Friendship Day

Just few hours before the end of this friendship day ... latest friend added .... by the way she happens to be my 200th friend on orkut and one of the two persons who had sent a personalized Happy friendship day message. Other one was of course my child hood pal who happens to be the oldest friend of mine to date .. don't mistake his age ... it is the age of our friendship that falls short of our age by probably 7 years.

If one has to value something over oneself it is friends..... and I feel friends are the people who ensure that one grows as a person and develops a personality. You need them to take you through difficulties and cheer your achievements. They are the only ones who knows all about you and still like you. And I think it is the day we honour all the friends who had really helped us to discover ourselves and understand our strengths and limitations.

I am happy that I have a small set of good friends and this very feeling makes me proud. By God's grace I hope I make a few more friends in this lifetime!!!

Traffic jam ... Houseful

Wow... Reached home !!! But daily I reach home why the wow? As usual we left office and reached Churchgate to catch the return local to Andheri. But today the scene was different - motormen went on strike for reasons known to all from ages. And this is a completely new situation - never seen Mumbai without local train. Then the option was to travel 40 km by road in the heavy traffic of mumbai and this journey will definitely as big as Hum Aapke hai kaun or Jodha Akbar. Wait are we talking about the length of the movies? Now why not watch a movie.... nice thought .... four of us went to a movie theatre and watched Houseful ... Came out of the hall after some 3 hours and took a cab back home and reached home in less than the time a hockey match is played with a sense of truimph over the challenge posed in front of us. While, many of them would have experienced a big time chaos caused by traffic jams in Mumbai we had a good time laughing at a mindless comedy made and reached home easily. But now its too late for today and I hope that we need not go to work tomorrow and take a long awaited break.

How I met my friend?

Disclaimer: If you do not have an idea of Delhi this post might not make much sense still a good leisure read

I was on a short break at Delhi and hence wanted to meet one of my old colleague from Wilco who happened to be working at Noida. I left my uncle's place at around 10AM in the morning and gave him a call and it so happened that he was on a city tour with his relatives and that point of time he was at Rajghat. I thought I can catch up with them somewhere on their tour and I asked him for his itenary. He told me that they were going to ISCKON temple - I had asked a couple of dozen people on where ISCKON temple was and none of them knew about it and hence I told my friend that I cannot meet him at ISCKON but can meet him at the next destination - he told me that it would be Laxmi Narayan temple - some how it got registered in me as Swami Narayan Temple. Took a metro from Uttam Nagar to Indraprastha and got down at Pragathi Maidan - took an auto and reached Swami Narayan temple at around 11:30 AM - gave a call to my friend just to find out the blunder I made while listening and told him that I would meet up with him before the end of the day - but this was a good mistake to make - I was glad to visit one of the architectural marvels - Akshardham in Delhi - my second one to a Swami Narayan Temple - the first one being at London four years ago. Visited the huge temple and had my lunch at the food court and moved on to meet my friend again - they were planning to reach the Laxmi Narayan temple in an hour from then may be after their lunch. On my way back I thought I will visit India Gate - a recommended place by one of my friends - on the way I found that Raj ghat was pretty close to Pragathi Maidan and could have met my friend at Rajghat well in the morning- reached India gate and had a long walk from India Gate to Central Secretariat and gave a call to my friend just to realise that they finished their lunch and were moving out of AP Bhavan which happened to be pretty close to where I was standing then and I was just kicking myself for not having asked him where they were having lunch then instead I was loitering on the roads of Delhi around the India Gate. Then I took a metro to Rajiv Chowk while my friend and finally at around 3:30PM I met him at the Laxmi Narayan Temple. I just managed to reach the temple while they were getting out of the temple. Visited the temple and got to spend some time with him and later in the day moved back home with a sense of accomplishment - Met my friend and saw a good number of places in Delhi and more importantly used public transport for most of my travel.

My First Last Day

Date : 18th May 2007 - Time : 6 PM ..... Nothing unusual about the date and time yet a feeling of nostalgia envelops me ..... Quickly checked the news ..... Bomb blast in oldcity ... Thats the matter of worry but my feeling is something beyond worry ...... India in control in the first Test match against Bangladesh .... Thats something expected and should not bother me ..... Then suddenly I saw my colleagues cluttering round a corner..... realised that its my last day at Wilco .... my journey with the company comes to end after 46 months ...... my colleagues were gearing up to bid me a farewell......I still remember the 10th of July 2003 when I was among the 3 students recruited at our college campus ..... smiling like a happy kid .... Life moved on ... The journey had provided me with various opportunities to gain knowledge, friends and lot more ...... Now its the time to say bye to all of them ..... The feeling was different ..... but then as some one said .... life is not about looking back but its all about going forward ..... when I think about it , it looks like the journey was all perfect and hence I have no regrets moving on to take up new challenges at WIMWI

After the results ....

Results are out. Me joining IIM A . No words to describe the happiness of my family members. Me went to share the news and sweets with the neighbours

Scene1
Me with sweets in hand - knocked the door
Me: Hi , please have the sweets. I am joining IIM A.
He: Congrats, where is that company?
Me: (Shocked for a moment...) Company? It is a B-School aka MBA College in Ahmedabad.
He: Oh! OK why are you going so far? Didn't you get anywhere near by?
Me : It is a good college so I am joining it.

Left the place ... pretty disappointing ... He is a student of a local MBA College... If he is not aware of IIMA who else would be?

Scene2
Me with sweets in hand - This time I will explain them in detail
Me: Hi Uncle , please have the sweets. I have got admitted India's best MBA program - IIM Ahmedabad.
Uncle: Oh Congrats ! What was your rank?
Me: (Feeling Better ...) I got 99.84% in written test which means arnd 300 among the 2lakh students who wrote it . This one was followed by group discussion and interview
Uncle: OK . So you have to leave your job here and go to Ahmedabad. When are you going there?
Me : June 21st uncle.
Uncle: What is the fees?
Me : It costs around 5 lakhs for the two year program
Uncle: So you have to pay so much even if you get a good rank.
Me : Yes Uncle. In other colleges it is even costlier.

Moved on ...

Scene3
Me - Thinking Just give them the sweets , tell them and get out
Me : Hello Uncle . Please have the sweets . I am joining IIMA. Got the final results yesterday.
Uncle : Wah beta ... Good stuff . Ab tho life ban gaya tera . This definitely deserves a bigger treat.
Me : Oh sure uncle !!! (Felt happy for it)


Hmmm... At last someone know about it. But this experience left me with lots of thoughts!!!

The best thing that I can ever find on net ......

Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad
Admission Status : Post-Graduate Programme in Management (PGP 2007-2009 batch), IIMA

TR No.	5360412
Name	NAVEEN CHALUVADI

You have been selected for admission to PGP (2007-2009 batch), IIMA.

Note: Our formal admission offer letter is being sent by Courier. You will have to send us your formal written acceptance and return the other documents enclosed with the admission offer by May 14, 2007. In the meanwhile, please indicate to us by e-mail admission@iimahd.ernet.in your decision on this admission offer, quoting your name and Test Registration Number.

At last I did it .....

Its been 44 months since I joined this company as a campus recruitee from my college at Bangalore ... Had gone through a smooth journey for close to 4 years now ... Last 25 months have just been great working for Mizuho . My stint with this Japanese client began in Feb'05 with the implementation of market changes for the year 2006. The experience of working on this project is something that I would relish for my lifetime - It was like chasing a total of 300+ on a regular basis and winning most of the times - 'Those were the best days of my life ...' . My journey with Mizuho has been very enriching and challenging. Above all the six months that I spent with them taught me a lot and the experience instilled a great amount of confidence in me.

Now I find that it is very difficult to accept the fact that I will not be a part of this wonderful journey anymore.

Finally I have submitted my first resignation today.... Very tough decision .... hopefully for the sake of better .... after all change is the only constant thing in our life and we will have to deal with it.

Blues, Butterflies and finally so simple

Feb15th,2007-

Time - 2PM : Done with my tasks for the day... Knew that it would be hard to concentrate as the day progresses

Time - 5PM : Time to start on a journey... Locked the system ... Collected a printout which had the details of political trivia ....One of my colleague helped me ease out ..... Started off to catch the Bangalore Express

Time - 7PM : Train started .... and few minutes later .... opened the CAT2006 Brochure and went through the Institute pages ... then went through the pre-prepared notes on various topics.... then there were few rehearsals on the regular stuff ... Intro, Why MBA , etc ... Started to feel good and slipped into the much wanted sound sleep

Next day morning - My friend came to Bangalore East to help me out with the proceedings in the city ... He dint utter a word as it all showed on my face ....

Reached Hotel Monarch at 8:30 AM .... walked into waiting hall and with in an hour I realised that the faces in the room are all familiar ... It was like waiting for GD at TIME Ameerpet branch ... Needless to say that I was pretty relaxed and then on the things started looking simple