Nandi Hills Trip @ 28th September

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Rang my phone... Abhishek on call ... time 3 am on 28th Septe

mber ... Abhishek says, "Aeee ekhone uthi ni .....tara tari kor ekhon teen ta hoye che.... Borete hobe Nandi Hills jonene ...Na hole Sunrise miss hoy jabe" (Wake up its 3 am already, hurry up we need to leave soon for Nandi Hills otherwise we will miss the sunrise).....

Ahhhhhhhhh....... Wished sunrise used to be at 10 so that I could have slept peacefully till at least 7 am...But Brahma had make the world like this... :(

After Abhishek's call, I really felt a sense of urgency to get ready and leave for nandi Hills fast ....And I was preety much upto the mark to leave by 3:25... 

Naww.... I messaged all the people that I am leaving and be ready....

Picked up Nitu, went to Sandy's Place , got along with him reached Domlur where Abhishek was waiting for us. Now we were 3 bikers.... Then our next destination was National Games Village to pick up two more persons, Pragya and Ankita. 

Picked them up then moved to Paramount (Koromangla) to get Alongwith Shradda and Rachna. Also, Nitu's friend - Sourabh and Navin - who were also coming alongwith us. So everything seemed to be going right on time.

Now we all 10 people - 5 bikes - started our journey at nearly 4 am.... Then I recalled Abhishek's bike was on reserve and we tried few 24-hours petrol pump until we found one on hyderabad highway.... It was preety chill at that time....my fingers were nearly freezed... But It was great to ride on the Hyderabad Highway, the road was quite smooth other than one or two unexpected bumpers.  

We reached the ticket counter at 5:45 am, and the rush at the ticket counter was way more than I have seen in any of my previous two visits here. The queue was long, but we got some girls in our gang to collect it for us and we were able to reach peak by 6:30 am. Hadn't we got tickets by some other means we wouldn't have reached the peak before 6:45. Everyone seemed to be in fine fettle.

The scenic beauty from the top was great. We went to various places of the peak including the suicide point, Sweet Water lake, etc.We had a lot of fun there and we were ready to leave. Every thing seemed to be going great as planned, none of us had any intitution of the adventure waiting for all of us. 

After having a good time there, we were ready to leave the hills and move towards the city. And during I ride back we got all short of probable thing which could happend to a bike.

As we were going down, Navin's Bike was out of fuel, incident no. 1 :( Thank God we had one shop nearby with petrol. And we could refill it. everything seemed to be going smooth and then Sourabh's bike got punctured. We searched for the puncture shop nearby and then finally ourselves got the rear tyre removed and send sourabh and Navin to puncture shop. Once they were back from puncture shop, we started again. In hyderabad highway, then we had 3 bikers caught by police for general checks and overspeed. two of them were fine with all documents so they got freed easily. However, Navin didn't have all the documents and he finally bribed them with Rs 350 to get free.;). Now after another 10 kms Navin's fuel was again empty. He got it refilled from some petrol pump within a radius of 1km. After all these incidents we had our group in 4 different places. I was with Navin as he had no petrol. Abhishek went through some different route. Saurabh was at different place. And Sandeep too at a different location. Thankfully Sandy completed his Doctors work while those police and fuel refil activity of Navin was taking place. Finally we all assembled at Brigade road and we were back to the full strength together. By this time everyone seemed tired and Hungry. So we planned to go to Prayag, koromangla for lunch. And adding to the adventure it was fully crowded. We got a table, but that was outside and then there was a scorching sun above our head. Somehow we had some thing to eat there and then we left for home. Most of the people in trip might have just went home and slept coz it was really tiring and adventourous journey.

27th September ....Its my Birthday !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, thankfully this birthday didn't turn out the way Last two birthday's i had in Bangalore. Few of my friends surprised by being there at 12' o clock.....And then the birthday celebrations.....

With my face also having the taste of Cake.....It was yummy .........

Not much different than what one can expect ...lot of calls & calls through out the day with the wishes....

Had lunch with my friends in Bangalore....

Then we made  plans for Nandi Hills the next morning which really turned out to be an unexpected adventorous trip ... 

Will tell u about the trip in the next post ....

Thanks all for the wishes !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Magic Of Dabbawalas Unfolded by Dr. Pawan Agarwal on 25th Sep 2008

On 25th Sep 2008, Motorola India Planned a session by Dr. Pawan Agarwal, who shared his insight on Dabbawalas of Mumbai. Lot of Town halls have taken place in our work place, but I never saw the number of people attend it in that large number as it was that day. Only townhalls of a CEO or CTO of our company can match that gathering. The session was very informative and was well communicated by DR. Agarwal.

dabbawallah is a person in the Indian city of Mumbai who is employed in a unique service industry whose primary business is collecting the freshly cooked food in lunch boxes from the residences of the office workers (mostly in the suburbs), delivering it to their respective workplaces and returning back the empty boxes by using various modes of transport. Most of the Dabbawallah's are illiterate, but still the perfection with which they do their work with nearly zero error without using any of the technology is simply awesome. They even got the Six- sigma certification without even applying.... That's really cool.

Examples of few incidents revolving them during the session was humorous and realistic at the same time it showed that sincerity, honesty and simplicity with which dabbawallah's do their work. Simply Hats Off to them..... :)

MOTO Raas Dandiya

On 26th of September'2008, Motorola organised a Dandiya function called "MOTO Raas" Dandiya. It was great success. Many of the motorolans shaked there legs and few were "papus" (where only spectator).
The Dandiya function started at 4 p.m. with a typical dandiya song, and it was great to see employees and contractors dressed in colourful traditional dress with a dandiya sticks in there hand. They all were dancing in the beats of dandiya together alongwith the ocassional performance of garba.

But initially participating seemed to be lacking and there were more of Papu's then we were expecting. So they get all of them shake there legs, we switched over from Dandiya to dandiya + Bollywood ... and as expected we saw the participation increase a lot. It seemd to be a 50:50 ratio now. Though I didn't like this sudden change from dandiya to Dandiya + Bollywood, as I wanted more of Dandiya ... but I knew my logic was flawed in this case... So I started up with the new mixed tunes... Then some songs from Kannada was also played, which was great and make us all dance with much more enthusiasm and made us feel tired much faster.Though I didn't understand it , but music was great and make me dance tirelessly. It added few more dozens of people in the dance floor. What we observed was switching between different modes of Kannada + Bollywood + Dandiya music. This seemed to be more proper with the way this cosmopolitan city Bangalore is made up of. It showed us the true mix of flavours from different region.

Before I give conclusion the question that may arise to you can be :
Who were "Papu's" ? And why they are refered like that?
Well the answer is all the spectator who were not dancing and just watching were Papu's.
There is a song like "But Papu can't dance saaala "....so once that song was played ..all the dancers were pointing to the spectators with the signature step that Bappu (or Spectator) can't dance saala ...... ;)

Finally the event ended and was a great success even though a bit of reluctance was observed on parts of people initially. The only time I was not seemed to be very happy with the way event went was between the event closure and the time I went to sleep. Coz the event was so good that made me dance hard and as a result made few of the spare parts of my body to feel the brunt of those high energetic activity. I was really tired and had a great sleep. Hopefully we will have such events more frequently at our workplace. :)