Conwall rafting - April'06

Pyaar ki kashti mein, lehron ki masti mein,
Pawan ke shor shor mein, chale hum zor zor mein..

Huff Huff...Puh Puh..this was our state; tired,and exhausted; after 3 hours of rafting. 22-April-2006, Saturday, was decided to be spent in water doing rafting. All planning was done, cars booked, excitement packaged, energy preserved and enthusiam bottled.

After many months I had seen 6:30 am on Saturday. Normally Saturday morning happens at noon ;-). After having quick breakfast I was all set to pickup my friends and start the trip to west cornwall. Pontiac Vibe was rented for the trip. This was March 2006 car which had run only for 1500 miles. Was it fun to drive the car? O yeah! I was driving 90 mph easily on it. So following the route CT-4 we reached clarke outdoors in 1.5 hrs.

http://clarkeoutdoors.com/rafting.htm

After reaching clarke outdoors we got ourselves dressed up in rain jacket, life jacket and gloves.

Rafting was first time experience for all of us.

There were many who did not know swimming. But hey swimming is not at all necessary for rafting. Even a swimmer cannot swim in rough water :-). So we were given quick KT by Bill, our coach. For non-software programmer KT = Knowledge tranfer...oh yes we IT guys mix work and personal life. So here we are are learning strategies from the guru.

As in work life, we are set to dive into the new task with basic idea. In teams of three we were all set to race among ourselves on water.

Shiv, Deepak, Vinod and I were in one boat. We learnt the art of rowing, turning left and right quickly. We started rowing quickly to race ahead of all. But Magesh, Chandru and Suresh were fast enough to be defeated. First 1.5 miles was smooth and we mistook rafting to be simple task. We had the first experience of slight rough water and enjoyed it thoroughly. When raft twisted left and right in wild water we were screaming with excitement. There were many people standing in cold water and fishing. After this came the tough path. There were many rocks just submerged in water in the path. Our raft got stuck in rocks. At runtime strategies were made and implemented to get into flowing water again. Shiv and I had to get into water and clear the raft of rocks many times.



Now lets talk about climax of rafting. We were told by instructor that we will see an island on right side in 3/4th of path. After 2 to 2.5 hrs we were desperately looking for island. We had to motivate each other to row more. Finally we saw the island. After gathering last drops of energy we rowed to reach the destination. We had lost all the energy and were feeling cold. Vinod was shouting to us "bas ho gaya yaaro, see thats the end point, come on row fast". And yes we finally reached the destination and ran into the van. The heater in van was feeling real good.

Finally we drove back, had a good dinner in udipi resturant. Hot water bath at home and sound sleep was all we needed.

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.

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.