We are fast coming onto the midpoint of Term 2. Man, am I loving all that's happening. Killing does not even half describe the schedule we have till now. We have "only" 4 papers but one can clearly see that the gear has changed from last term. Even though last term was hectic it was nothing compared to Term 2. If it was the sedate pace of a Maruti 800 then this definitely is a Ferrari, hurtling along as if there was no tomorrow.

As far as the subjects go, they are mostly building on the concepts of Term 1. The entire batch unanimously fees that the Strategy course is the best we have studied till date. It's a treat to watch Prof Kale in action. He takes a 25 page case & over a period of 2 hours rips it apart. The way he links apparently unconnected and remote things is just amazing. Another great thing is he does not tolerate any arbit CP. Everything one says has to be backed up by data. There is no scope of "I think" or "Maybe" in his class. The other faculty in this half of the course are, in my opinion, not so good. But I guess you will rarely find that you admire everybody who comes & teaches you. I'm not saying that they are bad. In fact, they have fantastic pedigree. It's just that their classes are not so interesting.

As far as Term 2 goes, there are classes and then there is Markstrat. Anybody who follows other ISB blogs, whether of the current batch (links on the side -->) or of earlier classes will see that around June-July all the blogs talk in length about Markstrat. So what is this beast? It's basically an online simulation game where you are given charge of a company in a particular industry and you compete against other companies in the industry. So what one has to do is basically decide on the products one is going to launch or withdraw, pricing strategy, production, marketing plans, R&D strategy, budgets etc etc. All this is wildly interesting, but the icing on the cake is you compete not against the computer but real people...i.e. your batchmates. So, you see huddles all around the Atrium, the LRC....people discussing strategy in hushed tones, people slamming down their laptops moment they see people from the same industry approaching, people trying to guess what their competitors are upto. Even conversation in the dining hall, the classrooms, SV lawns has veered towards Markstrat. What's the profit of your group? Are you doing R&D on a new project or a cost reduction in an existing project? And so on.....

The Markstrat game actually is part of our Marketing paper this term. Apart from the game, I dislike the class intensely. This is what happened in the last class:
So, I was sleeping peacefully in class. The class was just after lunch & I had a good lunch of Pulao, Mutton & Kheer :) and then in class the inevitable sleep came over me. All of a sudden, heard my voice & sort of jumped up in my seat.
Prof: Now, Sumantra will explain what happens if ......blah, blah, blah
Me: (Having no clue to either the topic being taught or the question posed to me) I'm sort of switched off at the moment
Prof: (Clearly pissed off) So maybe you need a water or coffee break
I mean, why? I was not disturbing the class....neither was I doing useless CP & disrupting the flow. This kinda stuff does not really endear a Prof to his students. Luckily he has only class remaining in the term. But this guy apparently comes back to take an elective course. Whoever signs up for that course, Sumantra Dasgupta will not be one of them.

The entire student body has now been elected. Apart from the GSB core which was elected sometime back, all the professional & social clubs have elected their presidents. So now what remains are posts under individual clubs & under GSB areas. But these are all posts which are filled via interviews. No further election happens. I've got quite a few close friends in important positions which I hope to leverage in the coming months :)

We are having a competition sponsored by NIIT this weekend. It's basically a fun thing where you can try working in a small team so as to see whether you can continue working in the same team when ELP's & the bigger B-school competitions come around. So this competition gave us 5 products - light bulbs, aerated drinks, DVD's, balloons & toothpaste - and we had to come up with alternative uses for any one of these products complete with a small business plan about target market, pricing etc. As per last count 60 teams have submitted their entries

Apart from that, activites are increasing day by day in the campus. So we have Dance, Language, Guitar, Vocal classes. In the pipeline are Fitness, Drums and God knows what. I have taken up French classes and probably will do Fitness as well. There is actually not a moment of idle time during the week.

And finally we have the Euro. The tournament is entering its business end. There have been some great matches already. Being a die-hard Dutch supporter, I am happy. I particularly enjoyed the Italy & France maulings. Go Oranje....keep it up. We'll probably have the Finals screened in the Atrium. Unfortunately, the semis are the day before the mid terms. So that meant, that we couldn't really have a screening of that. But, I guess all of us will continue to see it. As somebody remarked - it happens only once in 4 years. It's slightly unfortunate that it clashes with studies but then we are very clear as to which one has priority. So, all we have to say is - screw DMOP & screw Global Eco. Give us football any day, any where, any damn way.

Happy watching...