Emotional atyachaar...

As the countdown begins...you can see the difference in peoples attitudes, their sentiments, their talks and even their gtalk status messages. It is that time that everyone wants to pause a moment and look back at the time gone by.

I know its a little too early...there are almost 60 days more....but in a 1 year course like ours..days weeks and months hav just zipped by without even leaving a trace. Well the only physical evidnce that we have are a little worn out laptops, lean figures and dark circles.

Thoughts of exams,assignments, grades, lectures, nightouts, placements that once flooded our routine and our minds have suddenly taken a back seat. Previous job comforts, left away appraisals and hikes, hazy future and scary thoughts of jobless days ahead somtimes now clog our eyesight now. 

But the spirit never dies. We all find relief in laughing at each others plight, laughing about how we all have become bankcrupt in past one year, how the next job could actually pay less than what we got earlier n lots of stuff like this. Best way to vent out ones emotions is by using gtalk messages.

Some funny, some inspiring and some of them that make you feel really nostalgic..

"The only thing stopping you is YOU" 

"Memories are good as long as you dont have to deal with it"

"Do not fear going ahead slowly, fear only standing still" 

Some even get devotional with "Sri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram" 

One of the most interesting message that I came across in past few days was - "Yesterday I was clever.  So I wanted to change the world.  Today I am wise. So I have decided to change myself".  Who says nothing is impossible. I have been doing nothing for sumtime now" 

"There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all".

"Mera Number Kab Ayega?????"

"I am interested in It Telecom Consulting jobs in 'Forced2' initiative. :) "

"Who says nothign is impossible. Ever tried slamming a revolving door"

So heres the story so far...My heart is stuffed with a little too many emotions to handle... Happiness to get out of Chennai for once...God the weather here sux like crazy... Sad because rock and roll times are about to end and 162 of us will never ever be together again..anxious because am yet jobless with nothing on my radar...Tired and weared out of all the nightouts and assignments. But one thing thats for sure is that may be crisis times like these will come and go...but college days will be gone forever...  (sob...sob)

Ek chotisi naukri...

Well they say music transcends all barriers.

I dont know about that for sure but it sure saves me from wasting my laptop battery for writing what we are going through right now...

This has been the song of the campus for quite some days now...

Well hats of to Kishore Kumar and the lyricist to write this song so many years back...the song of the future...true visionaries.. :)

Boli Lagao...

Finally some cheer in the college. Apart from the frequent whinning that prevailed in the college about how uncertain the future is, there is hardly anything that I have heard in past few days. With whole week blocked for  "THE week" of MBA, there was not much to do for the past 5 to 6 days but catch up on some old time classic movies, have delicious food @ Mariott, listen to great music and lie tirelessly on bed refreshing the mailbox every 5 minutes. So we really couldnt believe when we saw the timetable for the following week...three lectures of 3 hours each on the very first day after this vacation. 'How can people be so cruel', I thought. 

But past two days have been quite happening with with auctioning and bidding tactics. This was the experimental economics class - a required elective ( I wonder how an elective can be required....but neways...let me not digress) by Prof Shyam Sundar of Yale School of Management.

As I waited for the class to begin, the housekeeping staff in the college began repositioning the chairs. What on earth is going on, everyone wondered. Row after row chairs were removed from the huge seminar hall. This guy seems to be crazy, is he really going to show us experiments or what !!. 

The professor explained us the rules of the game. The whole class was divided into buyers and sellers. The buyers were given a slip with a perceived value of the good. The sellers had given a slip with the cost of production of the good. Each buyer and seller had difefrent amount. The strategy for the seller was to find a buyer who was ready to pay more than the cost of production. The strategy for the buyer was to find a seller who would sell at a price lower than the perceived value.

This was not all, the auction was supposed to be over-the-counter auction. So the auction opened for 5 minutes and there was open outcry for the price. As the market opened, there was huge bidding going on in every corner of the room. People rushing everywhere to find the best deal.

WAITING FOR THE AUCTION TO START

Some were risk averse people who settled for small profits and closed deals early on. Some wanted to wait until they got a higher value. Seemed like a fish market.  Session after session we did this auction. Sometimes I managed a huge profits, sometimes less and sometimes I couldnt sell. A great experience and sore throats in the end. He explained to us all the results and how markets work in reality. As we got more and more experienced, we could see how we became more efficient. The class seemed more like a picnic place.

THE AUCTION BEGINS

Second day was even better. We had a closed bid tender game.  Each of us was given a perceived value of the item to be auctioned and we were divided into random groups of 10. It was necessary to bid higher to win the auction, it was also necessary to bid lower than the perceived value in order to avoid loss and thirdly we didnt know the bids of the other members of the group. We played several variations of closed bidding - second price auctioning, common value auctioning etc. At the end of each game, we were taught different strategies on how to maximise winning chances while minimising losses.

There are few cynical "know-it-all" minds that feel this whole experience is just not worth attending. But past 2 days have been a great learning experience for me. With only 3 months before we close this course, all I want to do is to enjoi this time before I get back to that sad corprate life again..(This is called height of optimism....confident of a job even in such times) Whether I will ever participate in bidding in my life and use these startegies is really irrelevant to me now.  :-)

It is that time of the year again..

Well not really a great post to open this years account. With less than 24 hours to go until we begin with this years placement season..eh er..week..er..days..whatever...,the scene is quite gloomy. The coats and shirts that would have been by now kept neat clean and pressed and hanging somewhere in my cupboard. The books that would have been revised and re-revised are just stacked up with no intentions and motivation to be opened again. Where companies would be fighting for the day zero slaught, the colleges are struggling to pull them till the campus this year. Well seems like tough days ahead for all of us. All that can be done is hope that Obama's winds of change reach India as well....

Connecting with the world.

Faster internet speeds have brought information around the world to your laptop screens just few clicks away and mobile phones are almost being viewed as commodities in todays age of globalisation and rising telecom power in India.  But listening to the daily happenings by getting glued to television has its own charm.

I remember my vacations when all I did was lie tirelessly on my sofa with remote in my hand and switch channels speedily not to miss single action happening on tv. I used to fill up water bottles and pile up chip packets near my sofa so that I dont have to lift my body weight and drift it along till the kitchen. Offcourse I was too old to attend to nature calls wherever I wanted and hence some energy got used up in squabbling  towards the bathroom. All the entertainment that I missed during the prime time due to numerous K,L,M soaps that my family was fond of had to be recovered during the day. Not to forget all the useless reality shows that I had got hooked on to.

Just a year and half back one of roomie got hooked on to the uselss fights on Big Boss. So much was the addiction that after some days even I used to be curious on whos gonna fight next with whom and whats the next bitching and gossip topic on the set. Not to forget the numerous series of Indian Idols and nach baliyes which I never missed out. Once in a while, out of sheer pressure of appearing for mba entrances, I used to stop by one of the news channels. 

That year later I moved to Mexico. I had no tv in my studio apartment but I was allowed to get glimpses in my owners house who lived next door. It was very frustrating to sit in front of the tv with remote control in someone else's hand. Not to forget the additional annoyance out of watching espanols blabber out indecipherable words and soaps that had the most obscene scenes that I had ever seen. This eventually led to greater disinterest in getting glued and I conviniently shifted to bollywood movies. After I came to chennai, life was something more than just being hectic. We were bombarded with assignments and tests one after the other, and if that was not enough we had guest lectures and more assignements that were in line. All in all, we had a television at home lying without a cable connection. Not to forget the tv and media room provided in college which lied unattended.

But today yet again the day has come where all I did was lie on the cot in the drawing room and switch channels sipping orange juice. So all three of us decided that enough was enough and we needed to have our share of entertainment. Basically we have mastered the art of delivering the best with minimal efforts. Ya we took our time to find ways to fight this evil education system that denies sleep to poor souls but finally have deciphered it. Okay, so I have degraded from the super comfortable sofa to a dhaba-type cot, but the passion of watching tv tirelessly remains the same. Yet again its time to connect to all those fake emotions on tv shows!!

Dream come true

Today was one of those days that I had longed since my childhood. Supper packed schedule and loads of assignments take care that I dont over sleep and even if i do manage to sneak peak into my dream world, I wake by the horrifying placement dreams that I see.

So as always, with loads of other subjects to study, we had to cope up with this micro economics. All the demand supply curves had begun to converge on the equilibrium points. In the end, all the micro economics to me was the art of free hand drawings and systematic way of intersecting the lines to form a beautiful wire mesh. So today morning I woke up with a start at 4 am after sleeping for complete 3 hours....and began flipping pages. How I wished that i could sleep longer, how i wished the professor would have forgotten to set the paper, how i wished that the printer would have got jammed while printing, how i wished the supervisors wouldnt turn up. (Basically I wished for everything other than the fact that I should have studied earlier). 

I did try to understand different graphs of how a monopolistic market would work and how a perfectly competetive market differs from the former one. After long hard struggle, I somehow figured out the difference (at 4 am all i could see was randomly drawn lines with random names assigned to them). In the end the book said that in reality, a monopolistic or perfectly competetive market does not really exist...grrrr...my temper shot faster than the chandrayaan...then why the hell do they teach such things that do no exist..isnt mba supposed to be "practical" teaching.

Neways..let me not digress from the main point. Somehow i got up from the zombie state and got ready for the exam. No sooner did I pick up my bag than I got a message saying that exam in postponed by an hour. Yipppeeeee...i jumped with joy. I ran with full enthusiasm towards the college. I went there only to find smoke everywhere. There was a short circuit in the college and the power was off. Soon it was declared that the exam was postponed to evening. Not a avery good news though but that meant that I could go and sleep for another hour before the lectures. Then came the news that the exam is postoned till next monday. We all jumped with joy. There were mixed reactions in the crowd. We got "uh-i know-all-and-might-as-well-finish-the-exam" looks from the sincere and intelligent lot and "good-now-i-can-go-n-sleep" from dumb people like me. But who cares, I happy walked back home, ate a good breakfast and went off to sleep.

I had longed many times since childhood that the exam got rescheduled. Today finally that dream has come true. Before sleeping I promised myself that I wud utilise this time doing a deep analysis on the subject. However everyone aorund me knows what the scene next Sunday is going to be :)

 

Mass murder

What is a open book test - Its exam when the professor knows that the paper is going to be so tough that the students will not be able to solve anything and he allows books and papers to be carried so that students AT LEAST SIT through the whole exam duration frantically searching for answers in the book.

"It is a open book test. Carry all the material available on earth. All the best" the professor smirked as he walkd out on the last day of the lecture. Past few days had been extremely discouraging. Day after day as new optimiastion techniques were churned out in the class, law of diminishing marginal utility had worked yet again and  increasing cost savings techniquies developed had only resulted into diminishing awareness of the subject.

All charged up to fight this evil, 162 of us gathered at this D-day that is hence forth going to be the Martyr day in the history of Great Lakes. Dozens of paper sheets and books were gathered and piled up in the class. Few people were almost out of their seat trying to fit the books that would save their grace. As the clock ticked 9, my heart skipped a beat, hands trembled and sweat gathered. There was tension in the air. There was a total hush-hush and we could hear the AC growl. It was almost as if the benches and the blackboard were laughing at us. Just then out of nowhere a leader rose and said "Dont worry guys, we shall overcome!!" Such were the encouraging words and with loud clapping we set on to fight.

The enemy attacked us psychologically. The first line read "Any material can be read and used". As i read this I could imagine the enemy smiling victoriously. But I was determined to fight. Questions after questions I read, but yet not a sign of victory. All that i could do is to flip pages after pages in search of some strategy to conquer. Seconds, minutes and hour passed by. All I had done was copied the question as it is (this is old engg days strategy- experience counts you see), done one step out of nowhere and halted the solution. 

Finally, as the two hours almost ended, I cracked one of the problem. I had fought long for this moment. My death was certain, but I had given a good fight. At the end, we all lost to this cruel, unconsiderate enemy but we all had fought courageously against a evil.

In the end, when all die, relative grading saves everyones grace ! :-)