The fun Phil-ed time

Its not just the beauty of the place but the beauty of the people which entices you, makes you wanna stay just a little bit longer and you never get enough of the place. Such are the magical islands of the Philippines, every day spent there has been an experience. Little over an year spent in this country has been the most wonderful year. My sixteen month saga at and the kinship with Philippines goes like this:

Even before we reached Manila the daily phone calls to decide which airlines to travel with, use to be quite bugging. And now that I know Saumya just generally talks a lot on all occasions even then I still can't imagine how he went on talking about flight tickets for one and half hours on the phone while my mom kept giving me looks and I kept telling Saumya I have to go somewhere and he still kept talking. But before we reached the stage of discussing flight tickets most of us had a hard time getting Visa with so many things to be done, it was a big hurdle that troubled Amrita a lot and delayed Tarun;'s arrival. The first time I met Chai, Amrita, Aseem, Saurabh and Sunil was at the Philippines Embassy and clearly Aseem and Amrita looked to be the most snobbish people. But I am glad my initial impression was completely wrong.

Finally we all booked the same flight because I got too bugged with the daily discussion about which flight to take and just went ahead and booked the cheapest one available and everybody else followed suit. My dad kept saying you guys can't even decide which flight to take and you guys will be managing firms, my only response was Dad that's why we are going for an MBA to manage the little things while the big stuff will manage itself...hehehe.

So now some picture will do the talking:

The first time we arrived at school. I don't remember feeling any excitement or fear, just the funny feeling I get when I go to a new place. Classes started with Pre MBA and I can go on cribbing about how much I hated LT(Larry Tan and also learning team later) and how much I hated accounting, accounting killed and butchered the moral of a lot of us. But the little ray of light were the two little SGV soldiers in our batch, who I must say have strived to help everyone ailing from accounting. When LT use to say 'do you fallowwwww' and all the lower being like me use to nod not knowing what else to do (but in my head I was screaming on his face No you ass I don't, cause you never explained it) and hide whenever he was on a lookout for someone to COLD CALL. And the worst part of the whole MBA was be the front liner, never in my life have I sat in the front row middle seat and I had to do that for 8 long months with a can group who I hated from the core.

With pre MBA done, while we felt some relief, LT was getting his master plan ready to torture us in term 1 with his bad accounting skills, so we started with Impasse with Pandesal and I knew it that accounting will definitely get me to an Impasse. But meanwhile the weekend scene started getting warmed up and some of us started to get out of our shells and letting go of our frustration out by partying hard.

So while the party scene was warming up, the term was nearing an end, the accounting book, economics undergrad book, stat book were getting old and we were getting tired of looking at them for long. Then came our first break and the first trip out of Manila to Mindanao happened and I regret the fact that I joined the trip late, but was still was a lot of fun, finishing up the whole bar was some legendary stuff that we did and I think the whole of AIM should be proud of us.

Well all thanks to Emile and Jo-anne for making all this trips possible and memorable. The pain they took to plan and arrange everything only humbles me.

So after a refreshing break started our term 2 which we all thought would be easier but was almost up there with term 1 and FM1 and FM2 troubled me further. All the sleepless night spend working on the excel symbolizes tough times to me. I sometimes wonder how the hell did I manage to take any finance subject after the torturous experience with accounting, FM1 and FM2. At that time LT's favorite dialogue use to be if you fail accounting you will fail FM1, if you fail FM1 you will definitely fail FM2 and if you fail FM2 you would have failed 6 credit in quantitative subjects and you'd be out of the school. Our day use to start with 8 am class of LT with his favorite set of dialogues and not one use to please anyone's ears or calms anyone's anxiety. Thankfully a well timed Baguio trip came along just to cool off our heads.

Then came the walk about time and me and Amrita took it quite literally and really walked about(supposedly running) around Manila Bay the only pain was it was 5 freaking AM. But a lot of people did a lot of interesting stuff unlike me shooting, flying, running marathons, cemetery visit and Pinatabu trip.

So term two ended somehow or the other and then came AC time and also the time when people went on exchange. So I had to go to Bombay to work in a bank, which was a horrible experience and my closest friends where going away for one full term. I knew term 3 is going to be a drag. But before that I had to survive in Bombay, two long sad months I spent there and the only comfort I had was that Dev was there and I was going back to Manila after AC. When I landed back in Manila the biggest relief was to see Jo-anne's face, I missed her a lot in term 3 and AC break, which wasn't much of a break. But in term 3 I think I just studied and did not do much other than that and saw a lot of movies and drank a lot of coffee. I think the staff at Kopi and Coffee bean know me pretty well by that time. All the peaceful time I spent at Coffee bean...aaahhh.

Term 4 had to be all fun, had to make the best of the last term. I think in term 3 and 4 you tend to take the studying part lightly because you have realized that anything can be done overnight and 'SO WHAT if you flunk a credit' attitude sets in. So the focus is completely towards having maximum fun and worrying minimum about anything else. MBA makes you thick skinned and a better procrastinator and of course teaches you how to phrase a simple sentence in complicated but impressive lingo. So in short you get better at faffing and giving motherhood statement once every hour.

So term 4 was a breeze but as we were nearing the end of term 4 tensions of job was growing big but even that wasn't stopping us from partying and traveling.

So this is how we enjoyed our time in Philippines and before leaving we had our family dinners, the official and unofficial photo shoot and the Grad ceremony. I must say the grad ceremony was beautiful and the prayer and speech were heart warming. And when I finally had to leave Manila it was tough and controlling the tears from falling even tougher.

The people and the place have a special place in my heart forever and I hope and pray to God that I may return to the Magical Islands of Philippines. And what I take along with me is a special bond of friendship that I made here.

Cheers to all of us and hope we meet again.