Days 15 & 16 - Of Fallen Champions and sleepy prodigies

 Day 15 - I don't remember much about Day 15 because of self-induced insomnia. After being up till about 3:30 am, I decided that I would not sleep at all since the chances of me waking up in time for the 8:45 am class looked bleak. So I read my book for a while after which I reeled off 3 episodes of Lost. By the time I detached my eyes from Kate Austen, it was 6:30 am, the sky was a virgin blue, birds were making excited sounds, everyone in the Hostel had finally slept and I was really sleepy. So I slept for about 2 hours, happily dreaming about getting stranded on a remote beach with a bunch of girls frolicking in near-nothings, when Mayur woke me up just in time for the Supply Chain Management Class.

Prof HG went on and on about God-knows-what for more than an hour. Most people spent their time watching objectionable movies on their cell-phones or massaging messaging their girlfriends while I opted for the morally right path and read the newspaper. FMCG class was not fun either but that was because I was way too sleepy for anything to register in my otherwise 187 IQ brain. The rest of the day was spent sleeping-working on Corporate Banking Presentation - and cursing myself for not sleeping properly. And then I get to know that my hero - Roger Federer - has gone down in 4 sets to talented and abnormally tall Tomas Berdych. That did it. I fell into depression which was only dispelled 2 hours later by a certain someone. I watched another episode of Lost later that night to make myself feel better. Nice!

Day 16 - After a farzi Corp Banking class, came FMCG which was much better with me doing some kick-ass CP which earned me plaudits from Prof Ramesh and middle fingers from classmates. The class was about Brand Equities and how some brands have successfully made very strong associations in consumers' minds. Good class! Post this, I watched yet another Samuel Jackson flick - 'Sphere' - which I thoroughly enjoyed. It is a psychological/sci-fi thriller based on Michael Crichton's novel of the same name, set 1000 ft. under water and is quite well thought out. This was followed by the Supply Chain Management Class where we made fun of Prof HG's accent. However today he finally got very pissed off and said something like, "I bloody works so hard and you just sits and clap in the class. Your level is worse than mine". His emotive statement was met with subdued applause and muted laughter. 

The evening was spent jogging in the rain and doing some serious gymming. I say serious because those 20 ab crunches are now causing serious pain when I breathe. 

Speaking of painful breathing, I just read that Tiger Woods is going to have to part with US $ 750 million for his Divorce Settlement. With this much money Elin Nordegren could have easily bought the Delhi or Mumbai 3G spectrum.

Anyway, have a presentation early in the morning tomorrow so have to hit the sack. Also its Nadal versus Murray tomorrow. Pray for the Queen. Good Night.

Days 11-14 - Of Weekend pains and Deadly Spain

The past 4 days could not have been a better mix of fun and work. And a Spanish victory over a listless and dull Portugal just made it better!

Day 11 Saturday - This day can be summed up in just 1 word - SPSS. SPSS is a statistical analysis tool which can be used to run a number of analytics procedures on numerical data. It makes Excel look like what it really is - a piece of poo. Prof. Banerjee's energetic teaching combined with the joy of learning something new, has made the Market Research Classes absolutely enjoyable for me. In spite of my naturally dazzling ability with numbers, I have always found doing non-deterministic data analysis a little weird and pointless. However now that I am getting good at it, I see the point after all! The night was spent watching 2 movies for Sunday's Strategic Management class. Both movies - Barbarians at the Gate and Baring's Bank were unexpectedly engaging and entertaining.

Day 12 Sunday - Sunday couldn't be worse with 6 hours of lectures including more than 4 hours of hardcore number crunching. However SPSS, a product made by my former employers IBM, continues to enamor me and keep me interested in the subject. The night was spent catching up on Lost of which I finished the Second Season. If you leave out the irritating bit with Michelle Rodriguez, the season was extremely stimulating and intelligent - just the way I like it.

Day 13- Monday - Call this me getting back at the hostile world.

Monday was our day off and me and my friends made the most of it.

Location        : PVR Cinemas

Activity          : Watching Toy Story 3 and The A-Team - back to back

Money spent  : Rs 130/- Totally value for money. While Toy Story was just okay, A-team was flying-tankingly-awesome! Though it was far from the intelligent fare that i generally savor, the action was unabashedly over-the-top with even my favorite machine ever - the F-22 Raptor - featuring in the movie.. Reminded me of the intensely enjoyable and equally unintuitive Die Hard 4. This was followed by great lunch at Pizza Hut. Good stuff! Mayur, 'U' and I spent the rest of the day making a concept for Clearasil to enter the Fairness Cream Segment for Tuesday's FMCG lecture.

Day 14 - Tuesday - Dull and drab was back with Prof HG conducting yet another soporific supply Chain Management Class. The Prof is immune to sarcastic clapping, cheering and being called disgraceful names like Reshma and Shakeela. I suspect he will be shown numerous fingers and be farted on in Wednesday's class, just to determine how much more he can take.

FMCG class followed with students coming up with one stupid product concept after the other. While my group's work was greatly appreciated by Prof Ramesh, the others came up with hilarious and otherwise typically IITian and pathetic products like edible chocolate toothpaste, ready-to-eat Maggi with special packaging capable of causing nuclear fission, and color-changing shoe-polish. No wonder IIPM dares to be better than the IIMs.

After a few games of cricket, in which I demolished the opposition, I watched Spain maul Portugal 1-0. The victory could have been more emphatic had Torres stayed on the bench, which I suspect he will, against Paraguay in the QF.

Anyway, this is going to be another hectic and tiring week. Will be back with more updates soon. Ciao!

Day 10 - Of many many demotivated men

25th June began at 10:30 am having slept really late the previous night. I am almost through with the second season of Lost and things have really spiced up. I really liked the episode with Hurley's split-personality being revealed. Very Fight Club-esque...

I watched some more Lost after waking up which meant that I went completely unprepared for the first Advanced Marketing Research class. Prof Prantosh Banerjee really kicked some butt in his lecture. Though he has scared us a little by giving us a huge amount of preparation to be done for tomorrows double-bill, I like the way he teaches. He peppers the lecture with anecdotes, each more humorous than the previous. At the same time, he somehow very ably uses scathing sarcasm to motivate the students, a rare talent indeed. We have to be prepared with chi-square test, regression and ANOVA for tomorrow's class. Let's see how that goes.

Dinner-time. The chicken in the canteen was surprisingly good today. However that was compensated for, by inedible veg stuff, or so my Jain friends told me. Nice! (wink)

Post that, I watched Brazil and Portugal put up a thoroughly sleep-inducing show at Durban. Since a draw was good enough for both the teams to go through to the next round, they did just that. Even the normally showy Cristiano Ronaldo looked subdued. Very poor stuff dudes.

We later headed to the auditorium for a batch meeting which, as usual, went completely off-track after while. Some people just internalize the art of doing CP anywhere and everywhere. Good grief!

Post the meeting I went back to watch Spain beat Chile 2-1. It was a good match as Spain had everything to play for. David Villa curled in an amazing long-range shot into an empty net. Torres, as usual, did not do any scoring.

There's lots to be done tomorrow. Time to hit the sack. Nite fellas!

Days 7,8 and 9 - Of neither yours, nor mine

Its been 3 days since I last updated this blog and I have been receiving numerous inquiries about  my absence. Contrary to popular belief that I was kidnapped by aliens for their research on 'superhumans', I have just been busy with certain things. 

Anyway, 21st night brought double delight as both Spain and Roger Federer won their respective matches, although in contrasting styles. But well, what's Federer without a little bit of drama, a little bit of grace and his subsequently almost falling from grace?

Day 7

22nd began on a slightly weird note with Prof AS doing some number crunching in the Brand Management Class.  He also used the sub-phrase 'talk about' in phrases like 'Lets talk about', 'if I talk about', 'if you talk about' and 'if we talk about', an estimated estimated 150 times in 75 minutes - a new Personal Best! The process of counting his 'talk about's was religiously taken up by half the class and the ones who counted accurately showed signs of immense personal achievement and were briefly the most about 'talked about' people in the college canteen for a full 2 minutes. The rest of the day was spent in making my report which i finally completed though I'm not very happy with the end-result. I could not  decorate my report with the ING Vysya logos and glyphs since there was an internet outage that started that afternoon and ended 24 hours later. Blast you, BSNL! All these PSUs must be divested without further ado!

22nd June was also the day on which i broke my month-long Writer's Block. I finally wrote another poem on my other blog and it has been receiving world-wide acclaim from the likes of James Joyce and Slipknot. Your appreciation is much appreciated fellas!

Day 8

23rd June began with a bang with yet another Brand Management class. The class began with a test, which I'm sure I aced as always. Most of the class tried peeking into my paper but I thwarted their attempts by not writing at all! Just another of my flashes of genius. This was followed by a discussion on the Intel Inside campaign which, for a change, was quite lively. Disgraced IITian Dushyanth finally made a contribution to the class by giving additional information about the shady 'Wintel' alliance. I was also amazed by how Intel's introduction of Core 2 Duo has changed the game for microprocessor makers forever. Good stuff!

Later that day, 9 of us had to present the 'Sensible Life Products' Case in the Strategy class. The topic for the day was Divestments. The discussion was okay, nothing great. Prof PS demonstrated brief signs of teaching ability when he explained Aditya Birla group's divestment strategy. After the class we found cold  but edible samosas waiting for us in the canteen. Not too bad at all.Later that evening I was supposed to update this blog. And that is when John Isner and  Nicolas Mahut started their fifth set on court 18 at Wimbledon. At the end of the day, Isner and Mahut were tied at 59 games apiece with fading light saving both their lives. Had they gone on any longer, Isner would have collapsed from exhaustion for sure. To quote the Montreal Gazette, "The match made the front page of Thursday's New York Times. The two players were atop the trending topics on the Twitter social network. It was discussed on news programs. And all this while the World Cup is going on." Federer's come-from-behind victory the same day barely made the headlines. 

 (L-R) Isner, Mahut, chair umpire Mohamed Lahyani, curious on-looker

A great day for tennis! Isner went on to win the fifth set 70-68 the next day.

Day 9 

24th morning was eventful as there was a special lecture by Dr. Srinivasan Swamy, who spoke on New Age Advertising and Market Disruptions. His focus was on explaining how marketers now recognize the power of the customer and are now creating more campaigns where users design the products and the advertisements. He showed us a couple of amazing ads like the famous Coke and Mentos ad and Obama's 'whassupp' ad. Later i finally got around to watching Unthinkable, a movie which best buddy Abhishek recommended. Decent flick if you can stand a little bit of torture-violence and a heartbreakingly old Carrie-Ann Moss.

After a forgettable Brand Management class, we headed to Utsav for dinner. We left after having soups and starters because the quality of food reminded us of the canteen.

We had the main course at Celebrations which never disappoints. We finished the day on a high playing cricket intoxicated by 1% vodka in 100% Mirinda. As you know, I stay away from such vile activities as drinking alcohol but that's the price you  pay when you end at a stupid Indian B-school when you could have so easily been playing Gears of War on the Harvard LAN. 

Anyway, The first Marketing Research leture happens at 5 today. More on this and other exploits tomorrow. Later.

Days 5 and 6 - Of Sadistic Sundays and Mundane Mondays

"So much done, so much yet left to do" 

  - Oscar Wilde on finding a roomful of men

While I abhor Oscar's blasphemous orientation, I could not find a more suitable quote to describe my state over the last two days. Working tirelessly for 8 days straight takes its toll on even the most able of men. To make things worse I have not watched Lost or The Big Bang Theory for more than a week now! It has been  more than a month since I started working on my project report . I guess being a perfect perfectionist does not come easy. Anyway, let's begin from where I left off.

After a long Saturday came a wearisome Sunday. Prof Ramesh kicked off yet another FMCG class at 8:45am but the 50-odd students seemed to show little interest  in the proceedings. But my classmates have negligible attention spans anyway. The topic was Consumer Insights. Insights are vital because they form the needs of the customer and help marketers decide the direction of product development. Sir closed the class by showcasing 16 product concepts that P&G had devised for the Mortein brand. All of the ideas were simply brilliant!

This was followed by the first Finance lecture of the year that I could not even get a whiff of. Prof Vaidya ventured into hi-fi territory with his rant on Asset Acquisition Strategies and Asset pricing strategy. The fact that the 'brilliant' front-bencher IITians were equally or perhaps more clueless seemed to be the only  consolation. 

SAPM was an interesting class with Prof  Dhillon explaining legendary speculator George Soros' trading strategy. His theory was far removed from the way Peter Lynch worked, but was highly effective. Other investors profiled in the class were Warren Buffett, John Templeton, Mark Mobius, William Sharpe and Samir Arora. Great class with a lot of perspective to be gained. The rest of the day was spent in working on the project and enjoying the weather, which towards the evening, transformed from Scarlett Johnasson hot to Kristen Stewart cool. 

View from my corridor, aka 'The McKinsey Way'

Monday began on a testing note with the Strategic Management Quiz squeezing everyone's lemons. Post the involuntary discharge, while most boys stared at the new and vulnerable First Year chicks, I continued working on my report until sundown. The evening was reserved was some cricket in which I shined with a distinct Golden hue. I am also happy to report that the quality of canteen food has hit new highs in anticipation of the juniors' arrival. Kudos!

I am on way to put my weight behind Spain now. They might just be able to pull off a surprise draw against Honduras. May God be merciful. More tomorrow. Cherio!

Day 4 - Of Peter Lynch and a cash-strapped friend

First up, my sincere apologies for being unable to post this item last night. I was slightly incapacitated by my rigorous academic schedule, lack of sleep and difficult and almost superhuman presence in extracurricular activities.
On weekends while most people, lounge around at home, party with friends or just be happy among themselves, the administration of my great institution believes that a tough manager can only be produced by molding him in the fires of Mordor Indore on a hot, steamy, sultry and hostile Saturday afternoon. I second this idea and believe there should be no weekends at all. After all we are not here to enjoy our lives. We are just tiny cogs in the wheel of capitalism and this wheel has got to keep moving nigga!
Anyway, the day yet again began with the FMCG class with us making further progress in Concept writing. It was yet another good lecture by Prof Ramesh. I wonder why we cannot have him in First Year itself. But that would render in-house faculty Prof AS and Prof SM jobless which would not be very pleasant.
Corp Banking was a good class too with Prof Vaidya talking about the process through which banks allocate credit to companies and the role of regulation in this setup. Sir also briefly spoke about the role NBFCs in the banking sector. Yet another good class.
The next two lectures were probably the most interesting Finance classes I have ever attended. Dhillon Sir made the SAPM class so interesting that for a moment even I was in awe of him. For the next 2.5 hours we tried to understand Peter Lynch's investment philosophy, which was quite simply, astonishingly smart. From being a caddy to managing a fund of $14billion, he has been proven as one of the smartest and most thorough investors of all time. The lecture was great fun. We are going to study Warren Buffett in about an hour's time from now which is extremely exciting stuff!
After the SAPM lecture Prof Ramesh conducted a session on careers in Marketing which was very insightful and informative. Overall, a long but great day at school.
After a brief game of football, in which yours truly put the other players to shame, we headed to Sayaji for dinner. We wanted to go to the newly opened Radisson  but treat-giver and newly-engaged friend Mayur showed us his bank statement, after which we had to make the heart-breaking but rational choice.

 (L-R) Pratyush (sailor1), DG, Mayur, Dwivedi (Sailor2), Anjani, Me and Junglee Ghissoo.

On finding Kebabsville full, we went to the Sanchi restaurant which, contrary to my expectations, was done up very opulently. The food, in my opinion, was just okay, but that did not deter dear friend and chicken lover Ram from emptying one plate after the other.

Mayur, who normally has the appetite of a sick sparrow, also ate without inhibition, maybe because he was going to pay for the eight of us. Good thinking dude!
By the time we got back it was really late. After working on my never-ending project report for some time, I     Ram (left) and Anjani fighting over a chicken breast
accidentally fell asleep on my Dell. I was pleasantly surprised when the cheap machine booted up in the morning. I like Dell.
It has been a hectic Sunday until now but I'll give you the dope tomorrow. Happy Sunday siesta folks!

Day 3 - Of Starbucks getting it wrong and other fiascos

Okay fans and fanatics, I am going to keep today's treatise short because I have other commitments, if you know what I mean (wink). First up today was the FMCG class which was less exciting than usual since I had to listen to 10 hopelessly under-gifted classmates presenting their views on how a marketing concept must be written. Prof Ramesh looked crestfallen since there was only one student in class who was really able to match his intellectual level, which is yours truly. The only take-away from today's class was the concept of umbrella benefit and how sometimes marketers forget what they're trying to communicate as the real value proposition of their product. Point noted.
Prof Vaidya's Corp Banking class however was yet another exposition of his great teaching ability. He started with explaining banks' off-balance sheet exposures, and went on to compare SBI and Citibank and explain why their P&L statements differ so much. Other take-ways from the lecture were the TOL/TNW ratio and compostion of banks' loan books. I really think that along with being a legendary marketer, I may also be able to become the the poster-boy of the banking industry as well.
The biggest surprise of the day came in the Supply Chain Management lecture when Prof 'funny fingers' RK dumped our class for a class with lower average intelligence. So now we have to make do with prof 'funny face' HG who unfortunately cannot make the sound 'k' as in kite. He made himself instantly unpopular by imposing a strict assignment rule upon us which was met by loud sarcastic cheering and whistling by the class. I cannot believe I chose this course on my seniors' suggestions. I think this was the seniors' way of exacting revenge on us for us having given them the wedgies for 1 complete year.
The 4th lecture was Prof AS's Brand Management class where we discussed the very interesting case of Starbucks' evolution, rise to eminence and subsequent business faux pas. They got so heady with opening new branches in every corner of the world that they forgot the one thing they used to value the most, the customer. My valuable CP was drowned by a cunning IITian who strung together random words like 'market share', 'value proposition' and 'brand identity' in the same sentence which brought a smile to Prof AS's slightly weird face. Overall, a below average day at school.
On the way back from class, I curled in a 70 yard free kick, in David Beckham style which had co-magazine editor and Argentina fan Srini request that I lift the Indian football team up from its pre-eminent place in the mud. I had to snub his suggestion as I had other commitments at that point of time.
Other significant events of the day included the ecstatic Malayali chick and the anorexic girl from yesterday thanking me for having mentioned them in my blog. Apparently they are being treated like celebs in their local neighborhoods. I touch so many lives everyday without even knowing it, I feel like Mohd. Yunus already!
Tomorrow is a long day at school which includes 2 SAPM lectures back-to-back. More on this tomorrow. Enjoy your Saturday folks!