Enter SmackD The Director !

Phew ! Whatte Week  ! Last Sunday after spending some awesome time with my friends at Hyderabad I came back to campus a fully contended man ! I felt I was ready to take over the world ! 

I had been in two minds about standing for the post of Director - Operations and Infrastructure Council. It was a trade-off as to how much time I could devote to myself (Friends, BBK, Blog etc) vs. to others (Acads, OIC etc). I loved this kind of Thankless jobs. Brings out the best in me because nothing is more challenging than get a Thank you in a thankless job. My success at Ashok Leyland (in far more worse n thankless conditions) was a testimony to the fact that I can do justice to this post. 

By the way I personally feel voting in India especially in the General Elections is a scam. I think those survey junta like Gallup must do all this and tell us who won. Anyways they make a living out of such kind of stuff. How many people brush twice a day, how many people are men, how many people had monkeys as ancestors kind of surveys ! Will save us a major pain of going and voting between the bad and worse. 

By the way when you are standing for the elections, all of you can think of is elections the whole day. What are my chances, who are all the competitors etc etc ? When I look at my watch to see the time I see elections all over it !

After I had decided on it fully I wrote down my manifesto, bringing about in one page major issues that I wanted to tackle this year. Was careful enough not to have a Jargon-filled manifesto. Afterall I was presenting ideas and not taking a marketing lecture !

Then came the Presentation ! I didnt want to pretend as somebody else on the stage. So I prepared a PPT which had SmackD signature all over it.  ( A separate blog on this coming up next)

In the end though I won by a convincingly huge margin but the competiton was tougher than what it may seem on paper. Hopefully now I will be able to do justice to it.

Director's Cut Version of my Manifesto

Its Election time and I am standing for Director - Operations & Infrastructure Council (OIC). So here are some highlights of my unpublished OIC manifesto: [For illustrative purposes only. Not to be copied. not even the comments]

* I will start an international consortium of a present day industry case study [Go figure out what this means]

* My experience so far, comprises my childhood in the school, a career at XYZ and an active interest in the every high-paying sector.”  - [Child prodigy]

* To empower each and every fellow student to discover and realize his or her full potential and to change the way we think of ourselves, the way we think of each other and the way others think of us” – [Wow, a lot in it for you to think about!]

* To truly have a OIC of the people.” – [To hell with by the people, for the people]

* To be honest, fearless, neutral, accountable, having great integrity of thought and action. To be affable, open and approachable to everyone. [Talent Personified]

* It is this diversity, leadership experience and ability to interact with people and using those interactions to drive towards the desired objectives (infrastructure building and shopping opportunities in our case) that makes me believe that I will be an effective and efficient OIC Director. – [This sentence is neither effective nor efficient!]

* Redressal forum for individual grievances – [Mommy will be in the house]

* Youngest Belt wearing Professional – [Youngest in the family, youngest in Mars]

* If it is significant for you, so it is for me. Openness is my priority, neutrality is my strength” – [And rhetoric is my forte] 

S.H.I,T (SomeHow In Time) - 'Kodak' Moments

Day One: 8th May - "Just Postpone It"

We had decided to meet at 9pm on Thursday but Gaurav requested for postponement as he was committed to the Pan-IIT meet happening that evening. We examined the entire issue in context of marital pressures and decided to meet next morning at 10.30am. Next morning Prasanna had a family emergency and had to rush to Chennai. So we had to make do without our Logistics Director for a day. By 10am Aastha woke up on the wrong side of bed and was feeling sick. Result: Postpone to 11.30pm. Then Vishakha mailed and postponed it to 12pm to give Aastha the additional 30 minutes to get better. Then I emailed asking for postponement to 1.30pm in view of my lunch schedule. Then Gaurav waved the magic wand of Marital pressures again and shifted it to 2pm. Then Aastha mailed since she was supposed to be at the Eco tutorial at 3pm.... and so the series went on till Gaurav finally decided to pick up the phone and the Clock stopped at 8.30pm. Our Director - Refreshments welcomed us with Pasta. Dicussed for an hour and half and called it a day !

Day Two: 9th May - "Of Permutations and Combinations"

The Famous Five met again today to solve a new mystery - the Funtime conundrum. And boy, were we not in our elements. We had agreed for a 3pm meeting the day before but it all seems a ploy to keep me out of study group meetings lest the discussions spillover to my blog. So when I walked in at 3pm sharp I see that three of them had been camping there since 2pm.

Aastha, Director - Refreshments, had lured everybody to her quad with promise of free Tea and she lived up to her promise. I was greeted into her quad by 7 different pairs of shoes and 7 different handbags - one for each day of the week I presume. She mathematically proved to me that the permutations and combinations in which she could wear them in unique combinations would last the entire one year. The math must have confused her quite a bit as she was suggesting that we use both sides of the page on Microsoft Word. Probably Bill gates would address this need of Aastha in the next version of Windows.

Prasanna,  Director - Logistics, was bamboozled to see the number of postponements that had happened to our meeting in his absence. After all close to a dozen postponements in a matter of 4 hours is hard to digest even when you are on a overdose of Hajmola. He decided to play the devil's advocate and confuse the hell out of us without much effort. When he looked at Aastha's shoe collection he laughed at it as he had more number of shoes that too which belonged to different countries. His count of permutations and combinations would have lasted all the five of us this lifetime.

Gaurav, Director - Common Sense, put aside his 'marital' pressures and made it to the meeting by 2pm. He was a bit sad that this time he wouldnt be able physically bond with the assignment. But he was cheered up by the amount of value he added along with the number crunching. Its no secret by the way that IITians get an orgasm out of number crunching.  

Vishakha, Director - Communications, started putting it all on the word document. She bonded so much with Aastha's laptop that the laptop too fell in love with her. They say Love makes one crazy ! The Word application too went crazy after that. The formatting just wouldnt come right !

We were almost done - atleast thats what it seemed. Aastha did the clean up job later in the evening and mailed us the rough draft late in the night. We decided to meet up next morning to finalize stuff. 

Day Three 10th May: "The Case of the Moving Pies"

We meet at 9am. There was not much on content that we had to had so we expected to finish it all up by 10am, latest by 11am. But nature presents irony at every given opportunity. Microsoft word decided to test us today. We were doing basically three things: Formatting, Formatting & Formatting. 

@ 10am: We had a few tables in our analysis. Formatting them was painful. They would shift left - right almost replicating Madhuri Dixit's thumkas. The lines above and below had also joined the Salsa party. While Gaurav, Aastha & Vishakha were fine-tuning content, Prasanna and me spent one hour formatting the tables. Success?? No

@ 11am: This was the time when the mysterious Force hit us. First Prasanna: "Arrey yeh Pie chart kidhar ko gaya?". Next 15 minutes he spent searching for it in the Excel sheet ! Finally we had to constitute a special task force for the search and rescue operation to resolve the issue. Then Gaurav: "I think the Pie charts are moving". He kept trying to put these 'moving' Pie-charts on leash but they were wild horses who refused to be subdued. After a long struggle we managed to tie it down.  

@11.20 am: At this time the case decided to come alive and all the contents started dancing. The tables and the moving Pies decided to push it again. Finally we all had to don the Cowboy caps and whip the wild horses. Adrenalin rush had begin as the deadline came closer. This was when Shweta Divecha decided to up the ante and send across her group's submission to the entire section - Sleep deprivation, lost mind and marketing are a deadly combo. I wonder what would have happened if she had mailed it to the entire Co2010. Mailing lists can be cruel !

@11.45 am: Time for headers and footers.   Formatting Jhamela - Reloaded ! 

@ 11.50 am: We were done finally ! We decided to convert into PDF before uploading into Turnitin. This would ensure that our formatting didnt go awry. We converted it and saved it. Oh not so easy ! We forgot we had saved it ! Redo to save time rather than search and rescue.

@ 11.55 am: Submitted successfully ! We had Aastha bring her 'Kodak' camera out and Sushmita click a Kodak moment !

It was a full on Bollywood masala with everything in it - 

• Romance: Vishakha and the Laptop
• Suspense: Prasanna with the Lost Pie chart
• Thrill: Gaurav with the Moving Pie charts
• Action: Aastha with her PDF conversion
• Comedy: Me ! (Need not elaborate I guess)

At 12pm finally we parted ways only knowing that the next Bollywood Flick is round the corner. Stay tuned folks !

Assignment 1: Birth of the Study Group

A common myth: One of the ways in which Profs ensure you do your studies like a good boy or girl @ ISB is by putting you in a Study Group. Wrong Answer Buddy ! You'll find the real answers in places where you look for them the least !

My study group met up at the Library on Friday to complete our first Group assignment. First thing when we met we decided to distribute responsibilities:

1. Prasanna: He is the Director - Logistics who ensures everybody gets to know what time we are originally planning to meet so that we can have it postponed as per our convenience.

2. Aastha: She is Director - Refreshments. She has been priveleged with the rights to arrange for resfreshments every 15 minutes for us.

3. Gaurav: He is Director - Common sense. He is the one who is supposed to collate the inputs, strip them into minute details and give the official 'go-ahead' for finalizing the answers only if they made sense to him.

4. Vishakha: She is Director - Communications of the group. After getting the go-ahead from Gaurav she is suppose to, in extremely neat handwriting, write down the answers on the assignment paper.

5. Myself have decided to take on the toughest job: Director - Credits and Blames. Yes I will take all credit for jobs well done and pass on the blame for assignments botched up to whosoever is willing to take it (within or outside the group).

It was all perfect. We were like Enid Blyton's Famous five unravelling the mysteries of Managerial Economics together. This way we tackled all the problems with great ease.  

Since we all realized the importance of "Bonding" we decided to take 4 hours for a 2-Hour assignment. In the end the experiement seemed to be working. 

1. Vishakha bonded to the white sheets she was writing on. 

2. Aastha bonded with the Tea cups from which she was drinking. 

3. Gaurav bonded emotionally to the Assignment (Excuse he used: I'll drop it in "alone" after the final answer makes sense to me)

4. Prasanna bonded to the desktop picture on his laptop which strangely was rotated 90 degrees and in which you could see all the different stuff he got while processing loans for different countries at World Bank. His sports shoes looked Pakistani, Wrist watch Vietnamese, Pants Italian, Shirt Thai and Sun glasses Hawaiian. But he never got bribed. Try and question his integrity and you'll know how he got all those 'gifts'.

 

5. I bonded to the notion of having a fixed audience of 4 people who have no option but to bear the brunt of my (poor) jokes !

But all of them seemed to be treading the paths cautiously as has the been the case with 500+ other people on the campus whenever they are around me. I wonder why ! 

Week 1: The Disability Week

Week 1: History ! Done and dusted under my bed (which the housekeeping will clear in an hour from now). The week that went by went off smoother than probably most of us expected. Each one had hyped it up to be a week when even peeing peacefully would be a luxury. From how it went by that was not even close to it.

It has been a week of self-disovery and disability. People kept discovering new ways of getting injured - twisting ankles, falling from bikes, falling after getting drunk etc etc. The Local Ferrari has been kept continuously busy. While others learnt that they were disabled in some way or the other. I saw a lot of people who were Statistically-Challenged, Economically-downtrodden, Financially-unstable & Marketing-Goofs. Talk about diversity ! 

Most slept through the time they should have been awake and were wide awake when they should be instead sleeping. Personally I discovered how life can be ironic. I coordinated and scheduled my Study group meeting and when the time came I was fast asleep in my room. 

I also saw the different forms of Class Participation (CP) on full display. You can categorize them as follows:

1. Desperate CP would think "Everybody has spoken atleast once. I have to say something else I'll get lowest in CP" and would say "Professor, I totally agree with him. *blah blah .. repeat the same points in Greek *"

2. Arbit CP would think "I gotta say something that must look intelligent." and say "Professor, you taught about Balance sheets today. What if it didnt balance, would you still call it Balance Sheet"

3. Infinite CP would not think. He would go on and on and on till somebody threw a short at him or the world came to an end.

4. Extra CP would say "Professor you ave asked us to read 12 chapters from XYZ book and come for tomorrow morning's class. Should we be also solving problems given in ABC book?"

5. After CP would run after the Prof as soon as class gets over and say "Professor, I wanna create a smart and intellectual image of myself in your eyes so can I ask you about something fancy that was in the Economic times today morning and is remotely connected to your subject"

I saw conversations shift from "Have we met? What is your name? Which Section are you in?" to "Dude, have you read the pre-read? Is it connected to what is taught in Class? How is the Prof ? Did you have a surprise quiz?"

The number of Club related SPAMs came down while "I lost my Name tag" mails hit the roof. Coffee sales hit a new high. Big long queues shifted from Goel Dining Hall to the Cafe. Swimming Pool saw more dunking than swimming.

.... and as for me I only sat and watched in amazement !