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.