End to End

Joining for my job in the company has had many positives as of late, and that has positively succeeded in overshadowing those dark days of sitting on the bench for more than a month. The overshadowing process included of some pretty rigorous training on various programming and design concepts. Now, maybe my manager(a really jolly chap), has got me brainwashed, yet I feel justified in inferring that design is something that usually is never taught to rookies such as ourselves (somewhat true in our industry, as a general rule). Yet, as say a twist of fate has had it, we have been put into the path of some serious and severe design and architecture know-how.

The company has had, as of late has a sudden enlightenment, that a really alarming proportion of the projects being undertaken by the company are under serious fire during their closing stages, identified during certification by our team and more specifically our manager(whose green light is needed for many a project to actually hit the market or the client or whatever/whoever it is supposed to hit) and that they were no where near a standard as to be called good or atleast passable code/application for the client from a non-functional point of view(say like performance, maintainability, coding standards etc). So after some brainstorming (probably meaning some heated words being exchanged) our management decided on an experiment wherein some rookies (namely us) will be trained on the finer aspects of software design and coding. These rookies were going to be a 'Vazhikaatti' to the senior architects and 7-10 year experienced Technical Leads who were, apparently not following the best practices and standards. Now don't get me wrong, but I think the senior members of our team (the whole team numbering all of 3 excluding us rookies, of which 2 we have met) are both nice guys. But somehow or the other the rest of the senior delivery managers or tech leads/project managers do not share our positive evaluation of our senior team members. Infact they just seem to think that they are complete *%&%&#!@!'s . Well, one cannot actually blame them, because after listening to some conference calls between a delivery manager and our second-in-command about our first-in -ommand while our first-in-command was infact in a very room, we could even begin to understand their consternation when they suddenly found themselves owner to red lights on all the 6-7 criteria for which they were being evaluated (non-functional aspects) and got 96 concern comments for problems with the code).

After listening to our trainer take us through the end to end of .NET and some very pheripheral concepts of UML and OOAD, all interspersed with frantic delivery managers practically begging to them over the phone for approval, we were nearing the end of our designed training. Now don't think that I am trying to blow my (our) own horn but I generally found that the 3 mallus in the 9 member team better coped up with the training. And when the manager found us a cosy practice assignment, I was not surprised to be assigned the task of dummy project manager(obviously me or Jose would have got it :D). I found to my dismay that trying to get people who have absolutely no intention of working to do what they absolutely have no idea about doing in the way which they absolutely could not imagine is much more difficult than it might seem to the casual outside observer. So you can imagine my struggle to make the Work Breakdown Structure(WBS) of the project, planning what all we were going to do for the next 12 odd days and what exactly each person was to achieve that particular day. Ofcourse the manager acting like a typical client, changing his requirements everyday and changing his specifications everyday added spice to the roles we were playing and basically everyone started getting mildly annoyed. My annoyance might have been a triffle above the general level because I had to suffer the additional annoyance of having my team members teasing me by calling me the project manager and asking me what they were supposed to do each day and each hour. We surprised the manager the third day with about 50 questions I painstakingly made that morning, we were finally able to pin down the whole intricate details of the project. This impressed our manager who usually was satified with his routine observation that team was not performing up to his expectation(but it was obvious that we were not actually faring badly). In the meantime I was making funny and silly mistakes like sending over mails forgetting to attach the required documents and the PM sending me mails in Malayalam saying what he was supposed to review.

Now half way through the project, and after some more minor "impressing" sessions he has sent mails to senior managers and head of various departments very very openly advertising our groups presence and in the process blatantly overstating our capabilities and knowledge. This has inturn lead us being assigned another "Bench" group to kind of mentor and bring upto our level. Our very own manager was all "Thallu Thallu" to the other group's manager, and we have sworn to follow in his footsteps trying to sweep the other group off their feet with our effieciency and ofcourse much better intellectual capacity :P.

P.S: And finally on a more postive note the author wishes to notify all the curious males that their concern regarding the new twist in the tale is indeed justified. The new group does include 3 quite pretty girls among the total 6 and the future is indeed bright.... The future is indeed promising.. ;)

Assorted of sorts

This blog has been lifted shamelessly yet again from silverine's.
This poor blogger has finally run out of topics to blog about (not really tho.. ;)) and has confined himself to an occasional original blog but is usually content with stealing tags from random pages from across blogosphere.

This particular one is an mixture of sorts...

Three things that scare me

1. Heights
2. The sight of Karnataka traffic police standing on the roads picking up Kerala vehicles
3. Failure

Three people who make me laugh

1. Terry Pratchett
2. Salim Kumar
3. Jagadish (in 'In Harihar Nagar')

Three things I love

1. Women
2. Good Music
3. Working out

Three things I hate

1. Badly edited or directed movies
2. People going behind my back and turning them against me.
3. Pulsar 150 or worse Unicorn guys trying to irritate me into a race.

Three things I don't understand

1. How girls I like in office keep getting transferred.
2. Why some people in college really hated me.
3. How girls can be so possessive sometimes.

Three things on my desk

Since I don't have my own desk or even ODC as of now lets try our hand with the hypothetical.
1. My worn out and hated by many jacket.
2. My optimised by my standards PC.
3. Stacks of waste paper.

Three things I am doing right now

1. Working on the end to end cycle of a mock project we have been given and stuck on the design phase.
2. Searching for cute girls in orkut.
3. Trying to download Blood Diamond and finding that we don't have enough space in either Hari's PC or my laptop.

Three things I want to do before I die

1. Make atleast a couple of million dollars.
2. Live in a couple or more eastern or northern European country for more than years.
3. Make more than a few acquaintances from among various races of women in the world ;)

Three things I can do

1. Wheelie and stoppie with my bike
2. Play basketball in the evening and then workout for an hour and then play again ( ah my schedule!!)
3. Make any girl go to Chennai by developing an interest in her and talking to her or atleast planning to do so in the near future.

Three things you should listen to

1. Jonathan's songs
2. K S Chithra's voice
3. Your heart

Three things you should never listen to

1. Hindi movie songs
2. Girls
3. Guys getting senti after getting drunk

Three things I'd like to learn

1. Salsa
2. Flying a fighter jet
3. One foreign language

Three favourite books

1. Godfather
2. Hitch hiker's Guide to Galaxy
3. Fountainhead

Three favourite food

1. Chicken kalimirch from Khana Khazana
2. Oranges
3. Chicken Shawai from De Paris in Palayam

Three beverages I drink regularly

1. Juice from cake corner in office
2. Mirinda
3. Tea

Three TV shows/books I watched/read when I was kid

1. Boy meets world
2. Phantom
3. Knight Hawk

Anyone who is interested can take up this tag......:D

i wAnna be ZaPhod!!

You know, continuous inactivity finally gets to you someday. You feel it is just eroding you away ever so slowly, without your knowledge, from within. I have been wasting away my days, doing nothing but read forwarded mails and ofcourse forwarding them to others who too are on the bench and contributing towards the erosion of their cores from within too. Today morning I got up and put on the TV and guess what greets me. My very own world of the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy in its movie version. Even though sam rockwell would not be able to slip into the shoes of beeblebrox perfectly I did like his style playing the crazy president of the universe thing. Well anyway, back to the point, that has put me in a very good mood for the day. Sadly though, I do not find any avenue to put my good mood into good use. Like everyday the continuing absense of chocolate in the EC2 pantries has become a road block in the happy spending of my swimming in the resource pool day.

But the shining star on the horizon is my trip back home to good old trivandrum this weekend. Even though i'll be getting very little time to spend there, the long gap before going home has filled me with anticipation to the maxxx..

hmm.. I'll have to finish my current book (old man and the sea) soon....

HIV/AIDS::Explained/Unexplained?

After undergoing training for one week, I am back in the pool, swimming about happily. By the pool, ofcourse I mean the resource pool. But bench has its positives. I get time to read forwards and go about orkutting, drinking badam milk (because the idiots have stopped chocolate) and reading blogs. This is when I came across this very interesting and informative blog. I have no means of validating or indepth research into the topic but it did give me a completely new view about the HIV/AIDS situation (or the non-existence of it).

http://www.haftamag.com/content/view/207/43/

Read through it and reach your own conclusions about whether HIV and AIDS are related and know what you are spending your money on when you donate towards HIV/AIDS research.

Knowledge is power. Go get the power.

Self Tagged

Ok. Since I have been searching for a proper topic to blog about and none seems to be forthcoming I'll take up silverine's tag. Here goes nothing.

1. Yourself: I could do what I do always and copy paste my orkut profile (mostly because I dont want to start thinking about what to write about myself again). Anyway I would say I am usually friendly, helpful and usually logical in my approach to most things. Ofcourse..I go crazy for any pretty gal I see. :D

2. Your galfriend/spouse: None

3. Your hair: Usually kind of crew cut... reminds me I need a hair cut soon.. Maybe some gel and a new spike hair style..

4. Your mother: My role model. Everytime I look at her I see what living life the best way is all about. Success, family and overall happiness... the balance is so fragile.. but she manages.
5. Your father: Me and my father were never that close, but nowadays since he is stranded in Cochin he tends to call once in a while. I definitely have to call him each time I need to get something important done because he is the man with strings everywhere... may it be getting tickets for india-pak match to getting off without paying a 1000 Rs fine for over speeding.

6. Your favorite item: If it were my pocession I would have gone for my bike. But since it hardly qualifies as an item I would have to go for my Sony Ericsson W700i. Somehow this is the first phone I fell in love with.

7. Your dream last night: Hehe.. thats not for a public blog :P

8. Your favorite drink: Mirinda

9. Your dream car: Aston Martin Vanquish

10. The room you are in: A conference room

11. Your ex: No proper Exs... but do have some ex crushes....thats about it

12. Your fear: Failure

13. What do you want to be in 10 years? : Well travelled

14. Who you hung out with last night(Sunday) ? I was down with fever... was hanging on tight to my pillow and jacket and socks and every other piece of clothing trying my best to stay warm... how I missed the hot and humid Trivandrum and my home!!!

15. What you're not? Emotional. Even though it is not a good trait. This is what I am.

16. Muffins: Nooooo...

17. One of your wish list items: Ducati Monster Dark

18. Time: Is on my sideeeeeee

19. The last thing you did: Went upstairs to have chocolate and suddenly remembered the damn company has stopped having chocolate powder in the pantry.

20. What are you wearing? Formals for a change. Gals dig it aye???

21. Your favorite weather: Bangalore weather

22. Your favorite book: Godfather

23. The last thing you ate: Chicken Biryani

24. Your life: Is at a very decisive stage with each week turning out to be the points which decide where I will be ending up in some years.

25. Your mood: Relaxed or maybe even mildly frustrated with the inactivity

26. Your best friend: Jonathan Bruce...

27. What are you thinking about right now? About Anitha Valakuzhy and how I can get to know her better... :))

28. Your car: Nah... not yet... still holding on tight to my Pulsar 180 Dtsi (non alloy one!!!!)

29. What are you doing at the moment? Duh... what do you think?? (anyway on bench :((.. )

30. Your summer: Go to some falls, get into the water and have fun.

31. Your relationship status: Single

32. What is on your TV? One thing that wipro can work on is ... you guessed it .. a TV..

33. What is the weather like? Crisp and Cool

34. When is the last time you laughed? arghhhh... dont remember..

Forever, the word

She was there beside him when he wept,
wept for his loss, unbearable, killing him from within.
Her calm words sooting his anguish, his pain.
He looked at her now, closely for the first time,
asking himself when he had found her in his life,
confused, he realised the truth, so obvious.
She had been there throughout.
But he never realised it, too immersed in his life,
the life that was crashing all around him,
and she was there, right next to him,
offering to be the pillar to a life, a new life
the life he would now be forced to build up from the ground.
Pillars they became supporting against each other,
balanced and stable, holding out against the storm.
Days passed, weeks passed,
hours became days, days became months, years,
yet she stayed with him, supporting him, loving him.
Now she found herself standing on a cliff,
facing the winds, facing the spray of the waters,
her hands holding his firmly, for warmth, outside and within.
He was looking down, distraught, fed up with the world.
The wind whirled around them, playing with them,
the droplets of water they carried causing goosebumps on their skin.
They looked at each other and they knew,
how futile it was to live, with the hurt, with the pain.
His eyes searched her and understood,
he silently pleaded with her eyes, trying to tell her it was all going to be fine,
that he will be with her always,
forever was the word, but they never needed to say it,
say it out loud, because the wind in their ears whispered to them,
and they took nature's word for it.
The time had come and her hand tightened around his.
Slowly as though caught in time they let themselves fall,
fall to be united, brought together for eternity.
Forever is the word, but they never said it out loud.

All Of Their Love

People around our age must have had some experience or atleast some vague connection with the mysterious word called "Love". My trysts with the word have been extensively covered in my old post "All Of My Love". My friends too have, in their time, had their share of encounters of the third kind with the members of the opposite sex, to a fair or sometimes seemingly unfair extent. Ofcourse kicking it all off was K in 9th standard, all of 14 years, persuing his first fair dame (who happened to be not so fair .. and not much of a dame either) , with with him making the first move in the form of a suggestive phrase in her scrap book. The juvinile love story which lasted a whole of 8 months was one of the most passionate and turbid love stories that I have personally witnessed. It involved the regulation hours and hours on the phone, kisses behind scrubs near busy intersections, secret love letters being passed and ofcourse repercussions like being beat by the belt and a few attempts at suicide(failed ofcourse). In the end the gal has been happily married to a "Dufai machan" for the last few years. K has inturn had his (unfair) share of lovers through the years. Most of them were nothing spectacular or worth mentioning (except one who has become a compere on a local channel). Finally the dude is settled in Hyderabad with a steady girl friend he intends to marry and a steady job (more important) I hope he intends to keep.

J, too has an interesting story to tell. He was smitten too, way back though, in 10th and the gal was three years younger, but promising to become a beauty in her time. That affair, mostly quite and unspectacular lasted too a mere few months. The time factor must have been short, but the intensity of love and its impacts are better manifested in this episode. Jonathan apart from becoming quite wary of the opposite sex became something of a small "viraha kaamukan", which was sort of good for him, because that has given rise to one of the rock ballads by Damnage in the form of "Swatchamaya". The words are hard felt ones folks, so when the song is finally released, listen carefully to those lyrics. Here too the girl in question is on her way in life, happily married last month. Everyone else in my gang has had his share of love; S, Aj, V, D, P. And all of them have their share of melodrama and weird factor.

Now falling in love is something, but doing something about it is completely different. None of the above mentioned affairs have got anything to do with my college or college mates. And infact the only thing that can even be classified as even mildly romantic that ever happened on campus, in my opinion, was a senior gal in one of the epic affairs of her batch, caressed the cheek of her lover and ran away (movie style) in the bus bay in full view of about a 500 students waiting for the bus to leave. Back to the point. So in the matter of doing something about the feelings for a human being of the opposite sex, to the fore comes, Aneesh, one of distant members of our biker gang. Now Aneesh was a typical biker guy. He was rash(both riding and otherwise), quite stupid about the world and impractical (ofcourse). What he did was an "Alaypayuthe" remake in Malayalam, with them eloping to some distant, out of state temple and getting married. He was all of 21 (I think) when they went out and did this (I think that gal must have been younger). The status of the movie/serial now is something like the dude is jobless/futureless, but it might get sorted out in the end, since his dad is into a prosperous business and her family is as it turns out, is completely loaded.

Next in line comes the shocker, personally. Joji, mentioned in the previous posts (*refer "State bank of Kannamoola "), had been in love several times since I have met him 4 years back. But since his breakup with his american galfriend, he had gone back to his boyhood love from St Mary's. Now I was in no way in close association with the buildup of this affair, but was vaguely aware of it (since he was on the phone with her all the time on his 'neelapallu' headset and n70 handset). All was well and normal when I had left Joji and my friends under his financial care. But one fine day a hysterical J calls me up and gives me the news that Joji had now become Mr & Mrs Joji. He used the term "Filmy style", describing the event wherein Joji(a christian) went to the gals (a muslim) house, in an open Gypsy (in the rain if you were wondering) and called her out (i am definitely sure some juicy filmy lines were used, knowing joji), and she came out with her "petti and kidakka". The couple went into hiding for 20 odd days, while hired thugs and family thugs roamed the city searching for them. The story ends happily though (somewhat), with the families consenting to the holy matrimony and they living toghether in the wholly WiFi'ied three storeyed Baker house. This was the gist of things that have happened in our gang till now. So the strength of the gang has been diminished considerably , losing Joji's(*Mr&Mrs) patronage. What would happen to those ponmudi trips now, no one knows....

P.S: I have just recieved word that JJ's Spectacular story is too in the making with the gals veetukar now in on the story and turning villians. At the latest report, JJ was cutting up his hand with a blade and her name.....

Off Road

So my training has gone onto the specialised phases with C# and next ADO.NET. But the classes have turned interesting with the addition of the LAN aspect of the whole thing, as in the introduction of Counter-Strike onto it. Well actually the gaming can't be classified as nail bitingly exciting, but it helps to pass time while the others play solitaire (which i discovered to be pretty good), or make passes at the sir's teaching(the north indians are unbelievably noisy and nasty towards the trainers).

Training for the last two days of the week were scheduled at Electronics city and this was the first chance for me to sample the Hosur road traffic and i jumped at it..

We started out at 7:30, early, to beat the traffic on the 12 km stretch from our house to EC. The first part was normal city heavy traffic with stops at the couple of traffic intersections stretching onto 5 minutes each. Finally we took the right turn onto hosur road and it went good for a little while, and suddenly it was all over. There just was'nt any road in front of us. Just miles and miles of vehicles filling every inch of the 4 lane roads ahead of us reaching upto to the horizon. Then we saw the daredevil riders on their daredevil rides (ranging from luna mopeds, through boxers and discovers to the kzmas jump off the road and go off road style, and I could not resist the temptation and I followed suit. Now, I was in full riding gear, with a jacket and helmet, and I did not give a damn about the thick cloud of dust we were entering. But poor Maakri who was sitting behind me had to bear the full brunt of it without a helmet. We were racing through mud road, jumping over rough bumps, scraping in between metal screens and just managing to stay upright on two tyres. We came pretty close a few times and maakri was obviously a bit shaken. Then we had to climb a almost vertical cut onto the main road since we found that the off road path had taken us onto a big gap where a culvert was being built. But it was somehow managed.

We finally reached EC uninjured and I understood why Wipro enforced a strict helmet rule. Its said hosur road sees above 25 accidents a day.....

No wonder most people opt the 2 hour bus ride to this..
But hard riders dont mind aye??? ..
lets see which one i turn out to be...

Thripparap

Due to demand from Sankar and others I have decided to upload the pics from the thripparap trip,( sitting in training class now :(.. )

Getting back on my bike after a month was unbelievable.
Getting back to friends was too.....

Here goes
 
left to right > Vaal, Suni, Me, Sankar, Jonathan, Ajmal, Podiyan, Nganaseelan

 

The falls... the force was mind and body blowing :D

 

  

Jonathan with the belt buckle behind him and sunglasses behind his head
Sankar as straight as ever.

Life Part II

So my life has moved on from a the depths of a small town like trivandrum and reached a metropolitian one, as in the case now, Bangalore.
So new life implies new everything (which looks bad on paper I know), and the new players as of now are us 8 guys from my company crashing into our apartment, freshly painted and immaculately leased out to us. Finding the corporate office was not that easy, with us drawing blank stares on each enquiry about the provided address of the office, which said Doddakennelli, Sarjapur road. We ended up in the vicinity of Sarjapur road with the help of certain mallu induviduals on the road and a lot of manipulation with google earth (registered trademark). Luckily for us a passing mini bus decided to take us on and drop us off right in front of the office. The office turned out to be in the middle of nowhere with a classy mess outside, with people in ties eating out of banana leaves (real classy) and sitting on upturned buckets on the road side.

Inside was another story, with guards inspecting under each car entering the compound with mirrors and the whole campus protected with electrified fences. Perhaps all the precaution are due to the fact that Premji has his personal office in that campus. The initiation/joining formalities went smoothly, except for the slight bumps in the road around midday due to a completely vegetarian lunch menu. Atleast it was free.

Next run saw us on the search for a new home to house us 8 guys, with minimum conditions of 4 per bathroom and Rs 1500 per month. The search lead us through various dark alleys of the madiwala/koramangala region with both our tongues and legs tiring. In the end luck foudn its way into our search and we were presented with a proposal of a house for rent with 2 bedrooms/bathrooms and hall. It turned out to be a kind of deluxe mini apartment setup with meticulously clean compound and corridors and tiled rooms. The lease agreement when finally signed by 4 of us stated what all we were supposed/not supposed to do, the number of geysers/cupboards/tube lights/curtain rods (he did not include the hangers, I wonder why).

The next few weeks were spent at an external training center with the trainers there trying to teach us, imbeciles, the basics of programming and us trying our bests to frag each other to hell in counterstrike. And ofcourse it all paid of for me with me failing to clear either of the two tests given after the first phase training. Training continues onto the next phase with much more complex programming and database concepts. (I have very little hope of clearing any of the upcoming tests)

This weekend saw me taking a break from bangalore life and heading back to the cocoon of comfort, i.e Trivandrum. Coming back brought back waves of nostalgia, seeing the red KSRTC buses and the KL registration vehicles plying the roads ever so meekly (after blore road devils, kerala riders seem like timid rabbits). I got back on my purple machine as soon as possibe, and the response surprised me after the one month break. Another thing that surprised was the power of my sound system at home, which I had never given much credit and which now seemed to be heaven after listening to music on laptop speakers for a month. Tradition was continued with us riders going to Triparapp Falls and getting beat up water and jonathan injuring his next under the impact of the falling water. Dhwani was good, but we missed out on the Bombay Vikings concert, which was a little disappointing.

Now I am filled with despair, thinking about going back to Bangalore, leaving the life I knew, the friends I love. I did not realise how much i missed everything untill I came back :( . Anyways... maybe it might get better once we get our first salaries. Any shopping partners ready...??

Days of Our Lives... XPLOCIVZ

Life goes on...

It was four years back that I had the same feeling as I am having now, getting ready for the new life that awaits me. Back then I had almost all postive things to look forward to, with a great college promising lots of fun and almost all my friends right here in tvm. This time life is taking me to a new city, a new life, new almost everything.

Bangalore is where everything is gonna be going down from. Wipro is going to be my second home, replacing the comforting CET. And as I am going through the preparations for this shift everything is unsure.

All the goodbyes are over. A booze party at jojy's house, lunch at mag's place with the rest of the college gang and both gangs have been pacified and all the goodbyes over. Now I cant help but be insecure about my position. Who are going to be my new friends. I have no one to take care of me like mag did for me till now. :D

Rest will be put up as soon as everything else happens.
Sad to leave everything I know and love.

Friendship day

Part 1 : 0100 - 1530 hrs

So we had planned on going to padmanabhapuram palace this friendship day and even though it seemed that the attendence of this program was looking a bit weak, we decided to go forward as planned what ever happened. That decision left us with 4 people to make the trip since most of the others were held up due to various reasons (vishnu and nganaseelan were not back from ekm interview; jojy and jonathan were drunk in bed, JJ was drunk and asleep in the bathroom and such other regular occurances). Hence we started out on our little TN registration outing. We reached the palace wih only the normal misdirection by a bystander malayalee and reached there in time (late only by about 1-2 hrs as expected). The palace in itself was magnificent, and we were all spellbound. The furniture and most of the roof and various decorations were done in teak/mahogany/other valuable timber, and most of the flower designs were of different patterns( 64 flowers on a roof each of a different design and so on). We also came across a couple of attractive female co-tourists which lightened up our visit a little more. We were almost as impressed with the natural air-conditioning as with these intrusions of the female kind. Vaal (deepu) and me were finding everything interesting and we found a civil engineering side to each of the things being examined. Sankar being an electronics graduate found everything interesting and found a "manichithrathazhu" side to it and suceeded in getting us bored with his dilapated renditions of the songs from the movie and some very boring dance steps from the same, which garnered us some fleeting attention from the guides present there. After seeing about a fourth of the entire complex( as the remaining three fourths were no entry zones) we came out completely disoriented and from the direction we least expected us to come out from. Then we moved on to the archeological museum adjoining the palace and found ourselves faced with statues of deities ranging from the 10 A.D to 18 A.D. We decided that we were too young to remember them back in those times anyway and decided to move on to the armoury section, since as Sankar stated, vaal was eager to meet those of his kind. The swords, guns, spears were interesting, and so was the body cast which we pondered upon on getting Sankar one. After getting out the ride back was completely normal and we headed back exchanging rides and bikes among all four of us.

Part 2 : 1530 - 2000 hrs

As we were pulling up into Ajmals place to rest after the long ride we got a call from Jojy asking us to join him immediately at his house. This completely dashed our hopes of getting in a short rest between the long ride and the routine shangumugham ride and we headed out to Jojy's house. But we had to catch them later on their way to the beach after we found the house empty. So Jojy had fixed up his gypsy with a new look and new retracting DVD player( fast and furious style). JJ was in his new Esteem bought with the money selling the NSR Honda. The beach ride too was pretty routine with jojy parking after a couple of 180 degree spins in his gypsy and leaving all the people there with open jaws. That meant a lot of open jaws, especially jaws which did not drop so easily. This was because the beach was the venue for a bike modification contest and the area was filled with guys who are used to seeing stunts performed, but always on bikes. Later a modified lancer challenged jojy's ride with a couple of 180 spins and 360 scrambles and a very impressive sideways drift on a curve. Jojy kept his pride with more of his 180 spins and power slides. We were later particularly impressed by rojan chettan performing the same spin on a Maruthi 800. The rest of the 5 hours we spent on the beach were utterly boring, tiring, scorchting and dehydrating, leaving us with little option but a ride to buhari to fill ourselves with parota and mutton curry, ofcourse on Jojy's tab.

Part 3 : 2000- 0030 hrs

Everyone of us were stretched to the limits of endurance and all this was showing, me and vaal the long ride, JJ and jojy the drunken sleep in the bedroom/bathroom, the long stay on the hot beach. So we decided to cool off and take it slow back to jojy's house. And we almost pulled it off. Almost.

Half a kilometer away from jojy's house a 100 cc bike over took us and I knew it at that instant that Jojy wouldnt let it go. And he paid the price. As he did a 90 degree handbrake slide into his sidelane from the main road, the 100 cc guy was pasted onto the sides of the gypsy and cleanly scooped up into the sidelane. Luckily the guy was not too hurt, with only a few cuts and bruises. Here is where everything went wrong. Gates were flug open and the neighbours started rushing out screaming and swearing everyone. They siezed everyone and the situation suddenly turned bad. To cut a long and exciting story short, me and shanavas escaped capture by the police and 3 of us were taken to the station along with both the cars and the bike which starred in the stupid accident. And luckily the day ended at last with the 3 being released and only the vehicles held for the night, on the last report over a very busy cellphone of mine for the last 3 hrs....

Part 4 : 0500- to be seen

This is after a 3 hour sleep as it is 1:15 am already and I have to go to kottayam tomorrow to drop Sankar off for his admission there at a college in Pala for his MSc.... Thats another story .. thats another day .. adios.

Ponmudi Trip

So, it had been almost a week since we had our makki trip and we were weary of a sunday to be just spent on a trip to shanghumugham at night. And after a little confusion over whether to go or not because of the lack of LPG to fill Jojy's car, we finally decided to go for it, with or without the gas. The decision was tested early with the gas running out and we having to pop the hood in the middle of the road and get the car into running condition.

Anyway, we filled petrol, since no gas was available on sunday and started out our trip with only 4 guys, which has now become rare in our gang. Once we got there we were greeted with a wonderful day and absolutely beautiful scenery. We decided to try and climb the next hill the hard way, finding our way through the overgrown steep side, even though we had santhosh ichayan, who wasnt so confident. The climb was exciting, hike style, with us having to make our own paths through the grass and rocks. We were trying to psyche each other out with stories of snakes and pointing to "potta kenars". And after upteen rest breaks we finally made it to the top of the mountain, only to be met by extremely "chorry appooppans" gang at top. So we had to cut down our stay at the top and climb back down, the easy way.

Next since we had no water, we decided to quench our thirst with what ever liquid we could get our hands on. And we were not dissapointed that, the particular liquid that we got our hands on happened to be a couple of bottles of chilled beer. So after a thoroughly enjoyable session at the table with a round of beer and couple of plates of green peas later, we were ready to come back down the hill roads in our gypsy. On route, plumbing problems forced us to take a few stops ( beer obviously made us all a little too hydrated!!) , followed by some very theatrical performances by both jonathan and jojy on the roads with both of them threatening suicides in one form or the other.

The rest of the ride was standard issue kind. Ofcourse the cops were conducting routine checks on the roads, and we ofcourse found ourselves not in the mood for wasting time with them, hence ran through the road block. We finally reached back, just in time before the darkness really set in, because the gypsy lacked head lights along with its horn (which was solved by everyone screaming at the top of their lungs before taking any hairpin turns).

The picture oddessy follows..


The ponmudi gang.. Jojy, Me, Jonathan, Santhosh Ichayan


My view

The hill we climbed.. its bigger that it looks!!


The proof... me completely winded..


Jonathan upto his usual stuff... 

Jonathan jumping off a rock.


Holding the rock up


Me and Santhosh Ichayan


The Gypsy..

State Bank Of Kannamoola : Pictures

Rajan and his Karizma


Lower part of makki


Me on my beautiful bike :D

Vallam Kali..


Me, Joji (RG), Sankar


The bikes...


Through the forest... 

The whole gang at Makki


The whole gang at Kowdiar


The fun... 

State bank of Kannamoola

So officially everything is over for me and hence I should start the hibernation period till the actual date of joining for wipro arrives. That would have normally meant sitting at home trying to fix up as many self imposed tasks/programming classes (java is the fave) like most others. But that would have completely spoiled the chances I would have had to blog about any of the recent events.

After the Blore/Mumbai trip, I delved straight into the world of Joji (RG) and his 'spend money and get a gang going' routine. What the statement meant is roughly this : My gang usually has many and more members ready for any kind of adventure/sleep over/biking trips/ boozing that can (reasonably) possibly be arranged. So RG, who had shipped off to the US a couple of years back and came back recently a bored soul, has come to our rescue with solutions to all of those incomplete dreams. The solution came mainly in the form of plain cash. Hence the title "State Bank of Kannamoola". He provides the means (cash, a car and the place to crash in) for all of those endeavours. So we are now accustomed to tearing through traffic in a military edition powered up gypsy at 90 kmph at rush hour, tires screaming on tight corners and where there is enough sand on the track a complete 180 degree spin using the hand brake.

So the trips are fairly normal, with daily Shanghumugham rides, either in his jeep or on our bikes with petrol partially RG sponsored. Ofcourse the smokes are completely sponsored by RG with his choice varying from scissors to 555 and marlboros (smoking is the pretext we use for any ride may it be ponmudi, kovalam, veli, akkulam or shanghumugham ; but a couple of us like me dont smoke). The rides starts or ends at RG's house, which in itself deserves a bit of commentry.

The house in itself is a work of art (I think), being the first Baker desgined home. It is by far the most complicated design that I have ever seen and it is also one of the most spacious ones. The beauty of it lies in the fact that it has all been construct in a mere 4-5 cents of land. Without getting into detailed explanations, the house is built aroung a single spiral stair case at various levels, with 5 bedrooms, two huge halls, and many bathrooms and other rooms. What makes the house more interesting is in infact the hardware sprewn all around. You cant take a step without the fear of threading over infinite number of wires of the 4-5 mac systems and a couple of Intel-D windows ones, several external hdds of capacities varying from 128 MB sticks to 350 GB external ones, and the various devices needed for complete bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity ( I dont know the details, and I am not mentioning the couple of laptops lying around with 80 GB external hdds). So this is the setting for night out booze parties, which I can only give mostly second hand descriptions since I slept quite early at about 2 am and I dont drink. But the gist of things is like : full volume swearing, mock fights, lots of banging around stuff and running about the house a lot. The external events which I missed included being chased by the police who followed them home, JB skidding the bike to a stand and taking off on foot into the compound and jumping over wall and hiding. Much more interesting was the reported customary drunk outing into the neighbouring cemetary late at night ( maybe early morning), and talking to each other and begging forgiveness of the dead dudes for realising too late they were standing on their graves. The scene alledgely involved JJ crying and hugging the cross and wailing to the dead dude for his forgiveness.

Today was more sane with a ride to the beach all on bikes. The ride was slow due to popular demand of the public and the beach was full. What was interesting was an array of modified and high end bikes parked on the beachfront which usually restricted to maximum 10, today totalled to about 50-70 with over a 100 bike freaks gathered around in various groups in the vicinity. (sadly not even one chick was sighted in a mile radius) . Leaving the beach was expected to be exciting since the abundance of bikers of various calibres hightened the posibilities of race taking place. And we were not disappointed for even a minute and as soon as the crowds were passed, a pulsar 180 with blinking flourenscent lights fitted to the bottom raced pass us almost sneering. I saw the Karizma of GJ and Rx100 of bipu come together in front of my p180 and confer for a second, give a slight movie style nod. This perpetrated a quick shifting down of gears from the front two bikes, followed by the same action by me and the sudden burst of pure acceleration and the accompanying booming sound. All three of us easily touched 100 and took the first 90 degree curve slipping and sliding about, already dissipating the challenger on the curve. The straight stretch was pure drag style with me gaining on the kzma. GJ slowed but the challeger x, was still trying to catch up. So me and bipu never let go of our throttle for a second after that. The next 90 turn was taken on full slide of the back tyre after each down shift and during the sudden acceleration afterwards. The next one was excitingly similar to the Rossi-Melandri rivalry we had seen on MotoGP the same evening with the curve taken extreme angle and between two cars taking the same curve all at atleast 70 and accelerating. After a 120 kmph straight stretch and full speed taking of the next curve there was not even a sign of x and we slowed down as soon as we reached the chaka stretch. Everyone was pumped, adrenaline rushing through our viens and everyone was screaming. Though JJ missed his CBZ and NSR400, everyone was satified. Next week the plan is the muster up all the bikes including the NSR and the gypsy.

Next ride> tuesday trip to makki > distance about 55 kms > route ponmudi.. fun/thrill factor=10/10!!!