My course at SCMHRD began with the Induction ceremony on 2nd of June. The induction involved the Founder of SCMHRD giving his short speech followed by that of the MD of Maruti, who was the chief guest. These were followed by speeches by the Director and the the Admin head. After a short lunch break, we were presented with a short case study and then the introductions by the faculty.

With this, the day was wrapped up along with the promise of a long and lengthy Outbound Learning (OBL) Program on Sunday, the 3rd. Sunday the 3rd is a very special day for me and I was hoping to have spent it in Mumbai itself, but unfortunately, this wasn’t the case.

Though we had to wake up early for the OBL, a group of us went out to Tamanna for dinner. The idea was to sink our teeth into non-veg, well atleast it was the case for around six of us.

The OBL is a program held every year by SCMHRD for its new batch. The purpose of the same is several fold. The primary purpose is to introduce us to each other and get to know the persons in the batch. It also aims to foster team work with a great number of team games and introduction sessions.

It was simply put, really good. The OBL was held at a small place called Lekha Farms, which is located on NH4 (the highway connecting Pune and Mumbai). We began with a set of games before breakfast.

The first game, couldn’t really be called a game, but I’ll call it “Toss the Ball”, where you simply had to call out the name of the person and toss the ball to him and her. Worked well to find out the other 22 people in my group (the entire batch of 197 was divided into about eight or so major groups and then subdivided into two groups each).

This game was followed by a Carriage-Rider game. Two persons formed a carriage by holding arms together and transported a “rider” to the other end. At this end, one rider became the chariot and vice versa and the three would return. We screwed up and got disqualified.

The third game was required two persons to hold a ball with their backs, reach upto the finish line and return. This was a relatively difficult game, but we managed to grab the second spot of four.

The fourth game was yet another one which we were disqualified from… this involved us forming a human chain and with twelve persons in a line, any human chain is majorly challenged.

We broke for breakfast after this, which was medu vadas and idlis… I must mention here, that the mess food has been pretty good so far, but this is just the end of the beginning as Winston Churchill would say.

Breakfast was followed by an extremely difficult but a hugely team oriented game, which required the entire team to assist each other to get through four increasing levels of ropes tied across two poles (imagine getting inbetween the rungs of a ladder, with the top rung higher than when I stand on my toes with my long arms stretched point upwards (I’m 180cms).
This took up the entire time upto lunch as we struggled but got it done with.

Lunch was not at all tempting, but I had to eat for the energy. The period after lunch involved us doing the Burma bridge, and me also trying the Monkey Crawl (though there wasn’t much crawling )

The monkey crawl was followed by a “I introduce my partner” (in a group of three) session and a team game, where we trashed the competition. Must say that yours truly was influential in coming up with the idea

The last game of the day, was a sheep and shepherd game with the job of the shepherd to lead his blindfolded sheep into the penn using only a whistle. We rocked!

The day came to close with us heading back to SCMHRD, wasting some time out there and then finally hitting the beds, extremely tired.

Monday to today has just been jam packed with classes and assignments. Our foundation course exams begin on Wednesday and I’m still far behind. Most of the profs are good and I’m understanding stuff. Non-acads (gym, swimming, aerobics and yoga) will also be beginning in full force from next week, though we have been given a taste of these).

I’ve been offline most of the fortnight (with only minor mail checking and chatting) because of the schedule and also because of stupid Reliance (the the only thing you can rely on is inefficiency and lies). This was finally resolved this week.

Also had the first set of exams of the foundation course, which included Economics, Maths and Computers. My steady track record of screwing up my Maths papers hasn’t left me even now.

This post will not be complete without me stating that I have really good roomies. The first one is Aditya from Bangalore, a brain and a sportsman rolled into one. The second is Akshat, who is as mad as us. The three of us will soon be labelled the “Three Stooges” of SCMHRD.

It may have been only 15 days, but it sure feels like a long long time. The end of the beginning…

Until I get to blog again…

Finally got down to studying at full shot. Have completed the entire Maths portion. Computers is easy so what remains of that will be last.

Went for choir practice yesterday after quite sometime. Picnic plans are being made for June 3, but by then I will be in Pune.

Received the email today with detailed reporting structure. I’m planning on reporting on 1st June. I hope I don’t have to do 31st May.

As part of the Foundation Course, I need to interview a CxO and an entrepreneur. I completed the entrepreneur interview on Friday itself. Had forgotten to blog about it.

Went today for the CxO interview. Had to travel to town and so set off around 10.30am for that. Landed up at the station in time, but spent 20 minutes standing in line to buy a ticket from a pathetically slow ticket counter. They’ve introduced computers to speed up things, but so far it has just been a major bottleneck.

Took a super-slow fast train to Churchgate and found the place easily. Finished the interview, picked up some coffee at Churchgate station to fill the empty station and caught a train back to Andheri. Found a bus standing outside so was home before 3pm itself.

Ordered pizzas from Pizza Way which has a 3pm to 6pm offer and has really economical and decent pizzas.

Have also got my brother to start teaching me basics of Accounts which I shall need for SCMHRD.

I’ve been having a string of disastrous papers with the CAT and NMAT not going as I desired.

Today I gave the SNAP, which is the exam for SIBM and other institutes. My center was IES School in Kherwadi, Bandra.

I had no clue where the school was and that is where Google Earth stepped in

Didn’t have to take the bike as one of my pals brought her car to the place. So three of us went out searching to see how accurate I would be. Turned out that I was able to gauge the route well even though I only knew the top view

The paper was two hours and had a twist – four sections instead of five. This kinda helped me because I didn’t realize that there were only four sections until I had completed half of English and had Maths left.

The paper was good I can say, though I really should have done some more Maths. Well lets see how it works out. The result is expected on Jan 8, 2007.

Questionable.

Have decided and will continue writing a mock exam a day until a few days prior to the CAT or till they run out

Well, gave the first mock CAT paper of TIME today. Am pleased with my overall score. Should have done better in Quant, because that cut-off still evaded me today as well.

Tomorrow I am giving MOCK2, so maybe I will be able to gauge a continuous progress. But for the IIMs, I am still far off

Haven’t had much time the past week to actually sit down and patiently blog.

So what have I been busy with?

Studies

For one, a good portion of my day has gone in studying. It can be both fun and frustrating at times!

My study partner came over one day and I went to her place the next day. Her mum cooks well

VPS

Besides the studies the rest of the day has been spent working on my new VPS. Once again I have decided to plunge into the world of VPSes. The last time I tried it out, I faced with much failure.

Gave up the idea of VPSes, but after the scam called Webhostplus (which took over Netbunch) X(, I was on the lookout for a good Reseller Plan or VPS. Always must have your sites spread out.
After a great deal of research I settled with Future Hosting.

Guess the bad luck of VPSes has followed me out here as well, because the the node on which my VPS was on gave some problems and my VPS in particular decided to act up!
The support out there (let me mention Vik in particular) were quick to act on this. Even better that a new VPS created for me on another server.

I’m back online again. Will be moving this blog there soon.

And this will be the new home of WebberZone.

And exams

Gave the AIMCAT this Sunday. Turned out to be a 180 mark paper. What I really like about T.I.M.E. is that every paper so far has been a surprise. This is really getting me mentally prepared to expect just about anything from the CAT.

The paper was good. Actually did a good deal of solving in DI. Verbal was a bit difficult and did run out of time for Maths.

Results are out Wednesday evening so will come to know how I stand.

So, that is how life stands currently.
Will try and keep this blog a lot more updated with my personal life. Also need a lot more pics online.

Ended up sleeping around 2am this morning as I was busy working on of my websites.

Was awoken at 8am by a li’l white mouse. Made sure I got some sleep after she left. Mom woke me up around 3.30am right in time for class.

Had two classes today, the first being on Numbers. And once again I realized I have a lot of work to put in even to master quant. Am learning a good deal and thankfully have the time to practice now.

The second lecture was Reading Comprehension. It was actually a test of 50 questions. Fared pretty decently IMHO, though there is still a lot of room for improvement.

At the end, the lecturer decided to tell us about Reverse Reading (though I prefer the term Inverse Reading) to improve our reading speed and comprehension.

It basically involves reading a book / newspaper upside-down. The purpose it hopes to achieve is to improve the ability to understand words from their shapes.

I will start practicing reading the newspaper for five to ten minutes daily. I don’t have anything to lose and if it really helps me read and comprehend passages, so much the better.

BTW, try reading the passage below. It is just one of my past blog entries. Click on the image to open it in a new window. Start from the bottom right.

My dad sent me this via email and found them really cool. Here’s for maths lovers to go all oohh.. aah about…

1 x 8 + 1 = 9
12 x 8 + 2 = 98
123 x 8 + 3 = 987
1234 x 8 + 4 = 9876
12345 x 8 + 5 = 98765
123456 x 8 + 6 = 987654
1234567 x 8 + 7 = 9876543
12345678 x 8 + 8 = 98765432
123456789 x 8 + 9 = 987654321

1 x 9 + 2 = 11
12 x 9 + 3 = 111
123 x 9 + 4 = 1111
1234 x 9 + 5 = 11111
12345 x 9 + 6 = 111111
123456 x 9 + 7 = 1111111
1234567 x 9 + 8 = 11111111
12345678 x 9 + 9 = 111111111
123456789 x 9 +10= 1111111111

9 x 9 + 7 = 88
98 x 9 + 6 = 888
987 x 9 + 5 = 8888
9876 x 9 + 4 = 88888
98765 x 9 + 3 = 888888
987654 x 9 + 2 = 8888888
9876543 x 9 + 1 = 88888888
98765432 x 9 + 0 = 888888888

Brilliant, isn’t it?

And finally, take a look at this symphony:

1 x 1 = 1
11 x 11 = 121
111 x 111 = 12321
1111 x 1111 = 1234321
11111 x 11111 = 123454321
111111 x 111111 = 12345654321
1111111 x 1111111 = 1234567654321
11111111 x 11111111 = 123456787654321
111111111 x 111111111=12345678987654321