Why do I travel?

I was asked to write for the Logica’s Women Network blog on Travel. They couldn’t  have chosen a better topic for me to write on. Below is what I posted on the Garam Chai blog.

The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page! -  St. Augustine

I love to travel, explore new places and re-explore already explored places!
People who know me say, my eyes twinkle and I become a different person when I talk of old travels and plan for new travels.
Why do I travel? To learn and grow – when I visit better countries, I wish to improve my own. I have now realized it is possible to drive without honking and I do try to do so. And if I travel to a country worse than mine, I learn to appreciate my own country.

The perspective of the word Still changed after my visit to the Amazon Forest.
Visiting Hampi, Ajanta & Ellora, Golden temple, I learnt that as we build the so called ‘state of art’ sky scrapers, we forget Beauty.
Fear was redefined after being chased by an elephant in Kabini.
Skydiving in New Zealand instilled in me a new found Respect for myself.
Scandinavians give a new character to the word Honesty.
As we travelled in the Norwegian Fjords, I discovered Majestic.
For the first time we Listened to our guide to stick together, after my friends were mugged on Copacabana beach in Rio.

I could go on and on but for now I want to leave you all with a beautiful quote from Mark Twain - “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Independence Day Celebrations @ London Office

The dress code was Ethnic. However, only 5 of us went in ethnic clothes. Of these 2 were British women – bless them!!! Dawn wasn’t in Indian clothes but she was very sporting and innovative – she wore the colours of the Indian Flag. What hurt me was the lack of enthusiasm among my Indian colleagues. These days I think they only want free food and free beer!

Robin Hood Events

For team building Logica organized an archery day out for the AON onsite team members...
A first look at the website for Robin Hood Events and I was totally excited and fully charged up for the day out.
It sounded like great fun...we don't shoot real animals or people - more the pity, because we could all think of a few candidates we would like to shoot!!!
Started in a coach from London at 7:30 AM, chocolates to munch on the way, general banter and chatting and before we realized we were in Canterbury by 9:30 AM.
This is a ’after a simple but yummy breakfast just before the event’ snap...

3 women – so we were divided into 3 teams...The Clueless led by Pam Lewis, The Little Johns led by Dawn Eyles and The Punters led by yours truly...

Equipped with our bows, quiver with 5 arrows each, protected with our finger tabs and arm bracers we started with 3 quick practice rounds on a normal target...one of the shots in the 1st session was a bulls eye...wish I had been able to shoot like that the whole day!!!

Competitive rounds of shooting different animals from huge bears to tiny owls followed this.

And not all targets were stationary…we had birds hanging with string and it being a windy day they were moving!!!
That’s our moving target

And then there was a speed round…15 secs to shoot the 5 arrows that we had. While in the other rounds we were shooting randomly (each one was identified by a unique combination of the cock and hen feathers on our arrows) and in the end checking the targets…for this round we were shooting as a team.
This is my team in the speed round…

The negative marking round not to be missed – a wolf and a coyote in the middle of several sheep. If you hit a sheep...lose points.
This is a picture with the hits on the wolf and coyote…at the back you can see the hits on the white sheep…

A hit or a kill – many animals had an area marked out…you hit in that…it is a kill. Anywhere else it is just a hit.
That’s a kill!

Volleys- pictures of people we would like to shoot had been provided to the organisers in advance. These were pinned to some of the animals and you had a volley if you managed to shoot them.
And this is a volley…its also Murali who managed to get into all the snaps irrespective of whether he managed to hit the target or not!!!

Finally a knockout round to decide the Archer of the day…that’s all of us competing for the title that was eventually a close contest between Luke and Simon.

The final scores

Clueless - 202

Little Johns - 184

The Punters - 183

Mess Ups…

I work for a leading IT company… 40,000 employees worldwide…(Sarcastic look on my face)
This morning I received a pay slip in the mailbox…only it wasn’t mine…but someone else’s…
It had the company logo outside and without realizing it I opened it. I called my colleague and apologized profusely. Thankfully I know him well and he didn’t seem to mind…but I am feeling soooooooo bad…:-(
And am concerned…god alone knows in whose mailbox my pay slip is sitting?

Calvin Gyan...contd

Hmmm...but in reality and life don't we most of the times end up doing things we are not enthu about?

Dooced

Dooced - to have posted work-related things on your personal blog and get fired for it...
Do I qualify considering my last blog and this earlier one

Insanity

These days all i do from 9:00 am to 10:00 pm is prepare (useless???)management reports...
This Dilbert strip is perfect illustration of my state these days...

My Sentiments...

Only difference is Calvin is stuck in school and me in office...



Itz not particularly beautiful in london these days ...itz been raining for last 2 days...but ideal to go watch some theatre or cinema...

Knowledge Overflow...

There was so much handwriting on the wall that even the wall fell down

-Christopher Morley

Read, read and continue to read…

That’s what knowledge transfer seems to be about in my current project…I guess I underestimated my capability to read documents…

It’s only my 3rd week into the KT…and I have gone through some 15 presentations (these are the interesting ones on Brokerage, Insurance, reinsurance)…followed by business requirements (* 3 for 3 related projects), then the conceptual designs (again * 3) …knowledge transfer documents (prepared my 2 of colleagues when they took KT for these applications…)…message standards, interface specs with another system…and what not….

They seem to be registering…but for how long… If I have to keep reading more documents soon it’ll all be Latin!!!