**** FIRST FLIGHT ****

A lot of things happen for the first time in your life, however when you have too many of such first times that is when you term it as a shock. Furthermore when you have too many such shocks, that is when you realize that you are in America !!!!!

14th of July 2008 - A young lad rejoiced when a hot female VISA officer said, "Congratulations, you'll get your VISA in a few days". In case you haven't realized that young lad was me, Veerendra aka Veeru aka Veerya. I would have added more adjectives like hot, intelligent, smart, brilliant, witty etc etc, but I guess you were smart enough to understand that from the name itself. Anyway, so when I got my VISA my happiness knew no bounds, the whole atmosphere became merry, Mumbai suddenly seemed heaven to me and all I could think about was, how I had managed to scrape through each and every obstacle between me and my dream of studying in America. In a few days I would be pursuing my goal of pursuing MS. However little did I know that time what fate had in store for me and the Americans as well.


Fast-forward to the 9th of Aug 2008: My near and dear ones had come to the airport to see me off. It was the first time that I was ever traveling by an aeroplane and the first of the many firsts that I was going to witness henceforth on this educational and/or embarrassing trip. I bade a final goodbye to my cellphone which I handed over to my brother for care-taking, forever. Made a final few calls to all the people who couldn't come with me to the airport and headed towards the airport entrance. But wait a sec, how the hell does this cart steer ?? It was my first time with a cart as well. After struggling for a few minutes with the cart, I managed to get the gist of it's maneuverability and then I was moving about like an auto-rickshaw in heavy traffic. :)
Moving on, inside the airport we had a humbling experience with not knowing where to go next, not knowing what to do next and spending an hour in the duty-free shop with people staring at us with the "First time at the airport?" look. So finally after getting our cabin luggage checked twice and our shoes removed thrice, we finally got aboard the plane. I got the directions to my seat and there I sat all ready for my first trip aboard an aeroplane.

Before the plane even took off, I had a proper look at all the gadgets at my disposal. First on my chair was a small pillow, which I correctly identified. Then there was a shawl, which i thought was a life jacket and hence tucked it below my seat. And finally there was a remote. Oh lord, I am thankful to thee who gave humans the idea to fit tiny LCD screens behind every seat in an plane. That was the only thing that got me through the 16 hours of cramped legs and the grouchy female sitting beside me. An engineer by heart, I managed to decrypt the utility of the remote in minutes, I then glanced over to the grouchy female to my left who was still trying to figure out how the remote worked and gave her a "I pity you human !!" look. Then came the air-hostess handing out headphones. Now as a first-time passenger what do you do ?? You guessed it right .. look at the other people, whether they are paying for it or just grabbing one for free. When you are dead sure that the headphones are handed out free, then say "Yes, thank you!!!". The same logic applies to everything else that is handed out by the airline staff. That was why I missed my first round of cold-drinks as I didn't see anyone grab a coke before me. But better miss one round than pay money for it.. Right? Well, so where was I? Yeah .. the headphones. It turned out a bit humiliating when I had just given my neighbour so much attitude and now I couldn't find the socket where the connection for the headphone went in .. Ooops!!! This is when my buddy Santosh comes in. Well, he was with me all the time as both of us have come to the same university, but all this time I was so awed by the entire first-time flying experience that I forgot what all he did in the meanwhile. Anyways, he came to the rescue in time as he found out the socket before the girl managed to :) .. So again I gave her the "How cool am I !!!" look and plugged the headphones in and started my journey to the United States of America, one movie at a time.

So my plane set off from my motherland, taking me to a new land of new people and new experiences. All I could think of at that time was about, how much love and affection I have received from everyone back in India and when would be the next time I would get to meet all of them. Friends and foe, all have been equally close to me in the good 25 years of my life spent here and I was missing it all already. I kept reminding myself that I will complete my education as soon as possible and head back home to all the people who care for me, and whom i consider not just my friends but my family. And finally I was wondering that why on earth had I been through the duty free perfume shop, spraying each and every perfume on my shirt, which had now given my shirt a stink which made me want to puke.

Anyway, after a good 16 hours and 4 movies, the pilot announced that we were all set to enter our destination country. So here we were ..In the land of Hollywood, the hometown of WWE, etc etc .. on the brink of a new journey in life. Life has lots of challenges planned for us, and each obstacle will uncover more first experiences, some of them have already happened and I shall be updating them soon.

THE CHRONICLES OF MALSHEJ!!

It has been a really long time since my last post. My entire world has changed in the past 2 years. I guess this is the time when you are 2-3 years into your professional career and you start to realize that life has many more dimensions to it than just coming and slogging in office.

So then your priorities in life start changing: Instead of coming early to office to complete the pending work of the previous night, people come early to reserve the pool table - this happens because of the work saturation.

Ambitions start changing: Previously we wanted to just manhandle some irritating pricks, whereas now we want to strangulate them, chop off their limbs, neatly parcel each and every organ and mail it to each and every corner of the earth so that even if GOD sends them back from the dead, they may never come back in one-piece. This happens firstly because we have so much time on our hands that innovation creeps into every task that we undertake and secondly because some people have become so damn unbearable that it seems highly unlikely that just killing them will rid us off the trouble.

Your English starts changing: Well not everybody’s does, but as I took the GRE some days back ostentatious indecipherable words have somehow seeped into my vocabulary which has made my communication not just cryptic but also vexing. And while I personally bemoan the usage of such pompous speech, I can’t disregard the effort I spent trying to fuse them into my vocabulary. Hence in case you see any tawdry word in the following compilation, gracefully acknowledge my humongous effort and move on.

But the one thing that does not change is your friends. Well some may argue that most of our friends change during this exact period as all those who looked like natives of famine struck places of Somalia, today look like the pot-bellied merchants of Surat. So I would like to clear it in advance my change was only limited to the inside of the person. (“Inside” in this context refers to the soul of the person, so don’t start ripping off the clothes of your friends to check whether he’s still the same from inside :P). Anyways the reason why your friends haven’t changed is that they are exactly in the same boat as you are, they are equally frustrated about the boredom at work, equally mad at the organizations which are not paying them enough, and each of them has at least one person around them whom they would like to rip open with their bare hands and smear the blood victoriously on their foreheads. But the most important commonality is that there is a silent fear at the back of every head that the marvelous time which we had together is going to end soon as life is going to send all of us on separate paths and with no guarantee that we shall have ever a moment with all our friends together.

This was exactly why all our friends from the glorious albeit infamous FG4TG decided that it would be fun to go on a trip before some of our friends go onsite, some go for higher studies and some rot in the same old hell better known as office. And like it is a golden rule of all events with more than one person, that the arranging of the event turns out to be a fiasco (GRE Word :D). First we argue on the location, then the duration and finally when we decide for a one-day trip on the weekend, it boils down to half people vouching for Sunday and half insisting on Saturday. But in the end we managed to get a consensus on Saturday the 14th day of June 2008. The venue was going to be the ghats of Malshej which according to Kshitij was a heaven of Waterfalls, but according to someone else was a haven for the drunken tourists of the entire Maharashtra. But we claimed of even worse drunkards in our troop, names withheld, so we decided to go ahead with the plan. On Friday we started our preparation for the trip with Kunal arranging for transport, Kshitij arranging for the route of the bus (which again was a disputed topic) and the boarding point for the public. Meanwhile I was reading on the internet about Friday the Thirteenth as that day was 13th June 2008 and a Friday. And as I read ridiculously unbelievable stories about how 13 people on one gathering are bound to call upon ill-fate on themselves, I kept laughing at how absurd can people get with the fear of the number 13. My ridicule was short lived as the next morning I got to know that the number of people who had agreed to the trip had come to 13. And how much ever irritating our stupid driver was, I was glad that he formed the 14th member of our squad and rid me of my anxiety.

Saturday dawned and all of us worked hard to meet the departure time of 6:30. Nishikant and me reached Tejas Office, Kothrud at 7:10. We saw the indistinct mane of Amey (which would have put Queen Latifa’s hairstyle to shame) who had arrived some time ago. The bus reached there at around 7:15 with Kuldeep, Rewa, Devi and her husband Manish. Kshitij with wife, Truppti (NOT a spelling mistake, that’s the numerology conspiracy) announced their royal arrival at around 7:20, and we managed to settle down and leave from Kothrud at 7:30, as planned – 6:30 Pakistan Time. Till then we had received a threatening sms from Varsha, and we assured her that the bus would pick up her royal highness in a while. But the super blow came from Sagar and wife, Shubhangi, who kept us waiting at Bremen Circle (Pronounced Brahmin Circle by Kunal) for a good one hour. During this time we got a deep insight into the driver’s persona who kept abusing Sagar for delaying the trip and it looked that the driver was more eager than us for the trip. Around the same time he started off with stories of how lively our group was and how boring were the other trips he had been to. He gave an example of a trip he had been to some days back where the troop consisted of old people who did nothing on the trip but eat. And as everyone else applauded the humor in his statement, I quietly slid back the packet of potato chips which I had flicked from Amey’s bag. Finally we picked up Kunal who was waiting for the bus since early morning and had to have a bath because of the delay of the bus. Thank heavens for the delay. So finally we left Pune at 9 am – 6:30 Nairobi Time.

The trip started with basic chit-chatting about how each of us was doing in their professional life. This was where all of us got to bitch about their company and bosses and how much everyone’s job sucked more compared to the others. And just as we got out of town, we started feeling hungry from the excessive manual labour we had been through waiting for Sagar at Brahmin circle. So we decided to wait at a place and have a hearty breakfast. The food was pretty okay, except from the fact that my missal looked liked noodles and Kunal’s pav-bhaji tasted like mutton kheema. But we were so excited about the trip that we gave all this a blind eye and moved ahead with our journey. The monsoon made its presence felt by a sending a fresh downpour and the green lush environment started looking greener and more pleasant.

For the next part of the journey, our jobs were forgotten and we moved into the picnic mode. Varsha had just removed her original Harley-Davidson cap from her bag and it was photograph time. I desperately needed a picture for Orkut so I was the first to don the cap and start posing with umpteen cameras dazzling me by their flashes. The battalion of paparazzi included Sagar looking like a cameraman for some ingrate Marathi Newspaper. Nishikant with his cellphone camera looked like a huge fan that had just bumped into his favorite actor. Amey with his crazy hair gave an impression that he was at some crazy Kavi-Sammelan clicking the snaps of people who shred poetry to bits and stomp over them. Devi, climbing upon seats trying to get the best pose possible made me feel as if I was some hippopotamus in a muddy pond being photographed by a National Geographic photographer. And finally Kshitij who would have easily passed through as a photographer for the fashion magazine “Vogue”, as his one hand was holding the camera and the other hand was holding his low waist jeans. So after some countless flashes I relinquished the cap to the next person who gave a couple of poses for his Orkut photo before passing it on. We have hardly moved forward when one particular individual could not control the massive generation of fluid inside his body because of the 2 cans of beer that he had consumed. Some of the other guys got down to lend the poor chap some company. That was when I realized that the green banana farms behind would be a good background for a Orkut snap. As my photo session started, one by one every other person stepped out of the bus. So then a couple of minutes and a thousand snaps later we decided that it was time to move on.

Back into the bus, we decided to start our merriment by singing songs, but to add a different dimension to it we decided to sing the most pathetic songs we could think of. But Mr. Manish misunderstood the concept as singing the songs in the most pathetic way possible. Firstly he started off with some old songs, but then he shifted focus to the famous song “Khwaja mere Khwaja” from Jodha-Akhbar. The pitch which he generated was simply unbelievable and I thought that as he was sitting right behind the driver, the driver would at any point of time pull out the gearbox and stuff it down his throat. But our driver was enjoying the atrocities which were inflicted on us. I bet I saw another car swirling by whose glass was shattered by the melody of Manish’s voice, most probably as the driver lost control not knowing what exactly hit him. Then the concentration of our maestro was diverted to the great “Himesh Reshammiya” as he started appending “Tum” after every line of song he sung. After the Himesh rage, we managed to soothe Manish into coming back to the normal world and sing some average person songs. But the nail in the head came when we all started singing “Satyam shivam sundaram” and the divine aura of Balasubhramaniyam descended into him. This object (Manish) started imitating the laughter perfectly of the singer in this song. Then he improvised by including the laughter in every subsequent act of his. I mean imagine someone singing “Kya se kyaa .. hooo gaaaayyyaaaa”, pause broken by Manish saying “Ha ha ha”, then the rest resuming “ Bewafaaaa, tere pyaar mein”. After this the journey was haunted by every sentence accompanied by a “Ha Ha Ha” either by Manish or the other cast of the crew who had picked up the annoying laughter.

So then what was our next stop??? Yeah you guessed it right.. we stopped for lunch. I am sure that by this time the driver had realized that this troop was exactly the same as the old people he had driven before as all we did was eat. But I guess he kept quiet as he feared that if he expressed his opinion freely, Manish would lock himself in the bus along with the driver and give him a dose of “Khwaja Mera Khwaja” with peaks of “Tum” and “Ha ha ha” scattered in between. Anyway, while we waited for lunch people started off the photo shoot. Locations included the top of the tempo, a dried up fountain with Manish and me posing as if we were drowning. Then the guys walking together aiming for the Kaante pose, and the girls catwalking together trying to imitate what the guys did but ending up with snaps of clinging to each other and giggling their hearts out of their mouths.

The photo-session ended, thankfully, when rain crashed the party and all had to rest their asses in peace. However this was the time when Kshitij who had devoured more than a gallon (US unit :P) of beer, started explain his theory of hangovers removal. He claimed that the best way to get rid of a hangover was to drink beer, and this was supported by a graph, which is a steep drop in case you try to be sober, but which turns into a gradual curve if we have a beer. Cheers!!

In the meantime food was served, and this was when I went into a state of Nirvana. What happened for the next 30-45 minutes? I have no memories. All I remember is the beautifully sculpted leg piece of the chicken, as if the Gods had especially posted it from the heavens in my name. Life went slow-motion, the cries of the people slowly died out and I achieved a state of total tranquil. All I can recall now is the delicious taste of the food. Veggies, I forgive thy ignorance for it is why chicken is affordable to us. Non-Veggies, I guess I have total unison here!

After lunch the crowd went wild. We could now see the beauty of nature, as the spell of the chicken was broken as soon as the last drop of gravy was drained from the Handi. The clouds had settled on the ground and the fog was become denser and denser. Soon we set off in the direction of Malshej ghat which was now just 4-5Kms away. People were now asking the driver whether they could sit on the top of the bus as he drove through the ghats and to our surprise he obliged. As soon as he said yes, most of the public ran out and at one point when it looked like all of us would climb to the top, he asked some of us to stay back and balance the weight. So it was all the heavy-weights, Kunal, Nishikant, Amey, Manish, Rewa (!!!), Devi (Ignore this one), Sagar & Family on top of the bus. And the remaining feather-weights, Varsha, Kuldeep, Kshitij, Truppti and me trying to balance the half a ton which was on the top of the bus. The driver drove for a good 15-20 minutes before he settled on a nice spot and parked the bus there. Meanwhile Kshitij had changed to shorts and the discussion which went between him and Truppti (his wife) is as follows:
Kshitij: Hey Truppti, wanna go out and have some fun in the rain???

Truppti: Sorry, I can’t. I have a sinus problem, Remember???

Before Truppti had even completed her statement, the doors of the bus burst open and Kshitij hands spread out, as though they were wings, ran out in the rain screaming “Yay, Yay!!!!!” as if the Yerawada Prison had broken open and the inmates serving life-sentences were on their own. By the time Truppti completed her statement, Kshitij had vanished into the fog and what was left behind was the displacement of fog cause by his vigorous hopping. The people on the top of the bus, held their breaths as they noticed this torpedo shoot out of the bus into the fog.

The driver seeing this entire drama, felt an enhanced sense of security as he too was miles apart from this wife and could enjoy the freedom with us all. He urged us to go dancing in the rain, while he blasted the CD player at full sound. The scene was a party with loud music, people dancing on top of the bus, people flying, with arms wide open, in the fog and one particular individual with his hands behind his head and his pelvic thrusts. Then one by one almost everyone came out from the bus and started dancing.

This was a feeling of a lifetime to be in the rain, dancing and with all our friends around us. After a good one hour of dancing we decided it was enough time spent at one spot and we got back into the bus. As chivalrous as we are, we decided that it would be good to let the girls change before they catch a cold. So we got all the girls into the bus and all the guys out of it, except the driver who was busy hunting for the track “Kombdi Palali” in his CD. We had to drag him out saying that we’ve had enough dance, we don’t need any more now. The next 25 minutes were the longest of my life, where 6 guys were trying to hide from the rain behind one umbrella. Though we were already wet we realized that dancing in the rain is a different thing as compared to standing in the rain waiting for girls to get ready. Everyone was shivering from the lack of physical movement, but I’m glad for neither of us was ready for thrusts under the umbrella.

Suddenly what struck us was the abrupt drop of PJ’s in the atmosphere. This could mean just two things, either all of us had gone deaf or Nishikant was missing. To our glad relief it was the latter case, but even this was turning out a cause of worry as time passed and there was still no trace of Nishi. In the meantime it was the year 2050 and the girls finally managed to get ready. We leaped inside the bus to protect ourselves from the rain and were greeted by the aroma of perfumes and cosmetics. The BLOODDDDDYYYY females were doing bloody make-up while the rest of us were freezing our drenched asses out in the rain. Anyway, we had a bigger problem at hand as Nishi was still missing. This was when the driver grabbed a jacket from the bus and announced, “This is a job for the protector of oppressed, the defender the weak and the knight in shining armour for Nishikant!”. He stormed out into the fog and now we were wondering whether we would have to go searching for him as well. Thankfully after some 5-10 minutes the driver stormed back into the bus declaring that he had managed to find Nishi who was found sitting under a tree, and while Nishi claimed that he had lost his way in the fog and wasn’t able to find his way back, the driver kept insisting that this was a matter of love and Nishi has been tortured and demented in love which lead to him sitting all alone in the fog under a tree. Whereas another dimension to the story came from Kunal who said that our love-struck hero was attending to an urgent nature’s call and the fog provided him with the perfect camouflage. The driver meantime had developed on the “hurt in love” story and started warning us all about the effects and side-effects of love. It took Kunal some really intimate discussion with the driver to cool him down and make him concentrate on the driving. We decided that this much adventure for the day was enough and we should be heading back home.

The journey back started off pretty quietly as most of us were very tired from the entire episode that happened before. Everyone was now drowsy and most were taking a good nap in their seats. For the next one hour all we could hear is the chattering of the driver and Kunal, who had taken up an immediate liking to each other. And in the only sound except the two chatting was the symphony of the rain splattering and the humming of the wipers. Manish claimed that tomorrow Kunal will have a new friend request on Orkut from the driver :) . At around 5 in the evening we stopped at a small village to grab a cup of tea. Here we had tea, bhajiyas and another photo session :D.

Soon we were back into the bus, the energy levels lifted and in mood for some more merriment. We started off with Kshitij taking a video of all the people present with a running commentary and then we switched to nursery rhymes from our childhood and soon the nostalgic mood took over. We sang advertisement, title songs of serials like Jai Hanuman, Mowgli, Potli Baba ki and every damn thing that could be sung or recited from our childhood. But then the driver lost his patience with our songs and asked us to sing something fresh. Then I have no clue what we sung .. but we sang in all ways possible, duets with guys singing the guy’s lines and girls singing the girl’s. Old songs, new songs, Amitabh bachchan songs, Govinda songs, Anil Kapoor songs, Kishore Kumar songs but it was “Ek chatur naar” sung mostly by Amey that mesmerized the driver. Maybe we were more concerned about the likes and dislikes of Kunal’s best friend, than our own. The driver by this time had found another friend in Kuldeep, who was sitting beside the driver now and had impressed him with troubleshooting of the bus’s hardware. Whenever the wiper of the bus stopped working Kuldeep used to hit something beneath the dashboard and the wiper would miraculously start working. This came to him naturally, as even in office whenever any hardware box fails; Kuldeep’s job is to hit the box in strategic locations till it starts working. And now it was my turn to do something crazy, considering that my quota of craziness was still unused. I started with the U S of A attitude, chanting “Yo, man” after every 500ms. And then every song sung by me was with an English accent. Nishikant, Amey and Manish further helped me mix the songs to our flavour. Amey, Manish and me were converting the song to English sub-titles, hence “toota –toota ek parinda” became “broken bird, broken bird” with Amey mixing it a bit as “bi-bi-bi-bird” and “Allah ke bande” translated to “God’s dudes”. Manish at one point of time replaced “Kajra re, Kajra re” as “Ointment, Ointment” till we told him that “Eye-liner, Eye-liner” would be a better choice. Nishi in the meantime was taking the names of all the people even remotely connected to the song and calling them on the dance floor, so when we were singing “Hum tum ek cubicle mein band ho, aur access card kho jaye”, Nishi was yelling – “Yo, yo, yo this is Dimple, the mother of Twinkle on the dance floor!!”. In this entire chaos we had no clue when half the people got down on the way and when we reached Tejas office. One thing we do recall is the faces of people on the road trying to peep into our bus, trying to get a hint of what exactly was taking place inside. That was our stop we got out there, made our way back home and caught a good night’s sleep.

This one day trip has given us more memories than most of our previous quests, as this time we spent more time inside the bus with each other than outside. Even more memorable it will be as Kunal and I are down with fever and cold. As I write this I have been taking breaks to wipe the fluid off my nose with my sleeves and now it’s time to wring the shirt as it has reached its saturation point. My head is heavy and aching once in a while, the coughs are reminding me that I forgot to mention cough, but this shall all vanish in a few days, hopefully. But what will be left behind is the array of Orkut Pics, sweet memories (check the spelling) and a sense of fulfillment that the trip, which most of us think would be our last, was such a block-buster success.

PROJECT EXHIBITION WOES (TECXPEDITION 2006)

To start with I’ll like to tell you what is tecxpedition.. It is an initiative taken by our company to showcase the projects which are being worked on in our company - their domain, their technology, their complexity and finally the sheer raw talent (Us :D). I’d like to also put light on the fact that our project managed to win the first prize in the exhibition. But the way we got everything into place was more than a ride, which I am going to tell you and which none of us will ever forget.

PROLOGUE –

Well actually the way we got involved in the project exhibition was quite of an adventure in itself. When the news of the project exhibition first reached our project we gladly asked our Big Guy Amit to register our project for it (1 Lakh Prize money made us glad – turned out to be 35K – Tip: never assume always be clear). But this was about a month or two before the exhibition actually started and over time most of us totally forgot about it. Then we realized that our project deadlines were also coming up so we wouldn’t be competing..

However the list of short listed projects came up a week before the exhibition and we created a blunder. Our project registration was done twice.. Once by Big Guy Amit and the other time by Super Big Guy Omkar, therefore we weren’t allowed to step down and we also hadn’t prepared at all, thinking all this time that we had cancelled our registration. So then, there we were.. Six days to go and a project presentation to be done totally from scratch. (Cheh Din – Prize Money IN :D)

DAY 1 –

It is Friday, the 8^th of September .. we come office for a normal day and get to know by afternoon that our project registration has not been cancelled. So we will be competing but none of us, except team leaders and above, have an idea about how to present our project. Actually the problem is that the project is very very huge. Even an introduction session of a new team member can take hours, even days. But at the exhibition no one is going to have more than 15 minutes for the project (provided we manage to keep his/her interest which again is doubtful). So we decide to call upon a team meeting at around 6 in the evening. (Project deadlines are being worked on till that time). In the meeting it is decided that we will meet on Saturday for say an hour to finalize on ideas. And everyone is supposed to come up with ideas. By that time Kunal is assigned the work of getting two small size motors (Tillu Motors) to show real-time simulation of our project. Everyone leaves for home to get some ideas to office tomorrow.

DAY-2 –

Here dawns Saturday, and instead of snuggling up in the bed on a weekend, we get ready to go to office at 11. And I’m the 4^th person to reach office, and that too at 12 J. Still we hang on there as the remaining members of the team turn up one by one and I feel glad that I’m not the only person whose weekend has been ruined .. hehe .. Ok so once all the dignitaries have arrived we start with the ideas sharing session. Clearly we can see that no-one has thought about any ideas, but we still manage to come up with some ideas on the spot. And finally we decide that we’ll be having a PowerPoint Slideshow running on a PC, some 5-6 posters which will show the basic overview and the User-Interface of our system and finally a flash presentation to show the real-time data flow of the system. However now comes the real question as to who will be in-charge of the actual presentation delivery, and in a flash of a second we have fingers flying here and there!

Options –

Kunal – The most eligible candidate cause of his background of Bihari education where he can convince anyone that he’s a Masters in every field you can think of and haven’t ever heard of (kidnapping & extortion included).

KP – Looking at the size and mass on this one (6’3’’ – 100Kg).. it is highly probably that even a newbie will get a total understanding of the system without any doubts.

Devi – With her dazzling moves and seductive looks people are definitely going to have a hard time NOT agreeing to whatever she tells them.

Nishikant – The deep understanding of Bollywood and Soap Operas that he possesses is much of an asset on his resume. If he loses any link in the narration chain he can revert to those assets bundled with PJ’s to put the person in front wondering as to - lets just agree to what he says and get the hell out of here.

Rewa – Her uncanny resemblance to our German clients makes her a worthy candidate for the presentation lobby. And plus we were planning to have KP in the doubt clearing section. So you have a doubt.. she orders KP to clear the query and then wham-bham-dhishoom and doubt cleared. :D

Kshitij – His low-waist jeans will be more than just a distraction for people coming on to the stalls for them to understand the project, and then raise any queries if any.

Sagar – Jai Maharashtra – No further questions J

Amey – He is the oldest member of our team so he must not have any problems explaining the project to anyone. And plus his current hair-do would remind people of the baal-ki-dukaan from the Amir Khan's Coke Ads some years back. So someone asks him "What will happen if one of your tank's temprature rises?" and he'll reply "How is that possible ? Kyunki ye Thanda hi to hai :D "

ME – No comments :)

But even though all of us had such splendid core competencies, no one was ready to take up the job of the presentation. Still .. convincing the guys into it was not such a big problems as the conversation given below will show.

Kunal: Nahi yaar, presentation dena apne type ki baat nahi .. koi aur presentation de.

Me: Ekdum .. ladkiyon ko presentation ki responsibility dete hai ..

KP: Yes ..i agree as well ..

Someone else: Maine suna hai Cummins Women’s college se ladkiyan bhi aa rahi hai ..

Me: I have no problems with giving the presentation. Actually I would like people to know the effort we’ve put into the project B-).

Kunal: De dete hai .. presentation to main bachpan se de raha hun :D

Rest of the Guys: haan kyun nahi .. de dete hai ..

So finally the tasks are assigned

Kunal & KP (The Art Couple): With the setup of the hardware along with motors and stuff.

Devi, Rewa & Kshitij : Putting up Posters around the project stall.

Sagar, Amey & Nishikant : Managing the project stall, setting it up and deciding the layout.

Me: Getting a flash presentation ready.

And we leave for home to start with the tasks assigned.

DAY-3 –

It’s a beautiful Sunday and whoever thought we would waste our Sunday and do our assigned work better needs to get sober now.

DAY-4 –

Ok, Monday the dreaded day has arrived and everyone is supposed to get something meaningful to office. But as expected noone has anything worth taking credit for..

- the hardware setup team’s carpenter ditched them :D

- Poster team needs posters ready to set them up (which as expected are not ready)

- Stall Management team doesn’t have a stall yet

- I managed to learn over the weekend that flash is not as easy as people tell you.

But the major shock was our project leader Omkar called in sick. Now we are struck by the truth that this won’t be one of all the times when Omkar gets us out of situations, so we are on our own.

DAY-5 –

Tuesday is here, Omkar is not coming today as well and to make the matters worse Supermodel Devi calls in sick. Wow .. we’re in for a ride now.

Carpenter has still not come. Posters still not ready. Stall not yet assigned and I’ve learnt how to spell F-L-A-S-H. Sounds like fun!!!

DAY-6-

Wednesday arrives and now Big Guy cum PM Amit wakes up and tells we must get our project presentation ready. That is what we call dead-line conscious. He takes up the task of making posters. Kunal’s carpenter feels some pity for the art couple and decides to show up at 5 in the evening. Devi gets the thermocol supports for the posters and some black chart papers for the poster background. The stall is assigned and the stall management team gets ready to start working. And finally I realize how to get started with flash. By evening the poster soft-copies are ready which we are going to send for printing (Meanwhile all other teams have everything ready and also have ads set up everywhere to tell people about how wonderful their project is.. we still haven’t realized that setting up ads outside the stall as well will be a nice idea).

It’s 9 pm in the office .. our entire team is still there .. but seems that we have managed to finish off work. The table for the tank gauge (An instrument used for measuring various parameters from a tank like level and temperature – that is what our project is about) is ready.. the motors are in place and all seems set at the hardware setup side. The poster backgrounds are ready as black chart paper has been put up neatly on the thermocol pieces and are looking cool. And the flash presentation is ready .. looks of more like a powerpoint presentation but we managed get some spice into it by KP’s idea to take pictures of actual hardware by a cell phone camera against a black background and then using these pictures as images in the presentation to show how the data flows thru our system .. and trust me it looks awesome. So we leave for home to come back to office tomorrow at 9 in the morning.

D-Day I –

Today is the first day of the event, we are supposed to get the stall up and running by 9 and only half the team manages to reach office at that time. We reach office at 9:15 and realize that even the posters are not ready. Kunal, KP, Sagar and Omkar have managed to get the stall up and running .. And we have managed to reach office :D .. Then Amit goes to get the posters .. and we go to see our stall .. most of it looks in place and then someone gets a brilliant idea no one has thought of, to set up ads inviting people to visit our stall(Sense the sarcasm, please). So Kshitij, Devi, Rewa and me go downstairs to collect ideas for the ads, while the remaining people are getting ready for the presentation.

Post-Lunch we manage to get ads ready and then we have to set them up at all critical locations, that is the time we realize that we are out of transparent tape and don’t have decent scissors as well. So guess what?? We use brown duct tape cut with a crooked cutter to stick those ads (ugh! Who does that these days?) onto the walls, lifts, all places which aren’t already used by our competitors.. and trust me .. it looks ugly. For around an hour we are doing rides through the company lifts and sometimes we even manage to get lost as to which floor we are on currently. Those walls are till-date stained with our brown duct tape victory marks. But the job is still half done; we have to set up a big poster at the entrance to tell people where our project is located. And as expected we have one more problem, our ads aren’t looking good on the black chart paper we have. So Kshitij and me get an idea .. we rip off a spanking cool blue chart paper off the glass windows(set up by the house-keeping dept), put up to block the sunlight coming in. Even the chart paper must have never thought that it would be a part of the epic award winning team (The next day it was ripped off again – but it had got it’s moment of glory).

So all is set-up.. Our posters have arrived.. we stick them onto the black chart paper and it looks neat. Our work is finally complete and Kunal, KP and Nishikant have done a good job to hold the fort of presentation and impress people by telling about the project. We finally manage to visit the stall in the evening, it had been good till then but it is tomorrow we are worried about cause tomorrow will be the day the judges will be coming. We’ve got quite decent feedback till then and we pack-up our stall at around 8 and leave for home.

D-Day II –

The last day has a lot in store for us. Today people have become more self-confident due to the presentations given by them yesterday and some have also managed to come up with various styles and punch lines to make their presentation jazzier.

Like whenever a person visiting the project looks like he’s getting bored listening to KP’s voice and over-done gestures, KP diverts their attention to the hardware box kept nearby. The Hardware is merrily blinking with red, orange and yellow LED’s and KP gets the punch-line in..

“The beauty of this system is blah blah blah blah … ”..
Use some more over-done sentences..
Again raise his voice and say “The beauty of this system is … ”..
The word “beauty” surely gets attention of most people..
He also manages to get a person so brain-washed that there is a feedback saying - “Nice project, the beauty of the system was that ……”. Argggggggghhhhhhhh!!!!

But the show-stealer like always is Mr. Kunal. I mean, whatever he does, he’ll get himself involved so much that he’ll forget where he is and what he is doing. Apparently his explanation of the project went something like this ..

Our hardware tells the sensor sitting beside the tank that “BOSS, GIVE ME DATA” (Most of us sitting beside actually fell off our seats, but the deep desire to watch his physical actions keeps us glued). Physically he is portraying the command with the upper part of the body showing that he is pulling something and the lower part (*parental guidance recommended*) of the body depicting a thrust. None of us gets what he is trying to illustrate until Omkar suggests that maybe it is some bi-directional protocol.

The rest of the crowd manages to get some presentation of theirs in between, but Prince Kunal swept the total public away. People came to rest of us in ones & twos but to Kunal in clumps (That’s the impact of a thrust). By evening we are all tired and the crowd has dried up. Then two babes come out of the blue to have a look at our project and before I can even understand that someone wants to see our project, Kshitij springs out of his seat to life, gracefully goes forth and starts explaining them the project (The force is really strong on this one), the babes give a nice feedback and one almost leaves a telephone number (Just kidding – sad .. wasn’t it ?).

Now it’s almost time to wrap up the dukaan. We pay a visit to the remaining projects, everyone has done a splendid job and we see the most innovative of ideas. Then we return to our desks after what has been a tiring day. Try to recollect what has happened over the day, the judges had visited our stall and were looking quite pleased with our efforts. So in all it has been a very productive day and all of us are eagerly awaiting the Annual awards night for the prize distribution.

NOT MUCH IN THE DISTANT FUTURE (The Annual awards night):

This night is much of an event in itself, but I’ll stick to the relevant part. Half of us have managed to reach on time. And the night is rolling, to start with, prizes are given out for paper presentations and then comes our category. And the prize for best project is announced and it is US. Kshitij and me start screaming with joy, but only our project lead Omkar is called onto the stage, probably the organizers don’t want Kunal on the stage telling our CEO that “BOSS, GIVE ME THE PRIZE MONEY” (accompanied with a thrust).

Anyways Omkar comes back with the prize, all of us go and flock him and he gives us the prize, which Devi safely keeps into her purse (Something which she can tell her grand-children about “Once I had 35K in my purse, and with the kind of salary we had that time, that was much more than a privilege”). We are so happy that we fail to realize that the best project is given to three projects and the prize money of 1 lakh is split between the three projects giving each one of them 35K. But that doesn’t matter much anymore. We have won, our efforts recognized.. not just the team with the presentation but the entire team with the development till-date as well .. our ex-team members are also involved in the celebration and we have a great time that evening.

FINALE:

This was how the Tecxpedition saga came to an end. It has been one hell of a joy-ride and we never play to lose .. :D .. The nice times are over; the feedback forms are kept away safely in my drawer as wonderful memoirs of that experience. And time and time again I go through them and laugh as I see feedbacks like “I liked the project especially the GUI”, which someone from the GUI team gracefully implanted. Then one more which tells about the beauty of the system, and trust me had I been someone visiting the stall I would have actually drawn Kunal in his stance onto the paper highlighting the protocol “BOSS, GIVE ME DATA”.

Well that is all I have to write at this time and I think most of you must have been too bored to get this far, and if you have come till here I would like to thank you for bearing with me and being a part of my experience. And sincerely ask you to stop reading cause I’m not writing a Novel. This is it.. THE END

P.S. – Just cause I’ve got back into my habit of writing, I shall be updating this blog quite often.

NOW IT’S REALLY – THE END.