Columbus Columbus Vittachu Leevu

(Written to the best of my memory about the May 24-28 2001 Columbus Reunion Trip on Nov 14th 2004)

"Vision is the art of seeing the invisible" - Jonathan Swift

It was a bizarre email trail that began this trip! Out of the blue, Rathish, Ramkumar, Aruna, Sowmiya and I get an email from Chinmaya about a ticket that he booked to Columbus, OH, where Ramku was put up at The Ohio State University. The booking made via Priceline.com is still talked about for its out of the ordinary timings! The departure time was at 6am on the Monday of the Memorial Day Weekend of 2001.

So, Ramku, "the host Beer", was caught in an embarassing situation, where he had to explain to Rathish and me about the whole thing. It was actually a conversation between Chinmaya, Aruna and he. Before he could get to Rathish or me, Chinmaya sent out his booking :-) It was not such a big deal. We both jumped on the opportunity as soon as we heard of it. It had been May 2000 when we met last, at Florida, to meet Sowmiya and Vinay (Jon). Soon, all our itineraries were sent out and we were well set to meet, atleast 5 of us.. Sowmiya was the uncertainity. She had been through really tough times.. her Cisco job got stolen even before she could set foot on it. There were some other opportunities that came by, including the Airnet on-site interview in Melbourne, FL.

The earliest arrival was me, on Thursday 24th May 2001 night, followed by Aruna, Chinmaya and Rathish. I arrived slightly ahead of time at the Port Columbus International Airport. It took me some effort, but I finally spotted Ramku waiting outside the baggage claim area. I was happy to see him for the first time in the US. Although I had gone to school hardly 180 miles West, in the small city of West Lafayette, I never managed to meet him even once for as long as I was in the mid-west. I had to take a detour to Dallas before coming back here.

Anyways, we searched for something to eat, banking our hopes on a Papa John's outlet near Campus, but we found it closed. We went around several places before we found a 24-hour Waffle House, where we had a rather late dinner, then we headed to a Gas Station which sold Ice Cream and had a cone each. Then I was given a guided tour of the Ohio State University at that late hour where I was shown The Columbus downtown, the two towers, which I remember were Hospital buildings. Also saw "Taylor Goburam", the Recreation centers which were Semi-Cylindrical in shape, besides the cricket field and the Engineering buildings. We headed back home after that and chatted away to glory over about.blank webpages and Haldiraam snacks, which took our systems to a toss! We listened to "aayirum odhai vangiya oru aboorva sigaamani" - a drama by S.Ve.Sekar.

The following morning I was awoken by Aruna's phone call to Ramku. She was in Atlanta, awaiting to get to her flight to Columbus. Then I dozed off again and when I woke up, I saw Ramku enter the room with Aruna. This is again the first time I would get to know her better. Back in HCE, we barely spoke to each other, we counted it to about 4 occassions. But since coming to the US, the friendship grew closer, mainly due to her help in preparing me for the Intel interview that got me the job. Although I did not take the job, I could not forget her help and decided to continue this new-found friendship. We spoke for a while before we decided to get ready and head out to lunch. We went to an Indian restaurant, (Taaj Palace?). There we met with the other gang that was touring Columbus, an Anna University gang, visiting Karru, Ramku's friend. We then headed out to the airport in the Minivan that we rented, to pick up Chinmaya. Here we found the great differences in opinion between Aruna and I, on everything ranging from songs to movies and tastes. There almost seemed to be no single thing we could agree upon. Right at the same time, we would begin saying something totally opposite. This was really funny! We'd kind of ease the tension by uttering the dialogue from Kushi, "samaadhanam samaadhanam" with folded hands and heads bowed :-))

Then as we got on to the airport, Ramku and Aruna exchanged funny glances and were laughing away secretly. I knew what this was for... since I already got the clue before embarking on this trip, that Sowmiya was going to make a surprise appearance. So, although I knew it, I played a double game by pretending I knew nothing. We rec'd Chinmaya after a huge iteration of phone calls which ended by his appearing from the gate. No one had seen him since arriving in the US. He was changed. He seemed to have put on some weight, had a goaty beard and seemed more stylish in general. Then Ramku said... we'll just go over to the other gate to see the flight status... I knew fairly well that this was the arrival gate for Sowmiya's flight. She emerged soon, and I hid near the ladies' restroom to avoid her from seeing me. Finally we met each other and I acted angry that she did not tell me about her arrival. This is where I totally flipped for reasons unknown to me. I became a bizarro!!! Pleasantries were exchanged between a really skeletal Sowmiya and the rest of us. I was almost double my original size and she was down to half! I felt kind of embarassed. This would lead to my reducing more than 90 pounds over the next year.

We escorted the new arrivals to Taco Bell and shared a part of their lunch too. We then went to a coffee shop before heading back home to take a short break before we went to receive Rathish, when we saw the "Writing on the Wall", that sent shock waves through us... The Whiteboard writing on Ramku's room said: "Rathish missed his flight... arrives tomorrow morning". We were all kind of irritated.. but could do nothing about it.. we were not even sure whether to believe it!! A fone call from Rathish proved it all.. we were all really frustrated, but did not know what to do. The rest of us visited the Hindu temple just outside Columbus. We also enjoyed the scenic route enroute to it. After that, we headed to an Indian restaurant and enjoyed a sumptous dinner sponsored by Aruna, for reasons I do not remember right now! Sowmiya behaved cranky with the straws and the mango lassi that kind of drove the onlookers crazy! We returned home and then played a round of Scrabble, watched a bit of the Lakers game with "Manamohanaa" before crashing off.

The following morning, Ramku and I went to pick up Rathish at the airport. He emerged from the terminal, finally! We were much relieved to see him at last! I was so thrilled that I almost killed a pedestrian trying to get past to the terminal before I could pass by. I apologized, but still continued on my course, not daring to look at the pedestrian's "veetla sollittu vanduttaya" dialogue! We got home and almost immediately set off to Pittsburgh temple. We had a great darshan just after 2pm and had temple prasadam for lunch. We had a lot of fun during the drive. I enjoyed particularly the drive into Pittsburgh city via the tunnel, at the end of which, there was a spectacular view of the entire city! Awesome sight! Although I had seen it once, it was great to see it again!

In the temple, we ran into the other group once again... this time I was shocked to see "the princess of Singanallore", Arthi Ramaswami from Purdue. She was working for Cisco Systems and was visiting Karru. I was almost irritated to see her... these guys made a field day out of the pictures they managed to catch. I was even more irritated :-) Then, we headed to get a beautiful view of Pittsburgh from Mt Pitts. It was a lot of fun commenting about Midwestern girls in a wedding... "Welcome to the Midwest!", I remarked to Chinmaya. After this, we headed to the ISKCON Golden Temple at West Virginia. It was quite a spectacular temple which gave us glimpses of Srila Prabhupad's life all the way from rest room to bedroom! After visiting it, there was a fun running-catching game played between Ramku and Sowmiya. After this, we secretly bought a "Shivji" picture for Aruna as a gift for her birthday that had just gone by.... hey this was the reason for her treat the previous day! Sowmiya took her to watch a little girl's dance performance, while we visited the gift store to get the picture.

We got back to Columbus and the others got the tour of the city and the university campus. We caught a super glimpse of the Buckeye "HorseShoe" Stadium, it was of remarkable grandeur.. how many times, I've wished I could catch a Purdue vs Ohio State game either in Ross Ade or at the Shoe! We then walked into Ramku's research lab, where we did some research on where to go to next. We decided on Paramount King's Island, a theme park near Cincinnati, OH. We played a couple of games of Scrabble, one was won by Ramku and the other by Rathish, I scored second on both occassions and was pleasantly surprised by my performance.

We got a late start on the following morning. We were first met by a former HCE friend, Prasad, who we heard had married our classmate, Ambica Mani. What was even more shocking was that they also had a kid! This was far too much news and we were getting a little ahead of ourselves! He seemed to have changed a lot. After this, we headed out to Paramount King's Island. Here, a lot of time was spent waiting in the queues, either for the crowd to get across or for the rain to stop. Here is where I got the title of Thathu Pillai which was adapted to Thathu Vajram.. a name I detest until this day! There were some memorable rides in this park.. there was an awesome wooden coaster, The Beast and a high roller, The Son of the Beast, the reverse coaster. Then most memorable ride was perhaps the water splash, which we took twice, leading to all of us getting totally drenched. This led to the "ara drawyer" incident with Ramkumar and "the Venkatesaaaa" dialogue from me.. utterred in total disgust! :-) Then we took some pictures and Ramku summarized it appropriately "I am your host Beer.... and that's all I have to say about that!"

The next day was departure day... Chinmaya left early.. we gifted him a Rio Volt MP3 player for his birthday. Ramku took this great initiative, which we carried on for a couple of years before it was scrapped. We later found out that due to an order muff up, the digicam he ordered for Aruna, did not make it in time; but we gifted her the Shivji picture, which she has in her pooja shelf to this day! Upon coming back home, we found that Chinmaya "Bhai" had checked out with the instant cameras that we purchased at King's Island :-)) Sowmiya left next, after having lunch at the airport with all of us. Rathish and I had the same United Airlines flight upto Chicago before I headed South and he headed West. This was a really sad moment... we did not know when we would all meet again. It was a quirk of fate that we all did not spend so much time by ourselves back in India, but thanks to the vision of Ramku, it was just a beginning of so many more trips and the real formation of this "gang of Six" totally different personalities!

This was a pioneer trip and one of the fondest in my memories!!!

States Visited: Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Illinois, Texas

SEA-huddle

"The last peanuts are the most remembered" - Dr. Kumaraswamy, former professor at HCE.

Its been an eventful trip to Seattle, but unfortunately, I will perhaps only remember the tail end of it, which was eventful but nonetheless not so good. Let us get back to the beginning before we reach the end though!

Subha drove out of the parking lot nervously on the Honda Civic in what was her first meaningful assignment with the car! Well... not so meaningful if it just means dropping me off :-) What made it tougher was driving back home without me. She did both of these just fine, even as I was nervously pacing down the aisles in Concourse B at DFW. I was much relieved to hear that they got back home safely.

So, I was on my way then, armed with "You're hired" by Bill Rancic, Apprentice -1. Almost 2/3rds of the 700 mile flight between DFW and DEN went in reading about half the interesting book. I learnt a lot from it and learnt to trust my instincts and take risks. I could identify a lot with Bill and the way he thought about several things at the same time. But before I could get into further identification, I dozed off at page 88 and continued on to page 125 in the airport.

The flight between Denver and Seattle was pretty much a sleep out across the entire row of seats. Upon arrival at Seattle, I promptly confirmed my arrival and then started looking for Ramu across the conveyer belts. I found him coming out of the Northwest airline terminal. It seemed to be pretty cold outside. Both of us were talking for sometime before Aruna and her husband landed up to pick us.

The trip officially began then. We took their Honda Civic to the Thrifty Rental center. I made the observation that it was really thrifty because the center was atleast 2 miles away. The airport area was referred to as SEA-TAC... I thought TAC-SEA was a better name.. but surely Seattle would not like to be second.

Ramu, the primary driver, took the reins of the Ford Taurus and followed the couple in their Civic. The slightest realization that someone is actually trying to follow them would have been nice... but can you blame them for being in their own world?? I remarked to Ramu that we should in future take directions rather than following :-)

We reached their apartment complex after picking up Deepa on the way from her friend's place. This seemed to be more of a Motel converted into an apartment complex. We climbed up the steps to the 3rd floor apartment #307. It was well heated up and I could hardly get a glimpse of it before we all decided it was time for lunch and hence I wore the shoes I had just gotten off a second prior. There were of course pleasantries exchanged with Sowmiya, Chinmaya and Rathish in the meantime.

By popular vote, we headed to Udupi Southy cuisine. The restaurant was obviously not comparable to those in Dallas or the Bay Area, which are prime desi locales, leave alone the fact that nothing even comes close to "home cooked/microwaved food". We had a mixed bag of stuff, eating out of everyone's plates even in the presence of a new guy. That was good to notice. As of now, my usual opinion forming nerves were already at work. I could gather even at this early stage that the guy was extremely simple, conventional, would not try much out of the ordinary... pretty much inside the box kind of character. This could be deciphered by the lunch he ordered. Hey wait.. its still too early to call!! I have to say that by the end of the trip, most of these initial impressions were confirmed :-)

Well... amidst all those analyses, lunch got over and it was time to decide where to go to next. There were a few suggestions thrown out, such as old Seattle and Space Needle. We went in for the latter as a signature to our visit to the city. We reached Downtown Seattle after another session of Car chasing :-) We weaved through Downtown and parked at a Garage which would be in the vicinity of the monorail that would take us to the Needle. But the monorail was out of service on this day. We roamed around the malls for a bit mainly in search of a restroom. Rathish cracked jokes at Barnes and Noble about his searching for a book, etc.

Then we headed back to the garage and on the way, we saw Robert Hoary, NBA all-star, currently playing for the Spurs, mainly known for his last minute 3-point field goals. That seemed to be the highlight of the trip thus far. No one approached him for an autograph since he was on the phone all the time and also though all of us were engineers, none of us had a pen! :-( We headed closer to the Needle... but not so close that it would pinch us....

From this distance, the mighty Seattle Space Needle was a minor disappointment. It was not all that big compared to other high rise towers we have seen. We still went up to catch a glimpse of the city and its surrounding nature. The view was breathtaking.. it was surrounded by Pacific backwaters and Lake Washington among which there were several islands. One of them is said to be the home of Bill Gates, among my most admired. Soon, it grew dark! It was barely 4pm and it was dark already!

Then we drove around for a "10 minute drive" to an island where we could catch a lovely view of the Seattle skyline. It turned out to be a 40 minute drive with several O-turns. The island was even better! It was a construction site... full of mud! The rental car still has stains of our shoes stepping on it :-) It was pretty frustrating for me all since I could not reach my 100% energy level for the day, having slept just 3 hours! So, I was very quiet throughout the day. We soon had to decide on where to have dinner and this time there seemed to be no consensus... we headed to an Indo-Mediterranean place some 20 miles away, where I was at the wheel following this time! I heard some trumpets of victory in the form of 2-3 cars honking at me as I was cutting lanes to stay closer to the Civic at the lead!

When we landed there, we were told that there would be a 20 minute wait. Sowmiya, Ramu, Rathish and I strayed away into a Walgreens and then a Safeway before we headed back. It was really hot and the reason was apparent pretty soon... it was the "Two Towers" blowing heat for the outside dining. We got our table soon and had a lot of North Indian food. In the morning it was Rathish's treat for his promotion as senior citizen and now it was Chinmaya for buying his new home in Denver. Must have been an expensive one. The Lebanese coffee that I tried was a disaster.. but other than that, it was good. "No man is wise on an empty stomach"?? Ramkumar was on an Amavasya diet that night and hence may have erred about Clinton's diet... I felt a bit odd with one person in the table unable to consume anything... had I known this before, I really might have had other "Palakaaram" suggestions so that the guy from Bellyvue would not go out with an empty belly :-)

Then we got back home and as we were wondering what to do, we started playing Dumb-C. After some argument between Rathish and me, we decided that Rathish and Aruna would pick the teams... it was the 3Rs and Chinmaya against Mr & Mrs Ramkumar, Sowmiya and Deepa. Seemed pretty even. In the end, we lost narrowly, mainly because of three reasons.. Ramu and I were a bit rusty and sleepy after a long day... Chinmaya got frustrated on two clues and none of us did a good job on the database. But it was only a game... I played a prank and said that the last clue would amount to 3 times the weightage.. if that were taken seriously... we'd have taken the game with ease! :-) After this, we all went to sleep.

The next day, I woke up at 12:30pm.. I was the penultimate since Ramu was still asleep. There was rapid channel surfing going on. I got kind of irritated by those rapid swings.. but this went on and on forever... between football, NBA, movies, etc. Sowmiya was picked up by Sundar to go to the ISKCON temple.. we all rejected the proposal to go to it. The latter was hosting some annadaanam and this annai was invited to help out... it is a noble cause and I approve of it.

What did we do next?? You guessed it.. went to lunch.. we elected to go to P F Chang's. This was the actual marriage treat... unfortunately minus Sowmiya and Deepa... we went through the malls during our 30min wait... looked into some cool tech stuff at Sharper Image and then headed to lunch. Had a pretty good lunch with usual favorites ranging from Dumplings-Wraps to Eggplant and Singapore Noodles!

After lunch.. there were two minor glitches. Ramu's camera got stuck. Just as he went to clean the lens with the sunglass cleaner cloth, he found his sun-glasses missing. Then we backtracked and found it on the waiting couch outside PFC. Then the camera began working... this is divine intervention! Then we headed back home to more football... Why can't we people subordinate ESPN to the team?

Then Sowmiya came and we dropped her off.. then dinner again at Udupi... Then we "toured" Microsoft.. looked at a couple of buildings and took Patel pics outside near the logo. Then headed back home to some UNO.

Then morning came, Rathish and I left earlier after bidding goodbye to Aruna and a sleepy Ramkumar. We dropped off the rental car and I just got to the flight in time! It was another thrilling experience getting to the flight!

Slept through the entire flight to Denver... then came the call I'll never forget!!!! It was from Sameer and also Subha at the same time... the big news was.... "Dallas DSL Software was shutdown!!!!!"... all members of the team from managers to clerks were out of their jobs!!!

I took this surprisingly well... I was still fresh from my confidence of having completed my WLAN CPE project successfully and also from reading some of the nightmares that Bill Rancic had gone through enroute to Trump Tower and the apprenticeship... I was calmed by a cool Subha, who took the news really well and into her stride as well.

Then I landed in Dallas, thinking about this all along...... it was just another project!! Time to win this battle too!

Sleepless in Seattle?

The first trip to make its mark on this blog will be my trip to Seattle. The event is Aruna's wedding pseudo-reception. She married Ramkumar, a Microsoft Engineer on Jul 8th 2004. The "gang" is coming.. Rathish, Sowmiya, Ramkumar, Chimaya and Deepa besides me will be in attendance. The format of this so-called reception is not clear as yet.

It will be 2-day trip for me starting in the United Airlines flight early morning on 6th Nov. The others will already be there, landing at various times starting from 5th Nov. More accounts to follow perhaps during the trip, now that I can email my blog for the day! :-)

It is going to be a strange feeling since this is the first trip I will be making without Subha after our wedding. Also add to that, the fact that my parents are going to be here as well and I'm leaving them for a couple of days. I can only reflect back to the time period 2001-3. It was a time of unbelievable amounts of travel for me meeting with my friends, just finding a deal and packing off for a weekend for weird reasons such as watching a World Cup finale together! Seems like a long time ago!

This trip came for a relatively cheap price of $189.. which is good considering that it will probably get me very near to the Elite Status in United Mileage for the year!