Day 424:15th Nov, 2010

Thanks to yesterday's power-play, gloriously slept through my stipulated CBM early morning lecture. But grade drops are the lousiest way of pulling your scores down. So I don't like losing out on attendance (and I don't give/take proxy either), and hence attended the 12.30pm session. Too good prof though - seeing the high strength in his class, all by himself he called out people who had been absent in his morning sessions, since he easily understood they have all attended this lecture :D

Remaining afternoon and evening again went in continuation of yesterday's topic. Finally reached a closure, which "right now" seems to be a bit unfair, but definitely better than what was being decided earlier.

Funny thing happened in the midst of all this. Exactly the kind of mischief your batchmates would play on you. We had a clubbed 3hr session for LTL, and I was able to attend only the first part. So after the 2nd lecture, I sheepishly went to the prof to tell him I couldn't attend the 2nd session and requested him to give me attendance for the first. On which I was told by the prof that he didn't have the attendance register, and hence everyone would get attendance! Argghhh - why didn't someone tell that to me before I went to the prof!

Day 369: 21st Sep, 2010 - Of Books & Crooks

How absolutely drab campus and committee life would be if it weren't for all the tiny and not-so-tiny confrontations that keep happening now and then! :D

So this small issue came up. I have always wondered how sometimes one needs to argue just to ensure something very blatantly and obviously stupid doesn't happen! Well, I agree that not all parties (as a result of not being apriori privy to all information) would know the actual point of debate is silly. But what is even more wondering is this - how one likes to stick to their original stance even after the additional data points come to light.

Anyways, one always hears about making an opportunity of an adversity. Today got a chance to implement it. Not entirely, not even in part, but just kind of sowing the seed in the mind. Suddenly remembered an old idea and discussed it amongst my colleagues. Lets see where that eventually ends..

Got two more books for the Leadership Through Literature course. And one of them is in Sanskrit! :-|

Day 264: 25th Mar, 2010

Had our last class of PGP1 today.. I woke up at 10:01 for the 10'o clock MIS lecture. But I did want to attend it.. confirmed with Dhamdhere if he was coming. Reached class at 10:20 :-p .. luckily Sir didn't say anything. Captured a nice 8 min video :) And took the last snap in CR 103 for 2009-2010... a pic of the now empty classroom..

From there, yet another farewell.. to Pravin, who was finally leaving campus. The fellow would have stayed on if he could. Loaded with more stuff now - the best of the lot - speakers! :D . The speakers, though seem to have a little bit of Pravin's ghost or something.. as soon as I connected the speakers, I heard the 'Tum Mile' title song 3-4 times continuously. (Pravin used to hear the song in an infinite loop for days on end :-| .. much to the chagrin of his neighbour :D ..)

Two quizzes one day before the exam. Two ways to look at it:

a) Silly to bother us with this a day before the exam :-S

b) Good match practice, let's crack this one!

But people like me follow philosophy#3 - it's called "kya farak padta hai !"

Trying to study ADA since evening. I realised hearing about stuff from people isn't really working. So now I have been trying to go through the slides by myself.. 

Also had a refreshing entertainment session at the night mess - small drama over the room allocation thing. It was indeed funny the way some silly points were being thrown around by people, with super-animated pappa trying to fend it all off :D . As my friend Deepak said - "that's what happens when you put too many 'intelligent' people together".

Day 263: 24th Mar, 2010

Many of us 'slums' people were in a very Inqilab Zindabad sort of mood since yesterday over the room allocation thing. Multiple emails in one fiery thread discussed new alternatives and strategies. Heck.. we even had a small precursor meeting to the batch meet in the afternoon.

Never mind all this turned out to be a damp squib eventually, but still, I enjoyed taking a stand and voicing an opinion. You might think everyone would do this if it concerned their interests. Unfortunately though, it's not quite true... a lot of people just do not participate in such activities!

The effect of this was yet another huge 'game-theory' based activity. Lots of number-crunching all around - how many groups are moving, moving where, will we get rooms and many such questions being discussed. Man, choice does become boring!

PS: my late sleeping saga continues.. comparatively slightly early today - just 4.45 am :P

Day 259: 20th Mar, 2010 - boli lagao!

360 students .. 1000 points .. and mayhem! That was what today was all about!

There have been days here about which we have heard stories from seniors, but still the intensity dawns only when it actually occurs. We had our electives selection day today - and the frenzy has been unprecedented! Till last year, the choice was mainly dependent on the concentration of courses. This year, we had the added element of 'bid points' which made the whole thing .. well.. interesting!

Game theory was at its best - every student making his or her own strategy to get the courses of choice. Expecting a lot of people to bid in multiples of 5 or 10, the smart ones placed bids ending in 1s and 6s. The smarted ones, anticipating the move by the smart ones, put bids ending in 2s and 7s :D . 

Every year, there are always a couple of courses which get into a massive bull run. This year, the courses in high demand were SBN - closing bid 302 (good course, chill exams) , MSD (great prof!) and AOC (ideal filler :D). But the show stealer was a course called FIRE - closing bid 364! - in which students would be taken to a resort for a week and have 6 hours worth of 'discussions' each day - and that's it! Ironically, this highest bid course was a half-credit one!

Without getting into too much detail, my own bidding strategy was OK. Fortunately I made a couple of important changes in the 5th round, failing which I would have found it difficult to get my choice of specialisation! I did end up losing three courses of my initial choice though. Atleast I was aware of it - unlike Chatur who realised the shortfall only on fortunately bumping into a group of friends at the mess!

Anyways, not getting everything in the first stage didn't turn out to be so bad. Did another couple of hours worth of timepass to the game to which many of us were now addicted :D . Took a couple of arbit courses..

What would be really interesting is to think - one year down the line - was it really worth the 8 hour (10pm to 6am) fiasco?! I may not be sure of that even then, but one thing, it was surely a fair bit of fun :D

Day 246: 7th Mar, 2010 - Choices!

Choices. Life is a lot about choices. Either crying over the lack of any or complaining about the presence of many. Today we had to choose electives for the 2nd year - in the field of your interest. Field of interest - an option that I had asked myself when I filled the CAT entrance forms. A decision I was quizzed about in my mock and the actual interviews. A thing I repeatedly thought about during the summer placement process. I only went on being more unsure. And so I still had to think today. And that's not the worst part. Worst part is - I am not yet done thinking about it at all! (And I doubt if I ever will be :D).

Continued with my sleep marathon today too. Woke up at 12.45! That's sleeping through the extra alarm that I had set. Continued to be docile and sleepy. Dealt with a small stomach upset I had (most probably 'cos of yesterday's visit to Ma Durgama), skipping lunch. Transferred a few more songs to my ipod shuffle, though unfortunately I couldn't find time to hear them, thanks to the elective choosing session that followed.

Had a nice long chat with Sud - pretty cryptic conversation for most part of it. One that I am especially bad at. Something for me to improve upon. (Amongst a lot of others..)