TULIP FESTIVAL 2007

Portland is a place famous for its natural beauty. Beautiful mountains, lakes, rivers, forests etc. It can be compared to our Ooty/Kodai in India.

The start of the summer we had Tuilp festival in Portland. We decided to see the tulip festival along with Krishna Menon(Kishku) , his wife Suja and the little one Sidharth. I am not publishing their photo for privacy reasons. I will put one photo with Kishku alone.

Couple of photos of me and Anju in the Tulip farm.

Niagara Trip 2005

When I was working for Nokia in 2005 at Detroit, we decided to go to Niagara. Achan and Amma came to US in June 2005.Me and Anju reached New Jersey and rented a 7 seater SUV and started our trip to Niagara from New Jersey.
It was a long 8 hr drive from NJ, but it was fun together with Manju, Bejoy , Anju , Achan and Amma. We were singing and joking all the way to Niagara.

We reached Niagara around 9pm and checked in to the hotel. Achan was not feeling well with the extensive travel and pressure variations. We went to checkout the water falls in the night itself. It was a fabulous sight and there were light shows and fireworks to add to the visual extravaganza.

In the morning achan was better and we went to see the falls during day time. The weather was good with a cool breeze and a lovely sunshine.

Above Achan & Amma, Manju& Bejoy , Me and Anju at Niagara.

Then we took the boat trip. It was so cool. The experience is unexplainable, the boat took us so close to the horse shoe part of the Niagara falls and it was the best ride ever. I couldn't even open my eyes because of the force of the drizzle. I would recommend this ride to all who visits Niagara.

Vishu 2007

Vishu -- always used to be celebrated with lots of fun at Ammoomma's place. We missed this years celebrations as we were in US.

Below are some pictures of Kaineettam. Elders are supposed to give money to younger ones.

1) Ammoomma to Achan

2) Ammoomma to Amma

3) Ammoomma to Balan Kochachan

4) Santha chitta to Praveen

5) Chilli(geetha) chitta to Praveen 5) Amitha Kochamma to Jithu
Below is how a typical Sadya look like. A sadya will be served on a fresh plantain leaf with rice as the main dish and tons of side dishes like avial, sambhar, kichadi,pachadi,thoran (all veg)etc. You are supposed to eat the sadya using your hand.Hmmm yummy.....

The below picture is my ammoomma(grandma) giving food to my father...

Julio using my photo as his desktop

Julio, my fellow panther was using my photo as his desktop....maybe he was so impressed with our panther games or was deeply pissed... anyways it was a moment to capture

Two old kid photos

Achan sent two of my old photos through Joy , thought I should publish it

Travel to USA - April 2004

United States of America---- the dream was finally becoming a reality.

On April 08th 2004 Me, Anju and Rajiv( who was supposed to join Mycom along with me) started from Nedumbassery airport on our first ever trip outside the country to the dreamland .

We took the Jet Airlines to Mumbai and then the Swiss Air to Switzerland and American Airlines to Dallas. I personally requested the airline personall allotting our seats (who was an indian) to give us seats with sufficient leg space to which he agreed. But once we entered the airline we realised that our seats had no sufficient leg space.Food in Swiss Air was great. We reached Zurich at 6am local time. The next flight was at 10am local time. We wandered around the airport. It was great to see the outside view through the window.

We were hungry but decided to wait till we get in the flight thinking they will serve wonderful food. The flight took off around 11am and there was no food for another 2-3hours. Finally they started serving food, it was some kind of a chicken and cheese... We were never used to eating chicken without proper masala and the food never felt tasty, but had to eat it because of the hunger. The inside temperature was set to American standards and it was too cold as per Indian standards. Me and Anju had throat pain by the time we arrived in US. The journey was so boring and tiring. I tried sleeping and slept most of the time.

We reached US on 8th April 2004( as we save a day coming from India to US and lose one on the other way). Dallas International airport was huge. We reached the immigration where they took our fingerprint and photos. Then we proceeded to the customs where they opened our bags. We had two bags of Masala's. The officer didnt touch the packed stuff and threw the plantain which amma had given to give to Manju(who reached Dallas in March 2004 along with Bejoy) for making "Ethaykkappam".Rajiv proved to be a big help during the entire trip and was our only relief during this journey. He proved to be very helpful throughout the first year we were together.

After collecting all our luggages we 3 came out expecting that Mycom guys will be there in the airport to receive us with a card. Unfortunately there was no-one from MYCOM and we had no clue what to do next. Rajiv called our manager with no response. We finally took a cab and gave him the address. We stepped into the cab and started our journey through Dallas. It was like going through a desert with no trees and it was hot outside.

We reached HOMESTEAD STUDIO SUITES in around 40mts. Fortunately the receptionist had our details and told that the room is upstairs and there is no one to carry the luggages up. We changed our room to downstairs and checked in. I decided not to sleep till night and made anju also to stay awake. Rajiv checked into the adjascent room.

Evening me and Rajiv went out to nearby Arbys and bought couple of sandwiches for dinner.We had tough time ordering food as they were not able to understand a word we says. Anju didnt like it at all and she just ate the bread. I was in a complete upset mood, due to the place and the jetlag and tons of other things. But we managed to reach my dreamland and slept my first night in USA.

Office Rooftop - Taken in Fall

These are couple of awesome pictures taken from Office rooftop.

Courtesy-Julio Brown

Mickey Mouse's House

We visited Mickey's house on the 4th day of the trip, it was fun to go around Mickeys house and finally after walking for 10mts we reached where Mickey was sitting. Took snaps with the legendary MICKEY MOUSE.

Julio doing cartwheel

This is Julio doing a cartwheel in office. Yes it is Julio brown.....the one and only panther....

New Outfit

I bought a new dress, trying to be sincere to where u are. The actual fact is I like to try anything different and new than the normal dresses. What is the fun to wear the same colours and patterns over the years?

Leaving Airtel

Me with CTO Mr.Sugumaran in a sales function.

The rumours started floating around that Bharti group is planning for going ahead with Managed Services contract and as an effect of that entire engineering dept. excepting couple of managers including me will be transferred to the payrolls of Ericsson or the respective market vendor.
CTO discussed the plan with the engineering departement in one of our Engineering Monthly meetings. So it was confirmed that Mr.Sridhar was going to head the South region from Ericsson side. He wanted me to join as a Project head for the south region under him, but my CTO wanted me to stay with Airtel itself. During this confusion I got an offer from USA thro Mycom North America and I took the decision to leave for US, thinking I will have a wonderful career in US.
Mr.Pandian during this period did my review and recommended me for the Senior Manager position and there was even pressure from the CEO thro HR head to make me stay. I decided to stick to my decision and resigned from Airtel and left CBE by 31st March 2004.

Julio's innovative arts

Here is an example to show how artistic my fellow PANTHER - Julio Brown is... He doesnt let any oppurtunity go...

Disney Day 1 - Indiana Jones, Pirates of Carribean and Haunted Mansion

We tried to enter Indiana Jones ride and went all the way in, but there were some problems with the vehicles and had to return again after an hour. If I had any idea of the ride I would have never dared to do that. It was that scary.

We started the Indiana Jones Adventure in jeep like vehicle. I couldn't get my seat belt fixed and Anju helped me with that. It was the worst speedy and bumpy ride I have ever taken in my whole life. The vehicle rumbles, turns left, right, jumps and even drops into dark holes. I thought my back will be broken after the ride as it was that hard to even hang on to the vehicle.

It was a real high speed, jerky ride in a cave where there are snakes and big sculptures. Finally the vehicle will reach a point where Indiana Jones like figure is hanging down from a climber. The vehicle will be halted at this point. All the passengers in the vehicle will be waiting to see this guy to jump on top of the vehicle and this goes on for some time. After sometime, suddenly you see a HUGE ROCK which is 10 times the size of the vehicle you are in rolling towards the vehicle. All the passengers started screaming loud and when the rock was a centimeter away from the vehicle, the earth below the vehicle opens up and the vehicle drops into that hole and the stone goes over the vehicle.

Anju was really excited with the ride even though I was shivering.

Next we went to Pirates of Carribean. It was a fabulous boat ride in which the boat will take you through the Pirate Land. Couldnt take any photos inside except for the one below due to ban on Flash photography.

You could see the pirates fighting and almost all the scenes of the movie is re-created. Finally the boat will drop down with a big splash. This is one of the rides you should not miss. Even Jack Black was present as a wax sculpture.

Next we went to the HAUNTED MANSION which was not scary at all. Here also I couldn't take any photographs due to the ban. But I managed to take one ghost picture with my Blackberry Pearl( quality not good as it was completely dark).The ride was in a two seater and this will take you through various chambers in which ghosts are present all over. The ghosts are created as fumes and it was an excellent treat for the eyes. Finally you enter a long hall in which there are mirrors and when you look at your image and you will find a ghost right between you and your partner. Every time you take this ride , it will be a different ghost.

Disney Day 1 - Jungle Cruise

Reached Disney Land from hotel by taking the Anaheim transit. The transit service picks and drops tourists from DisneyLand to various hotels in and around Anaheim from 8 in the morning till the time park closes. We had an unlimited travel pass. DisneyLand in LA has two parts - Disney Park and the California adventure.

We were fascinated to see the park for the first time. We entered the park and took the Park Map. The park has Adventure Land, Tomorrow Land,Frontier Land,Fantasy Land, Toons Land etc. We first went to Adventure Land.

The first ride we took was the JUNGLE CRUISE.

Jungle Cruise is all about taking the cruise in the boat shown above around a man made Jungle with Tigers, Elephants etc. It was fun and hopefully one of the least scary rides. The boat driver explains everything when he takes the boat through tribal areas and shows the various animals.Seems like a true Jungle cruise

The journey becomes slightly scary when the driver shoots at a Hippo which comes suddenly out of the water near the boat and the gunshot will give you a small shock. Just when you relax and come out the shock, a group of piranhas comes out of the water to attack the boat , but goes back without doing any harm ...