HCL Tech and NEC Joint Venture

A few days back Economic Times carried this headline on the front page of the newspaper. Perhaps none of us took it very seriously or gave it a second thought but this is a very important news for the Indian IT Industry. HCL Tech is the fourth largest software development company of India. Nippon Electronic Corporation is a Japan based software company which specializes in Enterprise Solutions delivery. The JV is a 51:49 one with higher stake on the side of HCL. It is expected that the JV will completed in the month of June. Also the CEO of the combined company will be from the HCL side only. The thrust area of the combined entity would be to provide end to end Integrated IT solutions to the customer. It is said that this deal will mark the return of HCL to inorganic growth path. For those who do not know what is organic or inorganic growth here is a quick reference. Organic growth is the one which comes from company's existing businesses as opposed to acquisitions. Inorganic growth is characterised by acquisitions and take overs done by the company to increase its turn over and top line growth. Till recently HCL had bought out its JV partners in the six of the companies it had floated earlier and made them wholly owned subsidiaries.

Interestingly NEC is one of the few HCL Tech's Japanese customers. NEC is a giant in the area of IT makes products ranging from Mobile phones and Super computers. Notably the NEC Earth Simulator Series which was the fastest supercomputer available on this earth one time. NEC has already outsourced close to $ 50 m - 60 m business to India and has ties up with Infosys and Wipro also.

The enriched pool of application development from the HCL and the NEC's expertise across several domains should definitely strengthen the merged entity. Let us see whether the JV really takes off or not.

New Search Engines for searching Blogs

A few days back when I was searching for my blog on the web I came across two search engines which are specifically used to search the blogs. These are : http://www.icerocket.com and http://www.technorati.com . Actually Ice rocket is much more advanced than many of the other search engines but its search results are quite a much similar to the Google's only. The search engine offers a button on the top which helps you to search a particular blog or a particular person. It automatically takes the snap shot of the blog and then puts in adjacent to the search result. The icerocket search icon is similar to another site (GIGABLAST) which I had come across when I was in TAPMI (courtesy krish). Ice Rocket is so fast in searching and indexing your blog that a post can take only a few hours before it appears on the Icerocket database.

Technorati has a different mode of search and a little different from the rest of the search engines around on the web. It promotes itself as a RTE (Real Time Enterprise) saying that "What's Happening on the Web Right Now". Actually it specifically tracks Weblogs of users worldwide the photos and related posts. It has a facility of opening an account on the site and then it can track your weblog better. Also it catches from other websites links also. All in all its a great tool for the blog search.

European Grand Prix - Nurburgring

The Formula 1 Grand Prix this sunday was the European Grand Prix at a place in Germany called as Nurburgring. The Nurburgring circuit is close to 60 races old and is famous for its track. On this circuit only thrice the pole position driver has won the race and the race ends as always in a spectacular and dramatic fashion. Even this year it happened the same way. I started following F 1 in the year 2001 and the first Grand Prix which I watched on television was the European Grand Prix only. From the European Grand Prix the FIA changed the rules for the qualifying from two sessions to a single session on saturday which will decide the position for the race on sunday. So the saturday's qualifying was a pretty exciting one with Nick Heidfeld capturing his first ever pole position in the career with BMW Williams. Second place went to Kimi Raikkonen in his Mclaren Mercedes and third place went to Mark Webber again in the BMW Williams. The Race as usual started with no hiccups in the warm up lap but then soon as the 5 red lights had to illuminate and go a few cars started before the lights can go off resulting in yellow flags being waved. But as the race started the next time immedietely the Webber's car got into trouble and Safety car had to come in action. When the Safety car went out and the race started again It was Kimi Raikkonen who took the lead ahead of Nick Heidfeld and emerged as the front runner. There was so much of chaos at the race start that few cars went into the sand gravel and had a tough time coming out of it. Some cars like Redbull of David Coulthard took advantage of it and moved from 11th to the 4th spot. In the middle of the race as cars were closing on the first pit stop David Coulthard became the race leader but his bad luck continues in the Formula 1. Due to speeding in the pit lane he was awarded a 10 second penalty during which he had to stay in the pit and which brought him down to the 6 th place in the tally. On the overall basis the race was absolutely fine with Raikkonen extending his advantage over the next rival by close to 31 seconds to so. But then when it was just about 15 laps to go for completion of the race tyres of Mclaren had given up. The front wheel of Kimi's Mclaren had become flat during the race but then the tyre came upto the last lap of the race but the car's suspension could not last long which was getting terrible vibrations resulting in extensive hammering. Soon when Kimi was about to start its last lap the signs of the car crashing were evident since it was vibrating like anything and the people sitting in the race and the TV viewers were able to find out that. Well when Alonso got to know this through the team radio he immedietely responded to it and started to catch up Kimi. When Kimi was about to reach the end of Lap 59 the car's suspension broke off and front tyre on the rear side came off on the front part of the car and immediete braking by Kimi made the car hit the tyre stands ending his race in an unfortunate fashion. Alonso emerged as the winner of the race and now leads the points tally by 32 points over Raikkonen. Nick Heidfeld came second for BMW Williams and Rubens Barrichello was third for Ferrari. The Race positions are as follows. What a delight to watch the European Grand Prix. I think this will be my last Grand Prix in Hyderabad.

European Grand Prix - Nurburgring Standings

InstaColl - A Cool Way to Share

This is my first review of a product which was launched very recently in a great function. Also this article is my first one in the IT area. In this article I have explained about an Instant Collaboration tool called as InstaColl. InstaColl come from the house of Sabeer Bhatia who is very well known for his very successful venture Hotmail and also a very unsuccessful venture Aarzoo.com which he started when the ventures based on the internet where on a high in the 2000s. It is his third venture and the good thing about it is that it is a product and not a service. In the Indian IT industry, the revenues come from two sources - One is the product and the other is the service. Usually we have very few product based companies in India. The pioneers in this area are I-flex and Polaris. Iflex with its FLEXCUBE (The world's best core banking solution) and Polaris (with Intellect) are one of the foremost companies in this product based business. Even Finacle from Infosys and a few more products from TCS are also in the fray but then Infosys is more of a service based company then a product based company.

The InstaColl is a solution which is totally developed in India in the Bangalore center of the company. As the company says its going to offer a new paradigm in the real time collaboration. Well I had downloaded a copy of InstaColl and installed it on my computer. The installation size is 2.75 MB which is good for the Dial Up users also. The installation finishes within a couple of seconds and takes up a space of 10.9 MB. It launches in the similar fashion as MSN or Yahoo Messenger will launch. Once you are connected to the internet it starts to set up a session and uses Microsoft Outlook as a communication client for sending invitations to the people who are using Instacoll. It provides a session URL and also a session passkey to ensure that unknown entrants are kept away. One who initiates the session will become the session moderator and rest will be invitees only. The main menu of the program consists of the four topics : share presentations, Share Spreadsheets, Share Documents and Share Screens. In the initial edition I believe its restricted only to the Microsoft Office Suite but soon will be extended to other office tools also.

The document exists locally on the moderator's desktop but the changes can be made by any user who has joined the conference. I must say the tool is really great and it will help really the users who want to edit a document simultaneously from various locations. It uses a hybrid p2p architecture and allows very large numbers of users also to join the conference.

I have used the tool only once and I liked it immensely. It can actually solve the problems of numerous users who are not able to meet each other face to face.

Kuddos Sabeer Bhatia !!!!!!!

Monaco Grand Prix

Other than Internet and computing my interest also lies in the motorsport or Formula 1. This week formula 1 race was held in the Monaco circuit. The Monaco circuit is famous for its settings since it is one of those circuits which is extremely narrow and situated close to the sea and has city roads like atmosphere. The race has 78 laps. Kimi Raikonnen of Mclaren Mercedes emerged as the winner of the race with Nick Heidfeld and Mark Webber both of Williams completing the top three positions on the podium. This is perhaps the best race for Williams in the recent times since BMW Williams was one team which was struggling for form in this season. Ferrari was able to consolidate its position to some extent with both its cars finishing with the points. Monaco Master David Coulthard suffered a collision with Michael Schumacher and was out of the race after that. Our Indian Man Narain Karthikeyen also suffered in the initial stages of the race with the Jordan and came to the pits thrice for the tyre changes leading ultimately to retirement. But in all terms it was the day of Kimi Raikkonen who dominated the race from start to the finish and had a 1 pit stop strategy and running on high fuel. Even the other Mclaren driver the colombian Juan Pablo Montoya also finished the race with 5th postion after the current formula 1 champion Fernando alonso. Alonso was in the 2nd position till 6 laps to go but had to slow down because Renault engine had got heated severely and Alonso was not able to push the car. Kimi Raikkonen's victory came at the time when Mclaren was running in its 200th Grand prix. Nothing can be a better gift for them . It was a second victory in a row for Kimi after the Circuit D Catalunya (Spanish GP). Well looking forward to Nurburgring GP in a week's time. Let's see if Kimi can pull off a third in a row or not.

Kaun Banega Crorepati - 2

Its back with a bang. Amongst us who have the habit of watching those Star Plus kind of saas bahu shows must have observed the promotional campaign of KBC 2. Yes guys its back. Kaun Banega Crorepati 2 will be its new name and it will be hostel by the one and only Amitabh Bachchan. One can visit the site http://kbc2.indya.com for more details on it. I was one of those fortunate ones to win some money in the KBC 1. It was the time when we had to send the answers to the questions by SMS. I won a lakh of rupees in that and I was delighted to see my name in the winners list which was flashed on the screen.

This show has numerous changes attached to it. One of the most important change they have made is quite possible the campaign which they are using to propagate the show. The campaign stars Amitabh Bachchan talking all about people's aspirations and beliefs and their hopes and wishes. I must say the ad campaign is really great and the dialogues are also superb. The dialogue writer is Mr. Renu Dev Tailang who I know quite well. I also met him once in Mumbai. Let's see what is the new thing he brings in the show.

The other change is the prize money in the game which has been increased from 1 crore to 2 crore.

Let's see whether Star Plus can pull off another victory and give people a relief after a very boring schedule of saas bahu serials.

World Telecom Day - 17 May

Its a great feeling when one's birthday arrives. Added to that if some other important day also falls on your birthday its absolutely icing on the cake. I was just looking forward to this day. Today is my birthday for the people who do not know and its also the World Telecom Day. This information I could get only when I received a SMS from CellOne service.

Today is the 140th anniversary of International Telecommunication Union [ITU] and also has special importance for India as the country is commemorating 150 Years of Telecom Services. The nation has crossed magic figure of 100 Million Telecom Users.

Today we are celebrating 37th World Telecom Day. The theme for this year is "Creating Equitable Information Society". Hopefully with years to come our country will scale greater heights in the area of telecommunications.

Last Day @ GOA

Today was my last day in Goa. I had to start a day early since my parent's were coming to Manipal and I had to receive them. Then Morning I started from the hotel, A few hiccups here and there in terms of money but finally resolved. In the afternoon then I reached Madgaon and caught the passenger train to Udipi. The train reached udipi at 7:25 pm and with this our great tour comes to an end. Its very difficult to put across how much fun we had in the tour, But I have tried my level best and hope that this remains itched in our memories forever. Alvida Goa.

GOA - Day 4, Dharmik Sthalo ki Yaatra

Well as the title says, day 4 was the day when we took the official south goa which covers all the temples and other tourists spots on the south goa side. The central character of this post is Mr. Mendis our Guide in the bus. He was one of those M S Narayana type of character in telugu movies. Must say he had tremendous knowledge on Goa. But was very "pakao" keeping in mind his jokes. The tour began as usual half an hour late. The tour began with the two famous churches in south goa. The SE CATHEDRAL OF BASILICA and one more I do not remember the name clearly. The churches were absolutely excellent and we really loved it. It has a great history behind it. The next stop are a few temples around panaji city. The main reason why the temples are situated far from the city is that the christian missionaries were destroying all the temples in the panaji city and hence the kings at those times moved these temples out of the town. Well the way we had lunch was really great all the SWADES touch once again to it. In the evening we reached COLVA beach. This is the second longest coastline in India after Marina beach. By the time we came back a few people had drained out of energy amongst us. Then we parted ways I believe. myself Amit and co went for some real great shopping with some goa stuff. CP just went and sat on the panaji main road side. Rahul just sat on the MIRAMAR watching the sunset or something else. Tejas was lying on the bed only. By the time we finished our shopping it was late 9. Then we had a session and we enjoyed it. Soon it was a walk on the pavement and the night just closed slowly taking all of us in.

GOA - Day 3, The IDLE Day

As the topic of the post suggests. It was out and out an idle day for us as we literally did not do anything and did not go out also anywhere. In the morning it was the time for shifting as we had to move into the new hotel. The new hotel was very nice. The room was airconditioned and very decent and nice when compared to our earlier accomodation.

As the accomodation was excellent so was the bed and the AC. Soon after that what followed was a sleeping session wherein all the people had slept except for me. Somehow people managed to take bath and I must say taking bath was a delightful experience for me atleast. One bad thing happened our saif ali khan Mr. Tejas G Sheth had fall ill because of some stomach upset and other related problems in the stomach. Poor chap. His absence from the action was missed by all of us. His diet got restricted to only curd rice and water from the unusual ones. We had lunch then when all the people were about to sleep I took the initiative to wake all of them up and ask them to move to the Fort AGUADA . This fort has some history and I do not remember it well. The path to the fort I must say was quite tortuous and had some real outbound kind of experience. Somehow we managed to reach just in time because the fort was about to close. The fort was extremely nice place and we enjoyed it thoroughly.

We returned back at around 8 pm and then I went out to look out for my tickets back to manipal. But unfortunately Goa being a coastal town, the shops close as early as 8:00 PM. When we had come back we had our first ever sitting. I must say it did not provide us with that kind of enjoyment as we used to have in Manipal but then goa is goa. Tejas was on bed only whole of the time and night we went out to have a stroll on the footpath which was adjacent to the Panaji main road. I must say that was one of most enjoyable walks we ever had. We close the third with this.

The "PIT" Stop

The title of this post actually looks akin to a formula 1 terminology but has actually nothing to do with that. The PIT as we called it is a game played with cards. I will not like to reveal the minute details of the game as it is a very old game and its quite possible that the game may not be in existence. To sum up it is just like making a complete set let us say from ace to one. We had a great time playing the game and as we all know Mr. Vora is absolutely superb in explaining each and every fundamental. There was also counting in the game and negative counts ensured that one always remains in the bottom who were myself and tejas. CP finished at the top how he managed it is still a mystery because it was looking like Vora will once again crack it the A+ way. Rahul as usual had more interest of taking the photographs then playing the game. The major enjoyment factor in the game was (BOOGLE AND BEAR) which almost for half part of the game ended up with me only. On the overall basis game was really very nice and we hope to have it again sometime when we all meet together. Something else also happened on that night but needless to say it cannot be mentioned here.

GOA - Day 2 - Dil Chahta Hai

Well I have been writing post on the goa trip for quite a long while and now since it is not looking like it will go to completion soon, I have decided to cut short it and finish it in this or the next post.

The next day was the real enjoyment for all of us. It was day of the trip to the Fort Chappal. The fort chappal is situated on the coast of the vagatore beach. Vagatore beach is one of the coolest, cleanest and private beach in goa since people cannot reach here easily unlike miramar or calungate. The journey to the beach was a true SWADES kind of experience keeping in mind the buses we travelled in.

We reached the Vagatore beach at about 1:00 pm. It was a hot sunday afternoon with mercury rising upto 35-37 degree centigrade. Also the humid weather of Goa makes one feel more sultry and uncomfortable. We had prepared a bit for taking bath in the sea but then encouragement from other corners like CP and Rahul was not there. As usual Mr. Vora was a little disappointed man as he had enormous plans for taking bath in the sea. Soon after our always ready saif ali khan Mr. Tejas joined for sea bathing and then I followed them. It was a nice experience taking bath in a clean water unlike the ones we took in Summer Sands in Mangalore or the Turtle Bay in Kundapura.

Soon after taking bath cleaning oneself and getting into new clothes is a big issue. Somehow I managed to get into the same clothes but without something absolutely essential. Soon the adventure of taking bath in the water ended and we decided to climb up the hill fort.

Now this fort has a history attached to it and was absolutely fundamental for our arrival here. At this fort the shooting of Dil Chahta Hai took place. The photo of mine in this blog has been taken at the top of the fort only. While CP and Poornima had left by the time we started climbing mountain. Amit and Co retired in between because of extreme heat and "outbound" kind of path. On the fort only three of us were there - Rahul (Akshaya Khanna), Tejas (Saif Ali Khan) and ofcourse myself (needless to say who I was). It was altogether a great feeling to be there on the top. It was just like the feeling of the movie. we took so many photos and we really pity all the remaining people who could not make it to the top.

Just have a look at the photo with three of us on the top.

I must say Vagatore beach and the Fort Chappal (may be an ancestral property of Rahul) was one of the most memorable trip for me. By the time we had come down it was 3:30. We walked till the main road and then myself and tejas had the fruit salad at one shop. It was just like heaven and both of us enjoyed it as if we did not have for food for days. Slowly and steadly we walked down the bus stop and took the bus to reach back to hotel.

Meanwhile poornima left on that day and as CP puts in he was free from the duty. That day also we had Pizza at Domino's Pizza for the dinner. It was a birthday treat from Vora and all of us know how tough it is to get a treat from Mr. Vora . Then we came back to the hotel and started relaxing. Soon after that what followed was perhaps the highlight of this trip of us. This marks the end of day 2.

The Dil Chahta Hai Experience 

My Upanayanam

Today was my upanayanam and it started as early as 5:00 in the morning. More about it I will be putting in later here. There are a few incidents attached with the new digital camera but on the overall basis I was able to cover the entire Upanayanam in the photographs. A Few glimpses of the Upanayanam are put on the blog in the form of photographs.

The entire ceremony and the rituals for the upanayanam began a day before on tuesday. It started at 5:30 pm on 10th of May 2005, tuesday. Tuesday as we all know is also the day of hanuman. Since the place which is the Sri Kanchi Kamakoti Mutt, in Skandagiri is very famous for its Hanuman Temple, they give lot of emphasis on tuesdays. The pooja started with the Kul devtaa sthapan which is always the first in any pooja. Thereafter ganesh pooja was carried out since that is done before beginning any good work. Afterwards the shanthi pooja is carried out to ensure shanthi in the household. This marks the end of the first day on tuesday. We had to do fast on that day and hence we had only pongal that night.

The next day begin as early as 5:00 in the morning for us. After taking bath I wore the dhoti or panchaa as we call it in telugu and then angavastram on the top. We reached the venue by 6:15 am and by that time all the arrangements were being made. By 6:55 am all the people were there and the proceedings began at that time.

Thereafter the pooja went uptil 10:20 am wherein once I had the haircut and then took bath also after that. I had the tiffin in the process. We had invited only our close relatives since it was a closed function. The lunch began at 11:00 am and we winded up the entire proceedings by 1:00 pm.

It was a great feeling for my mother and me since she was waiting to do my upanayanama for a long time but my busy schedule whether in TAPMI or in engineering was not allowing her to do that.

Next step after the upanayanam is the sandhya vandanam which is absolutely essential for a brahmachari to do. I did sandhya vandanamwith the help of my dad in the evening and since it is the first time and no one knows in our house how to do it it did not come properly.

Night we went to the house of one of our relatives. Mr Tirumal Rao. He is an expert in sandhya vandanam and perhaps he was the person I was looking for. More on how the sandhya vandanam is done in the next entry.

Myself and Dad before the Start of the Pooja 

Myself Performing the Pooja and Gayathri Japam 

Myself Dad and Mom at the Pooja 

Bhavathi Bhiksham Dehi - From Ammamma

Ashirwad Ceremony in Upanayanam 

GOA - Game of Adventure Part 3 - It's Party Time Folks

Well we come back to our Goa trip. The two girls who have joined us in this tour are vaishali who is amit's friend and Poornima who is CP's friend. Well poornima is quite open and mingled very easily with all of us vaishali seems to just a true copy of vora. The first day in Goa is a lazy day since none of us willing to get up from the bed after a bad sleep in the bus. So somehow we all gathered and went to the nearest restaurant for lunch. The lunch was more like a brunch and after finishing that we went to the nearest tourist spot from our place the MIRAMAR BEACH. One of the most popular beaches in Goa since it is centrally located in the city and the only beach which is inside the panjim city. We spent some time there and then one of the worst experience's of the journey begins - "My encounter with SAND".
I really hate sand and that is one reason I do not like to venture into sea bathing and other related activities near a beach.
Imagine getting rolled into sand for some umpteen number of times and then the sand getting into your pants socks shoes shirt and everywhere else.

The second spot where we went on that day is the DONAPAULA. This place has a little of history attached to it which I am not presenting here since it is not very great and it will make the stuff boring. But only this is that here a girl by name paula did suicide. Here also shooting of movies like Ek Dujhe je liye took place and that is one reason why it shot into prominence. Then we has a great time there in quite a number of photographs were taken by our photographer friend Mr. Chappar. We started back from their and by that time some amount of sand had started coming out of my pants. It was some what pleasant. The next spot was the Cruise which I was looking after very much. There also from where we should be buying the tickets. Finally we got the tickets of a nice cruise only. It had some name and I do not remember that now. It was a good trip perhaps value for the 100 rupees spent. There are numerous programs also on the cruise like the foreign dances and once foreign couple among the tourists did show off their dance also. The reason being they were drunk. After we were done with the cruise we walked back and only restaurant which was at our sight looked decent was the QUARTERDECK . The name itself is enough. The food was good and we enjoyed it to the fullest extent after a very long walk. The walk to hotel was perhaps the best. We reached hotel and then first of all I took the bath and then the couple got despatched into their respective rooms. Three of us Tejas Rahul and myself were left behind in the room. What happened thereafter is known only to three of us.

My Upanayanam

My upanayanam is now only two days away. It is scheduled on May 11, 2005 which is one of the most auspicious day of this year. On this day numerous marriages and other functions are going to happen throughout India. 11 May 2005 is the day of Akshaya Tritiya. Akshaya means something that will not diminish. It is an auspicious day to make a beginning. Hence on this day people buy gold because there is a belief that if one buys gold on this day then it will double in future years. Well this happens or not is still a mystery by itself, but the day has been utilised by news papers and jewellers throughout the country to mint money.

Well something about the upanayanam. It actually means taking near. The Samskara or ceremonial rite in which a young Brahmin boy is endowed with the sacred thread and initiated to the Gayathri mantra is referred to as Upanayanam. I was not knowing all this before neither it has been invented by me. I thought for a moment as to why I am undergoing this upanayanam and why I should wear the sacred thread. This provoked me to look information on the net info about the upanayanam. I am quite happy that my upanayanam or thread ceremony or Janaiv or Vodugu (as we call in telugu) is taking place on Akshaya Tritiya.

The Upanayanam makes the boy eligible for the study of the Vedas. The Vatu or the young Brahmachari becomes a Dvija or "Twice Born" after the Upanayanam. So I will be twice born after the upanayanam.

Will meet you all in my second janma soon.

05-05-05

As always days just pass on and we hardly notice them carefully. Usually even I never notice the dates so carefully but I have been looking at them for quite some time now. What is so special about today. Today is 5th May 2005. Ever wondered what's so special about this date. A closer look will tell us some things about this. The date format in the MM DD YY tells us that all the three are the same that is 05-05-05. It is such a rare phenomenon because this happens only once in 1000 years and the event happens on a thursday only once in 7000 years. This info also I got from the umpteen number of yahoo IM which people keep on sending across to their friends.
Last year also a similar kind of event had occurred. When I was doing my summers in Ranbaxy Fine Chemicals Limited, a celestial event took place. It was called as the Transit of Venus. It too happened on a very similar kind of date 08-06-04. Just observe that the three figures in the date are only 2 apart. The photo of this event is also shown below.

On this day venus drift across the face of the sun as Venus passed between the sun and earth. This was one of the rare celestial spectacle and a transit of Venus is so rare that, up to June 8, 2004, no human then alive had witnessed this celestial event. Simple as transits may seem, they are instrumental in defining our place in the cosmos. Historically global expeditions timed transits of Venus to quantify the size of the solar system. Then next transit of Venus is scheduled on June 5-6,2012.

For Further information please visit the site : http://transitofvenus.org .

The Google Moment

Well Well Well a little break from the Goa trip synopsis. Today is one day I will remember for the days to come. For the first time, right from the day I starting blogging, my blog as a website got listed in the google. The keywords are "yashasvi" and "yashasvi arun". One can also type my website name "yashinc" to get to my blog. Its a great achievement because usually google crawls the website in not less than 6 weeks. Well I am posting this essentially to express that Its not tough to get listed in google. What one needs to do is to post regularly for a week and that's it done. My next attempt would be list my website which is coming up within a few days as the first entry in Google on the keyword of "yashasvi". Actually if one types "yashasvi arun" my entry comes first. But if one types the name "yashasvi", my entry turns out to be 6th in the list of search results. So my effort would be now to first increase the "yashasvi" search to the first place. Well that is enough for this achievement. When more new things will happen I will keep posting.

GOA - Game of Adventure

This post is on one of my best and most enjoyable tours ever undertaken. The trip to Goa.

I like travelling and I have travelled to many parts of India and even stayed in many metro cities of our country thanks to the relatives and people on my dad and mom side. Dad's relatives are spread across the country right from punjab to UP, Gujarat, MP, Delhi, Haryana, Maharashtra etc. So usually in our summer vacations we used to go to these places. Well travelling as I said is my hobby like thing and I love travelling to the extent it does not make me feel tired.

Among the various tours which I enjoyed the most are the ones of Kedarnath, Our college trip to Vishakhapatnam and a recently concluded one the trip to Goa with my four close friends. They are Amit Vora, Rahul Chapparwal, T V S Chalapathy Rao, Tejas G Sheth. The trips in TAPMI are usually never organized beforehand and there is no clear cut plan ahead as to where we will be going and all. Since we prefer to work the JIT way hence no plans before hand work for us.

Same here. The plan for Goa trip was made by the foursome wholesome the CART (Chalapathy Amit Rahul Tejas). Now they also stand for the acronym CATR which is Cut Above the Rest because I feel they are different. More on it in the next post - GOA 2

GOA - Game of Adventure Part 2 - Its the Beginning

Our tour started on 18th of March 2005 soon after we finished all our end term exams of VI term and also our academic activity in TAPMI.

We had booked our tickets in a decent bus which also we caught in an adventurous manner. It so happened that the bus which we were supposed to take actually went without taking us thanks to the communication gap created by the ticket issuer. Somehow just in time we could reach the boarding place. As usual the bus came 1 hour late and we got the most unfortunate seats in the bus the last ones. The seats were good there was not much of a problem. Thereafter I slept and I think rest of the people also slept unless somebody got something more interesting like Tejas. Tejas and CP sat in the front and enjoyed the whole night the baby cries and screams. God bless them.

Early morning at about 6:00 AM we reached PANJIM. Panjim or Panji or Panaji as it is called is the capital of Goa. After getting down when we were just about to forget TAPMI, a person saw my TAPMI T-shirt and called on me and asked me some details.

Then we moved in a taxi which turned out to be the most economical among all modes of transport available in Goa for the time being only. We loaded all the luggages and ourselves also into it and then reached the first temporary accomodation for us in Goa - The Indra Niwas Guest House for the Bank of India employees.

We had to negotiate a little bit with the incharge therein for a big room and we were quite successful in that. I was not involved in that and this was all taken care by Rahul only. Thereafter we got inside and pushed our luggages somewhere and slept on the bed for sometime thereafter Music that too Filmi. I do not like filmi music in the early mornings because I think that is only time one can hear the devotional music.

Well when we got up it was the breakfast time and we all went for the first breakfast in Goa. The restaurant looked great from outside (NAVTARA) but then who knows the inside story we are not NDTV na. We went in and ordered the normal breakfast stuff we used to have in Manipal. The dishes were absolutely average with lot of oil in each of sambhar, curry and chutni. Ok What Looks great from outside need not be good from inside.

Well at this moment we close this entry and move on to the third entry since two more new characters are going to enter into the story from now on and they are of opposite sex. So watch out.