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Cellarstone

...flashback again 2-3 years back

It was a recreation club for most of us, i got my first shock on the second day of my joining, i was called to a conference room, an entire team was trying to get a conference call to US without success, and they asked me to fix the device....at this point only i realised that my work is not a system administration support and it is rather a infrastructure support.....what followed later were calls for all the hardware, OS, network, application, servers, desktops, laptops, printers...... and strangely after sometime i realised i was supporting electrical system as well in the company, managing 3-4 high capacity UPS devices and the most funniest thing was when one of our client from US who was visiting our office came to my desk and told that his AC is not working, that was not my domain for sure. I was happily getting involved in all the other activites though.

Apart from all the roles i was into, most people in our office felt that i was the person who is enjoying the most in the company, reason was mainly i had to report to a manager in US..and i never reported to him...and i had one senior in my office who never reported too..we had our own territory..there was never a instance i can remember that my boss had complained about us...

back to our main entertainment ..after the hype in table tennis game got down after tournaments, we played more of carrom and chess, mainly to encourage and give opportunity to others for playing TT and another reason was for giving company to few talented guys in that sport..

Anand, this guy joined as a testing engineer, he had a high rapport with all the co-staff, he proclaimed himself as a carrom champion..but seriously i felt kamal,me and enos were one level more than him in carrom, still we encouraged him a lot.There would be huge crowd when we four of us played ..as each one of us would try to better the other ....kamal was consistent, me -close to consistent and alawys looked for difficult cut shots, with enos -it was always blind shots, he himself wouldnt know which coin he was trying but he will win..and Anand - crowd liked this guy very much, and few times he did managed to beat us..

Chess...played rarely, never attracted crowd as much. i had kamal beaten in an improtant round but eventually fell to a lesser known guy, i think even kamal would remember that game. second year tournament was an great disaapointment, i fell in the semifinal rounds in all the games...TT, carrom...and in Chess i gave a walkover to Anand...who eventually won the championship. But i made sure that anand never won a game against me..he played 4-5 games with me after the championships..but the champion never was able to beat me...we both played equal style of game.

trips on the company, there would always be year end party on a resort or a theme park, which i always skipped due to my year end church service, we once went to pondicherry, when most people were visiting ashram, and museums.....me ,vijay and jenser found pub everywhere and enjoyed all combinations of drink that was possible...there was once a long trip to hogaanekkal...me and Anand got knocked over by drinks..still i remember both of us had more
than 4 beers and we were so knocked out that both of us carried a lemon in our hands in bus all the way from hoganekkal to chennai..lemon it is beleived neutralises the effects of a drink... and it did that day..

..ok back to work i got a change of job profile in the company after few negotiations with the management, now started looking into DBA activities as well after some training on that line. what followed later was bad days for that company..they lost an important client, business went down...slowly people started moving out of the club..sorry company..

NSA ....and friends...

...all this happened 2-3 years back during the period of 2004-2005. i decided to write about my friends and associations i had during this period after seeing a post from one of my friend, http://www.scribd.com/doc/122368/CellarStone-buddies this link realy moved my genrally cold heart to write about my memories..and relationships we had...

initally when i joined this company i started hanging out with few cool guys in the company....vijay, raghav, jenser...so we were the happiest person's on that company, most of the co-staff usually found us in the mornings with hangovers...since we were performing well nobody had any complaints though....

later moved to a mansion near my office, as my senior was going on a long leave and i was in infra support. so this place was called NSA mansion....later this became the hub of master brains in that company...few of the master brains

Kamal- he was an aspiring and budding e-marketing professional, who later learned the tricks of the trade fast....and had high influence in marketing the product the developers made. smart guy and very popular amongst girl....great player of all games he was right there in top and this guy is very compassionate towards needy people....he tried his best to teach me e-marketing...but i never learned

Karthik- fresh out of college and new to chennai as well, he learned a lot from us..bike,drinks, smoking..and he listened to all our great blunt stories eagerly without getting bored...he had come from one fo the top colleges in TN and nobody can question his talent and passion for work..one good thing he learned from me was reading books and novels...i was involved in a bike accident with him...no injuries to anybody thank god...

Maneesh -he is most senior person in our group but again a close friend...he is from varanasi and the difference in culture and language made us more closer...for 2 years every evening he had given us papayaa....this guy is fond of fruits, specialy papayyaa..again a smart and clever person..he is fond of movies...and most of the movie shows we went were for him.....

Enos- the abdul kalam of our company, our company CEO realy liked tis guy very much for his work, he developed a product out of nowhere and became famous....he is known for working only on nights....coming to office on casuals.... and for fighting with program managers...he is again close to me...we went to church together...along with 2 more guys me and enos recieved value award in our first year in company..

events that i remeber now...

As it is known kamal is famous amongst girls, one fine day one girls car broke down and she called kamal to help...but since we were close friends and wherever we went we went in groups..and whatever we had we shared...we all went to drop her safely at her house....

our trip to hogganekal....everybody had a nice bath on the falls, except for me and karthik all other guys were topless..to the discomfort of these guys our managing director forwarded all the pictures to the entire office in india and us...there were secret comments from girls....

weekends were usually shopping and eating out....what followed was usualy fights for sharing the budget..even if it fell 1-2 rs short there would be hours of fights to settle it...

the way a senior PM reacted after he lost to me in tabletennis semifinal before an assembled office...he just throwed the bat angrily at the table and went off....no handshakes...nobody were able to react at that moment...nobody even clapped for my win...

we slept on conference rooms, due to a bit of workload and mostly due to hot summer...office was like home....enos and karthik even had thier pilows and bedspread in office...
we drank once in office terrace..had few rounds and again worked...
we had regular session in our rooms, most of our discussion were like board of directors discussion, and few gossip sessions as well...

those days will never come again......evrybody's paths changed drastically in these 3 years...there is one secret wish i have now..would we ever be able to work together again in a same office....even if we did, we would never be able to spend time like we did before....miss you guys....

..games

..another weekend, another Saturday and well i seem to spend most of time time alone at my place these days...no more Friday night parties, no more Saturday morning hangovers, and no more pirated DVD movies to watch... on the other end work at office just seem to move along fine, no pressure, no late night work, no weekend scheduled works..but one thing that is interesting in office is i am completely into an technical environment that is very much demanding and new to me.

i have started playing table tennis in office, there are 2 games which have fascinated me a lot football and table tennis....i had played football in my school days, coming from a school that encouraged sports, we played the game with lot of pride and of course many injuries in leg and once in head ...well one thing i can still remember is once me and my friends had a game with the seniors, we were studying std 7...those guys were actually professionally trained by the sports trainer. we did lost the game that day but most people who saw the game and even the seniors saw that we were pretty good and attacking in the game. after that when i moved to a new school in chennai there was literally not much games i played and once i remember we played and it was one sided in which i scored close to 4 goals....

i was performing very poorly in other sports though...cricket..can remember just swinging the bat wildly and managing single digit scores...missing easy high catches...volleyball very famous in my school in chennai...not upto the level again..just managing to serve into the court..that was the big achievement.

it was in one of my earlier companies that people taught me tabletennis..and within a short period i caught up the game fast and i was right there in top4 by the end of the year..we played a lot of indoor games during this period carrom, chess and tabletennis ...sports festival happened every year and i managed to beat few big guys in TT..even the guys who taught me and finally lost in the final..after this i became popular guys tried their best to beat me....they liked my serve and everybody was imitating my serve. so what is that special in my game i defeated so many experienced guys...i was very strong in forehand cross court..bit weak in backhand..and i moved so fast and was hitting most of the shots across the table with high speed...i guess its the speed....Guys here in my new company seem to play lot of spin and these guys are too good in backhand also...have marked few guys to knock them........sport it is...

Saturday...afternoon 3 pm, boring and watching a movie....possibly next week i might go on a tour to god's own country..

....lent

.....had an important assignment and i was travelling on the evening of new year, i was happy that i was not made to travel out of station on the month of december, so we were a litlle happy family and celebrated christmas and new year together after a very long time..

the assignment went well, as usual there was pressure from my manager and my client. 3-4 more days left to finish my task. So it was one day like this that i was stuck in one issue to solve and working late night...around 10.45 got a call from my brother...well the tone said it all, it was not a good news. my dad was hospitalised for fracturing a bone near his hip. being a physio himself my brother did analysed the situation very well and made arrangements in a hospital that he had worked 2 years back..this is the second time that my dad was involved in a serious situation, the first one was even worse, and in both the occasions, both me and my brother were not around..

..next day i realised that i was not able to concentrate on my work anymore..well my manager and client were sympathetic enough to release me and major part of my work in this assignment was also over..well 3-4 days from then i was travelling on air,road and rail.....once standing 6 hours in a train all the way from chennai to trichy, i was travelling from one city to other and arranging logistic support for my dad treatment and getting few formalities done in my dad office...meanwhile my brother flew back to his place..and my dad was recovering fast..

now lent days have started....days starting from ash wednesday till easter are called lent days..there would be forty days during this period when most christians go on fasting and prayer...and i would as always would not take any non-vegetarian food during this period....most churches preach these principles during this period

prayer, penitence, almsgiving and self-denial...