Day 202: 22nd Jan, 2010 - Parikrama!

Just when we thought the cold would go away, it's back! And worse than what it was! Damn cold day today. Dense fog from around 8pm itself!

Today's lectures were painfully slow, even with the novel. Worked on another small INDEX notice after class. (NB was kinda empty!) Had a meeting in the evening.

Day 1 of manfest today! We INDEXians then went to watch HellRaiser - the rock show/competition. That was OK. Had cheese burst domino's pizza. That was superb! :D . After that we had a show by Parikrama. That was AWESOME! Super energetic! A great start to day#1.

Back in the confines of my room.. listening to a couple of parikrama songs. No lectures tomorrow. So no tension of waking up :D . Am making use of this by randomly listening to a lot of songs now. It's almost 4.15 am. Guess I'll go to sleep now, awaiting another good event tomorrow!

Day 201: 21st Jan, 2010 - Zero Visibility!

Unlike yesterday, lots of classes today. Half the MIS class was spent in random gyaan. Passed the remaining lecture hours with Kane and Abel.

Immediately after class, had to leave for some urgent work - going to a couple of schools and handing over their trophies. (Riza chickened out because of the lathi charge rumour :-p). Didn't even have lunch.

Had the INDEX meeting with seniors - a small doubt clearing session sorta thing. Some useful points there. Worked a bit on a collage for the NB. But then Ops Guru called me to SC's room to tally some transactions. Got a bit delayed in attending Manfest 2010's cake cutting ceremony. Missed the cake!

It's zero visibility state on campus! Impossible to see anything/anyONE even a few metres away! and nobody on campus needs a cigarette to smoke :D

Day 191: 11th Jan, 2010 - Stay Foolish, Stay Hungry

Yea, I know the book title is different. But then, I am not talking about that :-p

As I have pointed out, the weather is totally making me lazy (sleep is just a subset of laziness). Today I did not have any inclination to life my behind out of my bed at all! My bottle of water had been lying empty since I came back to my room and I just didn't go and fill it at all, rather resorting to the few ml of saliva left in my parched mouth to quench my thirst. It reached a more extreme situation when I decided to skip dinner for want of any enthu to move. Thanks to this silly decision, I did end up feeling a little hungry after a couple of hours. Luckily for me I have some dry fruits in my room!

Along with the involuntary overdose of laziness, I am also subjecting myself to a voluntary overdose of LOST. Finished season 1 after putting in 5 hrs of viewing time!

However, there WAS one thing today for which I did manage to get myself out of my room - and that is to catch my wing-mate red handed (or should I say wet-legged?) giving himself a nice pedicure :D . Despite a lot of resistance, we did manage to grab some pics - posted below! :D

Days 189,190: 9th-10th Jan, 2010

It's frikkin cold out here! Winter @ helL started off with me having to wear 2 layers of cloth. Around a couple of weeks back, I had to add a sweatshirt or jacket to that. Now, alongwith all that, I also have thermals, but it still feels cold! Almost as if the cold penetrates directly into the body through various means. The last 2 days especially have been super cold. Today I don't remember the sunlight coming down at all ! Had chilly winds the whole day.

All this temperature masti leads to a dense fog on campus. Literally, if you take 20 steps away from your hostel, you would lose sight of it :D .. Check out this pic!

We had this 3 session workshop by Abhiyan. The workshop was titled LEM or Laboratory in Entrepreneurial Motivation, and so it was!! It was conducted by Prof. Sunil Handa from IIM A and was one of the best sessions on campus. I won't write much about the session itself - since I believe it's effect would come only when delivered by the professor himself. However, this I'll say, if any one of you reading this post really wants to be an entrepreneur, you MUST speak to this guy.

Had INDEX final presentations today - the last step in the INDEX'09 journey. Went off pretty well. I was quite impressed by a couple of presentations and more than that by the quality of questions asked by the judge from A C Nielsen. Shanky was also with us thanks to the superb efficiency of trains in winter :-p .

Went to this place called Naush to celebrate. (Luckily Vanki managed to get the car and I got to evade biking in this cold!) Very mughlai type of ambience and food. Food was average I would say. We were there till 12, at which point we celebrated Vinay's birthday! Another first.. Gave him kicks right there in the restaurant compound :D

Made good use of my newly bought camera mobile. Am happy :D

Days 176,177: 21st-22nd Dec, 2009

The 48 hour day

It all started off nice and fine. This Monday was scheduled to cover up Saturday's timetable, but we had already had extra lecs so the day was free for us. Thus began the lazy start, waking up late, being lethargic and so on. Some semblance of the end term starting from tomorrow started creeping into me and I thought I'll start studying.

But it just so happened that Soumen called and asked me to come to the SME Conclave held by Abhiyan. And I did that. Mainly because I know the kind of effort that goes into organising such things. The conclave had some pretty big names and I guess we both would have liked to see greater numbers, but then, a start is a start.

Finally started with QAM late evening. And this is what sowed the seeds for the 48 hour journey. Called up my personal tutor for QAM - Sarin; he was himself studying up on something and he would teach me after that. So I was left with time for myself. Now you might be wondering why I was not studying by myself. As I have noted earlier, if our QAM prof dedicated even quarter the time he spends cracking silly jokes to making better reading material, life would be simpler. But then he didn't. And I didn't have any nice notes at my end. So I was stuck. Spent that time brushing up on whatever I had learnt for quizzes.

Went for an early dinner. Had badam milk :D . (wanted to highlight this better part of time :-p)

And then went to Joshin's room to study. Boy ! these FPM people sure are pampered a lot ! Stipend, multi room quarters. personal bathroom and even a balcony ! There was a nice big bed there and I don't know if it was the bed or the subject, but I was big time sleepy. With great difficulty, learnt a few concepts.

I guess the real struggle started when I came back to my room. Probably the disastrous consequences of such a soporific attitude triggered my subconscious brain (especially since the paper was at 9.30 am, so no time to prepare in the morning). I was sleepy no more. Struggled through the night, barely sleeping for an hour while trying to increase the breadth of syllabus I had seen atleast once.

Maintaining my real world attitude, won't speak much about the paper even here. Suffice to say this was nowhere close to the golden era of QAM-I.

Oh, and btw, the stupidest thing that I did was not related to the paper. I wore just a t-shirt to the exam hall. And it turned out to be quite chilly even in the afternoon. I would say I struggled more against the cold than the problems, but that's pretty debatable ;-) . High priority task during lunch was to wear a sweatshirt before the next exam.

Next exam? Ah well, I don't blame you for not understanding this yet, but we actually had two papers. MM as well. Now this was again an open-book exam for us and thus my Kotler still remains unopened. Majorly because the midterm results clearly indicated what mattered more was the imprompto evaluation of the case rather than quoting some non-contextual age old structure/principle.

The funny thing that happened was I fell asleep as soon as I got the MM case booklet. I mean, I hadn't slept the previous day and wasn't really sleepy even while I sat down in the exam hall and wrote my name, roll no. etc. But somehow, when I started reading the case, it was almost as if Mike Tyson had knocked me out. The 15-20 min sleep did a lot of good though. I was pretty fresh after that. But still, writing reams and reams of material is not my forte. With great difficulty, I managed to fill seven sides of the booklet. I just don't know how people can write more, especially when it was well proven that length is no criterion for marks.

Anyways, have OM tomorrow. Comparatively chilled out subject. (Does it justify the time I spent playing TT in the evening?) Also indulged in celebrating Naveen and Sarangi's bday in the INDEX room.

Now I hope to catch up on some good night's sleep. Need to stock up my sleep reserves. Have eco the day after!

Day 175: 20th Dec, 2009

The Great Indian Fraud

Imagine this. You are asked to prepare some Chinese food. But all you do is order some pizza. And when the person comes, you treat him to the pizza. And yet, eventually when he leaves, he feels he had the best Chinese food ever! ;-) . Talk about GLOBE! This one far outclasses any other effort :D

Exams in 2 days. Most people have started with something. I started watching Inglourious Basterds -yet another Tarantino movie. Found it ok, not as great as Kill Bill definitely !

It's pretty chilly today. I guess the cold weather is catching up. I just hope it does not induce me to keep sleeping. Really can't afford that in the next few days!

Had pizza for dinner today with Saurabh, Riza and Shruti over some general tp/chat about Riza-Fiza, CG, insti parties, Saurabh's-hunt-for-US'T', etc etc. Good fun. And to top it all, the cheese was still dripping from the pizza! Yummmyyyyy!!

Day 120: 26th Oct, 2009

Had these two HR forms to fill today. And guess what - they were totally different from any of the HR forms I had filled in earlier!! Quite a few people didn't apply for one of them on 'moral grounds'. I am not complaining :D

Am making frequent trips to the library now. Not that I have started studying early, just that we still don't have the net! And it's quite a pain walking through the chilly cold at night.

Speaking of which, the winter fashion has struck. The haute couture consists of sweatshirts, sweaters, hooded jackets, etc etc. Much to the awe of some people, I am still roaming around in the usual t-shirt and denims combi. Partly because I am psychologically preparing myself for more chilly days ahead, partly because I don't have winter clothes and mainly because I have so far been able to bear it :-p.