04/07/2014

04/07/2014; 02:55:

A new seating plan was delivered to us, yesterday. I struck gold. The first seat, in the front-most row belongs to me. The one that is right under the nose of the teacher. This is good; I can't really hear or see anything from the last row(s).

This morning is the Orientation for the new PGP batch. The last two days saw frenzied activity all over campus. State Bank of India & Central Bank set up stalls, offering educational loans, at 10.25 and 10.20% respectively. Vodafone & Airtel are offering CUG plans, for all IIM-Indore users. Most of my batch has Airtel connections. Vodafone seems to be offering a better deal, or so I'm told. All hail MNP! (Mobile Number Portability). Bombay Dyeing has for sale Bed sheets, Pillows, Pillow-Covers and towels.
The other car-park has the Hostel Reception Centre that’s been allotting rooms to the participants, a Hostel Office help-desk, a waiting area and a Pi-Shop help desk, whose aim is to hand the participants maps of the hostel area and direct all of them to the Pi-Shop, where buckets, mugs, soap dishes, ropes, clothes clips, note-books, pens and other essentials have been lovingly arranged.
Of course, my favourite item at the Pi-Shop continues to be the ice-cream.

There are a four hundred and fifty (plus parents who’ve mostly gone now) confused faces wandering around campus. The Institute Bus starts from the parking area close to the Old Audi and moves down to ER-3, then the Acad Block Reception, SR-13/14 area and finally out of the gate. Today, two students and a father stood waiting for the 9p.m bus at the reception. Their bewilderment at seeing the bus moving down to ER-3 instead of towards them was obvious. They were vocal about their confusion and were promptly supplied with the necessary information.

This PGP-I Batch has an increased number of female participants. More females is always good news. One of the new guys informed me that he was the ideal PGP participant- a computer engineer here right after his fourth year. He also shared some wisdom- In India, people first do engineering and then decide what they want to do with their lives!

It rained in Mumbai and my newsfeed was full of photographs of the sky. It rained in Mumbai and my newsfeed is now full of memes aimed at the Mumbai Metro Special Shower. And also full of memes and long pieces of information aimed at Maria Sharapova’s ignorance about Sachin Tendulkar.