Day 440 - 28th March 2012

The last week at MICA is taking everyone down memory lane. LitComm got the year books today. Reading testimonials is one big ego massage and it also reminds of things that you may have conveniently forgotten. It was good fun reading some testimonials. It is also a little embarrassing when someone writes a testimonial for you but haven't reciprocated :P 

Tomorrow is the farewell culnite followed by the farewell party, seems only like last night when we were at our seniors' farewell party.

Day 395 - 2nd February 2012

Another day where I woke up with great difficulty to play tennis in the morning. This was followed by breakfast, library, siesta. Its amazing how with just a couple of months the importance of the library dawns upon many of us. Was having the same discussion with the librarian yesterday as he was showing me around the construction of the new wing. To be very honest, I thought this was a very small library with limited resources. But that perception has changed and how! The kind of books here are amazing. Just the other day I was going through this book on the economics of sports media. Wanted to find out the price of the book online - it was 13k!

Anyways, after a two and a half hour siesta came back to the library and started working on the film studies assignment. It is due only on the 10th of this month but wont be here for 10 days starting day after tomorrow. Lit Comm is conducting a taboo tournament which started yesterday. I wasn't keen on taking part however some smart alec put my name alongwith Sania in the draws. Got to know that our match was at 11 in the night. After a lot of prodding decided to play :P Have played taboo only once before. Our game wasn't bad at all, we ended up winning 23 - 18 :D Though I dont see us progressing further in the tournament since both of us aren't on campus starting day after. In a way its good to leave on a high! :P

There are 5 people from our batch who have been asked to join the company where they have been recruited earlier than everybody else. Their joining date is in the beginning of next week! A farewell party was organized in Chinar for one of the people who will be joining early. Made me realise that two years are fast coming to an end! Spent a couple of hours over there. Have decided not to play tennis tomorrow morning, on that note will peacefully sleep in :D

Day 64 - 29th August 2010

Sunday bloody sunday! Never imagined spending a sunday in lectures from 9 to 6 and then a markops submission to be done by 8. Had 2 double lectures of QT and PoM. Had lectures in the audi after quite sometime, and I realised that it is still very difficult to stay awake in the audi no matter how interesting lecture is. The PoM prof showed us a video clipping about organization structures in which there was talk about org structures being clearly defined and all goals being communicated in the simplest possible way, with the intention of nurturing a spirit of 'intrapreneurship', need to start getting used to such management pfaff :-D. Though he also agreed that in theory everything seems easy and when it comes to implementing such stuff it is never easy. Started working on the markops assignment at around 630, although our results aren't exactly something to be proud of, I feel we have learnt a lot over the past few days, analyzing a number of reports on brand perception,competitor intelligence,market forecast etc. and then arriving at a decision - a pretty satisfying experience. Our primary aim today was to ensure that the SPI did not decrease and reduce our inventory by as much as possible. Ended up achieving both of them, in face the SPI went up marginally, which felt good :-D

LitComm had organized a mock Parliamentary debate after dinner, I hadn't seen one till date so decided to attend the session. Was pretty impressed with the format, will be interesting to take part in one such debate just for the experience.

That takes care of the boring part, now for the friend of the day and today it's the turn of my roomie -

Rajat Sharma aka CR -

Ironically my roommate was the last person I met on my first day out here. Throughout the day when I was in the room he wasn't and vice versa. It turns out that he was staying about a couple of kilometres away from where I was staying in Bangalore! His nickname comes from the fact that he is the class rep. i.e. junior MCSA, so technically Im living at the 10,Janpath of Palaash ;-) His responsibilities as a CR keep him away from the room most of the time, I have lost count of the number of people who have fallen sick and have been taken to hospital by him (at even the most unearthly hours), yet he does all of this without complaining. The most important thing though is the fact that I consider myself pretty lucky to have got a roomie who values cleanliness equally if not more than me!

CR - Long live HQ ;-)

Day 63 - 28th August 2010

Finally a day without markops! Regular lectures began today, had QT and principles of management(PoM). The QT prof. is really good, he breaks down the concepts to the simplest possible levels and then explains everything. The problems solved in class also seem to have some practical relevance, something that was missing in the maths that was taught till now, I mean if 2 guys are running around a circle in opposite directions at different speeds,am I going to save the world by finding out when they will meet for the first time? :-D PoM as a subject is a little dry but since the prof. is a guy who is working in the industry he has a lot of insights to share with the class, which makes it a little interesting. Also had the QT test today, was expecting it to be on the tougher side, but thankfully it didn't live up to my expectations. Comparatively this was one of the longer days in terms of lectures for quite sometime. Got free by 4, was in no mood to study so played tennis for a while. Had another quiz organized by LitComm in the night, this time the topic was brands. My partner and I almost made it to the final round, we lost out in the tie breaker for the last spot in the final round, nonetheless I won 50 bucks for answering an audience question :D

Ok now for the interesting part of today's post , friend of the day!! And today it's the turn of

Apoorva Sharma aka Apu

Prides herself in being a tomboy, she's the quintessential fauji kid, in her own words "MICA is the first institute on my CV without the word Army in it". Met her as well on the first day after Bulaa and Mallu, the Pune connection got us talking( she's from AIT), though I think she is not a 100% Punekar because she didn't learn Marathi in spite of living there for 4 years. She is pretty popular in our batch for speaking her mind and not compromising on her principles, in fact there are quite a few guys who are scared of her(cannot give the reasons for the same on this blog ;-) ), but that has definitely made her popularity ratings amongst the girls rise. She's an amazing photographer, no trip outside campus is complete without Apu sitting sharing the front seat of the rick with the driver and clicking away to glory. Shall try posting pics taken by her sometime soon.

Apu - As always my post has been quite short, in case something offended you please let me know, I shall keep my insurance papers in place ;-)

Day 50 - 15th August 2010

Happy Independence Day and Happy half century for MICAlal ;-) Cant seem to remember the last time I celebrated I-day. In spite of it being a rest day I woke up at 8 for the function organised by CulComm. They had invited around 300 school children from the neighbouring areas on campus for the flag hoisting ceremony. The function got done by around 11 after which had to send a writeup for TI. During the course of the afternoon got to know that our mini vacation at Asoka had been brought to an end and we had to move back to Palaash. I had actually started missing life at Palaash and Im quite happy to be back. The only thing I'll miss about Asoka is the attached bathroom ;-) Moved back after lunch which took about half an hour.

Tried working on the PM assignment which was like fighting a losing battle against the impending stupor. Ended up sleeping for an hour or so, would have been longer had I not been woken up by phone calls from friends calling me to the football field to cheer MICA in a match against NIRMA. The match was good fun, we ended up beating them 5-1, our poor goalkeeper got so frustrated because after the first goal he had absolutely no work to do :-P Started working earnestly on the assignment after the match. Spent a couple of hours on researching about the different service offerings of airlines in the India UK sector, which was the second part of the assignment (for the first part pls. refer to day 49)

LitComm had organised a quiz in the night at the audi. A friend and I decided to go for the quiz at 1010 p.m while the deadline was at 1015 p.m. My luck with quizzes, when it comes to clearing the first round, has been quite good over the past week. Turns out that I had a brilliant partner and all I had to do was offer moral support :-) My only contribution was two answers in the elimination round, for the remaining questions all I did was agree with what she said. We made it to the top 5 and ended up finishing in joint third place. Unfortunately only the top 2 teams get cash prizes. Nonetheless that was much more than I would have bargained for, and I have promised my partner a treat at Chota for her stellar performance and letting me tag along :-D

After the quiz tried to give the finishing touches to my assignment, Im getting this feeling that its not too long and I could have done a better job. Anyways will know if Im right when the grades are announced.

To commemorate 50 days at MICA I would like to post this song , I have been listening to it on loop for the past 3 hours. Until tomorrow, adios!