Seniors' Farewell Party

Finally gave farewell party to seniors.. with some slowly moving out of campus having done early submissions, it was the latest we could do. the party rocked.. almost 3 houry of dance.. most ppl in either batch practically fell of tiredness

Also, a new concept.. where everyone could write comments about you on your back and these were read in front of all.. it was such a fun.. I am sure, this tradition is going to stay for many a years

and by the end, as usual was a photo shoot where everyone was fighting to be in front of the camera.. and it was not as much about seeing yourself in snaps as it was about the fun of doing it.. snaps come so natural this way... ppl making silent simple sober poses for snaps.. it makes me puke.. fortunately, that tradition is not popular around me these days



coming back, we got some really nice comments by seniors.. many of them were real and coming from their hearts.. it felt like an accomplishment and final final of all, while getting down from the bus at hostels, our social secy took a panga by mistake... he bid personalised good bye to all the girls when they got down first.. like goodbye kavita goodbye divya etc... guess what, we made him bid personalised goodbyes to all the guys.. 100 odd.. and he was given bumps for refusing to greet last few.. hope he will remember no differential treatment in future..

A Rocking Holi

Played Holi in hostel today. It rocked!

This is the Holika-Burning scene last night.

our t-shirts in the very morning

sharafat waali foto

one more

in the end

A World Class Stupidity

Today, I experienced something I had never felt before.

I had taken up a Beginner's level exam (Level 1) for a Certification. I was happy since the pass rate is over 90% historically. Accordingly, I did medium level preparation and went for the exam.

After reaching there, a friend looked at my Admit Card and told me that I am being asked to appear for level 3 which is the toughest in the series and almost impossible to pass without preparation. I cross checked everywhere but apparently I was at fault. Probably, I had confused between the names of Level 1 and 3 exams and by mistake had applied for level 3.

Also, I had not bothered to cross check the name later either and they did not give number of level. It came as a shock. I mean literally. A shock. Main aisa to na tha. :((
Ppl are already coining new names for me on this new benchmark. I hope to survive a week in college!

This is what I feel like deserving right now:

And this is precisely how i look like right now:



May this never happen to anyone !

Weird Toilets

My God! ppl spend time on these things :O.. funny to see

Oh Boyy..!! this is irritating

What do these designers want!

For music freaks! probably

And these ones sell :O

Companies make toilets for couples also..! Gimme a break!

The best toilet ever!

No comments.

How to tie a Tie

Found this in a mail... should solve some problems..!!

Getting a Summer Project

Here I again come back to a high from a low within a few days.. got a summer project .. the centre of my troubles.. It happens to be in Retail segment in RPG and is based out of Kolkata. Again I come out of the pressures very soon after identifying a Low. Mann this cycle is reinforcing itself very strongly!

At the same time, this is also a very good example of how I perform average or above average at times. I had been working on getting some absolutely great projects in niche areas for a very long time. They are still uncertain.. may or may not work out.. For them, I had let some good opportunities go. And today, I bend to pressures again and accept an average or slightly above average solution.. this I will know after having done it anyways. But this is how it happens.

One ends up doing something very different from what one had set out to do, if s/he is willing to bend to any pressure.

You might be interested in my interview as well. It was all very funny. The schedule of the interviewer had got changed but for some reason, he could not contact me to prepone the interview. One evening I call him up and he says that he is already in Mumbai and going to fly out the very next day. Arranging a proper interview would be difficult. He also indicated that interview could happen late night on the very same day if the need be. Fortunately, he chose next morning .. a Sunday morning. Also, fortunately, his home is hardly 3km from my hostel and he proposes to meet in a nearby location.

Sunday morning, I am sitting before him in Mocha, a coffee lounge in Hiranandani, which had just opened up for breakfast. I am fully dressed in formals from top to bottom and he is in a T-shirt and thank God jeans and not shorts, smoking freely. I had a really bad cough and my focus was to speak minimum so that cough does not completely take over. So, in that about 45mins interview, he speaks for about 25 mins, I speak for about 5 mins and there is a silence for rest of the time. I felt awkward at times, when I saw that confused look on his face when I had failed to put my point through, in the number of words I had chosen. However, good of him that he gave due consideration to my bad throat and did not force me to speak more. I was in such a bad shape that I did not even bid him Goodbye verbally. He spoke and I didn't. Ye bhi karna padta hai. A funny experience all in all.

All said and done, I have a good Summer Project in hand..!! Time to rejoice!

At least say Congrats.. u bugger!!

Marketing project followup 060306

Today, we all met the prof. and were surprised to have been ranked at average even after so much efforts. There were mistakes on our part.. no denial. However, a complete ignorance of scale of project by the reviewer makes our job tougher. There are other projects whose scope and scale is small and they had to do very little original work.They are scoring higher than us. I guess efforts don't pay here.

Every prof. has been looking for a complete connect and high accuracy + justification. There is absolutely no weightage for efforts or originality at a compromise for these. These factors occupy only intangibles and are not even a part of marking schemes in any of the projects I have done here till today. I believe same is with the whole class.

This is a new experience. It stands as a very important learning given by a PG course. Justification, Connection and Accuracy are not compromisable for scale and originality of work.

Feeling down in a low-lit surround

Something has been pulling me down for past few days. I feel a stupidity, realism and irritation together. Stupidity is not being able to figure out why. Realism is to not feel odd. Irritation is the unrest to figure out why.

I have listened to loads of Beethoven, comfortably numb, everybody hurts, tu hi re and the painful kind for past 2 days. Somehow, they just keep expressing me. Which means that I know they are not bringing me down but just supplementing.

Most friends cannot even see it when I talk to them. Some others who felt it, have tried to cheer me up but it just doesn't happen. This irritates me further and I dive in to get an answer.

.

.

On a hindsight, I find a pattern in my life that has existed for almost a decade now. It is a cyclical pattern of highs and lows. Highs are closely matched by acheivements and lows by not just mediocre to low performance, but also by a strong psychological pressure to perform. This pressure may have been created by family, peers, consistent failure or may be by just a habituated feeling of simple lack of acheivement. But this pressure is strong. Very strong. And it often comes in combinations, thereby multiplying the effect.

This low is what I am going through. I have lost a lot of trust in past at such times. People take my behaviour for something completely different and assume it permanent. It has definitely hurted me hard at times.

These lows are often immediately followed by a high. This means that whenever I feel very low, I convert it into an acheivement that I find good enough to sustain me & my self-respect. Then these highs take relatively longer time to die out and to get converted into a low. A graph would typically look like this.

Such small cycles happen in large cycles as well. A combination of low on both has been deadly.

For the time being, I will ignore the reasons and repurcussions of this pattern, shall concentrate on my original questions and will attempt to further understand & describe this low I am going through.

This low is like a void. It generates a thinking process where I search out for ideas for solutions. It is like bending down before the God to beg for an idea for solution. It is to be done continously till I get the answer. It gets marked by introspection as well.

This need for solution is what stops me from cheering myself up. It would be like taking a break from some Tapasya because it was boring. It doesn't work that way. This commitment is unquestionable, even in quintessential sense. Hence, if it is this low, simple outing etc. shall just not work. Answer to the main problem is the only way out.

It seems to have worked till date. I hope it does in future as well.

However, bouncing back needs solitude. Hence, low has to be usually accompanied by a shutting self in the room or a long outing alone. Nagging is the biggest killer of this conversion. Tension is another. Room and outing both usually provide a disconnect from these and hence help.

I hope that my journey to self-realisation has started. Finally, I have started getting answers and not just questions.

Having figured out the stage I am in, I would better get to work. There is a lot of thinking to be done. :)

Marketing Project Part 1

This was hell of a job.. The team did unfair discrimination and got me stuck as the team leader.. mind u mujhe fasaya gaya is jhanjhat mein.. It started in jan beginning with deciding name of group and project topic. We spent hell of a time figuring this out and had loads of fun with whacky names.. decided on a decent one- mindshare.

We were probably the last group to search for topic. Thanks to our perception, we got an appreciation for selecting a very good topic that no other group got. We started off fast and well. Ajay, Divya and I were determined to push it off so hard in the beginning that later days are relatively free. However, everytime we met the prof., the project size would inflate beyond our imagination. And he would redefine everything. Everybody came out cursing me.. cos i was the lead :(.. It was supposed to be my responsibility to not let it inflate which i simply failed at.. still we kept working and got a fairly good idea of things faster than others.

Then, Aravindan broke his left hand because he was bowling with right hand (that's how he describes it to me).. he was not given any work.. gaurav was busy conquering the kelloggs and harvards so he wasn't there.. Girish wasn't willing to spend time on it regularly cuttting out marks on other submission and scores.. we all thought that we had done significant work and will just put it together later. So we all stopped working. From the lead position, the group came to a pretty lagging one. Gaurav had promised to work after some deadlines and we were so happy tht the genius will come and take away all our troubles. But that took pretty long.

Finally, the prof agreed to postpone submission after exams. The biggest relief.

This was the turning point. Right when the exams started, I got a very bad throat. This more than anything else, implied that i could not really speak. So, the person who was coordinating was suddenly silent. Because of this, the group had to rediscover a lot of things. Ajay took the lead and gave me rest. Thanksssssssssssssss to himmmmmmmmmmmm.

Gaurav, Ajay and Aravind worked all night long on the project. I mean actually all night long. Nobody has ever done that for any other course project. Those details can be seen on Aravind's blog. Later, in midst of all confusion and trouble, after Divya had also gone to meet her husband, the prof drops the bomb. He wants far more detailed project than we have ever made. this kill us. Right after exams are finished, we sit down and spend hell of a time on getting it right.

and the result is















This snap was taken just the morning before submission, when we all stressed out after many days of continous work. But some were still energetic :).. see ajay. I had never seen Gaurav so stressed out before. He was really crushed by the amount of different work he has taken.

And finally, we submit it just to hear prof shouting in disgust. I am waiting for Ajay's blog to explain it first hand.

Boyy it felt so bad to face dissatisfaction after so much work.. but thz how life is.. thz how we learn :)

Make-up

it often happens this way.. some ppl like the reality and most like the dreams.. some like to look at them together

mann some companies have attitude

I met a lovely stranger

Met a new friend today.. yaman.. this is her poem.. kinda liked it so posting here.. with slight modifications

I met a lovely stranger
And kept meeting her every day
I thought that I knew her
Until I realized today

That it all is an illusion
And every hope is fake
Love is an emotion that
Just puts your heart at stake

Sick things happen to u
Just when your spirits r high
When u want to b delighted
You just have to sigh

And I still keep meeting strangers
Meet many every day
But the bonding is in hiding
And the heart is kept away………