invested in a Red Bull to keep me awake through the paper tomorrow :D

Day 229: 18th Feb, 2010

Heard some not-so-great news about certain loopholes being exploited in certain systems and processes. Simply not done.

Needed to write the summary for those 3 HRM journal papers. Spent a good bit of time fluctuating between the states of 'who-the-hell-writes-such-things' and 'is-this-even-in-english' and 'why-is-it-taking-infinite-time' etc. Spent a little time on actually being productive and wrote the summary for one more paper.

In the afternoon, the rest of us wingies had gone and pestered Bellam for his CFA treat. Unfortunately Bellam was in a 'i-am-playing-CounterStrike-very seriously' mood. And therefore got wild when we disturbed him (though I personally think it was just an excuse at venting out his frustration which actually arose because he was invariably dying within 2 seconds of coming out in the open :D). And even threw away his soap because it got dirty (pretty ironic!).

He did have a change of heart in the evening and we wingies went out for dinner, to the dominoes outlet from where pizzas are delivered to the campus. Man!!..it's quite far off!! Anything for a cheese burst pizza though :D. On our return, we promptly changed our gTalk status message to "Long Live CFA Bellam though he doesn't survive for more than 2 secs in Counter Strike after coming out in open"

Day 226: 15th Feb, 2010

One of the things I miss about school or engineering is after the holidays that we would get after exams. Here bloody we had 2 exams on a Sunday and regular classes from Monday onwards (today!).

One very different thing was that I was quite attentive and *participative* during lectures today. Our new Marketing Research prof for MM2 post midterm has a reputation that precedes him. Of course, his lecture today didn't reflect much of that, but was super fun thanks to his pronunciation of certain words :D . We were to have read about a case for the session. I, for once, had actually done that, though I didn't make it nor intended to make it very public. The funny thing was the prof randomly picked up a group number (no prizes for guessing it was mine) to ask a question. One very special thing that happens in my section is when a prof calls out a group number, for a good one minute nobody gives any response. After the long pause, we raised our hands and were immediately bombarded with - 

Sir: "So, have you read the case?"

Yet another not-so-brief period of silence.

Sir: "Arre kuch toh bolo.. yes or no.. I am not going to kill you"

Me: "Sir we have read the case but not discussed the case."

Sir: "Uska kya matlab hai?"

Me: "Sir.. matlab hum ne read kiya hai par aapas mein discuss nahi kiya." (absolutely the same thing in hindi .. as if I was giving a whole new insight)

Fortunately, sir shifted to asking a couple of questions about the case. They turned out to be pretty simple (or was that because I had read the case?) and I answered them quickly. Felt nice to play the knight in shining armour in the academic battlefield :D

But of course, the CV point earned today was on a different plane - finally made our gujju bhai Sanghvi give his PPO treat :D . Phirbhi saale ne teen log ke paise pe paanch log (pachpan, shady, chatur, sanghvi and me) ko treat kar diya :D ... LOL! (Sanghvi please don't stop following my blog after this :P)