Rain Rain Go Away

Its been raining at irregular times and intervals for the last 2 weeks in Singapore. We have planned for camping this weekend I don't want rain to spoil the whole plan. The first thing that came to my mind was the rhyme which I learned as a kid.

Rain Rain Go Away, Come Again Another Day

Hope to have a great weekend.

Nice Weekend

All these days I have been busy because of one project and one tough user. Frankly speaking had a tough time at work last one month. I felt this weekend was great and relaxing after a long time and hence thought it was worth sharing with everyone.

Friday Nagaraj gave his birthday (which was actually on Apr-8th) party at Khalsa Club (Our favorite hangout place for long time because of its nice food and sensible rates). While coming back home we bought a carrom board and were ready for action. We played till 2AM and went home.

Saturday started off with some nice food and then went on playing carroms and watching movies. In the evening, thanks to Santosh, we all started running. We ran for around 3KM and then walked for 3KM. On the way back we went to Harry's had couple of beers and had dinner.

Sunday early morning I, Swetha & Surya left for cycling in the Pasir Ris Park. We did cycling for around 10KM and then went to friends room had nice lunch and went home to sleep. In the evening again I, Swetha, Nagaraj, Santosh & Amarnadh went for cycling. This time we went to Changi Village and the total track was 20KM. On the way back it was very nice experience to pedal the cycle in the rain. As it was raining we decided to have some nice pakodis along with couple of drinks. We went home had egg burji and pakodi along with beer.

At the end, the weekend was over with Deccan Chargers winning the match and earning a place in Semis.

Team Building Party

Its been around 2 years that I have been part of this team in Credit Suisse in Singapore. The team has grown enormously and have delivered many a projects, but none of us know each other properly and doesn't really know each other personally.

Finally this Friday, management has taken a step to give a Team Building party to the team. The attendance to this was compulsory. So evening by 4PM, we were all at the Ceylon Cricket Club to start a great evening. We were told that we will be having some games and then dinner at 6.30PM. When I heard about the games and saw the people around me, I thought what these old guys will play and this whole exercise would be a flop.

To my surprise once the games were started everyone forgot where they come from and what position they are in and have actually enjoyed the games part of the evening. We were split into 4 groups and were supposed to compete in 3 different games.

That's my team Red Bulls

After then games we went for dinner and drinks. After having 2 or 3 drinks we asked for some good music and then started dancing for a long time. We had food, drinks, danced and spoke to each other and in fact knew each other well. We had a great time till 1 in the night. In fact this is the first time I have got a chance to speak to all my bosses with whom I haven't really spoken for 2 years.

That's the final group who were there till Late night

Hope I will have these kind of parties quarterly.

3 Days 16 Movies

Telugu:
Andhrudu
Mallanna
Raju Maharaju

Hindi:
Wanted
Dil bole Hadippa

English:
Touch of Evil
Unforgiven
Entrapment
Shake Hands with the Devil
Click
Borat
Inglorious Basterds
Wicker Man
Chariots of Fire
Hostage
Assault on Precinct 13

Happy Birthday Mahesh

This weekend was all about movies again. We have watched 10 movies:
Rudy
The Express
16 Blocks
Homam
Oyi
Vijayendra Varma
Heat
Sword Fish
and 2 more which I am not remembering right now.

Other than that we had nice chicken curry with biryani at home. Also had some martinis and wine.
As Monday is Mahesh's birthday, Sunday night we brought a Tiramisu cake and troubled him with birthday bumps.

Overall it was a great weekend.

Fantastic Week

Last week has been really nice. It was joyful and eventful all through the week.

Saturday - Marie and Olivier came. We all went to Clarke Quay. Had a nice time there knowing each other. We slept around 3 in the night.

Sunday - Had bad headache and was at home doing nothing.

Monday - At work it was fine. Back home Olivier entertained us with his guitar.

Tuesday - I and Swetha called all my friends as we were giving a parting dinner to Marie and Olivier. We all had fun singing songs while Olivier playing the guitar.

Wednesday - Nagaraj gave party at Mirchi on the occasion of his 9th successful marriage anniversary. He was thrilled to see surprise from Shobha. We arranged 9 roses and a cake for him.

Thursday - We went to friends apartment for a couple of drinks with Martini.

Friday - As the next day we were going to Cruise to no where, we had to go home early and sleep.

Saturday - Had a nice time on the Cruise to no where.

Sunday - Went to temple. Had sumptuous lunch. Watched 2 movies. Had mirchi bajji, thanks to Srinivas.

My first Couch Surfing Experience

In recent times I have been travelling many places and have met many new people and have discovered many new websites which are helpful to travellers. One among them is this couchsurfing.org. This is an online community where people host many travellers across the world by giving their couches. It not helps people get a free place to stay but also helps in connecting travelers with like-minded people.

In the same way I got registered in this website for quite sometime and have been reading experiences of the different travellers with their hosts. When I was in Cambodia, I was about to meet one of my couch surfer friend, but couldn't make it due to some unavoidable circumstances.

Recently I got a request for couch surf from a couple from Canada. They sounded genuine and they have been travelling in Southeast Asia for more than 3 months. I and Swetha discussed over this for sometime and then gave a positive reply to them. We were not sure who and how they were.

This Saturday, the couple (Marie and Olivier) came home and there started a new friendship between that Canadian couple and all my friends gang. We all went out to have some drinks and I saw that everyone was behaving as if they all knew each other for quite sometime. We have shared so many stories from our side and at the same time heard their travel stories. Came to know about some interesting places and interesting activities which we can do.

I am excited about this couch surfing website and I am looking forward to host more and more new people and know new stories about them.

Weekend Tidbits

This is how my weekend flew away ...

Friday:

I and Swetha went for New York Movie. Nothing was good about the movie. Even Katrina was not beautifully shown. We came home and ordered from McDonald s at 12.30 which came at 1.30 early in the morning. We ate burgers and then slept at around 2.30AM.

Saturday:

We woke up very late. Prepared some curry and rice and had lunch. Later Swetha started preparing Gajar Halwa at around 3PM and successfully completed by 7PM. Meanwhile Surya came home and we together had dinner watching Tholi Prema movie. After dinner, I and Swetha went out for a walk with Surya dropped him at his place and watched Vinayakudu movie and came back late in the night. Today I spoke with Kishore for 2 hours and also with Dolly who was going to France for an hour.

Sunday:

Today it was no different to Saturday. We woke up late in the morning. By the team we even thought of cooking food, Santosh called us and invited for lunch at their place. We went there had our lunch and saw X-Men Wolverine and Identity movies. Later in the evening, I, Swetha and Srini went for a walk and had some masala tea. From there we just did some window shopping in Tampines Mall, Century Square and Tampines One mall. We went to KFC had some snacks and went to 230J. Meanwhile background we were planning Srini's birthday celebration for which Surya had given a wonderful idea, right from cake till the gift.

At 12 in the midnight we woke up Srini and made him cut the cake. Happy Birthday Srini.

Lighting the Birthday Candles

It was beautiful

Wow thats my birthday cake

Happy birthday to you dude ...

We enjoyed the cake came back home at that time and slept cursing the Monday.

Working for the Weekend

Everyday I get the work assigned by my friend and lead Nagaraj. This Wednesday while I was in the train and going home I got a call from my manager.

Phone rang Tring Tring ..

The screen showed my manager's name who never call me directly as things come through Nagaraj. I was just wondering what it could be and why he is calling me directly.

I picked up the phone and following was the conversation.

I: Hello
Mgr: Hi Sudheendra .. This is P******

I: Hi P****** .. Tell me
Mgr: This weekend we have a shut down at ORL building can you pls come and do a restart of the system and check the BO application if it is working fine on all the environments.

Now what else can I say when he asks me directly other than saying Yes. I always wanted to say no but then as its just checking the system for 30 mins so I said OK.

I: Ok P******, I shall do it thats ok ..
Mgr: Thanks, bye.


Today, I came to office at 3PM in the afternoon thinking that I will leave by 3.30PM.

But then now the time is 6PM and nothing is working till now. I guess I will have to wait for more 2 hours for doing this. There is nothing that I can do. I will just have to sit idle until the servers are up. Hope I will get a comp off for this which I can use when Swetha will be here.

Anyways atleast you guys have fun on a weekend rather than wasting time at office like this.

Stress Free Long weekend

I had a great time this weekend at Kota Kinabalu. It was just like I was retired for 3 days and was away from all the stress and tensions in the world. Even though I enjoyed the trek, I am right now struggling with body pains of a strainful trek. From tomorrow I have to get back to work and I am not sure how soon I can cope up with this.

Singapore IT Show @ Suntec

This weekend Singapore has hosted one of the big IT shows in Asia. This has lasted for 4 days (Thu-Sun) in Suntec Convention & Exhibition Center. Most of the well known IT and electronics vendors were present during the event. The show was sprawling over 5 entire floors of the Convention center. Consumers were offered with discounts on almost all the products. Every year this has become another excuse for people round the world for a trip to Singapore.

All these days I have been hearing about recession recession and only recession all over the world. So we thought recession would badly hit this time IT show. If you are claustrophobic then this was not a place to be. But to my wonder neither recession nor the huge crowd stopped people from buying the Laptops, Cameras, LCDs, Play Stations etc.


I have been to the show for 3 consecutive days (Thu-Sat) with my friends. Even though Thursday and Friday were working days, I could see many people coming to Suntec. On Thursday I bought a Laptop. On Saturday again we went to buy a play station. I must admit that even before I entered the exhibition hall I started to realize that it was a bad idea. Despite the significant number of people in the mall, we managed to get a seat at the food court. Had our lunch and then went into the mall. We felt that the crowd was a bit less when compared to Thu and Fri. Anyways we decided to get out of there as soon as possible before we both choked.

Once we were done with our shopping and came out we were astounded at the surge of masses. To control the crowd even the elevators were stopped, people were asked to come back in an hour, people were stopped while one batch of people would come out of the mall. Luckily we escaped such a scenario.

From the news I heard that, for about an hour there was a technology glitch, all the electronic payment lines went down. There was a huge loss for some of the companies as the frustrated customers walked off. There was heavy rain, which in turn resulted in a massive human jam at City Link Mall. Mall operators had to close some entrances to stop more people from entering and put marshals on duty.

Again looking forward for the IT Show in June ...

Wine and Dine Party

On the occasion of holi my friend has arranged a wine and dine party at his place. Though none of us has any idea about the wines other than surya, people got some wine bottles. I only knew that the older the wine the better is the taste and the more is the cost. There were 2 white and 2 red wine bottles on the menu. Even though the snacks we had actually do not go with wine we enjoyed the food and the wine very much. Here are some of the pics of this wine and dine get together.

Weekend Activity

Other than my usual being on Orkut, Facebook, Gtalk, Yahoo Messenger and Skype below is what I did this weekend.

- Since Friday night till Monday morning slept for more than 27 hours.
- Went for a Wine party at a friends (Vidyadhar) place.
- Went for my camera repair. In my marriage one of the lens got some problem.
- Watched following movies and my personal rating out of 10:

• Raaz-2 (5)
• Shashirekha Parinayam (4)
• Marley and Me (8)
• Maya Bazaar (9) Old Classic
• Curious Case of Benjamin Button (8)

- Downloaded following movies:

• Tahaan (7)
  
• Jugaad (4)

- Not to forget, also saw one of the best innings by Sachin ..

The weekend update

This was Diwali (long) weekend and we planned many a things during the week. We thought of going to Malaysia. We did a lot of research on going to Kota Kinabalu. But as I did not have my Malaysian visa we finally had to decide something in Singapore. Surya came up with this idea of going for trekking at Bukit Timah Nature Reserve on Saturday, Golf on Sunday and Total rest on Monday. It was a bit different Friday night this time. We did not booze and slept early to keep the energy for the trekking.

Saturday morning we started off by 10 o clock for the trek. The trek was a bit exhausting and we came back home and slept till late evening. Everybody was frustrated with the tiredness during the trek. We cooked Carrot and Beens curry which did not have any special ingredients but was very nice to eat. I slept early at 12.30AM when compared to my regular late night stays.

Sunday morning when we woke up we were still struggling to get out of the couch as everybody was still feeling the pain of the trek. We dropped the plan of going for Golf. We spent the whole day sitting at home. In the evening we went out to Harbor Front to do some shopping and watch Ben Stiller's Directed and acted Tropic Thunder movie. It was a nice movie. I spoke to Dolly, Chinni and Swetha in conference call and was awake till 4 in the morning.

Monday which was Diwali holiday in Singapore started off by waking up late in the morning (actually because of my late night conference call). In the afternoon we cooked some fried rice and had it for lunch. We decided to go to temple in the evening. Going to temple comes to mind only when there is a festival or special event in life. At 6PM me and Surya got ready in traditional Kurta - Paijama and left for the temple. After the temple we met Rajeev (Surya's INSEAD friend), Anu (Rajeev's Wife) and Satish (cousin of Prashanth who is again Surya's INSEAD friend) and had dinner at Khansama.

Finally we came home and started cursing the next day as we have to go back to work after an eventful weekend.

Long Weekend

Its long weekend for the first time since May. We have so many plans for long weekends. Last time in May I was in India and went for the north trip. This time also I wanted to go somewhere. Surya and me had plans to go to Malaysia. But because of the visa problem that plan was dropped. As my passport is with the Malaysian embassy I cant even go to India or any other country. Finally Surya stepped up and planned for Bukit Gombak trek and some golfing on Sunday. Monday I am thinking of having total rest as I am suffering from lack of sleep for more than 2 weeks now.

Its just an hour that I will be leaving office and my long weekend will start. I am very much looking forward for this as I wanted a break after this hectic month at work. Shall update the weekend details soon.

Most Awaited Weekend of the Year

This weekend was the most awaited weekend of the year for me. This was because I have taken the Formula 1 tickets way back in March. I have been waiting for the date with these cars since then. Finally I had a wonderful, amazing, astonishing, astounding, enjoyable, excellent, extraordinary, fabulous, fantastic, incredible, lovely, magnificent, marvelous, phenomenal, sensational, superb, terrific weekend. I mean it. I was at the race and the experience is once for life time. I am now part of history. I was in the Pit Grandstand and being first to watch the start and end of the first ever F1 night race. Haha .. anyways I will be updating my three day experience in my travel & photo blog.

Respite from Activities

This weekend for the first time I didn't have any plans. My roomies wanted to go out but I wanted to use this for rejuvenating my energy for the next weeks work. The only activity for this weekend was to watch "Journey to the Center of the Earth and Bachna Hai Haseeno" movies and some archery stuff.

London se Aayi mera Dost

Last week was full of fun. I met my friend whom I didnt see for the past 4 years. She came to Singapore last week to meet her brother. She and her sister both were here for about a week. I could spend almost 3 days with them. I met her on 8th July while they were leaving on 11th July. At the very first sight of her I felt very happy as I was seeing her after such a long time.


Tuesday, I went to office and took ML to meet her. I went to her place at around 12.30 in the afternoon. I also met her brother and sister. Her sister had a cute little 2 month old kid who was so sweet and cute. By the time I went there they werent ready so I waited for a while had lunch and then we went to Orchard Road for shopping at Takashi Maya.





Gayatri did lot of shopping. Even though her brother was against this she some how managed to spend so much money on this shopping. In the night we went to Little India to have dinner. Her brother Ravi gave a small party which also included his friends. We had dinner at Fifth Season restaurant. From here Ravi asked me to come home for over night and can go to office directly in the morning. Gayatri was ready to stay awake so that we can chit chat for sometime. Ravi and Radha (Gayatri's Sister) slept by 1AM. Me and Gayatri sat till morning and spoke about the happenings in our respective lives. We spoke till morning 4.30 and then I came back home as I had office.


Wednesday, I once again left office by 4PM. They came to Suntec City. So I went to meet them there. They wanted to go around Raffles Place. We walked through the Suntec City food court, Also saw the Fountain. In Suntec Gayatri once again did some shopping at Levis. We walked further and I showed them my office and the city link mall. We walked further to Esplanade and the Indian war memorial structure. Finally we stopped at the Merlion. We took many pics throughout the way. From Merlion around 8PM we went to Little India again to have dinner at Saravana Bhavan restaurant. We had our dinner and dispersed to our respective houses.


Thursday, Yet another quick jumo from office. Left office at around 4PM to go to China Town to meet my friend. They were already there. I met them at the pagoda. They did some shopping. Had some Thailand coconut water. From there we went to Perumal temple in Little India. This was my first time to Perumal Temple. It was very nice. We then went to Mustafa to do some more shopping and had dinner at Raj Restaurant. After dinner Ravi asked me to stay back at their place as I would anyways come to airport the next day. So I once again went to stay over night at her place. As she was going the next morning, I helped her in her packing. We sat and chit chatted for some more time. By the time we realised time was 6 in the morning and we started off to airport. We had a very nice time together for 3 days. Even her family members were very nice to me. Finally it was time to say good bye.

Cheers

Yet another wonderful weekend. We had a great time this weekend which involved many activities. The Fun started on Friday. Friday night I, Srinivas, Nagaraj, Vidyadhar and Ganesh went to Dance bar. We met at the Orchard MRT and from there we went to the Orchard tower for the dance bar. We had a great time as there was a Live Rock show going on who played some real good music. Even though they were local folks they played it very well. From there at around 2.00 in the night we went to Clarke Quay for disco. We were supposed to go to Rupee Room for disco. But as Ganesh was running out of time we just went to Shiraz, had a Chicken roll and started back home at around 3. We slept at around 4 in the morning and we were supposed go to movie on Saturday.

Ganesh @ Dance Bar

Saturday morning at around 1030 we woke up and got ready for the lunch. First we went to the Golden Village Cinema and took the tickets for Hell Boy II for the 4.30PM show. We had lunch at a north indian food court and started off in a bus for SAFRA. We went to Orchid Bowl at Tampines SAFRA. We did enjoyed bowling for around an hour.

Final Scorecard @ Orchid Bowl

After bowling we went back to theater to watch the movie. I, Mahesh, Nagaraj, Srinivas and Vidyadhar came for the movie. Other than me everybody else liked the movie. After the movie we just sat at the shopping mall discussing as what next. We decided to get some beer at home and enjoy watching some movie.

We went to Fair Price to get some beer. Also took some eggs, carrots, cucumber, ground nuts etc to have them as the side dishes. While coming back home we took Biryani for the dinner. At home Srinivas and Mahesh prepared all the side dishes stuff required.

Heineken Ad

Srini & Mahesh

We started having fun at around 9.30 and we were awake till night 2.30. We discussed many issues. Some things were professional somethings were personal and so on.

Before the start

Cheers Time

After

At around 3 we hit the bed and Sunday was just for relaxing. I thought I had great fun this weekend so just wanted to share this with everybody :).

Hectic Weekends

When I came to Singapore and for the past 7 months I was getting bored about the weekends as there was nothing much to do. Finally since I have been to India my weekends are so wonderful and busy that I dont really get time to sit near my system. The 2 weeks after I came from India I went to Vietnam. 2 weeks after my Vietnam trip, this weekend I am going to Phuket. 2 weeks after my Phuket trip I am planning to go to Kaulalampur. In between I may also go to Bangkok which is yet to be decided on the dates. Its really nice to travel so much. I am having a wonderful time for the past 1 month. Hope this continues.