And then came the 2nd and 3rd night-outs!

Tottering on the edge... living life the insomiac way, testing the limits of mental endurance!

Sample this:
7.30 PM - Go to friend's room for project meeting
2.30 AM - Get back to catch some sleep
8.30 AM - Go back to friend's room to do the remaining work
1.30 PM - Have lunch.....attend class etc.
7.00 PM - Get back to do more of the project work!
8...9...9.30 - Go out to nearby place for having dinner
10.00 PM - Get back and do more searching and data analysis for the project
11...12...1...2...3...4...5 (Grab a bite)...6...7...8 (breakfast)! Still doing project - No sleep
8...9....10...11...12...1 (lunch)...2 - Finally some sleep!!
5.00PM - Wake up.. and the again sit on proj
6...7...8...9...10...11...12...1....2....3 - Study for next day's quiz and go to sleep!
7.00 AM - wake up for class...
10.00 AM - back from class
12.00 AM - 1.30 PM - A small nap... no lunch
till 4.00 PM classes
5.00 PM onwards - again sit on the CCS report!
6...7...8...9....10 (order pizza)....11...12...
1...2...3...4....5...6...7... (still no sleep!)..7.30 AM - Finally done with the SECTOR ANALYSIS OF THE GLOBAL STEEL INDUSTRY!
8.00 AM - attend class
10.00 AM - Go to take print outs & spiral binding
12.30 AM - 1.30 PM - Finally some more sleep! (no lunch)
2.00 PM - 4.00 PM - Classes
4.30 PM - 5.30 PM - Some more sleep

And now typing this...

in effect: only 12 hrs of sleep in the past 80 hours!

Well this is what IIMB trains you for! - Know that you can achieve the impossible, stretch the human limits!

What have i realized? There is seriously something wrong with me, i'm not getting sleep, i'm in more like a zombie state. I'm not eating at the right times...heck...i'm hardly eating at all...surviving on bread, biscuits and some tea!

What have i achieved?
Satisfaction that i was able to make an awesome secoral report on the lines of BCG analysis!, Shoutings from Dad & Preethi asking me what's wrong with me and why all these night-outs?

Am i enjoying it? Can't i go around without having to be like this? Well when u'll get the answers to all these questions only in a B-School like IIMB!

First nightout of 2nd year

Yeah now i know something's seriously wrong with me...

Yesterday-Today turned out to be the first night out thankfully due to MGS report. And even though its been 30 hrs since i had sleep, i'm still not sleep.... but that does not mean that i'm gonna try to sleep immediately after i type this out.

Insight of the day : Anirban Barman Roy has compulsive report overseeing disease the same way as i have compulsive formatting disease.

3 cheers to the MGS team that made it happen - Roy, Jayanth, Majumdar & sleepy me!.. *hic*

Stranger than Fiction

I just did another skim..scan..swoosh! of the movie Stranger than fiction because somehow, it looked to be too slow for my type... but towards the end, there's this interesting dialog i came across.... really wonderful if you hear it in the tone and with the pictures...

The movie's about a writer writing a fictional story that in fact is actually amapping to the life of a real person!

"Sometimes when we lose ourselves in fear and despair in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank God for Bavarian sugar cookies and fortunately when there aren’t any cookies, we can still find reassurance in a familiar hand on our skin, or a kind and lovely gesture, or subtle encouragement, or a loving embrace or an offer of comfort. Not to mention hospital journeys, ... and soft spoken secrets and... maybe the occasional fiction!

And we must remember that all these things...the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties which we assume only accessorize our days are infact here for a much larger and nobler cause. They are here to save our lives. I know the idea seems strange but i also know that it so happens to be true. And so it was..

A wristwatch saved Harold Crick."

A day in Mumbai

My fourth visit to Mumbai in the past 2 years...

1st - NITIE interview , 2nd - IITBSOM interview, 3rd - Citi Orientation prog...and now 4th - French visa fingerprinting....

2.30 AM - wake up
3.30 AM - leave campus by cab (Javed, Abhay, Rahul, Me)
6.20 AM - leave Bangalore by Indigo flight (My first experience with Indigo and this is what i feel... a slightly better version of Air Deccan)
7.50 AM - reach Mumbai airport
8.10 AM - board a taxi outside the airport (Javed, Akash, Rahul, Me)
9.00 AM - reach French Consulate at Nariman Point
9.30 AM - Fingerprinting procedure starts
10.15 AM - Out of consulate
10.30 AM - breakfast at nearby Subway (Akash, Shreya, Shruti, Somdev, Sandeep, Abhay, Me)
11.30 AM - Out of Subway
11.50 AM - Buy tickets for Rush Hour 3 at nearby Inox (Rohit, Akshay, Tonmoy, Rahul, Vineet, Me)
12.00 PM - Go to some extravagantly costly pace called some Motilal something for lunch... (err...just a roti..considering the just finished subway breakfast)
12.50 PM - leave for Inox
12.55 PM - Start watching Rush Hour 3 @ Inox
2.30 PM - Out of Inox
3.15 PM - At Cafe Mocha near Marine Drive
4.30 PM - Go to the near by beach
6.00 PM - Go for a beach side chat stall for bhel puri (Adayar Anandh Bhavan' Chat now looks hazar times better)
6.15 PM - Start looking for bus / cab for getting back
6.45 PM - Get into taxi... (goes of to sleep) (Rahul, Me)
8.00 PM - Reaches Mumbai Airport
8.50 PM - Indian flight leaves Mumbai (Javed, Tonmoy, Rohit, Rahul, Me)
10.00 PM - Reach Bangalore airport
10.15 PM - Take auto to IIM (Javed, Rahul, Me)
11.10 PM - Reach campus
12.00 PM - Crash

Bombay is truly the commercial hub of india...and u cannot be be awed by the ads and brands that hit you in the face when you travel through the city.... i'v lost count of the number of ads i'v seen of the following firms:
1. UTI/Axis Bank - Rebranding exercise
2. Fly Kingfisher - Corporate Branding
3. Big Adda - Market promotion campaign

Now why am i typing all this out...just to retrospect over it some years down into the future.... :)

To do

What should i put up next?
- Project Meetings at IIMB : Reunion of classmates to gossip contemporary concerns!
- Marketing - Making Science out of Art : My inability to make sense out of Art!
- What is Strategy? - Commonsense in hindsight fit into a framework!

Things are getting topsy turvy now.

Mistakes that you realize

Is there any difference between opting for a Brand management course that has no end-terms or mid-terms or a Financial Derivatives course that has only mid-term and end term?

-> In the first case you chill out during those 3 days when your fellow mates belonging to the second category burn the mid-night oil studying for the xams all by yourself. Whereas in the second case you get to chill out during all the remaining 3x30-3 days when your fellow mates belonging to the first category run around conducting project meetings that essentially leads nowhere! - Either way, the system is so designed that you'll regret the fact that IIMB requires you to go through 2 years of hell whichever way you try to circumvent it. So you decide how you want it!

Ah.. the effects of it.... Getting into cycles that are slightly worse than BPO professionals... you suddenly realize that you don't get sleep even at 2.30...you'll have to force yourself to sleep... but having said that, that does not translate into...if you sleep at 12 u'll wake up at 8.. be it 12 or be it 4, u'll never wake up before 8! Unless, of course, you have a subject like Brand Management kept at 8 AM on Mondays & Tuesdays to make sure that you wake up at 7.45 and run to class. My sleep cycles have been taking major hits... On Saturday i went to sleep at 11.30 PM and woke up at 8.45 AM- (Am still wondering what went wrong...or rather what went right).. and today i went to sleep at 4.30 AM and woke up at 7.00 AM for Brand Man class, and i'm still not feeling sleepy (Something's seriously going wrong here). Ah well if sleep's taking it on course, food is another thing. There used to be that time in my C-101 days where i would diligently wake up at 7.30 have breakfast at 8, have lunch at 1, dinner at 8.15! ... Now it like.... wake up 9.00 AM... break fast?... oh damn...should i go all the way to F-E, then climb down 3 floors, then walk all the way to the mess, eat a piece of bread and the walk, climb all the way back here and then go back to sleep???... is it worth the effort ... na... better go back to sleep and avoid shedding some carbs (the ROI of which would otherwise be in the form of bread, just sufficient enuf to neutralize the loss)...anyway lunch is only 2 hrs away... ok.. so chuck breakfast.. ..11.15 AM, damn i'm hungry...go to the canteen and have choclate or a burger....get back... lunch... Oh damn... Mess food!.. lets give it a go by... 5.00 PM... there again am a bit hungry... go to mess and have some snacks... 8.00 PM... Mess food again?? NOO (in fact i'v not had mess for for a long time)... ok lets go out for dinner... and the cycle continues only difference is that sometimes the breakfast become lunch, the lunch becomes dinner and dinner ceases to exist.

Colour Dazzle

This is one helluva photo i found at Pursuing Pefections

Singapore in the night - stunning photography!