Day 162 - 17th December 2010

First day of exams in term 2. Had SM in the morning and CR in the afternoon. SM was a 1 hour 55 questions MCQ test with 0.5 negative marking! Anyways was a little liberal in marking answers since the test has a 20% weightage in the overall grade. As is the case in such papers people started walking out within 20 minutes :D Its like a race as to who will walk out first. Yours truly got done in half an hour. Had 3 hours before the CR exam, studied for an hour or so and then decided to take a break till the exam. Thankfully that helped since the exam was based on complete application of the theory, no vomiting of mugged up answers were required :P

Slept in the evening for a while before starting CMA. Now my experience with CMA's predecessor wasn't a very good one so Im hoping this doesn't go down the same road. Anyways started reading and solved a few numericals, which were pretty ok. Geeko came over to HQ to study and since she is familiar with most of this stuff was able to get quite a few of my doubts cleared from her.The exam is at 230 tomorrow afternoon so have a lot of time tomorrow morning as well. The subject is a good mix of theory and numericals and apparently the paper is going to have 10 questions worth 10 marks to be solved in one and a half hours! Will call it a day now and resume CMA tomorrow morning!

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 120 - 3rd November 2010

Campus has already started looking empty with people leaving for the Diwali break. The lectures had pretty mediocre attendance and it was difficult not to get caught sleeping for a few people :P. SM was all about the ticket pricing of tickets for the baseball team. Pricing is a pretty interesting topic and ought to be taught more in detail. The CB lecture was inundated with PJ's from the prof. He caught a guy sleeping and told him -"A lion cub is playing with a goat. What did the cub's mother tell him? - Dont play with your food :D and if you continue sleeping I will tell you some more jokes of a similar calibre :-P"

After lectures worked a bit on the DC assignment. Its a group assignment and the work has been distributed equally amongst all the group members so it makes life easier. Haven't been playing any sport for the past 2 weeks so had decided to play tennis today. Played for a good 2 hours, felt really good and I also realized how easy it is to lose touch from the game. Its been getting dark quite early nowadays so had to wrap up by 6. Maushi and I went to Bopal in the evening to buy some stuff got back in time for dinner at the mess which was butter chicken :-)

Palaash is relatively empty now, so was pretty much confined to my room post dinner. Was reading some articles on cricinfo when I chanced upon the scorecard of the first international match I had seen in a stadium. It was the India England test series way back in 1993 :-) I actually remember quite a few of the scores from this game and also feel privileged to have seen Kapil Dev live in action. Later in the night, Mallu Maushi and I met up to have golgappas(which we had packed in the evening) and to kickstart the diwali celebrations in MICA itself. Got back to the room at around 230, will do a little tp now before calling it a day.

Day 118 - 1st November 2010

Back to regular classes after a really hectic week. Had 4 lectures today and as usual CB stole the show. We were shown different ads and studied how the same product was sold in different regions of the country by working on cultural differences. Got done with lectures after which got to catch up with Geeko after quite sometime, she was pretty busy with MICANVAS for the past month and is now finally free. After that had to go to ISCON with Mallu, wanted to give the bike for servicing but decided to do it after the diwali vacations. Wanted to play tennis in the evening but couldn't find any company, so decided to sleep instead :P Woke up at around 630,just in time for snacks. At around 730 got to know that Palaash Corp was having a board meeting at Barbeque Nation to celebrate Kalkar's birthday, could not let the opportunity go by. Hogged like pigs, ensured that we did full paisa vasooli for the 500 bucks per person price tag :-) Got back to campus at around 11, had to read and solve the SM case. The Aila group met at Apu's room to discuss the case. Have some part of it worked out and divided the work. Have submissions coming up over the next 3 days, need to get cracking on those subjects as well! Got done at around 230,back to the room now. Have a late start so can sleep a little more tomorrow ;-)

Day 100 - 14th October 2010

Century at MICA! And had a pretty nice day as well. Had only 2 lectures - DC and SM. Got done at 1130 and had the rest of the day free. Went to Bopal and ISCON mall with the intention of buying bathroom slippers but ended up spending 5 times the amount that can be spent on slippers! Ended up going to landmark and bought 2 books - one on the IPL and the other on what sport teaches us about life. As a part of the Imagining India course we are also expected to read Mother Pious Lady by Santosh Desai, its his take on the new Indian middle class. And I also bought a book on the rise of Dhirubhai Ambani - Ambani and Sons. So that makes it four books to read over the next 3 months. With the kind of schedule I have here I wonder how I am going to find the time to read all of them.

Anyways back to today, the highlight of the day was lunch at Mainland China (yes I went out to buy bathroom slippers :-P ) Had authentic chinese food for the first time in Gujju Land, was really good and it is one of the few places that serves non vegetarian food as well. Had to get back to campus for an interface meeting. Got done with that at around 430 after which I played tennis (for a change). Felt good to get back on the court after a long time. This was followed by the first major event of the term - the MCL player auctions with the tagline "Know your real value" :-D. Players were divided into buckets with base prices of 30,50,70 and 90 and captains had a budget of 1000 while bidding for a squad of 14. There were core teams of 3 members already formed, with each captain choosing two 'star' players. Yours truly was in one such core team. The theme for naming the teams this year is cigarettes, now since the team which I am a part of consists mainly of non-smokers we have chosen the name Phantom Sweet Cigarettes :-)

The other teams worth a mention are 502 Pataka and Navy 'Square' Cut.

The auction went on for a good 3-4 hours and at the end of it we got a pretty decent squad. Had a team meeting after that(yes, MCL is serious cricket) Got free by around 1230 in the night after which I decided to sleep early since we have practice at 645 tomorrow morning!

P.S. To commemorate 100 days at MICA and the spirit of MCL I shall indulge in a little narcissism and

share this pic.

Day 98 - 12th October 2010

The CB lectures get even more interesting by the day! A statement made by the prof. today was a brilliant example of consumer insight - "When a child idolizes Sachin Tendulkar, he doesn't play cricket for 14 hours, he drinks boost!" That was one of the many examples he gave in class and each one of them made so much sense! The other lectures were on SM and DC, both were ok. After lunch had to go meet the communication managers for MICA alongwith TI. Had planned to go to Bopal for some work after that but came back to the room and slept for a good 2 hours.

Went to Bopal in the evening to buy some junk food. Had to come back and design another sports marketing event for MICANVAS. Came up with an idea of branding of stadiums and came up with an event around that, have submitted it to the events team,lets see what happens. After that took part in an online business quiz conducted by IIM Rohtak, was a very well made quiz. This was followed by the MCL meeting where we had to elect four captains from PGP1, the election process was good fun, we even asked the candidates to give speeches :-P Now that the 4 captains have been elected they have to come up with team names and there will be an auction for players over the next couple of days. After that was done got down to the pre read for the Imagining India class. Had to read a piece written by Dr.Ambedkar on whether there is a case for the formation of Pakistan, pretty interesting stuff, should be an interesting discussion in class tomorrow.

Day 92 - 6th October 2010

Guess I spoke to soon when I said there is so much time and so little to do. The assignments and pre reads for this term seem to have picked up from where they left off last term. Have a two group dynamics assignments - the deadline for one is tomorrow and the other is day after. Also have a lot of pre reading to do for the Services Marketing and Consumer Behaviour classes. But all of that took a backseat in the afternoon as a cricket match had to be played :-P. Had a practice match - 20 overs, pgp1 v/s pgp2. After restricting them to 94 we seemed to be cruising at 70/2 after 14 overs. But then in true Indian style there was a dramatic collapse, we ended up losing the match by seven runs with the last over of the chase being a maiden!! Yours truly after getting a decent start threw his wicket away trying to finish off the match soon.

Most of the evening was spent analysing the match and deciding on what could be the possible team combinations for the MCL could be. Got to know today that the MCL is quite a long tournament with at least 7 teams (3 each from pgp1 and pgp2 and one from the other courses) and each team playing the other 6 teams once and it is bloody serious cricket! There is absolutely no love lost at the end of some of the matches ;-) After all the cricket related duties were performed it was time to start the GD assignment (glad to know my priorities are all sorted out ;-) ).