At home At Hullimakki.....

A sweet voice said "I am waiting to run away, are you coming" and thus began this trip. Rushed to office immediately, a good chit-chat for half an hour then headed to V.V.Puram Food street. Hungry stomach and eclectic dishes always gel well. Reached Hullimakki at around 5 AM. Half an hour nap and then for the first time in my life i had bed coffee and bed tea, and it was awesommmmm. Cold climate, speciallll coffee (as Genelia puts it!!) and badminton made my morning.

A 2 hour trek later with some great snaps. Was just too hungry when i spotted a Ginnu (Pudding cooked with colostrum) look-a-like, it was too yummy. Aunty's cooking was an epicurean's delight, lunch was just lip smacking with akki rotis, cocunut chatni, bamboo shoot pickle, dry chicken etc. Then we had a wonderful time at their private waterfall. Sitting below the fall of water was quite a relief from body aches and felt supreme. We had a magnificient time there. Reached back and had juice, pineapple juice was never so tasty. Then badminton time again followed by play time with Rangi(A calf) and then 2 cups of tea and a cup of coffee( I think that states how pleasing they were). Of course we had to let out some quality time for UNO, this time with lots of 'open' cheating tricks. Later betal leaf wine + campfire + pic time. Then we invented some new badminton concepts.
Me and Vinz-Lazy Badminton- Absolute no leg movement.
Me Vinz and Shubra- Trio Badminton-This didn't work out well.
Me,San,Vinz,Sameer,Kartha+refreees- The all-opponent badminton- Even your teammates can function as your opponent. This was just a flabbergast ride.

We kicked off next morning with taTTe idli and headed off to a trek. Sudks and gang went ahead for about 4 hills, while me and San had some quality time experimenting her new SLR (Ond sala nan pic, Ond sala aval pic) after 2 hills. Climbing down we found a pond, lots of big fishes there, they seemed to love puffed rice. Back home, me, sudks, Damodar and Kartha went ahead for bath at a small stream and returned for a great lunch again. Then had great fun with the puppies minchu and shiny, will miss them a lot. Everyone of us had a sad time saying good bye to aunt ant uncle. Thanks to them again for such a great weekend.

Office Office!!

Things about office that you Sorry me hate or like...

1. You MUST hate the cafeteria food. Liking that food is like committing the most heinous crime on earth. This is valid even when your colleague has brought a lunch which looks such that you prefer to just stay away. And for Christ's sake never go for the second fill!!!
2. You MUST hate your cube. Even if it has all the comforts of a heaven, there is something you can find. May be just look at your neighbor, he may have a hideous face or he may have worn an odd apparel or worst he may be your "teammate".
3. If someone gets a new car in office you MUST involve with others in teasing him/her about when will he drop us home, even when neither us nor him/her bothers to do it even once.
4. You MUST hate your manager and director. I do not know if this comes along with the breeze of AC in the office as a free package.
5. Treats MUST be in a so-called sophisticated restaurant. That's because most people in office care about the "ambiance and not the food". Even if you feel the food was worse than the "Shanthi Sagar" nearby your house; you MUST say the food was great and thank the person for choosing such a great place and may be go a step further saying you will surely recommend it to your friends.
6. There will be some ladies in office who ACT(actually overact) as though they are dieting. They usually do not eat any sweets, coconut items,oil( a big no!!), even though they can gorge tonnes of ice-creams and chocolates.
7. Never Never eat anything out of interest in office. A suitable analogy: Order a plate of gobi manchurian(7 pieces) for a team of ten. Out of which five people will be ladies, so the overacting rule applies and they wont touch it( I just saw a lady take a hairline of onion from it and say its too oily. The others will say, ya by looking at it only i felt that). The other dudes are also no less of a natak company, one takes one piece then the other says hes full already and cuts a piece into one third. This goes on for about half an hour until then one or two pieces will be remaining on the plate glaring your eyes. You think a lot and about to grab those then a good Samaritan takes away the plate to the wash room.
8. Always use the terms "ping", "doze", "pretext", "in the loop", "contemplate". Also when you are in office you MUST be secular.
9. You MUST hate Pj's and laugh at some recondite jokes that one may feel don't even classify as jokes. Also never have a complete laugh flashing your teeth, just put on an artificial laugh.
10. You MUST love movies like "Pursuit of happyness", "Hotel Rwanda","The pianist","Saving Private Ryan","Schindler's list","No Man's land", "Blood Diamond" and all the movies that deal with social cause and the movies about some countries called Somalia, Zimbabwe. I agree that some of the movies listed here are good, but for God's sake all these movies deal with great pain, suffering; when you are already locked in a cubicle for 9 hours, and other n number of problems haunting you, why the f*** do you want to add more.

Actually lot more points can be added but this is what i recalled just now coming back from office (Ya its a Saturday!!) and yes, some were purposefully deleted for obvious reasons. Also any resemblance to any person may NOT be entirely co-incidental. Finally its just my opinion!!!

Change=Hope

Always love to sip coffee beside the window, with a serene, light drizzle view outside. Today is one such day. Although a bit cold, its nice and pleasant. I was lucky to have a cube with such a beautiful view. Other advantages of my cube in 1st floor were a covert sound 15 min nap after lunch, cubes with better heights so no peeping. Today forsaking all these, I am moving to 2nd floor. No corner cubes there, but some good friends (not so good as to part with their corner cubes :) ). Hoping all the pantry breaks can come back alive so as to compensate for everything.

The wheels are turning.....

Continuing with Vinz and San. And as SR had said, the wheels are turning. Lots of changes recently:
->Bhuv, sudks depart....
->San leaves to US, and so busy to even chat.. Paaapa yelli sannkaagibidthaaaro antha :)
->I got to move to 2nd floor. My current cube was magnificient. The view's amazing. But looking at the positives, 2nd floor has got good crowd :) . But still negatives are more in number. I failed to convince my manager in this case.
->Work at home as well as office got doubled.
->No trips since April.
A beautiful relevant song, Color blind.

Very confident, the wheels will turn back. Actually already started to....:) Got to Go...

Confessions of the dangerous mind....Part 1

Exactly 1 year ago, was the day i stepped into Cisco. An induction programme at Le Meridien, I was so waiting to peer into the future and see what's in store, today look back and smile. The place was highly embellish, great food and a full day of presentations, later we had a DJ night. This went on for a week, except that it was Chancery and Divyashree for further sessions. Almost the entire crowd was enthralled by my current second line manager's talk but the rest were just recondite or belabouring . A great accomodation at Humming bird ,plush AC rooms. Life was truely what it is meant to be. Ya hedonistic..you may call.

Further were the ICND training sessions at SA, commensurately abstruse and so were the Techtalks at our BU that followed. I still recall one of our manager taking us around the 1st floor and introductions that followed. We were exulting with the number of good looking girls around :). We were tagged as NCH. Here we met our mentors, who took us to a lab tour. The lab is formidable place for first timers. It seemed like a giant waterfall of cables. Our mentors were extremely patient in explaining what a switch or a server is? .The switch I only recalled studying in 7th sem the difference between it , hub and router (I used to hate that part as it was exremely confusing). They made us meet another guy, who we instantly identified as slightly nerdish. Then came across his presentation on dot1x. It was just fabulous, we were dumbstruck by his limpid understanding of concepts and his own way of explicating it. Then i can recall his explaining of a server with an analogy of rakthbeejaasura, his linux fundas and so so many other fundas. But i must say he used to harp a lot, during those pantry breaks. But when he taught us so much, such leniency seems no wrong :) . Bhu used to give us assignments, vinz explained DHCP server, ACS and so much more. What ever little knowledge on networking i have, is attributed to these people.

This went on for a month. Then came my first trip with the gang. It was Jog falls, Probably as i remember it was sudks who invited me, I instantly said yes. Dont remember much details of it. It happened somewhere in mid August. I knew only three people of the entire group, and above that a fresher.That must have been surely intimidating, but was a great trip for acquiantance. They were talking about HSBC, K2, some managers which made absolutely no sense to me at that time. Was more of the sort lost actually. But it was great that they tried to involve me into everyting.

I'm still in August so praising people a lot. And not to be mistaken that, I think you guys are still so good. Today's scenario is different :). And many more characters are yet to come.....