March was a really interesting month, so without any further ado...

• Mon-Sun, 1-7 Mar: One of my Term III courses, Field Project, involved groups of students visiting an industry for four days.  These field visits were from 1st to 4th, which was a pretty relaxing period since we didn't have other classes during that time.  I watched the end of the 76th Annual Academy Awards in the morning, and in the evening, I watched John Carpenter's Vampires.  On 2nd, there was a party organised by the BrandScan and Atharva convenors (of the previous year) for the entire batch (seniors as well as us juniors).  After returning we watched Ab Tak Chhappan on CD, it was really very good.  A few days before I was asked to do some drawings for TAPMI Update 2004, and so on 5th I did some.  I later found out that I could actually contribute an idea for the cover itself.  Prof. Natarajan, the editor of Update 2004 wanted me to come up with something better for it, that would bring out the central theme of the issue - reflective learning.  I had an idea in my mind after reading an article which he gave me, and I worked on that later.  On 6th night I watched Wishmaster, which was a really fun movie.  That night, my parents and Varun went to see The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.  7th was Holi, and I guess that morning many of the guys in our hostel had a lot of fun.  In the afternoon I made a preliminary version of my cover design idea for Update 2004 and emailed it to Prof. Natarajan.  After that I studied for the Financial Management 2 End Term which would be there the next day.
• Mon-Fri, 8-12 Mar: I didn't do too well on Monday's exam, but that night I got to see the excellent Ice Age, and I also made the final version of my cover design for Update 2004.  Over the next couple of days I had the pleasure of interacting with Prof. Natarajan and the rest of the Editorial Team on Update 2004, where a lot of lively and interesting discussions took place.  An important event on 11th was my selection of the courses that I would be studying in the next three terms at TAPMI!  I selected almost all the Systems-related courses and all of the Human Resource Management courses.  In the sixth term, I've taken Advertising Management (a Marketing course) because this is something that's "right up my alley".
• Sat-Sat, 13-20 Mar: On 13th March, Prof. Natarajan told me that my cover design for TAPMI Update 2004 was approved., which of course made me very happy!  On 16th, there was a presentation as part of Information Systems class, I gave this one on Linux, which was well appreciated.  On 17th, Rupak, Kamal and me took a few photos at Little Chef, which is my source for a burger, tea, two Mentos and a Fusen gum every day (in Manipal).  On 18th, I got my copy of Interface, which is the souvenir given to the seniors at TAPMI.  On 19th, I had the end term of Business Law, and later some work got done on an assignment for Operations Management.  On 20th, I found out that two of the courses I had registered for in the second year at TAPMI were scrapped, because there were too few registrations.  Pity - I really wanted to be part of that "Software Development Platforms and Emerging Trends" course, as it sounded technical... but I guess that was the very thing that put off other non-Computer Science-background students from the course.  Anyway I've taken Consumer Behaviour to make up for that.  In the evening, we (Jayesh, Rama, Rupak, Guru, Kamal, Sunil, Sameer, Abdul, myself) went to Malpe beach and had a great time - followed by dinner at Woodlands.  Watched Freddy vs. Jason on CD for the second time after that!
• Sun-Wed, 21-31 Mar: I got to go to Woodlands again on 21st afternoon with some friends (Lunch to celebrate Ugadi).  Over the next few days (upto 26th) there was a lot of CD writing going on.  Seniors were writing CDs like crazy, and I got a lot of stuff too.  Anyway, during that time, on 23rd, there was a viva-voce at TAPMI - basically this was more like an interview to kind of "take stock" of the students at the end of the first year.  Prof. Badri and Prof. Mohan Kumar interviewed me.  March 27th was an important day, it was the 18th Annual Convocation at TAPMI (held at Hotel Valley View).  After the graduation ceremony for the seniors, there was dinner, and I finally got to see TAPMI Update 2004, with my cover design (it was officially released that day, and all our seniors got a copy along with their Post Graduate Diploma in Management degree)!  Later on, during dinner, Prof. Natarajan was kind enough to get me two copies of the magazine.  You can download a PDF version of the same thing on the page I linked above.  It's a 1.4 MB file.  Well, after the seniors graduated, it was our (First Year students) turn to write the End Term exams and thus complete one half of our Management course.  That was what happened, and the exams were these, in order: Financial Statement Analysis (29th, 9:30 AM-12:30 PM, didn't go as badly as I thought it would), Business Research (29th, 2:30 PM-3:30 PM, was OK), Management Information Systems (30th, 9:30 AM-11 AM, went well!), Written Analysis & Communication 3 (30th, 12 PM-1 PM, quite nice), Human Resource Management (30th, 2:30 PM-4:30 PM, was good), Marketing Management (31st, 9:30 AM-11:30 AM, went very badly), Operations Management 2 (31st, 2:30 PM-4:30 PM, a disaster as well).  Of course, as these things were going on, I was also packing my stuff (after all, I would be spending the next two and a half months at home!!), putting together all my CDs, getting photos developed, etc.  I should particularly mention two CDs put together by Arun Ravindran, which I was fortunate to copy.  One is called "Stolen Bins" and represents a two-year compilation of various freeware tools for various things (graphics, programming, multimedia), and that includes Linux stuff too.  Another compilation of his I got some days earlier was the "Retro MODs" collection, which is a collection of MOD music from over a thousand games.  On 30th, I got appreciation from Prof. Sivakumar and Prof. Rajagopalan on Update 2004, which made me feel very happy.

Breaking News!  Fusen Gum, which I mentioned earlier, is the best bubble gum I have ever tasted.  I tried to search for links to the company that makes it (one Marukawa Confectionery company in Japan), but couldn't find anything.  However, Google came up with this - a Fusen Gum tribute page by Vishal Patel!

Well, that was basically the month of March, which ended on an exciting note.  You see, 1st April was the day I would be travelling back home to Hyderabad (similarly, all my friends would be travelling to their respective project locations - I was fortunate that my Management in Practice a.k.a. Summer Project was also in Hyderabad).  So, on 31st we really had fun - after finishing the exams I went to Little Chef for the last time (well, for the next two and a half months anyway), then it was time spent in packing stuff and clearing out our rooms.  I watched Payback that night, and after that we started watching House of 1000 Corpses... but that turned out to be too weird for some of my friends, so we stopped watching it after the first half.  Anyway I went to sleep at around 4:30 AM the next morning!

As you might guess, there is going to be another post with all the April news, and that will be posted as soon as I am done with it!