Campus monkey in picture

After a week-long email and telephone conversation with the Stockholm School of Economics, they in the end decided to lower the amount of credits we have to take here at IIMA. Instead of 6.25 credits, which happens to be more (!) than the Indian students are required to take, they will now be satisfied with 5, as was the case for SSE students coming here in previous years.

Yesterday also saw no less than two parties and a sighting of Jupiter and its moons. First, there was a surprise party for on of the Italians students on his birthday. On the way I stopped by the IIMA Astronomy Society that had put up their telescope as the sky was unusually clear and the possibility to watch Jupiter unusually good yesterday evening. After the birthday celebration there was a dorm party in my house, where I had the opportunity to try some Goa port, which was surprisingly tasty. Happy days, indeed.

I'm happy to say that I'm by now 100% well again after my disastrous strike of stomach sickness earlier. Many thanks to Lauralynn for the "eat a lot of yoghurt" advice, but as it turns out - yoghurt is one of the things I've been consuming endlessly ever since I came. Funnily enough, the mess yoghurt is one of the things that many exchange students haven't tried out of fear of dairy products, even though it's probably one of the healthier things on the menu. Speaking of food, some of you might be interested to know exactly how I don't succumb to famine on an everyday basis. The answer is that we have a student mess here at campus, which serves breakfast, lunch and dinner. Many exchange students have already decided to opt out of it and eat other stuff, but I kind of like it. It's a little bit of the same stuff everyday, but so far I haven't become bored with it (bar the breakfast, which is a rather bizarre mix of cornflakes, white bread with some kind of jelly-style jam and what I believe is a spicy form of scrambled eggs, though I'm not quite sure, e-v-e-r-y-d-a-y; it's, to put it mildly, extremely monotonous). (Pictures of lunch and breakfast.)

Speaking of eating and drinking, yesterday saw a birthday party for one of the other exchange students. It didn't bear any resemblance to the one described previously in this blog, but it did contain one ingredient somewhat missed. That ingredient was alcohol, as one person had been able to get his hands on an alcohol permit. All my friends know I'm not a heavy drinker, but a little sip of it, even if it was Indian whisky and Pepsi (guäh...) provided a reminder of home. Comforting, in an odd way.

Course load and elephant gods

My health situation has somewhat improved, however I'm still surviving on a diet consisting of yoghurt, rice and biscuits. Rehydration is a slow process and judging from several symptoms, I still have some way to go.

Today I initiated what I hope (though don't expect) to be a fruitful email correspondence with the Stockholm School of Economics. The reason is the course load that we're expected to take on, equivalent to 6.25 IIMA credits. This was recently increased from 5 that was the requirement for previous SSE exchange students, which in itself was pretty high compared to the 4 credits that students from other universities must take. It should also be noted that it's not uncommon for native students to take fewer, as I've been told. Fingers crossed...

Coincidentally, yesterday marked the beginning of the 10-day Ganesh Chaturthi celebration, in honour of elephant-headed god Ganesh. He's known as the remover of obstacles, so Ganesh, please, any help with the fellows at SSE would be highly appreciated. The picture shows a statue of Ganesh currently on display outside the student mess, complete with offerings.

First food reaction

It was bound to happen sometime. Yesterday evening I fell sick. Really sick. Something I ate, something I drank. Not to go into any specifics, but I didn't get that many hours of sleep this night. In the morning it was straight to the campus physician, who prescribed a number of different pills to get my body in order again. I'm spending this day (luckily a public holiday with no classes) rehydrating.

The picture shows a 16th century eight-storey well in Ahmedabad that we visited a couple of days ago.

First day of classes

Today was so the first day of classes. Since the wonderful Stockholm School of Economics requires its exchange students to take more credits than is the case for any other exchange students, my schedule is fuller than most people's. Today saw two courses.

First it was Digital Inclusion for Development, which focuses on how information and communication technology can help poor countries develop by bridging the digital divide. The topic sounds fun and the professors very competent. Good pick.

After lunch then came Consumer Based Business Strategies, which pretty much focuses on what the title promises. The professor in this course is well known for cold calling on individual students to see if they've prepared properly and today was no exception. I'm sure this course will require a little bit of work, but the topic is interesting and the professor, though somewhat scary, seems highly competent. And he teaches barefoot.

The photo shows my room lizard, Pluto.

Course registration

This morning we all woke up to an incredible bang of thunder, as the rain kept pouring down on poor Ahmedabad. The sound was truly astonishing and I dare say I have never heard thunder of that magnitude. Pretty neat.

Today marked our first official day at IIMA, as course registrations took place. We had all signed up for courses that we'd like to take previously, however as it turned out some courses were no longer offered and some were all of a sudden no longer available to exchange students. There was a lot of teeth grinding among the people in classroom 3 this morning, obviously. Fortunately for me, all my pre-selected courses were still there and I could descend to the literature office and collect all my books and compendia (shown on picture).

After a quick visit to the campus Bank of India branch to pay the fees for boarding, literature et cetera that come from being a student here, three newly found friends and myself took to the road and disregarded the normal campus canteen lunch for a Barbecue Nation showdown à la all you can eat. Good value for money, precisely as tonight's dinner at another restaurant, which was sponsored by a few school alumni. Tomorrow classes start.

Happy Birthday

Returning from dinner, I was greeted by one of my dorm fellows (they're all Indian, at least so far), who informed me that there was a birthday celebration going to take place. This is a major event here at IIMA, which provides especially the first year students, who study extremely hard, to blow off some steam. Now, as you might remember, alcohol is banned in the entire state of Gujarat, meaning some other kind of let-go instrument is desperately needed. This is violence.

Two floors up the birthday boy was suspended from the hands of his friends, who were holding on to his arms and legs, so that he was lying horizontally in the air. All the others then beat him up with the help of their flip-flops. Judging by the sound these made when hitting his bottom, I can tell it was in no way painless. Somewhere in the middle he was also carried out into the bathroom, though because of the rather poor visibility at the moment I can offer no eyewitness account to what actually happened in there. I only saw that he was carried from the shower to the urinals to the toilet booths, all under what sounded as heavy protest.

Four girls had been invited (boys and girls live in separate dorms), whose job it was to cut a very tiny cake. They then shared each piece with the b-day kid and for every piece they would rub and throw cream in his face. In accordance with the tradition, he then gave a sentimental speech in front of everybody. After all this came a bigger cake we could all share (eating, not throwing).

I asked around, but no one was able to tell me where this tradition comes from. It's been there forever, even though "they are more violent in some other dorms". All the same, I was very careful to tell everybody I met that my birthday is in January, when I've already left.

The pictures show parts of the IIMA campus.