Smile and Wave !!

A much delayed post. But it could not be helped. To write anything, even a post, one needs to be in the right mood, have time ones hands, finally have access to an internet connection, working personal computer etc not necessarily in that order. A little over a month back, I had the opportunity to go to Goa. Home sweet home, there is no place like home etc etc all those sentences came flooding back to me as i sat in the plane from Delhi to Goa. The occasion was Diwali and all the family, my family that is, was coming together. That included my brother, mom and dad, my in laws, my sister in law and my wife. It was wonderful to have the family all together. Makes one realize exactly what and how much one misses when staying alone.  To count the material stuff; well good fresh fish for one, I stuffed myself literally, home made food, having beer or drinks, the beach, the warm humid climate etc. Bliss! But it was the non material or qualitative stuff that mattered the m

Its been an absolutely fantastic year so far. Its been mostly good, with certain downs and lows, but on the whole good. I spent 2009 and 2010 largely alone, in Delhi, Shimla and Dehradun, away from friends and family, except for the occasional visit to Goa and the long long vacation in December 2010. 2011 is not so, its like my loneliness has been done away with Mukta entering my life. And that too despite the fact that Mukta is in Bangalore and has been here at best a total of 20 days all of 2011. Hell, she hasn’t even been to the Chandigarh house yet, but I am not alone. I have had the immense good fortune to have mom spend almost 4 months with me this year. This counting the time till September 22 that she intends to spend here. Nonetheless, it has been fun. I would really hate to see her go back to Goa. I am hoping Dad would join me here instead. Its so wonderful to have your mother around, it can be slightly stressing at times, what with the number of controls one has to exert

Although this may seem a plagiarised title, it is apt for what I have been feeling lately. I had the pleasure of a holiday without ever leaving my home these past few days. My family was here, all of them under one roof. Although the entire family was together only for a few days, the members all arrived in batches, which means my holiday started way back on 16 th May with the arrival of my mom. On 11 th June, dad and aniruddha arrived, adding to the fun and finally on 17 th June mukta arrived, completing my family. It was fun. My family was together after 6 months. It really gives one a sense of satisfaction to spend time in the company of your dearest ones. Whats all this got to do with the title. J For a few days of happiness, Aniruddha coordinated his leave, Mom stayed with me a month, dad came all the way from Goa to Dehradun for just a week. Mukta dropped everything and took off for a few days from Bangalore to be with us. I contributed to the pool by taking a few half d

After a very successful Industrial Expo and accolades coming in from all quarters, it was time for the entire team to unwind. Somewhere during the period prior to the expo I had become a part of the team, sort of accepted, either that or the guys were just being nice to me or may be there is some other vested interest that I have not yet imagined. Whatever the reason, I was invited to join the team on a week end holiday. I must confess to planting the seed for the holiday. All I did was suggest to my colleagues that since the expo is done with and very little to do immediately, that we take his opportunity and the available weekend to check out Dehradun’s first and only multiplex. The guys were not too interested as no good movies were on. It dawned on them that they hadn’t taken their families together for an outing in a while and so it was decided that a weekend overnight trip was due. After much deliberations as to the appropriate choice for the holiday, Asan Barrage was decided.

To fully understand the scope and the scale at which this expo was being organised, I need to describe some stuff in detail. At the risk of boring the reader or sounding extremely egoistic, I might delve into details here and there, but will try to stay on track…. Our team in Dehradun consisted of 3 officers, a senior director and a peon. There would have been 4 of us officers, but as I mentioned before one of us had left us in Feb 2011. To help out with the more menial tasks like correspondence and telephonic confirmations, we had also hired 3 temporary staff. One of them, a girl, had been on the team since Sept 2010. Two of the boys were students of MBA programs. These 3 people were the team which was corresponding with all the invitees, sending mass mails and calling up those who had been mailed. These poor devils were making about 100-150 calls a day. The girl from the trio was also looking after the Exhibitor contact list, generating the database for mass mailings and also ge

In continuation of my previous post, I am describing here the events that all added up to the Industrial Expo 2011. It may not make exciting reading, but as an experience, I want it to be documented. While the government with whom the expo was to be partnered decided to pull out, we were busy weighing our options. In defense of the govt. they could not help but withdraw. The code of conduct was in place and the election commission had not given the go ahead. Nobody expected the expo 2011 to be considered as violating the code of conduct as it was a strictly B2B show of industries, no consumer stuff included. It was only due to a letter by the local administration of Haridwar (to whom we had applied for permission)that we thought of getting endorsement from the election commission.  There were 2 options available to us; one, go on with the expo as planned without the participation of the govt and two, postpone the event to a later date after the elections in Haridwar so that the g

A long time since my last post. Been kind of busy. Our office was organising a one of a kind, first time ever B2B show. Ok, for the record, B2B stands for Business to Business and not some geeky acronym off the net. This show was christened "Industrial Expo 2011" and slated for 29, 30 and 31 March 2011. What is it with my organisation and weekends. I mean weekends are supposed to be off, but we rarely get them off. Almost all events, programmes, meetings, conferences, seminars etc have to be organised and scheduled for a weekend. Nonetheless, I wasn't much of a part of it, since the preparations were on since September 2010 and i only joined in November 2010. besides I had taken a whole month off and joined only on 19 Jan 2011. As a result, I was kinda uninvolved in any of the aspects of the expo. i felt guilty though and tried to help out my team in whatever way I could, doing odd jobs, and working on the menial tasks of data entry, correspondence, telephonic follo

A post I had written offline.. got saved and shunted into an obscure folder during the last re-installation of Windows, suddenly discovered 5 mins ago and therein posted albeit out of turn (and date) to its rightful place. Feels good to blog again! :) After a considerably long gestation period, my appointment to CII (Confederation of Indian Industries) finally came through on the 18th of September 2010. It was a fine birthday present although rather surprising, as I had given up all hopes of the opportunity materializing. I was told initially that my offer letter would be dispatched on the 20th, but it again took almost 10 days. I finally received the scanned copy on the 30th of September and on the 1st of October I resigned. The manager was initially quite taken aback. he felt I was quitting because of him. Our relationship hasn't exactly been cordial since he joined up. But that is besides the point. I had taken a leave of absence on 30th  September  2010, to sit down and th