Day 190 - 30th January 2011

We had our first lecture of Media Economics today. It's being taken by Prof. Panda, the same guy who took Eco for us in the first sem. This seems to be a pretty interesting subject as well, its the first time its being taught out here. Apart from that had 2 lectures on brand management which were quite good, it is that kind of a subject which can be best explained with examples. Today we analysed brands like FedEx and L'Oreal.

Wasn't feeling too well, so had some Benadryl before I slept in the afternoon. Slept for four and a half hours straight! Worked a bit on the IPL article in the night. Been a pretty lazy evening/night. Have a late start tomorrow, will crash now and try to get more than 4 hours of sleep for a change :P

Day 189 - 29th January 2011

Today was the last day of the CS workshop. It dealt with the fear psychosis that the media creates in the minds of the general public. We were asked to research on any topic of our choice and present on the same. Our group chose swine flu. One of the slides was trying to put into perspective how many deaths were caused by other diseases, just for one we slipped in an extra line at the end. Here's what the slide looked like -

Every 3 seconds, a person dies of starvation.

Every 34 seconds, a person dies in a road accident.

1 child dies every 30 seconds of malaria.

Every 3 days, an innocent, unsuspecting girl is attacked by the Malayali Marauder.

After class had to go to Motera stadium to submit the forms for the accreditation. Its a pretty nice stadium with good facilities. Had a chance to explore the pavilion. There some really good pictures out there. The one that stood out for me was Gavaskar being the first Maruti car in India :-) Geeko also came along to give me company. Went to Subway after that. Made an impromptu plan to watch a movie - originally wanted to see 127 but the show was too late, tried for Nobody killed Jessica which we learnt wasn't being shown, so settled for Yamla Pagla Deewana which we couldn't sit through more than 45 mins of :-S Moral of the story - dont make compromises when it comes to watching movies, if your choice of movie isn't there it always makes sense to do something else :-P

There was no response paper to be written today so it felt like the last day of exams! Saw a couple of badminton matches, it really is a beautiful game to watch. Im considering trying my hand at it sometime soon. In the night made a complete list of all the players in the DCP cup and mailed it across to the batch. There are 41 players in the league now and quite a lot of them have changed their profile pic on fb to that of the player they are assigned to in the cup. :-D

Day 188 - 28th January 2011

So the DCP cup really picked up today. In less than 24 hours, the facebook page had almost the entire pgp1 as members. In the CSW workshop there was running commentary since we could carry our laptops to class. When ever someone said something in class, people started pressing F5 on the facebook page to check for a commentary update! :-D News about the DCP cup has spread to pgp2 as well, talk about leveraging social media ;-)

Came back from class and slept for an hour or so. Had to go to Bopal for some work. Came back to campus and filled up the form for the World Cup accreditation. Post dinner started working on the last response paper for the CS workshop. Finally took some help from wikipedia(unlike the previous ones). Nothing much to do after that, saw a few of the badminton matches, went to Chota for chai (twice) and saw a bit of Simpsons. Will watch another episode of the Simpsons before calling it a day.

Day 187 - 27th January 2011

What a day! I always wanted to create a facebook group for the DCP cup but I never got myself to do it. Don't know what came over me in the RM class where while I was working on SPSS I created the page, added members and posted player profiles based on their DCP style. Here are some examples -

Shail Stephens : Rahul Dravid. The wall. Classical stance. Poetry in motion.

Varun Kore: Chris Gayle. Unorthodox stance. Brutal but ugly hitting.

Jayati Somani: Ricky Ponting. Aggressive player but will never become number 1.

Abhinav Shukla : VVS Laxman. Responds only to Ponting. They have had some epic duels.

Introduced 20 odd players like that and many others pitched in. Within hours the page became a roaring success in the page. We even got a photo of 'Sir' to bless the page. You see eventually everything boils down to Sir! The other highlight of the day was when Sir played a doubles match in the badi tournament. A huge crowd had gathered to see him play and as one would expect, he had a huge fan following. After Sir won the match, he was lifted like a war hero returning back victorious all the way to Palaash. :-D

In the morning we had our 3rd day of the CS workshop. Today's topics were the culture of consumption and obesity. The class was divided into groups of 10 and each group had to perform a skit based on any TV show with the aim of analyzing what is trying to be communicated. The exchange student from NTU Singapore, when as a part of Dance India Dance he put up a brilliant performance to Urvashi. Was good fun. Had an EB lecture after lunch, the lectures now are general discussions on the latest happenings in the industry and what are some of the ethical issues faced in the corporate world.

After class had to go to CG road to collect the accreditation forms for the World Cup. Need to fill them up and submit them by 30th. Got back to campus by around 830 and had to work on the response paper for the CS workshop that needs to be submitted tomorrow. Did that alongwith random tp. Once that was done, went to Chota with Geeko for chai and frankie, meals at 2 in the night are always good fun :D It's 3 right now, but am not feeling that sleepy, will try to get some shut soon though, need to keep score for the DCP cup tomorrow ;-)

Day 186 - 26th January 2011

Today's highlight was lunch at barbeque nation, which was Apu's bday treat. Im still feeling stuffed although the meal was nearly 12 hours back :D Apart from that worked on the CSW response paper and scripted content for Micavaani's next show. Holiday's get over too fast! Tomorrow is the start of a 10 day marathon without any breaks. Feeling extremely sleepy now, cant type anymore. Over and out!

Day 185 - 25th January 2011

The day before a rest day is always looked forward to with a lot of anticipation. So the fact that I slept for around 4 hours wasn't too much of a deterrent. The CS workshop today was on identity, nationalism and gender. The part that had all my attention was on how sports has been a unifier for nations and has re-emphasised the concept of imaginary boundaries. So now we all know what my response paper for this paper is going to be about ;-) In the afternoon Rajat, Maushi and I did the recording for 'Tamara Cricket' at the Micavaani studio. Rajat and Maushi did the recording in Hindi which I scripted and Maushi translated. Was good fun, the studio is really good some top class facilities. In the evening we had a workshop on the dissertation that we are supposed to work on in the second year. Don't know how I managed to stay awake during the workshop, felt like I was stuck in a time warp. As is always the case, after the lecture is over all the sleepiness was wiped off :P Decided to go for a walk/jog in the evening, the road to Bopal is being reconstructed, once it's done it would be a brilliant road to ride on as well.

Saw Dhobi Ghat in the night with Mallu, Maushi and Apu at PVR. It's a nice movie, very realisitic not your run of the mill masala flick. The part that I liked was it showed the parts of Bombay that aren't generally shown in movies. Got back to campus and it was the second night of the badminton tournament. Some enterprising people setup a cafe at the Parijat courtyard. They serve desserts, mocktails and hookah :D. It did some really good business on the first day. Have a holiday tomorrow courtesy Republic Day, no holiday after that for another 10 days. Need to make the most of it!

Day 184 - 24th January 2011

Quite a loong day. Had the cultural studies workshop from 9 to 2. This course is being taken by a Danish professor. Today's session was about the evolution of culture through the ages. Got to know that there was a human fair at Paris in 1889 where 400 'rare and exotic' humans were on display!Based on today's class we had to submit a 'reflection paper', which is an assimilation of our thoughts on the session. This needs to be done for all sessions! Had EB and SDM lectures after that. Today was the first day of 9 to 5 classes and it seemed to take its toll on a lot of people. Hopefully, we'll get used to it though.

The highlight of today though was completely non academic. During the term break I had come to know about a company that was looking for people to cover World Cup matches in different cities, so I applied for the matches in Ahmedabad - 2 group games and a quarter final. After 2-3 rounds of phone calls and another 2-3 rounds of emails I finally got the offer from them to cover the games in Ahmedabad! :-) Now the only problem was that the quarter final clashed with one of our end term exams, so had to talk to the college admin today regarding the situation and what needed to be done. They were extremely supportive and ensured that I would be given the chance to give the examination later or earlier. Something to look forward to :-) Need to set the ball rolling with regards to the accreditation for the World Cup.

In the evening we celebrated Apu's birthday with the traditional dunk,cake smashing and gifts. This was followed by the start of the annual badminton tournament organized by SCAM. The main match was the battle of the communists - two bongs v/s two mallus. The build up to the match was exceptional, in fact it would make a brilliant case study for sports marketers ;-) E-mails were sent to the entire batch informing them about the epic encounter and slogans like 'be red or be dead' were floated to generate buzz :-P The baddy court was packed by the time was about to start and we had arranged for a music system to be setup courtside to keep the atmosphere as lively as possible. The mallus entered to 'I am a Malayalee' and the bongs entered to 'Korbo Lorbo Jeetbore' :-D Even the MCL never generated this much buzz :D The match lived up to its expectations and went right down to the wire, with the bongs winning by a whisker. But at the end of the day, Communism won and the comrades prevailed ;-)

After the heady excitement of the politburo badminton game had to get down to working on the cultural studies workshop assignment. Have been doing that for the past hour or so. Will call it a day now, another long day ahead!

Days 176 to 183 - 17th to 23rd January 2011

Back after a looong break. Wasn't exactly a break though. Placement week for the seniors was on the whole of last week, so we didn't have classes and some of us volunteered for the process. I was in charge of batch handling, had to make sure that all the seniors were there in the designated classrooms before the process for any company started. That involved spending long periods of time in the class with them and sending people for GD's and interviews. It was a case study in human behaviour - how people handle stress, how do they react when their friends get job offers and they dont make the cut, especially if your boyfriend/girlfriend gets a job and you are still jobless. Essentially this was the week for which they took the CAT and MICAT two years back. It all boiled down to how well they did in the GD's, also there is no denying the element of luck that is involved. It's an emotional roller coaster ride for most of the people and people from my batch ahve already begun dreading our placement week next year. Volunteering took up most of my time last week. Though I did get time to go to the McDonalds at Bopal for a midnight snack (it's open till 1 in the night) and also to the coffee shop at Mariott for a late night coffee.

The past 2 days have been pretty action packed. Had to go to CEPT, which is an architecture college in Ahmedabad, to play a cricket match against their team. Their ground is huge!! Only two boundaries in the entire match and I got run out because I had never run so many runs in my life :P We ended up winning the match though, so it was all worth it :-) Today (23rd) there was a PGP1 v/s PGP2 match which we lost by 10 runs. By the end of it I realised that my legs still hadn't recovered from yesterday!

Apart from that on the academics front, we had a BM assignment to be submitted. The assignment was about tracking the brand communication of any product through various stages of its life cycle. I chose to work on Cinthol and while researching realised that we have an amazing collection of ads in the online library and that is just one part of the library. Need to start using the library more often! ;-) Also have a pre read for tomorrow's EB class which I started reading in the night and dozed off :D Will try reading it in sometime. Right now need to work on some content for Micavaani, they are doing a biweekly cricket show. Will get down to working on that and then come back to EB. It's back to the grind tomorrow, 9 to 5 classes for the first time - hope we make it to the other side!

Day 175 - 16th January 2011

Had a rest day today so could take the liberty of waking up at 1130 and have brunch at Chota. Was generally lazing around and doing tp till around 3 when I had to go to ISCON mall to buy a pair of trousers. I realised yesterday that I don't have any black trouser :D and plus with the placement week starting and me volunteering I needed to stock up on formals for this week. Because of the sunday rush the trouser alteration took nearly 2 hours, so I decided to spend sometime at Crossword. I also wanted to test myself - didn't want to end up buying a book, which is what I invariably end up doing! And I emerged victorious :) Got back to campus and there was nothing much to do, one of those days. Though I will be in the firing line from tomorrow since I'll be in the batch handling team for the placement process. Got to wake up early for that too!

Day 174 - 15th January 2011

The IRS workshop today wasn't that bad. Some pretty interesting stuff on how the data collected from the readership survey helps in creating media plans for different products. The workshop went on 430 in the evening. After that I decided to go for a walk/jog upto the highway. As I was crossing the ground I saw Suhail (who is a national level squash champion and also equally good at other sports) exercising on the field. So decided to join him for a while and see the routine he follows. After that went upto the highway and came back. All that exercise was useful since it helped in building an appetite for dinner at Mirch Masala which was Jayati and Vineeth's birthday treat :) Whenever I decide to keep a tab on what I eat such things come along! Was good fun though, around 20 of us out there. Got back to campus by 11 and have been doing general tp since then. Have a rest day tomorrow so in spite of sleeping only for 4 hours last night am not feeling too sleepy. Will watch some videos on youtube before calling it a day.

Day 173 - 14th January 2011

Had a holiday since it was Sakranti/Pongal. Woke up in time for brunch at Chota. Had to start working on the QT assignment, which reminded me of engineering. It was the kind of assignment which if one person did it, the entire batch could copy it, since no one could a different answer :P Also had to start working on the CB assignment which is a 10 minute video and a 4000 word assignment. Kalkar and I started working on the video when we got a mail saying that the deadline got extended to 18th. So we could take it a little easy. Went for a jog/run in the evening since we had planned to have dinner at honey9. Now its really good to go in a large group where there a few people with large appetites (including yours truly), so when it comes to the food eaten to bill amount ratio, it is quite high for us ;-) Must have easily eaten food worth 500 bucks but eventually the bill came to 200 per head :D Got back to campus after that for a placecomm batch meet. In the night continued working on the QT assignment which went on till around 130. Did general tp after that. Have an IRS (Indian Readership Survey) workshop tomorrow, people are saying its not compulsory to attend, will go for the first hour and see if its worth it.

Day 172 - 13th January 2011

Today's MDA class was completely based on a software called SPSS which we use for Market Research. The prof. explained it really well and we pretty much got the hang of it. Now an assignment awaits to be done which will be on live customer data. Had our first class on Sales and Distribution Management (SDM), which was mostly about sales force management. College had arranged a special Sankranti lunch, Gujarati menu with Puri and Undiyo taking the cake (pun intended). In the afternoon started reading a book on how brand Arsenal (the English football team) was built. I am not into football so it'll be interesting to see whether this book keeps me engrossed. Had a little PlaceComm volunteering work in the evening which went on till around 630. Geeko and I went out for a walk/jog/run after that (all 3 in descending order of duration of time).

Continued reading the book in the night, and before I could realise it I had dozed off which meant I missed the Lohri celebrations CulComm had organized. Woke up at around 330 in the morning courtesy a Palaash party that was going on next door, in fact there were multiple parties going on, the essence of each party could be judged by the type of music being played ;-) It's 5 in the morning now and I am not feeling too sleepy, tomorrow is a holiday but we need to work on th CB assignment which requires a 10 minute video and a 4000 word assignment. Will need to find ways to keep myself occupied till I fall asleep again!

Day 171 - 12th January 2011

Had 2 lectures of BM today which were about brand personality and how brands like Nike and Adidas have competed over the past couple of decades. Pretty interesting, how they took different approaches to reach where they are now. EB was again filled with real life examples, especially about Ahmedabad based textile companies. At one point of time there were about 110 companies but now only one big name has survived and one of the prime reasons for that is it never adopted any unethical practices. The last lecture was MDA which covered the theory aspects of linear regression, tomorrow we have a practical session on the same concept, it'll make more sense then.

In the afternoon was again caught up with some ARC work. That went on till around 5 in the evening, so now that makes it 2 days in a row where I have been deprived of my much valued siesta :P In the evening had to start working on the OD assignment, this is something that needs to be looked into, we have 4 assignments from last term to be subjected this week! Apart from OD there is CR, CB and QT. Anyways it pays to have the same project group for most of the assignments, so we've split up the assignments amongst ourselves, parallel processing ;-) In the night extebned family went out with Rajat and Samyuktha for dinner to Ikobo sizzlers. I was quite surprised that I was able to eat a complete sizzler, maybe skipping snacks in the evening was one of the reasons. Got back to campus by 1030 for a placecomm meet, we were given our duties for next week. Continued working on the OD assignment after that, have produced nearly 2000 words before passing on the baton to the next person :P Shall call it a day now.

Day 170 - 11th January 2011

Had only 3 lectures today, two of them on Non Verbal Communication which was about reading body language and one on MDA which was on regression analysis. The MDA prof. has made it very clear that there are 6 techniques to be taught and every technique will take about 3 lectures, so if we are to miss his lectures we should bunk the lectures for an entire technique otherwise it will make no sense! Anyways got done with that and had some major ARC work lined up, we had to figure out what could be done regarding the culture and communication course. The faculty member who generally takes the course will not be able to conduct it this time around and we will be getting a Danish professor teaching us. We also had a long chat with the area head of Cultural studies and got to know a lot about this place wrt how it has always tried to be different from other management schools and how much importance has been given to the communication aspect. Got done with that by 430, because of the ARC work I missed out on playing a PGP1 v/s PGP2 cricket match in the afternoon. PGP2 won the match pretty easily.

Had to go to ISCON in the evening to buy earphones, I realised that I was pretty handicapped without them. In one of our marketing classes we learnt that in a retail store 60% of the purchases are unplanned and today I was the perfect case study for the same :P Was back on campus by 7. Went to the gym to make up for the guilt of not exercising for quite sometime now. Have been doing general tp since dinner, will call it a day in a while.

Day 169 - 10th January 2011

The last term of the first term begins, how time flies! 6 months back when I was coming to this place I did not know what to expect, and today when I came back to Palaash it felt like I was back home. It's also going to be my last 3 months in Palaash, and now I know why all the seniors and alumni have such a special bond with this place. Lots to look forward to in this term, placements for seniors, committee elections for our batch, new hostel allocations and of course the 2011 Cricket World Cup :D

Back to today, reached campus at around 745 in the morning. Was amongst the first few people to get back on campus. People slowly started trickling into campus before the first lecture. Had 2 lectures of Brand Management (BM) and one each in Ethics in Business (EB) and Mutivariate Data Analysis (MDA). All were taken by visiting faculty. The EB prof. is pretty experienced he is a Harvard MBA pass out and was one of the founding members of IIM-A alongwith Dr. Sarabhai. He was also on the panel that interviewed CK Prahlad! He had a lot of examples to share on ethics and it was really interesting hearing him out. BM is being taken by a relatively young prof. who is from the advertising industry, he had a very structured approach in today's class, hope he continues the same way for other classes as well. MDA is basically QT III , just had an overview of the subject and what to expect over the next 3 months.

After lectures and lunch went to the office to pay off the term fees. Came back to the room and slept for a while. In the evening Maushi and I went to Gulmohar Mall to buy a gift for Jayati who is turning 21 tomorrow. Also went to TGB to buy cakes, yes we always buy 2 cakes, one to smear on the face and the other to eat :D Got back to campus by around 830 and I started off setting my room in order. That took about an hour so. Coming to campus after such a long break means there a lot of goodies brought from home. Since afternoon have been feasting on Gajar Halwa, Sandesh, Chocolates and many other goodies. Am pretty stuffed now!!