just like that!

The third semester passed too swiftly to be noticed. Officially this semester lasted for less than hundred days. This being the only semester in which I hardly saw 5-6 movies (that is my way to measure semesters, you see...). I've sooo many things to talk about…

First things first! Why this blog is coming after this big a delay... why not? Now I'm an active user of Twitter which has given me the freedom to let my thoughts be known to others by pressing few buttons on my phone. So is Twitter a blog-killer? Well, actually it doesn't make much sense to wait for a computer to type and publish my thoughts (on a blog) when I can directly do it from my phone/computer (on Twitter).

Now some lines about the electives... PM alias Product Management better known as Presentations Management as it had one presentation by a group in each of its sessions (excluding the first session). The number of students-opted-for-this-course was 7, a prime number and therefore the constituents of different teams kept changing. At times some people had two different presentations in two consecutive sessions by being a part of two different teams. I had the wonderful opportunity of working with nearly all the 6 people (except Lekshmy, I guess). The team with which I enjoyed working most was Madhuvanthy's & Rubini's team. We discussed two cases- Kevlar Aramid and Innovation at 3M in the class. The peculiar thing in this group was that more conversations happened in Hindi than in Malyalam/Tamil. Obviously English was the dominating language. I left a message on Twitter during the discussion- PM Case Discussion: Ruby de dictator, Madhu de typewriter, me de spectator. Product Management had glimpses of different subjects ranging from Marketing to Finance. Sooo many presentations by me (and consequently poor marks) made me realize that something is wrong with my presentation skills and I worked on to improve that.

I recall the 22^nd session of Integrated Marketing Communications (totally there were 30 sessions so around 70% of the course was complete) when Hari Sir asked about the role of Accounts Executive in an Advertising Agency. Despite having passed the time in 70% of the sessions I was not comfortable with this term. But the creative initiator inside me extracted some sense of words 'accounts' (as in Accountancy) and made me raise my hands. I said Accounts Executive is the link between the Management and the Accounts Department. Hari Sir, a bit stunned silenced everybody and asked me to elaborate. I having got the cue, elaborated blah blah blah... Other students screamed no, no... Accounts Executive deals and manages different clients of an agency (something like that). Hari Sir put his hand on his chest and asked me, "Did I do something wrong?" I hid my face with my hands.

Energy and Bills of Material are what come to my mind when I think of SCM sessions. Citing another incident, once Bhaskaran Sir asked a mobile phone from us to illustrate some Strategic Sourcing concept. I was the first to hand over my 3¹/₂ years old (it's not that old phone, you see!) Black & White LG phone. I've rigorously used that phone and all the metallic shine, alpha-numeric symbols etc. had faded. The screen had sustained a crack and though it was not, it seemed to

be in a dilapidated condition. So Bhaskaran Sir took the phone from me and posed the question to the class, "Where do you think you can get the back-cover of the phone?" "Not even in the museum" replied somebody. A laughter broke out in the class. Bhaskaran Sir had a thorough look on the phone and asked me, "Nikunj! Which museum did you steal this phone from?" The left picture is of that phone only. =)

I had never thought that brands would be playing such a dominant role in making a purchase-decision. Moreover, in the sessions it was fun to see one particular team repeatedly making presentations and criticising other teams' presentation (they didn't criticise by their own; obviously they were asked to criticize by Balki Sir).

One phrase and one word namely 'single version of truth' and 'integrated' were the two take-aways from ERP sessions. I started writing this blog on 29.12.09, the day when the Trivandrum city came to a halt. So you see, strike is not that bad.

I bought Nokia 6303 Classic a couple of months ago. Here goes the review of the same- first the +ve factors- 3.2MP Camera with Auto focus and LED Flash; 2.2 inch QVGA screen with 16 million colors; metallic cover and superb battery life. Where will you get this stuff in 6.8k? Though the drawbacks are that the volume of the speaker is a bit low, you may miss your calls in a noisy environment (I’ve missed a couple of calls), the lens is not a Carl Zeiss one, so if you compare the pictures with the ones taken by N73, you may be a bit disappointed. It got launched in the second quarter of 2009 and therefore has got some of the latest features (for eg. You can synchronize your contacts OTA [Over the Air] with Nokia Ovi Suite on a GPRS Connection and it’s very easy).

With ‘3 Idiots’ I finished my hattrick of watching movies at Athulya theatre. Though people said that it was an air-conditioned theatre, I don’t know why I didn’t feel the chill. The rates of Balcony are 1/3^rd compared to what I used to pay at malls in Lucknow (but that’s okay in the sense that I was earning those days). People hoot too much here and in the case of last movie (3 Idiots) the row behind me was fully occupied by girls and surprisingly they were also hooting.

I also got a chance to volunteer in the inauguration of CII office at Trivandrum and the summit titled ‘Changing Role of India in Global IT Business’. The entry fee for delegates was a substantial amount which we got to attend free of cost. I remember those two days when the CII-cab came at 0530 hours at the hostel and left us back to hostel by 2030 hours. I happened to listen various captains of different industry and ultimately the Finance Minister TM Thomas Isaac and Minister of State for External Affairs Dr. Shashi Tharoor made it to the summit. Last but not the least, the food was also good.