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 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.

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 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 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 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 :-(