Day 471:7th Jan, 2011

These days one just can't make out whether it is 12 in the afternoon or 6.30 in the morning with a glance outside. No wonder, it is becoming more and more difficult to attend even afternoon classes! Luckily managed to make it to this LD class, which was good as we even had our presentation today. No issues there, I played my part of the slide-changer (and thus contributed more than 33% of our group).

Just as I was having lunch wondering how to spend the day, plans got made. (That is often a consequence of Pachpan being around). We left to watch No One Killed Jessica at Fun. The first theatre movie for 2011 and it turned out to be pretty good. (BTW, they played the National Anthem before the movie here too. Something I have seen happen only in Bombay. But definitely, something welcome.) Based quite a lot on facts (Jessica Lal case), the movie was quite hard hitting. I would highly recommend everyone to see the movie.

While Pachpan and Kisaan left immediately after the movie, Bala, Shomo, MMR and myself stayed back for some shopping and food. Got myself a new belt (and a pretty expensive Satya Paul one!), as if that's what is going to get me the job :-P . Also got myself a new brand of 'clothes', the first time I switched after many many years. Followed up all that shopping with a nice dinner at Cultures (where I should have ordered something better than a Risotto!), braved the freezing cold even though I was riding pillion and survived. Somehow, from somewhere, got into an ultra long, convoluted but engrossing conversation on gTalk. And now that it is done, time to put myself to sleep. So long!

Day 408: 30th Oct, 2010 - Design Time \m/

Woke up to find missed calls and mails that had asked me to come back for a liaison stint at 11.30 am. Missed that totally :-|

Instead, woke up to a conversation to remember for a very long time :-)

Anyways. How boring it would be if everything would be organised too smoothly. Latest information brought to light the urgency of the t-shirt/sweatshirt design conundrum. Seems like every place that manufactures all this stuff is going to go on a looooong holiday for Diwali; and therefore the requirements / designs have to be given to them ASAP. And since our chief in-house designer for 2010 was occupied with shaping his Apr-May 2011 plans, I had to go back a year and step into my "designer shoes"! :D . Not that I minded it at all. Was quite happy to get back to something where I can see a very immediate and tangible result :-) . Plus, dabbling around in photoshop is something that intrinsically makes me happy :-) Even managed to learn a couple of new tricks today!

In fact, as I was mainly driving the designs last year as well, there were quite a few creatives that had been made, but never saw the light of the day :-( . So today, I revived an old tag-line which I had thought of last year, and came up with a design around it. Hopefully it will be well-received by the batch :-)

Day 402: 24th Oct, 2010

Now although I had had a preliminary glance through quite a bit of the PPTs that had been uploaded, I knew for sure that I wouldn't remember anything if I didn't get a chance to revise it. Also needed to read a few handouts. With this intention, I set myself the target of waking up early. I didn't miss this target by much. However, today was one of those days when I was destined to have a slight stomach upset early in the morning and consequently all my grand plans went haywire. Just saw a little bit of some new theory and ran off to the exam. Paid the price of not going through the stuff once again. Also had a mini sense of deja vu when we got a very similar question as was in the EPA exam. Had a small conversation immediately after the paper, which resulted in an ..appointment of sorts :-P .. which I did not honour, mainly 'coz I wasn't sure where it would lead :D

In the afternoon, meddled around a little bit more with my handset. Have been trying various permutations and combination to find more details, i.e. the circumstances under which it does / does not conk off. And what I have learnt till now is that the phone seems to be working fine in the Offline Mode. In fact, even after the SIM has been inserted, the phone continues to be ON only when it is being used in that mode. 

Even while I was fiddling around with my handset, an urgent plan to watch Jhootha Hi Sahi at 5pm at Wave was hatched at 4.10pm. A really bad and unfortunate moment.. the movie must be amongst the worst I have seen! Pachpan's almost in a mood where he wants to start a blog, exclusively to categorically give the choicest abuses to this movie!

Back to the campus; had dinner in the mess. 2nd consecutive Sunday dinner in the mess! Must be a record of sorts in the 2nd year :-p . Back to my room, I was still trying to explore some new tests for my handset when randomly Vanki and Kisaan made me go all the way to 3.4, just for their "celebration"! It has started to turn really chilly outside, need to keep my pair of gloves ready at all times.

A proper "genuine" post this one ;-) . After quite some time I believe! Somehow managed to finish this post..  in between juggling with shayari-jugalbandi with Kisaan :-p . Going to get some early sleep. At 01:00 hours, bon nuit!

Day 399: 21st Oct, 2010

Bamboozled! For today's Proj Fin paper, the whole batch had religiously understood one big excel sheet. And implicitly, what was unsaid but understood, was that any deviation from this pattern is going to result in a mass disaster. True to Murphy's law, that is exactly what happened. We got one big case, in which we had to hunt for all the numbers, and then use them to calculate some key ratios. Most people followed the strategy for cleanly writing down all the formulas once, just so that would qualify them for some marks, before they bungled up with all the incorrect number substitution! Funny how most people depended on the second globe part of the paper for actually getting marks :D . And btw, a lot of core marketing guys had taken this as the sole fin course. I truly wonder what they must be thinking now :D

Had to rush off to a place called Alambagh to meet an alum. The place is actually quite far off, but I took the peeche wala shortcut which goes to the Airport; made the trip considerably faster. And it was a pretty nice ride too (for most part). From there, I went to Hazratganj as Kisaan and Pachpan were already there. Did some local spons in that area while I was waiting for them :D . We three then went to a restaurant called Ruchika, just beyond Yoko's (which BTW, we have never been to :-| .. don't know why!). The place was the average sort.

Had a little meeting after that. After coming back to my room, had a .. memorable .. conversation on gTalk .. Loose ends, unfinished business and some pluck :D

Day 394: 16th Oct, 2010 - Touchwood!

Super Saturday! 

The sole morning class was cancelled. Did a little INDEX work in the short afternoon that was left. Had two long (my standards i.e. 20-30 min) phone gupshup sessions with two of my close buddies from Bombay. Followed that up with a super lovely gtalk convo with a close friend on campus :D . One of a kind it was! :D 

A 2005 INDEX alum is on campus. Pachpan and me took him to the Dandiya Nite organised by Random Walk, enjoyed there for sometime, and from there we went to have a pizza dinner in the INDEX room. His treat of course :-) . Some really nice conversations we had there too. Got to know of some interesting titbits from yesteryear :D , including the inflationary trends then :D . And then, had a nice chat at home too :-) . Didn't end there. Came back to my room, only to find and join a group chat on MSN with my engineering classmates! :D . Will put myself to sleep early :D , before anything might irritate me :-p . For now, I hope Deepika Padukone comes in my dreams :-)

Day 231: 20th Feb, 2010

I remember, back when I was an engineering student, MSN Messenger was the Instant Messaging Client to be used. The whole of college used to be on it. Endless hours of chatting, emoticons, group chats, winks, nudges, custom emoticons, audibles and so on.

Cut back to now. MSN has been replaced by the super bland gTalk; Mainly retaining its supremacy as it is built inside gmail. And it's now the de-facto communication medium on campus. Yesterday I was chatting with a friend inquiring if a few of my friends would be free. The reply - they are idle. And idle as in their gTalk status!

Speaking about gTalk statuses .. a whole article can be dedicated to that, but I'll stick to a para. People have their own styles with it. Some usually just stick with the default ones. A few others put up links that seemingly 'educate' others about topics that might range from gossip to science to philosophy. Many others (me included) just selfishly promote their blogs/flickr streams. Some enterprising ones risk putting up the links to fill up surveys, sometimes even hiding their motives under the tinyurl cover. We have Praveen who is in a different league altogether. Some witty remarks, some requests, some anguish, some nostalgia. And then some plain ones just calling for cooperation - like this one from Bala - "Nebody who has taken my toothpaste please return it to me.......All my wing mates depend on it ." LOL :D

PS: The day began comparatively early with an unexpected call on an unexpected event.. was caught up with some INDEX work.. lots and lots of LOST through the day.. season 3 is weird !