Oktoberfest, SIP and Goddamn Sleep

This might be my post after coming back here, and i realised that the holidays had made my life hell as i now cant handle a day with less than 7 hrs sleep. Thats Insane!! . Not for the present class schedule , but for all the events i get involved and the occasional random things i do , like checking videos on Youtube, ads on Adverbox and sometimes reading class books.

The second term actually seems very interesting , it has a lot of time for liesure in a day. The point is , i tend to screw up things when i am given a option to choose from choices , I know thats not what a gonna-be manager shud be saying. But thats how it is. I have started to sleep in class, not actually sleeping but i try my level best to not to fall asleep. But this so called 'try' from the eyes of a 3rd person looks like as if i am fighting between life and death. I wriggle my face every 5 minutes as if to cast away the looming shadow of sleep from my face, and then i rub my eyes for atleast a minute non-stop, until they go red and then the trade mark yawn - the other day , i felt so embarrassed that i was yawning big time infront of a prof who is supposed to be the coolest of the lot. I was sitting right under his nose and executing the afore mentioned gestures. I couldnt stand the self embarrasment and so bunked the next class. I guess that was my first voluntary bunk.

And i was doing almost the same thing, this time though , i was in the last bench, this was what one of my friends asked me " you seemed as if there was something extremely wrong with you, your eyes were red, you face was long and you were absolutely uncomfortable" . I was doing al l this when the marketing prof was shouting at the top of his voice.

Ya, the Oktoberfest, the last minute preparation and execution of the Dracula Event went on well. I somehow feel that there are so many areas of our brain that are asleep for a long time, when they came alive its a rejuvenating experience. I now regret my inability to keep up with quizzing after 10th class. God!! there was loads of knowledge that i went blind to. Anyway, i am enjoying being a learner again by being in the audience in every quiz . I guess , i shud start getting qualified sooner or later.Every other thing that happened in oktoberfest was a proper food for thought. Now , i feel that i shud have been more involved in than what i was. And i realised that there are a lot of good writers on campus. Need to learn from them too and catch up with them.

Now the big thing, The SIP , I think this where the whole batch is tested for everything it claims to be, not on the standards of their intellect , but on their ability to withstand the vicissitudes of fate . My supposedly Mar-Focus has also been diluted for now by the senior's suggestions as they say " When you are being picked arbitly, you can't pick them systematically" . So it seems that i will have to take every chance. I dont know how heavy is my CV . But the talk over a CV had already gone beyond normal or even abnormal.

Above all this, i am writing something which i think might turn out to be a very good original if executed well. But there will be a lot of push and pull in the next one month atleast till the SIP to keep thiongs in order. Whatever may happen, i am still worried about one very precious thing - SLEEP .

Its 3 am and i have a class at 8 30, in case i come back to this blog after a few years - Its Fr.Jesu's class tomorrow.

P.S1: I feel like studying Biomechanics to know whats happening to my teeth.
P.S2: P&G and TAS forms to fill.
P.S3: Prasanna says he sleeps for 2-3 hrs a day. WTF. Is he human.
P.S4:JAM is fun , though i did it only once and got swept out easily. As i said already there are many smart things to do.
P.S5: ID crisis is a clear outcome of one's own perception, but no one can help it.

Logged in

My status message on Gtalk was misunderstood by enough number of people to lead to this post. It might be difficult to get into XLRI, but its much more difficult to get to XLRI. Travelling is one thing that i wished to do , but i do not do things unless i am forced to. So i had to come back to XLRI from Hyderabad thats far far away. Well there was one single thing common between both the places , it was raining at the same intensity at both the places. But Calcutta walks with all the top prizes.

We payed 1200 rs from Calcutta airport to Howrah railway station. We were actually supposed to pay 1000 , but after seeing the streets through which we passed through, i felt it was worth paying him an extra 200. I will not write much , but i will leave the post with these pics . The one where one can see my feet is where the water flowed into the taxi.

News as on 28/07/07

Headlines
-Our class lost 2.5% marks in a subject.
-I got 30/30 in QT test and subsequently , i failed in BFA (supposedly).
-I became a member of the Student Affairs Council.(SAC)
-Old Monks have come down to deliver their Signature.

Details and opinions

-our class lost 2.5 % of the total marks for the term in a subject as we couldn't do a sum given by a prof. This as it seems is a very tragic moment for the whole class, or rather for majority of the class. Looking at the very concept of marks and exams, an individual of 23-24 years would have taken 70-75 tests per year on an average(starting from an age of 12 years). And we havent still grown immune to them. When i say immune , i do not recommend negligence , but i guess we are mature enough to balance our life on various things along with marks. But marks seems to the be all and end all even at an age where people are old enough to reproduce.
(I also belong to the marks fearing club)

-Its all in your mind. I know that i am saying this in hindsight.The first two tests i took on campus had been a learning in a way that you do what you think you can do. Its not as easy to implement as it is said. QT and BFA tests are just a measure of my mindset before the exam rather the content and understanding of the subject.And i see the same trend throughout our class.

-The first time ever in my life that i stood for an election and it showed me all facets of it. The most important facet - Moral flexibility (thanks to 'Thankyou for Smoking' for the word ). Fortunately or Unfortunately, i didnt have it a bit . The best thing to cherish is to come through the elections with clean hands, which i did.And ofcourse, i cant forget the words of Uncle Ben.

-Culture shock is the most talked about thing in a B-School. I had enough shielding to save myself from the shock, but i realised that its inevitable. Its as inevitable as change.So much for i can say now. But just to add to the headline of Old Monks, the dry days will henceforth dry off.

P.S1: Adventure trip was an experience, especially for the way i will hate the words strategy and motivation.
PS2:Quote- "B-schools are nothing but placement agencies" Unquote
PS3:Counterquote "What else are B-schools supposed to be?" (quotes and counterquotes are not my words)
PS4:A bike called Swever runs on urine.
PS5: I attended a Quiz and a Fin event given an exam the next day. I rarely did it in my life.
PS6:from the documentary Drowned Out - Arundhati Roy says in the international conference on water utilistaion "I came here to know what power smells like, i found out that it stinks". I was surprised to see her in tears on the issue of narmada bachao . I thought people like her had iron hearts to take on this world.
PS7: Word of the week :BAKCHODHI

muddy waters

So much for the rain
that tried another stain
as it came in a deluge,
to the eye it wasnt huge

for it rose from underneath
and traveled to the zenith
the air turned foul and hazy
as the waters that splashed -
were all muddy

P.S: the poem as usual seems very artificial, but i had to write it because of 2 reasons. 1)One of my friend appreciated the usage of the phrase muddy waters in my mail to her. 2)The waters i was talking about turned out be more muddy.

Tower of Babel and other PS..

I am back from a village trip. We were a group of 7 people who visited around 6 villages around jamshedpur in 2 days. One of the key points of the trip makes me refer to the Tower of Babel. The explanation from wikipedia is as follows..

The story is found in Genesis 11:1-9 as follows:

1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. 2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. 3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. 4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. 5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children builded. 6 And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. 7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. 8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. 9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel (confusion); because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

Now back to our tour, in our group, we had a bengali, bihari, mumbaikar, two tams and two gults. I need not specify what language each of them spoke . Our guide prefers to communicate in bengali and so does the villagers (in fact, we didnt have a choice with them). So our bengali friend was made the official interviewer, interpreter and spokesperson of our group. If you have assumed that he communicated everything to the group in the great national language, you are mistaken. Not everyone of us could follow hindi.

Some would comment "This is India". I would say "This is the world we live in". Its just not in India that we have such problem. Language is an identity for many people which is being strongly questioned by globalisation. One of the villager on the borders of jharkand and west bengal says "We belong to jharkand but everyone here can speak only bengali, so its difficult to earn livelihood in both the places". On the flip side , communication and understanding had been so chaotic on the first day within our group that we almost had a translation of everything spoken in 2 languages atleast. By second day, everyone started to appreciate the similarities among languages and tried to understand things based on the context. This is what is frequently referred as The Tower of Babel.
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The Restart
-All systems alert, space shuttle ready for take off, countdown begins 10,9,8,7,6,5-
-Hey, who is this guy counting numbers, we had been launched into the orbit long ago.
-never bother, he would have woke up just now.

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PS1:Topic for Group discussion "Iron fillings need a magnet to stay together"
PS2:When you want to do a survey, interacting is way better compared to interviewing or interrogating, because both the parties are mutually new.
PS3:One of the story ends , i should apply for copyrights :p
PS4:Trivia thats not trivial : In one village there is a couple with 19 children.

Probability....

Probability is one subject that has a very interesting relationship with our day to day activities. The paradox of probability is , it has a validity period. If you say that an event is going to happen at a probability of 'x' , when the time actually comes to the occurence of that event, Probability takes only two values '1' or '0'. In fact , its not probability at that time, its a fact that a certain event has occured or not.

But do we stop calculating probability for a similar event that might occur tomorrow? No, we dont .

Probaility in a way is hope or the degree of hope, in other way its the degree of hopelessness also.We hope something good would happen tomorrow or we fear that something might go wrong day after. I dont want to get into conditional probability and bayes theorom , as i already realise that not many are reading my blog :P.

But , just that i mentioned it. Many events in life take this form, what is the probability that you might reach the college at right time if you take a bus instead of an auto and probability of availability of bus is so and so (this i guess is conditional probability)
Reading it the other way, if you reached the college at right time, what is the probability that you had taken a bus .(this follows bayes theorom). Half the time, people are lost in retrospection of what actually is the cause behind an effect.

Above all, probability is about simplicity and demand for visualisation. I guess many of my batchmates would be having hallucinations of black and white balls revolving around their heads and suddenly disappearing into n urns.

And probability brings down the whole mathematics to just that little distance between 1 and 0. Mind you, there is an abyss between those numbers.

PS1:I have an exam tomorrow, no prizes for guesses - its on probability.
PS2:Had some real good discussions on the value of mathematics.
PS3: I am getting goosebumps seeing some people, they chose to be what they are, beyond what everyone else says.
PS4:Mind you, you have a Political Theatre column in Economic Times.
PS5: Whats the competition for a dishwasher? It could be a TV or your servant maid. First steps in marketing.
PS6:Quote - May the right balls go into right urns and dont forget to count the last ball - Unquote.

This is It...

Its happening, i am sleeping , i know its contradictory to say that i am sleeping and at the same time writing this piece. But that is the point. I am sleep writing(in a way learning too, i can interpret some part of the lecture). Well in one way, i am better off. Some of my classmates are into deep sleep and some had taken off into their dream world . They have no idea whats going on around them.

There are a lot of ways to sleep. You take positions like wax statues in Madam Tussad's . You look like a shakespeare holding his pen and scripting the sequel of Julius Ceasar. But the truth is , you are sleeping.

Now, i am always midway on anything. My eye lids are in such romantic mood that they just glide down the eyes and kiss there lower counterparts. So you can see me blink every 2 seconds , rubbing my eyes and yawning every 30 seconds.

Now i start to curse the cause. This might be head spinning.
Why am i sleeping-->I am feeling sleepy, why?--> I am feeling weak-->my stomach is absolutely empty -->skipped breakfast(been the case for 2 weeks)-->was in bathroom till 8:27-->woke up at 8:16(minimal time for necessary tasks, class starts at 8:30, I did brush my teeth, though Nupur doesnt believe it)-->Slept at 3:50 or 4:00-->too much of junk talk with roomie-->night canteen at 2:15--> arbit discussion on placements on campus at 1:00-->won online quiz by SPJain (Thanks to krishna and 'the world at our finger tips')-->Gyaan session on QT--> and so on........

I turn back and see the clock on the wall, if my interpretation is right , i am just 15 minutes through the class and that means, 75 more minutes to go..

PS1: there are many posts i am postponing, not that i am busy, but only too lazy.
PS2: only thing i have completed reading is Brand reporter.
PS3: I have QT test on thursday, i dont know where from did i get this gut feeling. I feel i can do well, or atleast i am confident i wont screw it up.(due to this, i am not studying)
PS4:Peer pressure counts, everyone is on their toes for the exam, so i also refer to the book once in a while.
PS5: two back to back contradictory statements- thats what MBA is, atleast for many i know.
PS6: This style of writing PS is inspired from srinivasans blog. You can call it copying his idea as well.
PS7: There is story everywhere, and i see them.(like the boy in sixth sense).
PS8: coming sooner or later 'Subjected to subjectivity'