Sunday, September 30, 2007

King County - Day of giving



Donate one day to your community - work on something that is not related to your work. King county is the county to which we belong.
Well so that was the day of giving. The concept was great - enticing of sorts - except when the day of giving actually arrived. When I woke up I felt that the day was colder than usual and the work was going to be outdoors. On top of that we had to collect and car pool from office at 8:30 am - what!
Well I managed to reach office by 8:30 only to find the co-ordinater missing. Hmm - well I was angry and as usual not too keen and doing my - I dont wanna go -stuff.
Well we did go though. Seems like it was seattle weather's day fo giving too as later the sun rose and was shining brightly. All the while I thought it would just be like some timepass stuff - until I got there. Seems like there was indeed some serious worked plan and we had to take tool and be responsible for well-defined tasks ..aah. The thing that we had volunteered for was laying down a trail for trekking purpose. So we had 3 tasks -
1) Decommisooning a road - when suggested for the first time -we thought it was useless- all we had to do that cover existng trails with logs and plant ferns at the entrance so that no one walks over it. We felt a "Do Not Enter" sign should suffice but seems like that was out of question so we rejected this task untill our guide who lead us far-far away to a trail and asked to do exactly that. And oh yeah we did and lo and behold -utkash uprooted a dead tree to cover the trail.
2) The second task after a chocolate cup cake break (and a walk back to the trial head) was cleaning the trail by cutting down plants and trees that were growing in the path of the trail. The concept was that stretch both of your hands and if a plant hits your hand then it is on the way. Hmm - I started doing it and suddenly the concept of cutting plants hit me. Why cut plants - if you cut a animal it is savage - cutting plant not . So I was careful to not uproot healthy trees but just trim them - not less savage but well good enough to provide me a reason to cover my guilt.
Then there was lunch break with Alex getting some meticulosly packed tea (incidentally russians also cal ltea as chai (and they mean from china by that), potato edd salad and ham sandwiches. All desi married men coming with there 3 floor dubbas storing 3 course meals. We ate haertily - little did we know that the next task would consume all the energy we gained.
3) The next task was filling cart with heavy stones and taking it where the trail was laid. And this was by far the toughest. I and Alex carried the cart - mid-way I gave up holding it as it just flipped me -while coming back though I carried it. Ofcourse Alex had his part of sense of humour - how to donkeys yell in India. I said - ee aah ee aah. He said do they carry carts too and I sad - yes - some of them do. And then he started laughing. Hmm - it took me a while to understand that practical joke.
I ended with a gift card from King County. "It wrote - Trees can't hug back to say thanks". Well - only if they knew what was our task 2.

Monday, September 10, 2007

1000s of fortune cookies


my office room has 1000s of fortune cookies. One of the typical messages in the cookies are:

"Search and ye shall find" - join the Search team.

This is the new marketing strategy our team has acquired to attract internal microsoft employees to join in the search team. Provide fortune cookies in the cafeteria of other teams.

I remember what Girish once said in total earnestness: "I cant imagine working at any place as exciting as this" and I couldn't help but agree. There is lot of kick in being part of a underdog team trying really hard to beat the big guys. Working over the months and also on this fall release has changed my outlook from hopeless, to hopeful to confident to passionate. I know it is no miracle - its not impossible - and it is good to be in the side of the fence that believes in this fact and works for it.

Fortune favors the brave - well so do fortune cookies.

P.S- do look at my new tiny bag also in the picture :)

Sunday, September 09, 2007

Hmm - watching independence day

Remember "Independence Day" The Will Smith -Alien flick - I remebered watching it in a theatre - one of the 2 english movies that I convinced my parents to watch with me. The other was Titanic (we will talk about that experience later).
anyways - this time during India trip to keep me occupied - my boyfriend bought 5 dvds each of 100 bucks for me. I got to see the bourne series over there and one of the DVDs were all Will Smith flick. It had Pursuit of happiness (bad print), Hitch - a very good print and definitely more likable than partner and Independence Day.
Well this afternoon - while cooking - I thought I would settle for independence day - anyways I had totally forgotten about it and then after a little bit struggle with the menu I managed to play it - every thing was good - the titles - the print - the special effects until someone spoke. Yes - the movie is dubbed in Tamil. Hmm. Lets settle for unpirated kill bill

Sunday, September 02, 2007

Summer of Seattle

Right here sitting in my apartment (taking a break from a tea break with friends) I miss people I want to be with right now. I want them in the same surrounding - experience the same summer wind, the same lakeside, the same bustle as I do and I know that I will never be able to reconstruct the same situation ever in future - The imagination of this experience is there in my day-dreaming head but then it wasn't felt for real and never will it be ...
and then I wonder - what hurts more - the absence of people or the beauty of summer...

Addendum - enough rona dhona - heading back to Mary's