Happy birthday Swamy and Nitin... AND The Freshers Treat

Sep22 2008 was indeed a fun day... It began with us celebrating the (belated) birthdays of Swamy and Nitin... It was fun getting the cake for them... and the mess that Sweet chariot got me into.. but thats another story...

Everybody found the way their names were written on the cake very funny...

I managed to find a little green leaf for the cake as well...

Here are a few pics from the birthday party:

From Freshers and Ashish's treat

Both of them were staring at the cake for a while... ha ha

From Freshers and Ashish's treat

Here they go... cutting it together...

From Freshers and Ashish's treat

Shiba got them with the icicing... as usual...Swamy claims he coudn hear for a week

Can't wait for Shiba's birthday... I'm sure most of us would be itching for revenge for all the cake smearing...

Then, came the Fresher's treat...

This was one treat that was a long time pending... After long months at virident... I finally got to BE THE ONE giving the treat (and of course Nrithya and Mahesh too)... Considering the number of treats that i've been a part of since joining as an intern in Feb 2008, this was indeed a memorable day for me...

So we went at around 1:30PM to Pinxx (Yeah I know! lol ... and yes it was a little pink.. but very comfortably furnished), at Royal Orchid Central at Manipal Center.
I shouldn't be talking about this explicitly... but I think everybody enjoyed the food... the Kababs were great and the Rava fry was really good on the fish... for the veggies, we had this lovely curry of sweetcorn that left me wanting more...

There was a whole versatile set of desserts to wash it down with... on the whole it was a fun outing...

Here are a few pics of the same:

From Freshers and Ashish's treat

From Freshers and Ashish's treat

From Freshers and Ashish's treat

From Freshers and Ashish's treat

Farewell to Srivalli... and ethnic day

On 14th August, the eve of the 62nd year of Indian independece, saw us at Virident display our enthusiasm with a dash of ethnicity...
For the earlier part of the day, we bade farewell to Srivalli and had an oriental buffet lunch at Bamboo shoots...

Here is a slideshow of the pics at Bamboo shoots:

Once we had come back we went straight to the Ethnic shots, here are a few ethnic shots:

Vineet was the first person to model for us... His short kurta passed of as remotely ethnic

Ankur's Full Kurta was certainly more ethnic... but he was too lazy to pose for us :D

Shiba looked quite the part... we were expecting him to start a pooja anytime now... ha ha




Nitin was hardly ethnic... but he was all prepared to pose... with ID card and all



And this is Ajith... As for ethnic, you can see he is ... umm... er...



Swamy... he was as ethnic as you could get... Kudos to him for a great effort..

Here I must mention Viswesh who was equally well dressed with a long blue kurta and a brisk white dhoti (Kasavu Mundu). I could not get a picture of him as he had to leave due to some personal matter.

And here is Yagaty... very chilled out in his red robes...




Muthu took the award for best shoes hands down... with his Lucknowi Jooti




Here is Ganesh... eating his second lunch after bamboo shoots... ha ha (Neer Dose)



Indranil... caught off guard... He was dressed in what someone called the Hawaaian Shirt :D



I hold my silcence... ha ha



Mahesh... in his BRAND new kurta... he even had the tag in the morning to prove it... :)

Vivek, ethnic with an air of subtlety :)



Jaggi had a meeting at 3... so he couldn't be ethnic...



The ladies... :)



Mohan... Simple yet elegant... He and swamy were the only ones with a shawl..

I leave you with a final slideshow of all the ethnic pics...

Jaggi takes us to Kudla!

Jaggi's treat at Kudla bore me witness to one of the most scintillating experiences that I've EVER had with regards to sea food... It was a place for food lovers... where you could just about anything that swims... :) The vegetarians (heresay) had a great time too... they had great starters of enticing paneer and gobi that made us look away from our palate and glance at theirs for a few moments...

But kudla was all about the Veggies... It was a very relaxed crowd that settled down at Kudla for dinner on Tuesday... Each of us relishing our cocktails and (mock)tails... [ Though here I must mention that swamy ended up getting some wierd green drink that he could hardly understand and soon he had slight symtoms of being a lil drunk... ha ha... look at the pics below for confirmation]

Here are a few glimpses...

And here is Shiba warming up ...

The lip-smacking crayfish that we had:

The Gravies we had with our Neer Dose: (Prawn masala and Kori Sooka)

And here's Yagaty uncle fighting over Ankur's ice-cream like a kid...

We washed down dessert with fried ice-cream(Yes you did read it right!)... Shiba was all for it as he'd had it before... fried icecream was a huge scoop of icecream that had been dipped in bread batter and fried to a crisp outer covering with amazing icecream and nuts inside...it was quite a treat!

Finally we all tried out some desi chewing tobacco...

Kudla was indeed a spectacle of sea food on its own... amazing crab(I can still taste it), great prawns, and spicy crab fish that left my tongue tingling for more... it was indeed a memorable treat... Can't wait to go back there and enjoy it again.... Cheers to Jaggi for great selection!...

The network blackout!

7th Aug 2008... we finish our meeting and then we figure it out... no network AGAIN!!! This was starting to get frustrating(Especially to Ajith), and this is the second time this week... So the rest of us guys decided to have some fun while it comes back... Ye hain us din ki kahani chitron ke zubani.... :D Ajith was frustrated that his work was getting cut off...

In this pic... you can see on the screen Ajith was pinging and pinging and pinging... but alas...

Some of us after giving up on doing stuff offline...decided to take more recreational outlets to pass time... What followed was a tirade of games starting from Cricket (Until everybody was tired of it), Then came an improvisation of football like never before - we kicked around the smiley ball as indranil displayed his flair at goalkeeping ...

Here is a glimpse of our football... if you observe carefully towards the end you see... Yagaty come up in the middle and try to figure out....what we are up to... (ha ha )

Soon people got bored of this too... then came the funniest of the lot where we were trying to play something that some of them called golf (with a cricket bat and a dustbin??)... but to me it reminds me of the thing that Alice played with the queen of hearts in 'Alice in wonderland'....croquette(I hope i've spelt it right)... Here are a few pics.

Here Shiba is showing us how it is done...

There is the target... the horizontal dustbin :D

Ajith got tired of waiting for the network and joined us... Here he is measuring up the shot..

Poor LLT(Low level team)... Still working away... They dont need the network :D

In the meantime... Ajith continues... Now getting the hang of Goquette(Golf-Croquette)

The LLT guys couldn't take us playing anymore... they went away to the conference room to continue working...(I felt sorry for Ajith and Viswesh)

The network finally did come back at around 1:30 PM and then...things got back to normal...

Just another day in the life of a Viridentite(Sigh!)

Cheers,

Manas

Kumar at Bangalore...

We had a really great time talking and interacting with Kumar where each of us had a really great time... this was followed by lunch at 'Atria', where we had a lavish buffet and talked about everything from the early days of Virident to the Marathon running of Joe and Kumar... It was real good fun....

Here are a few glimpses:

Here are the rest of the photos:

With the treats down memory lane...

This post is a reverse-chronological glimpse at all the treats that I have covered over the last few months at virident....

First we have Ganesh's treat at South indies that gave us a splendid flavor of south indian cuisine at it best... This coincidentally happened on the 7th of July and we've just got our spanking new virident T-shirts!!!




All the pics are here in this slideshow...

Going backwards, we had shiba's treat... where he took us bowling ( Which all of us enjoyed tremendously) while we figured that Vivek and Shiba were really gooda at it... And then we had that amazing dinner at Angeethis...

These images are the slideshow below...

Here's a video of the Viridentites at action during the bowling session:

Rolling on down memory lane we come to Viswesh's treat during which we got a flavor of Kerala at Coconut Grove...

The last treat that I'd covered was Viveks treat at Indijoe's with that amazing buffet whose desert section still lingers in my mind...

There are a couple of treats here in the middle which have gotten missed out :-( , Mohan's , Indranils and all the ones before... I'm sure we'll cover your future treats! :)

Cheers,

Manas

Journey to the top of the world...

As we set out on Friday night, little did we know about all the fun that we were about to have in the coming two days. It was a novel idea - this trek and it began smoothly with some meticulous planning by a whole bunch of people. Vishwesh and Yagaty had already made sure of both our travel and the stay well in advance which made the whole process smooth... After leaving the office at around 10:30PM on the 27th. We picked up the two Ajiths on the way :) And I had already started taking snaps of people by flashing the camera on their faces...










The journey in the bus was filled with fun while we discovered the hidden talents of our Viridentites. Swamy began the show with an amazing performance with his singing that made us keep asking for more. Vineet (no H please) followed up with a hilarious display of dramatic talents. [ The contents of his act is confidential and hence cannot be disclosed ].

We spent the next few hours some trying hard to sleep (Vivek and Ganesh), some sleeping away to glory (Ajith K and Vishwesh) and the rest of us enjoying the movie "Ghosts in the darkness". The highlight of Ajith's(For all future references, Ajith is Ajith Kumar and Yagaty is Ajith Yagaty ;) ) sleeping tenure is displayed in the following pic.

We reached there early in the morning around 6:30 AM. The home stay called coffee country turned out to be a beautiful little place with waves of lush greenery lying all over in abundance.

The place where we stayed

Settled down


The lush greenery that surrounded us

There was a lot of energy in the air and nobody wanted to get anymore sleep. So we decided to go for a walk. When we returned at around 8:30, we realized that the weather was amazing...and that there was going to be a slight drizzle all through...thus plans were changed and we decided to do the trek the same day... In the picture below some of us are getting ready for the trek.

Vineet and Vishwesh using the snuff powder... they had the last laugh

All geared up!

The trek itself was full of energy and excitement as we pushed ourselves uphill for a total of 7 kilometers. The first 3 km were concrete road and the next 3, a paved path. The last kilometer was the toughest as we had to climb the hill up the path made by the flowing water.

Tromping up the hill :)


We were surrounded by such amazing sights all around us...


Yet another breathtaking view...


All drenched in the flowing water... [ We found our first leech right after this...]

Here is where I confess to going overboard and running up the hill, pushing myself and feeling real good about it...but I wasn't prepared for what Vishwesh later termed "Manas went running up the hill and came crawling down it". Leeches were a constant pest...which initially had us worried, but later we became used to them get us once in a while...

The top was amazing and we really felt like we were on the top of the world....

Elated....at the top!

We were so into the whole trek....that if our guide hadn't warned us away....we would have continued on to the next peak....

Slowly heading down...

Once we headed back down ( I was the last...could barely walk ), a good few of us hid the beds and fell asleep while others visited the coffee plantation nearby...

It was an exciting journey for us and each of us who were part of that little group that went up and conquered 'Thadiyandamol' had formed a bond of sorts... which is evident even now when we talk about the trek and instantly our eyes light up....

The way back was amazing too, where we visited the Buddhist Monastery in Bailkupe...but all that is another story...maybe another time...this is about the time we conquered the peak...
And for our little lives...a journey...all the way to the top of the world... :)

Signing out,

Manas

PS: Here's a slideshow of all the pictures we took if you want more... :)

These are the pics taken by Ajith: