Thursday, March 19, 2009

It happens only in IIM-I

Some time back a few students from France were there in the campus. They were here for a term as part of the student exchange program. In one of the lectures that they attended this thing is supposed to have happened. The following is a simplified version of a true story.

It was early in the morning. Lets say 11:30 Am. A section of PGP2 had a class conducted by our beloved prof X. One of the exchange students from France had an urge to sneeze and let go without following up with an excuse. I wasn't there in that class but I guess the incident must have been followed up with a noisy nose clean up job, if anything. But nothing justifies what followed. Prof X, being the mercurial personality that he is, asked the student to leave the class. I don't know why he did this..lets take it at face value and move forward.

Apparently the French guy thought that it is not okay to sneeze and not apologize in Here. He assumed that he broke some sanctimonious protocol of India. He wrote to the consulate of France to help him out. He thought that the Prof had barred him from the subject altogether. The French embassy followed up with the Indian government which lobbed the issue to the HRD ministry who get back to the institute to reinstate the student.

Will I get in touch with Obama if I burp in the US of A?
Sorry I don't want to see Obama. I could do with a certain Carla Bruni's personal attention.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Familiar Feeling

Last night I was preparing for some quiz. One of those quizzes that happened with an announcement. Being the procrastinator that I am, I postponed preparing for it till 1 am. There were about 100 pages of bland HR stuff to read. All of a sudden feeling became one that's very familiar. The one where one is tired but still has loads of things to finish. Those rare moments where even the most notorious of the nocturnal tissues of the eyes give up. The only option is to crash in bed feeling depressed and unhappy with oneself. Damn when it happens.

This is another in the same lines. There are no submissions to make tomorrow. Time was available in plenty. And lots of long term work pending. One and the most prominent was studying Finance 2. Exams were near and Fin had grown to become a huge Demon. I was very good in Fin 1 but Fin 2 was a different ball game all together. It is like a snake that throws venom the moment you try to go near it. So the plan was to somehow try studying when I had a slight temptation to play a game of cricket in the F block courtyard for 20 mins under the newly attached flodlights. So I called some friends who at first gave a sensible reponse of turning down my offer. I should have stopped then..but no I didnt. Finally we started what was supposed to be a 20 minutes game.

It went on and on and on. When I finally stopped it was 12:20 AM. I lost most of the games, lost the Pepsi bet. Lost energy. Lost the enthusiasm to study fin. Thats when I login to my blog and continue writing from a boring piece that I had left in draft. It is a pity that you had to read it. Sigh.

Monday, March 02, 2009

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Start of Term 3

What do people do when the are bored, they write blogs. This is precisely what I am doing. Why am I doing this? other than the already hinted reason, I want to write about the new feel of IIM I that I have been sensing for a few days now. I will look back at this after a while to see if I was right. Thus there is a dual purpose. Kill current boredom and future boredom. Hurray.

Prof. Ravichandran of IIM A took over recently as the new Director of IIM Indore. He made quite an impression in his first very address to the students. He was sharp, witty and articulate. But then he was among the sharpEST, wittiEST among people whom I have heard to recently.He emphasised on the importance of the PGP course which gladened me.

He had mentioned about the National Youth Conference that he intended to hold, back then. Given the time frame of the event I was not sure about the feasibility, but then it turned out to be a great success. I was impressed by the quality of the lectures, particularly one on Safe India by Dr. Karthikeyan - ex director of CBI. It made it a good start for the 3rd term.

Then it was time for classes. We were in for a surprise in this front too. We had Prof K K Choudary from the Indian Stastical Institute to take up QT. To be frank, I had settled for what we had earlier and in the process became cynical. In this light, it was great to see the change that was on offer. Then it was time for Operations Management. We had Prof A H Kalro (served as Prof at IIMA and Director of IIMK) to handle the subject. That puts an end to the Goldrads Goal that we were at earlier (Good for you if you aren't from my class and still understand what I mean).

So all this means something to look forward to. Let us see. Let us see if the good times are for real or an India Shining.
RaviC Quotes

http://mckinseymind.blogspot.com/2006/11/best-of-prof-ravichandran-at-great.html

-Prof Ravichandran is the new director of IIM I