Day 298: 4th Jul, 2010

Just as little things keep happening which irritate you to the max, little things happen which can make you amazingly cheerful :D 

Just the day when I was to be back here, I had asked one of my friends to pick up a pack of Krishna Sweets Mysore Pak (it's a heavenly sweet!! - just melts in your mouth!) for me. He forgot.

So when I came to know one of my friend's parents are coming from Chennai, I didn't waste any time in putting forth my humble request. And lo and behold, there lies a box of that wonderful stuff with me :) Yippeee!

Had Parichay today - the first chance where the PGP1s display their talent (and PGP2s their decibel levels :-p). And must say there is quite a bit of that (or so I heard :-p ..I left halfway). Went swimming - the water seems to have become a little dirty.

Day 288: 24th Jun, 2010

So Pachpan decided to remain all rolled up in his bed, banking on a proxy for his first class. I had already refused to do this (seriously, no giving/taking proxy from/for me) and therefore the focus was shifted to Vanki. At the last moment, he felt it was not possible. And it was fun (a little sadistic :-p) to see Pachpan's reaction at this discovery in the next class :-p

Spent 3 whole hours in the afternoon getting the INDEX room cleaned. Was a major cleaning exercise. Disposed off a whole lot of old redundant stuff ! The room looks super spacious now. And eerily clean :-p

We had our team building class in the evening today as we were supposed to have an outdoor activity. And man, what an activity it turned out to be. Basically, we were divided into teams and each of us had to go from A to B WITHOUT any member's feet touching the ground. Before you start imagining us doing Rajnikanth or Mithun da level stunts, let me tell you our modus operandi. We all had a limited number of thermocols, newspapers, etc. and we make our way by stepping on these. Now, if you can imagine this happening, the first person bends a little, puts something ahead, steps on it. Everyone in the middle just take a step ahead and pass the sheet coming from the back to the front. But the last person has to completely bend after every step, reach out and pick the material left behind and pass it ahead. So you can imagine - for 200 odd steps in our path - that person had to do some 200 quick and successive sit-ups along with other movements. I guess by now you would have understood I was the last person in my team. And in short - totally lagg gayi !

But the post-activity analysis had 2 useful things that I came across:

1. For all members of a team to give their best, there has to be a strong sense of a Common Purpose.

2. It is very essential (and practically quite difficult) to identify the weak link (may be a person, activity, process anything) and give it support.

Had the presentations today in the induction. They sure are fun :D 

Also celebrated the mad man's birthday. The fellow got bashed up, but I guess still much less than what he does :-p . 

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 286: 22nd Jun, 2010

The effect of 800 students and an under-construction mess was at its fullest potent. There was so much crowd that myself and pachpan went off to Fauzi for lunch. Had the standard fare - roti, dal, aloo jeera, dahi. This is definitely something which does not go wrong at Fauzi.

However, this 3.45 timing for the SM class is turning out to be a major pain. Invariably, the free time post lunch happens to be an extremely sedative-oriented hour. But it is such an 'in-between' time that we can't even enjoy a proper siesta. Took 2 alarms (and 2 snoozes!) to motivate me into going for the class.

The induction session for the fachchas has started. Was pretty surprised to see that it ended as early as 12.30am :-O ..A far cry from the niteouts we had last year. This timing should definitely be extended in the coming days if they are to be introduced to the rigour that lies ahead.