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

Today was the big day again, i.e. big for nearly two lakh students who took the CAT today.

I had my center at Guru Nanak College in Sion East. Never heard of that place but was confident of getting there.

Left early and was there by 9.15am itself to find a large number of students already there, some studying, others chit chatting.

My class was on the fourth floor and with no lifts that meant a lot of climbing.
Had my seat on the very last bench which turned out to be dusty and was very very irritating.

The folks there were a lot stricter this time (wasn’t even allowed to keep my pencil box).
The paper started only at 11am. Maths and English were good however my Data Interpretation was a mess. Well I’m not getting through this time. CAT 2006, I may come!

That’s it for today I guess. Was supposed to meet Madam C but she’s not keeping well. Get well soon my honey.

Will rest a bit today. Have to go for mass in the evening. Today is Christ the King feast.

So until next year….