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Its my life
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Tuesday, 05 August 2008 00:02 |
Hello all..
I know I've not written anything for almost 2 months. I dont want to give you the same lame excuse that I was busy. I thought , I would rather pen ( keyboard ) down all that was happening over last couple of months.
As I've already wrote before , I was going through a bad phase when nothing was happening around me. My Boss , called from US and said its time for you to go for a bike ride. And thats what I did in May.
Went for a crazy night ride from Delhi to Varanasi . It was planned to be a non-stop ride , but the bike I was on didnt like me much. It blew its fuse many a times and finally we reached Varanasi a good 2 hours late than ETA. Still , I enjoyed the quick break from work and the ride in the night with High Intensity Discharge ( HID ) lights fixed on bike. It was like I was riding under flood light. Varanasi was really hot , so I returned to Kerala within hours after I reached Varanasi. I know , its crazy ...but thats what I am.
Few days after I reached back , I came to know that I am selected to speak in a conference in Chicago. I was least expecting such a bolt from the blue and it really got me excited. So June had me quite busy tying up the loose knots before my big journey. I took a couple of classes for our next generation leaders and moved my responsibilities to others in the team.
I went back to Sainik School in the later part of June. We had our Old Boys Re-union for which around 30 guys came from our batch. It was a special occassion for us , because we had a memorial built for our last friend Harshan. On that day , we gave it officially to the school . Manu & Sunil gave a wonderful speech which was really touching . You can checkout the pics taken by Sunil at
( http://picasaweb.google.com/suniljosegregory/OBAPhotos21062008 ). Later in the evening we all joined at Harshan's home for a tea .
I left to Chennai the very next day for my visa interview . The counsellate looked like a fortress and even the guy who was interviewing me looked like one. He couldnt believe that after me being in a company for almost 7 years , that too a company with 90% of customers from US , I've not gone outside India even once. What should I say for that ? I donno.He grilled me for 20 odd minutes and finally gave his approval. 10 years multiple entry !! That was worth the 20 minutes grilling session, I guess. :)
July saw me moving in with Amal because he had internet connection and there is no Tobby trouble in his flat. Just kidding :) . Tobby did gate-crash once in a while to check out his culinary skills but for better part of the week , I was left with my own worries . When you represent a company with many "international" speakers like Tobby around , you have a lot to worry.
I left Cochin on 20th. 21st July remains the longest day for me till date. It lasted for almost 34 hours . I left Chennai at around 5:30 in the morning and after 10 hours of flight reached Heathrow airport, London at 11 am. Few hours later I got into the next 10 hour flight , which took me to Phoenix where I landed at 6:30 pm .
For the next one week , I rarely saw day light. It was mostly due to the dry heat and partially because I was sitting in the apartment and trying to put together my presentation slides. The first day in office , Robert showed me the actual poornam server ( imagine using a machine for 7 years without seeing it ) and also a datacenter( that provide mirrors for sourceforge ).
On 27th, me & my buddy from US office flew to Chicago. The whole conference & exhibition experience was overwhelming. We were staying in a hotel built in 1929 ( Dont worry , they have done a lot of repair & modifications since then ) The Navy Pier , where the conference was like a fair ground. The talk did go well , but I think the attendees liked my slides more than the talk. The conference gave me the opportunity to meet a lot of big guys in the industry and I really enjoyed the three days over there. I also got a chance to vist the suburban Naperville where one of our clients showed me around the place. Its such a beautiful and calm place . Someday, I'll have a summer house there. :)
Checkout the few pics from Robert's camera. (http://picasaweb.google.com/sojish/ ) I also got my new Nikon D40 . So , you can expect a lot of updates from me.
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