The experience

I'm back to the blogging scene as a temporary moment of insanity consumes me, what with the hellish week we've been having after the blissful no-quiz routine that I had unfortunately gotten quite used to.

Three surprise quizzes in three days, not entirely unexpected. So whats the surprise here ?

Well, owing to the fact that the we were strangely fortunate to have the last week declared as a no-quiz week, which of course resulted in some pretty crude celebrations, the likes of which had hardly been seen during the second week after midterms, the time when the word 'quiz' becomes the most feared thing, and it was pretty much expected that after that piece of good..,no, supremely outstanding piece of good fortune, the third week was pretty much gonna be a killer.

And it has lived upto our expectations. Though the surprise element in there being a quiz has been obliviated, there is still the aspect of which subject.

To make matters even more convenient, all subjects are completely up to date on the 'askable-in-quiz' part of portions, so there's no respite for us poor over exploited souls.

Now that the cribbing part has been dealt with, I must say the last week was quite fabulous. Though the number of assignments was in no measure small, the feeling of impending doom in the quiz that might happen the next day was conspicuously absent :D.

Of course, one gets immune to such tactics by the system to bow you down to submission.

I saw the Arsenal game yesterday although there was the really horrible prospect of there being a quiz in one of particularly disastrous (for me) two courses, and then blissfully slept off.

One of the consequenses of which was that I was totally unprepared for a class (Unprepared here does not mean not read the case or something, that I never do anyways, unprepared means we had a presentation by a random group in class, and our group had not done anything, which, btw, is a cardinal sin at iima).

God helps those who help themselves, and He also helps Oink from time to time. After some nerve wreaking random group number generating moments, I heaved a sigh of relieef.

My phone rang. That itself is quite phenomenal as my phone seldom rings. Putting that aside, my phone rang today in class. It was then that the thought struck me that today might be quite my lucky day. The unbelievable part was that the phone rang 5 minutes after the class was over, in the 15 minute break given between classes. It was not in silent. 5 minutes earlier, or 10 minutes later, and I would have been screwed. Yet another inexpilcable quirk of fate, only this time, and its been some time coming, in my favor.

To top it all, the two subjects I was abso-freaking-lutely dreading, had no quiz today. It was some random globe subject that was to take the honors of having a quiz today. Though I have no idea how I have done, I do know that I shall not flunk.

Well, time seems to not whoosh by you, it seems to actually disapparate and leave you with a 'Smack! you're late!' feeling.

That feeling's just struck me now, and i realize i gotta rush.

Adios

Long un

its ironic, isin't it , that i never posted when i was at the pinnacle of joblessness, but now that im buried under with never ending assignments deadlines etc, this is my second post in, what, 4 days ?

Well, not quite. There is this thing of having something to post about. Or even if nothing very postable has happened in the recent past, at least something other than nothing that is getting on your nerves. What has happened is that im totaly sick of this fart course that im having to study, this has no credits whatsoever, just random philosophical stuff picked out from heaven knows where, pages and pages of globalization of a few random, repeating, so-called facts, which is then randomly shot down, ending with something of the 'we can't really decide at this point' variety, and all this after about the only 100 odd pages of reading assignment even before the subject has actually begun as part of the classes, and as if this wern't enough, making this a group assignment so you can't even finish this at your own pace, but have to wait and match teh schedules of everyone in the group, wait for everyone to finish their part, which seldom happens synchronously, so that the thing that you could have done, with tremendous application and focus, i have to add, say, in less than an hour and a half, you end up not completing even in a little over 3 hours, the remaining of which you spill over for the next day, when you'd rather be pursuing other things, sleep being one of them.

Now that that not so short a sentence is complete, my mind is fresh again, and i shall resume attacking this mundane 0 credit subject.

adios

iimba

Its 3 20 am, tomorrow's the, correction, today's the first iim ahmedabad class for us. I just thought i'd post a small post before going off to sleep. Yes, im sleeping at 3 am, its wayy to early by iima standards, seeing as i'v been sleepin not before 5 the last two days, when classes were non existent. Today, after preparation of two cases and an assignment, all this before even a millisecond of class is underway for that mba degree waiting at the end, i feel a sense of deep satisaction. For the past two days iv been more busy than my entire stint at bits put together, minus the waves time.

The thing is, im loving it. This is what college should be like. Bits had its own awesome moments. Its just that i needed a change, and this is just it. I have so much fallen for this place.

I should really not be spending any spare time doing anything other than sleeping, as its a rare commodity here, even before the first bouncer has been bowled by the profs. The seniors are the most amazing people i'v ever met. They not only inspire, not only are they the most helpful, they are almost the managers that one would expect out of this hyped an institute. i am awed by the tremendous change that one year at B-school brings to the personality. The way things are gone about here is just ... inspiring. I never quite believed the hype associated with these so called premier institutes. But i see now that it does change you, and for the better. Management is much more than a load of tosh, as i have come to experience these past few days.

I just hope this love affair lasts a long long time.

ID Mubarak !

Okay, my stint in bits comes to an end, and im back to blogger. Net speed is now back to what i would like it to be.
On my way home from bits, i was thinking about the alarming amount of time i spend in front of my computer, especially if i have nothing to do. well, yours truly decided that once home, the computer will get to see a lot less of me.
It went on well on Day 1. The laptop lay blissfully packed in its cover, and the resolution looked to live the first day.
Only to be spectacularly broken the second day. Not that i became desperate or anything. What just started with a seemingly harmless pestering by my sis to open the laptop and show her all that i'd downloaded from DC in college, snowballed into the breaking of my resolution that i had really wanted to keep.
again, it started because of the fact that my sis, what with her unique name n all, could get, at quite a late stage, an email id hername@gmail.com. Pure. elegant.
Thus began my attempt at obtaining elegant emails.
Obviously, myname@gmail.com was not an option, courtesy my oh-so-not-uncommon name.
Then began the variations, ranging from myname.initial to initialmyname, to all possible variations that i percieved to be an email worthy of posting in my ceve.
I gave up in the end, cursing the day when i chose horcruxer as my email id, when i could very well have gotten any damn ID that i had wanted, seeing as gmail had just been launched then and was through invites only.
Then comes microsoft to the rescue :D . apparently they have launched this live.com, a new thing that combines multiple windows utilities. What the heck, who cares. All i care is that i got my yogeshp@live.com ID :D :D
yoyo. Now i'l re-resolve to not sit in front of the comp for to long. Hopefully, nothing as interesting as this will come up in the next 2-3 weeks. ( ??!!! )
ID mubarak to me :D

Tata, Birla!

Its the final fortnight of my Bitsian life. Compres are under way, and familiar exam-time scenes are now not too infrequent. 

I'd be lying if i said that this sem has not been a bit boring. The fact that half our batch is actually not in campus adds to the 'emptiness' thats largely what this sem felt like. Nevertheless, it has been a wondrous journey, not just this sem, but the entire 4 years at Bits. 

Statutory Warning: This is gonna be a long post, so bear with me. You have been warned!

I remember when i first came to the campus, all excited about living a hostel life for the first time, meeting new people, expecting to learn from some really awesome profs in such a renowned institute, that too in goa, the land of beaches. It would be fair to say that the first few weeks were really exciting, to say the least. Those were the days when my attendance per unit time was at never to be seen levels. Well, that was prolly the case with everyone at that time. 

My antics in one of the first classes, prob stats, taken by a certain SKG, saw me getting nicknamed with a really hilarious nick, of which i wasnt to learn until much later :P. Well, the attendance curve soon became precipitous, falling to zero within a couple of weeks. I remember the system of surprise quizzes and tests that really screwed me upside down, primarily because i attended almost none. Hostel life changed my sleeping patterns, i became , like most others, a creature of teh night. Well, in November, i got my comp, and there started my gaming addiction. There was no LAN at that time, still i managed to  get hooked on to comp gaming. It was perhaps due to the fact that i never had any exposure to any kind of gaming, except perhaps the occasional bouts of mario at home. Anyways, GTA san andreas was the first game to catch my fancy. For the uninitiated, it is a really huge game. It consists of a set of three cities in which you can roam about, almost like in the real world. People moving about, cars, traffic, shops, and all that. Well, the point is that it takes a while to complete it, and take a while it did.

Enter 2nd sem, and my GTA addiction continued, even though my CGPA was screaming for improvement. Well, who cares about marks, right? This is college, for heavens sake!

With that optimistic attitude, i played GTA like there was no tomorrow. I made some good friends, all of whom seemed to find classes a unnecessary pain. The scrapping of the insane surprise quizzes and mini tests did nothing to change that point of view. This was also the sem which i managed to pass without buying a single text book. How i did it, i dunno, but somehow at that time i felt books were unnecessary expenditure. In retrospect, i should have utilized those times better. What else happened in that sem, largely remains a blur, primarily because i dont think i did anything at all except play GTA on my comp. Come sem-end, and partial LAN was up, and all the excitement was about when full lan would come. Needless to say, i performed no better this sem, though it hardly caused a flutter.

2-1, perhaps, gaming wise, the most efficient sem. A large number of people got introduced to that mother of all acad-screwers, Counter Strike. Coupled with the timely arrival of lan, this sem saw me engrossed in the game, so thoroughly that i wondered how i had survived the previous year. Clans were made, forging friendships that would last a lifetime. lan was my life at that time. Sometimes i feel i kind of overdid it, but then, it was an experience. Something that i perhaps will never experience again. acads were as neglected as ever. Many people say 2-1 was the best sem of their bits life. for me, it was a lot of fun, though not the best one. DC was introduced to the campus, and i was one of the early hosts of the Titan hub. It brought with it a plethora of possibilities.

2-2 brought along with it, the shadow of the CDCs. A couple of courses that were sort of alarm bells for the dreaded core subjects on their way to engulf us. They however, did little to drive home any sense into me. This was the sem when i would get sort of tired of CS, and get introduced to what i still feel is the greatest game ever made - World of warcraft. 

This was also the sem when i would truly become an integral part of my corridor, which was made up of the strangest specimens that bits could come up with. Im thankful for the wonderful corridor that i had been allotted. Those were some of the most fun days of my bits life. Well, WoW came and stayed, and i gradually got really hooked on to it. Waves 07 was one of the most memorable times of my life. Exam times were most fun, when the entire corridor came out, hurling insults at the mundane subjects, shouting at the top of our voices, discussing absolutely unrelated topics with tremendous enthusiasm, and in the process often disturbing the more serious 9Ps who were at it trying to conquer yet another subject. And so went on another sem.

Then came PS1. My preference of PS station caused large scale laughter mingled with pity. Bitsunami, chennai, one of my top 3 options, i was allotted. Braving widespread ridicule, i went to chennai in not-so-high spirits. PS1 however, turned out to be the best 2 months for me in bits. I might have cribbed and crabbed, but i thoroughly enjoyed every moment of it. Trips to remote villages, roaming about chennai with friends, exploring the city like never before, taking random buses to wherever, falling in love with the city in the process, it was a most unique experience. _/\_ bits for including this in the curriculum.

3-1 came, and my WoW playing consumed almost the entire sem. Music club occupied a major part of my non-wow time, and i at last started to look at a life beyond my 17 inch screen. At the end of the sem, the realization dawned upon me that cg does matter, and i forced myself to develop an interest in my core subjects. The CDCs were unrelenting, yet classes largely remained an ignored entity. It was this sem that i decided that i would try my hand at actually doing some justice to the 'engineer' tag. The Pilani trip, my attempt at learning french, the realization that electronics wasnt as bad as it was made out to be, all these made this sem unforgettable. 

So began 3-2, a sem that was made up of very less gaming, a non-zero attendance curve, a desperate attempt to change my sleeping patterns (in vain ) , the sudden addiction to trivia on dc mainchat, the desperate attempts at doing something in electronics, and a steep increase in the gpa curve. That sem was largely made up of electronics and music club, and then some more of both. Projects in the core domain, CY and DSP clubs, labs, etc formed a part of my daily routine. Frequent meetings of the music club, Waves committee meetings, and in general, the non-gaming part of college life is what i will remember. Then came the part which i feel is the most stupid thing in bits. Farewell, given a whole year early. It was an emotional time, knowing that half the batch perhaps i might never meet again.  The farewell, with all the suits and sarees was, again, one of those unforgettable moments in bits. But i feel, as do most others, that it was a year too soon. In the end, it was goodbye time for the batch. 

PS2,well, i got screwed. To keep it simple, it wasn't the most thrilling of experiences. Nevertheless,  it was a different one. 

With the anticipation of 4-2 being the most fun sem of all, what with the almost nil load and the unlimited free time, people were most looking forward to this sem. For me, it has not lived upto the expectations. To be fair though, expectations were a little too high, and PS changed a lot of people. Those who usually revelled in doing nothing actually wanted to do something useful. Hardcore gamers left gaming, lazy joles started working dilligently, and people were a lot more serious about the future. Its like growing up, this system of PS. suddenly you are catapulted into the big bad world, and you experience first hand how life is gonna be hereafter. For me, this is the sem when i'v spent the least time on campus. More often than not, i was either in Bangalore or Mumbai. Its been fun, to say the least. But the time in campus, it's sort of suffocating. Well, the only thing is that im now savoring the time i have left on campus. Frankly, im not too big a fan of the campus. Neither do i find goa to live up to even a fraction of the hype that it is usually given. I shall, however, miss the people. All the bitsians, who have been part of this wonderful journey, the friends and acquaintances and strangers, the seniors and juniors, my batchmates, profs, the  mess guys, monginis, nescafe, the jhopdi that i seldom visited, shop C guy, the miser aunty, and everyone else who made these 4 years, an unforgettable vacation :P

This sem is not over, yet. Who knows, it might yet throw up a few more surprises. This is prolly the last time i'll be posting from college, however. So ends, my time here. 

Tata, Birla!

Pro - pose

I just heard about this TV news reporter who proposed to his anchorwoman girlfriend on live television at the end of a news broadcast.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/entertainment/805210/journalist-proposes-to-anchor-on-air

The Indian news channels are infatuated with this story. Its understandable, to them, this must be the most romantic thing in the world. On the face of it, it looks to be a perfectly sincere and creative way to propose. But i can't help marveling at the brilliant idea of the reporter guy. Not because of the inherently innovative way he employed, but because of the near fail-proof nature of the plan.

Think of it from the anchorwoman's point of view: This was completely unexpected. True, to some, this might just be the perfect proposal. Provided the guy is the right match.
Now consider the situation where the woman wants to say no. the catch is that she can't say no without coming across as a heartless inhuman non- friend. I mean, who the hell says no to such an innovative and wonderful proposal, right ?
For the guy, its a win-win situation: She says yes, all's well that ends well; she says no, he becomes the martyr to creativity who was shot down by the evil anchorwoman who can't appreciate genuine love.
The thing becomes even more complex for the anchorwoman if she wants to actually consider her answer, like if she wants to think it over. What could she do, with the whole world watching ?
and her boss breathing down her neck ? (Oh cmon, if she says no, think of the boss' reaction: Ratings plummet negative publicity blah blah : in short, both her personal and professional lives are screwed up). The only option for her, say yes.
Moreover, the guy gets all the credit. 'oh, how brilliant that was! ' and 'He's such a romantic'
And the woman ? She's blissfully forgotten. She's the side show.
That's called strategy.

PS: In case you are reading this, Mr reporter, ( oh yeah, now thats a stretch ! ) im sure you meant well.
Thats the second straight post that might get me labelled as crazy :-/

But it (sp)Rained !

I had wanted to post something a few days ago, but was thwarted by the stubborn refusal of the bits net to get me signed into blogger.
Im just back from yet another trip to Bangalore, although unlike the others, this one was strictly a chumma trip.
Anyways, today i decided to go play tennis for a change. Back home, i play at least 4-5 hours on weekends. In college, due to the laughable courts combined with my racquet being nicely hoarded back home, my playing frequency is zero. However, today it seemed to be a favorable alternative to being bored to death, and so there i went, off to the newly being (re)built tennis court. Someone had mentioned the courts were blue like in US open, though made of tar. Well, that was enough to spark off my curiosity, and i went-a-searching for a tennis racquet. I found one with a friend, and promptly headed off to the courts.
There i found the nets hanging dead barely a feew inches over the ground, as if some hurricane had come there and demolished everything in its path. The courts, lived up (down) to my expectations of resembling more a road than a tennis court.
Anyways, all the effort gone into gearing up and walking right upto the tennis court was not going to go to waste, oh no. A few juniors playing, i joined them. Ah, long time. New court, new racquet, new opponents, and the ever so fickle wind changing direction every other minute, being sometimes a boon blowing cool sea-breeze into the face and sometimes a curse swinging the ball wildly according to its own whims and fancies. Anyways, it was fun simply because it was something other than staring at a 17 inch screen.
During the last rally, i sprained my leg. Perhaps it was due to the lack of tennis in the past 3 months. It should be just another sprain, i know. But i can't help glorifying it, because its been aeons since i had any physical injury. It feels good to be human sometimes. It might be a minor sprain, and then again, it might not. I can't really remember when i last sprained my ankle, or for that matter any part of the body. Its not that i don't play much. At home, tennis forms my major weekend activity. In college, of course, i take recourse to other activities, most of which involve sitting idiotically in front of the machine which im using to post this right now. Its just that I haven't got hurt much. All around me i see people on plasters and temporary crutches and Volinis. I kinda feel this sprain was long time due.

Obviously, i dint visit the doc or anythin, despite the assurance of some basketball n football players that i might regret it later that night. Lets see, if it swells to conspicuous levels, then i might go tomorow. Till then, i will savor this once in a blue moon occurence. Even if it means a painful night. The only downside is that i might not be able to play for a few days. Ah well, one can't have everything in life now, can they?
I aint no masochist, just another crazy human, with just another crazy post.