Day 438 - 26th March 2012

Today marked the beginning of the last week at MICA. Woke up at 11 and had some MCSA work to take care of. 12 of us were giving a joint birthday party in the night which meant that most of the afternoon went in preparing for that. Swati, Manu and I went to ISCON to pick up cold drinks and snacks for the party. Got back to campus by 5 in the evening. SCAM had organized an arm wrestling championship which provided ample entertainment in the mess during dinner. Post dinner the party preparations took over again. The party was good fun with the dancing going on till 730 in the morning :P Its been a while since an all nighter has been pulled off after being on the dance floor for so long ;-)

Day 303 - 3rd September 2011

Got back to campus last night after a week in Bombay during which I had to go to office for some FIF1 work and also got to celebrate Ganesh Chaturthi at home. Didnt have any classes today but had some work lined up which had to be taken care of. Have not been feeling too well over the past couple of days, wasn't feeling great today either. However I couldnt resist the temptation of playing a cricket match in the afternoon. It was an unofficial PGP-2 v/s PGP-1 match. Played on the ground for the first time since the MCL final! The match was a huge letdown though, we got mauled and lost by 65 runs, a very rude wake up call for all of us. It was extremely humid during the game and I must have lost nearly 3 litres of water :P Came back to the room and slept for an hour so.

Had Sania's birthday treat at the Marriot today, courtesy a pretty decent offer from snapdeal. 18 of us feasted on the buffet and as is the case in such buffets, the desserts took the cake(pun intended). Came back with satisfied bellies! Will sleep a little early tonight, still reeling from the after effects of the cricket match and just before sleeping SCAM has sent a mail announcing the opening match of the cricket season with PGP-1 playing PGP-2 tomorrow ;-)

Day 276 -26th July 2011

Woke up at 1030 today and had to take care of some internship work before heading for the 12 o'clock class. Today's CC class was about IMC from a sociological perspective. We discussed about the proliferation of brands and advertisements, about how advertisers are getting frustrated and consumers are getting infuriated. The average time for ads in a half an hour show is now nine minutes, up from 2-3 minutes from the 1980s. Product placements were also discussed with the Walt Disney+Monsters Inc.+ Pepsi versus Time Warner+Harry Potter+Coke case study being discussed. The whole point being that the number of ads and marketing strategies when viewed from a sociological perspective gives one a lot to think about.

The class was followed by a movie screening, today's movie was a French movie - Three colours blue. Was quite zonked out during the movie. Realized that movie appreciation isnt that easy! This movie is a part of a trilogy with the other colours being red and white. They are based on the colours of the French flag with each colour standing for a set of values which are explored in each of these movies.

Post dinner had discussions on committee budgets for Alumni, SCAM and MICANVAS. That took around a couple of hours. After that had to work on the concept note for the dissertation topic that has to be submitted tomorrow. As of now have thought about naming rights for stadiums across the world and its scope in India as a topic. Got done with that at 430. Will tweak it a bit tomorrow before submitting 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!

Day 26 - 22nd July 2010

It's 245 a.m and Im wide awake. Just got back from Chota where a friend gave a treat for making it to SCAM. That place is buzzing with activity at 2 in the morning, no wonder its a part of MICAn folklore.

Had our second workshop on creative strategy today. Learnt about the SCAMPER technique to devise visual campaigns, also saw some examples of how its done, pretty interesting stuff. We also got the chance to interact with the gentleman who came up with Raymond's complete man campaign. Got some good insights from him on whom campaigns should target and how important it is to evoke a strong emotion within people through a single image. Apart from that our group had to work on an adult literacy campaign, which went on till about 430. Came back to the hostel and slept for an hour, felt groggy throughout the evening because of that and the inclement weather. It poured almost throughout the day,because of which the clothes I had kept out to dry were subjected to another rinse cycle!

There is a very strong rumour doing the rounds that we are in for a surprise eco test tomorrow. Apparently the library was packed with people from PGP1. If it doesn't happen, whosoever started the rumour is going to have a tough time ;-). I also studied a bit of eco but have a gut feeling that there won't be any test tomorrow (using that as an excuse to sleep early).

P.S Had my Team Interface interview today, was quite chilled out, will know tomorrow if I've made it through to the next round.

Day 24 - 20th July 2010

The day after a rest day is so difficult to get through. Moreover had a full day of lectures today, 9 to 5! Somehow managed to stay awake during the marketing and ID lectures. The marketing class had a discussion on marketing research and the different methodologies involved to extract/interpret data from potential consumers. ID dealt with motivation and we were introduced to our first theory in this subject. That was followed by 2 hours of communication theory, the prof.wasn't in his element today, he himself admitted it, so the session wasn't too captivating either.After lunch had a tutorial on marketing, we were expected to read a case,which no one did because of the fact that we got to know about it during lunch :-P So instead of that we were broken into groups and had to come up marketing plans for different organic products - foodstuff, paint,cosmetics and clothing. Turned out to be a free for all with each group trying to find out mistakes in the other group's plan, was kinda fun,it came to a point where the prof. had to remind us that we were still in a classroom :D

In the evening went for a walk around campus, want to start playing tennis again but don't know when its going to happen. Went to the library to study a bit of eco in the library but halfway through got a call from a friend who had got a task in one of his committee interviews, he had to clear 10 rooms in 15 mins and mine was one of them. The room was stripped bare with everything being dumped in the cupboard. It looked like how I remember it from the first day. But he also took it upon himself to set things back in order.

Post dinner had the elections for Sports Committee at MICA (SCAM). Similar to the PlaceComm
and MCSA procedures - candidates give a speech followed by election/selection. Got done with that by around midnight, nothing much to do after that so calling it a day!