Convocation.............

If you will check in the English dictionary, the word convocation means a calling together, an assembly of clergy or members of a university. But in reality it has a much deeper meaning. It means getting a chance to go back to the college, meeting old friends, going to all the popular hangouts where countless evenings had been spend and lots more and ya of course getting the degree for which we had spend 4 years of our lives.

From the past 2 months, my friends in office have been bugging me like anything. They always keep on talking about their convocation which is scheduled this Saturday. Whenever we meet whether on lunch, on coffee, or while going home they have just one thing to talk about-convocation. They all are so excited to go to their convo, got their invitation card by e-mail. They are going in a group by train. They have done shopping for convo, taken a day’s leave from office and had made endless plans. They are gonna stay in the same hostel once again where they had spend 4 years, play basketball, meet all the friends, go to all the regular hangouts and addas, watch movies at the same multiplex where they used to watch during college days and lots more.

I am bugged with all this because there is no convo in my college. The university with which my college is affiliated to simply call the gold medalists from all the colleges that comes under it and gives them the degree and for the rest, the degree is send to their home by post. This is the convo in my university. I mean wdf yaar. OK we are not gold medalists; we are simply so-called-engineers. So does this mean that we don’t deserve convocation???? We deserve every bit of it. Even we have slogged (applicable only to a few though, obviously excluding those morons- the gold medalists) for 4 years just like other college people who are getting convocation. I am angry, very angry. Now I am feeling like joining the politics and passing a bill according to which all such colleges that do not have convo would be banned.

Warning (to all those who are going to their convocation) - talking about convocation in front of an angry young man like me could be injurious to your health.
I am giving you people this warning because I am sure that after coming back from the convo, you people will be discussing it for at least two more months.

The Journey Continues…………

28th July-2008 - The day we joined office. Today we have completed 6 months. I have already written about the training period in previous post. Now in this post, I am trying to recall and cherish the incidences that have occurred in the past few months.

So, we were done with our training and had been assigned projects. We were then introduced to our respective teams. We also had few KT (Knowledge Transfer) sessions in which we were told about our projects. My team people were supportive. They still treat me like a kid. I was the only fresher and all the others had some 3+ years experience. I should say that I was lucky to find such a team. I had been fooling around in training and hadn’t studied properly, so I basically knew nothing. I had absolutely no clue about java, html etc (though I still have no clue about it). My team people gave me enough time to learn.

I had done my training in Hallmark. The project I was put into was being handled from Touchstone, so I had to move from hallmark to touchstone. I was very excited about it. Around 45 freshers had joined the company together, out of which around 20 were in Hallmark and some 25 were in Touchstone. I got a chance to meet new people. Now as far as friends are concerned, I have always been lucky (touchwood) and this time again, I was lucky. We have lunch together, sitting on our regular table and sharing lunch. We talk all sorts of nonsense during lunch. (Well... people say I talk a lot. ummm…..may be….who the hell cares yaar) Then, after lunch, we go down to the juice center. Then we return to our respective cubicles and try and work. Then after some 2 hours, we take a coffee break and sometimes even go down for mirchi-bhajji.

We order cakes at barista and celebrate b’days there itself. We also bid farewell to two of our friends who had joined with us. They left the company since they had got some better offers. One of the best time pass is mails that we keep on forwarding, though most of the times they are nothing more then killer pj’s. We even went out for lunch. How can anyone forget the ecospace fiasco, when we finally landed up having lunch at chinai’s. The workplace is also cool; we can access orkut, gmail, youtube and can even watch movies in office. We can come whenever we want, wear whatever we want. We have also been out for team lunch and team outings, where I hogged like anything with my hogging partner. And after all this, we still manage to find out time to work. Yes we complete all our assignments before deadline.

So this was our past 6 months in office, which I feel were super cool. People please feel free to add whatever you think is missing.

This post is dedicated to all those who had contributed in making my workplace super cool….

Bole To Jhakaas..........

Eating the unhygienic food at the railway station when you are almost starved to death, train getting late due to fog n den reaching home after 44 hrs journey, spending time with parents, finding temperature around 12 degrees, meeting friends and going out with them, taking rounds of arya nagar every evening, having lunch at the dhaba on the highway, going to school and eating bread-pakoda at school canteen, seeing the girl on whom you once had a major crush in school at rave3 with her husband and their baby ( this may not be considered as jhakaas thou), sitting next to the heater in my room under d blanket and watching movie at night while eating peanuts, having sweet-sweet jalebi and hot-hot kachowdi for breakfast, pastry at little chef, kulfi and laddu at thaggu ke laddu whose tag line is “asia koi saga nahi jisko humne thaga nahi”, dinner with parents, patties at adarsh bakery, butter rice and butter pav bhaji at a local thela, ice-cream at temptations and riding on vip road at the 90-100kmph without wearing helmet with the attitude that my father-in-law owes the road….