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!