Dubai Diaries...

It is now a little more than two months since I landed in Dubai (8 June 2006 to be precise). On one hand, it feels like ages for I am going through one of the busiest phases of my life and on the other hand it doesn’t seem to be anywhere even close to two months at all, thanks again to the rigors that ensure a steep learning curve. Time just seems to fly by at SPJCM (www.spjain.org)… I am already on my way to making lifetime friends, not to mention building networks. In this blog which is also my first, I try to describe how I spend a typical day at S P Jain, Dubai campus.

A typical day begins at 7 AM, with classes starting as early as 8 AM. The early morning rush to get ready for college is something that deserves special mention over here. Mathematically speaking, the speed of getting ready is inversely proportional to the time left for boarding the college bus (Can’t stop my engineering fundas from creeping in!J). The necessity of boarding the bus becomes the mother that helps us discover our hidden potential. In fact, some of my friends have become experts in the art of getting ready from bed to bus in five minutes flat. God bless the inventor of Deodorants! And then there are some more running to board the bus, with laptop in one hand, belt in mouth and tucking the shirt in with the other hand giving us a live lesson in multitasking that we learn outside our classes.

Classes are a completely different story though. The exhaustion and rustiness suddenly vanish into thin air as we hear of ‘surprise Pre-class Quiz.’ Post Quiz, we get to see some ‘excellent Class Participation (CP)’ which in some cases borders on Desperate CP to earn some brownie points. At this point, I must add that the faculty flown in from SP Jain Mumbai does a commendable job of teaching us and more importantly keeping us awake through their interactive sessions.

Typically classes end by 5 PM. Occasionally; however, we’ve guest lectures by industry stalwarts after the classes as a part of Visiting Wisdom Sessions. Whether external wisdom visits us or not, the professors ensure that we get wiser every single day.

Hey Wait! You thought this is it? Boy! This is just the beginning. In fact, the real fun starts now! For now comes the Herculean task of completing the pending assignments, presentations and reports due for the next day… And by the time you leave the institute to head back home (the villas), it’s already 11:30 PM. You can’t leave any later for that is the last bus. But that is just an interval in the long movie on our typical day. In the villas too, it is not abnormal to see people discussing and studying until 1.30 or later. Thereafter you crash into the bed and flake out into oblivion…

A few more such days and we hit a weekend, full of hope for recharging our batteries. Our weekend is Sunday & Monday, the two days dedicated for the Special Group Project (SGP) with companies like Microsoft, TCS, Infosys, Emirates Bank and many others.

Truly, time just seems to fly by. We’re a two months old cohort and we’ve just three more months left before we end our tryst with Dubai and move on to Singapore. I now realize that there is, however, much more midnight oil to be burnt before we take the break and many dunes of wakefulness to cross before we reach the oasis of sleep.