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.