Vacations..

...are pitstops in the long race that life is - and absolutely essential to ensure you're geared to handle what's coming up around the next corner!

An undeclared sabbatical

A self imposed exile from the world of writing.

Something rekindles the flame today.

The world around me fast a-changing,

Am I geared to handle another day?

Wish each day could be longer,

24 hours seems to be getting shorter

Work, travel, and reading

Movies, sports and chatting

To be or not to be is not the question.

The question is where I want to be.

TPing :)

TP... now thats sometime that comes very naturally to me. I was shocked to find myself telling mom almost everyday, these last 2 weeks, when she asked me in the evening what I'd done all day ' Oh mom, just this and that... some surfing, some chatting, etc"
Well, anyways not too many complaints since it did help me catch up with friends I'd been out of touch with the better part of 2 years....
And of course, have been meeting friends as well.. Along with Anand caught up with Frooti today @ Mocha ( finally visited it !)... and gorged on some Cheesecake and the always delicious Chocolate Avalanche (man, who can resist that? :p )
And a dinner last night with folks @ Chandni Chowk ( which will forever be etched in our minds thanks to events that transpired almost 3-4 years when we took some US-based relatives there :| ).... the ambiance the same as before...
And yet to plan things for today :)

Time flies.... literally.

I almost forgot I had a blog. Or that I ever used to write on it.
The entire 2nd year @ IIMA has flown by without me having written a word... and now as I sit at home, ruminating on how the MBA has whizzed by, I feel that though there was a lot more I could have done in the last 2 years, I've atleast done enough to keep me going... :)

2nd year wasnt as chill as it was made out to be, and was more of a whirlwind since too many different things happened.... the internship in Spore, the exchange visit to Canada, final placements, developments on personal front... a real pot pourri. And amidst all that I lost both the desire and the inclination (and to a certain extent the time!) to write !! A blessing for humanity, no doubt :p

And now have to find avenues for spending the next 7 weeks before I begin an new career... and as I always want to do- both "usefully" and so that it is "fun". Rarely have I see the two meet though ;)

Oh, and finally got around to uploading pics onto picasa... :D

http://picasaweb.google.com/talktoara

Arbit stuff.....

The runout of Murali by McCullum... Its just not cricket !!!
A half-decent comment by Sanjay Manjrekar when Chanderpaul got a runner after being injured in today's ODI against WI... That as sports are getting increasingly physical, doesnt make sense to have a 'runner' concept.... Quite an anachronism ( As he said, it wasnt his idea... But atleast I heard it thanks to him, and despite being a die-hard cricket fan and one opposed to 20-20, I think this is a good point)

Indian 1st innings... Some really awesome strokeplay from Sachin. And rearguaard action from Ganguly. 3 cheers for DADA ! Takes some balls to be able to make a comeback, and then to deliver !

Enf of cricket...
Yesterday's visit to chawls' in Old Ahemdabad as part of our ISPE project... the poorer side to the city... Where water supply is 1/2 hr a day and sanitation not present... The side we choose not to look at. Can we do anything for them? With them? In a sustainable manner?
As one of the richer houseowners in the chawl said, the problem is not just from one side... The govt doesnt do much, but the ppl dont exactly help either. They dont protest when one of their own neighbours undercuts the others by taking the communal water connection for himself... And encroach into the road and build houses on top of manholes... How will the municipality clean the sewers then?
It remains to be seen if we can brainstorm with them and find some solution....

A poster making session.... Again part of the ISPE course. All students as groups of 4-5 to submit posters of whatever they felt.. And one of the profs who was asked to judge refuses on the basis
"Why are almost all the posters with negative themes? These are supposed to be the leaders of India in the future... Whats gonna happen if they are all cynical about India?"
Food for thought indeed....

A visit by CPM's Sitaram Yechury (Yet again ISPE -> This course is a non-credit course i.e. no grades.... but I believe is as vital as any other.... )
http://www.outlookindia.com/pti_news.asp?id=436005
And at the end of his speech, Q&A session... Quite a few hard questions... But the tactful politician that he is, he handled very well ... And the prof who's taking ISPE for us says afterwards "IF u all had bothered to do enough homework, and been abl to pin him down with statements he and CPM have made in the parliament... and policy decisions they have taken, u could have been able to have a more lively discussion." True indeed....

Guess that as much thought as I am capable of for one day.... Now, back to muggin and the works. :D
And I wonder when I will write again !!

Cleaning the room? Excellent way for structured procrastination...

This is just what I wrote as a response to a thread
(http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2004/10/26/structured_procrastination.html)
I saw when I googled 'structured procrastination'.

****************************************************
This post is not going to add much value at all, AND its most definitely a LONG dead thread...
However, I'd like to say that I too agree with the points discussed about cleaning one's room. Especially what Logan said.
Some semblance of order, when the rest of the world seems to be spiralling out of control... A way to distance urself from the *real* world.
The room is ur world. And u have put it right.
Period.
The world, now thats a different task. If nothing, u can atleast take it on with a iota more of confidence... at having accomplished something atleast!
Flip side: 1/2 - 1 hr of valuable(?) time gone...

Me and the real world.... My LIFE.

While writing a scrap to padi, the thought arose... when I told he could indeed do a MBA after his MS.... sometime in his life, should he feel the need to do so.
And he said, like many others do, either flippantly or seriously
"More studies? No way, man... "
And I thought... How has the last 6 months of my life been? With respect to the 2 years I spent @ MT atleast... What has been different? The positives? The losses?
Hmmm......

Being back in college has allowed me one thing: To focus ( on the rare occassions that I actually do!) on a single task. 1st term the mantra was very simple - MUG ur way thru... It didnt last too long though, we ppl soon figured out that it wasnt exactly required to mug all the time to get thru with faitly decent grades :)
Second term was a bit painful that way - you had to (supposedly) divide ur time between preparing for summers, and academics. And even academics involved a lot of group work... and thats one thing I found very painful. Being a relatively early sleeper, and one who prefers to work in the morning, I would stumble thru the (invariably) 11Pm - 1 AM grp meetings half asleep...
( The grp eventually found a way out to accomodate my errant sleep pattern - they would leave behind my part of the work for me to do the next morning ( i.e. I would have to mostly collate data and frame the report/ppt) or on rare occassions we would meet at an earlier hour. )

Work.... Now thats a good one. Did I really do any work @ MT? I dont think so.... Not as much as I could have, at any rate. Sure there were phases when I've slogged my ass off... But going by other batchmates' experiences, hardly much. Any regrets? Not at this point of time, I guess. I dont think I learnt too much from those 2 years at all.... Not as much as others possibly miht have ( I dont c why else B-schools would consider Work-ex such an important aspect!) I had a jolly good time @ MT - working when absolutely neccessary.
However, I do remember that I was hardly a great person to be with at home... In a foul mood so often ( why? why ??? CAT?) that I almost ended up alienating those closest to me - my family. Thats no longer in my life... It took sometime to get over that phase of my life. Thanks to chithi, who has this uncanny knack somehow of putting things in perspective in a very simple manner. 'Have a frown on ur face all the time and u'll end up looking like that forever'. Not a great statement? Dunno, It sure worked with me.
Took me a while to realise that I had to stop getting worked up so easily... And to be able to smile more... Some very forgettable incidents in that period ( which since I am saying are very 'forgettable' are obviously those that are etched in my mind.)
And I still dont know WHY was it that i was in such a state....

( This is turning out to be a real ramble, thats what u get when u decide to sit down and think for a while about ur life.... Introspection AND retrospection. I just told a friend a couple of days back, who planned to do the same, that it would be a meaningless exercise. Ara's Hypocrisy at its best... :| )

Call it misplaced ( I dont think it is, at this point of time atleast ) ego or whatever.... I finally feel like I belong. To what, u may ask? Well, life's been a struggle for quite a while.... Not a painful one - my engg and MT work-ex could hardly be called that. But the desire to find out where I stood... How good I was....
And IS CAT the answer to that question? Hardly. I know that for sure. BUT, it still gave me the opportunity to interact with people of high intellectual capability. Basically, to be amongst some of the best minds in India.

And one MAJOR loss , in a way... I dont EARN anymore. Not really an issue though. Had salted away a fair bit during those 2 yeards @ MT... And though I'm no ascetic, my wants are few. I mean how many Rs. worth biscuits CAN one eat over 2 years :D
Summers might replenish some moolah thats been disappearing from my bank a/c though...
I guess the real issue is not money... It never has been at home. Its about not earning.

Have I covered all that I wanted to think about when I set about writing this post...? I dunno. In any case I'm done writing about this topic ( Btw, I'm typing this after typing the P.S. and P.P.S. sections below :|) So much for coherent thought.

P.S. Up ahead are going to be some REALLY arbit posts. Dad n Mom, please do excuse me.... I'll gete right back to my books alright... Just that I havent written for ages... And when I start writing ( or for that matter, whenever I start doing ANYTHING), I dont do it in moderation :((
Do I need to organize my life? YES. But later.... Tomorrow will come, or so I believe today.

One of the most powerful phrases I have heard ( thanks to a fwd when I was @ MT) :
structured procrastination

I advice ANY one who is reading this to google and look up the same... Or hell, here's the URL.
http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/
U might
a) realize u have been one all the while, and just didnt know the formal name for it! (That's my story) :P
b) Avoid becoming one! ( 'Forewarned is forearmed' , aint it so? )

P.P.S. I've a fair amount of work to do this weekend ( its not yet reached the IF I DONT START NOW, I'M DEAD stage... which is why I'm still typing :p ) and hence I'm gonna write (hopefully, if I enthu to write doesnt suddenly disappear in another bout of str. proc. ) about some other stuff thats been happening / happened over the last....well, lets just say of late.
Ciao !

Narcissistic!

ME !

Still Alive..... Still Kicking....

Writing... I miss thee !
And hence this abrupt return to the blog; almost on a whim.
Life has been fast paced, and with placement season in less than 2 weeks from now will continue to get faster by the day !
After what turned out to be a really good 1st term, the second term has been academically a lot more enjoyable with most classes proving hugely enjoyable... Fin and MANAC have turned out to be very insightful classes, and invariably feel u leaving HAPPY ( I know strange adjective - but thats what a *good* learning experience leaves me feeling )...
But as always, I've managed to let those backlogs accumulate. Add to it all the form filling we've been undertaking, and the backlogs have reached really scary proportions....

And now off for breakfast, and then the gargantuan Marketing assignment. God, have mercy on me.

FIFO = Fast In Fast Out.

.... Couldn't think of any other way to say this is just me 'peeping in' to blog... Unlikely that I will continue my full-time blogging for a while , but a chat with Van made me want to write about a particular topic.
It started with a rather innocuous scrap by Van, "do you like the stuff you're learning now?"
I was initially like.... Hey, thats so obvious. I must be....
And then..... I thought. Must I ?.
Then decided to think aloud and that's going to form the basis of this post.
8 papers in 1 semester. Taking them one after another....
i) Management Accounting: Definitely something I havent been doing well in primarily due to lack of effort and practice. Do I like it? Well, its something totally different from what I have done before and hence I guess I do like it coz of the learning i'm getting from it.
ii)Economic Analysis: Basically Microeconomics, it is one of the few subjects which is not explicitly case-based. However, with significant emphasis being placed on applying the theories learnt, this too is a subject which is very insightful. A very interesting subject....
iii)Operations Management: A great prof who has made me like the subject to a great extent. Its very hands-down and one gets a real view of the industry.
iv)Management Computing: I'd assumed it would be primarily for non-programmers, but turns out otherwise. Not most of us are aware of the capabilities of Microsoft Excel, and thats the first thing we learn given the fact that we are going to be dealing with a lot of data in our career. Some basic VB and Access fundas also. The seniors supposedly found it quite useful during their internship. Nothing much to like in it as such though.
v)Human Resources Management: What I thought would be a totally boring subject has turned out to one with some very interesting class discussions, despite the fact that we need to read so much theory and the cases are damn long ! However, yet again a prof who makes the discussion very lively has ensured I've liked most of the classes so far.
vi)Quantitative Methods: Math. Or so I thought. Not a subject I've fared at badly before getting here. However realised that there is more to it. This sem its mostly about modelling problem situations using linear programming (doesnt make sense? It just means modelling problem mathematically). Logical reasoning and modelling are critical. Definitely something I need to learn.
vii)Written Analysis and Communication: Report writing. Analysing a situation, and reaching a decision in a structured manner. A rather useful skill, I daresay.
viii)Individual Dynamics: After the first class, I swore that this was the worst prof and the worst subject I've ever done. 6 classes down, I have revised my opinion significantly, and am more appreciative of the soft-skills involved. However, on occassions things do seem very arbit to me !

Thats it folks. Term 1 @ IIMA for you....

On a personal note, things going ok. Mid-term scores coming out... And pretty much along expected lines. Scoring near the class average. However, quite a lot of backlog to be cleared, and
with end-term exams just 3 weeks away.... Sigh!

A few interesting events been happening....

Study group formation for the next term. Some very acrimonious stuff had been happening in other sections in the process, and the last thing we wanted was all the good work done during T-Nite to be washed away by one days' events. After a few scares, things seem to have worked out fine, and I guess not too much damage done to the class bonding (visible damage atleast).

Last night was a rare occasion for this time of the year.... We (Section A) treated our tuchchas ( seniors) to a pizza treat in recognition of all the support and help they'd provided during T-Nite.

Joined CCC, IIMA's Comp. Infra maintenance & student-admin liason team. With the amount of troubleshooting I did while @ MT , should be able to contribute a but atleast....

Last but definitely not the least, this past week my entire batch has been quite bamboozled! Everyday, we check @ about 1.15-1.30 for the quiz notification, and dont find one.... Eventually, No quiz the whole week !!!
This aint the calm before a storm, this is the calm before a Class 5 Hurricane !

Guess I've pretty much said all I wanted to for quite a while, and hence signing off ! Breakfast beckons !