The Road to El Dorado..

The hostels in my B-school are one of the best in the country.. Spacious rooms.. Single occupancy.. Attached bathrooms.. And if all that was not enough, my hostel has balconies with each room as well..

Each hostel wing has 8 rooms.. Sometime back, some of my batchmates came up with innovative names of their wings.. one was christened as ‘Banjara Hills’, another as ‘Raisina Hills’, and yet another as ‘Utopia’.. My wing is full of ingenious creatures as well.. So, one fine night, in the midst of our module exams, we decided to name our wing as well.. After lots of discussions and deliberations, we finally named our wing as ‘El Dorado’.. Let me introduce you to all the residents of ‘El Dorado’ one by one..

Room 244.. S.G. .. a.k.a. “shabby”.. One of the chillax guys.. Great sports enthusiast.. Has perpetual PC problems.. Gives his own continuous commentary while watching cricket matches..

Room 243.. U.T. .. a.k.a. “gulti”.. Occupies all posts of President available in campus.. Roteract, CIE, Spic macay and so on.. Perpetually worried.. about grades, girls and his receding hair line.. Not unusual to find him, entering my room at 2.30 in the night to say, “Am feeling dead sleepy man.. Can you wake me up in an hour?”

Room 242.. N.K. .. a.k.a. “boiler baba”.. Have already written a lot about him.. Will just add here that his nickname owes it’s origin to his habit of boiling over in agitation on the smallest of debatable topics, and his seeming dis-interest in most worldly things..

Room 241.. S.C. .. a.k.a. “CR”.. Spends half his day sleeping.. And the other half, planning the class schedules for the rest of the week.. Cracks crazy PJs all the time.. Eats cricket, drinks cricket, dreams cricket...

Room 240.. G.K. .. Volunteers for everything under the sun.. Great at extra-curriculars.. Has a rather dubious bulging belly.. Has the incredible god-gifted ability to sleep and read novels right under the prof’s nose..

Room 239.. A.M. .. a.k.a. “the boss”.. Tall, dark, handsome.. Knows the serial no. of each book in the library.. Arguably the best quizzard in the B-school.. Bowls over girls with his brand of dashing sincerity...

Room 238.. M.D. .. He’s the Ritchie Rich of the batch.. Has the fairest and most painstakingly maintained complexion.. Keeps more cosmetics than the entire girl’s hostel put together.. Guess where he did his summers....... L'Oreal.. where else..

Room 237.. A.K. .. a.k.a. “AK47”.. The grand old man of our B-school.. worked for eons in Wipro.. Even profs. treat him with respect.. Has great passion for photography..

“El Dorado” is a picture of unity in diversity.. We’ve got people of all ages, all CGPAs, various amts of hair on their heads, wide ranging creative competencies....... It might not be the “city of gold”, but it’s got something for everyone.. young or old....

Cheetah bhi peeta hai.......

These days, the hottest topic of discussion in the B-school is the leopard scare.. Leopards hav always been frequent tourists to the campus, with it being adjacent to the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, and have had the odd dog for dinner at times.. But in the last couple of weeks, they seem to have had a change of taste, and have feasted (almost) on 4 or 5 people near the campus.....

The administration has swiftly moved into action.. Traps hav been laid.. Heavy patrolling started.. We’ve been asked to move in groups, and late night strolls in campus hav be outlawed.. Many in the junior batch are quite petrified.. If the leopard scare happened before their admission process, I wonder how many of them would actually have joined.....

As expected, the media has jumped on the story like a leopard as well.. both NDTV and Aaj-Tak were here tonight for on-the-spot reports.. They interviewed 2 of our batchmates.. I somehow managed to squeak into the crowd in the background.. Here’s hoping that my face got broadcast over cable television as well....

Weird Wired World....

Being in a top notch institute has it’s perks.. Sprawling campus, state-of-the-art infrastructure, great batchmates and so on.. But, the one thing that keeps most students hooked most of the time is a 4 letter word- ‘2mbps’.. That’s the speed of the internet lease line.. Most of the time, all of us are online.. Most of the studies, as well as most of the fun, takes place on the net..

The entire campus is on a 100mbps LAN.. All PCs, in hostels, in classrooms, in faculty rooms, in offices..are on the LAN.... Thus, effectively, one can access any PC from anywhere on campus.. Humongous amounts of data is transferred on the internal messenger (called ip messenger) daily.. Doc files, pdfs, software setups, songs, movies.. You name it.. It’s on the lines.. The wired world helps us play some ingenious pranks too.. When a Prof. declines to share his presentations with us, IT comes to the rescue.. All you have to do is share the CD drive of the classroom PC on the LAN, then copy all the presentations to your hostel PC as the prof. teaches in class.. So you get all the stuff that was taught in class, without even attending it.. This is what I call ‘virtual education’.....

Text and note books are on their way to obsolescence.. Most of us tend to download pdf versions of textbooks from the net, rather than buying a hardcopy.. Others don’t bother to read books at all.. Just the MS Power Point slides used by profs. in class are enough.. And what if you have a nagging doubt while studying??.... Well .. All you have to do is ‘multicast’ ur doubt on the ip messenger .. And voila.. In a few seconds, you hav answers from all those who know..

It is very difficult to find an activity we perform without the help of the net.. Wanna know bus routes of Mumbai?? Wanna know which movie is playing in which multiplex?? Wanna read newspapers or magazines?? Wanna book a railway or air ticket?? Wanna listen to the latest hit movie songs?? Or wanna set an alarm so that u get up early in the morning?? There is only one place to go.. near ur PC..

All important info. is sent through mails.. And it is not unusual for someone to write 15-20 mails a day..

IT has it’s effect on work as much as it has on fun.. During my 2 months of summer internship, I have hardly ever carried anything to office.. Whatever I did in office, I uploaded it on my Yahoo briefcase at the end of the day.. And I could continue the work from my room later.. But IT is taking it’s toll.. It has almost killed the reading habits.. By conservative estimates, I spend 80% of my time in front of the comp, whenever I am in my room..

Now for weirdest part.. Me and Nikhil live in adjacent rooms, and have a connecting door in between (which is perpetually open).. So in effect, we live in joint rooms.. So what does he do when he wants to give an important message to me late in the night, when i am already asleep?? Write it on a piece of paper and leave it on my desk?.. No way.. He’ll mail it to me.. As he knows that mail is the first thing I'll check as soon as I wake up......

"IT support is like a soft bed.. easy to get into.. but very difficult to get out of.."

"Power Points"

Which is the subject each MBA student is expected to be most proficient at??... Financial management, organizational behavior, consumer marketing?..... nope.. it’s the art of making and giving presentations..

Not a single day of a b-school student passes without him seeing a power point presentation given by someone, or he making one himself.... All..well..almost all profs. use power point presentations in their lectures.. All assignments and projects are invariably terminated by a presentation.. Presentations are the lifeblood of MBA education, and MS Power Point is the most useful software.. Even during exams, most students prefer to skim thru the short and concise stuff given in power point slides, than delve into volumes of text books..

Making a cogent presentation is an art in itself.. Those who are good at this have a definite advantage over those who are not.. Just doing a good job is not enough.. Convincing others that you have done a good job is more important.. Many people win competitions simply on the basis of their brilliant presentation skills.. It’s something which all MBAs strive to achieve.. After all, an MBA has only 2 all important assets.. his mouth and his PC.... If either of these is missing or malfunctioning, he is a dead duck....

Many next generation softwares like flash, swish etc. can be used to bring in fanta-bulous text and graphical effects.. But the good old fashioned MS Power Point still remains an all time favourite.. as they say.. it’s sasta, sundar, tikau....

When I was in PT, preparing for MBA entrance, we were told about the importance of having a good personal folder.. It was suggested that we give original tag-lines on the folder covers.. Many guys came up with clichéd stuff like ‘in search of excellence’, ‘spectrum’ etc.... Being my usual “pun”ny self, I decided to name my folder ‘Power Points’.... Never knew that the word would become such an integral part of my life in this way........