It is not normal for me to put in two posts on the same date...even though the time difference is a bit on the higher side, but as I said in the previous post, there are days when things just keep hapenning.

This time it was the re-arrival of the pop (our LAN messenger). Now things will go more towards normal as we have the divine pop to provide some sort of excitement in our otherwise dull lives.

Thank you God for listening to our prayers...we can get back some semblance of normalcy in our lives now.

Some days life is so dull. As if their was nothing in this entire world that could shake the laziness away from you. Then suddenly one day in between will change the entire idea....in my case I would put it at 2 days actually. This entire term had started on a very lazy note. Absolutely no classes and the entire weather ensured that we did not feel the need to get out of our beds....let alone do some useful work. The last two days changed the entire thing.

In the end it feels as if some hidden force had just been gathering strength to strike at the right time. This time it had to be my girlfriend...actually it was me only...I am just blaming her (after all I can take those liberties on my blog ;-)) Yesterday I suddenly came to realize that I had (I thought) not told my beloved (her name is Megha btw) about my blog. Just one of those things which suddenly strike you and I could not believe what will happen to me when she finds out. Daring that I am, I decided to find out my fate and the next time I mailed to her, I sent her the link to my blog.

I came to know almost instantly that lightning takes a lot of time to strike. She took less. The next moment I knew, she had inundated me with "How could you's"...well had I known the answer, I would have told her but that is not the case....even I dont know. It has taken two days for me to get back into her good books again (hopefully) and this time I intend to be more carefull. You dont want to lost the faith of the one person who means so much to you, right...

So the next time you are getting bored...just 'forget' to tell something to your girlfriend / boyfriend (I dont think the latter will work though...it is the girl's who have the knack of scolding properly)

All the best people.

The following are the lyrics of the song "Am I true to myself" by Lobo. How true can simple songs sometimes be? I guess this actually takes care of the self-actualization stage that we keep talking about in our management day and night. We would have reached this stage if we can actually look into the mirror and see a very satisfied person, a person who has been true to everyone, a person who is happy with all that he has and all that he has been able to achieve for himself and for people around him. Can we actually make these things come true for ourselves? Ever?

Take care and have a safe journey towards self-actualization....

Today I looked down in the water
I saw a face look back at me
It hit me like a bolt of lightning
I may not like what I see.

Am I true to myself
Do I believe in what I do
Am I playing a role
Do I want to be like you
Or am I what I hate in others
Only seeing things my way
That's what I'm gonna ask myself today.

Do I really like my brothers
Do I like my hair so long
Do I try to think of others
Can I believe what's in my song

Do I think of all men equal
Or pretend I just don't see
Have I looked for good in others
Or just laughed and let them be.

Someone tell me how much can it rain in one place. Delhi has started getting rain from the last 2 days as I came to know through my family. Here in Bhubaneswar if I find the sky clear and no water falling from heaven to completely soak me within 15 seconds flat, then it will seem different. So much has it rained since the last 10 days or so (non-stop, unlimited, beating down on the roofs) that the recent Mumbai floods would definitely have got a lot less (this makes me want to praise the dranage system of Bhubaneswar though I feel it is more because of the elevated land area that has resulted in this beautiful drainage).

The pros of these rains is the wonderful water that is always present for you to take a bath in. We can always go to the bathroom to do that but bathing in the rain has a different sensation which only people who have VOLUNTARILY taken a bath in the rain will be able to explain. Another huge advantage is that I actually sit inside my room all the time and that is really essential right now with a business plan, Kurukshetra presentation, project appraisal and company analysis to be done in the next one week.

The con is definitely the difficulty with which clothes dry up. They take more time to dry than start smelling due to the dampness. I thought I had left this clothes problem in the navy but it seems to keep occuring again and again. "History repeats itself" so they say.

Not that I never think about people in distress but this time my heart seriously goes to the people in the drought affected areas. Cant someone give some of this rain to them?

Exams are over. Actually it has been two days since they finished. I was too lazy to get up from my bed to write a post to let anyone who cared to know about this. Actually anyone who would care to know about my exams being over already knows that they are over.

My learning from the last two days:
1. Come what may, I cannot sleep for more than 11 hours at a stretch (Yes, I AM doing an MBA)
2. If you sleep for long hours, you actually feel more sleepy during the day. So you have to sleep more and that makes you even more sleepy.
3. You feel more hungry when you sleep than when you go out and play football!!! Yeah...even I could not believe this could be true untill it hapenned to me.

Its been two days since the pop stopped working on campus. It was a real relief intially with Kartikeya (K-virus) and now even Bivas and Maloy coming up with thr versions of Stick Cricket and Pingu and all the other games....and that also always during exams....but now the absence of pop is getting on to me. You feel so cut off with nothing to do. No pops just popping out of anywhere and u getting to do all sort of things....quizzing, revising syllabii, teasing ppl etc etc etc...

And that actually made me start feeling about the time when we will leave the place. Probably ximbians.com will be helpful since we still will be able to have a virtual pop where we can interact and chat but what if we do not get time? Rumpelstiltzkin, Don, Eminence, Webmaniac, Dragon, King Arthur, Scarface, Cupid, Critter, Narcissist, Scorpion... and of course the ppl with thr actual names...Safi, Maloy, Venky and roll nos as well (U104008 is the top of the mind here)....is it going to be the same? I actually see two juniors calling themselves Hawk and Eagle...wether intentional or not....I liked it ;)..these are synonyms of my name after all so i can say they are inspired by me...he he he (God save them)

The 14 14 14 14 (War cry of AOE) from Arthur which makes us run to start AOE......(6) (sign of the devil on pop) from Don which i started patenting for myself......demands for songs or movies, assignments or project reports of seniors, calls for meetings or fixing of dates....I am sure we cant have all this anywhere else.

I hope my work makes me so busy that I forget all about it and get on with my life. I hope that the same does not happen with my frnds and we all stay together. I hope i stop being so senti sooner than later since i have an exam to give tomorrow and 4 more over the next 2 days...

This term is coming to an end in another week or two with the end of the exams. Looking back i found this to be a really different term from a lot of aspects. First of all I actually feel that i have learnt something in this term. This feeling of having learnt something is actually an alien to me and my body still has to create antibodies for this disease. Till that time i have to suffer. Secondly this was probably the first time in my life that we had less classes during the week and more during the weekend (sometimes even 6-7 classes on a sunday). 15 august was a monday and we were actually regretting getting an extended weekend since that meant more classes.

All said and done this was a better term....not withstanding the constant enmity which exists between me and marks which i am sure is going to continue till death do us apart...

till next time.....ciao

I was going through a website detailing the lives of people living in concentration camps during WW-2. I came across this para from a guy in Auschwitz Concentration Camp which was supposed to be the most notorious camp of the type. The para goes...

"Despite the madness of war, we lived for a world that would be different. For a better world to come when all this is over. And perhaps even our being here is a step towards that world. Do you really think that, without the hope that such a world is possible, that the rights of man will be restored again, we could stand the concentration camp even for one day? It is that very hope that makes people go without a murmur to the gas chambers, keeps them from risking a revolt, paralyses them into numb inactivity. It is hope that breaks down family ties, makes mothers renounce their children, or wives sell their bodies for bread, or husbands kill. It is hope that compels man to hold on to one more day of life, because that day may be the day of liberation. Ah, and not even the hope for a different, better world, but simply for life, a life of peace and rest. Never before in the history of mankind has hope been stronger than man, but never also has it done so much harm as it has in this war, in this concentration camp. We were never taught how to give up hope, and this is why today we perish in gas chambers."

To think about the plight of the people living there is a bloodcurdling experience in itself but to think of the really important ideas that come up from these experiences is another. Dont we all live on that thin string of hope that binds us to what we want to achieve. Had it not been for hope, would I have ever thought of becoming an MBA and spending 2 more years of my life studying? It is just the hope of making it big after doing this course that i am actually doing it. Same can be said for everyone in this world.....cant it?

GOD loves me. I am 100% sure of that. And how I got to know this is because however much i try to reduce my weight, it just does not come down. GOD likes to see me healthy and hence he has put such habits into me. My interest in food and excercises seems to be conversely related to each other. So even when my aim of reduction requires me to concentrate more on the latter, I seem to be more inclined towards the former. Hence while I usually skip excercising almost daily, i prefer to eat enough food to keep a family happy (and such a quantity is possible because of the mess i eat in....had it been anywhere else, my consumption of food will probably rocket to inconcievable proportions)

Please everyone...pray to god to keep loving me as much but do change his perceptions of a healthy person..

Yesterday evening I played football. Not that it is a really great achievement of that I did this for the first time but it was a genuinely new experience. I never thought that football could actually take the role of a cross country and that a ball could decide the direction of your running. We were practically running from forward position to defence position as the other team kicked the ball here and there. The final scoreline of our having lost 0-3 was actually an appreciation of our talents. The way the teams were matched....it should have been at least nothing to a dozen or two. In the end I was basically lying down in the ground with absolutely no energy to move my legs and wondering what kind of godly intervention will make me get up and go up to the second floor (my room is on the second floor). I somehow managed.

After that I had a feeling that I really wanted a 'bhutta' (corn...the way it is made here makes it really tasty.) For that I took my legs which were screeming for some kind of respite all the way to Swosti for buying that.

It is morning now and still my legs are aching for a little bit of rest....well lets see...I thnk i will let them rest in class where i will sleep peacefully.

Life is a torture. Specially when this life takes us to the Business Ethics classes twice a week. I have no clue why we are studying what Aristotle did or could have done or what is the meaning of teleology. Ethics as a concept is known to everyone and I would prefer if it is left to each and everyone to follow his own ethical standards. As it is, I dont see much change in anyone who has gone through this course.

Considering all this, I am the only one in our batch who has to attend two ethics classes continuously. Not considering the fact that these two classes are seperated by a gap of two whole days and also not considering the fact that the reason why these two classes are continuous for me is that I have not attending the 3 classes that lie in these two days, the thought of 2 classes is enought to send shivers down my spine.

Hope I scrape through tomorrows' class....

Exams ended day before yesterday and new energy came into my otherwise lazy bones. It ensured that the great pangs of sleep that i had been experiencing for the past few days was gone and was taken over by this really great urge to stay awake...even when i actually had time to sleep now. Stay awake I did but what i did while awake is something which even i cant explain. For the simple reason that i did not do anything. The cycle starts like this...in your room you think of what to do...cant find anything worthwhile (i am not going to start studying plz...papers just ended...) so i just start off on an expedition tour roaming around in blocks and trying to find people who are both awake and in their rooms so i can reduce there brains to dust by using my gift of the gab. i dont find any people who fit into the above category because of the simple fact that each one of them is on a similar mission. so what i finally end up with is a group of people chatting away to glory with no respect for either the people or the time...all of us competing with each other for talk time as if we are not in any informal discussion about no topic (choice of topics is an entirely different matter which requires a whole blog to itself but i will rather devote another post to it)...but as if we were in a GD for the post of a CEO (do we have GD's at that stage???)...The great chatting session actually makes us all hungry so we decide to go to mess and have something to eat. another chatting session till the time that eatable is consumed and then back to our rooms. In the room i try to think that i am feeling sleepy and try to go to sleep. seems like another waste of time so i get up again and not having anything to do...go on a mission to make people get up and talk with me....and everyone else is doing the same....cycle continues. This is how i keep busy during days after the exams...really a very very hard work to do..dont u thnk

Seems that all that I can talk about during exam time is related to exams...we had International Finance paper today. I practically started studying yesterday after giving myself the usual kicks in the ass for not having studied till then and how i was going to flunk because of that...(how do i manage to repeat this again and again after promising myself to study as soon as the exams get over...I will never understand)

People all around me were studying like there was no tomorrow or someone will hold back there degrees if they did not study...I couldnt care more it seems...but I did. My paper was at 6:00PM today. Yesterday I decided that i will surely wake up early in the morning and go to the library and study like hell...u thnk that i did not get up eh??? Well i am not that bad....i did get up, had breakfast as soon as the mess opened and even went to the library to study. Sat and studied for some half an hour before the first pangs of sleep hit me. I immediately heeded their advice and dozed off right there......what hapenned after that is history and i prefer not to repeat this part of history ever...

Hope they do not hold back my degree!!!

My dreams

Man...am I bad at this...everytime I log in I think that next time will be sooner and it always gets later. And the funny part is that I always happen to remember my ID and password...for a guy who cant remember where he kept his mobile...this is a big thing. Guess I am more hung on the old fashioned way of writing diaries. Will take time to get used to a blog. (Please dont ask me how much time)

I was listening to some saxophone instrumentals today in my room (supposedly preparing for my term exams) and I started of on one of my frequent dream chases....

What will probably be the best thing that will happen to me? It will probably be moments with the girl I love. Dancing close to each other with sweet romantic instrumentals playing in the background (have to be slow though...dont u feel i am very selective?....back to my dream...), sweet smells of sandalwood in the slow breeze and no one to disturb us or worry us in any way. I could probably carry on this way throughout my life....

lemme get on in my dreams for some more time before i get back to my paper preparation....and nxt time i promise to be more regular...!!!

tough weeks gone by

whew...those were tough last few weeks. First the great German fiasco in which the embassy actually proved that there is no difference between the Indian or any European government as long as it is a government. How do these people survive...I have no clue.

Now in Kolkata (I still prefer to call it Calcutta) things are going along much better. Cant really think about Germany all the time. Life keeps going on. Project is great and simply put...will make for good interview FAFF. "FIBRES based reverse engineering model for future strategies for 3 of TATA international's products". I hope that I will be able to do as much work as it requires. Sure will give my best.

Ciao my blog for now...will keep posting

As we saw and the seniors went away

As i saw them all leaving one by one, all the things that we had done together went through my mind...the ragging in which we really hated them all to the time when they woke up at 5 in the morning to help us out with our assignments when we loved them so much. those were our seniors...so good yet so bad. now that they are gone leaving us to take care of the next batch which is yet to come, i really miss them. now is the time when i really know there true worth. what they stood for and what they did. of course there was not much defference between them and us but they were the seniors...the guys who were supposed to help us settle down and the guys who did this work perfectly.

all the best to all of them from the bottom of my heart. take care and do well in life. that is all i wish for.

keep in touch guys...

As we saw and the seniors went away

As i saw them all leaving one by one, all the things that we had done together went through my mind...the ragging in which we really hated them all to the time when they woke up at 5 in the morning to help us out with our assignments when we loved them so much. those were our seniors...so good yet so bad. now that they are gone leaving us to take care of the next batch which is yet to come, i really miss them. now is the time when i really know there true worth. what they stood for and what they did. of course there was not much defference between them and us but they were the seniors...the guys who were supposed to help us settle down and the guys who did this work perfectly.

all the best to all of them from the bottom of my heart. take care and do well in life. that is all i wish for.

keep in touch guys...

Why cant we be just Indians?

Today we were giving a farewell to our seniors. Some momentos for them for which each one of them went on the stage one at a time and took the momento. I could not help but notice the aplause which the juniors were giving. As soon as a Tamil was called on stage, the entire Tamil group in the audience clapped. The same was the case with Telagu's, Oriyas, Maharashtrians, Keralites.....and almost all the other places that make up this great country which we call India. The point to note was hardly any of them thought of clapping for a person of some other state except when they knew each other well enough. A small thing like clapping when someone goes on stage????? Why this difference? Are we from the same nation which fought together to achieve its independance? Are we the same nation which has caused the biggest rising against the English rule in 1857 which even shook the very roots of the nation on which the sun never set just because of our sheer unity? Are we the same nation in which Mahesh Bhupathi and Leander Paes together make such a deadly combination in world tennis when individually they are not even in the top 100?
Why has this difference creaped in? Why do people prefer to stay within there own "kind" and not intermingle? Why cant we be just INDIANS??? Do we need another Subhas Chandra Bose to remind us that we are one country??? Why this big difference on such small matters?? Why cant we be just Indians??

Why is HR not compulsary???

Not that I like HR. I would be the first person to run away if HR is compulsary. But the kind of people who want to become managers really should know how to deal with people. After all, wether u r in finance or mktg or ops or systems...u have to deal with ppl. and then i see the way we just slaughter anyone who is trying to do his best but is unable to. why do we do that? the poor guy i am talking about must be crying out aloud in the bathroom of his house right now thinking about the next time when he has to meet us.
I just hope that i dont become that....have to keep that in mind for future...forever...