Sunday, February 19, 2006

Parting time !!! - Touching moments

After 4 years I said good bye to Infosys. I never imagined it will be so emotionally touching moment. It was not because of love for company but because of love of fellow people. In past I had changed a project after 1.5 yrs and had same feeling. Leaving ACAS project was also touching. Team mates gave me greeting card ( I still have it !!), gift and touching speeches. I had made comments on most of them and in return got great opinions from many.

This time again I wrote small but valuable things about team mates which I felt touched me. I was overwhelmed when they spoke high about me. May be part of it was because at parting everyone talks good. Its old joke that if you stay with the company they will highlight your weak points and cause problem in appraisal. Once someone quits, everyone talks big about him and portray him to be 'the' employee :-). I had same feeling but somewhere I felt most of them spoke truth :-). Feel good factor about myself , you see. All qualities were highlighted by some live incident. As I was getting close to parting moment I was getting a feeling that I would be missing my friends a lot. Few of my close friends had arranged for pizza party. Party started by giving me gift which I know is real useful to me. Then biggies started talking about me. Then it was my friends who started narrating incidents and refreshing old memories of good times we had together. People highlighted the first impression or old image they had about me and how they found me different ;0). It's touching when people speak about you. I did gather few points which I should improve on and I am sure friends will help me in improving on them.

Greatest surprise to me was client giving me card and gift coupon. I had just spent few months with the client. They wrote emails to me and shared personal email IDs. I had written about them as what quality in them impressed me the most. I was really happy to receive replies from them. On gosh..Touching moments.

Now fun part. My flight was on Saturday noon. I was at airport 1.5 hour before. My friends were there at the airport with me. We were having photography sessions and chit chatting. We waited till last moment and I left some 30 minute before for security check and all. Then there long queue for security check. Boarding point was far off and I had to walk long and take subway and again walk. End result - I missed the flight. I returned to my Seattle house to spend another day with old pals. :-)

Finally I made to CT.

Friday, February 10, 2006

Talkative Man - R.K. Narayan

Today I finished reading Talkative Man by R K Narayan. As ususal author wrote in simple and flowing way. Story moves at good pace. Its about a person living in Malgudi who happens to meet a foreigner from Timbuctoo. TMs interaction with foreigner, station master, village folks is very interesting. The way author described station master's agony in trying to remove person from Timbuctoo from waiting room is great. Our foreigner started by three piece suit but towards end of novel came down to shirt and pant. Our foreigner in a seminar announced that world is doomed to end in year 3000 AD. After hearing his reasoning and description of doom women seemed to have fainted. I was laughing on reading this.

Somehow I was not really ready to digest the abrupt ending. The concept that Dr Rann from Timbuctoo was fraud and had cheated many women was strange. Even RK wrote in post script that he found the story not moving after 166 pages. I thought a lot about what more I wanted to read from the story. I think I wanted to read that TM in our story was wrong in judging the person. I wished to read Dr Rann was genuine. Ah I wish all incidents and stories in world had happy ending. More on the book at http://www.brucebawer.com/narayan.htm

I have read 'Bachelor of arts' by same author and found that much more interesting. The style in which thoughts of boy is captured in this book is great. Boys struggle to build business, or find love, or follow girl all are described very nicely.

Now I am thinking which is the next book I should pick up.

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Vancouver and Whistler trip

Neel-n-Nikki made van couver quite famous. How can I miss visiting Canada, which is just 3 hrs north of Seattle, WA. So the planning began by gathering friends willing to spend dollars on yet another trip. Shiv, Basav, Alok and myself were part of famous five. Four of us planned to join the fifth member in Van couver. Rajesh ,my college friend, agreed to be the host in Canada for 2 days. Running around to get Canadian Visa, get visa style photograph, run to office and run back to visa consulate, all made us much more busier.

Despite heavy worload and like true travelers, we were all set to embark our journey on Jan-27-2006, Friday. Friday ! oh the same day Rang de basanti movie got released. Its a must watch movie. So first we went for movie. Enjoyed the movie thoroughly. ' Arre isko toh hindi aati hai' Amirs dialogue later became part of our Canadian trip.

After having dinner we finally started driving towards Canada. Time check - Its 12:30am. We reached Canadian border at around 3:30am. The consulate officer was wondering why four young men are driving to Canada at such an odd hour. We had to convince him that we were late because of some party and started late.

Saturday Jan-28, 2006

Day began very early. Yes it we left the apartment very early, around 11 am :-). After having brunch we went straight to world famous Capilano Suspension Bridge. Although the suspension bridge is nothing when compared to Lakshman Jhula but the rain forest adds to it beauty. The concept of treetop bridges is unique and gives wonderful view to observer. Tall and green cedar standing high, water flowing below and lovely surrounding.





Walking down different trails was thrilling. All structures were made of wood. Infact there were many Chinese mythological images kept. These objects were made from signle log and were looking wonderful. It was raining heavily so we ended the rain forest tour in two hours. We were anyway short of time and had to rush to next spot in the list.


Grouse mountain was our next destination for the day. Snow lift took us to top of mountain which was completely covered with snow. It wasn't snowing at all below and we could see green trees. But as we went up and up we could see snow covered trees like bride in white wedding gown. There was so much of snow that we decided to walk on snow, have a coffee out in snow and just enjoy the moment.















Evening was spent in downtown van couver looking at lights and watching birds :-).

Sunday Jan-29, 2006

This day was to be spent in close by city in Canada, called Whistler. It is famous for its adenture sports. Whistler is two hours drive from Van couver. The route is very scenic and we took breaks to click some photos.
















One can do zip trekking, skiing, snow mobiling and many more sports. We decided to do only snow mobiling. Its like driving a snow bike. No one among us had done this before but all were very exicted about it. It was two hour tour.


There was fresh snow on mountain. Snow depth would have been about a foot. We were riding in between mountains away from any civilisation. It was all white and white. We crossed bridge and reach another mountain. Again view of snow covered trees and mountain cannot be described in this space. We played a bit by throwing snow on anyone and everyone.

Return Journey

Return jounrey was equally challenging in terms of driving car. It started snowing heavily. Road was covered with snow and it became slippery. It was dark outside and only thing visible was tail light of car ahead of you. So it was driving just following the car ahead of you. In between I became the first driver and then we all started peeping out of glass to guess the road. But I was behind the steering :-) and we all made is past the snow covered roads. We dropped our friend at Van couver and came back to Seattle at 11pm. A beautiful trip came to an end. I am sure I would visit east coast of Canada sometime in future. Canada wait for me, I will come again.