Days 263 & 264 - 13th and 14th July 2011

Pulled off my first all nighter of the second year! 13th was a rest day to woke up at noon (in hindsight it turned out to be a good thing since I didn't know what was lying in store for me :P). MCSA work consumed most of the day. Started off by meeting the chairperson of the dissertation committee to finalise the timelines of the dissertation submissions. Post that had to meet the associate director and registrar to have the first round of discussions regarding the committee budgets. Also had to discuss the status of the internship report that had to be submitted, finally came to a mutual agreement that no report had to be submitted! :D In the evening had to sit with Apar and Jhamb to discuss the way forward wrt to the Junior MCSA elections which were to be held in the night. This year we tried something new by going online for elections, saves a lot of paper and time as well! The Junior MCSA elections started a t 1030 in the night. Candidates had to make a speech followed by Q&A from their batch. This was followed by elections from where the top 3 girls and guys would proceed for interviews which were to be conducted by the MCSA. We had to interview 13 people after the elections. The interviews started at 230 and went on till 8 in the morning! At the end of it we've found a Junior MCSA that we are very happy with and from whom we expect a lot. Also have to say that the junior batch also seems to have a lot of talented people, a heartening sign for MICA :-)

Had the first day of the crafting dissertation workshop on the 14th which started at 930 in the morning - which effectively meant no sleep at all on the 13th! Managed to pay attention for the first hour and a half after which the lack of sleep started taking its toll on me. Pushed myself to stay awake in class until the post lunch session. At around 330 excused myself from the class and came back to my room. Slept until 7 in the evening. Had JPC speeches and elections in the night, the online voting system was tried there as well. It worked quite well for both elections, due credited to be given to our chief election commissioner - SIR alongwith with Kore and Kore for devising a foolproof system. After a long time had dinner at Chota since the mess food was quite boring. JPC speeches went on till about 230 after which I came back to the room and crashed!

Days 146 to 152 - 2nd December to 7th December 2010

Been away from the blog for almost a week now. A lot of things have been happening on and off campus that have kept me busy. So Sankalp, MICA's annual theatre fest started on the 3rd and most of day on 2nd was spent in helping out for the on ground creatives. Had to climb ladders to hang decorations from trees and the roof of the audi. Never done anything like that before, was good fun :-) Had to also prepare for the competition at IMT. Left for Delhi on 3rd evening amidst a lot of drama. Our onward journey tickets were confirmed and we had asked an agent to book our return journey tickets for the 5th i.e Sunday. However he ditched us at the last minute and we boarded the train to Delhi with no confirmed return tickets. We reached Delhi at around 8 on 4th morning and went to the Reservation center to book our return tickets. There was a huge line so in the meanwhile we asked a friend on campus to book the tickets online which luckily went through. Took a metro to Noida from where we took a rickshaw to IMT. It has a nice campus, they have an amazing library, it is quite grand and actually makes you feel like studying :-) There 7 of us from MICA so it was good fun. Our competition was on the 5th, it was a good learning experience (read as we didn't win ;-) ) But we did see a few areas of improvement which should help us out in the future.

We left for Delhi on 5th evening and wanted to make the most of the time that we had to explore the city. Khan Market, Connaught Place, GK, India Gate and Pahar Ganj were on the itinerary. Also made the most of happy hours ;-) The weather was also brilliant , dont think it ever crossed 20 deg. Pahar Ganj was an interesting place to go to, it is where most of Dev D was shot. Had to go around the place on a cycle rickshaw which was also a nice experience. Had a pretty uneventful return journey. Made the most of getting an upper berth and slept all the way from Delhi to Sabarmati :-) Reached campus at around 1130, could make it for the last class of RM, and as luck would have it, the prof. finally got his chance to say 'Wake Up Sid!' :D A few of us had a meeting with some consultants who are in the process of making a 5 year plan for MICA. They wanted to know our opinion about the place and where we saw the college heading. After that had an interface meeting, we have the Bangalore city meet next weekend for which I will be going :D:D but the flip side I will miss the Grand Alumni meet which I heard if going to be a lot of fun! In the evening played tennis and basketball and then went for a jog - had to make up for all the calories consumed in Delhi ;-) Post dinner had to help the alumni team with the on ground creatives. Kalkar has a really amazing idea in mind which when implemented will be something completely out of this world. Worked on it for the entire night! It required a lot of carpentry to be done. Had never used tools so much in engineering, quite ironical that I had to use it in a mgmt. program. Was really good fun though. The structure is called a 'trippy tunnel', will try and upload a pic once it is done. That work went on till about 845 in the morning courtesy which for the first time since I have come to MICA I have to attend lectures without taking a bath :P Somebody tells me that it is my right to passage ;-)

Days 75-76 - 9th & 10th September 2010

Combining 2 days because its really been hectic and plus I wasn't keeping too well. Have been sleeping the most when I should have actually been studying or completing assignments. Yesterday was all about preparing for the SSC term end examination. Four ppt's were circulated to everyone and that was our bible for the exam. However the tough part came when it came to understanding post modernism and all that jazz. A classmate of ours with a background in humanities explained some of the concepts to a few of us in the library. Was able to grasp a few of those concepts. It was actually fun to get back to examination mode after such a long time. Owing to the ill health I decided not to sacrifice sleep (and it was a very difficult decision :P), slept for a good 8 hours!

Woke up at 10 today that was also because of the fact that lectures began at 1130. Had only one lecture of eco which started half an hour late which effectively made it a 40 minute class. The highlight of the class though was the mimicry session by these supertalented guys in our class in the first half hour. They had the entire class in splits. Batchmates and seniors were at the receiving end- no one was spared :D After class went to the library with the intention of studying a bit before the exam. Did a bit of that before sleeping for 40 minutes in the cool confines of the reading area. That actually was quite refreshing. Had the exam at 4, it was OK - we were specifically told how many line answers were required, though the weird part was that there were fill in the blanks repeated twice and with the same options! We were told we can keep the same answer in both places or give different answers :-S Anyways once the exam was done there was a sense of relief but me thinks things will not be easy when we have two papers per day from 22nd to 25th.

Had a pretty hectic evening/night. Had to complete the ID and PoM assignments which had to be submitted the next day along with some TI work regarding the MICA website and blog. Got done with the TI work and managed to catch the last part of the champions league game which Mumbai Indians lost :-( Felt worse for missing out on watching Sachin score a half century. PoM was a group assignment so it didn't take much time after the work was divided. After that moved onto the ID diary. Got done with that by about 3 so decided to get a printout in the night itself. The printer room is near Chota, so couldn't resist the temptation of having a cheese paratha and chai - the joy of it at 330 in the morning :-) Didn't feel too sleepy so decided to come to the library, read a bit of eco and did some tp on the net. I have made up for sleeping so much over the past couple of days by pulling off a night out now! It's 7 in the morning now, will head back to the hostel in a while before attending the last day of lectures in term 1 - how time flies!

P.S. Amma/Appa - I am feeling much better now, thanks for calling. Its good to know at least two people read this blog ;-)

Day 19 - 15th July 2010

Second night out in the past 5 days! Its 6 in the morning as I post this one. Had my MICANVAS interview at 245 in the morning following which I was given an assignment which had to be submitted before 9 a.m. Headed to the library after my interview to work on the assignment, it was quite an interesting one, regarding how I would go about selling different kinds of events to corporates for sponsorship. Had to research a bit on that before I could actually come up with a plan. Im not very sure how my interview went, it didn't last for too long, will know whether thats a good or bad thing pretty soon.

Apart from that had a workshop on creative strategy during the day. We learnt a bit about how ads work on and use human emotions to get their message across. This was a day long workshop and we will be having a similar one next week.

Need to head back to the hostel now and get at least an hour's sleep. Have lectures from 9 to 4 out of which 3 hours will be in Quantitative techniques! Dont know how Im going to keep myself awake for the whole day.