Telecom Party (Read as Tallicom)

Phew !!! What a party it was and the timing couldn’t get any more perfect. The party marked the culmination of the torture we had to go through for our minor exams (well ..actually I’m talking for others over here). Well first to get to the basics, this party was thrown by three of our friends who were from the Telecom group and who received scholarships totaling about 1Lakh from Bharti group for topping the Telecom batch.

First we had chose TSF(The Supper Factory) as our venue. The ambience provided to us was trashy and they didn’t have much of variety in the drinks they could offer. Disappointed we immediately left and reached another restro bar 'Storm' which was near to it and had no other choice to check it out as it was already 10.15pm. (Entry to bars stops at 11pm and the serving of drinks stops at 11.30pm).

To our amazement, we found an atmosphere of extraordinary languor greeting us despite its prosaic exterior. The prices too were very reasonable and with little time left before the bar closed, we got busy ordering drinks and dishes. And soon the entire table was filled with tequila shots, martinis, screwdrivers and shots. We didn’t waste much time in emptying the table either. With booze showing effect, emotions started running high and there was sudden display of new found solidarity and brotherhood. That was some treat to the eyes ;).

Too bad it had to end so soon ...

Three cheers for Tallicom ... Hic !! Hic !!

Minors Again !!!

Strange how fast time flies and am constantly reminded of it during the minors. Every time we have minors, I really wonder if I had learnt anything significant enough to be tested by an examination. But then the IIT system begs to differ with my views and so I am obliged to the system.

I better get my act together to hit a decent GPA this semester.

So guys again …. Wish me luck!!!

Guitar Lessons

This is one of my passions that is yet to be realized and can hardly wait for the day when I can strum away songs from my guitar. Here I think it would be appropriate to give some brief history of my tryst with guitar.

Class 2 - First time I was exposed to a guitar, prior to that I had only watched in television. This was when I felt and touched a guitar. Looked very interesting and appealing.

Class 6 - My liking for guitar had grown strong over the time and began liking all the songs which had a guitar instrument in it. I used to derive vicarious pleasure by trying to strum imaginary strings on badminton racket and cricket bat.

Class 8 - For some strange all the heroes in romantic movies seemed to have a fetish for the guitar and guessed that guitar was the key to click with the girls. But then I was supposed to be taking my academics seriously as I was entering a milestone phase of my education life where I had to make a choice of what I wanted to be in life.

Class 9 - 12 - Just kept postponing the idea of learning guitar due to lack of time and having too much of focus on Engineering Entrance Exams.

Graduation - Too busy having fun to even think of guitar.

Now soon after graduation after I had secured an admission in the MBA program of IIT Delhi, I had good couple of months with me to have fun before I was supposed to join. And on one fine day I decide to give it a shot. I looked up in the directory, made some calls and zeroed on an institute nearby my place.

Someone told me that you can master guitar in four months. Well since I had a couple of months, the least I expected was some level of comfort and skill to be able to play decent number of songs. But then I was wrong. After joining the institute I learnt that guitar was one of the toughest instruments to learn and master.

Soon after a month of effort all I could manage to play was a handful of kindergarten rhymes :(. And the return on efforts didn’t seem attractive and soon lost the steam.

But after reaching IIT I had heard some amazing songs like Hotel California which refueled my passion for guitar. Though I managed to get the guitar along with me to the campus, never had I touched it in the entire first year due to the academic pressure and occasional laziness.

This semester I have got an opportunity to learn guitar within the campus and have resumed or rather began my guitar lessons. This time I hope that I sustain myself through this and be able to play something by the time I pass out of IIT. This would be one of the precious things that I would like to take along with me after I pass out of here.

Till then...wish me luck!!!

Ready to Explore New Horizons ???

Today we had organized a Strategy Rostrum at our institute. (For the uninitiated please visit http://www.iitdmba.com/rostrum). This is a sector-wise full day event where we call upon experts from the industry to educate and enlighten us (read mostly as a part of placement process).

This particular rostrum was special in many ways. Firstly, I was the coordinator of this entire event and that meant a lot of work (err... not exactly) and secondly this was very prestigious to our institute as we had Ambassador of Japan to India, His Excellency Mr. Yasukuni Enoki as our chief guest. This was good enough to pull off bigwigs from the Japanese Corporate as speakers for the event. The list of dignitaries for the event included

His Excellency Yasukuni Enoki, Ambassador of Japan
Mr. I. Ishibashi, MD, Toshiba
Prof. Surendra Prasad, Director, IIT Delhi
Mr. M. Yamamoto, CMD, Itochu
Mr. N. Noguchi, Director General, JETRO
Mr. Abhimanyu Roy, Sr. Consultant, Avalon Consulting
Mr. Ravi Parasuram, Vice President, IBM - GS

As is evident from the above list, it was primarily filled with Japanese dignitaries and that meant they wouldn’t appreciate tardiness. We had to keep our entire schedule and proceedings tight. We had almost rehearsed minute-wise proceedings of the rostrum the earlier day just to be sure.

The earlier day we had to be awake till early morning decorating the auditorium and checking the entire logistics. The next day we had to reach early just to take care of any bad surprises. All this was possible with a team that I had formed with the juniors who were motivated enough to push me at times.

Also special thanks to our Prof. Dr. Kiran Kumar Momaya who made this entire rostrum possible. Finally, in line with our expectations, all went well and the rostrum ended on a successful note.

That was a good enough reason to celebrate the two-week long effort that we had put in organizing the rostrum.

Dengue Epidemic in Delhi

Delhi for some strange reason has never appealed to me as a city to live in. There's no night life as things get shut down after 8 in the night, the pollution, traffic, insecurity, extreme weather conditions and the list goes on. Even the scenic locations, wide roads and the chicks couldn’t make up for it.

Anyways coming to the point, I'm talking about the Dengue epidemic in Delhi. What started as a little incident seemed to throb with significance? In a couple of days the disease was declared as epidemic and officials got their act together by increasing the staff for fogging at various places in Delhi.

This news had soon reached all parts of the country and people now know more about dengue than India. For example, you can die of hemorrhage which would result in internal bleeding and this is possible only in the case when you're bitten by mosquitoes infected with multiple strands of Dengue. And by the way there are three strands of Dengue and in very rare cases you see concurrent incidence of all the strands. Quite Impressive right!!! Thanks to all the announcements and the posters in the campus.

Anyways my well-wishers have been pleading me to take proper preventive measures (again courtesy - popularity of my laziness) and they have scared me so much that I become very restless at the sight of even a single mosquito in my room.

Dengue had caused many problems for people. For example, one of my friends is suffering from diarrhea is too scared to visit the loo as he is afraid that he might catch dengue from the mosquitoes (permanent occupants of loos in IIT) and neither he can stop himself from not visiting. Good luck to such guys.

My recent sickness had shaken me enough and I'm taking all the preventive measures.

My best wishes with the affected ones. Get well soon!!! And others take care...