Mdi Gurgaon, Saurabh Garg and a Canon A 75

Mandevians @ ICFAI Gurgaon

2005-01-09T08:35:00.000-08:00

Mandevians, students from MDI went down to participate in Blitzkrieg at ICFAI Business School (IBS) Gurgaon this weekend. Blitzkrieg is thier annual cultural festival wherein they invite participants from all over the country and there are speciality games for Operations, Marketing, IT, Finance etc. Apart from these games, there were inforals, quizzes etc.

So I went there and won the IT game along with Saurav Dey and Aarti Dewan. Shubhi Sood and Samit Tibrewala were third in the game. Ridhima Thukral, Ketan Mohile and Lavin won the Marketing Game and they were second in Ad-Mad. Great going MDI peeps !

So the point to note there was that they had a theme based show. I think thats a great idea and it should be followed by other B-Schools as well. Their theme was Rural India. All the games were designed around this theme and the campus was decorated with rural settings. The themes were relevant in todays' context when more and more companies are going for rural markets and trying to penetrate the heart of India.

And before closing this entry down, I would like to mention that I would be closing this BLOG very soon as the real purpose of the BLOG is not being served. I would keep posting about MDI and the things in my personal BLOG.

Saurabh Signin Off @ MDI !

Arena 2004

2004-12-17T06:46:00.000-08:00

Imperium, Delphique, Illumina and e-Blast are the MDI's window for the outside world. People know what happens at MDI, how hard we word, how harder we party, how we enjoy life through these events. Somethings are exclusive and people do miss them. Arena 2004 is one of them.

Arena is our internal sports and cultural meet organized once every year. We have competitions like races (in all flavours Dash, Relay, backward etc.), badminton, table tennis etc. I would leave the rest of the details for the lucky few when they get into MDI.

So the point here is not Arena 2004 but the matter of the fact is the competitve spirit that sports bring out of people. At Arena there were my classmates - some freshers, some with work-ex of 5+ years and everyone was striving hard to participate, to win ! There were faculty members (who anyhday would charge in lacs for consultancy assignemnts), there were FPM students (who would be the professors in some time to come), kids (the future), exchange students (who would fly off to their countries in few days). Almost all were very differnt people but had something in common. The spirit to fight, the spirit to participate and the spirit to win.

I can take myself for an example. I am one of those who HATE walking, leave alone running. So there was this race and one of the classmates were looking for someone to complete the team and I pitched in. I was'nt decided that I would be able to run and do justice to the team's confidence in me but I decided to go ahead and be a part of the team. And I left even myself surprised with the kinda effort I put in. I forgot everything, I wasnt concious of the girl I want to pataofy, I was'nt worried about my grades, future anything... All I was concerned with was running and putting in my best effort. The feeling can not be replicated. You have to do it to experience it. Sports brought out a hidden me. I always thought I can't concentrate on something, can't put in my best, would never be satisfied but when I was running, even thought I didnt win, I was happy, I could tell myself that I had put in the best effort and I knew that nesxt year, I would put in even harder effort and try to win.

It was a sort of enlightenment for me. (Wow am talking like Aasaram Bapu) :D. So the bottom line is that if someone can put in so much effort in sports and be motivated like anything, why can't people realize it themselves... Confusing thoughts I know but who said life was easy...

2004-09-13T11:13:00.000-07:00

Septemberthe22nd happens to be my Birthday and my First End Term exams start on that very day. I would say a perfect birthday gift for me. I would be completing my first term here at MDI on 25th September the day our exams end.

We have two papers on a day with one in the forenoon and one in afternoon. Exams are REAL tough and they get tougher with the kinda competition we have here. The marks and the grades that we get are relatively calculated. So this means that if you get 45 outta 50 and the rest of the batch has got 48+/30, you are screwed. Even though on paper you scored 90% (imagine 90%) you are gonna get a D grade. There could be times when you get 10 on 50 and grade as A+ because the entire class got 7 on 50. Its all relative. Now I see the implications of the Theory of Relativity given by Sir Albert Eienstein.

So we have few days to go for the exams and that mean some of us would get a few days to study, some would take it as few days for masti, some (people like me) would take these days as one of those regular days when you have nothing special to do and just pester people. Talking of pesterin people I made Samidha real MAD. She actually yelled at me! (Big Deal - every other girl yells @ me).

Saturday Nights

2004-09-11T13:36:00.000-07:00

So this is one of the few Saturdays when I ain't home.

A Free Bird

2004-08-22T08:59:00.000-07:00

Its beeen atleast a month since I have been trying to add an entry to the blog. There are a million things I can talk about and I can't seem to add an entry in the blog.

So I have some time before I sleep today and here is my contribution for the day. If at all anyone reads this COMPLETELY, please send me a mail @ saurabh.garg@gmail.com and I would send a quiz to complete ;) Actually I don't believe that people would have time to read my blog. Anyways here is comes...

So the reason I have some spare time is that my exams aka MID TERMS are gettting over tomorrow. Tomorow we have Oral Comunications and Presentation Skills Paper and as far as I know, I know quite a fwe things about it and I should'nt really study. We have seven papers of one credit each. Mid Terms started on Monday and we had two papers on a day and they passed in a jiffy. One thing great about a B School is that life is very fast. The time runs so fast that you don't even realize when you got bald and when two years got over.

Anyways exams was a sad story. As usual I did'nt study the way I should have. I did the badly and anyone can guess my scores. There are fwe things that I have learnt from the Mid Terms. I could be one of those gurus and share my global gyaan bout em... but at a later stage. I have got more important stuff to write.

So exams, I realized who was a good friend and who was'nt. There would be some people who irrespective of their condition and preparation level would help you out and there would be few who won't want to help at all. I dunno if I can call them friends but am really impressed by some people. It would be worth mentioning there names here. I am very honourd to be studying with Ketan, Nishant, Pushkar, Ridhima, Samidha, Sandeep, Satyajeet, Saurabh. These guys never ever refused anyone for anything someone might need.

After that senti stuff, lets get to the funny side of the exams. The paper begins at 10:15 in the morning and we are recquired to be in the hall at 10:05. One fine day, we had some paper and it was 10:10, we realized that Mr. Sandeep Agarwal (the guy who posted the Mother Diary write-up) was missing from the hall. We could'nt figure out what might have hapened to him and where would he be. We missed called him n number of times and he won't pick da phone. Suddenly someone thinks that he might be sleeping and then one person goes running to the hostel to find him. He is found sleeping in his room with no worries of any sort. Finally he is brought into the exmination hall at around 10:25 and finally he manages to take the paper. Moral of the story... Buy an Alarm Clock !

Sandeep also happens to be a member of the "Constitutional bench of the Supreme Court" of PG04 Section A (people here have been divided into two sections with 61 students each and I happen to be in section A). The other "judges" of the "constitutional bench" are Satyadeep Gandhi, Myself, Saurabh S. Gupta and Sharad Gupta (4 out of 5 are baniyas ;)). For the unlearned, a "baniya" is a special class of people in India who are supposed to be good at making money.

At MDI, the way we sit in the lecture hall is pre decided and everyone sits according to the enrollment number. My number happens to be 50 and yes its cool :D. So the bench I sit on houses people from number 48 to 52. We sit on the second last row in the lecture hall and it gives us a lot of oppurtunities to unleash ourselves. So why are we called The Constituional Bench? Once we were sitting in a class and getting bored of the lecture, so the creative geniuses of the five people sitting on the bench thought of taking out an opinion poll. We took out the poll and everyone in the class sorta liked it. The very next day we were taught about the Constitutional Bench of the Supreme Court and we decided to call ourselves The Bench. Another name came out. Me being a John Grisham Fan, decided to call us Brethren as we decided petty issues with these polls. These polls are a big hit and everyone still enjoys it and we get to test our creativity skills with em. The reason for me writing about it that from Friday onwards, The Bench would be broken. The seating order is reversed after the Mid Terms and people are now made to sit in decreasing order. Effectively we would be sitting on the second bench and we would no longer be sitting on the same bench. I would miss the fun we had on the bench :(

Now since I have touched polls, let me complete the poll thingy. The poll is made on a sheet of paper with a question on it. Then we add few options and we pass along to let everyone add their votes and add options. Few questions from the poll that I remember are "Who is the most effective sleeping pill in the class?" with options as people who would talk and make no sense, another was "Who should go and take a bath?" with options as people who stink, another was "Whos got the crush on the Madam X" with unlimited options and Madam X not defined.

MDI has a excellent Music Society called Mandolins. They have EXPERT people with them. No one can sing better than Sowmya and Prakash, play better keyboard than Abhik, make better sounds with computer keyboard than me ;), play better saxophone than Karishma, play beter guitar thar Rahul Raj Singh. There are so many talented people, if I started writing their names here, it would take me atleast an hour to jot down stuff and beleive me that hour would be worth spent. I would try to do it at some other time but abhi let me try to add things that would add more dimensions to my experience at MDI. Before that, one name deserves a special mention. Prakash. He is one of the people who can sing really really well. He can play guitar, drums, flute, you name it and he plays it. He is from some North-Eastern state and the problem he faces is the lyrics. He does'nt knows the lyrics of many hindi songs yet he is able to substitue some words and sing them perfectly. I can't explain it on words. You have to listen to him to know what kinda talent he is. I have got a few videos of him singing and would try to post them if someone could donate me about 30 Megs of webspace and few gigs of bandwidth. Oh did I mention that he works in the Mess here?

MDI campus is very very beautiful. It is spread over an area of about 40 acres and is very scenic. None of the building has more than three floors. This adds to the beauty of the landscaping. We have huge trees lining up the roads and pathways. The campus is surrouned by the Golf Course on two sides. Its all open and green. Another thing to boast about would be the view and feel of the campus in the rains. When it rains, everything is so beautiful and refreshing. When it rains, the weather is already very pleasant and on top of it we have the beautiful MDI campus. I would say the sight of the MDI campus in rains should not be missed by any one.

One thing good about MDI is that apart from academics we get to do a lot of stuff. There are so many events and oppurtunites for people to explore and develop themselves. If one is interested in academic reaseach, we ave Delphique for him. If one is interested in cultural events, Imperium and for all those people who live, eat and sleep fun and hard work, we have Illumina.

Delphique is an Management Convention where people from industry come and help us know more. For Delphique, students at MDI research on a particular theme and write papers on it. They would carry out research for three long months working atleast 4 hours a day, finding about the topic chosen and prepare a discussion material. Then this discussion would be opened in front of the CEOs and VPs and MDs of the huge companies and then they would give their perspective. This event lasts for two days and after two days you come out more knowledgble than your entire two year stint at a BSchool. Last year's website can be located at http://www.mdi-delphique.com.

Imperium happens to be our inter BSchool Cultural festival. We invite students from all over the country and they all come and have fun of their lives. Last year there were Parikrama and Jagjit Singh on campus and boy was it fun. From the pics and videos of the last years Imperium, I envy my seniors and wonder if I was there last year, what would it be like. I really wanted to be there...

And last but not the least we have Illumina the Diwali Mela. Diwali is one time of the year when everyone is so happy and in the best of their spirits. We celebrate Diwali like no other BSchool. We have a fun day Diwali Mela where people living near MDI come and enjoy. We have regular stalls like food, games, quizzes etc. Every one across evert age group gets something or the other to make him happy.

And sudddenly I realize that this post is getting long and I should stop writing cos its hurting my eyes, my fingers, my brains, my ...

Mother Dairy Visit

2004-07-25T20:08:00.000-07:00

This was written by Sandeep...

From: pg04sandeep_a Sent: Sat 7/24/2004 4:03 PM
To: PGPM2004
Cc:
Subject: Mother Dairy Visit
Attachments:

Hi everyone

Just a little recap of our Mother Dairy Visit today. Not all of us were there but i believe that 1/3rd of the batch was. It started around 8.00 A.M. with quite a few sleepy faces who were also sleeping in the Bus on the way to Mother Dairy(atleast for half the journey). Around half of the bus was still active in the morning and they eventually got the bus involved with a game of antakshri. Ofcourse one team (the people sitting upfront) were not as vociferous as compared to their peers sitting at the rear end. We reached MD in the course of this antakshri and had a good time there. especially with the AC on when the movie was playing (zzzz) and also with various parts of the dairy. The movie ended with some CP or DCP even when there were no Class Participation Marks.
Some of us actually wanted to climb the milk containers and probably wanted to peep into it. Then came the refreshments part of the Visit at Mother Dairy and that was the milk offered and sharma is the current record holder(i think) with 11 glasses of milk. And ofcourse everyone enjoyed the ice-creams as well. And we were back in the bus for the return journey.

It started with Arvind singing two beautiful hindi songs for us. He should be encouraged to sing more often. After that people were specifically asked to sing songs for the bus a few notable singers -
Swati, Pushkar, Amrit, Pochu, Khemka. Quite an active participation from the rest of the bus a few notables Saurabh G. , the other Saurabh , and Stayajit Gandhi.

There were a few dedications specially for Raj(two songs dedicated), Ruchika (one song dedicated), Some dedications to the quizzes and ..... . And for the rest of the journey almost all the bus was singing except for one or teo sleepy faces here and there. Again leading the Change Masters in their efforts were Soumaya, Amit Sharma, and Abhishek Kanodia
(who knows all the lyrics of all the songs). Their was shayari though not always good by khemka. It ended with a few songs that i cannot recall after entering MDI and some shayari. I think i will end here and sorry if i have missed something.

Looking forward to the next Industrial Visit.

Sandeep Agarwal
PGPM 2004

Apart from what Sandeep has to say, One thing I enjoyed most about Mother Diary visit was the advert jingle... "Doodh Dhoodh"... The tag line. It was played for us after the introductory presentation on Mother Diary was over. Everyone (about 40 of us) forgot our ages and sang along with the advert. It was AMAZING experience.

I would try to find out the lyrics somewhere and post em here.

P.S.: When coming back, I was sleeping ;)

Gone with the wind !

2004-07-24T02:05:00.000-07:00

It's 24th July 2004. A month has passed in a flash!

I landed at MDI on 24th June 2004 with a couple of bags and lots of hopes. Its been a month since I am here and I would be here for atleast another 11 months or so.

23rd June... There I was standing amongst 180 odd more "Change Masters" who had come to Gurgaon from All Over the India to Change their destinies and Master their lives. Some have already been successful in Changing and Mastering, some are almost there and there are some, like me, who are still trying to get used to the life here.

A typical day here would include sleeping for just 4 hours, eating the same "good" food daily, looking at your batch mates study for rest 20 hours and cursing yourself for not studying. And this is when we don't have difficult subjects, sweet professors, so many facilities and what not.

Everyone would talk about academic rigor here but one thing that goes most un-noticed is the student activities. Students here have innumerable options if they want to explore and develop themselves. One can run anything from a Kirana Store to a Mutual Fund here. Apart from running stuff, you can be a part of PlaceComm or Alumni Committee and make people run around.

Library is huge! You have any book you name. One book I found missing was good old Champak that I love so much. And no copies of Panchtantra. Seriously speaking, Panchtantra is one of the best Management Books you can ever find and still no mention about it in the library. I tried asking the librarian but alas! He said there are no plans to procure it in the near future. I would certainly think about it once I become the General Secy. or the PG Rep.
Talking of posts and the power associated with them, we have had elections, booze parties, campaigning, slogans, mud slinging etc. It was certainly fun. Politics here at MDI aren't like those we have at Delhi University. People think about it for a day, forget it the next day. The candidate I was favoring and campaigned for lost in the CR elections. I would be taking the revenge next year ;)

Right now I am sitting in the Comp Center. Its open from 9 AM to 5 AM. Yes 0900 hrs to 0500 hrs. You can play music of your choice in the Comp Centre, Occasionally Study, Play Games, the hottest ones being Icy Tower and Pocket Tanks. I suck at both of them even though I think am champ with gaming ;)

Computer Games remind me of TOL. They were fired yesterday. Will post about it in the War of Words.

So every student here has a senior student mentor and a faculty mentor. My student mentor is Ruchi Pokhriyal. She is from Delhi, an engineer and ex-classmate of Jyoti. She is majoring into Marketing and HR and she happens to hold a few key positions here. She is one of the five members of the Alumni Committee and a Panelist at the Delphique/Imperium HR panel. Imperium/Delphique is our inter-college fest and there is immense competition to get through these panels. There was this event where I was supposed to talk to seniors and write about Ruchi. I hope the report I wrote is still with Ruchi and as soon as I get it, I would post it here. I am still not sure if I should call her "TU" or "AAP". She is more of a friend than a senior, but again this is one of those things that are debatable ;) Enough about Ruchi and coming to my faculty mentor, Prof. Kalra, he is one of the pioneers in the Organizational Behaviour. Just search for HPM and you would know the stature of the man. He takes our Organizational Behaviour Classes and to tell the truth, he is AMAZINGLY good.

To Be Contd ...

Lights, Camera, Action !

2004-07-20T13:29:00.000-07:00

OCPS - Oral Comunicatoin and Presentation Skills. This is one credit course that we have here. We will be taught presentatoin and communication skills and thye would teach us speaking with courtsey, using busniess slangs, eye contact, body movements while speaking, way we start, way we end etc.

The first excersise was giving a one to two minute speech on a topic of choice. I was supposed to speak today and I had to talk about Computer Gaming. I scribbled few points when I was waiting for my turn to come up and had prepared everything like a friend who would prompt me every minute so that I can keep track of time. Ah, one thing I forgot to mention here is that tihs speech would be videotaped and distributed back to us so that we know where we lack and may be help us laugh on other pepole ;) This videotaping was done with a regular 70 mm film camera with a flash light on top that made me look fairer (did pretty good job I guess). As soon as I reached there and I saw the camra for the first time, I wanted to run back to my seat and hide under the bench. But again with all those "divas" watching me there was no turning back. I started in the usual mannre, stammering, nrevously, not confident of myself but as evreyone konws once I start talking, I am unstoppable. So I started talking and talking and talking about the gaming industry and etc etc and went on. I finally decided to stop and our Prof told me that I spoke for 3 minutes and 50 seconds and I thought I was in the time limits. And this was when Sandeep prompted me after a minute.

I got the regular feedback of being fast and not speaking clearly. The Prof was trying to tell me the ways to improve and ways to buid confidence but who was listening, I was dying to get back to the seat and and hide.

I noticed one thing though... I could not gather enough applauses from people as some of the other speakers. Lesson to be learnt: There are better people and you gotta slog, kick them in the butt and get better than em.

Let me tell you it IS difficult to talk in fornt of people and people who are into Public Speaking gotta be very very brave and confident. I tihnk if I practise hard enough and get my speed right, I can be serious competitoin to Navjot Singh Sidhu !

It was one of those brong HBO classes when some creative individual thought abpout statring an opinion poll in the class. The Question was "Who according to you is the funniest sleeper in our class?". Following lucky people were listed as the options... Ankit Srivastava, Saurabh Garg aka ME, Raj Kiran Sharma, Shubhi Sood, Satyadeep Maheshwari etc.

Dr. Kalra was taking the lecture and this question was being passed among the people and it completed the round and dear Ankit won it hands down. He got 27 votes. The next person in the list was Pushkar Joshi. He got all of 9 votes.I managed one SELF VOTE :D.

Signing off till next time.

Happy Birthday Dear Roomie

2004-07-19T09:36:00.000-07:00

One of the traditions at MDI is to celebrate the Birthdays. The Hostel and Mess Secretary would send an EMail to all the people that there is one BirthDay boy and everyone would asemble in front of the mess to celebrate.

Another thing of note is that the roomie of the Birthday Boy is supposed to arrange for the cake.

So today, 19th July 2004, it was Lucky Me. My Roomie aka Prasad aka Pochu had his Birthday. I wasnt at hostel, went home :D and when I came back at around 10, Shubhi informed me that it was Pochu's Birthday and I need to arrage for the cake. Me and Gupta went to Sec. 14 market and bought the cake for dear Pochu.

So we have a Birthday Boy, a Cake, A reason to celebrate and so many people waiting to get their hands (or should I say legs) on the Birthday Boy and the roomie.

Monday, we were suppsed to submit three major assignments and seniors' mid terms were starting. So everyone was kinda awake and everyone was ready for the Party.

I forgot to mention one thing here. People here give Birthday Bumps to the Birthday Boy and THE ROOMIE. Yes the Roomie.

Since Prasad happens to be a very popular guy, almost 50 odd people gathered there and everyone wanted him out. He finally appeared and people immediately lifted him and started kicking on the bums. Everyone was finished in about 5 seconds. Now the hunt started for the roomie aka ME. I was very innocently standing there amidst confusion and yeling stuff like bring in the roomie and kill him and etc etc but since we are at MDi, there are quite a few smart chaps around, someone figured that I as the roomie and then they started with me. Initially it was fnu to be lifted but as soon as people's real love started coming out in form of kicks on the butt, I realized for the first time that a Birthday is not something to be happy about.

But again it was fun, then came the bucket full of water for the Birthday Boy and he was all wet in an instant. Next in line was the cake. With cakes, people here would make every part of your body eat the cake except your mouth. There was cake on his eyes, nose, forehead, chin etc etc.

Finally when the REAL cake came, everyone ran towards it as if it would the last meal. I managed to get a few pieces of the cake and I was also made to eat the cake with my eyes etc.

And after all the celebrations, people dispersed and me, Mohile, Ridhima, Shubhi etc. went to Prakash and listened to him sing Pal by KK. I recorded him as usual and after that dear Prasad moved to the canteen without giving me the keys. I was supposed to take a bath and I could not.

Finally I managed to take a bath later at around 4 and before that I had tried my hands at Hard Court Tennis with Piyush, Arvind and Devendra. I soon realized I suck at it.

I completed my assignments and could'nt sleep and right now me, Ashish and Harry are planing to goto the library or the Comp. Centre. in pursuit of my latest crush... A Senior :)

Su, Pu and The Fun Loving Girl

2004-07-16T09:26:00.000-07:00

Courtesy Dr. Satish Kalra, Professor of Organizational Behaviour @ MDI Gurgaon, India, few people from PGPM 2004 - 2006 batch have been rechristened.

Mr. Pushkar Joshi aka Pooch-Kar Joshi aka PJ would be called 'Po with an attitude'. Ms. Sugandha would be called 'Su' and Ms. Sleeping Beauty would be called 'Fun Loving Girl'

The reasons for renaming these people are classified and the way it happened is also not to be disclosd as a policy matter ;)

I just hope to get more time to write about these 'small' incidents that make life worth living.

To Be Contd...

MDI Rocks !

2004-07-14T13:26:00.000-07:00

MDI - Managemet Development Institute.

MDI is my new home, my new passion, my new love, my new life, my new ME !

MDI has been a dream since last two years. I strangely decided to take CAT in 2003 because all my classmates at Maharaja Agrasen College were taking it. I took CAT and few other B School entrance tests. Got call from MDI and I was'nt selected.

Started working at a company and things didnt turn out well and had to leave that place and decided to take cat again in 2004. Took CAT and finally made it to MDI after the waitlist cleared till 30.

That was the History of me bing at MDI. Coming to the Current...

MDI offers two courses at graduate level. Regular PGPM and specialized PGP-HRM. I am enrolled at PGPM course and the person with MAX CAT percentile has 99.96 and the person at the end is 95.48 with a years experience in some call centre.

One thing that stands apart for MDI is that EVERYONE, I mean EVERYONE is very very good. Right from the senior batch to faculty and the management team, people are experienced, understanding and they KNOW ! And who needs to give an introduction for Dr. Pritam Singh. Everything about him could be summed up by mentioning the fact that hes been awarded Padma Shri by the Republic of India.

To Be Edited and Contd...