Tour de Pondy

Jp(Jayaprabhu) once sent me a mail with the subject line 'Karate for u', depicting a motorcyclist doing a venturous stunt. It was just a 45 seconds clipping. I never thought our karate (Lt.Prabhu) would take it seriously. Ironically he did. It was on our jaunt to Pondy, karate exhibited some vivid bike driving skills along the ECR road on 11th of August 2007. The road was very narrow and had a fine turn where speeds of even 70 kmph would prove to be fatal. But karate still managed to park the bike going at 90kmph!! It was due to his superior reflexes, he brought the bike to a halt. Many might say it to be an accident. But i personally dont feel so. Its simply because, the place he landed was no desert. It was infront of a snack bar :).

This trip to pondicherry is definitely not a memorable one. It was just because more than half the defaulters - Baju, Abhi, Delhi, Sankar, Amit and Lava were missing. Compared to excursions like ooty, yercaud, kodaikanal etc, this one was nothing.

Maani and Arvind desperately wanted to chill themselves by having a bike trip to any place. Around chennai, pondy is the only recognizable spot and known well for its cheap booze. Arvind, myself, jp, maani, karate, mamu, sudan and roger geared up. Jack, Baju and Lava had their own reasons not to come.

Nothing great to say about the trip. We started off at 2PM compared to the planned time of 10AM on saturday. Reached there around 6PM and were straying in the streets to find a decent room. Finally got one at a heavy price of 3600 a day!!. The only joyous moment was that night where there was a series of disputations between Maani and Arvind both having their 'moments' ridiculing each other. It was really entertaining and funny. Other than that, nothing more to say about this one. 6.5 out of 10.

Kozhi's grand finale

We all had to come out of the teynampet dhaba with our bells loosened and aiding each other from not collapsing. It was due to the wide range of delicacies we had that night. One of my colleagues at verizon (Rajagopal a.k.a kozhi) was forced to choose a better life. Yes, he decided to leave Verizon and join Ericsson. His harbinger would be thala kotta (Arun) who inaugurated this trend. Hope i also join this league in the near future.

Kozhi's treat was on dilemma. He was dilly-dallying and procrastinating many times. Finally a committee was formed under bala and andi to fix the venue and day to be August 6th, 9PM at teynampet dhaba, a place renowned for its potpourri of chickens.

Myself, Bala, Andi, Madan, Praveen, Phalgun and Murli were invited to embellish Raj's final treat. Palgun drove his car accompanying Kozhi and Murali with him. Myself, andi, praveen and madan came by two-wheeler. We all reached there on time. And we found a decent place in the open. The environment was colorful ;).

Lavish Murali and Ravenous Andi dictated the items. Palgun, Raj and Madan were the 'veggies' who were in lesser number (or is it greater ;-) ?) that day. Tomato soup, Hot & Sour chicken soup and Jaljeera were ordered to stimulate our appetite.

Then the starters which was really an elongated list of chickens included Dragon chicken, Tandoori chicken, Reshmi kabab, Tangdi kabab, Chicken 65 and Ginger chicken. Along with that we also ordered Chilli Prawn, Paneer tikka, Gobi fry. These items forced the main course out of the question. Still we had to order something for namesake. I recall them to be Butter naan, Romali Roti and palgun ordering some brown colored naan. I was full after having three to four pieces of chicken. And so were Murali, Madan and Raj. The remaining 'husky 4' raped the dishes that were served.

Amidst our banquet, we found ways to pass time joyfully which included eyeballing an iyer girl from the next table, badgering madan, pepping up kozhi etc.,

For desserts, we ordered Gulfi, Gulabjamoon and Jilabee. Beverages were pepsi and lime soda. Snapped these memorable moments with praveen's sony ericsson.

We all greeted Kozhi for his successful future ahead. All the very best da Kozhi!!! Consider this an apocalypse and seek a new and fruitful beginning!!!

My 1st year at verizon..

This one i wrote inside comments section of madhan's blog. I was not having a seperate blogpage then. Having my own one now, its more appropriate to move it here..

Is first year a champagne or cyanide at Verizon?
I'd say it was full of champagne coz of the following reasons
1) Training period.. A WELL BEGUN IS A HALF DONE. nalla entertaininga irunthuchu.. esp our salaivaan; avaru classla vanthale comedythaan.
2) Project - nalla project. OPyum adikalam, workum interestinga irukum. nalla lead. (en lead kaeta, he'l say 'enna paathu nallavanu sollitanapa') :)
3) Friends - got a uniq set of close friends : bala, madan, rajagopal, andi, abinav
4) Figures - konjam kammithaan, irunthaalum oru 10-12 paera paathu site adichu adichu kannu avinji poachu.
5) My workstation : Good place to pass time after spending many tiring hours @ Cafeteria/Breakout/Dhanam mess /Food court/Olympia lawn. (he he he)
6) Sametime/Lotus Notes : ithu irunthathaan en kalai(well, for most it'l be aftnoon) velaigal sevvaney seyalpadum.
7) TT (latest fever) : daily oru 2 hours.

But a lil bit of cyanidum iruku.. :(
1) verizon policy : cell phone, mp3 player edhuvum kondu vara koodathu. Thummanumna kooda, ivanungalta trouble ticket raise panni permission vaanganum.
2) perutha avamaanam in april 2007 (guess my vz friends can understand this :) )
3) thoppai - s/w engineeraga maarnathuku kedacha thandanai.Ithoda niruthikiren..
overall solla pona this 1 year's rating : 8 outof 10.

My Pilot

Time : 2:18 AM
Date : August 06 2007
Bored after reading my 38th wordlist in GRE Barron's book, i thought i would take a break. Amidst studying the list, lava showed me a post in his blog. It was impressive. Moved by that, i thought why not create my own blog? Had to copy lava's title though ;-). Two full days i did not touch my book. Watched two movies Zodiac and Apocalypto.
Zodiac was a nice movie. Started watching that movie with Jp, Karate and lava at usual 2 AM on saturday night. Jp retired at the start going into deep sleep. Karate was there for some half hour watching the murder scenes alone by some X serial killer he had to retire as well. Our lava murthy tried his max to keep himself up for some 70 mins, but he too cant withstand as it was already 3.10AM and still some 70 more mins were left in the movie!! Everyone were asleep. So i switched over to headphones and finished off that movie. It was good. I've seen many movies of this kind - serial killer based. Some of them include se7en, primal fear, silence of the lambs where the killer will finally be revealed through some three to four twists in the climax. But in this movie which is based on a real incident, the killer is still not found, although they have one suspect name 'leigh', but this case is still open in vallejo, SF. Finally went to bed at 4.45 AM.
Next day woke up at 2PM. Well i did not intend to. A phone call from my relatives made me do it. That full day was spent playing chess. Night ordered pizza and finally felt that two days i did nothing. Out of guilt, started a wordlist and then this blog. Enough for a pilot version. I stop here.