Day 168 - 23rd December 2010

AM paper was pretty OK. The instructions at the beginning of the paper would have put anyone at ease. Here's what they were -

1.Examples and Explanations should be like - "No confusion, Great Combination."

2. 30 sec/20sec/10 sec are ad timings,keep your answers also likewise - short and crisp!

3. Do not "write for charity" - focus only on your pen and paper :)

At the end of every page of the answer sheet there was a 'Thank you :)' - talk about driving home a point ;)

Paper was for only one and a half hours, so it got done pretty fast. The scenes after this paper weren't as ecstatic as the ones in the first term. Though we did do something symbolic in Palaash which cannot be shared on this blog ;-) I had an Interface meeting with the people who would be conducting the Micampaign city meets in Delhi,Chennai,Hyderabad and Pune. Post that extended family decided to go out for lunch. Now in 2 states, the book by Chetan Bhagat we had read about this place called Topaz where they go to eat Tandoori Chicken and roomali roti, so we decided to go there for lunch. On reaching the place we realised that the place is a 'pure veg.' restaurant :-(. Guess 2 states was more fictional than we had imagined! Anyways the food wasn't that bad either. From there we went to Cad-B for desserts. Had to rush back to campus since I had to pack and leave for the airport. Have a 15 day break but also have assignments to be done in the holidays and need to go to Sawantwadi for one of them. Anyways looking forward to catch up on some sleep and hog on homefood.

Here's wishing you a merry christmas and a happy new year! See you on the other side.

Day 167 - 22nd December 2010

Today's CB paper was quite decent, not heavily oriented towards theory. Most of the questions were application based and fun to answer. After CB spent around an hour or so going through the IGD slides, really didnt expect anything good to come out of the paper. Testing theory for such a subject is completely irrelevant, should be more of a case based approach.

We got our schedule for the next term today. The batch had some issues regarding the time table with Prof. Mathew not teaching us any subject and some other concerns as well. The ARC had to meet up for that to discuss our course of action. We decided to call a batch meet to discuss some of these issues, was a pretty good response,hope something good comes out of it. After the batch meet, Mallu had packed Shikari Tangdi Kabab from Honey9 , so Mallu, Maushi,Kalkar and Kore shared the meal at Chota followed by some random discussions on how engineers are and how engineering jokes will never really be understood by anybody else :D In the midst of all this had to study AM and also work on the OB make up group assignment which I missed in class as I was attending the sports marketing lectures with pgp2(still dont regret it, SRT's brand manager v/s excellence in organizations - which one would you choose? :P). The mood in the batch is already pretty relaxed since we had studied for the AM test earlier and moreover it is the last paper :D

During the course of the day, spoke to a few senior ARC members, got some pretty interesting points of view. Will need to take it forward once we are back next term. For now the only thing on my mind is getting done with tomorrow's paper :P

Day 166 - 21st December 2010

The OB paper didnt have too many surprises since it was based on a case which we had read anyways. 4 questions 10 marks each. Though the prof. still asked us questions which expected us to know the exact theory from the textbook something which is definitely not required for a subject like OB, as long as someone knows what the right thing to do is how does it matter whether I know that my organization is pursuing competitive excellence or creative excellence :P Anyways more than the OB it was the CB preparation that everyone was dreading. Started studying CB in the afternoon itself, had nearly 500 slides to cover, relived the engineering days when certain 'irrelevant' topics were left in choice :D One of the chapters on personality had theories which were propounded by psychologists like Freud, Jung,Adler and Allport. Some pretty interesting stuff. But then after a point it reached saturation point what with cramming about motivation,personality,percerption,culture,learning and all that jazz! The frustration levels of the batch were quite evident on facebook and on micamail chat statuses. :D Maushi's status read - "The irony of forgetting everything you read about memory" The frustration levels in Palaash also were quite high, as is the case in such situations there was random screaming of expletives, whistle blowing, dancing et all. Today though it went one step ahead with the Coco of the subject- Bhandu being brought out of his room and an unsuccessful dunking attempt being made. By midnight my eyes started burning so decided to go to Chota for a chai, have been doing random tp since then, will just skim through CB once again before calling it a day. In all of this we seem to have forgotten that there is another paper tomorrow afternoon - IGD but then we have 2 hours between the papers so bahut time hai! ;-)

Day 165 - 20th December 2010

Today's QT paper was an absolute disaster. It was a 50 mark paper with 100% weightage :-S And to add to it there was a problem on simplex linear programming for 30 marks! Had practiced a decent number of sums yesterday and was relatively confident of solving the sum, but then while forming the equations there was one condition in the problem which I did not read and that changed the entire course of the solution. Could not solve the sum completely but attempted the theory questions, should hopefully get some marks there. Came out of the exam hall and realised the mistake I made and also realised that the paper wasn't good for majority of the batch. Micamail was flooded with people asking for a make up assignment since having a 100% weightage for such a paper is unfair. Anyways lets see what happens. Didn't study much of DC, in fact I slept off for a while, read a few of the slides half an hour before the exam. The DC paper was OK, pretty much on expected lines.

Had to submit the Imagining India essay as well today, managed to write 3045 words! :D In the evening we got a mail which had a case study for tomorrow's OB exam. Finally a real life case for the subject! It's a good thing that we dont have to mug up theory for such a subject, because it is of absolutely no use. Read the case in the night and kept watching videos on youtube of SRT's innings. Was a pretty light day in terms of preparing for the exam, but its going to be exactly the opposite tomorrow when we have to prepare for CB and IGD. It's going to be a mugfest!

Day 164 - 19th December 2010

Had a holiday today and boy did we need it! I cant imagine completing QT if we didn't have a holiday before the exam. Whoever coined the term simplex was a sadist :P Spent the entire day solving sums and trying to understand maximization, minimization, sensitivity analysis and degenerecy :P By the end of the day I am now feeling degenerated. Will study DC tomorrow after QT. This is a really short post, will crash soon, hope tomorrow's paper goes off well!

Day 163 - 18th December 2010

Today's CMA paper was pretty good, not that I did exceedingly well but the way the paper was set was very nice. No mugging up required, just an understanding of the concepts and how to apply them. 10 questions for 10 marks each in 90 minutes. In one of the questions we had to play the role of a marketing manager at Maruti and based on a recent press release from Toyota which would be launching a new hatchback and a sedan. These vehicles would be direct competition to the Swift and SX4, we were also given some numbers on the costs for these vehicles. Based on this data we had to suggest what strategy to the board to adopt to counter this assault from Toyota in the Indian market. The question read 'Many times in your career as is the case in life as well these subjective evaluations make or break careers.' The answer had to be written in the form of a speech and began with Gentlemen...... It was actually fun writing the paper and nobody left early!

Since tomorrow is a holiday there was a semi vacation mood on campus. Almost everyone went out in the evening/night. Extended family went to honey9 for dinner, we had heard a lot about the Shikari Tangdi Kabab out there and it lived up to its reputation. Moreover Mallu and I made the most of having dinner with people who have a very small appetite ;-) Got back to campus by around 11. Went through a few of the DC slides to see how much needed to be done. There was a birthday celebration in Parijat at midnight, feel sorry for the people who were born in the winters, imagine getting dunked in this weather! :D Will let the vacation mood to ensue for a little more time by crashing early tonight.

Day 162 - 17th December 2010

First day of exams in term 2. Had SM in the morning and CR in the afternoon. SM was a 1 hour 55 questions MCQ test with 0.5 negative marking! Anyways was a little liberal in marking answers since the test has a 20% weightage in the overall grade. As is the case in such papers people started walking out within 20 minutes :D Its like a race as to who will walk out first. Yours truly got done in half an hour. Had 3 hours before the CR exam, studied for an hour or so and then decided to take a break till the exam. Thankfully that helped since the exam was based on complete application of the theory, no vomiting of mugged up answers were required :P

Slept in the evening for a while before starting CMA. Now my experience with CMA's predecessor wasn't a very good one so Im hoping this doesn't go down the same road. Anyways started reading and solved a few numericals, which were pretty ok. Geeko came over to HQ to study and since she is familiar with most of this stuff was able to get quite a few of my doubts cleared from her.The exam is at 230 tomorrow afternoon so have a lot of time tomorrow morning as well. The subject is a good mix of theory and numericals and apparently the paper is going to have 10 questions worth 10 marks to be solved in one and a half hours! Will call it a day now and resume CMA tomorrow morning!

Day 161 - 16th December 2010

Study leave today and it reminded me of my study leave days during engineering. Most of the day was spent in the room studying. Have SM and CR tomorrow, SM is a one hour MCQ paper with 20% weightage overall and by around 9 in the night someone had managed to get a slide deck from the publishers of the text book. Its amazing how resourceful and efficient people become during exams ;-) Also managed to finish the Imagining India assignment today, will go through it once again tomorrow or day after before submitting it. Also had to submit an AM assignment in which we had to play the role of an account planner and write a creative brief for Bru instant coffee.

The highlight of the day though had nothing to do with MICA. At around 1130 in the night got a call from an ex-colleague, there were some major issues at work which needed to be resolved soon. Yours truly managed to give remote support from here and the work got done :D Was surprised to see how much I still remembered! Sports marketing nahi to SAP hi sahi ;-) Had a birthday celebration in Palaash at midnight. Birthdays during the exams aren't the best thing that can happen to a person plus one of the birthday boys is a founding member of PJComm, the unofficial committee which takes the trouble of sending one PJ a day to the entire batch. So you can imagine the amount of frustration that was vented out. :D

Day 160 - 15th December 2010

Last day of lectures in term 2 today! Never realised how fast time flew. Had 2 RM and an AM lecture today. The AM prof. was all praises for our batch and asked us to keep up the level of enthusiasm as we entered the second year. After lectures got done extended family headed out to Mainland China for lunch, as always it was good fun :-) Ended up spending a good 3 hours just talking about random stuff like who would be ideal for which of the senior committees next year. Got back to campus by around 430 and slept for a while. Continued working on the Imagining India essay, crossed the 2000 word mark and stopped for the day. Wrote about the evolution of hindi movies and heroes, another 1000 more words to go.

Off late there has been a huge load assignments that has been given to us which we have to do in our term break. We got one more such assignment today and as expected people weren't too happy. Anyways the CR's will be talking to the prof. tomorrow and hopefully things will get sorted. After dinner our CB group met to decide how we would go about the assignment, we will be travelling to Sawantwadi in the term break and a do a study on the socio cultural region. Should be good fun! Started reading a bit of CB, that is one subject I am pretty apprehensive about this term its too theoretical and the syllabus is humongous! Read 2 chapters and feeling extremely sleepy, shall call it a day for now, have a long day ahead tomorrow as well.

Day 159 - 14th December 2010

For once things went according to plan and I managed to wake up a little early today to read up a bit on IMM. The quiz was pretty OK, some of the questions seemed to require only common sense while the others needed a good understanding of media terminologies and concepts. Apart from that RM and AM lectures. RM was taken by a visiting faculty member who also happens to be a MICA alumnus. He introduced the topic of research design and posed some pretty tough questions to the class :P. AM was about the Advertising Standards Council of India and its role, some pretty interesting cases were presented alongwith the ruling of the council.

Had to finish off some formalities regarding the Bangalore trip in the afternoon. Had a discussion with the prof. regarding the learnings from the meet and how things can be improved for future meets. Slept off for a couple of hours in the afternoon. Had to get cracking on the Imagining India essay, which I did in the evening, it can be no surprise that one third of my essay is based on how cricket can be seen as a metaphor for the changing aspirations of the middle class in India ;-) At Micare it was the turn of Maushi's team to takeover and they came up with the idea of serving pani puri. It turned out to be a huge success with their stock getting sold out in 20 minutes!

Its end term season as well and we have a quiz in tomorrow's AM class so decided to study a bit in the night. Have been going through the ppts, have one ppt left before calling it a day. For some strange reason the exams this time around dont seem to be as stressful as last term.

Days 153 to 158 - 8th to 13th December 2010

Been away again for quite a long time. Had a pretty hectic week and have now finally got some time to update the blog. So after staying up the entire night making the trippy tunnel made it to class on time. First two classes were IMM and the fatigue and lack of sleep set in at the beginning of the first lecture, at the end of the lecture though I thought I would be able to survive the second lecture, and how wrong was I! Never realised when I dozed off in class only to be woken up by Geeko who told me that I was snoring :-S, decided thats all I could take so came back to the room after the lecture and dozed off a couple of hours. Woke up in the afternoon as some work needed to be done for the Bangalore meet. After that had to go to Bopal with Balaji a.k.a Sir to buy some stuff for the trippy tunnel. Carried 12 feet long wooden planks on the bike, Sir was looking like a knight going in for a joust ;-) Once we came back had to get down to working on the IMM presentation for the next day. I was lucky enough to work in a good group and one of the group mates had worked in AC Nielsen so making sense of the data in the excel that was given to us became a lot more easier. Worked on the presentation till around midnight before I crashed for the day. Had only the presentation on the 9th which went of pretty well. We were playing the role of a media agency and had to pitch to Aircel with an effective media plan. We were pretty happy with what we did. After the presentation Maushi and I went to the old city to buy stuff for the alumni creatives. We also had lunch a sumptuous lunch at Upper Crust. Got back to campus in the evening after which we got back to working the tunnel and other on ground creatives. Spent most of the night in installing the tunnel and other also did a bit of the tensile structure which was shaped like a DNA (double helix). We also had to move out of our rooms on 9th since some of the alumni had already checked in. A few of us decided to sleep in the community centre, was good fun, moved our mattresses and blankets to the community centre. The next day as well was spent working on the tunnel, it was no easy task! Finally got done with all the work which included installing the UV lights at around 1030 that night. The end result was very good, people appreciated it a lot. Have posted a few pics of what went into the making the tunnel and the final result. The guy in the third pic is Kalkar - the brains behind the tunnel and in the second pic I am holding the light for Sir who was in charge of implementing the construction of the tunnel.

Had to leave for Bangalore on 11the morning for the city meet. Went to venue to check out the facilities after we landed. The meet was scheduled for Sunday so was free for rest of the day on Saturday. Met a few ex colleagues, went to SBX - where we have seen many a IPL match :-) The meet went off well on Sunday, had a decent turnout around 60-70 people turned up. Was free after the meet on Sunday evening so went to Purple Haze, was good fun to be back there as well.

Today started off early, had a 10 o 'clock flight so had to wake up quite early. Slept well on the flight. Reached campus at around 130 and caught up on more sleep. The Imagining India assignment deadline, which is a 3000 word essay got pushed to 20th from 15th, so have some time for that as well. Spent sometime with extended family after which we headed to Micare where the interns were in charge of the store today. Mallu and Bulla were handling the store from 1030 to midnight and they sold some pretty innovative stuff like bhutta, masala papad and popcorn. In the midst of all this we go to know that the first term results had been declared. the list had been put up in SH1. What ensued was a mad scramble :D Yours truly got a B+ overall and just scraped through in FA. It was also one of the rare occasions where I did exceedingly well in QT. Got back to the room after that.Have an IMM quiz tomorrow but I am feeling very very sleepy, will wake up a little early tomorrow morning and read up.

Days 146 to 152 - 2nd December to 7th December 2010

Been away from the blog for almost a week now. A lot of things have been happening on and off campus that have kept me busy. So Sankalp, MICA's annual theatre fest started on the 3rd and most of day on 2nd was spent in helping out for the on ground creatives. Had to climb ladders to hang decorations from trees and the roof of the audi. Never done anything like that before, was good fun :-) Had to also prepare for the competition at IMT. Left for Delhi on 3rd evening amidst a lot of drama. Our onward journey tickets were confirmed and we had asked an agent to book our return journey tickets for the 5th i.e Sunday. However he ditched us at the last minute and we boarded the train to Delhi with no confirmed return tickets. We reached Delhi at around 8 on 4th morning and went to the Reservation center to book our return tickets. There was a huge line so in the meanwhile we asked a friend on campus to book the tickets online which luckily went through. Took a metro to Noida from where we took a rickshaw to IMT. It has a nice campus, they have an amazing library, it is quite grand and actually makes you feel like studying :-) There 7 of us from MICA so it was good fun. Our competition was on the 5th, it was a good learning experience (read as we didn't win ;-) ) But we did see a few areas of improvement which should help us out in the future.

We left for Delhi on 5th evening and wanted to make the most of the time that we had to explore the city. Khan Market, Connaught Place, GK, India Gate and Pahar Ganj were on the itinerary. Also made the most of happy hours ;-) The weather was also brilliant , dont think it ever crossed 20 deg. Pahar Ganj was an interesting place to go to, it is where most of Dev D was shot. Had to go around the place on a cycle rickshaw which was also a nice experience. Had a pretty uneventful return journey. Made the most of getting an upper berth and slept all the way from Delhi to Sabarmati :-) Reached campus at around 1130, could make it for the last class of RM, and as luck would have it, the prof. finally got his chance to say 'Wake Up Sid!' :D A few of us had a meeting with some consultants who are in the process of making a 5 year plan for MICA. They wanted to know our opinion about the place and where we saw the college heading. After that had an interface meeting, we have the Bangalore city meet next weekend for which I will be going :D:D but the flip side I will miss the Grand Alumni meet which I heard if going to be a lot of fun! In the evening played tennis and basketball and then went for a jog - had to make up for all the calories consumed in Delhi ;-) Post dinner had to help the alumni team with the on ground creatives. Kalkar has a really amazing idea in mind which when implemented will be something completely out of this world. Worked on it for the entire night! It required a lot of carpentry to be done. Had never used tools so much in engineering, quite ironical that I had to use it in a mgmt. program. Was really good fun though. The structure is called a 'trippy tunnel', will try and upload a pic once it is done. That work went on till about 845 in the morning courtesy which for the first time since I have come to MICA I have to attend lectures without taking a bath :P Somebody tells me that it is my right to passage ;-)

Day 145 - 1st December 2010

Woke up at 630 today, its for the second time ever since I have come to MICA that I have woken up so early! Had to prepare points for the panel discussion Mother Pious Lady. The author of the book, Santosh Desai who is also the CEO of Future Brands, came to campus to talk to us about it. Although the book is a collection of article on the Indian middle class, it also serves as an excellent book on consumer insight for a marketer. How he has brought out the nuances that are a part of our daily life which we subconsciously knew existed but never thought of is quite amazing. Initially the session started off as a panel discussion with people who had prepared on certain parts of the book spoke to him about how they reacted to the book. The session then turned into an open house with people asking questions on questions ranging from the changing Hindi Film Hero to gender to homosexuality to cricket! A pretty enriching session to say the least.

In the afternoon spent time with extended family , Maushi was leaving for Bombay later in the day, Mallu will also leave for the SP Jain sports fest tomorrow and yours truly will be leaving for IMT day after. Most of the evening was spent with family as well. For the past couple of weeks I've been searching for the school anthem of St.Vincents, my school in Pune but was not able to get hold of it. Today one of my friends shared it on facebook and I since then I must have heard it at least 20 times :-) Still gives me goosebumps!

Post dinner I went to see the rehearsal for the Sankalp play, since I will be missing the a performance at Natrani. I know it sounds repetitive but I just have to say it again - we have some supremely talented people out here :-) That went on till around 230 after which helped out the Alumni creative team in making some structures that the plan to put at places around campus during the Grand Alumni Meet. Went to Chota with Mallu at around 5. It was then that I realised that I have been awake for almost 24 hours, the moment I realised that tiredness set in :D So will crash after a 23 hour day ;-)

Day 144 - 30th November 2010

Pretty long day today. After a full day of lectures had the Ahmedabad city meet for MICA aspirants as well. In AM we learnt about the building blocks structure while analysing a brand, its a tool that makes life simpler when people have to think about what they want their advertising to communicate. Had our last lecture of OB today, didn't see it coming. It was only when the prof. showed us the last slide did we realise that it was the last time she would be teaching us at MICA. In the RM lecture the prof. looked at me and said, "All these days I have been waiting for Siddharth to go off to sleep so that I can say Wake up Sid! But he has never given me a chance!" :P Hope that chance never comes :D

After class had to make arrangements for the Ahmedabad city meet. Few of us had to go to ISCON mall where a bus had been arranged to bring the aspirants to campus. Had a pretty decent turnout considering there it was a weekday afternoon and there was a rickshaw strike in the city. It reminded of the time when I was on the other side of the table ;-) Good fun interacting with them though. Since this was pretty successful there are more meets now planned.

Have the mother pious lady panel discussion tomorrow,so read a bit of the book but am feeling awefully sleepy right now. Will hit the sack early tonight and hope to wake up early tomorrow!

Day 143 - 29th November 2010

Had a late start today so could take the liberty of waking up at 915. In the CR lecture when the prof. what to know that it was a classmate's birthday he immediately sent somebody to buy chocolates for the entire class! Very nice gesture on his part :-) The AM prof. wasn't keeping too well so she decided to take a surprise test and a class presentation. In the test we were expected to write about what we understood about agency structures nowadays based on the session taken by the VP of Ogilvy. The class had earlier been divided into 6 groups and one of the pre reads was based on 6 different consumer behaviour theories. Each group had to present on a theory. This method of learning I've realised is really effective, definitely better than cramming last minute before an end term examination. Had our first lecture on Research Methodologies (RM) today. It is going to be split into parts, one this term and the other will be done next term.

In the afternoon had an interface meeting. We have the Ahmedabad city meet coming up tomorrow so had a briefing on what all needed to be done. The meeting went on for more than an hour. By the time I got back to the room, I was dead tired. Didn't even realise when I dozed off. Woke up at around 7. Worked a bit on the IMT competition before heading out for dinner with Apu,Mallu and Maushi. Went to Millenium, a dhaba on SG road famous for its tandoori chicken. This was followed by desserts at TGB, fell in love with the chocolate barbeque out there.

Got back to campus by around midnight and had to pick up where we left off on the IMT competition. Came up with a different concept for the presentation so started afresh, this alongwith the fact that we all are novices at prezi made things a little difficult but after 3 hours of effort we finally got the hang of using Prezi! The satisfaction of having struggled and achieved something reminds me of my days at work where days were spent on resolving an issue but in the end when it did get resolved the accompanying sense of satisfaction made it feel like it was well worth it :-) It's 415 now but am not feeling sleepy at all nonetheless shall try and hit the sack now, have a long day ahead tomorrow with a full day of lectures and the Ahmedabad city meet.

Day 142 - 28th November 2010

It was a rest day since I woke up at noon. But apart from that something or the other kept coming up to keep me occupied for most of the day. Bhandu,Shitut and I qualified for the final round of the co-branding event at IMT, so we started working on that presentation today. Decided to use prezi instead of power point. It's not as easy to use as power point but the end result is definitely better. The event is about co-branding of Acer with a sporting event, the sport was decided by us in the first round based on which we had to submit an abstract. That kept me busy till the evening when I had get back to reading Mother Pious Lady, its an excellent book and anybody who has grown up in India post 1960 has to read it! Went to the gym in the evening, which was quite empty, guess a lot of people took advantage of today being a rest day. There was fish curry served in the mess today so all the Bongs and Mallus on campus had a field day :-) Post dinner saw a couple of episodes of scrubs before getting back to working on the co-branding competition. Have an AM pre read for tomorrow which I shall do before crashing for the day.

Day 141 - 27th November 2010

Had a full day workshop on media management today. This was also conducted by a MICAn who is VP at Zenith Optimedia. It was a good follow up to yesterday's session on account planning. The session was all about strategic media buying and as is always the case for a person from the industry, it was best explained with the help of case studies. Came across some interesting facts today. The most revealing one was the fact that ibibo.com, the Indian social networking site is three times bigger than facebook in terms of number of users! Mera Bharat Mahan eh? ;-) Also got to know about how movies are creating games on sites like zapak.com as a part of their promotional activities. In fact zapak delayed the launch of one of their games to coincide with the release of a movie with the same theme. After both the movie and game tied up for promotional events, the number of users who registered for the game was 10 times more than the estimated figure. Lot of other interesting insights from the session. All in all 4 hours well spent :-)

Have been getting into this habit of sleeping in the afternoon/evening. Continued the tradition today as well and clocked in 2 and a half hours of sound sleep in the evening. Had promised a friend to play tennis at 5, woke up at 6 to see four missed calls, the phone was next to me all along, so you can imagine how sound the sleep was ;-) Spent the rest of the day reading Mother Pious Lady. Before calling it a day need to finish a AM weekly assignment, which is uploading ads on a facebook page with their analysis!

Day 140 - 26th November 2010

Today's AM session was a guest lecture taken by a MICAn who is now a VP at Ogilvy. He spoke about the advertising industry and how things actually work. The entire process was brilliantly explained and it shattered a lot of myths that I held against the advertising industry. I had a totally different idea about the account planning specialization that is offered over here and today that radically changed for the better. He then went on to show some ads that were made by Ogilvy and explained the nuances of each of them, how things that we remember the most from the ads were most probably not a part of the original script :-)

Had an interface meeting in the afternoon, we are organizing city meets for an info session on MICA. The first meet is on tuesday, so had to work out the details for that meet. Got done with that by 5. Came back to the room and slept. Now sleeping in the evening has never done me any good and when I woke up and saw the time I thought it was 645 in the morning and went back to sleep! :P Finally got my bearings right at 715 when I managed to get out of bed.

A friend of mine from Bombay had come to campus in the night, had dinner at Chota and ended up doing general tp for most part of the night. Got back to the room at around midnight and have been surfing the net and listening to music. One of those days when you dont really do anything productive and before you know it, its time to crash :P

Day 139 - 25th November 2010

Had a pretty interesting communications research today. It dealt with participatory theatre and people were asked to enact a play. The play had two protagonists and people could take chances in playing those roles. They had to just walk up and tap the person playing the role at that time and they could continue from that point. It was hilarious at times, with some of the people getting in new twists to the story. Apart from that a pretty routine day.

The course on Imagining India requires us to read Mother Pious Lady a book on the changing middle class in India. Brilliantly written it is a collection of articles on the everyday aspects of growing up in India in the pre and post liberalisation India. Started reading it today and its quite addictive! That kept me busy till dinner time, mess food was quite boring today so extended family decided to go to honey9 for dinner. Tandoori chicken and butter chicken are always welcome :-)

Had an ARC meeting at around midnight. Identified a few issues that need to be tackled and also got some inputs from PlaceComm on the industry perception of MICA. That got done by around 3. Have nothing much to do now, have another full day of lectures tomorrow and the weather makes it all the more difficult to wake up in the morning!

Day 138 - 24th November 2010

The MCL is heating up and all the action is spilling over off the field as well. So today's game was between Navy 'Square' Cuts and Lucky Strikes (who are incidentally the defending champions). It was expected to be a cakewalk for the strikes, but as they say this is a game of glorious uncertainties and we got to know today why it is so true! Strikes batted first and posted a competitive total of 98 on the board. Their mainstay in the batting order was given a life and he made the most of it in a partnership with a Wasim Jaffer clone. Though after he got out wickets started falling at regular intervals and the SQ's also raised the bar when it came to their ground fielding with some really good catches and ground fielding. On this ground anything above 80 gives the bowlers something to bowl at and with the kind of bowling attack the strikes had one knew it wasn't going to be an easy task. After losing Ravi early, it was upto Vineeth and Vikesh to steady the innings. The two roommates gave a brilliant exhibition of sensible batting, something that is rarely seen in the MCL. They hardly hit any boundaries but were always alert to steal singles and twos and even capitalise on overthrows (there were quite a few). The way they played out the strike bowlers of the strikes(pun intended) was a delight to watch, there were hardly any false shots played. Before the strikes could realise it SQ's motored along at a rate that was very close to the required rate. The two V's had laid a brilliant foundation for the rest of the team to launch the final assault. They even played out 5 of the 8 overs to be bowled by Beedi and Puri, the strike bowlers mentioned earlier. At around the 14th over a mini collapse of sorts took place with 4 wickets falling in quick succession, however Utkarsh brought the game back into balance by belting 2 consecutive boundaries before getting out trying to go for the third one. It was now down to Akshay Menon, popularly known as Baby Menon, since he just turned 21 and also because the other Menon in the batch is as old as father time ;-) So a little background is required here, Akshay was not able to score in the previous 2 matches and one of his innings lasted 15 deliveries without scoring a run. This made him the butt of a lot of jokes from the seniors but today he proved to them (and us) that he definitely isn't a baby and showed tremendous maturity in the final overs of the chase. He got into the groove by clubbing a couple of boundaries and keeping the required rate at a run a ball. The most crucial over though was the penultimate one with 12 runs required of 12 deliveries. Akshay whacked the first legal delivery of the over all the way to Bopal and with the first ball being a no ball only 5 runs were required of 11 balls. This is where he maintained his composure and showed great temperament, the next 5 deliveries were good ones and played all of them on merit. The strikes tried their level best to get under his skin with their trademark sledging but that hardly flustered him. With Dhruv taking a single early in the last over it was befitting that Baby Menon hit the winning runs which sent all the pgp1 students gathered at the ground into a frenzy! It was a clinical performance by the SQ's. The strikes were good in certain phases of the game with Kanabar taking 2 good catches on the off side, but apart from that they will rue the overthrows that they gifted the SQ's. At the end of the day the better team won.

Now generally at the end of such an exciting match if you were to choose one man who made an indelible impact on the game, the last person you would think of is the umpire! But such is the beauty of the MCL that today's man of the match had to be Satyaprem. He has always received a lot of flak from the seniors for no reason and has taken it in his stride. But today an altogether new level was reached when the strikes used all possible pressure tactics to make him crack but SP stood his ground. There were a couple of straightforward decisions that he made which were made to look controversial by the strikes and they used that as an excuse to converge on him as a mob, with stumps being wielded a weapon of mass destruction :P Unfortunately such tactics to disturb the concentration of the batsmen and the umpires hardly work, it only makes the bowling team look quite silly. Due credit must be given to people from pgp1 who supported Satyaprem in full force. Generally in such cases there is a tacit understanding between both teams that whatever happens on the field remains on the field. However that rule was broken when one of the strikes, wrote a pretty disgusting note about Satyaprem on facebook, with morphed images and all. Now until sometime back I respected for the guy for his knowledge on cricket and his writing skills, after reading the garbage he wrote that too on a public forum about a person from his own college I was quite saddened. Also the person in question was not even directly affected by Satyaprem's decisions because he was bowled of the first ball anyway :-D It got worse with him showing absolutely no remorse for what he had done and some other pgp2 guys actually supporting him on facebook. The replies to his note, especially to girls who requested him to remove the post,were quite disgusting! Anyways we as a batch have decided not to react because then we would have to stoop to the levels that they have gone to.

Nonetheless quite an eventful day, out of all this pgp1 got its first real rockstar - Satyaprem. As ironical as it may sound, he owes it all to pgp2 and their 'official blogger' ;-)

Day 137 - 23rd November 2010

Back to regular classes after nice break. Had a double AM lecture in the morning and as usual they were quite interesting. The lecture was all about marketing of mobile phones and how the consumers are segmented based on buying behaviour unlike other products where there are the standard segmentations. I could actually put myself in each of the buying behaviour zones based on my age or more importantly based on whether I was earning or not ;-) CB and OB were pretty OK with a lot of people in class being caught sleeping. Can't blame them, the weather has been so good over here that it feels like an insult to it if we sit for classes. Apparently even Bangalore is not as pleasant as it is over here right now!

In th afternoon had to make a press release for Interface after which there was a meeting regarding the city meets that we would be conducting. Got done with that by about 430, came back to the room and read a bit of AM for tomorrow's class. Slept for an hour or so in the evening before going to the gym.

It's PPO season now and today we got to know that Kaushik (guest writer from last week) got a PPO from L'Oreal! Congratulations Kaushik :-D To celebrate there was a party in Amaltas. From there went to Chota at around 3 for some chicken pakoda and nimbu paani. Got back to the room by 4, have a late start tomorrow,should hit the sack now.

Day 136 - 22nd November 2010

Second consecutive rest day. Bettered yesterday’s performance by waking up at 2 in the afternoon :D The weather here for the past couple of days has been awesome to say the least! If this weather continues waking up for class from tomorrow onwards is going to be one helluva task. Spent most of the day watching scrubs. Had a little interface work to be done in the afternoon, got done in about half an hour. In the evening went for a walk outside campus, there is this water tank about 5 minutes away from college which I have always wanted to go to. Today was the perfect day to climb up to the top of the tank, brilliant weather coupled with brilliant surroundings! Got back in time for snacks which was Pani Puri(buurrrp).

Worked on the co-branding competition until dinner time. Had planned to go out for coffee/ice-cream post dinner but the rain gods weren’t kind enough to let that happen. Had no choice but to stay back on campus. Decided to start work on the AM assignment which is due on the 25^th(yes at times,we donot always work just the night before the submission).It’s a pretty interesting assignment, we have been given 8 print ads and have to write a brief analysis for each of them. Did that along with surfing the net and listening to music. Its almost 3 now but I am not sleepy at all, will watch Scrubs for a while before crashing for the day.

Day 135 - 21st November 2010

12:00 p.m - wake up

12:30 - Brunch at Chota

1:00-5:00 - Scrubs

5:00-6:30- Tennis

8:00-2:30 - Chocolate room + Harry Potter (slept through half of it)

Aah I love rest days :-)

Day 134 - 20th November 2010

It was the last guest lecture on sports marketing for pgp2 today, so as has been the case I attended this one as well. The brand manager for Force India, the formula 1 team owned by Vijay Mallya came down to give a talk today. It was pretty interesting, he spoke about the F1 team as well as the Bangalore IPL team and how UB group takes up unique marketing initiatives to get maximum reach with minimum investments. He also spoke about their plans for the upcoming Grand Prix in India. That got done by around noon after which I was free for the rest of the day. Went to the library and found a book on how brans Arsenal was built,seemed to be interesting so issued it, hope I get to read it sometime soon. Played tennis in the evening for about an hour or so.

Started watching Scrubs today. I was addicted to it at one point of time where I finished watching six seasons within a week or two :D Started season 7 today. Mess food was extremely boring today so went to McDonalds to pack a burger, so had a TV dinner of sorts :-) That is also a major advantage of having a bike, can go out whenever you want to. Worked a bit on the IMT competition on co-branding. Have the next two days off which I am looking forward to, will spend most of it sleeping and pay justice to the incredible weather out here which reminds me of Bangalore :-)

Day 133 -19th November 2010

The good times continued today as well. In our second MLS in 2 days, Bharatbala (of the A R Rahman Vande Mataram fame) came to campus to talk to us. Spellbinding would be an understatement!! He spoke about his life and his experiences while making the Vande Mataram and Jana Gana Mana videos. His passion for what he does in commendable. Pretty much drives home the point that if you find what you like and pursue it wholeheartedly happiness is not too far away. He was also creative director of the opening and closing ceremonies for the CWG in Delhi. Shared his experience from there as well. Both ceremonies were a grand success in spite of the government and bureaucracy. There were some parts of the opening ceremony that were performed for the first time at stadium during the actual ceremony itself! He also spoke about the parts that he felt could have been done better, he shared with us the original plan for the opening ceremony which was much more grand than the ceremony which we saw (which was quite grand actually). Unfortunately that did not materialise because of the efficient way in which the government functions ;-) There were also some broadcasting flaws that he spoke about. The entire broadcasting team was from the UK and tried to depict a picture of India that they had in their minds, they missed out on showing some really significant moments like when the Pakistan contingent entered the stadium during the opening ceremony, the PM actually stood up and applauded them, politically a very significant moment but they didn't feel it was worth covering! The session went on for more than 3 hours but was not boring at all. The sheer scale on which he conceptualises events is unbelievable.

Apart from that had a pretty routine day. IMM lectures were on strategic media planning. Discussed some of the accepted practices in the field and the evolution of certain core media principles. There was a MCL match between Marlboro Reds (pgp1) and 502 Pataka (pgp2) in the afternoon, the Reds had to win by a certain margin to qualify for the next round. Quite a lot of people from pgp1 came out to support the Reds and gave pgp2 a taste of their own medicine. Unfortunately they didnt take it too well, but if they dish out something they should be prepared to take it as well. The fact that the Reds won and knocked out Pataka didn't help matters for pgp2. ;-)

In the night worked on a marketing competition for IMT which is based on co-branding and a little bit of sports marketing. Did that for a while before going to Chota for chai. The weather has improved and its quite cold during the nights. Makes it all the more difficult to wake up in the morning :-P

Day 132 - 18th November 2010

So after guest writer's week it now back to tolerating me on this blog :-) I would like to thank each and every guest writer who agreed to write without any hesitation and actually stuck to the deadline, something very unMICAn :D

Anyways back to today. There are certain days over here when I couldn't thank my stars enough for getting making the cut and today was one such day. PGP2 has been having their general elective on sports marketing for the past week or so and I have been sitting for their classes (out of interest and yes I have been missing a few of my classes for that, but its a worthy investment nonetheless). Half the course is taken by the prof. who is a guest faculty member from IIM-C and the other half is taken by industry experts. Two days back we had the managing partner of GroupM talking to us, he managed the IPL bids (team and players) for the Deccan Chargers, gave some really good insights into the entire process. But the lecture I was looking forward to was the one that happened today, it was conducted by the brand manager of Sachin Tendulkar :D:D:D Yes it couldn't get any better than this! The brand manager of by far the biggest brand in the country talking to you and sharing his experiences with God. He is the VP of World Sport Group(WSG), who were also recently in the news for the IPL mess. The session was divided into two sets of one hour each. The first hour focussed on the IPL, from its conceptualization to execution how it exceeded everyone's expectations! He also shared with us his views on what went wrong in the third season and why WSG is fighting a couple of cases in court. Was pretty impressed with that, would generally expect people to avoid these topics, but the very fact that he spoke about it and that too with conviction is an indication of no wrongdoing from his side at least. The second part was about celebrity endorsing brands and brand SRT in particular. One takeway from the session was how the celebrity and brand personalities need to be as similar as possible. He also spoke about how they are building a legacy for brand SRT with the adidas sporting gear and Sachin range of soaps and shampoos. These brands will last even after he retires. And when SRT endorses a brand he doesn't do it just for the heck of it, he means business, for instance he used the adidas pads and told them that the pads were too hard because of which the ball would fly off easily to any close in-fielder. So adidas went back and modified the pads! That is the level of involvement. The very fact that I have been ranting so much about the session shows how excited I am and that too 12 hours after the session concluded!

In the afternoon had an MLS which was actually a movie screening. The movie called India untouched was on untouchability still being prevalent in India. It brought to light some pretty harsh truths - one of them was the fact that untouchability is practised at a village just 5 kms. away from MICA! The person who made the movie was available for q&a after the screening. Got done with that by around 7 after which I went to the gym. Dinner was pretty boring at the mess so had Paratha and Burji at Chota.

Kaushik mentioned it being the season of competitions and today even I joined the bandwagon. Apu and I worked on a causal marketing competition the deadline for which was midnight and we started working at 10 pm :P Nonetheless finished on time! Have a couple of competitions more lined up over the next 2-3 days. Nothing much to do now, no pre reads after quite a long time so will make the most of it and hit the sack early!

Day 131 - 17th November 2010

Today's is the last post in the guest writer's week and is by a fellow 4M member. Rahul has made my job easy by introducing himself pretty well, so here goes -

And so, it’s my day today!! :) Well this is Rahul Shitut, Siddharth’s next door neighbour at Palaash, fellow mumbaikar and a his co member in 4M :P

Have been reading MiCa Lal’s blog since the first day and it’s interesting to read how he chronicles each day of his life at MICA with small incidents here and there.

Ok now lemme talk about my day. Today being a holiday got up aram se at 11 in the morning after a late night & had to rush to meet Anand and Abhijit for the shoot of their ad, which has come out pretty well, and you can check out yours truly in it (now that you know about it, watch it here:http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=467754157331&oid=144040988975093 and like it ;) Post that had to rush for a JPC meet which went one for quite some time. Once that got over went to the mess for a late lunch with Sam and Abhinav.

For a change the weather was kickass throughout the day and it was raining as well but I was too lazy to enjoy it and slept post lunch. Got up at around 6pm but was not feeling that great so just chilled for some time and went back to sleep. Got up in time for dinner expecting biryani as it was Bakri Id. Went in and saw something which looked like khichdi and it turned out to be chicken biryani. Post that met up with svablum, bhandu and nitin. Wanted to catch a late night show of Due Date but as the weather was brilliant decided against it and went for a drive. Went to the city, ate brun maska after ages and then drove on this superb stretch on the Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar highway. To put it in Svablum’s words,” Aisa lag raha hai ki France mein agaye! ;)” Dunno where that came from!

Got back to the hostel at around 12.30. Saw a few episodes of “Californication”, the same one which yesterday’s guest writer also saw. And I agree with him on the fact that this series is friggin addictive!!!!

Well its almost 3 am now, have a couple of classes in the morning which I intend to attend. So signin of folks and MICALAL, I think you should be back now! ;)

Day 130 -16th November 2010

Today's post is from a senior who at one point time was my junior. Didn't get it? Let me explain - Kaushik was 2 years my junior at engineering college and got into MICA immediately after graduation, I on the other hand worked for nearly 3 years before coming here, so that makes him my senior. Anyways here's how the life of a pgp-2 student feels like -

Er.

I am honoured and privileged to be a part of this social media initiative. I feel that this is an efficient tool that reaches out to the right audience, and also believe that this media channel needs to be leveraged in order to drive saliency, awareness and engage the consumer. Paradigm shifts in media behaviour suggest that social media is the future for most brands.

Sorry, I have been working on a debate, a case study, and my dissertation – this has led to the thoughts in my brain being all messed up, resulting in the above. Speaking of dissertation, I fail to understand how my report on “Effect of country of origin on alcohol branding” is going to be of any relevance to the industry, academia, or other Latin-inspired words that our “global” professors and “dissertation committee” come up with. It is a mindless exercise comprising of half hearted research, zero relevance, and absolutely no industry potential. Oh well, that is true for most projects in any B-School J

Oh, I’m supposed to write about my day. When Siddharth asked me to write, I was quite clueless, considering I am awake all night and sleep (soundly) during the day, so I’m going to write about my night. I woke up around 3 (in the afternoon), only to realise that I had dropped a subject, and the last general elective was on. Oh wait, that doesn’t make sense, I’ll explain. See, I had taken a subject, it got dropped, and there was this subject called Sports Marketing that was supposed to commence. I realised that I HAD to take that subject if I had to complete my GE credits. Talking about sports marketing, it is probably the only area of marketing that I have no interest in. Make me sell/market anything – soap, biscuits, condoms, shampoo, lipstick, underwear, soap, laptops, soap (did I mention soap?), I’ll do it. But sports marketing? No no. Its probably because I don’t understand why people would run around a ball and waste their time, and then again, why some other people would bother spending money on it. Just doesn’t interest me (Micalal don’t edit this)

So I attended those sessions, and they were mostly about the IPL (surprise!). Post that, I did some MICANVAS work = running around with a box from my hostel to another. Damn, MICANVAS, that thing is addictive. I still have a hangover. I then (finally) met my dissertation guide – my only motivation for this is the word “alcohol” in the topic. This (as every discussion in MICA does) disintegrated into whether MICA is going down the drain or up the pyramid. After two hours of discussing whether “MICAn’s lack depth” and “Without CAT, these batches are just not up to the mark (or are they?)”, I got back to my room.

I thought I’ll work on my dissertation, but oh well, didn’t work. I ended up watching Californication. I am now officially addicted to this series. Its brilliant, and based in LA. Oh wait, there’s an insight – the only other series I’m addicted to is Entourage, also based in LA. Maybe I should look for a job there.

Anyway, post that, I worked on the DraftFCB+Ulka case study competition that seems to be the flavour of the week. Yes, its fest season, and every week, there is a new festival/competition that everyone seems to be participating.

Anyway, I have written quite a bit, and this isn’t exactly my forte, so I’ll sign off!

Day 129 - 15th November 2010

Today's post is by Zoya aka Joya Ssingh aka Fruit Loops. She has also been reading the blog quite regularly and in her own words 'has done a pretty decent job for today's post' :-) So here goes -

Wow. I’ve written a lot today.

Anyway. Today I am guest writer on MICAlal, and let me just start by telling all the readers how much it means to me to be a guest writer. It’s something I’ve dreamt about since I was a little kid. Thank you Micalal, you’ve fulfilled many dreams.

Speaking of dreams, ever since MICANVAS 2010 got over, and I’m not perpetually tired and my sleep cycle isn’t quite so amusing, I have found that I can’t quite sleep. Bummer. I almost look forward to my alarm going off in the morning... although I still hit snooze. So today, alarm went off at 8:15, slept till 8:30. Woke up, brushed, changed, etc... and then BREAKFAST! And there were Paranthas, which is my favourite morning meal (or at any other time during the day).

First class was CMA, as a previous post mentioned, never had a costing class been quite so emotional. This was followed by a class on Consumer Behaviour. I really love how everyone waits for my name in the roll call for this class. If you’re from PGP1 MICA you’ll know what I’m talking about. Come ask me if you still haven’t figured, I’m awake at all times except classes. Today’s lectures were shockingly boring. I do believe this is the third subject in which I have been forced to study needs, wants, values, learning, and all the other things that cause mass yawning. Following the first class on CB (conducted in the auditorium with all of us lolling about on colourful polka-dotted cushions... yes, really) we were pointed to SH2 for our second class on, you guessed it... CB! More stuff on animals getting conditioned, babies getting shock treatment, etc etc... hurray everybody.

If you had supplied your system with enough coffee during breakfast you would be one of the lucky ones still in the running to attend ‘Development Research’. As luck would have it, I was one of them. Unfortunately, the effect of the coffee started to wear off by the first 5 minutes and in the 30^thminutes I had the professor waving frantically in front of my glassy eyed expression trying to get me to answer ‘How will you conduct a group discussion?’. My concise answer of ‘By making groups.’ was met by laughter. Ah well... at least I entertained.

Lunch was bad. I forgot what it was. Slept badly in the afternoon and woke up in time to go to the doctor with my roomy ‘Geeko’ to get my medical certificate authenticated. It wasn’t in case you’re wondering... something to do with the fact that it wasn’t authentic. The weather was beautiful, so Geeko and I went off for a walk, but only after Thakur Chacha at the gate had instructed Geeko to look after ‘Chotu’, referring to me. Ha. We got back, safe and sound, and in time for tea and snacks, which was some unnamed substance. MICANVAS meeting at 7 in the evening... whee! We discussed post fest withdrawal symptoms, work and horror movies, in a dimly lit setting. Dinner happened at Chhota where our meals were mixed up. Geeko got my tastier mixed (it has Cheese) parantha without oil and I got her boring Gobi parantha with oil, a tragedy if I ever knew one.

Post-dinner was very productive... Geeko and I did some geeky work. Following which I made a triumphant return to Chhota to have what is known as... wait for it... the ‘Sex Toast’. Go figure... or actually don’t. Post the sandwich I’ve been writing like a maniac, and I’m still not letting up on this great opportunity because I have word vomit.

On a completely unrelated note, I will take this chance to inform you of AC Milan’s derby win yesterday. We are now top of the table. Rejoice! Yes, this is also the end of my post. Miss me, and beg MICALAL to call me back!

Day 128 - 14th November 2010

Today's post is by Apu. After reading her post you may want her to take over the reins of MICAlal, and I am willing to take that risk ;-) (Ok before you continue reading you might just want to know that Sanbad -> Maushi , Maldlu -> Malyalee Marauder, Macha-> Yours Truly. )

So well, the day began with at least one thing done right – not missing breakfast, probably the best meal in the MICAn mess. Caught up with the Malayalee Marauder over breakfast table about his antics on the court the previous day;about the much-talked about attack on one of my team co-owners (oh yeah, for those of you who don’t know it yet; three of us, Kamla (yours truly), Bimla and Sakku own a cricket team in the MCL – MICA Cricket League – The Phantoms. “Only fire, no smoke”…yes, we proudly promote the No Smoking campaign as well)…Single class for a Sunday today..and oh boy, we couldn’t have wished for a better class…Last session for the course on Cost and Management Accounting by Prof Sridhar Chari (easily one of the best visiting faculty here)..He wrapped up with a special trademark slideshow on life and changing times & workplaces..He conveyed the fact (without sugarcoating it

whatsoever, mind you) that no MBA is indispensable and that it usually takes less than an hour to fire 20 management professionals across some 9 different international offices...Some of his statements were superb mantras for conduct in career and life..For ex, he enumerated paradoxes of the following ilk :

1) You must welcome change as a rule but not as your ruler

2) You must learn from past mistakes but not lean on your past successes

3) You must stick to your convictions but be ready to abandon your assumptions

4) You must act self-employed but be a team player

5) You must get money to chase you, but never let it catch you.

And it was only befitting that we stood up in ovation in respect and admiration for the man, as he ended his slideshow with what is usually a slide titled “Last Slide” with a slide saying “Chase your passion, not your pension”. Quite a moment that was. One of those few in which you submit to the sheer ingenuity and knowledge and experience of a man worth his salt and acknowledge his greatness for his simplicity at the same time.

Came back all energetic and bubbling with happy thoughts to design the “Alumni of the Day”

poster. We have The MICA Grand Alumni Ahmedabad meeting happening soon. Hence, we plan to introduce really successful MICAns to the students, so as to let everyone know that the two years here are going to be good foundation afterall :D..(in addition to the vacation we so lovingly talk about..)

Today’s alumnus was Mr Amol Gurwara, Head,Operations,EA Mobile..also one of the first to have married a senior MICAn ;-)…By the time we got done with putting the posters up in the campus, it was time for snacks..Played basketball after a really long time after that..felt awesome! Sport can be such a release…and often an under-estimated one, at that…

And then of course, the highlight of the day…So Macha and I decided we were falling prey to the once-in-a-while “blah” claustrophobic feeling in the campus -> hence the urgency to step out for dinner…Maldlu and Sanbad said they’d join us for dessert…We set out with lofty mouth-watering visions of Barbeque Nation, only to find a waiting time of 45 mins (*groan*stomach growl*groan*)..As if that wasn’t unfair (and a term I am forbidden to use here, since it isn’t sophisticated) enough, Upper Crust Café had a waiting time of 30 mins as well. Hence, we traveled across half the city only to end up in a tinier-than-ever Subway, having our regular favourites. My insights, reinforced again : Gujjus are a rather foodie lot, in addition to how filthy rich they are…And of course, a trip to the civilization all the way from MICA is as useless as a comb to Maldlu these days, if you don’t have non-veg food on the way.

Finally met up with these guys at TGB…So, one sizzling brownie later, we were in the mood for extended family pics :- )…Oh and also, found one of the strangest “Ladies” signever...almost

demeaning..Downright mean… (*See picture : -P*)

Maldlu didn’t let us have any good pics at all though, the photo-spoiler that he is..No worries,

Sanbad..soon..sometime soon..Came back to campus almost an hour past midnight..but the trip was worth it..Back in good spirits after good talk and good food, only for a highly vague and boring and pfaffy Services Marketing Assignment…Seven Eight Peas and what not…Met up with Bimla..she’s been busy with her drama<=>Sankalp<=>MICA Theatre practice..

Tried to work, but obviously could not..kept listening to music, randomly updating the MICA Alumni Page on facebook (That reminds me, I have to have to watch The Social Network…too many good reviews about it..)..made a chai trip to Chhota with Macha…looked at photographs (my staple diet) …random mélange of useless activites…

Finally re-re-saw a couple of episodes of “That 70s Show” and decided to re-(MI)-cal-(A)-l the day..

It’s a fine sky tonight..Orion in full nightly resplendence and the stars shining clear and bright..And the moon brought out the lazy hidden poet in me, I swear..It’s a perfect semi-circle with a reddish tinge..no no..no worries, I am not going to rhyme…I have rambled enough already..

Many thanks,Macha…for letting me write here…and thanks to time, for letting us enjoy the extended family outing (Many more to come, as Maldlu said.. :D )…thanks to, I guess, life…for introducing such brilliant people who make it such an interesting deal...more so, with each passing day..

Here’s mesa signing off with a message I received today afternoon from another one’s of God’s own masterpieces…He’s called Kid, as he tells me..

“I want to go back to the time when innocence was natural..

When getting high meant on a swing..

When drinking meant Rasna..

When Dad was the only hero..

When Dad’s shoulder was the highest place on Earth..

When Love was Mum’s hug..

When the only things that could hurt were bleeding knees..

And when Goodbyes only meant till tomorrow..

Life’s changed a lot…Isn’t it?!”

I couldn’t have said it any better,Kid…just couldnt’t have..

Happy Children’s Day!

Day 127 - 13th November 2010

Today's is another 'hatke' post. Jayati Somani is the latest victim of Mallu's tactics on the basketball court and as luck would have it she is the guest writer for today :-D.Steve Waugh was the proponent of mental disintegration but Mallu is the beacon of physical disintegration, he doesn't sledge because he is a sledgehammer :D Jokes apart, in the poor guy's defence all the instances Jayati mentions below were unintentional, nonetheless they provide us one more reason to pull Mallu's leg who at the end of the day takes it like a sport :-)

Chronicles of a Marauder

We all know and have heard of the ‘Mallu’ on Siddharth’s blog before. Yes, he’s the dude with

no hair, a crazy hyena laugh (which has the ability to hound you till the end of time), has different notions about life (Well, yes he does belong to a different era) and what can I say? He’s a little different.

However, what people don’t know about him is that he is also known as the Malyali Marauder.And with good reason.Any girl in and around MICA campus who has felt a searing pain through any part of her body which has left her incapacitated for a minimum of 24 hours has definitely had some sort of a contact with the Marauder( let’s call him MM from now on, shall we?). He is the one to give girls black eyes, broken toes and dislocated jaws. It would be safe to say that many a girl has had a sleepless night because of MM(and not just because of his crazy loud laugh).

Speculation is rife about why or how it so happens that it is always MM who ends up punching any sort of female presence around him. Some say he was once slapped by an older sister and he sees her in every girl’s face. Some say he sees the face of an old flame. Some say he’s plain chauvinistic and wants to wipe out the entire XX chromosome population of the face of the earth. This insane mad doctor mission of obliterating women altogether is obviously accompanied by his repeated attempts to perfect the art of asexual reproduction after which he apparently plans to take over the world- state by state (Kerala comes first obviously!).

Grapevine also has it that he maintains an album of all his victims and crosses out their faces as and when his attack and eventual ambush is complete (evil smile intact while he’s doing so).

It won’t be very long before the police put out a reward on his capture.

Meanwhile- girls- Beware! Hunt him down before he does you.

Get him.

Dead or Alive.

Day 126 - 12th November 2010

Half way through guest writers week and today's post is by a person who hasn't been mentioned on the blog but has been a regular reader - Atin Batra. Wanted to introduce him as the MICAVaani guy but he has taken care of that :-) So here goes -

'having read three guest writer columns over the past few days, I feel that there is one thing missing:
we must thank Mr. Siddharth Raman for giving us this opportunity to write on his blog...it is indeed an honor

apart from that, for the benefit of all those who do read this blog on a regular basis, it is highly commendable the fact that sid has continued to write it for so long. Believe me its not easy to take out time here in MICA (as a batchmate I know); and yet he has been at it all this while and to him i'd like to say, cheers man, keep up the good work....

well, now on to the meat of this piece, what happened today....well today started off as any other day with classes in the morning...though personally i failed to notice b'coz i was too busy getting my travel arrangements booked for a competition I have to go to next week....as for the classes-the three classes scheduled for today were all interesting (sid, i'm in B section, I had CMA and 2 AM, unlike you...hahaha). In CMA, we were reqd 2 read a case study which was supposed to be graded. However, the prof was too smart for us, he had apparently said that just to ensure that we read the case and came to class. Once that was over, I headed over to the MICAVAANI studio-MICA's community radio station.

Sid has never mentioned it so a little about MICAVAANI (sorry guys, couldnt help it-had to say something). MICAVAANI is the community radio station that transmits to the nearby villages.I am a part of the commitee so am working on a small programme for the coming sunday, 14th of Nov. We are planning to gou out to the villages. All those who are reading, GO AND LIKE OUR FB PAGE.

Right, so after classes and a little work in the studio, I went to the city for micavaani work-had lunch at McD's on the way-a welcome break from mess food. Returned from the trip at about 7, went to my room, sat on the computer, checked my mail and other online touchpoints and posted my weekly assignment for AM (yes, we post the assignment on Facebook). Skipped dinner and headed to the studio for work.

Before I started work, I visited MICARE, which is a killer thing. I am a sucker for Lychee Twirl juice and have ended up having 2 glasses every day-did that today itself.

It's 1:00 am right now and am writing this blog entry from the studio itself.

Well, thats all I have to tell about today as of now...thank you siddharth for this opportunity, hopefully we will be able to do this again.'

Day 125 - 11th November 2010

Today's post is written by Era 'Geeko' Bali. So here goes -

Hola!

After a long holiday back home, it was hard to drag my ass to the classes but i mustered some courage and finally made it to SH1 that too at 8:50 itself:) I was not surprised to see the CMA teacher already waiting! We were supposed to have a quiz on CMA that day and as per the MICAN tradition..ummm..belief ..or may be culture no one had even read a word before the quiz. Nonetheless, the quiz started on time and was supposed to end exactly after 20 minutes. Believe me taking a quiz like that had never before been so much fun! We cheated in 'chain'. To tell you what that means, Cheryl, Satya, Aila, Chillar, Arvind, Ranaji and I sat in a row. So, Satya did question 1, rest copied, Cheryl the next and the rest copied, Aila the third, the rest copied, Arvind the next to that next, the rest copied..blah blah..oh yes the rest copied..Ranaji..umm..nevermind but we still copied!

I was glad that the next two classes were Falguni's..i dont know for some reason i feel like calling her Falguni Ma'am. She is just a brilliant teacher. She knows exactly when to pick on who. You cannot sleep in her classes. Oh and whats worth mentioning is her love for Ishaan and his reciprocation...'ALL THE BEST'! The AM lectures(though double that too in a row) were good fun..some of the ads that she showed were outstanding!

Quick Read!

Campus looks pretty as usual....Waiting for the winter rains..like desperately...Cant wait for the onset of winters....trying to get over the post MICANVAS lull..excited about doing lights for Natrani and yes looking forward to the play as well..dont want to attend more IGD classes like NO NO..ummmmm..what else..ummm..dont know but there is something missing..the campus has become very languid..may be Sankalp will fill the gap..or may be there is not much gossip or may be there isnt enough DCP in classes or may be its the weather change or may be i have no one to stalk on facebook or may be its the mundane mess food or may be i am just BORED!

Phew..lalalalalala...blah...ummmmm...okaaaaaaaaay...sunday..monday..tuesday...wednesday..thursday..friday..saturday..lalala...i think i am growing old..aah i guess its the company of the 25 year olds who i hang out with..wink wink..and honestly i dont mind getting old like that because that 'company' is my bestest buddy and the official blogger of this page, 'Micalal'!

Cheers

Era 'Maachis' Bali

Day 124 - 10th November 2010

Today's entry is from my roomie Rajat aka CR. A slightly 'hatke' post -

*RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING*!

*PSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS*!

*BEEP*! *Thank You!*

*BEEP*! *Thank You!*

*Aaaaaah…*

*BEEP*! *Thank You!*

*Music!*

*Cheer!*

*BEEP*! *Thank You!*

*Laughter!*

*Oh, shit…*

*BEEP*! *Thank You!*

*BEEP*! *Thank You!*

*Damn…*

*Hmmm…*

*BEEP*! *Thank You!*

*GROAN…*

*Cheer!*

*BEEP*! *Thank You!*

*Ugh…*

*Uhhhhh…*

*KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK*!!!

*Grunt*

*Slide*

*Kick*

*CHEER!*

*OOOOOF!*

*AAAAAAAAAAH!*

*Sigh*

*Oooooh!*

*Burp…* *Oooof…*

*Lalala!*

*HOLLER!!!*

*HOLLER!!!*

*CHEER!!!*

*Happy birthday!*

*Laughter*

*Sigh*

…just another day in the life of an ear at MICA…

Day 123 - 9th November 2010

This week is guest writers week on MICAlal, have asked a few of my friends who read this blog (shockingly,there are a few people who read it :-O) to contribute to this space. We start off with Maushi.

Hey there readers, this is Sania aka Maushi filling in for Kaka, who’s
been feeling quite lazy of late. (Hmmm…I wonder why :P)

So basically, today at MICA was like any other day (read pretty
eventful). The term’s tradition of interesting classes continued with
the IMM class. To demonstrate the computation of media reach,
frequency and the GRP of an ad, the professor came up with a very
interesting way. He gave us a list of about 10 magazines (media
vehicles in the management lingo). He named each magazine and asked
the students who read them, to raise their hands. Every time the
student raised a hand, he or she got an Éclair :D. And then he defined
all the terms in units of the éclairs distributed. So, not only did we
learn things easily, we left the class with chocolaty smiles :).

The next class was another very popular class called Advertising
Management. Who wouldn’t love classes where you spend a large chunk of
time watching brilliant pieces of advertising? But what actually makes
us look forward to the classes is the analysis that follows. The
professor facilitates a discussion within the class which generates
brilliant insights into what actually goes into the making of the
commercial. I, for one, always walk out with the sense of
damn-how-could-I-not-see-this-before every time. Then there was
another Organizational Dynamics class followed by an IMM quiz.

Another thing that we’re all looking forward to this term is The Grand
Ahmedabad Alumni meet of MICA. Post dinner, we had a batch meeting
with the alumni committee. A lot of ex-MICAns are expected to come and
stay on the campus for three days throughout the meet. Sounds like a
great chance to interact and learn with a lot of interesting people.
Can’t wait!

PS: I’ve always believed that good teachers like good cooks, are a
gift of God to mankind. And blessed are those occasions when you
encounter both in the same day. Today’s classes were followed by
munching on delicious chocolate cake prepared by Kaka’s Mom. Aunty, we
can’t thank you enough for the goodness :D

PPS: Kaka’s team (Phantom Sweet Cigarettes, which is owned by me
(Sakkhu) along with Apu (Bimla) and Kamla) has another match tomorrow.
It’s a do or die situation. Pray for us :)

Day 122 - 8th November 2010

Its nice to be back on campus, for a change the weather is very pleasant. Had to carry my sweatshirt from home. Started off with one of the two subjects that I am looking forward to this semester - Introduction to Media Management(IMM). One of the faculty members taking the course is a MICA alumnus and is presently the VP at Jagran Prakashan. He had 3 sessions with us today and it didn't feel boring at all, we were introduced to the basic concepts of media planning and research. This subject is an extension of IMEI from the last sem which I found quite interesting, hoping this is also follows the same trend. Today's CB class revolved mainly around two different advertisements for Bajaj Pulsar and Avenger. The idea was to show us how the ads tried work on the different levels in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, some of the inputs that came in though were hilarious to say the least and unfortunately cannot be reproduced on this blog ;-)

All plans for a siesta were thwarted since there was a practice match against Navy 'Square' Cut. MCL will pick up again now that MICANVAS and the diwali break are done. It was a close match which we ended up winning by 2 runs. Yours truly got out on the first ball of the match :-P The fact that I hardly spent anytime at the crease made me feel like I had absolutely no exercise, so went to the gym and ran a bit on the treadmill :-D

The second course I am looking forward to this term is Advertising Management(AM),again taught by a very good prof, which begins tomorrow. Had a pre read for that which I did in pre and post dinner. Got done with that and went to MICARE - the retail store on campus run by students, they keep everything that we otherwise would have to make a trip to the city to go to get. Got back to the room and read a bit of IMM, we have a quiz on the subject tomorrow. Have some more quizzes and assignment submissions lined up over the next week, looks like the vacation part of the semester is coming to an end :-(

Day 121 - 4th November 2010

Last day before the diwali break and campus already has a deserted look. Had only 2 lectures in the morning, a lot of people left in the afternoon. My flight was in the evening so had some time to kill. Slept for an hour or so in the afternoon, Palaash seemed to be pretty empty by the time I had to leave. A very very laid back day. Have a 3 day break for diwali now, a nice little vacation home never hurt anybody ;-)

Day 120 - 3rd November 2010

Campus has already started looking empty with people leaving for the Diwali break. The lectures had pretty mediocre attendance and it was difficult not to get caught sleeping for a few people :P. SM was all about the ticket pricing of tickets for the baseball team. Pricing is a pretty interesting topic and ought to be taught more in detail. The CB lecture was inundated with PJ's from the prof. He caught a guy sleeping and told him -"A lion cub is playing with a goat. What did the cub's mother tell him? - Dont play with your food :D and if you continue sleeping I will tell you some more jokes of a similar calibre :-P"

After lectures worked a bit on the DC assignment. Its a group assignment and the work has been distributed equally amongst all the group members so it makes life easier. Haven't been playing any sport for the past 2 weeks so had decided to play tennis today. Played for a good 2 hours, felt really good and I also realized how easy it is to lose touch from the game. Its been getting dark quite early nowadays so had to wrap up by 6. Maushi and I went to Bopal in the evening to buy some stuff got back in time for dinner at the mess which was butter chicken :-)

Palaash is relatively empty now, so was pretty much confined to my room post dinner. Was reading some articles on cricinfo when I chanced upon the scorecard of the first international match I had seen in a stadium. It was the India England test series way back in 1993 :-) I actually remember quite a few of the scores from this game and also feel privileged to have seen Kapil Dev live in action. Later in the night, Mallu Maushi and I met up to have golgappas(which we had packed in the evening) and to kickstart the diwali celebrations in MICA itself. Got back to the room at around 230, will do a little tp now before calling it a day.