Morning Star,Tequila Sunset

Friday - 26th May 2006

I had lunch and a round of discussion with Mr. S. Mahalingam - Chief Financial Officer and Head, Global Finance and Mr. A. S. Lakshminarayanan - VP and country manager, United Kingdom and Ireland ; with Ester - HR Manager and 3 other Star of the Year awardees.....

[L-R] - Dharmesh, S.Mahalingam, Priya, Ester, Sethu Lakshmanan, A.S. Lakshminarayanan, Chennakeshav Adya (a.k.a. AdyaMan), Avinash Kulkarni






A bit of a flashback for the benefit of the audience....

This snap was taken by Subbu on March 18th 2006; in the London School of Economics; where we had a Open House; attended by a few hundred associates. Couldnt believe it, when Adyaman was awarded the "Star of the Year 2006" award by Mr. LakshmiNarayanan - Country Manager UK & Ireland!

The last couple of years that I have spent here, have certainly been the best years of my life, where I have realised a lot of my dreams and this certainly was the best one of them all!

Coming back to the present....



Ah! Yes.... Then, later in the day, had a discussion with Dinanath Kholkar- the Pune GDC head, Aditya Desai and Pravin Brijwani.... till around 10PM!

We decided to meet again .... Saturday morning at 8.30AM and goto Greenwich.

TEQUILA Sunset
After the customary see-off to the hotel for Dina that evening; there was a change of heart, when AdyaMan challenged the others for a round of drinks. This turned into a competition with Aditya and AdyaMan downing shot after shot of tequillas.... with Pravin playing the role of cheerleader.... This finally cluminated at midnight, after some 10 shots each(the bar ran out of tequilla and time).... we caught the Jubilee back home.

Some day that!!!!

27th Wedding Anniversary

"Wedding Anniversary"

(n) : the anniversary of the day on which you were married (or the celebration of it)
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn


My parents were married on May 10, 1979 .... and today is their 27th wedding anniversary. Twenty! Seven! Years..... together! I cannot get to think how they managed it.

I marvel at my parents' colourful and loud "old school" marriage, their complex canvas of undying committment, and how our modern-age relationships pale in comparison ~ this culture and age where our relationships, like our technology, become outdated as soon as they are released, and an update or upgrade is always a mouse-click away, or so it seems.

Our generation?

Well.... We know only how to frantically hack away complex code , but we can't figure out the simple hard-wiring behind our own emotions. Ummm.... well.... most of us(including me) can't even make it through college without breaking up ~~ we're all too quick to hit the CTRL+ATL+DEL keys in our relationships and "irreconciliable differences" is the modern catch-all phrase for "this is just too hard."

They make marriage look so flawless, but if you ask them they'll tell you that it takes a lot of work to have a marriage as happy as theirs and that the work NEVER stops!

I am proud of you ....
Congratulations, Mom and Dad.

We love you guys a lot.
Keshav and Hari ( AdyaMen!)

Proud to be a Chelsea Scum

Chelsea thump Manchester United to retain title

Chelsea - 3 Manchester United - 0

Chelsea are named "Most-Despised Regime" in professional soccer!!Another crushing blow was dealt to the fragile psyche of Manchester United last night when the Chelsea team ruthlessly scored more goals than the Man U blokes.

Eye-witness accounts from stunned Man U fans tell of deliberately-inflated expectations being shattered entirely at the last minute. Some expressed dismay and an inability to cope with current events without the psychological crutch of a world championship soccer team.

The Man U Manager immediately held an emergency strategy session at the surprise conclusion of the game. Shortly thereafter, his staff released this statement: "People of the world, please understand that we, the Insidious Overlords of Soccer, are not without compassion. We listened to your pleas and the game was supposed to be fixed -- Man U should have won. The renegade actions of the Chelsea team are in no way endorsed by FIFA and they should now be considered to be acting as a rogue franchise."

Following the Chelsea win, the British premier Tony Blair announced in a press conference this morning that "this outrageous act of international terrorism" would not go unanswered, and that he is fully prepared to launch air-strikes and perhaps even commit ground-troops to topple the terrorist-team of Chelsea if they do not immediately turn over and let the other teams win. "We have already assembled a coalition force of U.S. Army Rangers.

If our demands are not met within three days, we will unleash these forces to ferret out the responsible parties and repeatedly body-check them. Then we shall imprison them indefinitely under the terms of the PATRIOT legislation.

Mwah ha ha ha ha! Mwah ha ha! Ha!"

Super Chelsea
And it's super Chelsea
Super Chelsea F.C.
We're by far the greatest team...
the world has ever seen(repeat)

Chelsea, Chelsea, Chelsea, Chelsea, Chelsea (repeat)

Morgan Stanley's 9th annual 5-a-side football tournament

Morgan Stanley's 9th annual 5-a-side football tournament kicked off under cloudy skies and chilly wind and.... the SAFE a.k.a. Settlements team went all the way to the semi-finals and ended THIRD !!

Yes!! a mighty fine display.

And doubly sweet considering the lack of substitute players. Without a doubt, the SAFE-five were the most outstanding underdogs in the tournament. We had the intensity of a kicked beehive. (kicked beehive--that's actually a John Smith phrase. He wrote it years ago. I steal it every time I write something.)

Our star player??James "Striker" Spicer a.k.a. James.... He was so outstanding in the tournament; that you could not work out what position he played in, due to his dominance and moments of sheer brilliance at every corner of the pitch. And I mean that literally.... he took the strikes, played the role of goalie, set up goals for the strikers, defended and got his just rewards. Smashed 8 goals!! Must be a front-runner for the golden-boot award, I reckon.

The strike trio of Andy(4 goals), Dave(3 goals) and Grant(4 goals) were very consistent and showed glimpses of class all the way through. I (a.k.a. AdyaMan) too joined the party and scored 3 of 'em goals!! Andy had 2 brilliant free kicks to his credit, that showed the excellent form he was in. Dave was in his brilliant best!! And some of the goalies stood there flabbergasted, as Grant's powerful free-kicks ended up in the net.

Under the kind of intense pressure were in, especially the constant nagging of the audience and the rough opposition(s), other people would have thrown the game. Well, perhaps "throw" is too strong a word, but I certainly pulled my punches. The main area where we felt we fell short -- on the Achilles’ heel -- was goalkeeping; the goalkeepers kept changing every half (and almost cost us the game when I was keeping ;-)).

We were up against Equity CSG in the first game (we lost badly, 6-2) .... then went on to hammer Quantum IT 7-2 and IBD APG (I guess) 4-1!! And surprise of surprises, we pitted against Equity CSG again in the Quarter-Finals .... they were grinning ear-to-ear when we stepped in the arena .... expecting an easy win .... but we ended up beating them 5-1, thanks to some excellent strikes by Andy and Grant!!

The semi-final was a tough one -- the EC Dev team had some real good players and truckloads of substitutes.... who kept pouring in, every alternate minute. At one point in time, I was racking my brains trying to figure out where that tall skinny guy disappeared.... and lo behold! I find him chuggin' towards me at full-throttle from the subs area. We lost the semis 3-2.

We then; after a few pints of lager; parted ways to have some good sound sleep at around midnight. I reckon we successfully "settled" this "mission" "safe"ly, using all the tricks of the "trade" and showed world how we can rise to a challenge, and do more than just frantically hacking away code!

Thanks to everybody for an incredibly fun evening.

The Universe is again nagging me back to work. I better get right on that.
3 cheers to the SAFE team!!

Godspeed,
AdyaMan