I have S.L.O.T.H written all over me

The other day my friend a fellow blogger sent me the link to her new post, I visited it and was amazed at the amount of posts and the jazzy new look of her blog (looks like the effect of her 'better half' has rubbed off on her ;))
I spared a thought for my blog which has been rusting in the cans for about 5 months now. Enthused by the idea I sat down to pen my thoughts but then on what?????? Life at XL part 3?? or lessons learnt in the past 1 year? Enough fodder to last a good 3 posts I reckoned.. and here it began. With my right eye nearly shut thanks to the sty (grubby hands=rubbing eyes=sty=discomfort arrghh!!! ), waiting for one of the "teen deviyan" (Anusha, Vidya and I) to turn up from her jaunts for dinner, I started writing. Not a good way to start I know...but what the heck it's MY blog, MY wish! Life in XL part 3 it was to be coz of my involvement in it instead of giving a pedantic account of lessons learnt (I’ve saved it for another day).

Term 3 was by far the best. It got off to a wonderful start :D. “Maxi fair was fun” would be demeaning to say the least. It was loads and loads of fun!!! Check out the fun part :). A picture speaks more than thousand words .

Muahahhahhahahahahhahahh........ (disclaimer: I aint the 'Ba' in the above pic)

Ok now the serious part, we had to slog all through day and night to make this all a success. The important day dawned on us on 21^st January. Setting up stalls, giving finishing touches, decked all of us stood waiting for the Jamshedpur here forth referred to as Jampot junta to arrive. Arrive they did and made a big impact. Not one or two not a dozen or a score they swarmed all over the place like bees. It appeared as if this event was the most awaited event to the entertainment starved junta (Come on! there is just one theatre usually screening Mithun da’s C grade movies & no malls in the steel city) . Making them play “supposedly” interesting games to garner data points for market research is no mean task. Designing the games to hide the ulterior motive is an up hill task. All day long they swarmed the place- paying no heed to the relentless sun beating down upon us. First 1 or 2 hours was fun, and then came the “marginal utility” concept into play. I was shunted away to handle the kids (being a kid myself it is kinda hard to handle them especially since I was itching to play truant). Finally tired of all this I managed to find a secluded corner to talk to my ‘stress buster’ only to have kids coming after me “didi didi”. Finally at 5pm the shop was closed phew! What a relief. Aching feet, droopy eyes did not dampen the brilliant smiles as seen in the group pic :).

The academic rigor soon caught up. A certain prof who regarded engineers as “dunkeys” (guffaw) loomed like Lord Rudra over the poor bummers. I have never ever been good at math, analytics & the ilk and this subject promised to be hell 7 times over. It delivered as promised :( .A firang prof was brought in to teach Strategy and was oh! so nice until he bamboozled us with his end term paper. How the hell are we supposed to remember “how we started the case discussion in the class” , “what did we discuss about this particular point in class”. Gimme a break. We dint attend half the classes taking advantage of the fact that the prof dint take attendance and paid for it :( . A marketing research subject went beautifully esp the project with the prof promising to get our project published in management review books. Still waiting for him to make good on his promise… One area I absolutely loathe is finance. The finance prof was a very considerate human who let us do hotch potch and gave us super grades in the end. I’m done with finance (yippy yippy yay yay!!!!!!!- a nutty jig by the nut).

The organization behavior project made sure I know much more about Infosys than Mr. Murthy himself. Analyzing it from a OB point of view, group shift, halo effect et al drained out through osmosis all the pride I had in Infy . Macro eco was awesome coz the prof liked the style in which I presented the same point is hazaar different ways in the same answer (engineering experience :) ). Soon the term was over leaving me with a assorted bundle of emotions- relief, exultation on being “half an MBA” -just a year more to go , a summer internship – my first working experience to look forward to.

Stopped over at Hyderabad for a day before dashing to Bangalore for my internship. I wished I could have arm twisted the company guys into giving me Hyderabad as my work place . I had learnt enough Hindi gaalis during 1 year to blast the courier guy for having made off with the best of my clothes. It spiced up the day. Off I trudged to Bangalore………..leaving behind XL, home, Hyderabad and love…to commence another comical journey…