I returned to college in mid March for the last two weeks at SCMHRD; two weeks filled with exams and vivas. Began first shot of the exams with the viva for our Finance Paper on 21st March. It was short, to the point and sweet with average marks. We also collected out hall tickets on that day.

Two days prior to that Sneha got placed. It was also the same day that Namrata manage to break a leg (and I?m not talking show business) while shopping. She sure got fussed over for two weeks.

My first written paper was for World Class Management on 26th of March and the paper turned out to be a real bouncer for the entire batch. We still await results, which are due in June / July.

On 26th we all set out for Sneha?s treat at Sigri in Dhole Patil Road, Pune. I had been to Sigri last year for one of the many admissions treats and liked the place. This time we went with the Barbeque buffet and it was simply fabulous. I stuffed myself up with fish, prawns and chicken and washed it all down with three triple scoops of strawberry ice cream.

And, the next day, I went out with the Admissions Team, viz. Anoop, Maria, Radhika and Ravi. Rashmi also joined for dinner. We went over to Rajwada, which I had visited once. The service at that place is painfully slow, but the food is decently edible.

We intended to stop off for ice cream and stuff but rushed to catch the last bus back to college.

The remaining days at SCMHRD were two more papers and a viva, lots of clearance forms and final packing as I headed back home to Mumbai.

The last week in Mumbai was actually just a few days as I got my belongings ready for transportation to Bangalore. Lil white mouse was a real blessing as she helped me a great deal with all this. During the time we manage to spare some time to visit Tunga?s Something Fishy, where we drew up our highest bill ever over prawns and fish and Zodiac, a place I haven?t been to since a very long time.

The transporters picked up all my stuff on Saturday and I dropped my bike over on Sunday before I flew down to Bangalore. The driver who received me at the airport was a very chatty guy and pointed out quite a few places as we passed them during the 90 minute drive to the guesthouse.

Today was the first day at work and was an excellent day. I like the place here. This week, I plan on searching for a good 1BHK in Bangalore.

BTW, in all likelihood, this may possibly be my second last post to be filed under College. The last possibly be the results, if I have the time!

Took the early morning Volvo to Pune on Sunday morning for the last two weeks in college (hopefully).

Aditya picked me up from the Hinjewadi flyover. We headed back and met the others out here for breakfast. Immediately after breakfast, we changed into our formals and paid our exam fees.

Now, all that is left is completely our vivas for our finance paper, which has been scheduled for 21st. As well as collecting the hall ticket for my exams which begin on 26th. Also need to collect material to study for them!

Also, got my S.S.C marksheet which was with the college, as these need to be shown to the company when I join on April 6.

I’m also working on a brand new plugin, while continuing to study AEC. It sure is a major uphill task and wouldn’t have been possible if Ronald hadn’t done a good job in handing over the content to me! I’d love to promise an update soon, but there is at least a month before I can be sure about having a perfect one ready.

I’m still looking for testers for the plugin. I have received only one response so far, and, I’d hate to have the plugin released without proper testing. So, if you’re interested do contact me.

While making my last post, it completely slipped my mind about our visit to Appa Balwant Chowk in Pune to sell our MBA books. ABC is a well known place in Pune where you can pickup second hand books for MBA, engineering and other streams. There are several raddiwalas there who buy your old books and then resell them to eager buyers who can’t afford a brand new copy.

Hence, every year ABC sees a stream of students dropping in with their old books. We joined this list of students to sell the books we collected in the past 20 months. Any money is good money!

So, Aditya, Akshat, Sneha and me took the afternoon bus to the city. We were joined by Namrata, who had already sold her books the previous day. Got down and Atur Center and took rickshaws to get to ABC. The moment we alighted we were “received” by book sellers interested in purchasing the books. Boy, can they smell students interested in selling books from afar!

One thing I can’t do is bargain. But luckily for me Namrata and Akshat are the experts at this and Sneha and Aditya can provide decent backup! So, I stood with minimal talking while they bargained and sold all our books for a cool 3K. My share Rs. 600

Show me a college student with loose cash, and I’ll show you a student waiting to spend it!

Since we were free, we headed off to Dhole Patil Road which was a good Rs. 50/- by rickshaw to eat Katti roles, some pastries before realizing we just had nothing to do there!

So, it was back to Atur to catch the bus to Aundh, where we dropped in to Idlicious. We learnt to our surprise that they had stopped serving customers and only offered parcels. The reason: the Pune corporation now only permits those with allocated parking to serve customers. This has resulted in the closure of several restaurants across Pune, including Cafe Coffee Day. So, we picked up parcels and then headed back to college where we ate the idlis.

And, that was the closure of an interesting day

After a quiet two days at home, I finally ventured out on Sunday evening for mass. I?ve realized that I can spend days at home without evening stepping outside and not even think twice about it. Pizzas always get delivered, don?t they?

Anyway, Sunday the 4th also marked the 28th Wedding Anniversary of my parents and since Dad isn?t here I decided to take Mom out for dinner. However, she chose to order home and so be it.

Dinner was Chicken Manchurian, Prawns Masala and Chicken Fried rice. We tried a smaller new restaurant near my place instead of the regular one I ordered. While the chicken was good, the prawns was terrible. Note to myself. ?Do not order sea food from small places?.

Monday and Tuesday were normal days. Aditya was in Mumbai yesterday on placements work and dropped in after that was done. Took him to InOrbit, Malad whose sheer size had him all amazed.

Got back home, bid farewell to him and got ready for Seema?s birthday party. We were at her place gossiping and chatting till post 10.30pm before I drove back home. Had no energy to make any of the blog posts I had originally planned. Had also decided to make my way back to Pune and so needed to get some sleep.

Caught the second Volvo to Pune. The last time I was on my way back the bus tire was punctured and the driver and cleaner spent a good hour fixing that. Fortunately, today I didn?t face any such problem, though the bus that I missed by a minute broke down on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway. After our driver lent a hand, we were on our way.

Reached here in the morning, met up with friends and then got down to making those blog posts. The count of unread posts in my RSS reader is slowly mounting. As is the case of my Gmail inbox which seems to be locked due to Google detecting unusual activity. Now, me not checking my email for 20 hours is characterized as unusual Hopefully, this gets unlocked by tomorrow.

Tomorrow is a long day with a lot of lectures scheduled. We also have a so called Finance paper to work on tonight.

After a good long party, I went off to watch The Day the Earth stood Still on Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday were relatively lighter days. Went off to McDonalds for dinner on Thursday. Was so exhausted, that I just crashed after coming back.

Friday was lecture day with me attending a Strategic Marketing class. The strategic marketing class so far has been filled with cases which makes studying a pleasure. I hate subjects that require us to learn by rote and vomit it out at the exam. While theory is necessary, it is important that there are a good number of cases.

The internet connection at college has been as terrible as ever. The experiments by the network folks are a massive failure and we are starved for a decent connection at one the finest business schools!

Spent all of Thursday coding. I’ve worked on upgrading Connections Reloaded to the next version. I have submitted the same for approval at the theme repository. Given the current controversy, I’m sure this approval process is going to be a while.

I also released updates for three of my plugins, viz. Open Picture Window, Add to Feed and Auto-Close Comments, Pingbacks and Trackbacks yesterday.

Ohh, as for Mumbai, I came back here late Friday night. Was accompanied by a friend who had some personal work out here. We have painting going out at our place in time for Christmas which requires me to spend a while at home. Have some plans for the next few days. Will let you know how it goes.

This post was scheduled for December 1st, but never ended up getting done. Anyway, met up with Lil white mouse came over on the last day of November, the last day of my stay in Mumbai.

We decided to go to Gajalee in Seepz for a sea food dinner. The prices there have already been steep and after the makeover, its gone steeper.

However, must admit that one dish is enough to fill two persons. Ordered a sweet corn chicken soup followed by fish tikka masala and some chapatis.

Caught the 6a.m. Volvo back to Pune, which has been my routine whenever I come here to Mumbai.

Attended lectures in the evening. They are so few that they don’t seem very interesting. However, we have to attend.

Sneha‘s boy was down so we went over to Mezzanine for dinner. The food situation out here seems to get worse by the day and it takes a lot of strength to even enter into the mess. (Now you know why they call it a mess!)

This situation is combated by regular dinners outside. Aditya, Sneha and me went to Tamanna on Saturday and this was followed by the same on Sunday as well and then McDonald’s on Monday.

Was summoned to the Director’s office today and two of us sent to Mumbai for placements pitching activities. Headed over to town for a quick stop at the company and headed back home.

Am going back tomorrow morning. Intend to catch the first bus out of town. Would have stayed more but carried absolutely nothing to assist me!

Landed in Mumbai on 11th itself. The visit to Mumbai would consist of a lot of time spent at home, some bank visits, a lot of traveling, a roce, a wedding and a birthday.

Lil white mouse‘s friend Priyanka‘s marriage was on the 15th and as part of our custom, both the bride and the groom have an individual roce which is a traditional function.

The roce was held on her building terrace in Kurla, which required me to ride in terrible traffic out there. Got there very early in spite of this.

Early did mean that I had to wait for a while before the function actually started… an hour later.

The usual dirtying of the bride-to-be took place followed by dancing. We left the place and I dropped Lil white mouse home.

The next day was rather silent. Saturday was the big day of the wedding. Being free in the morning, I decided to head over to Big Bazaar, this time in Mulund. My last two experiences were rather bad. However, since I had Rs. 1,400 in discount coupons, I had to go make and expense. Picked up a black sweather that shall hopefuly assist me this winter. I spent last winter borrowing jackets from Ravi.

Also picked up a salwar piece for Mom, who celebrated her birthday on Sunday.

Saturday evening was the wedding. The reception was held at St. Josephs in Bandra. Lil white mouse’s sister and dad were trigger happy and I was able to collect quite a few images.

For more photos check out the photo gallery.

Stayed over at my grandma’s that evening and convinced her to come back with me on the bike. That would have made an excellent photo

Sunday was Mom’s birthday. Just a quiet lunch to which Lil white mouse came over. She left in the evening.

Spent Monday visiting banks and my barber in the morning and the rest of the day at home.

Caught the first bus from Mumbai to Pune on Tuesday morning and reach here by 10am itself.

Classes began yesterday with a full four hour class from 6.30pm on Advances in Supply Chain, followed by Strategic Marketing and Advances in Supply Chain lectures today. Thus ends the lectures for this week.

Placements is just around the corner and well I kinda tensed. A well kept secret atleast on the blog was my Preplacement Offer from the company I was in for summers, which I rejected last week since it wasn’t up to my expectations. The scene is bad this year, so my fingers are crossed.

My last post was in Mumbai. And here I am back again posting from my home city.

Returned to Pune after Diwali vacation on 30th itself to make sure that we study for the Corporate Finance and Software Project Management exams on 1st. Well, study we did, but managed to mess up SPM

The rest of the week passed by with some good, some bad and some really really ugly papers. Well, January 3rd is the tentative date for the results.

Had originally planned on leaving for Mumbai on 10th itself. However, I had to attend a student interaction session by the NAAC team. Symbiosis International University is currently being accredited by NAAC.

Namrata and me set out for Mumbai by the 7.15am bus. The driver refused to take it through Parihar Chowk and insisted on taking the bypass route. The drivers can be really frustrating at times.

The MSRTC bus turned out to be full, which is rather suprising for a Tuesday morning. Anyway, got into the Neeta bus which got to Mumbair rather fast. Ended up watching Tashan on the bus. I really wonder how they allow some Bollywood movies to be made!

Got down at Santa Cruz and picked up my bike from Jana who studies in NMIMS. The bike runs well, but as usual I plan on getting it serviced tomorrow. Have a lot of riding to do this week.

Not sure when I’m heading back to Pune. I’ve got to start studying for my upcoming placements.

The last two weeks have been busy, as usual.

Last week had a Software Project Management class followed by which I caught a Volvo to Mumbai to get away from the weekend long powercuts. Spend time with the special someone.

Came back to Pune and immediately got down to work with my FSA case. Was called away by my director to help restore the contacts on his Nokia N96.

After struggling for a good amount of time with trying to use Nokia Contact Manager to import the CSV file, I realized it was easier to do the transfer via Outlook Express and Nokia Sync. Everything went perfect.

Got back to Financial Statement Analysis yet again which took up the next two days.

Today, attended the first day of the Luxury Marketing symposium today. Well, I won’t be buying any Luxury brands for sure!

There’s yet another day of the symposium left. I also have my summer presentation to be made tomorrow. I’m already all set to go.

I haven’t had much time to get down to blogging what I have been upto in the past month. Having celebrated my birthday in Mumbai, I headed back to Pune to get on with life.

Had originally planned to come back to Mumbai on Thursday itself for Placements work. However, a thought improvement workshop interrupted these plans.

The workshop was conducted by CGN. The workshop is actually a program by The Pacific Institute. I had originally planned on going into details for the same, but I guess most of the same is copyrighted and it would not be correct. In brief, the workshop covers topics like scotomas, Reticular Activating System, Gestalt psychology. In all it was an entertaining three days. We did miss a finance test in the middle, which I would have liked to attend.

Left for Mumbai early Sunday morning and reached there by afternoon. It’s been starting to take too much time traveling to and fro between Mumbai and Pune!

My first job was to clean up the house. Took out the vacuum cleaner that I purchased oh so long back and cleaned up lots of dust from my computer primarily, and then the rest of the house.

Aditya was to stay with me for the entire week while we roamed the city visiting companies. Well, that’s exactly what we did, “roamed the city”.

The next five days were extremely exhausting, with us traveling in all directions, in buses, rickshaws, taxis and more importantly, the local trains of Mumbai. The five day first class tourist pass did not provide that much relief!

Left for Pune last Monday and took well over five hours to get back to college. The journey was extremely frustrating. Caught a volvo at about 9am, which reached Wakad around 1.30pm! I made the mistake of getting down at the Police Chowky, only to find no rickshaws. Had to climb mounds of construction work and walk a good deal to find the tumtums. Would have taken photos but I had my hands full with three heavy bags!

Walked another kilometer or so from the Hinjewadi chowk to college, wondering at every step of the way if I would make it back alive.

Reached my room only to find out that I had a class, which had already begun. Had a quick bath (it was a necessity) and rushed for the class, which was immediately followed by a test.

The rest of this week has been extremely lazy, with a good deal of electricity problems. And, it is the weekend yet again and yet again we are without power for full 48 hours!

Did I mention that in times like these I really really miss Mumbai?