Quiz

The week that was…

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Some highlights from the first academic week at ISB:

  • The profs are really good, and their ability to keep the class engaged for a couple of hours amazing. All that talk about international profs is true I guess. I was very skeptical about my ability to stay awake in classes, but I have managed that without too much fuss. We discussed ManU in an accounting class, wine and cheese were talked about in economics, and a lot of stories revealed in marketing!!
  • We already have had a quiz. Granted that it was a pretty simple one at that, but one in the first week. Seesh!!
  • The first case study for Marketing, the only course with class participation (CP). As imagined, there was a lot of “arbit CP” for which people were dunked in due course of time. Also, it felt awesome that the strategy that we came up with was actually the one that the company used later.
  • We have our first assignment due by EOD today. Again nothing too difficult, but something to be done nonetheless.

Other than that, the week was pretty calm and most of the time was spent, well, sleeping. A couple of birthday celebrations were attended. I must confess that dunking does not follow any pattern at all, random distribution if I can borrow from Stats, and if anything it keeps increasing in randomness. People get dunked without rhyme or reason!!

One great thing about this place is the movie screening. You can use the comfortable lecture theaters for screening movies, which can be borrowed from the seriously awesome collection the library (LRC @ISB) has!! We had a smalll screening of Amores Perros on friday evening. The director, Alejandro Inarritu, effortlessly weaves three separate stories and tells a wonderful story about love, life (he calls it death), and betrayal.

I also joined the ISB Blogging community and hopefully we will soon start blogging on the official students blog.

I am back

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… after a brief hiatus. I have been away for almost a month, mostly due to increased work load. But I am firmly and surely back again. I recount below some of the more interesting things that have happened over the past month.

1. BarCamp Delhi 4 was attended. It was my first BarCamp and a very nice experience at that. It was held at the Amity Incubator in Noida, and they were excellent hosts with brilliant WiFi and lunch. Met a lot of interesting people. The event was low on tech and more on networking I was slightly disappointed. I personally delivered a talk on “Software and IP” and Akshat one on “Folksonomies”. After the camp clicked a couple of snaps at the India Gate and got caught in hail and rain. Thankfully the lappie and the cam were unaffected. Photos here.

2. The Quiz at office was won. The Bong (Aditya Chakrobarty) and me – named as “Two Bongs or Not” – defeated three other teams by a huge margin and got ourselves coupouns for Landmark worth a grand each. Luck played a huge part, but I am not complaining.

3. Gurgaon experienced a week of “Awesome Mausum” – I phrase I can claim to have invented. Rain pounded and the temperatures fell so low that the fans were switched off! In the middle of May – who would have thunk!

Fell in love with Poets of The Fall – Carnival of Rust. Other than that I have been twittering quite a lot. You can follow me here.

The Day The Music Died

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A quiz, sent by Sandeepan (ex-BITSian) yesterday, had a connect for Don McLean with American Pie and Vincent Van Gogh. While I figured outthe Vincent connect, Ojas knew the American Pie one.

But February made me shiver,
With every paper I’d deliver,
Bad news on the doorstep…
I couldn’t take one more step.
I can’t remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride
But something touched me deep inside,
The day the music died.

McLean was a paperboy in his youth, and the incident is about the death of Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and The Big Bopper in a plane crash on February 3, 1959. Since all three were so prominent at the time, the day came to be known as “The Day The Music Died“. Holly’s recent (widowed) bride, Maria Elena, was pregnant when the crash took place; she had a miscarriage shortly afterward.

The lines were also used by Time in December 1980, on the death of John Lennon. The song has many more references to both political and musical events during the life of Don McLean. You can read more about it here.

Also came across two new songs yesterday. Linger – Cranberries and I Can’t Tell You Why – Eagles. The latter has beautiful lyrics and below are my favourite lines from the song.

Nothing’s wrong as far as I can see
We make it harder than it has to be
and I can’t tell you why

Quiz Actually!

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Please do not blame me. This is the title the PR dept came up with for an intra-company quiz contest.

The elims were held yesterday. 30 questions (provided at the end), 30 minutes, 25 teams and 5 finalists to be chosen. The elims was fun and I hope a sign of things to come. Prepared by Rohan, a very interesting set of typical (though pretty easy ones) quiz questions. Anyways, the good news is that Ojas and me qualified (we were the last ones ;)). Yet another point ot note was that 5 out of the 10 finalists (5 teams) were BITSians. Sandeepan (’96, ELAS, BoB finalist), Ram (’98, HDC), Chaitanya (’98, PCr), Ojas (’01, Soundz), and yours truly.

The finals are slated for Monday Tuesday, and I hope to have loads of fun then.

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