Retrospect!

This is a summary of my experiences in the whole of the year 2008.

January (Janvier) :- The whole of the month I was in Saudi. I still remem the new year party, I got sloshed, puked, abused a few...and finally crashed on a sofa....

I had to come back to India to attend my interviews. I came back on 27th Jan. Reported at Mumbai office, I was very happy to be back in India

February (Février):- I was in Hyd. Everyone at home were scared looking at me thinking I was sick with some disease. (Reminding all my readers again that I cut down weight by almost 10 kgs in a month). Once again readers, my bday is in Feb so in case if you wish to gift me something and confused on what to give, please drop a message I will let you know my wish-list :)

March (Mars) :- I was back to Mumbai office. In the middle of the month I had to go to Bangalore for another intvw. This was the month I made biggest of all the gains I ever made in stock market. I could predict every move of the market.

April (Avril) :- The bull run continued for me till the 14th April(Ambedkar Jayanthi :O).Ok the story goes like this. I was so over confident that I put all the money I made till then and also a significant amount from my best friend in the greed to make huge profits, on 11th(friday) of April. I was very confident that the following monday markets world wide would fall. As expected there was a bloodbath in world wide markets except ours. I was surprised to discover that 14th April was Ambedkar's  Jayanthi and it was holiday for our markets. As Murphy’s  law goes the markets went against my predictions on tuesday and I lost almost all of the money I invested. I was so psyched that in a hurry to recover the money, I placed orders with the remaining amount in my account on thursday and again to my shock friday was holiday(this time Mahavir jayanthi). The following monday again markets went against my expectations and thats it. That was the end of all my dreams. I was in a shock and it took sometime for me to recover. I was sad that I lost not only mine but also my friend's hard earned money.

May (Mai) :- This month was again a turning point in my life, a lot of things happened. I got 2 job offers which I declined for a seat in IIM Calcutta. Within my company I had 2 US and UK onsite opportunities. I was in a dilemma to whether go for IIM or to take GMAT and go for US/UK onsite. But finally decided to join IIM.

June (Juin) :- The first week in the campus was the best experience I should say. I felt like dropping out of the course. I couldn’t take the pressure :O. Later it subsided and I started enjoying the course. In the first few days I was complaining on everything. I thought there would be many grounds and stadia like IITs. Now I realised it's actually waste of money because we hardly get any time to play. The free time we get we spend for club activities or watching movies. So the limited sports infrastructure in the campus is the optimum I believe.

July (Juillet):- The first exam in the campus was the qualifying mathematics. Surprisingly it was a cakewalk(Our seniors scared us that the Profs fail students mercilessly). We had our midterms in this month.

August (Août):- We had gone for the Inter-IIM sports meet in this month at IIM B. We were thrashed by B in almost all of the events. It was a big disappointment for all of us. I was part of the Hockey team. We were very confident that we would win at least hockey, but we lost it. We were leading in the first half of the game but towards the end they scored two goals in quick succession. That was the first time I played on a turf court.

September ( Septembre) :- The first term got over and officially we finished 1/6 th of MBA.

October (Octobre):- We had a week vacation for Durga Puja.  Didn’t realise how I spent the time.It gotover in a jiffy. Everyone was busy preparing for internships for whole of the month.

November (Novembre):- The summer placement week was one hell of an experience. We had GDs for most of the marketing companies, which often ends up becoming fish market. You can see the heights of desperation in people(that includes me). seriously feel the process is so painful. The typical questions why you? Why me? huh! had to memorize details of a lot of companies. The best experience of all was this-> I attended a telephonic intvw with one of the leading logistics companies. our placerep informed me that it was an operations and logistics role. So during the intvw I went on talking about my passions blah blah on operations to only discover to the end that they were looking for strategy :). I somehow tried to convince them that strategy was also my interest but then the heat was lost by then :D...finally got placed in a investment bank start-up.

December (Decembre):- I should say this month was by far the best one till date. Our second term got over in the first week of the month. So done with 1/3rd of MBA. We had our Cul-fest during 19-21 Dec. It was a failure as it was wrong time for any cul-fest and we had a low turn-out. A lot of colleges in Kolkata had their exams during these days. Still it was fun organizing the events. During 28-30 Dec we had another fest called Reminisence(Alumni reunion). This time it was batch of 1983. It was a great experience to interact with people with 25 years of work experience. Most of them were Managing Directors, CEOs and Professors in leading Bschools. I was part of the organizing team and got to rub shoulders with honchos of the industry.

I am doing a French course and have picked up a few lines.

Bonne année à tout le monde - Happy New Year everyone