Jairam's Jives

December 27, 2004

Moving on to Day 3 of the necessary evil that we refer to as End-terms, we began on an arbitrary note with Research Methods bugging us for two full hours. The subject itself was not quite understood nor appreciated by us material beings who had everything but research on our minds as a career option. Plus the fact that this paper had a generous dose of Statistical concepts thrown in made it all the more interesting considering the Quantitative Techniques paper that we had answered the previous day. In any case, barely managed to get all the answers in before the allotted time and grabbed some decent lunch.

Post lunch, we had MIS, a subject which was considered cakewalk by all the software techies in our batch.

December 26, 2004

The start of Day 2 was nothing quite like expected. We anticipated an Operations Management end-term paper similar to the mid-term paper, but then the Prof had to bowl a googly, the cricket lover that he is!!!

Yes, we did have a case in the paper, but then it was nothing like the mid-terms case. This one was completely about JIT, its implementation, the issues, etc. Further, we had quite a few hard core technical Operations Management questions quite unlike the mid-terms.

December 25, 2004

We started off with Marketing which involved us deciding upon which segment Suzuki Samurai (hold on to your guns, not the bike, but the jeep which was launched in India as the Maruti Suzuki Gypsy, quite a few years back) had to be launched in the US automobile market in 1985. Since it was an open-book exam, didn’t suffer too much. However, am not too sure about the veracity of my answers. In any case, that is for the Prof to decide.

There are ways to end academic terms, and then there is the IIM Indore way!!! Just when we thought that our lingering doubts about a fifth Macroeconomic Quiz and a sixth Finance Quiz were just those, lingering doubts, as fate would have it, those materialized.

There I was sniffling away to glory, unable to think straight due to the extremely congested state of my throat and nose, trying to prepare for the Macro and Finance quizzes.

Well, we had a guest talk today after an interval of quite some time. Today, we had Mr Shyam Sunder from Yale University down at IIM Indore trying to enlighten us as regards “How markets generate wealth?” He did this using a simple trading game which involved around 35 of the PGP participants.

There are quite a few things which remind me of Amma, but none more so when I’m suffering from a cold the magnitude of which I’m suffering from right now.

But then, she ensured that I was adequately equipped when I set out on my two year long journey into the world of IIM Indore. So here I am in my room, sitting, and periodically digging into my medicine bag and pulling out cocktails of Ayurvedic medicines to get rid of this ‘common cold’.

Man, this is truly irritating.

It’s quite amazing what a small thing such as a game of cricket can bring back so much that you hold precious.

Today as usual after my afternoon nap, I got out of the room to see some of the seniors enjoying a small game of cricket on the Basketball court. For a while, I was standing up in front of my room on the first floor, as usual passing stupid remarks and giving proxy commentary to the entire proceedings.

I came across this absolutely hilarious site and had to share it with you. It begins with -

The Darwin Awards salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally kill themselves in really stupid ways. Of necessity, this honor is bestowed posthumously.

I know it sounds a little mortifying and sad, but then it is quite funny at the same time. Here go a few snippets from the site -

Three men wielding knives tried to rob a slaughterhouse.

Well, yesterday we had our MAC 2 end terms. The course basically consists of Cost Accounting, a subject which I am quite familiar with considering the fact that I am a Commerce Graduate. But then, it has been quite some time since I ve actually done any kind of costing and therefore, I put in the requisite amount of effort which one would require to do the paper decently. And that is what I precisely did during the 2.5 odd hours that I was in the exam hall.

Now, this is an article worth reading. Sukanya Verma talks about the lengths that the media is going to just to get that scoop on your favorite star.

'How desperate is the media?' wonders Sukanya Verma.