Day 182: 27th Dec, 2009

Sooner, not later

I guess I must be amongst the first people to be running off after exams. I had taken a flight at 2pm and my exam was supposed to end at 12.30pm. Which was a close call (unless of course I left the paper a little early ;-) :D ). Fortunately or unfortunately, the flight got delayed by 45 minutes, so now the gap was enough.

Anyways, about the DWO paper. Have already told you about my level of preparation. Let me now tell you that it had no connection with the paper. The last 30 marks question was amongst the weirdest ones I have seen. We had to analyse EVERYTHING about a case from EVERY aspect of the course. And the funniest part - there was no case ! We were supposed to take any example (real or hypothetical) and go ahead!

As I said, it was intention to finish off the paper asap. And though I was writing to the speediest of my abilities, I was shell shocked to find Bharat submitting the paper in 1.5 hrs! :-O

I finished the paper with about 20min to spare and then caught up with Swapnil Thakre and shared an auto to the airport. After dealing with some of the worst roads in India and a tyre puncture, did manage to reach the airport well in time.

Time for vacation now. Time to chill out and enjoy. Time for a vacation for this blog as well. Brutally short break this one. I hope to make the best of it ! :-)

So long folks!! Cya soon!!

Day 181: 26th Dec, 2009

Mei aa raha hoon !

As expected, MANAC 2 paper turned out to be a mixture of problems based on by-hearting some formulae (variance kind) and problems based on common sense. Managed a little bit of both. So should get through with respectable marks overall.

One decision had been hanging. A problem of plenty, which is sometimes more difficult than the problem of scarcity. I had multiple choices, and had to choose one. Made that decision. And finalised it before I could have second thoughts again.

Slept off in the afternoon. Woke up coolly in the evening. And just didn't want to study. Who keeps a stupid paper like DWO as the last one?! How on earth is one supposed to study anything in that?! (though I guess I would have said this for any subject falling on the last day of exams :-p). And nobody around was studying.. nobody! I indulged in some music, little bit of HIMYM and general tp. Went to the mess at around 12 midnight to meet the topper himself (coincidentally .. Shreyas :-p). Chatted along for some time. Came back to my room at around 1.30 am. Finally started studying... or should I say tried to start... since I eventually started listening to music again! Finally at around 3, I opened up some ppt.. and now after reading it for some 15-20 minutes, sleep is taking over :D

And just before I end today's post.. must mention this.. sudden deluge of 'coming back' kind of messages as the gtalk status of people. And so I go with the flow. My gtalk status - (Mumbai) mei aa raha hoon !

Day 180: 25th Dec, 2009

Kal exam hai ?

Doesn't seem like it when you woke up at 11. (With hazy recollections of some senior walking into your room and switching your helmet - yea Naveen, you can't hide :-p).

Doesn't seem like it when you spend another two hours in the afternoon repairing your specs, not because you'll need it in your exams, but because you'll need it while watching movies in the vacation!

Doesn't seem like it when you vehemently stop yourself from going to remedials, even though you know nothing.

Doesn't seem like it when you haven't started studying even till late evening and stick to the company of people who are also not doing anything :D

But there is. And what's more, it's early morning instead of afternoon! :(

Started studying. Went with Saurabh to the 9 pointer's room to get a past paper explained by someone. Absorbed a little bit of that. The major motivation obtained was that MANAC 2 was a lot more about common sense and DI than MANAC 1. And survival should not be a problem. Aur kya chahiye? :D

Day 179: 24th Dec, 2009

Fastest Finisher

Well, we didn't get the exact same paper as last year :-p . But the paper was OK. Macro eco is a little more based on common sense than micro eco. Atleast that's what I feel until now :-p . Might just have to take back my words when we get our grades ;-)

Now in every class, there are some stalwarts at this game of answer paper submission. No matter how fast you write your answer papers, you always find that these people have completed and submitted their papers much before you even reach the end! Another first for me in this aspect. Achievement today was that for the first time, I was the first person to submit my paper, beating the likes of Shreyas Dhamdhere and Bharat Chintapalli. Attempted decent number of questions as well.

Holiday tomorrow for Christmas. So of course, time to party. My friend Ron (another college) starts studying atleast a week before exams. I can't manage to do that even 2 days before!

Went out with the INDEX gang. To this place called UV. It actually stands for ultraviolet, but why that name?... no clue! Pretty nice ambience and food.. including the Chinese bhel starter suggested by Swetha. Riza's enemity with my specs continued. This time, he managed to hypnotise me into breaking my specs just by looking at me and chanting some weird mantra (which I thought was just an innocent question). It's time I took revenge!

Day 178: 23rd Dec, 2009

Multiplier

Here's the situation. You know that the weightage of some paper is going to be only 40 marks. But yet, you are answering a 100 marks paper i.e. multiplier is (1/2.5)x . So whatever you gain (or lose), only 40% of that is effectively going to matter. But still, it feels bad to lose 10 marks than 4 marks no? Was asked a question about one Johnson's algo for 2 machine scheduling in the quiz, and I didn't know it then. Had prepared for it today, but today he asked that algo for 3 machines :-S (not even in the book!). tragic!

Eco tomorrow. Was a bit of my achilles heel last term. Macro-eco is a lot more interesting though. Lets see if it translates into marks!

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!!