Day 2 - Of Mallus and milk

Prof Ramesh is officially one of the awesomest profs ever! He took the FMCG class by its horns and proved that even 76 dull, dumb and detached students can be taught new things which may, some day, help them earn a living. He started by quoting Jack Trout and went on to explain why apart from market share, even the profit share of a company is very important. He went on to explain the basics-enablers model for FMCG products. He stressed this point by drawing the Relevance-Differentiation matrix which informs a marketer about the segment his/her product should target. We also began concept writing today which is extremely exciting stuff. I did quite a lot of CP today and Sir even asked my what my name is. Brilliance just shines through doesn't it. Though I think doing so much CP earned me a few enemies at the back of the class who kept showing me a particular finger after the lecture. Urban propaganda! Sir also gave an interesting assignment which I helped my group complete but that resulted in some controversy which I shall discuss later.
The Second lecture was equally mind-blasting. In spite of our complete lack of preparation for the class, Prof Vaidya, taught us the basics of Corp Fin with disarming ease. His tremendous experience allowed him to give us a practical viewpoint of the subject and he cleared one inane doubt after the other just like I would have done it. The concepts of CRR, repo, reverse repo, SLR, LAF and call money market transactions were clarified beautifully which also made me realize that I might have to clean up wikipedia because IITians have been putting in a lot of misleading junk there. Sir also showed how and why Indian and foreign banks' asset and liability compositions differ. Tomorrow is another Corp Fin class and I am totally looking forward to it.
After coming back from class I tried getting my bike to start which didn't happen because 6 years ago I decided to take Computer Engg instead of what I really wanted to do - Mechancial Engg. Since I was unable to fix the problem and my equally useless friends Anjani and Mayur couldn't really do much I called a mechanic who took Rs 100 from me to tell me he couldn't fix it. No morals people have these days.
To get over it, we went to Celebrations to have lunch which turned out to be totally worth it. I drove an archaic Maruti 800 at an average speed of 70k/hr which had rear seat occupiers Anjani and Mayur requesting me to join Formula 1, an idea I discarded because I have better things and less vain activities to do in life. We had Indian, Italian and American cuisine and stared at some hot Medicaps chicks too. However they left within 3 minutes after we entered the place leaving their food uneaten. I can never understand women!
My afternoon was spent chatting on gtalk with a few women who claim to remember me and have been 'friends' with me. God alone knows! One of them who's recently turned extremely anaemic, to whom I extended my congratulations, claimed that she still had to lose some more body fat (after a check-up with VLCC). Way to go Kate Moss! One other woman took offense to me not loving Malayalis anymore, a statement which I defended reasonably which was followed by her profuse apologies on behalf of the Malayali community. Dont worry Mallus, we're cool.
Now for the controversial part. So I did the FMCG assignment with good friend and fellow quizzer 'U'. When group member, good friend and constant PITA activist Mayur came to know about this, he started spreading malicious rumors about me and her and accused me of 'milking' her, whatever that meant. It took a significant amount of time, effort and my strong networking to kill the rumor and restore my dignity. One has to learn to deal with such things when fame, glory and renown surrounds one. And I think I am becoming more adept at it everyday.
Tomorrow is a hectic day with 4 lectures including one by Prof "I love fingering" RK who is, well, bad. More about this tomorrow. Until then, Stay good.