Life as it is...

Its been 4 months since I last blogged, so there's lot to write. So hang on for another long one.

Fun Jan:
There is no limit for fun. We just returned from Mumbai, and the next weekend we had another mini get-together in Bangalore. This time though the number of attendees was much higher. Lot of my friends who are doing their MS in US had come to India then, and they were present for the get-together. We were around 17-18 ppl and had lots of fun. We scaled the great foothill of the Nandi mountain range :) by foot. (Don't know how high it is, but from the top you could see ppl at the base to be few cms in height.) Then we went to a really benign manmade water falls at Balmuri (or was it Bhel Puri?). This place is near Krishna Raja Sagar Dam in Mysore. We couldn't resist the temptation of the Brindavan Gardens and made a visit there. We had great fun playing high catches there. But there is one unforgettable place in the whole journey, though I don't remember its name ;), the hotel we stopped for breakfast and dinner. The place had amazing Ulunda vadais. Ethana saptom. For a group of around 15 we ordered around 20 plates of vadais (ie around 40 vadais). Luckily not many had any serious *back* problems the next day.

Jan was *the* month. We had fun all the way. I work in the AutoBU in Trilogy and we had an outing planned out. This also ended up being in Jan. We went to Wayanad in Kerala. Well I had the additional responsibility of organizing this trip, but that didn’t hamper our fun one bit. We trekked up some ancient caves, which had some amazing views. We also had a nice stroll through an island, criss crossing streams of water. Two days is just not enough for Wayanad. You definitely need to spend more time there.

Work and recognition:
You could have read from my pervious posts that my work has been improving, that trend kept continuing. I was expecting to get an “Above expectations” rating for the previous half. In our company we have half yearly rating which could be below, meets and above expectation. But one fine evening my TDO (senior manager of the team) asks me to call him on his phone. Thinking more along the lines of some production bug I make the call. He surprises me with the news that I am going to be promoted to Senior Dev. It’s a great feeling to see your labour bear fruits. Also all my current roomies (bk, olu, Arun – IITM, and Senthil) got “Above expectation” rating. Senthil also got promoted from Technical analyst to Dev. So it was great news all around.

Matches in heaven:
The batch in which I joined Trilogy is called TU2k3 (Trilogy University 2003). One thing that was missing in TU2k3 was married people. All of us were young and hadn’t made the mistake yet ;). But we were yearning for someone to first take up the challenge. I always hope to see my friends getting married :). Attending friends marriages are fun. More about this latter. TU2k3 was also being pressured on by the next batch TU2k4 which had a married guy. So we put in our first candidate Himanshu, but his wedding is to happen only next Jan. As we were all thinking it is Himanshu who’s gonna be the lucky (?) one, our man Ratish makes the move. Though he had a hard time initially to convince his parents to look for a girl, once they got the message, he cashed in with amazing quickness. His marriage is most likely to be in this November. So we as a huge batch (TU2k3) will be looking for vacationing up North some time in November.

Pre-TU2k5:
To close more candidates for TU2k5, we had an event called Pre-TU. The intent was to let the offered candidates know what kind of work goes on in TU. This was a 2 day event, and was held in a 5 star resort “Golden Palms”. This was again really a fun experience. (Am I using the word “fun” a lot??). One bad thing about having these events in a resort is that you never get time to enjoy the resort :(. The pre-TUers were split into teams, with one mentor to help them. They were asked to work on a real problem which Trilogy is currently working on. As it is common in TU, these guys were given unrealistic deadlines. They had approximately 4 hours to get this done (assuming they wanted to keep decent sleeping hours). As in true Trilogy fashion it happened that these guys had to slog and get their code done by sacrificing a good night’s sleep. I was amazed a how much enthu the new batch showed. One more rocking TU up ahead. The next day after the demos were all done, we hit the dance floors, some fully sane and most otherwise. Pre-TU was amazing for one and all. I am sure Goop and Dave (Trilogy Austin guys) would agree on that.

The Dinner Club:
Being a software engineer in Trilogy when you have a hectic project release going on could be really stressful. It might not allow you any after the office hour’s activities. And with a screwed up schedule like mine (work from 3PM – 3AM), you could have a very monotonous life. But we found a great way to catch up on our evening life. Danny, Arun, Bk and I used to go for long dinners. They usually last around 2 hours. BTW, Danny is a colleague of ours who is 4 years senior to us. He is a great friend and mentor of mine. These dinner breaks is time for some great conversation. From books to films to science to politics to philosophy, you could never get bored of them. Though different days others to join us, we four almost make it a point to go for dinner together. So this used to be “The Dinner Club”

One more catching the bait? (Oops I didn’t say that)
From April 24^th onwards our Dinner Club’s strength decreased by one. Danny got married to Renu. Poor Danny was in office coding away till 2 AM on Saturday morning, with the wedding on Sunday. I hope this would never happen anymore. (I guess Renu would make sure this will not happen :) ). We have been trying to get on Danny’s nerve, trying to do our bit in scaring him about marriage, but he had an amazing strategy to get past it. Leave the realization till the very end. Maybe we should learn from this. Back to the wedding, it was a very different kind of wedding. Danny was dressed more like a king and Renu wore a vest (must be Queen’s attire in those days). The Iyer conducting the wedding ensured that the bride and groom aren’t pained, and they smiled all throughout. As in any wedding nowadays, there were the great poses Renu and Danny had to stand for (nicknamed grandpa-grandma poses by Dharma an Rk). They continued to stand and greet visitors, and posing with them in the reception. All said and done, I wish Danny a great married life with no more night outs or weekends in office.

Some sad news
Well all the above seemed to pretty positive and great things to enjoy. But life is always even. You never keep getting goodness all around you. One of our teachers, Rams, from CEG, had committed suicide. He was more then a teacher to us. He moved with all of us like a friend and he even accompanied us to our final year trip to Kerala. He is a teacher students listened to, so such an asset ending his life seems such a waste. I hate it when people can’t face their lives and try to take the short and easy way out. So on hearing the news I was angry, but after sometime you cannot stop feeling the sadness of it. May his soul rest in peace and his family recover quickly from this terrible loss.

Well friends I am not sure when I would blog next. More hectic work is ahead.
So until next time, ciao and have a great time.
- Palani.