Day 191 - 31st January 2011

Took the liberty of waking up at 1030 today, the joy of waking up leisurely :-) Had our first lecture on Internet Marketing, a pretty interesting subject with even more interesting evaluation criteria. True to the subject there is a website that has been created where articles will be uploaded and we can have discussions in forums. This will count as class participation. Apart from that we will have to present two research papers, one individual and one group which will require us to analyse a brand and an industry respectively. This subject is also being taught for the first time out here and is very relevant, hope it continues to be interesting. Had NVC post lunch which was about what nature communicates non verbally to us. It invited a lot of DCP which meant it was a belter of a pitch for the DCP cup and all the batsmen had a field day ;-)

In the evening went for a walk/jog up to Bopal and back after a break of 4 days. By the time I was back I feel the after effects of losing rhythm. Updated the DCP cup on facebook before going for dinner. Post dinner had to give an interview for a senior's dissertation project on the IPL. That went on for nearly an hour, but it was good fun though, some good questions. After that have been doing general tp browsing the net and scripting the next piece for Micavaani. Have been trying to make a conscious effort to sleep early these days but it just doesn't seem to be happening :-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 ;-)