Day 519:24th Feb, 2011

Feels so nice to wake up on a day, and find out you don't have any ppts lined up :-p . Did have one form filling to do. Was initially happy since the company had come during summers, and I had all the answers ready. Turns out the questions were different, and also more in number :-S

Finally finished with my KT session for the juniors. Gave this half with Pachpan; I think it's a good idea to give it in groups. You can remember more by bouncing thoughts and opinions off each other.. INDEX is definitely in good hands though :-)

Quickly finished off whatever was left of the form (thinking and filling two answers at super speed :P) to make myself free for the hostel party! Had good fun there :-) . Just like it marks all special occasions, it rained even on this night, to make the senseless dance a senseless rain dance :D

Had a really long and really random bakar session in my room after that with Pachpan, Kisaan and TG. Always so worthwhile to talk and enjoy for 3 hours on topics right from 'biology' to engineering days to stuff here :D

Day 513:18th Feb, 2011

Woke up (pretty late) to find that I needed to give the final touches to the FRA document. Got that done just in time to have some (crappy!) lunch, and then dashed off for the Jack&Jill ppt; only to find the guys walking in a complete hour late :-x . And then break the promise of finishing off the ppt in an hour. (No, the few soaps and lotions that were distributed did NOT compensate!)

Some intensive chest exercises at the gym today. Also spersed with some triceps exercises and a 3km run :D . I can feel my muscles getting tougher now ;-) . Might be a little biased though :-)

Had kutte jaisa bhook and even the dinner at the mess was really sad. Kisaan had gone to play a cricket match for sikander and so poor me had to go all alone to Fauzi. But then, you just need to sit at Fauzi for two minutes and you are sure to get company :D . Had dinner with cyberKGP and my Bridge colleagues, funnily over giving some Fin electives' gyaan to some facchas. Had a marketing session scheduled just after that; attendance wasn't mandatory for me, but I figured I wouldn't be doing anything productive anyways. With that simple logic, I went along. Don't know what I learnt, but I know I didn't lose anything.

The night mess visit that followed suddenly left me with a new brainwave - we get brownie there, heated up, with chocolate sauce. How about buying an ice cream from Guptaji to have some home-made (not so) Sizzling Brownie?! Definitely an idea worth a try I guess!

Went to my INDEX junior Mak's room to collect KungFuPanda's sweatshirt. Also ended up giving a little electives' gyaan to him as well. Poor fellow reminded me of the crossroads I was standing at last year...

I think I need to start locking my room when I leave. (Have I mentioned I (and many others) NEVER lock the door of the room while going out?). Yesterday had the instance of a friend randomly posting a status update from my FB account, regarding the way my name is (mis)spelt. Today, I suddenly saw my USB mouse was missing. My detective instincts told me the suspicion would be on Bala. And then, true to his remarkable style, Bala gave yet another demonstration.

Me: Do you have my mouse?

Bala: No, it's with Kisaan

Anyone reading the above statement would infer Kisaan came and took my mouse. But no, the great Bala came, took my mouse, went to Kisaan's room, gave my mouse to him, and took his mouse. And on my quizzing a little more about this 'arrangement', I was (in his characteristic style) "ordered" to use my "hands" till my mouse is available again :-S . The e-sikander AOE addiction :-S

Anyways, my intentions of sleeping early have gone bust big time. Been randomly reading stuff (as usual). 4.20 am now. Just read a random mail from some committee on campus who (God-knows-why) called someone, and now we all mandatorily will have to attend that. Arghh!!

Day 512:17th Feb, 2011

Yet again I woke up at dawn! And took me a good 30 min or so to get back to sleep again. Fortunately woke up earlier than yesterday. Too much inertia though - skipped breakfast.

I seem to have made my 'casual steps' into an algorithm to pass off the day. Stuck to it. Lunch, laptop, gym, dinner. And that's a little flexible in the sense I could squeeze in 2 movies today, due to well, lots more free time. Fight Club was kicka** I thought, but Rocky Balboa was kinda disappointing, didn't match up to the Rocky series one bit.

And in the midst of all this, I found time to fill in the rudimentary details and then flunk the numerical part of this STeN-Chy online test. In a way, lucky for me; was saved from the 150 question long psychometric test which most others flunked :P

And then, I probably became the one of the only 4 PGP2s still working on a project - yes, the much discussed FRA. As noted previously, we thought we should be giving in more decent stuff. Spent around playing a little bit with some databases we have subscribed to (OK, only one database. OK, that too was done by my friend :P)

Was pretty sleepy somewhere then in between. But the night mess seems to have driven it away. And now at 5.20am, I am unfortunately not sleepy, but hungry :-S . Look on the bright side though, my sleep won't be "disturbed" at dawn :P

Day 508:13th Feb, 2011

Unabashedly, I admit to having sincerely studied for FRA today, especially given yesterday's debacle. But seems like the choice of 2 Fin subjects in the final semester might prove costly for me. Literally, since today's 19 mark FRA paper had a weightage of 60 marks overall, and the questions didn't have partial marking :-|

Had to come back and sit to complete the form for a General Management biggie. Frankly, I think that's my dream company :-) . But I really don't know if I'll even get shortlisted. Given the midnight deadline, I sat around filling the form fast, but neatly; mostly using answers that I had prepared for last year. There's one answer though which doesn't seem too satisfying, and just as I was about to copy that, I came to know the deadline's been extended :P . Good, let me think about it tomorrow!

Day 501:6th Feb, 2011

Today somehow seems to have become a day of self promotion. Now that I had finished 500 posts, it was time to give some publicity to the effort :P . And there went my blog URL on facebook :-) . Actually, apart from the publicity which I gladly welcome, a major intention was to give my batchmates a peek into the past. Although I write very specifically about my point of view, I am sure a large number of elements would be common to most of us.

Without putting in too much effort, I finished the application the way I had answers yesterday. Seems to be some issues with the assessment though - it never loaded for me! Got to look into that.

By now, most of us have been extremely poverty stricken. In these desperate times, visits to the mess have increased. Including for Sunday dinners! :-( . Guess it's time for one last major funding rescue call to home. And now, after one 'reflective' walk around the campus, it's time to have one look at what to do for all the pending presentations. I have given my laptop to Pachpan and asked him to take it to the library so I can come there and work. In a weird way, I suddenly feel free from all digital shackles. Guess.. on second thought, may be I'll push the project work for tomorrow :P . Will tuck myself into bed now. tada!

PS: I was also the Etrigan topper today ;-)

Day 500:5th Feb, 2011 - Five Centuries :)

Woke up comparatively early (8.30 is early dude), partly because I still had to finish the LD report by noon, and partly because I had to be (nominally?) present in class for our QAF presentation. Worked around these two conflicting interests by taking my laptop to the QAF session :P

Much of the day was spent filling the application for this multinational FMCG; more specifically in coming up with answers for three HR questions. Each time this happens is like suddenly hitting the 'Pause' button in life and trying to think of what you did. Has the potential side-effect of making you think you live a rather shallow and empty life, hardly doing anything beyond the mundane. But given the fact that we are MBA students, that cannot be true ;-) and thus you keep thinking and re-thinking and writing and re-writing, usually till the deadline appears. I had to attend a game+learning combo session by the same organisation in the evening, and by then I came up with what I thought were pretty decent answers.

Got back to my room and suddenly entered into a Reformist Mode. Day before yesterday, a particular incident happened regarding the way a certain amendment was done. I personally thought the process was unfair, and have been trying to mobilize opinion. All I want to do is have the batch re-think over it :-)

Just got back to my room after a night mess session. Pachpan just got a huge download of politics, scams and other GK stuff from his KGP batchmates and we sat around discussing that for some time. And yes, the deadline for the application has been extended; yes, as usual, the answers were kinda trashed by Pachpan; yes, will give it a re-visit tomorrow.

And yeah, 500 days in helL, every single day on this blog :-) ! Three cheers! :-)

Day 462:29th Dec, 2010

Same old morning getting inundated with lectures. Seems like we also had to submit an initial proposal document for our FRA project. So sat around working on that for some time. Seems like a long time since I did anything like that. Finished that just in time to land up for the batch meet by Pcom - a small little "expectation setting" purpose. Poor guys, they really have to slog!

Went around to Dham's room later to get some feedback. Hope I get the chance to apply it too in the near future. Then went off to celebrate the birthdays of Sud and Sarin. The latter involved a couple of more "innovative" "celebrations" with Pappa employing his creativity to make a really gross 'maggi mix'! And what was even more creepy was that Sarin used that to wipe off the PINK cake off his face! :-S Eeeks!

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.

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 333: 8th Aug, 2010

Heee haw haw haw! Super funny incident - I was lying on my bed in the afternoon when all of a sudden Vanki comes up and asks this -

"oyee.. what do you call an umbrella in hindi?"

:D :D

Apparently, he wanted to communicate something with one of the fellows at (the Awesome) GnB, but couldn't get his point across for want of this :D

Spent a good amount of time on the Retail Marketing Final Project. But the problem is, having people like Sud in my group is super helpful, but in a weird sort of manner, also a little painful. She has just completed her internship at PUMA - and all the knowledge which I discovered and documented after these long hours seems peanuts for her :-( . Sheah - have promised to put in some more time and improve my deliverable - hope to get that done asap.

Our Ops guru is on campus (yet again! :-p). We all met up at Fauji, along with the facchas and did some tp. Then had the laugh of my life as he showed me one particular pic that was taken last year during recruitments - hahahaha! Some people are just so weird!! :D

Day 262: 23rd Mar, 2010

I have an alarm set at 5.45am. Why so early? I don't know. But I like to have it then. Interestingly, for the last one week, that alarm has primarily been responsible in alerting me that it is time to go and sleep!

As I said yesterday, submissions were due soon and today somehow was that day of the term when all your submissions need to be completed in those few hours. So there we were, sitting in the library till around 3-3.30am putting things together. (It's still an improvement over our first term performance when we used to sit till 6-7am.)

Once we had finished off with our MM (donnn), ADA (the jugaad) and FM (Golden GLOBE nominee), I left and came back to my room with the intention of doing the HRM project (which was again to read those never-ending cases and summarise them).

But the night was dark and beautiful. The silence was soulful. It needed a melody. So there I was - earphones plugged in, listening to some nice soft numbers. Awesome!

Never realised the time go by, until of course, my alarm reminded me that it is time to go to sleep..

PS: We also had an FM quiz today - 10min was the time limit. Everyone came out and complained about the lack of time to arrive at all answers. By the way, I had finished it in 8min flat. This way or that way, atleast I know to respect time :-p

Also, mass mobilisation in progress to argue over the proposed 2nd year room allocation procedure. More on that tomorrow. So long then!

Day 258: 19th Mar, 2010

Oh, I don't know how I forgot to write this yesterday! Some more raid on seniors - this time the target being Pravin. I took a tennis racket and a TT bat from him (for now .. more to follow in a week). Kisaan took away BOTH his badminton rackets and pachpan also took away his tennis racket. Man, this is fun :D

I continued my exploitation of the high attendance resource piled up by sleeping through the FM class (in the room i.e. :-p) . Went for the HRM class in which this funny thing happened - the prof made a statement which, thanks to the wonders of the Queen's language, can be interpreted in an altogether different meaning - "... the same applies to sexual harassment. You must have experienced that in your Behaviour In Organisations class". After that, sat down all by myself and did the SCM Nike assignment. That felt nice :)

I seem to have lots of time right now. Just saw The Dark Knight again. Read quite a bit of Calvin and Hobbes. And a little bit of Harry Potter. And all this conveniently sitting on my bed, thanks to the extra long LAN cord given by Sanghvi! :D . It's 5.30am now and the charge on my laptop is almost out. Guess I'll treat it as a sign and sign off for the day (or night.. or the next day.. arghh!). Chalo guys, cya tomorrow and have a nice weekend!

PS: the last 2 words reminded me that we have tons and tons of extra lectures of ADA lined up in the next 2-4 days..!! shucks!

Day 219: 8th Feb, 2010 - Monkey Management!

Our section is quite (in)famous for asking for deadline extensions. True to the record, a few guys had been asking for postponement of submission of a couple of assignments. The efforts did pay off - the boring HRM journal reading task had been extended. But our FM prof's style of putting through the same point for his subject was awesome :D . His mail -

"The date for the first assignment submission is extended to 16th Feb 2010.

A line of advise for the lobbies. No more extensions on any course related matters will be entertained. You manage your monkey and I will manage mine.

Cheers until then "

Allowed myself to bunk a QAM class in the morning today to enjoy the luxury of some extra sleep :D :D

The next MIS class was the usual - scrambling to copy the assignment in the first 5 min, listening as the prof whiled his time (and ours) rambling on something that has no coherence or relevance to what he should be speaking on. Doesn't seem to be a good course at this juncture in the first place. Would have been much more logical to have a strategy course now and keep this as an elective next year.

INDEX room is now spacious, thanks to kisaan. Poor fellow had to become a mazdoor to unload the boxes at the shop :D . Had the extension of yesterday's meeting today. Things came to a logical conclusion.

Have my exams from day after. Doesn't seem like that at all. I have friends who are worried about tests a few days away.. and here I am to restore nature's balance.

And just as I finish writing this post, it's started to rain. Wonders never cease!

Day 197: 17th Jan, 2010 - Nothingness

Woke up at 12. Had lunch. Did some tp. Chatted a lot. Snacks. Chatted more. Dinner. Zzz @ 10. Woke up to find everything dark..I thought it must be around 5. Discovered it was just 2am. Remembered that we had to submit a comm assignment tomorrow. Sat up on the comp. Only ended up chatting some more. And height of heights - spent around 30min looking up 'joke' on wikipedia :D

Day 165: 10th Dec, 2009

Today's post is definitely going to place my blog a few notches above on the babe quotient ;-) . Yea guys, today's post is by the evergreen etrigan topper - Meenal Anand. A very talented and popular figure on campus, with a very charming personality. Spotlight!

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It is Friday, 3:54 pm. Some 12 minutes back, Shivku reminded me to send him the blog entry. I spent 3 of the 12 minutes cursing myself for having forgotten all about it, and 9 cursing Shivku for having conned me into writing it in the first place! Ok so the ‘thing’ is, I can’t recall a word taught in the lectures today and they only just got over. And I am to recall the entire yester-night and yesterday! Talk about screwed up expectations! (Ouch! What’s with the mood?)

Ok. Thursday! Thursdays for Section F are pretty chilled out. Relatively. (Now if you notice, a section F blogger will never let go of a chance to brag about Section F. It was sometime during World War 2, while combating Fuhrer's forces that this sense of fraternity developed. As it happens, Fuhrer won, but at least we all came out alive. Sigh! Good thing that the war is over.) Ok so Thursday.. This thing about snoozing the alarm half a dozen times, and running down the corridors with a brush in one’s hand, is true for all of the 700 IIML students. All except one. But that aint me. So snooze I did, and run I did and found myself in the classroom at 9:47 am. Only a couple of minutes late for the first lecture. And.. I have been trying to recall what happened next ( Shivku, I swear on you I have been trying. So if I am lying, you will die and we’ll know ) .. “The next thing I remember.. I was running for the door, I had to find the passage back, to the place I was before..” And so at 12: 05 pm I found myself in my blanket, only to be woken up thrice by three Manfest-ors about ‘The Big Photo Shoot’ that was to ‘change our lives forever’. I dragged myself out of my blanket and got ready (read suited up!) for the event of the year. 10 of us Barney figures reached the MDP to be greeted by the only direct descendent of chimpanzees we have here in IIML. (Rule Number 1 of blogging: One has to be subtle while making fun of colleagues. Here I try. I am talking about the chimp who is often seen with a DSLR hanging around his neck, owns a pair of inline skates he never uses, blogs about girls, calls them Rare Flowers, is in love with a dimpled rare flower and is called Hansraj).

For the next two hours, the chimp arranged us in queues of three, four and five, circles, triangles, squares, semi circles and question marks. It ended with the chimp and Shantanu climbing the terrace to click an aerial view of Us-The Question Mark. For ten good minutes while clicking the aerial shot, Hansu hung over Shantanu’s arm like a pile of washing freshly plucked from a roof-top clothes line. Just like that! Reminded me of the games of cricket, when, after a simple catch, we used to just dive and topple over to make it look like a tough one. (What! You never did that?)

Anyway, it was 4:30 pm now. Any guesses as to what I did next? I slept. I wouldn’t have slept all this much had I remembered it was my turn to blog for the blog I am blogging for. But I did not remember, did I? So I slept. Blissfully. For two hours. (Why I can’t I talk about Friday!!)

I got up at 6:30 pm, to go for a ..wait for it.. jog! Ahem Ahem. Yeah so Kapil, Ashish and I go for a jog. Regularly. Ok let us call it a jog-walk-mix. Ok it’s really majorly a walk. Whatever! I am sure you don’t even do that, now do you? Huh!

Fast forward to 9 pm. I pinged a few people to ask for deliverables for the next day. Only an Economics presentation! Some two hours of work. So I decided to leave it for the morning (and that saves me from talking about it in this blog! Does a little victory dance).

“..And she slept happily ever-after..”

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Thanks Meenal! Great entry to mark the end of the first Guest Writers' week on my blog :) I got some really good feedback on this idea from quite a few of you readers out there. Thanks to you guys for following my blog! It would be great if you could also post your comments on the articles. Feedback, positive AND negative, is nice!

For now, it's back to me. And when I'll have guest writers in future, I'll make sure you know.

Day 162: 7th Dec, 2009

The blogger himself writes! Yea, today's post is by none other than Amit Haralalka - an avid blogger himself & one of my first friends on campus. The writer in him was super enthusiastic about accepting my offer :D

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Wokkay. Thanks to ‘mumBHAI’ (as I call him), I get to recollect my day and share my thoughts on this blog. And Boy! What a day it has been!

The term ‘Monday morning’ loses its significance (notice the lack of the word ‘blues’ usually attached to it!) when you have 3 hours of classes on the preceeeding Sunday. DO NOT raise your eyebrows if you are not from Section F, neither do I need your sympathetic “tch tch”s. It is a truth that I (and my brethren from Section F) have learnt to live with.

So coming back to ‘Monday’ – the only good thing about ‘Monday’ was that classes started at 11 AM. So I got about 2 hours to do the whole act that I indulge in everyday. It is an act I call “the routine”. “The Routine” is the following act performed in sequential order:

1. Put the alarm for 8 AM

2. Get out of bed at 8 AM, and put the alarm clock on a 15 minute snooze

3. Get back to bed, comfortably inside the blanket for the next 15 minutes

4. Repeat Steps 2 and 3 until you have exactly 25 minutes left for class.

Today I got to do “The Routine” from 8.00 AM to 10.30 AM – Aaah! .. The joy of getting back to your bed on a cold winter morning 9 times in a SINGLE DAY!

Classes were regular – nothing fab. Except that I had to indulge in some “Desperate CP” and gain some CP Marks – not something I usually do, but I wanted to do everything possible to compensate for poor mid-term performance in a particular subject.

Post-lunch (usually siesta time, but since I had done the “routine” 9 times, I started getting the feeling that I have been sleeping for the last 7 days, which obviously I hadn’t been!), I decided to complete the Marketing Management project (since this was the project that I was working on… & the other’s weren’t!! – Division of Labour!) .. Interestingly, during one of the Oral Vivas conducted by an Adjunct Faculty, the faculty (lady) politely commented on how ‘the Collaborative Culture at IIM manifests itself in all possible ways’ when she caught members of a particular group prompting the answers to their group member during the Oral Quiz. Well, there are STILL more Collaborative Ways at the IIMs are used for social good – Work on some projects, free ride on others! J

Evening was NostaLgia time. Went out with a part of the group that I used to hang out with during my first week here – Kanny J, Saali, Bansal and yours truly. We went out to Barista, followed by dinner at Royal Café, followed by a nice long drive back to campus (with all of us crooning to Sufi-Bollywood music).

Wow! – This feels better than I thought. I should get back to writing on my own blog more often. Hopefully the Gods of Hell will smile on the internet on campus in general (and the WiFi on H14, in particular) so that a blogger can get back to some blogging!

Thanks mumBhai for the opportunity. Relishing it.. :)

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Thanks man. And I am sure 'The Routine' is something most of us here follow very religiously :D

Day 161: 6th Dec, 2009

Today's post has been written by Aarthi. She happens to be one of the most timepass people on campus. She always carries a spirited smile on her chubby face but her weapon happens to be the wit in her words.

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I get the honor of writing about the most interesting day in the life of an IIM student. Heck the life of any student in the world - Sunday. What is it about this day that puts a smile on our faces? The day that is is synonymous with relaxing, dedicated to admiring the colors of the sky and the smell of flowers and the freshness in the air.

Let’s zip back to reality now, shall we?

The only time of the week you can find the IIM campus deserted is Sunday mornings. People comfortably snuggled in their beds on a cold winter morning. Not for me though. Reason: I had a guitar class at 10:30. I would have bunked it if not for the vague promise I made myself a month ago to make life more than just project submissions and movies. So I dragged myself out of bed at 10:15 in the morning and realized I was clean outta cash and I had to pay for the classes. A few frantic calls and Rs.500 later, I was running down the stairs with my toothbrush in my mouth so I could make it to class on time. I reached class to find the instructor waiting outside cause no one was there yet. So much for breaking the monotony – Most people go crawling back into its secure walls to blissful emptiness.

On the day of Sabbath, the Jews make it a point to avoid work. There’s a reason you hardly ever find Jews in IIM. Sundays are reserved for post lunch meetings in the library to “split up” project work in time for a Monday deadline. I was no exception to this rule.

I’d like to digress here to emphasize the curse of being picked as group No.1. Our group was more cursed than most that we landed slot 1 even in a not – so – lucky draw. Anyways cursing the fates that conspired to ruin our happiness, we decided the work each of us had to do. But work has this way of dragging itself hours after the deadline and it was 12:00 in the night and the end was nowhere in sight. After a frantic meeting at 00:00 hrs on D-Day we realized we did not have what we needed (the thumb rule with creating a marketing questionnaire is that when it comes to data analysis, you’ll never have the data that u originally intended to collect). After yet another split up of work, we headed to our respective pigeon holes (popularly known as rooms) to do as we were instructed.

When I mailed my portion of the project (Which would be shot down by the professor as unadulterated nonsense) in the wee hours of Monday morning, I thought of the promises I made myself a year ago – To bust the monotony, to do something I cared about. I thought if I cared about busting the monotony. I thought about caring about things. I thought about thinking. And sleep took over and I escaped where I could keep promises made long ago.

Thanks “Shindex”.

P.S. I was not forced into writing this article

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Nice one :) Thanks Aarthi !

From my side, the Guest Writers' Week is being pretty well received! :D My blog got a huge number of hits today :D

Day 84: 12th Sep, 2009

FOURTH consecutive day (err.. night?) when I am sleeping AFTER sunrise! Today I tied a handkerchief around my eyes so that I feel it is still dark :D **lol** :D . The devil this time was the CV.

BTW, I fell victim to the risk assessment theory I put forth just yesterday. Had the ITC presentation at 10.00 and realised my mobile was ringing at 10.05 . Rushed off for the presentation. Not much of an issue though since the time was given by us anyways for the preponement. Full timepass in the presentation as well. Some imaginary question not present in the case should have been solved it seems :-p . And of course, the tossing between solver and data table.. hehehe..!

Had the money kannon presentation today... which looks for all those bullets. That took up afternoon. Then the CV struggle started. The bloody dispatch office was closed, adding to the complexity (and wasting Blue Dart money). But anyways, I think finally, I have more or less decent stuff here and there in the CV. Finally uploaded the CV at 05:58:00 for the 05:59:59 deadline. Afghanim ji .. iss CV ko freeze kiya jaaye..! .. But is this the sahi javaab?' .. Will know in course of time!

Day 83: 11th Sep, 2009

Reached my room at 8.30 in the morning and had the presentation at 10.00. The temptation to use this 1.5 hrs to squeeze in a small nap is the riskiest one, since you just don't wake up on time! I fortunately woke up at 9.45 and rushed to the class; only to find none of my other group members had come. Immediately started calling them. One smart guy had not slept, so he was safe. Two of them somehow woke up when I called them and rushed in a few min. One poor guy could not be reached and he dozed his way off and missed the presentation. Talk about a hard night's work wasted!

BIO presentations as usual continued with the madness of extra comments. Today saw a nice little goof-up by one of the groups. Even as the presentation was going on, suddenly the slides started coming without any content in them :D . Apparently they had opened some wrong file or something!

You might start wondering if we are all machines to just go on without sleep, but it is more about balancing sleep a little. You either make up on the lost sleep yourself or else it will catch up with you. I chose today afternoon to sleep. And guess what, slept from 3.45pm - 11pm - for a good 7 hours - in the day :D

Was woken up by an INDEX mate. Ran a little late to the INDEX room for the meet. Right after that, got a call from a classmate. He called to inform me that the ITC presentation had been preponed to tomorrow morning from tomorrow evening. Apparently the prof sent this mail at 11.45 in the night :-S. Back to the library to debug our excel sheet and then make the presentation. So here I am at 04.00 am, at the library again, this time for some other reason. Lucky me for having had my quota of sleep! Time to leave now(no rains today thankfully!) and get some sleep. Have sufficient buffer to get some sleep before the presentation :-p

PS: last day of lectures for term 1 done!