Mid-summer night's daze

Up, after the first splash!

I am not a swimmer. Yet, aided by a life-jacket (yeah, not purist aquaphile) I have previously dived in to cold waters. When you hit the water for the first time, head down, the splash causes you to go in to a state of daze, until the buoyancy bobs you up above water. Only then can you breathe. If you get my point, this blog post is one such quick breather.

For email access, internally (Ah! the coveted domain name in my new email ID) WIMWI uses a SaaS-modelled service of,probably, the most popular email service that also owns the best search engine. So, we have this page that comes up as the inbox and on the left pane is the list of ready-for-chat users in the PGPX batch. The intent of this post is not to familiarize you with the features of our email system, but to enlighten you how a 'productivity' application can become a subtle support system. Let me explain.

The speed at which professors' assistants send updates, the academic reps post the latest twist in the profs' plans and the last minute changes to the make-up classes (you wish these were cosmetic) and the updates we get on assignments and submissions, one needs to be checking his email every few minutes. Else, one is working on expired information.

So, now you should guess that my Inbox page is, well, always open.

What do I see now? There is this gentleman SG, who's right now battling the twists of supply side managerial economics. How do I know that? His current status is "IsoCan't Curves". Inspired by this, I update my current status to 'segMental State' reflecting my state of mind at the maze of jargon surrounding Market Segmentation and Target Marketing. Then there is RR whose status is a smug 'hmmmm'. I am not sure what she is studying. Not sure if he was really sleepy or just bored, SG-Bandit flags a 'Bean Counting is fun, Bean Counting is fun, Bean....'.

As I make my way through the Building Blocks of PGPX, post-supper, I increasingly find that
a. It's already lunch time on the US Pacific Coast
b. My wife is already in REM sleep, probably dreaming that I have retired for the night
c. There still are several users online (green user icons) but deeply engrossed in subjects that while enjoyable, remind us that 'there are no free lunches'. In fact, nowadays, there is very little free time for lunch.

While time chugs along,outside the walls of Vastrapur campus, our Microeconomics Professor (so good that he was brought back from retirement) speeds past the topics at a speed tad less than that of light (If you think I am exaggerating, remember that I am reading marketing!). By the night, we try and run behind this beam encouraged by each others' 'statuses' reminding us that 'we are not alone'. Subtle Support System?

Coming back to the splash: After the first bob, gravity takes over and you go down for many short plunges. Time for me to plunge 'down' into Kotler's maxims.