Life does seem to have taken a strange turn this term. I have long forgotten the concept of trying to start some serious studies and change myself as per an 'IIM'. In fact, to be true and honest, I never had the misconception that I will find the need and moreover, even if I did find the need, the motivation to change myself, IIM or no IIM. And that is what happened. As I have been cribbing over the last few posts, I gave another door-waala-salaam to the studies and went on another trip to another inter B-school festival, this time at TAPMI, Manipal.
And a good thing I did, too. Coming along with me on this trip, Ravi 'BigMan' Girdhar, Rohit 'SCon' Gupta, Prashant 'Pakow' Kowshik, and Kanav 'CStar' Kaul made the trip even more interesting. Shounak 'Bappida' Ray was already at TAPMI to participate in the prestigious Young Business Leader contest.
Having already missed the first day of the fest (and in turn, most of the interesting events, as we discovered in due course), we had only four games to participate in and of course, there were those informals. TAPMI people had arranged a hotel (a lodge, actually, but decent, anyway) for us and as soon as we reached the hotel, there were guys from TAPMI to welcome us (as early as 6 in the morning). The kind of unassuming and ego-free attitude that the organisers of this fest had, was in fact, the talk of the place for the next two days.
After breakfast, the first game was Marketing for us (that is Ravi, Kanav and me) and Crisis Management for Rohit and Prashant. Though we did play the marketing game quite well in the later stages, we made a miscalculation in the beginning and that cost us dear, as we finished fifth out of 13 teams. Rohit and Prashant, on the other hand, went on to win the Crisis Game but more on that a little later.
A quick lunch and promise of making the next day's lunch at Domino's later, we were ready to get going for the qualifying round of the strategy game. Since there was only one team allowed from a college, I got a chance to team up with the winners (the results, however, had not been declared yet :-)). The prelims were a cakewalk as we cracked the lateral thinking quiz, topping the list of participants with a score of 26 out of 30 and with the last qualifying team scoring 12. This was one rare time when I was actually thankful for what Father (Dr.) K. Cyriac taught us in Organisational Behavior classes :-)
The beach was scheduled to be presented to us now and a beautiful beach it was. A relatively clean place with a decent crowd, it had its own appeal. The fous, however, was a little away from the waters as the fest started with its second day edition of Brouhaha, the informals. It was at this time that we met Dr. Araana, the visiting faulty who teaches us Corporate Law next term. Surrounded by TAPMI students, he actually tried to put us down by asking us why we had not won anything so far. It was humiliating and we could not even say that we had just come in today morning and the results are yet to be announced for the events we participated in.
Later, we came to know that he had told his TAPMI students that IIMK will not win anything and if they do, he will throw a party for his students on losing the bet. The retribution was taken when in the next half an hour, we not only won all the informals that took place but the results for the Crisis Game were announced and our guys won the first prize there, too. It was fun to see Dr. Araana's facce at that moment.
The next and much-talked about event was the Quiz on the Beach...and what an event it turned out to be. Ranging from the compulsory attendance for TAPMI-ans to buses and buses of beautiful girls, to the discipline of TAPMI-ans in staying within the barricade and actually waiting for their turn at dinner, to the excellent arrangements including a buzer that really worked, the quiz was flawless organization at its best. To top it all was the very standard of the quiz. Even Mastermind or University Challenge do not come anywhere near the quiz that we witnessed that day. Conducted by an enthusisastic quiz master popularly called Pickbrain (he also does the ET Quiz), the quiz was as tough as they come and the quizzers, even more. Out of the final six teams, four of them were corporate teams, with one of them being QuizLab, whose very job is quizzing.
After the long day, we slept like a log but not before we went to this hyped place called DownTown which is supposed to be one of the hip places in Manipal...what a rundown downtown it was, a small time bar with nothing to offer except dark corners and cheap drinks.
The next day was uneventful in terms of the other competitions as neither of our teams could win anything. However, that does not take away from the excellent games that the TAPMI-ans had lined up. They had worked really hard for the events and the concept for most of the games was unique, innovative and well-executed. The valedictory was scheduled for three and we made good on our promise of a Domino's and Cafe Coffee Day meal before that (the coupons we had won yesterday were another reason to go to CCD).
In the valedictory, Shounak showed what he was capable of, as we saw a cheer go up from his competitors when his name was announced. His was the only name that evoked suh popular appeal...he was even nicknamed Captain, all in a space of two and a half days...now that's what I call charisma and winning hearts.
There were lessons-a-plenty to be learnt for Backwaters from this fest and as the others kept reminding me, I should start doing something about it pretty soon (about backwaters, I mean). To top off the excellent fest, the TAPMI people had managed to get hold of Yukta Mookhey to judge their Mister and Miss Personality contest. We had to miss that as we had our train to catch at 5:30 in the evening to be on time for the two quizzes this morning.
Prof Saji Gopinath's quiz is over and I did pathetically. Nevertheless, instead of studying for the FM quiz that goes live at 5, I am writing this blog with the hope that the limited syllabus and the open book format will bail me out.
No comments:
Post a Comment