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| TRAVEL |
I do like moderate amount of
travel and I have been to several parts of this country as part of
my job. I did maximum travel while in Transmatic Systems, my first
job. I have been to Patiala, New Delhi, Calcutta, Jabalpur, Vizag,
Chennai, Bangalore, Coimbatore, and Madurai from Transmatic.
Traveling came to an abrupt end when I joined Templeton Automation
Services in Bangalore. Later when I joined NeST, travel was
limited to between Trivandrum and Cochin. Now with Tata Elxsi, my
travel is between Trivandrum and Bangalore. |
| Vailankanni and Poondi
[1-3 Oct 2008] |
We typically visit
Vailankanni once in about five  years or so. This time when we
planned there were about 8 of us including infants. That was too
small a number to hire a traveller and hiring an Innova or
Tavera would mean the per head rates would be quite high. |
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Taj Green Cove, Kovalam [27 March 2007] |
| Our team at Tata Elxsi went for an
outing to Kovalam Taj Green Cove this day. For details click on
the image. |
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VARKALA [06 May 2006] |
| A short trip from the BCC unit at
church to Sivagiri mutt, Papanasam beach, backwater and pozhi at
Anjuthengu. |
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SREE's Wedding [20 Apr 2006] |
| We went to the wedding of Sree at
Ernakulam. See the pictures here. For a change this time we went
by train instead of taking the car. |
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KURISUMALA [1 Apr 2006] |
| April first was a very hectic day
this year. Early morning we went to the pilgrim place "Thekkan
Kurisumala" near Vellarada. For details click on the picture |
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GERMANY [6 Mar - 19 Mar 2005] |
| Urgent demands from a client had
me traveling to Germany from here on 5 March 2005. I landed in
Germany on March 6th and finally reached my |
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| hotel room after a
long and eventful train journey. The train from Köln
Hbf to Hamm (Westf) was late by a few minutes and I missed my
train from Hamm. This resulted in me taking a wrong train that
took me to Rheda-Wiedenbrück. As the
train approached its last station I realized my mistake, and the
only other person in the train was a beautiful young lady. She
took me to the front of the station and showed me the next train
back to Hamm (Westf) is after one hour and then took me across the
street to a cafeteria so that I will not freeze in the cold and
disappeared. I waited there for nearly 45 mins having a burger and
coffee, and then went back to the DB station. There another
stranger helped me operated the ticket vending machine and I got
the ticket back to Hamm (Westf). Finally by around 9:45pm I was in
my Hotel room. |
| Two days I went to
office, but on the second day I looked really ill and on Wednesday
Tojo took me to a doctor where I was diagnosed as having "Windpocken"
and was asked to rest for 8-10 days |
| So there I was
confined to my hotel room. Tojo and Simple helped me with food and
brought me milk, apples, bread, grapes and assorted other items. |
| By Friday, 18 March,
I was in a position to show my face outside. On Saturday Tojo and
I went out to City, and I took the train tickets for my return
journey. I also bought some chocolates to take back home. |
I started from hotel
at 9:45pm, Saturday and after long long hours in airport and
flights finally reached home in the evening on Monday. Here are
the travel statistics:
Total journey time: 37:39 hrs
Train time: 2:48hrs = 7%
Check in time at airports: 3:05hrs = 8%
Flight time: 13:45hrs = 37%
Waiting time at airports: 18:20hrs = 48% |
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NELLAI [28 Nov 2004] |
| It was the Wedding of our
colleague Mary Jayanthi at Nellai. About 15 of us went in a bus
that was arranged by Mary. The journey took as through some very |
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| picturesque places on
the border between Kerala and Tamilnad state, through wind farms
and mountains. Though the bus looked bad with missing window panes
and head rests, the travel was comfortable with minimal shakes and
bumps. There were three or four kids including my daughter in our
group and they too enjoyed the trip very well. As usual I put my
camera to very good use and have uploaded some of them for you to
see. Click on the thumbnail picture above to see them. |
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BANGALORE [12-13 Feb 2005] |
| It was the pooja of the new
construction at Dharmaraj's place and I went there to attend the
functions. I also took some photos of the functions. |
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| I had stayed in this
place during my tenure at Texas Instruments and it is a very nice
place to stay. It now has several new rooms which are well
constructed, a canteen facility and a gym at the top. Pretty
impressive. Have a look at the photos. |
| I also did some major
shopping in this trip, purchasing a Casio keyboard, helmet and
other things. |
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| PARAMUGAL [16 Oct 2004] |
This is too short a trip to be mentioned under this page, still ...
Varghese called me in the morning and enquired whether I would be
free in the day. Later around 11:00 called up and fixed the trip
for 1:30pm. By 1:30 I got the camera and gear ready and was
waiting for him. He turned up by 2:15pm and we were off on our
bikes by 2:30. traffic was not that heavy and about 7kms from home
we reached nice rubberized but with rathe,r I would say dangerous,
curves. But we maintained our speeds close to 80kmph even through
some of the curves. I reduced speed only after I could not
negotiate the curves without scraping the footrest.
Had a short stop for a glass of fruit juice and a bottle of
mineral water before turning to the hill road. I realized that my
cruiser was totally out of place in this particular trip. The
Karizma was handling the roads much better. I would have preferred
an off road bike at least in the hill roads. Finally we reached
the top around 3:30pm. You get a very good view of the western
horizon from the top. You can also see the Technopark from there.
We clicked a few snaps which I have given in the gallery page. By
4:15pm thunder clouds were threatening and so we dropped the idea
of going to Varkala beach and headed straight back to the City. |
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| BANGALORE [4 Oct - 8 Oct 2004] |
| A two day training program on
ISMS had me traveling to Bangalore between these days. it started
with a mail requesting me to come for the training in "AC Bus or
Train". The specific mention of AC Bus or Train disturbed me when
HR executives too travel by flight to attend training programs.
Cribbing aside, I enjoy traveling by Bus and would have taken the
Bus route in the absence of any specific instructions. |
| I got ticket on KPN. It was a
lemon green Volvo. The couple in front of me were not sleeping and
I also ended up lying awake. |
| Thankfully the training program
on the first day was split into two and I was in the morning
session. The class by the KPMG person was good and he could keep
the class interactive and live. |
| I wanted to sleep off in the
afternoon but was asked to attend a seminar at Leela Palace. That
turned out to be an unexpected bonanza with cocktail dinner and
all. |
| The second day training went off
smooth and was over by around 3:30pm. Now I had to think of my
return trip. It was already too late to catch any bus for the day.
By the time I reached Kalasipalayam it was 6:00pm and I booked
ticket for the next day. |
| The return was also on a lemon
green Volvo from KPN. I was in the last seat. There was a huge guy
in front of me and as soon as the bus started he started snoring
louder than the bus engine. This man had to get down at Salem and
when the bus reached there he was still snoring. The 'kili' had to
come and wake him up and get him off the bus. In his sleepiness,
he took some one else's bag and left the bus. The other person
realized his bag was missing only when the bus reached his place
in Tirunelveli. This is the second time I am seeing such an
incident and so I always keep my bag chained to avoid such
mistakes. |
| How do you spend time on a bus
journey that lasts about 16 hours? Watch scenery, watch others,
sleep, dream... but the most boring would be milestone counting. I
did that too - Madurai 168... Madurai 167... Madurai 166... |
| I got to touch base with a lot of
friends during this trip to Bangalore. Sai, Dharmaraj, Sivakumar,
Abhijeet, Lakshmi, Uma, Shameer, Deepa, Siju, Saritha, Sanjay
Paul... and the prominent ones I missed contacting include Anand,
Riyaz, Shakeela, Chandana, Safeer and Soorej. |
| Uma wanted some of the photos
taken in Tata Elxsi to be put in this web site while Lakshmi
wanted the articles and links on quality to be put. The articles I
do not have the copyright, but the links have been updated in the
'Professional' page |
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