Day 232 - 16th March 2011

Decided to attend the morning session of DM with the other section. The idea was to slip in a siesta but when I plan things like this Murphy ensures that it never happens! Had some MCSA work that came up in the afternoon. After that had to work on the IMC group assignment. As is the case with every term there is a bunch of assignments that need to be submitted jut before the exams begin. Worked on the NVC and ME assignments as well. Have been in the library for a major part of the day (more for the AC than any other reason, summers are back!).

Just realised that tomorrow is our last class in PGP1, how time flies!

Day 220 - 2nd March 2011

Had a holiday today courtesy Mahashivratri. Needless to say. could take the liberty of waking up at 1230 :P Spent the afternoon trying to figure out the NVC assignment. We have to remove the text and logo of a particular brand and see what aspects of it communicate non verbally about it (shape,colour scheme,sounds etc.) In the evening had a practice session with some of the Phantoms. We have made it to the finals of the MCL which will be played tomorrow!

Went to the city with Maushi later in the evening. We got a very important insight about the eateries in Ahmedabad - its very difficult to find a place which serves non vegetarian food! Ended up settling for veg food, which was quite good eventually. Went to a place called Not Just Grill. Dont remember what cuisine it was but it involves the chef making the food in front of you. Tried Mongolian and Japanese cuisines. Came back to the campus at around 930, just in time to see the end of the England Ireland game. Ireland has this knack of pulling off an upset which invariably changes the course of the tournament. In the previous edition of the World Cup they defeated Pakistan and knocked them out of the World Cup. Whether or not this defeat will result in the same fate for England only time will tell. Its also very irritating to know that all good matches in Bangalore have happened after I moved out of the city :P Had the second round of showcase today. 5 plays in total ranging from a murder mystery to the Bhopal Gas tragedy and Maoism in Dantewada to the love story of Arjuna and Chitrangadha. All of them were really good plays. Got done with it at 145, will call it a day in a bit. Back to the routine from tomorrow.

Days 210 to 212 - 20th to 22nd February 2011

Although I've been on campus, the past 3 days have pretty much been a blur and I cant help but club all of them into one post.

On the 20th spent half of the day at the stadium. Had to go to collect my accreditation and since I had made the trip to the stadium I decided to check out the stands and facilities available for the work to be done the next day. The pavilion at the ground has some really good pictures dating back to the 1940's. Met an IMG official who took me to the sponsors office from where I could send across the videos that I'd be taking. Was also lucky enough to see the Australian contingent, who had come that time to practice. I must say that I was never really too fond of Ricky Ponting but on seeing him in person, the realization dawned that he is one of the greatest batsmen of our time and I felt sorry for the guy for the way he in which he might exit Test cricket. Came back to campus and slept off for a bit, never realised that riding to the stadium could be so tiring. Had nothing much to do post dinner so saw The King's Speech - a nice movie, about how King George VI overcame his speech impediment to give speeches during World War 2 and united the country.

On the 21st had to go to the stadium at 10 in the morning. It helped going early since I could get in quickly and ensure that things were in place for the rest of the day. Got to learn a lot about events are run in India. At the end of the day no matter how much planning is done in advance one is at the mercy of the local authorities on match day. The cops at the ground love going on their power trips and there is really nothing one can do about it. It's sad all this happens for a world class event. Anyways got to meet some interesting people in the stands, there was a decent turnout considering it was an Australia Zimbabwe game. Met a few kids who had bunked school to watch the game (brought back old memories!), there were also people from Australia,Zimbabwe and South Africa who had come to watch the game. Good experience overall. Got done by around 10 in the night after which I had to get back to campus for the MCSA elections which were scheduled to happen at midnight. Now the process for the election goes like this - there are 3 posts President, General Secretary and Treasurer. A person can stand for multiple posts. First all the candidates for President will give their speech after which the batch votes for their choice. Until there is a clear majority for one person, there are multiple rounds of voting with the person having the least number of votes at the each of every round of voting being eliminated. I had applied for the post of President which was the first position for which speeches and elections took place. There were 6 candidates and once the first round of voting happened it was clear that the choice was between 3 of us. In the second round there was just a difference of 2 votes between Shail and me and unfortunately Shail had to be eliminated. The last round was between Apar and me. The thing about counting of votes is that once a person crossed the halfway mark the counting stops. When I crossed the halfway mark there were still 20-25 odd votes left to be counted. So now yours truly is the President of the MCSA! To know more about the MCSA, you can find out here. The elections for the other two posts took really long with a lot of drama taking place along the way. The elections finally got done at 530 in the morning! The other 2 members in the MCSA now are Apar - Gen Sec and Karan Jhamb - Treasurer.

Since I slept late and considering how tiring the previous day was, woke up only at 12 the next day, was able to make it for the 1 o'clock SCM class. The other 2 lectures were SDM and NVC. NVC was quite interesting, it dealt with how branding is done through sights and sounds. Came back and slept for a while in the evening. Met up with the present MCSA in the night and got some of our queries cleared. Got back to the room at around 130 in the night and tried to catch up on some more sleep!

Day 195 - 4th February 2011

Woke up at 815 with great difficulty today. For a change didn't wake up 15 mins before the lecture :P Had 2 BM classes in the morning. Some pretty interesting concepts were discussed with some really good examples. The one I liked the most was the brand portfolio of Apple. NVC was about how music is used as a mode of communication. We heard two different versions of Imagine, one by John Lennon and another by perfect circle. Both had the exact same lyrics but diametrically opposite contexts just because of the kind of music that was used. There were many other applications of music discussed, sports advertising uses music extensively. We were shown a Chicago Bulls introduction video and how it is used to build up expectation among the crowd. A very interesting class, its a pity that we had only one session on music.

In the afternoon had CSMM tutorials which was based on a case. The entire discussion was pretty fruitful and an indication of a good case discussion is that it left you with more questions than answers ;-) Went to Bopal for a jog/walk in the evening, I cannot stress on how good the road has become! Post dinner (which was Parathas at Chota) Geeko and I worked on the MDA assignment which was based on SPSS. I'm not a huge fan of number crunching but this exercise was quite interesting. Have been in the library for the past 3 hours working on it. More or less done with it now, will try and sleep early tonight for a change ;-) Have a long night ahead tomorrow with what might probably be the last party in first year!

Day 194 - 3rd February 2011

Had a very weird time table today. After the morning 915 lecture had a class directly at 1 in the afternoon. In the break that we got tried to study a bit of NVC since we had a mid term at 3 in the afternoon. Went through a couple of slide decks. The test was OK, though I really dont understand why we have exams in subjects like these, research projects or assignments seem to be better options. Came back and slept because of which I missed the dissertation workshop, now I hadn't asked anyone but some noble souls had put a proxy for me and as my luck would have it, they checked for proxies at the end of the lecture. The only positive thing is that there are a lot of people on that list :D

In the evening had a presentation from TOI regarding a competition where we have to pitch to UNESCO for Ahmedabad to be granted heritage city status. Got to know some interesting things about the city in the process. After that had went to Bopal for a long overdue haircut. Got back to campus by around 9. Had to do read the case study for tomorrow's CSMM tutorial and take a print out of the article that needed an critique to be written for the media economics assignment. After that had to figure out how to work with SPSS for the MDA assignment. Have got some idea about the software, now need to solve the assignment problem, which I think I'll do tomorrow. Cant stay up any longer. Over and out!

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 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.