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..