The bygone year of 2009 for me

The year 2009 was great for me and could have ended on a brighter note had i been placed by the end of 2009. But i think destiny has something else up on its sleeves for me.
The year started with me pursuing my old passion of quizzing and winning my first biz quiz in my life in Jnuary in KIIT-SOM, Bhubaneswar and netting a cool Rs. 2000. The year also bought the third trimester in ITM in which i was able to cross the dreadly 3 CGPA mark which had evaded me for long. Then in March i was able to be a city Finalist at TATA Crucible Mumbai and the episode was telecast on TV. I was very elated about the fact. I took off to Goa for a week after my 3rd trimester and cooled off my heels at my uncle's house in Goa before coming back to Mumbai for my summer internship. The summer internship at ION EXCHANGE was a bag of mixed experience for me, where i learnt many a things about Mumbai and corporate life, while at the same time the management of the organization was not supportive nor appreciated the efforts of me and my friends. Then a quick visit to home followed before commencing of the 4th trimester.
The otherwise boring 4th trimester became exciting for me when me and Anirban became the DARE09 quiz western zone champions and were invited to Delhi for the national finalsto be hosted by Shahrukh Khan. A stay of 4 days at a plush Delhi hotel at the expense of IIPM, while quizzing was really a experience to be relished for long. The feeling of coming second in this prestigious quiz by beating many national and international teams gave me that feeling of satisfaction and achievement while bringing name and fame for the college. I netted a cool amount of Rs. 75k and other goodies. This trimester was also accompanied by the Swineflu scare. The trimester ended on brighter note with me scoring a 3 CGPA again. I was also fortunate enough to watch TATA crucible national corporate finals at the TAJ MAHAL hotel in mumbai.
The 5th trimester started off with podium finishes in many corporate quizzes where we brushed shoulders with the bigwigs of Indian Quizzing. Also came the placement season in 5th trimester. The first co. that i sat for, i screwed up my interview, the next co. didnt match my expectations , the third co. that i appeared for thought that i didnt match their expectations and the saga continues and lo after the end of 5th trimester with exams going on,urs truly Soubhagya Jena is still unplaced. In the mean time i won quizzes at IMT Ghaziabad, IBS ,Mumbai and Kohinoor businees school and reached the national finals of NTPC quiz thus gaining some kind of notoreity in the college as overhyped quizzers.

I also tried to encourage quizzing among juniors by organizing a quiz for them and thankfully a few of them were good enough.

I just pray to god in this new year, that all the students in the college including me get placed before the course ends.

Hello friends i am back again to share one of my experiences which many of you would like to read as it is about my interaction with none other than the KING KHAN........yes it's SHAHRUKH KHAN.
Actually i am talking about a quiz oragnised by IIPM in which the finals were hosted by Shahrukh and i was lucky enough to meet him in person. Somehwere during my summer internship i came to know that IIPM had signed Shahrukh to host a quiz although i had no further information. When our classes started again, my friend Tanmay informed me about the quiz called as DARE09 for which the western zonals were scheduled on 22nd JULY. Me and my quiz partner Anirban Mohanty went to IIPM,mumbai campus on that day and became the western zone champions and were asked to go to Delhi to attend further rounds starting from 30th july.
We reached Delhi by train and were floored by the hospitality showered on us by IIPM people. We were accomadated in a 3 star hotel near to IIPM campus where the rooma nd the food were awesome. We were able to clear all rounds and reach the finals which was to be hosted by the great Showman SRK. On the D-day, when Shahrukh arrived i had the chance to see him upfront in a very odd manner. My friend told me that Shahrukh was coming into the hotel and when i peeped out i saw him coming straight towards my room.
The crowd behind him was erupting. Girls were standing outside the hotel with placards saying SRK marry me and all that stuff. It was the first time i saw any bollywood star and his fame directly.
Our quiz started somewhere around 5.30 p.m,when Shahrukh invited all the finalists on stage and shaked hands with them and made them sit. Then he took a brief introduction and faced difficulty pronouncng Anirban's name. The quiz was more supposed to be focused on Shahrukh's antics and less on serious quizzing. After all Arindam choudhary ahd spent crores on hiring Shahrukh and was miising no opportunity to encash on his presence.
We scored well in first round. In the second round we were the highest scorers and Shahrukh presented us with a boomerang signed by him which is now kept in my room and will be relished by me and my partner as a souvenir of our quizzing days for ever. In the next round IIFT kolkata managed a slender lead. The next round had one of each group to dance with Shahrukh and i still can't believe it that what people dream of, i was able to accomplish it.I danced on the tunes of Gori gori from Main Hoo Na and Shahrukh infact applauded my moves. But i could not score any point in that round. Then Shahrukh took a break and a dance was performed by IIPM students . This was the first time i saw this on a quiz. When the rounds commenced these IIPM guys had scrapped three rounds to our utter dismay giving the excuse that SRK was running out of time. the quizng spirit was dampened by this among all contestants. In The last round Anirban pressed buzzer on almost every question as they were on movies but SRK didn't recognise one of our buzzers and it hurt us the most as IIFT kolkata won by 5 points at end.For that i will never forgive shahrukh who took away my opportunity to win an international level quiz. But destiny always has new tricks up its sleeves andwe fall prey to it
We came second but the winners and the crowd complemented us on our tremendous performance. Overall it was nice to bring our college some name and fame and make a mark for ourselves in the national quizzing circuit by beating some established teams. this is a memory that i will cherish for ever.

Aaya mausam garmi ka

Mumbai as all of u know is among one f the most humid cities in India.The summer has not set in as yet fully and all of us at ITM are being blown away by the heat wave and being tested by the merciless and scorching sun. To top all of it,our class AC is rarely on.So you can imagine the plight of the students in these conditions. So you find all of us sweating profusely out of our skins at any moment of the day.
You can not run away from the college also,because this area has frequent power cuts. Also the water gets heated very soon and you can not have a bath in afternoon to keep you cool. Now i am not writing this to give a vivid description of our pathetic condition. I want all my friends and fellow future citizens of India to look at the root cause of the problem.
During the last decade or so,the global temperature has increased significantly,polar ice has melted,many glaciers have disappeared, amny species have gone extinct. Still then we limit ourselves to discussions in AC rooms and watch movies like AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH but not really like to face the same. Yes i am talking about GLOBAL WARMING caused by green house gases which are increasing in our atmosphere beacuse of deforestation. Now it is time that as responsible future citizens we should introspect ourselves and realise that we have some responsibility towards our environment which has nurtured us for so long.
I can not ask any body to stop using AC. In such conditions it is impossible to do so. We can try to use environment friendly products as much as possible.I would like to ask all of you to rise up and protest against any destructions of natural cover like forests and take a promise from all of you that once in professional life,all of us will try to give improve our environment in whatever way it is possible. We can try to take upafforestation drives in CSR prograns of our companies.Then only we can hope that our GENNEXT does get a slightly better climatic condition to live in. Or else you might find them carrying portable AC's on their backs to keep them cool which will aggravate the problem only.

Hope my words may enlighten some minds.

tasting some success

This one achievment(i would like to call it that way), i would like to share with my friends particularly. As known to most of my friends, i am a quizzing buff since long. I had always been short of a good partner and so had not qualified to stage of any national level quiz for a long time. Although i kept on winning small quiz competitions thru out my school and college but no major ones.

I had almost left quizzing beforw comin to ITM, untill one day our grand quiz master of ITM, Mr. Anirban Mohanty rekindled that extinguishing fire within me. With resources like internet at my disposal, i decided to start biz quizzing. I started reading "n" no. of blogs on biz quiz. Collected ads,punchlines etc.

My efforts bore fruit when, me and Anirban won a biz quiz in BBSR during our NGO project. It was a win for me after many many years, but for Anirban it was yet anothet laurel, as he is famous in Quizzing circle of bhubaneswar.

The defining moment came,when we came to know about the Mumbai leg of TATA crucible campus quiz,India's biggest quiz. Me and anirban decided to attend it. So we started polishing our business gyaan. On the fateful day,i reached the venue 5 min. late with a broken hand along with me. We went into the hall. The quiz master called out 20 qstns and we gave it our best shot.When answers were declared, we had 11 correct. Then the wild card round started, and there was no mention of us. I was loosing hope. But fate had other plans.

I was really taken aback, when the quiz master Giri Subramaniam said that Tata crucible has been throwing surprises each year with lesser known college candidates qualifying to top 6 tahn from known colleges and this year it was ITM,s turn to deprive JBIMS,NITIE,SPJAIN,ICFAI,SIES to go on stage. We were thrilled and it took us some time to sink in the feeling. When we took our positions on stage ,the whole mumbai student crowd from elite institutions wer there. We were brushing shoulders from quizzards from IIT,KJ somaiya,Narsee Monjee. Then we came to know that the episode was going to be recorded to be telecasted on CNBC .
Once on the stage ,lady luck departed us and we knew that to succeed you ahve to maintain ur momentum and have more broad knowledge base. It was a learning lesson for us as we came last, but all gloom disappeared when we found out that the TATA'a had surprise in store for us. A goodie bag containing a PHILLIPS DVD Player, A fAST TRACK goggles, a pen drive was given to us.

I returned satisfied, bcz it was my first attempt at such a major event and we qualified to finals and were rewarded for our efforts also. I hope our small acheivement will encourage many more quizzers at ITM.
Sorry if u get bored,as i cud nt stop myself from sharing this great news with every one.

yet anodr hell of a day

This one is not about any of my horrible trysts with life. But it is about the way today went for me at college.
As decide by the college ,we had our MCS classe early at 8.30 a.m and to top it we had dal puri as breakfast which was not totally edible. So, a horrible start for the day. We had god's grace on us when we had a new faculty to teach us the ever boring MCS subject. We had a man of erudite and great experience to teach us and really he did a wonderful job taking the class along with him.
You would be thinking wat went wrong. We were then forced to sit through the CAPSTONE presentations of our esteemed seniors. We had to oblige. Wat went on next was 4-5long hours of presentations of seniors on their assigned topics.Wat we could make out was that instead of taking up the Cap stone project as an important stepping stone, many of our seniors had taken it up as yet another assignment to be completed in a given dead line. Many had just played around with their data and given some recommendations which were not practical or were already known.
The faculty guides in our room really took some of the seniors to task for not doing any value addition to the given subjects. Some presentations were not even accepted. But think who were thw most suffering lot.............................................................................................
yes u guessed it correct. out of the 15 people in our room, only 10 were present in fear of the dreaded DRCC attendance and the rest fled. the same was the situtaion in other rooms also. Also those seniors who finished left in haste widout waiting for their friends to present.
My point is, wat the hell was the purpose behind binding us for a whole day to listen to some people who did not make any genuine attempt to conduct their research................or perhaps were not motivated to do so because of the grim placement scenario. wat i could make out was that,the college was trying to give us an inhand experience about how to go about the CAPSTONE.To my utter dismay none of the seniors did inform us about the research methodology they had adopted during their project, which was very mporatnt given the fact that we juniors are soon going for our summers and need to know the practical uses of Research methodology. The faculty guides did not also ask them to clarify on their research part .
And so i ,and am sure my class mates would agree to me on this point that we had a hell of a day and wasted our precious time(oooopssss) for other purposes like we all know bettr.

signing out,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,stay tuned for my next post

first steps in mumbai

well, this is a bit old experience of mine.........that of when i came to the dreamland of Mumbai 4 the first time................
I came alone to attend the interview of ITM and reached mumbai CST on morning 4.00a.m of 23rdfebruary,2008.......
i stepped out of the train got a local ticket and boarded the first local to vashi..................at 4.40 in the morning i expected to see a vacant local train............................

but to my utter surprise i found the local getting jampacked befor it left CST..............people were literally drooling but yet had started out on their day's journey not knowing when they will get back to their safe fold of their homes.................

Then i really felt that CITI (Mumbai)never Sleeps........coming from a tier II,sleepy city like Bhubaneswar i had never seen life before 6a.m.........................................

Then at that moment during the local journey from CST to Vashi(where my relative was staying) i decided that this is the city that has promises and i need to mould my career here and see the rigours of life.............because it is truly said that raw gold becomes pure when it is exposed to fire.........

and today after spending almost a year at ITM, i have seen mumbai and its life from close quarters and learnt that Darwin's rule Of "SURVIVAL OF FITTEST" applies for every body in this cutthroat competitive world...............

My first blog.......

Hi every body who has been blogging since long....
I came upon this idea to share my views when i came across the term Blog in our very boring subject MIS....................
I would like to take this opportunity to thank my friends Lagnajit,Mona and shweta who are pros in writing blogs and were my inspirations behind starting mine....

Although i may not match their intellectual content i would like to give it a try to improve my blossoming writing skills............

So guys stay tuned to get some extraordinary gyaan from this ordinary guy from the temple city of bhubaneswar,orissa.