Eventfull Weekend
Indeed! Friday morning I step into my cube and see this "very pleasing" sign on my desktop "PLEASE DO NOT SWITCH THIS MACHINE ON" The IDM had quarantined my PC thinking that it had some really nasty virus on it. This was a side effect of a security incident that was reported by our client earlier in the week. Despite me reassuring the folks here that it was not an attack and looked like some security scanner that was doing it's regular job, people here pressed the panic button and confiscated my machine. The paranoiac upper management also thought that I would obliterate evidence of some malicious activity on my machine and tried this stunt of keeping me away from the machine. I really pity them, In fact they made my day; I literally had the day off :-) I don't think they succeeded to exorcise my machine off whatever they though it had in the end, either.
Later in the day I realised how horrible it is to be in the office without doing anything. I became restless by noon, after lunch hung around ramesh's desk for sometime and fell deep into the knowledge transition activity. Friday evening, wanted to go for a swim so, picked up the recreation pass from ramesh and walked up to my bike. The most awful thing happened!!... I was backing up my bike, didn't realise that the side stand was still on and ripped my left toe nails off. Blame the human mind! I am amazed at how the mind works; I never put the side stand while parking my bike at office, and this sub-conscious registration overrode the real situation and didn't preempt me to check for the condition or probably because it was friday the 13th. First few second there was no pain, after that it felt like I had put my toe into a hot furnace and I could see blood oozing like water out of a broken tap :-) quickly called ramesh and got some rudimentary medication done. The swimming plan went down the drain in minutes. Went home, managed to clean the mess I had done to my toe and sat down to do the last (w)rites using my notebook. Burnt about 5 CDs, and cleaned up the notebook. I'd decided to sell my notebook off for, I was badly in want of money.
Later in the day I realised how horrible it is to be in the office without doing anything. I became restless by noon, after lunch hung around ramesh's desk for sometime and fell deep into the knowledge transition activity. Friday evening, wanted to go for a swim so, picked up the recreation pass from ramesh and walked up to my bike. The most awful thing happened!!... I was backing up my bike, didn't realise that the side stand was still on and ripped my left toe nails off. Blame the human mind! I am amazed at how the mind works; I never put the side stand while parking my bike at office, and this sub-conscious registration overrode the real situation and didn't preempt me to check for the condition or probably because it was friday the 13th. First few second there was no pain, after that it felt like I had put my toe into a hot furnace and I could see blood oozing like water out of a broken tap :-) quickly called ramesh and got some rudimentary medication done. The swimming plan went down the drain in minutes. Went home, managed to clean the mess I had done to my toe and sat down to do the last (w)rites using my notebook. Burnt about 5 CDs, and cleaned up the notebook. I'd decided to sell my notebook off for, I was badly in want of money.
So, Saturday, a lazy morning, picked up my notebook, went to my friends place and sold it for 18,000 bucks, it was an excellent deal for the buyer, you cannot get a P3, 1 ghz, CD-RW,DVD R, 256 MB RAM, ethernet, 56k modem, 15" TFT, 20 GB hd, 2USB fully loaded notebook for that kind of money. I had to sell it because I really didn't have a choice :-(
Saturday Evening, Party time ! With folks from alma mater, we hit this beach house off ECR. A party right next to the beach with some heavy duty music from one of my friend's car. This friend of mine has got a mind boggling music system on his car with wooffers, amplifiers and heat sinks that completely occupy the boot. Pumping out something like 8000 watts of music. I was carrying my MP3 collection and we were able to play virtually any song that we could think of.
We played volley ball, couple of games of cards after which we lost interest. We talked, talked and talked for about 3 hours sharing our nostalgic school memories. We caught up each other for, I was meeting some guys after about 8 years ! Dinner at "westpark" or something sounding like that, this place is like 2 KM from VGP towards Chennai on the ECR. Food was not so good, surprisingly they served beer though it was not an authorized BAR. After food, all of us headed back home, this time we played some spectacular Illaraja hits like the Agninatchathram #s and mike mohan's best hits. Came home and was watching DD sports-Olympics live, weightlifting was being shown. I just waited to see if Kunjarani devi created some kind of history. She was actually struggling amidst all her young adversaries. She managed an 82.5 Kg in snatch and 107.5 Kg in clean and jerk. Nurcan Taylan from turkey gave others a run for their money by lifting 210 kg (97.5 snatch, 112.5 Clean & Jerk). I think kunjarani finished 6th in the end.
We played volley ball, couple of games of cards after which we lost interest. We talked, talked and talked for about 3 hours sharing our nostalgic school memories. We caught up each other for, I was meeting some guys after about 8 years ! Dinner at "westpark" or something sounding like that, this place is like 2 KM from VGP towards Chennai on the ECR. Food was not so good, surprisingly they served beer though it was not an authorized BAR. After food, all of us headed back home, this time we played some spectacular Illaraja hits like the Agninatchathram #s and mike mohan's best hits. Came home and was watching DD sports-Olympics live, weightlifting was being shown. I just waited to see if Kunjarani devi created some kind of history. She was actually struggling amidst all her young adversaries. She managed an 82.5 Kg in snatch and 107.5 Kg in clean and jerk. Nurcan Taylan from turkey gave others a run for their money by lifting 210 kg (97.5 snatch, 112.5 Clean & Jerk). I think kunjarani finished 6th in the end.
Sunday morning, I had to do all the mundane stuff that was originally scheduled for Saturday, so was little busy Sunday morning. I was about to have my lunch and happened to notice parul's SMS about the Landmark Quiz, called him and confirmed my participation. It started raining as soon as I stepped out of my house. So, decided to go by car. Reached Music Academy at around 3:30 and there was Parul and Mohanraj waiting. We waited outside for about 15 minutes before our number was called. We were asked to occupy the smaller hall within the music academy complex, we couldn't find any place to sit so we went on stage. The quiz master appeared on screen from nowhere and started reading out the formalities. Answer papers were distributed and the organisers were kind enough to distribute some snacks for the participants, I am unable to recall the name but it tasted like chocolate chips :-) We crashed through a set of interesting 40 questions. We managed to crack some of them very easily, some of our guesses turned out to be right and some went wrong and for some we absolutely had no clue what the answer was.
After submitting the answer sheets we tried to get into the main hall. There was this maddening crowd in the brink of a virtual stampede. I had to be doubly careful for my toe was already in a bad shape. We made our way into the mail hall and found a safe space to stand and breath. We waited for the results, the guy started to read out the results I was not even listening for, I was quite sure that we wouldn't make it, I was told that there were around 1000 teams participating in the prelims. Suddenly, the guy on stage read out, "Best Corporate Team"..."Quizbots"...! even at that point I was a little skeptical about what I was hearing, by which time we had walked up to the stage and I had hurt my toe in the process :-) It all happened in about 2/3 minutes. Once we went back stage the organisers wanted to see some kind of ID, luckily Parul was carrying his ID and mohanraj had his card. Our names were called once again on stage, we proudly marched on to the stage and collected the trophy,a gift voucher for 3000 bucks and posed for the photograph :-) We watched through the rest of the quiz programme. It was fun and in all a wonderful weekend.
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