Kyaa mausam aaayaa hai .... :((

The weather here is quite extreme ..... 6 months back when I landed here in the month of July, this place was as hot as a furnace (though the locals said that the summers were over ;) ) ... Bombay can get hot too but then its nothing compared to this place!!

And since the mid of November this place has turned mind numbingly cold (though the locals say that this year the cold is milder than previous years ;) ) .... as per some websites the mercury dips to almost 3 degrees in the night time in Gurgaon ....n the campus being an open one with lots of greenery its easily a couple of degrees lower out here.... So you can imagine!! Its too damn cold out here. I have worn enough woolens and real heavy ones at that in a months time here than what I did back home in Bombay in all of 20+ years :)

In such cold weather we have classes at 8:30 AM in the morning when the mercury is hovering in single digits and the sun refuses to make its presence felt ..... and worse some professors are scheduling extra classes at 8:30 AM :((

Plus it tends to get verry foggy in the mornings (which too the locals claim is not bad this year as it can actually be) .... just the other day i.e. saturday got a taste of how bad things can get...

On normal days the view from my room is pretty decent one:

but on Saturday the scene at 7:30 AM was something like this



If you are wondering that why was I up at such a time when it was so cold .... fyi .. we had an extra class on Strategy at 8:30 AM and I had "coolly" slept through the night without reading up for the class :) ..... Making it to the 8:30 class in time is a big ask for most people nowadays....

What this kind of weather induces bigtime is SLEEEP ...... one can actually sleep through the day in the warm confines of the quilt ..... without even bothering to get out of bed for breakfast, lunch or dinner!! :)

Newyz this is all I could write on "Dillii ki Sarrdeee" or perhaps it should be "MDI ki Sarrdeee". Few months down the line .... it will be Summer time ... and I am already dreading the prospect of spending my summers@Gurgaon!! God Save Me!!

P.S: Written during the brief time I was out of my bed after sleeping through most of the day ... and most likely will again go to sleep after posting this. Pre-reads for tomorrows class ... some other time!! :)

My Campus - MDI, Gurgaon!!

Was planning to write a detailed post on this topic ... but came across this post written by a senior ManDevIan, couple of years back .... so being an IT engineer who believes in extensibility, reusability blah blah .... I can close this post by just giving a reference to the super duper seniors post!! :))

Newyz .. will post some new pics in the near future .... once the mind numbing cold subsides!!

Meanwhile you can check out my campus here too:

MDI Pics

Most if not all of the pics in this album were clicked on my first morning on this beautiful campus which is now, my home for 2 years!! :)

Besides this heres another great collection of MDI Pics and real classy ones at that clicked by one of ma friend who also happens to be ma senior here .... some of the pics even adorn the Alumni Calendar released the other day.

Alma Matters!!

For any b-school worth its salt .... besides the obvious things like faculty, quality of students, infrastructure etc ... its the alumni network which helps build its brand in the corporate world. Here is where the IIM A,B,Cs, the XLRIs n JBIMSes of the world have an edge over MDI right now ..... since these institutes have been in existence for over decades now ... their alumni is obviously in all the right places and places that matter a lot in the corporate world. MDI according to me is on par with the schools I just mentioned above or even better perhaps on some parameters. (More on this in a separate post soon ... as I don't want to digress from the main topic of this post i.e. Alumni)

As far as alumni goes, the flagship PGPM course is just 14 years old. So the Alumni network is just about on the verge of reaching maturity. The fact that in this short span of time MDI has made its place in the top 10 b-schools of the country is a testimony of the overall quality and performanceof its programmes.

Anyways coming back to the Alumni, on the 19th we had the National Alumni Meet on our campus. This years event was special as it marked the registration of the Alumni Society ...... which is rather late for a top grade b-school like MDI ...... but perhaps "better late than never" suits perfectly in this case.

There was a cricket match organised between the Alumni team and our batch i.e PG07 team. It was a keenly fought match with our team hitting the winning runs on the penultimate delivery of the match.

In the evening the Alumni Website was launched with much fanfare ... its a pretty good website ... n a much needed one to keep in touch with the alumni .... since until now the feeling was "Humare aadmee chaaron taraf phhailey hue hain!!" ;) Besides the website an Alumni Calendar was launched containing pics of MDI clicked by some ManDevIans which includes yours truly too. Also the quarterly Alumni magazine "Footprints" was released. The cover story this time is on Couples@MDI ...how their love blossoms and grows on campus :D ... A slightly modified version of one of my earlier posts on "Summer Placements" also found a place in the magazine which made me feel really proud!! :)

All in all it was a great day .... a landmark one for MDI according to me. I am pretty sure that this small step by MDI will help ManDevIans take giant strides in the years to come!! :)

The mood for the day was well captured by the punchline of the Alumni website i.e. "ALMA MATTERS".... Sure it does!! :)

....... TZP the movie I was really looking forward to ....

Some weeks back I had posted about TZP i.e. "Taare Zameen Par" ... a movie I had then said that I was really looking forward to. We had a "Christmas Vacation" and I had gone to mumbai for 10 odd days. just abt managed to catch up with this movie .... and have to say its easily one of the "real good" movies that I have watched .... n one of the best in recent times.

Nothing really flashy about the movie ... its a simple story which U can identify with coz if not yourself, you must have at least seen someone around you go through what the little Ishaan goes through in the first half of the movie ..... atleast I could. It brought back memories of my school days .. when my younger bro had to go through something similar especially the scene where Ishaan gets compared with his elder bro ... me obviously being the more studious and disciplines elder bro :P Also the scene where Ishaan is checking out the stuff being sold outside his school brought back memories of school days ... as bor/karwanda, buddhee k baal, kachhee badishep (thats wot we used to call it as kids ;)), gola etc were a part of daily lives of most school going kids of Bombay n I hope they still are.

Its a movie with its heart in the right place ... needless to say something I was expecting since it was a movie with Aamir Khan both behind as well as in front of the camera. But still I think Aamir did a brilliant job by not getting trapped in the standard bollywood format i.e. silly heroines, item songs etc :) .... n he didn't get too obsessed with self too ... allowing Darsheel whoz done a great job as the vulnerable Ishaan ....to take the centrestage for the most part of the movie. I seriously feel Darsheel deserves to win a few awards this year .... good lesson or two in this movie for the Tushar Kapoors, Arjun Rampals of the world on how important emoting on screen is.

Coming to the music ... all the songs are equally good and relevant in the movies flow ..... I believe its one of the most complete album to come out of bollywood in a long time. Its class apart in terms of everything be it meaningful lyrics, perfect music or soulful singing ...the album which comes close to it is I guess RDB. Prasoon Joshi is the common link and for a change Shankar Ehsaan Loy has done a real wonderful job with the music ..... moving beyond the pretty woman, its the time to disco, wheres the party tonite type stereotypical music.

All I can say is this movie is worth watching on a big screen .... especially this song which is a real classic ....



.. a song close to my heart coz .... though I am much older than Ishaan ... "B school" is a kind of "Boarding school" too .... and the lyrics truly capture my feelings many a times in this place.... being so far away from home n family.

newyz belated Happy New Year Wishes and many thanks for taking the pains to read my blog. :)