My First Trip Abroad... to Switzerland

My onsite trip from Infosys came to me after relatively long period of more than 5years in offshore. But finally the day has come - 21 May 2011. I always believed 21 was a special lucky number for me, and was excited that my first trip abroad came on this date.
The flight schedule was from Bangalore Saturday morning 10:25am by Emirates airlines to Dubai by 12:55pm and from there at local time 4:05pm finally reaching Zurich by 8:45pm. We (me, Winnie, Babumaman) left Mysore on Fri evening 5pm by car arranged by Infy to Bangalore, to Abhilashettan's home at Hal JagdeeshNagar. Next day morning, taxi came to pick and was in Airport well in time. We had weighed our bags (total 4 checkin bags and two cabin bags) and was slightly over weight. Abhilashettan and Babumaman waited outside the airport till we cleared security gate. We were greeted by picture perfect faces of Emirates airhostess on entrance, and often by drinks & food that they brought.
The journey time to Dubai was 4hours, but what surprise me was that local time difference between dep & arrival time was only 2.5 hours - I got to understand the time zone difference real time!

Myforia Fashion show - Retro theme

It was the annual cultural event of Infosys Mysore DC which happened on Nov20 - 'Myforia'.. and I was happy to be part of its organizer for the fashion show.. I did my best in every aspect of making the fashion show happen - calling for nominations, interacting with fashion show judging panel, going around looking for potential candidates, conducting two rounds of selections, short listing candidates, discussing about costumes with fashion designer in Mysore, getting budget from hrd, seeing the fashion show going off well and finally the satisfaction of organizing a fashion show officially in Infosys :)

Ponnonam '08 @ Infosys Mysore

It was a like a dream come true ! I couldn't believe for myself how grand the Onam celebrations at Infosys Mysore turned out to be after a month's planning & hard work arranging for it.

The whole idea of having a grand onam celebrations in Infosys Mysore started when Jiben mentioned to me about on Aug15 while having lunch after a visit to zoo with orphanage kids. We then put forward the idea to few malayalees in Infosys and started calling meetings on evening to plan for the events. The preparations rolled out smoothly with auditions for singers, narrators, dancers etc We also planned for fun events and ona sadya spread over three days of Sep16,17,18. Throughout the planning and execution of events, we were a team of 6 core organizers - Myself, Jiben (extreme left in above photo), Sreeja P (just right to me in photo above), Sreejith Madhavan, Preetham MD & Shino Jacob (last three on right of above photo).

The whole programme came out too good - the fun games of lemon spoon race, sack race & uri adi on Sep16 evening, Tug-of-war & Kerala special dishes on Sep17 evening, Ethnic wear day, Ona Sadya, Pookalam competitions, Chenda melam, Stage programmes of Mohiniyattam, Thiruvathira kali, Kalari payattu, fusion dance, songs, vanchi paattu, and the lucky draw prize nd onam trophy winner announcements..

It adds to my pride to be able to do so much from my part starting with planning of events, calling for auditions, bringing ona sadya cook & chenda melam troop, helping selection of fashion show costumes, buying items from city and coordinating with anchors for smooth flow of events. We, as organizers received appraisal mails from DC Head Shaji and HR Manager Bradley.. and all of us were really happy about it..

Ponnonam '08 was the best ever Onam celebrated in Infosys Mysore and it'll remain in my heart for ever:)

Cartoon series "An Otherwise Perfect Morning"

I suddenly fealt like starting a new cartoon series that would depict everyday humour of funny incidents in life. I have already started making each one daily and is posting them in my office bulletin board (outlook) everyday around 9.30am.. I am getting good responses for it and everybody seems to like it. I wish to keep posting new cartoons daily and get more eyes to it.

My New Sitar

After staying away from sitar classes for more than four months while I was in Pune, I have started joining to my sitar master Saroj Mukherjee in Mysore. Last week I have bought my new Sitar from Mysore and it was nice to bring home this magical musical instrument. I went along with my master to the shop to select it and bought it for Rs.7300 after various parameter validations by my master. He later replaced the strings of this string with better ones and my net cost of sitar turned out to be 8k. It's a nice feeling to own a Sitar, though not many would even appreciate learning Sitar.

Brushing up the artist in me.

I completed a three month course on oil painting from a drawing institute named Grafitti in Pune, near where I stayed there in Jagtap dairy. This picture is the last oil painting I made before returning back from Pune. I liked it very much as a proof of my efforts to brush up my old talent as an artist while in school days. I have now framed it and looks pretty clean to be hanged on the wall at my home :)

My Lunch Group at Pune Infy

(from left)Nikhilesh,Me,Leena,Priya,Suwarna,Anvita and Subodh.

We are a wonderful group comprising of four software engineers (me,Nikhilesh,Leena,Anvita), a project manager (Priya), a quality analyst (Suwarna) and a Senior Project Manager (Subodh) and meet everyday for lunch at FoodCourt-2 in Phase2. Our daily lunch hour is spend talking over silly topics, pulling legs,PJs of Subodh and finally a long walk.
We also had good time together going for movies at E-Square and dinner. Sadly, Subodh resigned and yesterday was his last day at Infy. He gave us a delicious dinner party at Mainland China and we gifted him a shirt and a cup custom written with words of memories.He has invited us for a picnic to his village home town and hopefully we could have a nice time there.Anyway rest of us would continue having lunch together he group and keep the friendship alive.

Malgudi Days - the cute swami

Malgudi Days was a television serial which appeared long back in Doordarshan channel and the little stories set in a typical Indian village is loved by all even today. "Swami and Friends" was a popular series of stories around 'Swami' whose innocent pangs, wonder and mischief touched the hearts of the viewers. The picture shows the child character of Swami (master Manjunath) and inset pic shows the current photo of Manjunath (oops! same as my name)

Download malgudi series videos at http://www.stage6.com/Malgudi-Days---The-series

My new blog

Doesn't every city in the world have its own unique landmarks ? It could be a monument or a shopping complex or park or a palace or a temple or anything else. I decided to go around the internet looking for such uniques city landmarks and publish it in my new blog everyday. I hope I gather interesting photos everyday and at the end of this year, it would be a fine collection!

http://www.wonderlandmarks.blogspot.com

Chalo "Tum Tum"

I am here in Pune for a short term transfer to Infosys Pune for my project work. The first day to my office in Hinjewadi Phase 2 had me travelling in three 6-seater autorikshaws. The first one from my flat near Jagtap Dairy to Danke Chowk, the second from Danke Chowk to Hinjewadi, the third from Hinjewadi to Phase 2.

When I mentioned about the morning travel to my collegue, he said "So you came to office in Tum-Tum ?" I asked him "Tum-Tum ?.. Is it what you call the 6 seater auto ?" He replied "Yes.. its Tum Tum as we call it.."

I recollected my "Tum-Tum" experience- sitting crunchy, shaking sideways, jumping occasionally as the over packed three wheeler zips through the dusty traffic.

A Typhoidical Experience

Some diseases are worth having an experience. Typhoid is certainly one of those which keeps in us a lasting memory of the unfriendly bacterias who have conquered the forts of internal defense systems in the body.
It started in me with a slight shivering and fever. I took a day's off at office assuming to be normal fever. But hospital checkup made it clear that I was infected with Typhoid. It was then a week's stay back at home having only rice water as my stomach is fully disordered and no scope of any digestive mechanisms in place. My fever came down to normal from 102F a week back. I returned to office and continued my rest of days with work, and having food at restaurants.

Meanwhile, the colonies of bacterias had started recovering and was aiming for a second attack to break into my body defense systems. It happened after couple of weeks- me falling sick again with typhoid fever. Typhoid took me more than I cared for. Only after two weeks medication and rest at home, I came back to office work.

Now I won't allow the tiny tiny bacterias for a third attack. I care well for my food and drink only boiled or bottled water. I hope my body has acquired enough immunity to build the damaged fort walls for protection against any such unfriendly incomers.

Right mail at the Right Time gives you too Good Responses

If you had an old school friend whom you are not in touch with for a long time and then you send him a mail of Birthday wishes exactly on the fine morning of his birthday. It's going to bring happiness in his soul.

That's exactly what happened when I mailed all of them in my batch on the morning of Oct 16th - the first anniversary day of OctFT2 batch which was under my batchownership. I got too flattery mails praising my gesture and then there were circulation of good wishes mails. This photo was taken by few of batchmates in Infosys Bangalore when they decided to find time afternoon for a group photo to remember this day.

Touching moment

I felt touched after I saw this photo. It was taken when few of us, 'Soften' volunteers had gone to 'Chaya Devi Ashram' which is a home for oldage and orphan children. I had taken my mandolin and played couple of songs like 'vande mataram', 'mere sapno ki rani', 'jana gana mana', for the old age people there.

The photo clearly shows the glitter in the eyes of the old man and a shining lonely teeth in his mouth. Sometimes you don't realize the beauty of a moment unless it gets captured in the four borders of a photo. This is a clear example for that!

Daud - for a cause

We had a mini Marathon in our campus here in Infosys, Mysore on Oct 16th. It was to raise fund for the social forum, 'SOFTEN', now involved actively in helping the needy.

The event was a huge success with infoscions gearing up to run along. As a surprise, Anil Kumle, Sunil Joshi and few Ranji Cricketers were also running this fun marathon.

I too was involved in a way to this event in designing banners and posters for promoting it. This image shows a 6x3ft large banner designed by me, which was hung in the campus for the event.

The First Touch

Imagine you are exposed to different varieties of art forms while you were a school kid and you happen to like an art passionately ? Probably the life and career chosen would be different now.That is exactly what United Arts Society is trying to do. They help bring in artists from various forms of art - fine arts, theatre, dance etc and conduct interactive sessions with school kids during weekends and thus wake the artist in a child.

I am happy to be part of the 'First Touch' programme held in a playschool 'Kidzee' in Malleswaram, Bangalore to expose school kids to sessions of fine arts (norton collage), basic theatre art and dance as well. The day started with few kids who had registered for the programme turning up at Kidzee with their parents in the morning. The first session was to help the kids make a 'Nortan Collage' which is japanese creative paper design art made by cutting out pieces of paper and sticking it on a chart without throwing away any bits of paper. The kids loved thinking hard to make a design out of the paper given to them and finally after an hour we could see some creativity pasted on the chart paper.The next session was about basics of theatre performance by Vineet (one of founders of the society) and it involved fun games to teach kids the lessons of observation, concentration, attraction and voice modulation. The final session was to teach kids basics of dance with couple of artists asking the kids to follow their movements as they danced.

On whole it was a fun filled day for the kids and for us too, and the idea of waking up talents in kids to help them enjoy art forms better with a series of weekend sessions would be the future plan of United Arts Society.

To know more, visit: http://www.unitedartssociety.com/

Let me play Sitar !

I struck with this not so normal idea of learning sitar after I read about a professional sitarist Manoj Mukherjee in Mysore. I went to his residance near Jaylakshmipuram and was quite taken by the artistic beauty of this fine hindustani musical instrument.

I have now started playing my first 'Sa-Re-Ga-Ma' moving my fingers hard on the long strings of sitar. My sitar master taught the sitting posture for playing sitar and he insisted on my attire to be kurta-pyjama. I was happy to accept my sitar guru after I offered him a thali of coconut, bunch of bananas, beetle leaves, agarbathi and guru dakshina, after which he wore on my right index finger the 'mizrab'.

I am hoping to get along practicing better on sitar with its calm tones of music spreading into my mind each time I strike the strings.

the boys, girls, grandmas and grandpas are well

We had a visit to the orphan boys, girls and the grandmas and grandpas staying in the Chaya Devi Ashram orphanage in Jaynagar, Mysore. The Infosys Foundation, which works for social benefits, funds the ashram and we, as part of SOFTEN, also supports them in some ways.

We were only four, but our appearance brought smiles to the faces of the inmates, and the children were happy to play around with us. I had brought my mandolin and I played few songs including 'jane-gana-mana' and 'vande-mataram'.

The oldage grandmas who live there seem to be cheerful even in their age. I was surprise when one of them enthusiastically shouted 'mere-sapnom-ki rani kaba aayega' when I started with the first line of the song in my mandolin.

We left the orphanage on a happy note and also visited 'sneha makkale mane', which is again a home for orphan kids taken care by a NGO.

to know more about chaya devi ashram : http://www.hohinc.org/chayadevi.html

onam 'pookalam' at infy

I found myself plunging in all my efforts to bring out a good appreciation for the Keralite festival of Onam at my work place in Infosys. We, a group of malayalees put our head together to come up with an attractive onam 'pookalam' (flower carpet) and we agreed on the idea of a Mohiniyattam dancer placed comfortably in a typical 'mudra' gesture on the middle of a colourful rainbow of flowers.

The full completion of this wonderful flower carpet demanded lot of efforts - buying sufficient flowers from city, getting valuable petals out of flowers spending enough manual labour, late night drawing of the mohiniyattam dancer picture, running for chopping plates for beetroot so that it could used to border the picture, laying of different coloured flowers exactly in the drawn design enclosures, cleaning floor after flowering, lighting lamps, etc

The flower carpet competition was held between teams in various office buildings of infosys, and it was a great feeling to work hard towards completing it on time. Though we didn't bag any prize for our pookalam, we knew we had a good onam at office with our pookalam being watched with smile by everybody around.

Wonderful Weekend at Trivandrum

I had a most memorable weekend after a good long journey with my infosys enr colleagues to Trivandrum to attend the marriage of our colleague Ajeesh. We started in two tempo traveller vans on Friday evening 4pm from Mysore and reached Trivandrum on Saturday morning 8. We went to the popular beach Kovalam where we enjoyed ourselves in sea water pushing each other into water, throwing balls, racing against each other, throwing mud etc We then moved back to our hotels after having good orange juice in one of those leafy beach restaurants.

I went to Shri Padmanabhaswamy Temple evening where I awe struck by the temple architecture and the divine greatness of deity of lord vishnu in anantha shayanam. The same day dinner was at our team lead Rajagopal's residence at Trivandrum.

Sunday morning we turned towards the marriage hall where Ajeesh - ShriLakshmi marriage function is to be held. We stayed there till all of us finished marriage 'Sadya' with three kinds of 'payasams', and then started our journey back to Mysore.

We reached Mysore today morning 6:30 after a long journey not boring though because of the occasional stops we had to have yummy food, played 'rummy' and watched movie in the van.

Help for Independance from poverty

We were happy to be part of a Social Service today on the day of independance to our country. There's a charitable organization called 'Operation Shanti' which is helping to needs of destitute children and helpless people in the streets and its volunteers are actively involved in Mysore.

The SOFTEN (Social Forum to Enable Needy) group in Infosys connected to 'Operation Shanti' volunteer Tracy in distributing old clothes and serving food to the destitute woman and children, today morning near KR Hospital in Mysore.

Today's programme started from Infosys Campus, Mysore where we loaded boxes of clothes, blankets and shoes to the van and we, a group of nearly 40 SOFTEN volunteers starting off before 8 in the morning towards KR Hospital in Mysore city. Tracy and her friend (both of them foreign volunteers of 'Operation Shanti' working in Mysore) got along with us in their car with containers of food. We were pleased to see Tracy interact with the street women and children who had assembled on the foot paths in front of KR Hospital. We then served Idli, Sambar, Chatni, Kesari bath to all of them sitting on the footpath. The food was served by infoscions and it was a totally different experience far too away from the daily jobs. After the food, we started distributing the set of blanket and old clothes we had brought in the van. We then moved to 'Nava Jeevan Foundation' Centre and gave them the boxes containing remaining clothes.

It was a half day engagement for all of us. But it helped us to be aware of being useful to the society we live in. Let this message spread wider through similar initiative in future.

to know more on Operation Shanti: http://www.operation-shanti.org/pages/msp_solution.html