Golf Tournament - Sep08

We had our Annual Golf tournament and I decided to participate for the same, eventhough I dont even know how to hold a golf club properly. I was late to reach there in the morning, and Josh had called me wondering whether I escaped...

I got my clubs and they assigned me a cart, which I loved driving, and started searching for a team for me to join as all 3 from my team was no-show.

Finally I joined the team with Justin(left) and Jeff Ley(right), who was my personal instructor, teaching me how to hold the club, how to shoot, the angle and all...It was fun, hitting the ball, especially when everytimg it goes in the opposite direction I hit, with lot of grass flying around.... I cant believe I lost all my cricket skills...

Trip to SilverFalls State Park,Oregon

Oregon state is very famous for its rugged natural beauty...The state provides abundant outdoor recreational facilities..The most convinient factor of all this is is that, most of the natural attractions requires 1 to 2 hrs of travel time even from the down town Portland.
This being a long weekend Krishnan and us decided to go on a small family picnic to Silver Falls State park which is about 2 hr drive from our home . It is the largest state park in Oregon, The major attraction of the park is the collection of waterfalls. There are 10 falls and more than 22 miles of multiple use trails leading to them.
Classic South falls,Lower southfalls,North falls,Double falls,Drake falls,Middle Northfalls,Winterfalls,Twinfalls,North Falls,Upper North falls.

We started at 3.30 in the afternoon and reached there by 5.15pm…This park is extremely big and wide spread with benches ...A lot of families were having picnics and barbeques and a few birthday parties …The kids seems to be having a wonderful time.

The full loop to see all the 10 falls is 22 miles… We decided to see just the Classic south fall and to return back which is just 0.7 miles…

Path to South falls… A few pics of us on the bridge on the path to the classic south falls...

The end of the stream leads to the water fall:-)

Trail to Classic South Falls

South Falls is extremely beautiful. This is the most accessible and the tallest of the waterfalls at the height of 177 feet. The trail allows hikers to walk behind the water falls....the volume of the fall is much more than this…

Moss covered caves behind the falls....

Krishnans and Sujas son-Siddharth...He is a two year old ...He was extremely happy running around and walked all the way up and down the trail with all of us...

The trip was short,funfilled and beautiful.........

Hey hey hey...oh comeon Anju...( This time the whole trip details are written by Anju --this is the first time she is writing in my webpage)...As you guys have noticed, she is more professional in writing the details...Thanks Anju...

But there is one thing she forgot to mention..Anju was not well the whole trip, but still she wanted to walk the trail..When Krishnan and Suja planned to walk around, I thought of using Anju as an excuse to avoid the walking..but she bailed out on me and decided to walk, poor me , I had to follow them. After walking back, she felt little Dizzy..but it was worth the walk,specifically walking behind the waterfalls...I will definitely go back again....

George's Party

George invited my family and Julio's family over for dinner at his place.Look at the nicely carved fruit basket he made for us.

The food was awesome, and it was great fun to play with Ginger and Chloe. The picture above is me trying to make a shark fin hairstyle out of Ginger and she got really happy after I tried a couple of times as below..

Finally she got exhausted and started sleeping....

Chloe's expressions are priceless when it comes to photoshoot......

No pictures of George as he was not happy about publishing his pictures and Julio didnt take any pictures of Stephanie....

New Exercise in office

Josh bought us a new WII in office, now everyone including George quit playing Ping-Pong and WII Tennis is the game of the new era...In the picture from Left to Right, Josh, Me, Kirk and George enjoying a virtual reality game of Tennis.

CHINCHITHAMOL in PORTLAND

Inspite of her busy 3 month schedule in US, Gayathri (Chinchitha mol)decided to visit her sister Lekshmi(Anju) in Portland

. Anju was very excited about the whole visit as it was more than 2.5 yrs since she saw any of her dear ones.We had 100 reasons for not visiting India in the last 2.5 yrs, but I only know how upset she was not seeing her parents and her dear ones back home.So chinchithamol's visit was a big relief to me also.

Anju was preparing the apartment and dishes for her visit and was very excited from the moment Chinchu boarded the flight from Virginia on the 1st of July08.She normally never calls me at office,made atleast 5 calls asking various questions about the transit at the Minneapolis airport(there are no direct flights between virginia and Portland) and the flight timings and gate confusions. I had to repeatedly assure her that everything would be fine.

We left to the airport around 10:00pm and waited in the airport for the flight to arrive.Finally there came Chinchu and I had hard time keeping Anju from jumping the fence of the security restricted area.

See their excitement in the photos(poor quality due to phone camera)

We reached back at around 12am and then chinchu had the wonderful dinner prepared by her chechi which comprised of chicken curry( which she thought is fish curry),fish fry, thoran etc., etc., Anju ditched sleeping with me and went to sleep with her sister.

02July08:

We all got ready after breakfast with dosa and chutney and planned to visit Mt.St.Helens.Set up the GPS in the vehicle for the destination and while on the way I called Krishnan and as per his advice deviated our trip to Mount Hood.It was a little hazy day.
We reached Mount Hood around 3pm, was surprised to see a ton of snow.Anju and chinchu was really excited to see all the snow and started running and playing in the snow.

They both started running towards the direction of Mount Hood while I took a break and watched the whole show...

Then we started towards TRILLIUM LAKE which is very close to Mount Hood.It was the perfect time to visit the lake and we took a couple of photos in the area.

After spending an hour in the Trillium lake area, we started towards the Multnomah Falls, this was too much for a day to travel, but as she only had 3 days in Portland and the last day being July 4th, we had to cover the maximum possible in a day.

After Multnomah falls, we decided to have dinner at PF Changs for which I promptly made the reservations.We had a great dinner,but chinchu didnt enjoy it much.I understood the reason only the next day..she was craving for home food and she wanted to eat what her sister makes and not the food made by a chef....

03 July08:
We got up late and chinchu demanded her chechi to prepare "Puttu" and when I got up, Anju was busy preparing the same for her. Anju was preparing Puttu after more than 8-10 months, but it came out really well. See below the same...

After the breakfast Anju prepared lunch with lot of dishes.

We had lunch, I took a nap and started to the beach. We reached the beach around 7pm, it was sunny and bright,but unfortunately it was very cold.

See Chinchu shivering below due to the breeze:

We came back around 10pm, had kappapuzhukku and fish curry and watched the movie "Vinodhayathra".

The next day was an all shopping day and my job was that of a driver.

Chinchu left Portland on 5th July by the 630am flight.

Manager-Field Operations in USA

Was constantly trying to become a Manager in USA since the first year.Was desperately trying for a RF managerial position in T-Mobile for the last one year but was never lucky enough to even get a interview call....Oh Yeah, that's the US way of getting a promotion, there are no regular promotions, u can sit in a position for years without any promotion.The worser part of the whole situation is that for a management role in the US , no-one cares for the management experience in India.So when a management position opens up, we have apply for it and go through the same process as if for a new job.

I almost gave up trying in RF and when a position opened up in Portland in the Field Operations group decided to give it a shot.Josh being the head of operations was a very positive part towards trying for the same.Applied for the job on 19th Feb08, Anju's birthday.Had to go through two rounds of interview,one with Josh and another with the Area director Grant.Josh's interview was really admirable with practical management situation based questions.Anyway finally after the all the required paper work I got the offer towards mid of April and joined the team officially on 29Apr08.Got an office and vehicle as a part of the job.

I had mentioned about destiny and how slowly I climb in my career, this is a perfect example.I wanted to become Manager in RF and God Almighty had something else in mind, and here I am came back to my Operations role.My life is always like this, I want something, get something else, but historically the end result has always been better than what I aspired for.Another example was my plans to become a Doctor and ended up being an engineer, and hence got the chance to come to the US.I take this moment to thank GOD Almighty for all the blessings.

An AMAZING survival story

This email below is a truly amazing survival story of my friend Ani from Dallas..Worth reading...

---------- Forwarded message ----------From: Ani Gopalakrishnan Date: Apr 14, 2008 6:05 PMSubject: My Near Death Experience on Vishu Day!!To: dallasmallus@googlegroups.com

It was yesterday evening around 6, I was coming to temple, and took George Bush from Sandy Lake rd. There was not much traffic
as it was Sunday evening so everyone was going on almost 80-90 miles per hour. My car stopped right in the middle of the highway!!.
Few minutes earlier when I sensed some trouble with my car, I stayed on right most line. But right before Old Denton exit, there are
two more lines join the highway.... and you realize, all of a sudden, you are on the middle of 5 lane highway and your car is dead...
I didn't know this will be that serious until I realized no body can see my hazard light because of the evening sun.

I called 911.

I can see vehicles approaching me so fast from behind and they didn't have any clue that this is a dead car until
they come inches away from me. They were all coming from a curve. I thought of getting out of the car, but there were
vehicles going so fast on both lines... From the back view mirror, I could see Death is going to come to me as one of the cars.
Then, there come three cars side by side, it was silver BMW on the middle line behind me, I knew he can't change the lanes
because of the other cars... .. I put the gear in neutral and closed my eyes.

Guys, this is the moment you realize who you really love, because you think about them..

Don't know still how they didn't hit me, I could only hear the honking and a silver car sliding next to me.
I was there for 4 minutes and finally the Almighty has come in the form of a Patrol car. He parked behind me, diverted all traffic
and pushed me to a curb. He was literally shouting at me. He said I had a narrow escape. According to that cop, out of his
15 years career, he hasnt seen anyone who got stuck like this in a moving highway surviving. Everyone ended up fatal.

My fuel cap was faulty and the gas was evaporating. I didn't know Patrol Car stores gas in a can to help people.
Finally he filled my car just enough to go to the next gas station.

It took 10 minutes for me to recover and finally when I came to temple and I was so happy to see some of your faces!.
Because I didn't know I could...

Regards
Ani Gopalakrishnan

Random Oregon Pictures

Some random Oregon pictures from near Bend,OR.

Photo courtesy:Ronaldo