The Tarmac Kisser.

Don't be afraid

2011-12-16T01:47:00.002+05:30

A new beginning is always symbolic. Sometimes its the untangling of the mess we make of our lives. At other times its about calming the whirlwind of troubles we get into. Sacrifices are always made in such situations. Some by ourselves, but most by others who aren't a part of the newness.

The heart bleeds for the olden days. Like the smell of an old tome, the memories of the past will always be trapped in the book of our lives. If you miss them, you can turn back to the old pages for a whiff, and a read. But the new pages need to be written, for the book must go on.

Predicaments will hover around you like mendicants all your life. My advice, don't support beggary. Give them a coin of your precious peace and they will ask for two more tomorrow.

Always count the blessings, not the curses. For curses are far too many to number, but the few blessings we get in our lifetime will always be enough to get over all your curses. And make sure, when doing something or refraining from something, that it will not be regretted the day after.

Look for success, be excited at the prospect of great achievements. They give meaning to your efforts. And remember, a new beginning will not always be new. A life is stringed together by a number of new beginnings. Don't be afraid.

Later.

P.S: Happy New Year. And Take care

Sometimes I forget how to.

2011-09-08T20:19:00.000+05:30

It's been so long that I forget how to write. Write for myself that is. I know how to put words to paper, a lot of them actually. Some making sense, others simply nonsense. Sometime you need to write for yourself. Not for your readers, not for marks, not for money. Write to pass time, write to lighten your load, write to enlighten your road. You can choose to write nonsense too, but that's not point. You can do other things too, like read a comic and imagine what would it be to create flames from your palms, watch mindless sitcoms in search of meaning of life, listen to music to drown yourself in the superficial silence. The daily deafening drone. It bores the life out of your nostrils. You don't even feel like breathing.

That's when you realize you have a blog you can escape to. I mean twitter, facebook, google+ are all ok. But sometimes, you need make time for the unsocial you. I don't know if that's even a thing with people. Being unsocial. Maybe it's a phase. It's that time of your life, or your day (to make it less melodramatic) when you -

don't feel like chatting with any person online on FB or Gtalk
can't think of those make believe clever retorts on twitter
don't have assignments which you have to try and escape (get it done by someone else)
can't think of smarties to get a sizable number (enough to guarantee a good night sleep) of likes/comments on FB
have downloaded and read all the free comics you could find comixology
have listened/skipped through all the tracks on your iPod (even on shuffle!) twice.

Think you have a pretty good idea of what I want to express. (Any more hints and you'd start predicting my daily routine with heightened accuracy). I like a little uncertainty. Just a little, not to much. Like right now, I am uncertain about why my left eye is twitching incurably since last night. Maybe I am getting some superpowers from using this new blogger interface. Maybe not. I mean what are the chances of that. I don't expect any of you to know the answer to that. The only thing that could probably answer that is the onboard computer on "The heart of gold". Yes, I finished reading the first Hitchhiker's book. Twice.

Sometimes, I wonder if they should have a measure for levels of boredom. Or panic for that matter. (Happiness and sadness would be too easy to measure). Another exciting metric would be the level of horniness. Would be a life saver. Enough. Am bored already.

Later.

P.S: Am so bored, am going to look for synonyms for bored. So that I don't get bored of saying I am bored too many times. I mean, have you ever wondered what would happen if people get bored of getting bored. If you ask me, I think that is the day, the world will come to an end. O_o

And thus came the camel downhill

2011-07-18T01:58:00.001+05:30

Or in other words "ab aya uunt pahad ke neeche"

We, the previleged students of b-schools who believe that the world is for us to buy need to have an undestanding that before buying the world we must know how is it to live in this world. Reading the following article I flashbacked to the days during my first hostel stay when I was left with 10 bucks a day ration in the last week of every month.

TOI: IIM-B students live the life of have-nots

Later

How not to make a video

2011-07-02T21:02:00.001+05:30

Hello friends.

Welcome to my first and probably the only tutorial on how not to make videos.

Make sure you have the some knowledge of the video making software and what you can do with it, or at least know someone who will do it for you. Do not attempt to learn the software in one night and make a video the next morning.

Second, always make sure you have your equipment, cameraman, and yourself ready and at one place before attempting to shoot any footage for the video.

Third, and most important part. Always have a backup to fall upon.

Later.

P.S: If I had followed the above I (and the rest of the IT team) would probably not have to able to make this little composition in less than 30 hours flat.

The IT Team. 2011. SIBM Pune, India.

Awesome artwork

2011-06-29T01:04:00.001+05:30

I have come across quite a lot of goodstuff since I started exploring the android world. Just wanted to share a couple of screenshots pf some great artwork I discovered on the comixology app.

As for me am busy doing cheap content writing and learning adobe Aftereffects, thanks to youtube. Need to make an awesome video for the team.

Later

Rains at Lavale

2011-06-29T00:58:00.001+05:30

The best time to visit Lavale is now. On and off rains, misty weather, pleasant breeze and a whole new batch of freshers to explore. XD

Am still waiting for the second stipend and its getting a little late since I need to pay off some heavy debts. What else, classes have started and so has bunking. New faculties same old classmates, although everyone seems to have become wiser after summers.

Just hope to enjoy life for all it's worth. 10 months left on the hill and counting.

Later.

Projected Progress

2011-05-29T20:30:00.001+05:30

Am already at the last leg of my summer internship at Chennai. It has been pretty uneventful so far. Well that is not counting the experience gained over the past two months, the things I have learnt, the grub I have had to survive upon Yada yada...

There are a few things I can now boast about that definitely take my life skills up two notches. Haggling with Chennai autorickshaw annas (AA), spending a summer in horribly hot humid Chennai are a few to start off with. The key to survival for an outsider in Chennai is pretty simple according to me. You must invariably possess the following two things. An aggreeable roommate and airconditioning. The logic is quite simple. Your auto spends halve and you are less resistive towards exploring new places. Respectively. Which could sometimes also be outside Chennai (yes we went to Pondicherry on a bike). Apart from that you have someone to boast or complain to whenever you won or lost one of those small day to day battles at the office or with the AAs.

In any case it wasnt as bad as I thought it would be. But yes it was bad enough. Among other things to worry about I have second results which have come out and I have no clue as to what I have scored. Juniors coming in. Credit card debts. Sorry dad. Getting back late on campus. PPO woes. And so on. But thats the best part, as long as I have something to complain about I will have something to blog about too.

Later.

Toss the coin. And decide yourself

2011-05-07T19:55:00.001+05:30

I will tell you what. A simple funda that I use when in dilemma.

Its called introspection by the coin. Or simply "toss the coin". Here is how it works.

1) get a regular 1 rupee coin. Check if it has exactly 1 head and 1 tail.
2) now toss it. Heads for option 1 and tails for option 2
3) if you get heads ask youself what are the pros of "options 2" and cons of option 1. And vice versa
4) if you cant satisfy yourself at first go. Then go for best of 3.
5) when three tosses are done. Repeat step 3. If not satisfied with your own reasoning move to best of 5. And so on.
6) continue until you are satisfied with yourself.

For some it may seem kiddish. However I have discovered that it is a very powerful introspection tool. Sometimes your subconscious already knows the answer to your dilemmas. All you have to is probe yourself.

Although you toss the coin it doesnt decide your fate. You yourself do. At the end of the day, its always better to follow ones own reasoning than to blame someone else for making or influencing your choices.

P.S. Try at your own risk but thank me if you find this little trick useful. Try it on smaller day to day dilemmas first. And then scale up to bigger things.

Later

Hello world.c(hennai)

2011-04-30T15:41:00.001+05:30

Hello everyone.

Even as I write the above line if wonder if there is even anyone left who reads the authorforsaken blog of mine.

Whatever be the case, even as I browsed through the android app market I could not help download the blogger app. Something about just doesn't let me quit. I don't know what it is, ah well never mind.

Did I tell you, I got a new phone? No. Did I tell you I am enduring Chennai heat for my summer project? No. Did I tell you I have become fat, making all my nightmares come true. No. Seems like there is a lot of catching up to be done. No problem, now with my handy dandy mobile phone blogging app my blog and I will never be separated again. Well, at least not until I find a better app.

Speaking of Chennai where I am currently working, and will continue to for another 40 days I can say a few things I have observed so far. One, you should learn two three key worlds so as to haggle with the auto guys properly. Two, always check your food and drink for vermin, insects and the linke before eating. No, not street food I mean proper eating joints where you normally don't expect to find any. Three, I am not sure what else you can get but one thing you will get for sure at midnight in Chennai is good idli and dosa.

Having said all that I might also add I spend most of my waking hours exploring the android world these days. And hopefully for the next few months as well. When I am not doing that I do some activities for attempting to successfully complete my internship with HCCB.

Think that's a long enough post for a mobile phone app. Now where is that publish button.

Later.

404 NOT FOUND 2011

2011-02-11T00:42:00.001+05:30

SIBM Pune Online treasure hunt event now ONLINE

GO GO GO! http://www.sibm.net/transcend11/404notfound/

Discussions Forums on: www.404notfound2011.blogspot.com

of which Tarmackisser “Deneverkid” is a proud member.

Much needed sleep

2011-02-02T08:05:00.001+05:30

It had been at least a couple of weeks since I had a complete and satisfying sleep. Recently I got an unplanned chance to do so and now that I have woken up after 11 hours of mildly interrupted slumber I am so excited that I feel I must blog about it too, having twittered and facebooked about it already.

I got my chance last night, evening actually. At around 1805 hours I was feeling slightly drowsy, having accumulated sleeplessness over the past 10 days of 4 hours night time sleep. So I closed the laptop lid and covered it with the pillow and rested my head on it. The was disturbed once at around umm, I don’t remember but it was my roomie removing the laptop from under the pillow for some reason. I got a few calls, non-irritating ones and a few irritating messages. I took the calls and ignored the messages, bunked a batch address and carried on. I had very vivid, and detailed, no to mentioned HD dreams, but I don’t remember the content all that much.

I woke up at around 2 am to check that it was 2 am. And then decided it was too early to wake up. And hence I resumed my slumber and it finally got over 3 hours later when my body clock said, that’s enough my boy. Once up, I thought of attending to other unworldly chores, like cleaning up my laptop, internally I mean. It had become slow and software was not updated and all that stuff I love to do to kill time. So I got around to killing time, learning more about Google vs Microsoft war, installing Firefox 4 Beta, getting the new Windows Live writer 2011 and using it to blog about the most needed thing for MBA students and hardworking professionals. Sleep.

Later

Full on(e) entertainment

2011-02-01T11:18:00.000+05:30

Blogging somewhere, where it matters, somewhat. O_o Do check it out.

Bodyguard brings Salman to Symbiosis campus

Republic Day Special

2011-01-26T12:59:00.001+05:30

A little something I came up when I was doing some research about India China relationships. Must read :)

India: China,should i be your foe or friend?

China:... Free Tibet, Arunachal Pradesh, Aksai Chin, Democracy, competing for Energy, arms market in Pakistan, using Pakistan to contain India.. well we dont think you are important

India: If that be so then why are you so religious about propping Pakistan up to nag India? Nuke and missile transfers, infrastructure, weapons, tanks, aircraft, phew! thankyou so much for not showing interest in India!! Probably you would have been feeding the Pakistanis out of your hands had you shown any more interest in India!!!

Houston : hahahahahaha

India: so what is it going to be?

Houston : China.. why are you always so stuck up? You are not the only emerging power...

China: Well, we will never be surpassed, there is no way a democracy like India could make sweat shops upon sweat shops for hapless Chinese to work in.. after all death in a factory serving the nation is better than unknown death in countryside.. and while I am at it we will continue to poison your kids with our deadly toys

India: well why do you get so caught up in idealogy when all that is asked is a simple question

Houston: China is stalling like always, lets arrange a well publicised meeting with His Holiness The Dalai Lama, that will speed things up!

China: hey no! please dont do that! I think I have you by your balls USD 2T forex, remember? global banker, remember?

Houston: No, I dont think so, lost 'em in AfPak and the other in Iraq.

China: So what about the F-22 for Pakistan to help it fight Taliban in the WoT

Houston: Well, what?

India: *^#&*^#*^, What the fish????

China: The Taliban, they that have beards, long flowing clothes, suicide on their minds and go ack-ack-ing at the sight of any infidels.. the last time they boarded a flight in the US they crash landed it, 9/11 bing! They whooped our a$$ in Xinjiang too!

Houston: this F-22 thing is news to me.. oh and the Taliban what about them? We will first focus on WoT and then look at other ills plaguing the world.. that responsibility comes with natural leadership of the world
India: But Pakistan is still clamouring for a nuke deal and combat drones, the purchase list just gets longer.. this is getting insane

China: (thinking.. how can I control these two with an iron fist like I do my people.. I am not used to opinion.. CCP rules!) .. thinking...Free Tibet, Arunachal Pradesh, Aksai Chin, Democracy, competing for Energy, arms market in Pakistan, using Pakistan to contain India.... thinking too much...India & Houston meanwhile give up after waiting on China's response for a few years.

Later.

Lost my way around. Again.

2011-01-20T01:11:00.001+05:30

It’s been literally months since I fired up my Live writer. First of all, apologies to all of them who asked me if I had stopped blogging and I replied that I was just too busy. To tell the truth, I have no idea how (or why) time flew by in the past couple of months.

Some times I had nothing to write, and at other times when I had some thing, there was no time. Whichever be the case, I was somehow kept from being the tarmackisser. In the month of November (or was it October) I appeared for my first MBA end semester examinations. The days were a blur. All I can remember is 4 hour sleep time and daily 2 hour CS 1.6 sessions with my roomie without fail. It wasn’t until a month later that I found that I had miraculously passed. Interestingly, I wasn’t even in town when the results were out.

Apart from that, the IT team finished development of its new portal, ImprinT. Somewhere in the middle of December, I along with two other classmates of mine got shortlisted for a competition being conducted at XLRI, Jamshedpur. (Note for noobs: XLRI is considered the Mecca for HR/IR in India.) It was a whole lot of fun, travelling through 5 cities in a span of 12 hours. Pune to Mumbai to Delhi to Ranchi to Jamshedpur. By the way, we won third prize there! The other winners were stalwarts from XLRI senior year. A point to be noted here was that I engaged in some serious networking during this trip and I hope the reap rich rewards for the same sooner than later. lol

Nothing much has changed in the new year. New year resolutions are still made. And broken within the first week of the new year. As usual, I hadn’t made any. Oh! I almost forgot. I gained a few inches around the waist and some chub on my cheeks. So, I kinda sorta started jogging!! And missing a few richly prepared meals of the SIBM mess hall. Hope to get back into shape soon. I wonder if blogging would help me lose me some weight. ( Maybe that could motivate me to blog more often ). Sigh**

Had a mad night out in Mumbai one evening. It was an awesome trip, featuring the now world famous Gateway of India, the Taj Hotel, The Leopold cafe, the new Bandra Worli sea link and of course Marine drive. The city was electrifying as ever, the crowds noisy and thick even after midnight. After the 2008 attack, the Gateway of India has been literally turned into a fortress like stronghold with heavy gunnery and patrolmen stationed all around the Taj and the Gateway. The heightened security is a sight to behold.

And finally, the thing I had been waiting for had arrived. Need for Speed hot pursuit 3. It is sooooohooo cool. I like busting them cars up like tin cans, and doing 400kmph on the Veyron. Uff uff. I could go on and on…Anyway, the SIBM Pune admissions process is underway and thus I and several others like me have become “buddy”s for the aspirants. I must take leave now to attend to my Buddys, but fear not for I will be back soon. And how. (That’s a rhetorical question, not supposed to be answered)

Later.

The days of the white PC.

2010-11-26T11:14:00.001+05:30

It wasn’t long back when operating a computer was something wondrous, since a computer in itself was so rare, not to mention overly priced. That was also the period when computers were weak calculating machines, moody, and white. Even imagining them in any other colour was nothing less than technological blasphemy. And Terabytes of memory existed only on paper and maybe in some secret government facility, the location of which is obviously classified.

And if we consider the period in terms of human years and not in terms of Moore years, it isn’t really that long. I was still in school when I touched my first “working” computer which did an impressive 44 Mhz on the clock and could make the turtle go wild all over the screen. Those were the days when computer viruses and the influenza virus were believed to affect both humans and computers. God forbid, if you sneezed near a computer, the lab assistant used to take you to task.

Ten years hence, I am still in a school, of a different kind of course ( am doing an MBA ), using computers of different kinds, operating on a different level altogether. The sizes of computers have undergone a high degree of miniaturization. Desktops to laptops to netbooks to tablets to smartphones. Even as I speak, a tablet revolution is underway with every computer manufacturer under the sun readying itself to launch some tablet or the other. Interestingly, the tablets sport a 1Ghz processor (Snapdragon Qualcomm), which if I do the math correctly, has more computing capacity than all the computers in every school in my city put together in my school days. What’s more, they come in all sort of colours. Red, Blue, Green, Pink?!?, and of course sometimes white as well.

Funnily enough, the miniaturization of size, addition of potential usages and exponential increase of memory and computing capacity have only left us wanting for more. It has invaded our lives in ways we never thought it would. Well, to be honest I am not really sure, to what extent has it invaded your life but it definitely has followed me around. I did my engineering with computer sciences and thought it was over when I joined a Bschool. Somehow it seems, I still continue to learn more about IT than anything else on campus. Maybe it’s a good thing, but I am yet to confirm the same. For now, I will just try and go through the flow and hope to live through a few more Moore years.

Later

iDAREu

2010-10-19T14:54:00.001+05:30

Finally blogging somewhere where it matters. Do check it out.

On the learning Curve.

Later.

Joblessnesses.

2010-10-18T22:56:00.001+05:30

The phase that I and sometimes my room-mate experience these days is called joblessness of the second type. Yes, there are different types of joblessnesses. In spite of what you have been told or taught so far, one can suffer from multiple types of joblessnesses, given the situation he or she is in. Let me try and explain , maybe then my dear would understand and be aware of the symptoms pertaining to the various kinds of joblessnesses that ( or perhaps already ) affects people in general.

Since I mentioned I am suffering from joblessness of the second type, that makes it quite obvious that there is a type I as well. Well, according to me, the first type of joblessness is the kind one experiences when one has a lot of time to kill and engages in activities, which are either unproductive or give rise to negative productivity, not to mention irritates others. For example, playing games and answering stupid quizzes on facebook, and then publishing the results on to your friends’ fb walls. (which irritates me to no end -*blows steam from ears*).

The second type of joblessness, is the kind one experiences when one feels the urge to do anything and everything, most of which is usually productive or refreshing or awe-inspiring ~in some cases~, especially when you have *exams* ( or something else just as important is going on, something you should be spending your time studying or preparing for. Only, you don't. ) Since I returned to campus last week, I have been experiencing something similar. And now, I believe my roommate is beginning to feel it too. A ripple effect, probably from me. ~ Don’t blame me –_- ~. There is this incredible urge to wash clothes, blog, check mail, arrange clothes in the cabinet, update facebook status over and over again, that it simply overwhelms me during the day. And then I spend late nights, playing counter-strike with my room-mate or posting –sic- comments on funny pictures of people on facebook or cursing exams or swearing to each other our native and/or national languages.

And then there is the third ‘dictionary’ kind of joblessness which is experienced by most of the mango people (aam aadmi – general populace) when they lose their jobs, either to recession or to office politics or to right-sizing or to the hot chick who precedes them in the interview queue. It is the saddest kind of joblessness, that affects the mental health of the person suffering from it, the physical health of the dependants and the economic health of the country he or she resides in. There are few solutions to it, but most of them have either already failed ~such as leveraging contacts~, or are too costly to try s~uch as entrepreneurship or better/higher education~. But then again, things go on and world keeps rotating.

For now, I have classified only the above mentioned types of joblessnesses. However, I am confident that as I proceed in my MBA student life I will come across more interesting kinds of the same. At least, that’s what I have been told time and again by my seniors. As of course, as always, I will keep my readers updated regarding the latest discoveries made by yours truly. After all, awareness is the key. Isn’t it? :)

Later.

P.S.: My end sems are on. If you find my posts even mildly amusing, please pray that extra minute to help me pass. Amen. \m/

Jaya Jaya Jayanti

2010-10-02T12:50:00.001+05:30

I never knew that finding a weekly holiday to sit and ponder would be so difficult. For this holiday and opportunity to blog I am grateful to Bapu. Did you know, incidentally my nickname is also Bapu. O_O

One of the things that SIBM and MBA do to you is take away your weekends without prior notice. So after three weeks of slogging it out, I finally have a day I can write about. What am I going to do today? Sit back and relax, recharge batteries, the phones’ and mine. After all having nothing of importance to do is one of the most envious things on campus. Comes in at third place. ( First, being able to sleep for more than 8 hours straights, and second, having a girlfriend in the neighboring colleges. :D )

And what could be better than having your dad calling to wake you up, asking you if you still wanted the SLR camera. Oh well, that was the fun part. Now comes the bad part. As usual I am broke and I have overshot my expenses account again, again without fail. The semester is coming to a close. I don’t know how much of the academic content have I actually learnt, more than that I have come to learn about some life and survival skills. Especially over the last week when I (and the rest of my batch) survived on crumbs and less than 4 hours of sleep in a day.

The sensex is soaring to greater heights everyday, the Ayodhya verdict seemingly accepted without too much hullabaloo, and Need for Speed Hot pursuit is going to be reinvented in a month *_* or so. With so many exciting things happening around the world, I don’t think I need to go out and make an effort to make news for the time being. So I think I’ll just post this and go to sleep.

Later.

Take them as they come.

2010-09-03T20:10:00.001+05:30

First of all, millions of apologies. For every unfortunate being who stumbled upon my blog since the last post. I never knew MBA would be this draining and time consuming ( full time course doesn’t necessarily have to mean that it eats into my personal time too ).

Updates updates. Since I was missing for the entire month of August, no points for guessing that a lot happened over the month. First of all, the boring stuff. Had a test in the very first week of the month, in which I am not sure how I fared, probably average. (Thank the heavens for relative grading). The next week was consumed in getting approvals and signatures and other paraphernalia ready for my trip. Yes, my trip out of this hill top monastery. It’s true, whoever said, aid comes in the most weird and whacky forms, especially when you need it the most. Of all the people to help me, I never expected Microsoft to remember me for all the hard work I had done (or so they believed >.< ). Whatever the case, they invited me for a trip to Goa. ^_^ And that wasn’t enough for me as I clubbed a “side” trip to Bangalore with the same. The trip this time was supposed to be rather special. I must make a mention of my dear friend Debi Prasad, for providing me with accommodation, or rather a room to stay in. Probably, the memories of my stay in that “special” room for the period of those few days will forever remain with me. Was shopped for, fed and taken around for walks, all in good company of course. Now that I look back at those days, it makes me want to relive it all again. My ten day off campus stay proved to be refreshing, invigorating and of course, calming. Ah well, the holiday ended soon enough and I returned back to my monastery, loaded with gifts, thoughts, and marks, some temporary, others indelible.

Once back on campus, reality seized me by the collar, hissed angrily and said, pull up your socks kid. I realized, my classmates had formed groups for at least 5 different activities, (which were supposed to add up to our semester marks) and had conveniently left me out of all the groups. And so I spent the entire last week trying to figure out how to invade a group ( –_-** ), and of course attempting to look not very surprised when the faculty declared it was “the day” for submission of some assignment of which I had no clue.Now that I was aware of how considerate my classmates were, I decided to take things slightly differently. I incorporated the ultimate technique of handling pressure of my own devise. “Fukitall”. In other words, I gave up and chilled out. >_> Heh.

Meanwhile, IT team was gearing up for launching “ADdIcT”, an intranet based video and print media advertisement repository for the “benefit” of the students who don’t like youtube :D. Somehow, the word had got out that I could put together a few lines of text sensibly enough to put it in a blog or a letter or an article. Invariably, and thankfully I got the work of promoting an ad-related blog for the repository. You folks can check it out here at http://edaddict.wordpress.com . Of course, I was writing guys. :| Only that I wasn’t, as a certain someone calls it, tarmac‘kissing’ for the time being. ":) The most interesting part of my SIBM Pune sophomore year is about to come up sometime this month. It’s the hottest event that marks the beginning of the winter on campus. And ironically its called, “Summers”. Stay tuned for blow by blow description of the days in the run up to the event. More next time.

Later.

Tired in tiers.

2010-07-31T04:03:00.001+05:30

As the second month comes to an end at SIBM Pune, a hollow feeling begins to sink in. As my life on top of this hill tends to become limited, as if being compacted by a trash crusher I can almost compare it to a monastery cut off from civilization, the occupants of which ~like me~ fear to go out into the real world. It’s not like there is nothing to do on top of the hill. Rather there is so much I am supposed to do, that there is very little time for things I want to. More so, I have also forgotten things I wanted to do. Hmm. I am confused.

While attending a session today by a senior corporate guy in college, I realized some things. In two years time I will be 25. And, as I go on to join the corporate world, straight jacketed in formals, working longer and harder to outperform, to move up the invisible corporate ladder, leaving very little time for myself. Maybe then I will ask this same question to myself again. Am I losing out on something? Here and now. Two wholesome youthful years of my life on a hill. Are they expendable ?

I vividly remember the last time this happened. I lost my teenage in the mad race called competitive exams and by the time I realized it, I was already out of my teenage. Even to this day, I have to correct mother when she blames my “teen”age for my clumsiness. I remind her of my age, and in the process, get rudely reminded of it myself. Will my history repeat itself, is the question I would like to ask myself. If I get the time i.e.

I would have liked to call it a quarter life crisis, but seriously given the conditions I would rather call it a midlife crisis. My misgivings could probably be baseless, as someone* tried to explain it to me. Probably, not possibly. As of this moment I am too tired to argue anymore. With 20 hours of sleep in the last 5 days, I deserve to feel tired. In the least. And maybe hope for a change.

Later.

Minutes of the moment - MOM

2010-07-13T01:10:00.001+05:30

It’s been a month already. And I suppose now I am in a position to make the following comments regarding how life has changed for me. Things have started falling into place. We always have tests coming. And most of the time there is no point or time in studying for them.

Couples have started forming around the campus. Others have broken up. Heartache and heartbreaks are the flavour of the season. The weather, as always, is impeccable and makes you miss your sweethearts like never before. Workload keeps piling up, and as it does, we keep looking forward to the next party.

Adding to the normal classes and assignments, I usually have up some IT team work or the other. At the current pace, I will most probably get to learn more about the Computer Sciences and the web “2.0” and IT consultancy here in a b-school than I did in my four years of B.Tech in CSE. Ironic? Well, that’s not the only learning I have had so far. Some very interesting jargon keep coming my way. “KT” for one, a very harmless jargon meaning knowledge transfer which is very similar to how it was done in the old days. Other more severe ones are “taking someone’s case” which simply means you are in deep trouble and someone will take up your “case”. The other jargon are not exactly meant to be discussed on public forums so I think I will steer clear of the rest.

Rumour mills are up and running again. Cheating couples, public showdowns, weird dance steps do find a mention over a sip of coffee or a lick of ice-cream. If you are lucky, (or unlucky, as the case maybe) you most probably will be discussed and argued over, in great detail. After all, that’s what MBA is all about. Case studies, presentations, reports and of course, as of my learned professors rightly said, “spiral binding”.

Later.

Let’s roll.

2010-07-01T22:54:00.001+05:30

Continuing with my MBA journey. From a certain nobody a couple of weeks back to a member of the Interim IT team. Needless to say, things have happened over the past week. First of all, the food at the mess is going from good to bad to worse. Apart from that, my new laptop was delivered (woohoo!) and it took me 2 whole days and nights to set it up to fit my “preferences”. Thanks entirely to Fortinet Web Blocking…I mean filtering system that this college has in place. –_-*

Apart from that, I applied for and got into the student council IT team. The team members are pretty cool, classy and fun to hang out with. (So far.) As far as my duties as a new member are concerned, I haven’t the smallest clue, however that hasn’t stopped people from asking me to fix their laptops. I wonder if it would be the same like it was back home. “The free IT service man” –_- I certainly hope not.

With endless quizzes, tests and assignments, the picture of MBA life is becoming pretty clear. If you want free time, make your own or rather steal some. The two most important things I never seem to have time for are, sleeping and studying. With specialization tests looming overhead, people are starting to get sweaty palmed all the time. For some reason, I believe that will change with time. As will my attendance, which currently stands at 100% !! ( O_O).

That’s all for now. As for next time, let’s roll the die and see where I land. Shall we?

Later

A Cloudy Memoir

2010-06-27T02:01:00.001+05:30

A new day after-all.

2010-06-21T00:31:00.001+05:30

As everyone around me begins to gear up for the first test at SIBM tomorrow (some pre-induction foundation course test), I decided to take some time out and put down in words, the atmosphere in the hostel. Most of the guys have shut themselves inside their rooms, probably to prevent the knowledge from flowing out of their minds and into the corridors, or maybe to keep all those out who are done with their studies, per se. ;)

As for me, I have taken refuge in a neighbouring room. Unbelievably, the playlist on this computer is playing Ustab Amjad Ali Khan. This is the last place one would expect to find classical music playing. I guess, our rich culture has a chance of surviving after all. And as the minutes come to pass, even I begin to appreciate the soothing effects of the sarod music.

It was my second Sunday here, and was pretty uneventful in comparison to the movie outing we had last week. The high point of the day was when I went to the bathroom to do my laundry, only to find the taps running dry. However, towards the evening the skies turned ominous and doused the scenery with a heavy downpour. Interestingly, there have been numerous showers since I arrived here, however all of them were docile. I miss the thunder and lightning we used to have back in Bhubaneswar, although few and far between.

The food, the 6 day long week, the delayed sunset, the random downpours, the hotties on campus. Some things I will get used to with time, others things, perhaps never. But everything will definitely be a part of life at SIBM. Also, now that I have something new to look forward to in life, maybe tomorrow will be a different day after all.

Later.

P.S. Thanks for laundry tip. :)

A first of many.

2010-06-11T19:42:00.001+05:30

And so it begins.

And how. The train was 12 hours late and the auto-walla was 30 kms off the destination (He took me to SCMHRD!). Somehow after 3 hours of ragged auto journey I was finally on top of the Symbiosis "hill" I was trying to get to. Filled up my forms and got to my bed. Met my good-natured (but huge, nonetheless) room-mate Anurag.

The evening here was nothing like Bhubaneswar. For the first time in many days, I experienced "rain". The female population here is a sight for sore eyes, and trust me from the place I come from...(trails off). The most talked about topics (that I managed to overhear) were which "mobile connection" to avail, (involving deep seated discussions involving call rates, potential all night long chats with potential future girlfriends, free sms et al) followed by which laptop to buy. At least, those were the hot topics until some poor girl met with a accident while riding a bicycle. I hope the bump on her head heals soon, whoever she is, but all talks apart, it was a bump well taken, considering that it shot her to super-celeb status on campus. People are still talking about her today, however as the mobile SIM wallas set up their kiosks and unleashed their aggressive marketing plans, talks began to shift back to the regular topics.

I wonder if falling off the hill would give me the much required on-campus popularity. (hopefully for longer than the cycle girl). As I stare outside the window, I realize I missed my first SIBM sunset. But that's ok, it was the first of many to come. :)

Later.