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 356: 1st Sep, 2010

Bye for another week :)

PS: Strat man was simple. RM was weird :-|

Day 347: 23rd Aug, 2010

Today marks the celebration of one AWESOME year of being an INDEXian! :) :)

Sometimes, somethings are memorable forever. They need not always be big things. For eg., this short SMS that pachpan received - 'Pls meet the prof for your conB viva'. And the guy had no clue that the rest of his group (including yours truly) had already met the prof :D . Super devilish that was! :D

Was also the savior for my SM group. Had made the complete ppt and mailed it across to them, but they just didn't happen to take it in a pen-drive. Rushed to class (15min late!!) with the presentation on my hdd. Got blamed for not getting along the word doc :-| , as the others hadn't read up on the parts on which they were supposed to speak :-| . The presentations were a little fun too, especially the recommendations part. One of the groups actually said - "Should gain market share". Hello? Who wouldn't want to?! :D

Day 346: 22nd Aug, 2010

♫ "Woke up this morning, Got up with the fear of SM!" ♫

Needed to start (and finish) the SM project in a few hours before it was time for the extra lecture in Retail (on a Sunday, yes, :-( , sad, I know). Sud seems to have gone off the map, so I guess another consecutive ditch putting all the load on me. Never mind, taking a "cosmos" point of view, I think I'll balance it out next term (INDEX term!). Finished that thing.

Next up was a guest lecture by the founder of Crossword - R Sriram. Luckily, that lecture turned out to be nice. One of the things I found interesting was this thought he gave on rules; most organisations make rules for the 1% who are the outliers, people who'll do silly things. But what you can do instead is to relax those rules, make life more comfortable for the 99% and treat that 1% as a business cost. Point to ponder.

Next up was our conB viva. As I keep saying always, the prof is too good, really nice person. In his email informing us about the viva, he wrote - "my request is all of you should come with pleasant faces" :D. The viva itself went off smoothly, thanks to Bansal ji. 

Sunday dinner in the mess is made to push you to go out and enjoy :) . And of course, such things are to be followed. Off we went to Richi Rich - last minute ditch by Vanki, not sure why/for whom ;-)

Days 344,345: 20th-21st Aug, 2010

Shared responsibility is nobody's responsibility. Now that Pachpan ran off to his hometown, his ditching act inadvertently put the workload of getting the surveys filled on me; but I at least I knew I was to do it. That was my biggest incentive to go to Friday's prom strat lecture - got the surveys filled through my friends in class :D . Of course, equally troublesome was the part where I had to manually feed in the hard copy replies into excel. And bored of having the work pending against my name, I came up with an "innovative" solution for the problem ;-)

After I came back from my dinner, birthday-boy-Bala came and told us that we are going out :-S . Apparently Shomu's persuasion. We (expanded to Ritzee, Kisaan, Vanki, TG for the free food) went to Genesis, highlight being we managed to jugaadofy one car! Didn't eat much, kept nibbling on the Peanut Masala. Had the choco-chip icecream for dessert - its awesome !

But, that wasn't the end to the day. Came to know that iBrand'10 was witnessing unprecedented enthusiasm :D . Excess of anything of course, brings its own set of interesting and unique experiences :D . My room has suddenly become the discussion hub :-| . Consequently, even as I tried working on some projects, facchas kept coming and discussions kept happening.

Finally, found my peace at 3am. A knock on my door at 7am (actually it was a violent push and a loud shout) interrupted my dreams. Realised it was two of our facchas. Poor fellows had stayed up through the night :D . Nice practice for INDEX I say! ;-) . Went with them to the mess and stayed there for a couple of hours, had breakfast and slept off again.

Spent the afternoon mainly trying to come up with something substantial for this inter B-school competition - iCreate. Didn't really manage to do much, so dropped it halfway. 

Had missed going to Lafangey Parindey yesterday; and not wanting to delay it any further, we made arrangements to go tonight. That got interrupted through some nice negotiation practice. Anyways, dealt with that (or so we thought) and we left for the movie. Wow, again in a car! :D . Sudden rise in status over the past 2 days :D . Or is it because Pachpan isn't here? :P . Some more interventions during the movie (sorry Deepika!) happened, but finally reached one acceptable-to-all conclusion. Peacefully saw the rest of the movie.

Came back to see my room wide open. Saala once again full kabzaa by everyone. Quickly, some little analysis and explanations and then sabko bhaga diya :-P . Sat down to start work on my Strat Man part. Too tired now though. Put it off for tomorrow morning. So long, for now, its bon nuit.

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 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 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 315: 21st Jul, 2010

What sort of a test is this?! We got 48 'fill in the blanks' (yes you read it right) today. Without alternatives! :-| . Sometimes I am just clueless about some things! Oh, btw, also had the Strat Man paper in the morning :-) Was a case based paper - yet another open-book exam where the book didn't come into any use!

But the important part - exams over!! To celebrate (bahana!), we went to watch Tere Bin Laden. Though not "very funny", it has its moments. What I would appreciate is that it was well thought out. Wasn't nonsensical just to be funny; though again, that's not really a problem :D

Now for all the hearsay about Lucknow being a great "foodie place", it is pretty much restricted to a few places and mostly only if you are a non-vegetarian. I hadn't found a single place here which served good dosas, which is pretty surprising considering it is one of the easiest things to make! 

Until today.

Went to this place called Dasprakash - famous for South Indian cuisine. Didn't get disappointed :-) Ate some good dosas and uttappas! 

A little weather update - the monsoon finally seems to have come to Lucknow. Twice in the morning this week - it got so chill I had to switch off the fan :D

Day 300: 6th Jul, 2010

Had that proper romantic weather today. Cool, a little cloudy, the clouds a little dark. And then the skies opened - and it rained :D

It would have been criminal to go to class in such an awesome weather. Laziness crept in and I bunked strat man to ... watch LOST! Am almost at the end now, finally ! Just one episode to go.. LOST, but one. Hehe.

BTW, 300 days at hel(L)! Woah! :)

Day 293: 29th Jun, 2010

Most Strat Man classes, KV, Pillai and myself sit together on the last bench. Even as Pillai continues with his farce of trying to read cases from the polycopy, KV is loyal to his old ways - He dozes off! The funny thing is, invariably within a few minutes, he slips into such a slumber that he starts snoring :D . And although traditionally snores are supposed to wake up and trouble people adjacent to you, in this case, KV himself gets up hearing his snores :D

Today is when facchas start putting in their applications through Calvin. Gave Pravin a nice little scare :D

Day 291: 27th Jun, 2010

Had a massive 3 hour guest session on a Sunday. The GM of Fortis (also happens to be an alum) had come down to give a talk on Strategy. I liked the part on how he switched roles between playing the corporate professional, the concerned alum and the faculty who wants his students to engage.

The overtures were delayed by around 90 minutes. Lots of electricity fluctuation issues today and the AC in Samanjasya wasn't working. Was nice to see the team in the INDEX Core t-shirts :) . Shankar and Shruti gave the overtures.

Postponed our Barbeque plans as Barood (CEO, Quetzal - the startup where I interned) was on campus. He has come down to take a guest session on New Venture Planning. We (Shetty, Cheeta and myself) + Harlee had dinner with him. Barood as usual had his another set of interesting experiences to narrate to us.

Came back and had an absolutely random discussion with Pachpan and Kisaan. It seriously started from somewhere and went off absolutely somewhere else :D . And that too for a good 1.5 to 2 hours! 

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.

Day 279: 15th Jun, 2010

Had great fun collecting money (for the section celebration) during the SM class. Especially Dada's negotiations with Lima, raising his contribution from zero to Rs. 30/- 

Buried under an avalanche of work now!

Day 278: 14th Jun, 2010

Steps to elect a bakra CR:

1. Spot the 'bakra' , in this case the person who leaves the classroom as soon as the lecture is over, even before the prof leaves the classroom.

2. Form a group of people. Meet him 'casually' afterwards and tell him he has been nominated the CR. (The group helps in the convincing part - you can break up the group in 2 parts to 'act real').

3. Now he has started cursing himself for what he got into.

4. Make him send an e-mail to the class, talking about the work which the 'CR was supposed to do'. Thus by default, he is now the CR.

5. Take the group of people to his room and laugh your heart out :D

All Hail Vanki - the CR for all occasions!

Poor dude. He also ended up as the CR for his StratMan class :D