Thursday, October 13, 2005

Homecoming 2005 - Part 1

The title of the post should not be new for most of the people who belong to TAPMI. Every year the Alumni Affair Committee takes the mantle of organizing Alumni Homecoming which is a 2 day affair where in the Alumni of the institute come back to the institute, enjoy and remember their spent times here.

Last time we were the organizers of this event. This time we were the participants of this event. I started from Hyderabad on 7th of October by Kingfisher Airlines incidentally, which was my first airline journey. The flight journey was cool and we landed on Bangalore at 8:15, which is 40 minutes later when compared to the actual arrival time. By the time I came out of the Airport I took a taxi that took a whopping amount (I will not like to disclose that here) and dropped me at the bus travels place after a bit of struggle. The bus arrived at 10:00 PM and I met all the people there. Raj, CP, Uncle, Venky and Nair. Chappar could not come due to some last minute changes. As always myself and nair started in Bus itself and took a break and slept in the night at about 2 or so.

The next day morning the bus reached manipal at 8:00 AM. It was a pleasure to come back to Manipal unlike other times when I did not feel like coming back to Manipal at all. We took an auto and reached the hotel Royal. We met rest of the gang from Bombay. If we look at the major chunk of people they were from IT companies only thanks to the 5-day week. Anyways we got allocated ourselves into rooms and myself and Nair landed up in one room. We all got ready somehow thanks to no power and no water in the hotel. A bus was arranged for our transportation from place to place. We reached TAPMI at about 10:30 PM and then started the day with registration and some honors. After that it was the turn of the event of the day – The Director’s Address. It was good. Some of the recent developments happening in TAPMI also came into light.

After the director’s address we all gathered for an informal Tea session with the faculty and the students. It was the time to interact with faculty and I had a talk with Prof. Mohan Kumar in detail about our job and profiles etc. We had a plan to talk later on some issues but time did not permit. After the Tea session it was the time for the Photo session. Pretty decent crowd it was and as always it was very hot standing out there. By the time we completed the photo session it was 1:00 PM. Then we came back to Institute had some photo sessions therein and left for the mess to have lunch by walk.

We reached the TAPMI mess at about 1:20 or so and then had lunch out there. It was awesome. Although the taste did not change a bit, it was good in terms of variety. After having a sumptuous meal at the mess, I went upstairs with Vora to see the condition of our room. The room was in a very bad state. I will not like to comment on that. Thereafter we came down and I was chatting with my TSG junies and other people. Some how we got two bikes. I drove pulsar for the first time and CP drove Enfield. It was a great experience and we went to endpoint. By now the weather in Manipal had become great with cool breeze and cloudy skies with little of rain just like Kerala. We went to end point and sat there for an hour or so. Then we started back, I dropped Tejas to college and then CP and myself came to Thalloor’s for the party. It was a warm welcome by Souveer. After finishing from there we had Goli Bajji in the same shop where we used to have while I was in Manipal. The evening came to an end there. We went back to hotel room and slept there till 7:30 PM.

For the night party I had my special PROVOGUE shirt, which was pretty well received by all. The Nike shoes almost went for a toss because of the mud and dirt clinging to them. Our Night party was in Hotel Kediyoor. It is the same venue where we had the Farewell party. It was a nice experience. Anyways I need not mention about what happened out there. We came back to hotel room at about 1:00 AM and then the bakar session started in our room itself. CP too joined us.

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