Arbit thoughts at the death of the night

Its almost 4:30 am. And i have slept for precisely 4 hours in the past 44. But the amazing thing is that I dont want to sleep. im not feeling sleepy. I'm certain I can watch two movies back to back from the many I had kept on hold during the exams.
How come when I had exams, staying awake took the entire effort. No more energy left for studies. So I should have gone to sleep. But that was what I was avoiding in the first place....

Thats a different story and this one has its roots there. This marathon staying awake period left me wondering what was my motivation of staying awake for this long? I did not have anything do. Was getting bored the entire time. No more handouts and slides to go through. No more books to read from cover to cover in 6 hours. In short, my exams are over (And I finish my first year in Hel(L) with that).
So was it the lack of any specific thing to do that kept me awake? Or was it the euphoria of having sustained an entire year of the daily grilling? Or was it simply a force of habit? The more dramatic responses from my overly sleep deprived mind says it might be some medical complication. My next door neighbour (who, btw has also been awake for about the same time as I) says its the Moon. Tides. Vampires. Harry Potter and Vodemort.

I some how have a different take on this than the more obvious once. Imagine you are asked to sit in the same seat for an year. You are asked to read books. You are expected to read books. Finally, you are made to read the books. You are given a schedule. You have to follow the schedule. Its a big bad restrictive world. End of year, end of schedules. I have already put most books in a box and sent it to the bottom of the Spartan well (Ref. 300). I am my own decision maker once more.
Its simply a matter of (here im beaming with pride, mostly because I remember something from the IR classes) "Free Will". I have the capacity to decide when I sleep (or rather till when I dont). This notion of having control over my life, in my case for full 2 days, has given me enough motivation to go ahead and make use of everything I have. Not having found anything better to do, I am now writing this blog entry after a gap of more than 2 months.

I looked around on the net and found many interesting things related to this. Google, for example, is such a great organization because it gives its developers the freedom to do what they want, when they want and how they want it to be done. OK atleast there is an illusion they have the decision in their hands. This is the stage when most of the creative and the mind boggling ideas come out.

I will continue this though in more details later. Right now, I feel like having a nap :)
Good Night, and Good Luck.

Google is god

This is a repost of an earlier article where I was discussing how Goolge was assuming the role of God. There is a lot more written about 'Google is God' and you even find a church of google. They post their own version of 9 proofs (http://www.thechurchofgoogle.org/Scripture/Proof_Google_Is_God.html).

A search for the term 'Google is God/' returns 24,600 results (0.25 seconds).
I guess there is a bigger cult of google followers that even before and now is the time for me to put this point across again.

The story goes, what we see is what we believe. And of late, what we see is in effect what the Media shows us. So if there is a controversy about whether Jodha and Akbar were married, I will google and assume that the most poplar belief is the correct one. And if I write about it, as is common, I make it more popular. So the simple act of putting something higher in the results gives Google the power to 'create' a truth, write our history. And the corporate policy of do no evil, makes it so much harder to challenge it.

In effect, the search engine was able to create history by planting a result into a virtuous cycle of being quoted again and again. And like god, Google is able to create history!

So again, in effect, Google is the modern day God. And just as there is a lot of caution attached to our brick and mortar religion, there is a need for the same with our new Divinity.

(For the lack of a better alternative, I am a voracious consumer of what google doles out but I strongly recommend a dose of caution).

Ah......Manfest 08 if finally over. Three days of great fun, hangovers, and of course no sleep and time to eat.

I somehow was given the task of handling all the informal events. Now, I’m not kidding when I say this, I told everyone I met that I was an honorary member of the Manfest committee. (Seriously, the Manfest guys are going to kill me if they find out). Friday was a working day for us here so the informalz started only in the evening. The first event was Capitalist. It was a complex game where guys got a chance to act like someone pushing their venture idea and trying to raise funding...after a lot of jostling, shouting, name calling and frenzy, the first round was over. The fall out of the mega interest in this event? No. no one came to congratulate me. They were worried about attendance in their events. Now come on…who will attend a talk on some globish subject when they could be taking part in an exciting event? They had a point. But why were they having the talks in the first place? Let they guys have some fun…

Night time, there was a rock competition. Illuminati from Bangalore won the event. And it was not a difficult decision for the judges I’m sure. Try looking for their videos on youtube. They had self composition that goes something like this “Use, use, use………use protection” hehe. The guy said it was based on his life. His GF stopped him mid way and insisted on protection. Will try and embed a video later.

Next morning was pretty interesting, as well as jam packed with events. Including many events under Informalz. We started out with kite flying. Yes kite flying. And in case u are wondering who would participate in that in a management fest, well ppl, it was the most successful event on campus. We finished off all the kites (more than a 100) in a less than two hours. Then the participants started making their own kites! And they flew! Hehe. But the support guys on campus hate me for that. All the grounds were littered with kite “debris” and kites hanging on trees all over the campus.

That night, there was a dual performance in pro-nights. First, Mohit Chauhan of Silk Route and then the rock band Parikrama. I was with parikarama at their hotel. They guys were resting and I had to spend close to 3 hours. Alone. Hungry. Bored. And I could not even leave! Not even for a snack. What if the band wanted something? what if they called for me? And because of this, I missed out on
1. Performance by 3.4, the IIML band
2. Dance performance by college choreo club
3. Play by students and professionals
4. Silk Route performance. Well atleast half of it.

But the Parikrama performance made up for it. More than made up for it. And it was also the first time I was back stage for a concert J

Last day was not so eventful, but we had a lot of fun at the informalz desk. Getting ppl to play arbit games, handling out snikers for no particular reason, watching Sourish Basu perform on Bipasha Basu numbers (and it was covered by Channel V). It was simply a great time. I also won a T-shirt from Channel V.

Pro-night for the last day was by Euphoria. they kept the crowd on its feet all through the 4 hr show. And Palash Sen sang songs from everywhere. English (Old McDonald, We will rock you, summer of 69…), Hindi film music (Kajrare (!), some more numbers), Junoon, Jal, and whatever came to his mind I think. He even sang Punjabi folk!

Then at about 12, the Manfest party started. And that was the best party on campus ever. Free flowing booz, DJ specially flown in from Delhi with all his music systems and crew, and around 600 IIML guys (with classes at 8:30 in the morning). Dancing, drunken dancing, doped dancing. Till 5:30 am. Then the DJ had to go. He had a train at 6am. He somehow managed to stop the music and the party. Me? I was behind the bar, with some Manfest guys. Pouring out drinks for all the others at the party. Maybe, staying sober was not a good idea. But bar tendering was more fun than I thought.

Cheers!

Puneet

prowler of the night

Its well past bed time. not mine ofcourse.....that would be unthinkable. after all im in IIM L..... or Hell.

Now that the exams and project submissions are round the corner, sleep is like someone im not going to meet very frequently. Just a "Hi" or a "Hello" every now and then tops. (maybe i will get to meet him in the class tomorrow)


its interesting looking at what part the projects play in our course. most of the time we end up doing the projects in the last few days of the term (the hard-to-get-rid-of-habit from engineering days i think) just as we prepare for the exams on the last day (or more appropriately, on the last night before exam)

But the projects still serve a purpose.

Its almost 5 (yes, a.m.) and i have finished the Titan Watches project for the marketing class.
After the grueling 10-12 hrs in the CC, pouring over books and polycopy, web sites by the dozens, and many more papers and phone calls [:)], i can say that i have finally learned something. i can say confidently that i know bits and pieces of marketing now. rest i will get to know while doing the end term paper. its open book afterall

ah i just finished all the songs on my playlist. damn. need to find more songs. or look for smaller projects. haha

Puneet