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 503:8th Feb, 2011 - Last class at helL!

Woah, 3rd consecutive day or so when I am having breakfast! Some record indeed!

The extra morning time and the breakfast turned out to be pretty useful as I had to miss lunch whilst I (started and) finished the PM report (and presentation) for today's class. My last class at helL :-) . My special contribution to myself - inserting a video in the ppt for the first time :P

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 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 495:31st Jan, 2011

An LD quiz to start the day off with. As stated before, quizzes these days seem to aid in only one thing - having breakfast :-)

I now seem to be the IIMPrints renovation expert. Post my FRA and Prod Man class, spent the next hour or so modifying and correcting a few more testimonials, including revamping Kisaan's completely. And then, got back to (re re reading) another top favorite book of mine - Godfather!

Post gym, my quest to find a bathroom that had hot water (we have the facility, but finding some actual hot water in the tank is tough!... I so miss the solar-powered 24/7 hot water in the slums!) got me delayed for dinner in the mess. The only thing worth missing because of that was the Gajar Halwa.

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 477:13th Jan, 2011

Woke up pretty early today. Around 7.30! In fact, so early, that I went for breakfast exclusively with that intention, as I would otherwise start feeling really hungry by lunch. Just can't remember the last time this would have happened! Spent some of this early time closing up some of the many opened tabs in my chrome window. But compensated that by opening up a few new ones :-(

LD, lunch and BM took up the afternoon. Evening once again was spent working my thighs and calves off at the gym. To put things in perspective, during dinner, I came to know that I was burning 4 times as much calories as Shanky (who is twice my size). 

Have been putting off washing my clothes since quite some time. Since it is so cold (and therefore absolutely dry and non-sweaty), t-shirts run for more than one day. But the limit actually gets defined by the more critical category - undergarments :P . As a matter of fact, 2 days back, I bought a few new ones just so I could delay the washing cycle :D , but didn't have that option today. Yea, agreed we have a washing machine and our job isn't that tough, but it is still very boring to (typically first wait for the machine to be free,) put those clothes in the machine, wait for them to get washed and then dry those cold things with your bare hands. Just had to be done though :-S

Finished off with some little INDEX work - a little excel sheeting to have a digitized record of my expenses.. Followed that with some Big Bang Theory. Positive development for the day - Equal gym effort as yesterday, but managed to stay awake further.

Day 459:26th Dec, 2010 - Miss :-(

Shit shit shit! Once again, I missed Taj breakfast! :-(

And this in spite of all the effort I took to wake myself up. Which included not having my blower switched on in this cold weather. And also drinking water to "build up pressure" :P . I don't know which of these worked, but disastrously I woke up only at 10.15 to a song that runs as "spiderman.. spiderman.. tumne churaya mere dil ka chain"! (Watch the link below at your own risk)

Congrats if you have indeed survived beyond that!

Woke up to realise not everyone had missed the breakfast ;-) . But anyways, I had the Dexter episodes. And a lazy Sunday got off to a murderous start :-P

Luckily, decent lunch in the mess. Mooli parathas, but more importantly they were well made. A couple of more episodes later, made my way to the Brand Management class. Nice prof. Our institute should get more of them to neutralize the location disadvantage. And to that the fact that they finish off their sessions in that one week :D

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.

Day 395: 17th Oct, 2010 - Last mid-sems! :D

Woke up pretty late today. Late considering the fact that I did sleep comparatively early yesterday :-p , and early considering it's a SUNDAY! Breakfast of course was a distant dream. Settled for an early lunch at Fauzi. 

The afternoon was any other lazy one :D . Was listening to songs. Made a playlist after a long time.

Well, finally, something tangible indicating that we are inching towards the end of our course... From tomorrow, our mid-sems start. And this will be the last mid-sem here. Writing this sentence suddenly put me in a little bit of a flashback, my feelings about my first mid-sem here. Not that I was a super stud or anything, but for sure I definitely wasn't tensed even then (not even for the dreaded MANAC!). But I do remember putting in (a lot?) more effort :D . Including night-outs in the library! And not just me; the whole gang comprising also of Dhamdhere (teaching LAM to Mommy :-| ..), Vats et all. Memorable days for sure! And compare that to today, when we (Pachpan, Chatur & me) wrapped up studying for CBM in all of 2-3 hours :D . Smart work! :-p

By the time we finished, it became pretty late and nothing was available in the mess. So Pachpan and me went to Richi Rich. It was super crowded. So we had a pani puri while we waited outside :D . But still no vacancy. So we went to Zaffran. Sat there for 5 minutes, and then the waited told us they would take at least 15-20 minutes to serve any order! :-S . Back to Richi Rich! Luckily, we got a seat without any more to-and-fro trips. In retrospect, all I am wondering is - with infinite time ahead of us, why really were we being impatient? :-|

We had called for a small session with the Ops team. Although it was to be driven by the juniors in my team, I just went to see how it goes. Mostly just a nominal presence to boost their confidence :-) . All I did was narrate a couple of incidents from last year and ensure the team realises it's a happening place to be :D. Similar to what my senior did last year :-p

Day 373: 25th Sep, 2010

Our dear wingie Shomo's birthday last night had an extra element of discomfort - a bucket of water. Blame Pachpan for starting all these wrong trends, especially at wrong moments :-X . Three rounds of assault, followed by the cake smear (a nice heart shaped cake!), followed by a march to the mess, and of course another round from the animals there :P . Even after all this though, I still managed to wake up pretty early - 9 am for a 12.30 pm class! The tough part though is deciding what to do with the extra time (unnecessarily) created. I decided to be a little productive and actually went and had breakfast. Unfortunately for me, it was pretty sad today!

Encountered yet another super example of arbitrary pricing in a Servicing Model. Went to this bag seller to get the chain mended on my laptop bag. He randomly quoted 100/- as charges! I just told him that only a day ago I had enquired at his shop and was informed the cost would be 50/. And lo and behold, his price dropped by 50%. And am pretty sure, even on that, he must be making 80% profit (at least!).

Don't know whether the net and the LAN must be considered a boon or a bane. Boon because, thanks to them, we spend all our free time watching movies. Bane because, thanks to them, we spend all our free time watching movies! Anyways, without getting into the judgemental aspect, I would just say Chatur, me & Vanki caught up with a movie called 'Se7en'. Interesting thriller, it's based on serial killers :D . Now, who doesn't like them! Hehe :D

In The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare aptly captures the protagonist's anxiety with the words - "your mind is tossing on the ocean,..". Well, let me just wish some good luck to a friend, who's probably feeling these words right now...

Day 339: 15th Aug, 2010

First things first,

Wish you all a very Happy Independence Day! :)

Managed to wake up well in time today to attend the flag hoisting ceremony. In fact, even managed to squeeze in my breakfast before the 9am event! :D . Pretty ironical, considering I miss my breakfast on most weekdays even though I have morning classes; but managed to have it on a Sunday.

The event was immediately followed by another irony, as 60 students (including yours truly) lost their freedom to a project submission. One of our group members took ill, so we had to patch up his part too. The even more difficult part was in finding somebody who had an active print account (most 2nd year students had exhausted their balance!). Then, as expected, caught a facchi who was kind enough to consent to an expense of 23 Rs. (yes, this is exactly why 2nd years don't have any balance - they get looted off by "smarter" classmates and "lesson-learnt" seniors).

As soon as I came back to my room, I somehow slipped into a nice loooong siesta. Remained dazed even as I went to have my dinner and stuff. That's the side-effect of a long sleep - keeps you in a stupor.

The only time I managed to come out of it was when we suddenly put some thought on getting our conB work done. Went to the night mess, from there to the CC. One useful tip: it pays to have a multi billionaire in your group ;-) . Thanks to the great Vanki, we took 160 printouts - 40 copies of a questionnaire, 4 pages each. Half the job done. The other half - getting them filled! ;-)

Anyways, that's for tomorrow. Getting back to my tryst with the Sleep Goddess for now. Can't even afford to miss Retail lecs anymore!

And yes... Jai Hind! :)

Day 327: 2nd Aug, 2010

One of those typical days.

Was pretty tired yesterday, so happened to doze off comparatively early. Woke up today at 6. Stop alarm. Then at 7. Stop alarm. Then at 8. Stop alarm. Then at 9.30 - Get alarmed about missing the lecture and RUSH for it! Missed breakfast :-(

A very interesting incident happened in the Strat Man class - I suddenly saw the usually docile Tiwari furiously scribbling away and making notes in a book :-O . I was super amazed, and wanted to ask him about his actions, in a manner as if he had broken some unspoken brotherly code. I forgot about it at the end of the lecture. I only had to wait for another hour though - when I went to play Bridge in the evening, I realised he was jotting down relevant stuff!

To give company to the infinite book (Atlas Shrugged), I have also started watching the infinite movie (LOTR 2 - The Twin Towers). There seems to be no concept of 'finite' for these two things!

Day 307: 13th Jul, 2010

It is always a super feeling to not have any classes in the morning. The downside of course is the fact that you end up sleeping right through your breakfast; but then again, you avoid the pain of skipping it so you reach class on time.

As usual, took the chance to pay a visit to the city. As usual again, not a very useful trip. But then again, I know many such useless trips will lead to one useful trip.

I remember being at Puranaya Chowk at 3.32. Managed to reach college just in the nick of time - even grabbing my favourite Kool Koko! Ohhh, I just remembered - the Amul stall (which was ALWAYS closed last year) had reopened - and now I have access to my favourite drink - Amul Kool! Yippeeee!!

I played a little bit of the revolutionary - sending mails and following up with the MessComm on certain aspects that I thought should be changed. \m/ Glad to see all my suggestions implemented. \m/ Had Maggi in the mess today, thanks to me! :D . Suddenly remembered the conB extra class and DASHed for it. Now in order, we INDEXians were getting caught. So it was but natural that Vanki would face the music today. And that is what happened :P . Caught, while he was replying to me :D . Not enough drama though!

Day 303: 9th Jul, 2010

A little regression and analysis (the MBA show-off giri) and some basic common sense (the truthful reason) made me realise that the highest frequency of missing my breakfast happens on Fridays and Saturdays. Must be because of this odd timing of the Prom Strat class - 11.45 :-|

Spent a typical afternoon - getting some INDEX work done with Vanki, in the city. Had a never-done-before interesting experience on our way back though :D - riding over a railway track! Actually the lone flyover to reach our college was blocked (innovatively, using some cycle rickshaws!) for some Queen's Baton or something. So off we went searching for a route from under the flyover. And that is when we realised we needed to cross a railway track, and that too not our any proper road! There was a narrow path where at one point, a few stones were arranged to give a little elevation. Was fun :D

Went to Cellar for dinner - Mine and Shanky's PPO treat! My first visit there actually. Italian fare mainly - surprised to find one at Lucknow :-p . Food was pretty decent - though the mocktails, desserts weren't too great.

With heavy tummies and sleepy heads, we still motivated ourselves to have a short meeting. Work is work - no compromise na :) . Just some updates, some allocations. And then the customary night visit to the mess, a milkshake on Shanky's account, and a good good night.

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

Day 266: 27th Mar, 2010

Funnily enough, I suddenly realised it's been many many days since I ever mentioned running for breakfast. Well, that's partly/mainly because even that's a give up case now. Today, finally, I went to have breakfast - must be around after 2 weeks! :D

Funny supervisor we had today. Innovative way to keep indicating the time - he was burping every 5 min!

Had a limited open-book MM exam, in the sense only one book was allowed of the two books we had. It now seems (after the exam) that we should have been allowed the other book instead of this one.

Day 256: 17th Mar, 2010

Gone are the days when I used to get a bit late and had to run for grabbing that bite before the first lecture. Nowadays,  I sometimes wake up so late that even after missing the first lecture, I have absolutely no time to have breakfast.. I find myself rushing for the 2nd lecture. Fortunately for me, I have a huge cushion of high attendance that I am making good use of now. We had a marathon 3-hour FM guest lecture today - which I bunked - and even my dark complexioned friends could not stop the envious shade of green from showing on their face :D

Just finished seeing a movie called Identity. Pretty interesting movie, a thriller - I recommend.

Day 215: 4th Feb, 2010

One thing I don't like at all is when profs continue teaching beyond their stipulated lecture hours. A one-off incident is OK, but some of them do this repeatedly. Two reasons why I don't like this happening. One, I feel a prof must have the ability to time his content. And two (more importantly), we often miss breakfast or even otherwise feel hungry after a session. Students look forward to grabbing a quick bite in the 15min break, and this is not possible if a prof extends the lec by 5-7 min.

Our MIS prof today asked us to start our presentation just 5 min before the lecture was to get over. Now that is unjust on two counts - no student would be interested in our presentation and our effort just goes waste + we miss our break. Even after pointing this out, he was pretty unrelenting and asked us to give our presentation anyways. A few people walked out, and unfortunately, one person was singled out by him. Not the kind of behaviour I would expect from a prof to a post-graduate student.

Had our first INDEX KT session - started with Shady's ancient wisdom. Session surprisingly went much beyond what I thought it would. The great thing was that it ended with us managing to convince him to give us all a treat (combined with Praveen). And so off we went to Genesis, all of us on bikes. Kisaan and Pachpan managed to even pull off the stunt on the pebble-laden road. Had a fun time there. I am loving INDEX more and more as the days pass by :)