When I travelled on a historic route - TTTT 23

Last month I traveled from Amritsar to Delhi by Golden Temple mail. The train starts from Amritsar and goes all the way to Bombay.

So if you are wondering, whats so historic about this route, well, let me try to convince you!

- Before winding up our day at Amritsar, we went to Wagah border, Attari village. Lahore from there is just 23 kilometers. (from the India Border).

- Before partition, I am guessing the train line which starts from Amritsar would have ended at Lahore.

- I remember reading about Sadat Hassan Manto, traveling all the way from Pakistan to Bombay by train!

- I also have read, Mahatma Gandhi doing an all India travel by train where he mentions crossing over to Lahore by train,

So, coming from Wagah border and travelling from Amritsar in a train going to Mumbai via Delhi, dont you think, I just traveled by a historic forgotten route!

Yeah, I do not get to cross the border! But ain't my imagination weird and correct?

Cheers,

When a journey from Spiti Valley to Manali took 18 hours during the day - TTTT 22

Yes please, during our last trip to Himachal Pradesh, we had 2 days where we traveled during the day (that too 12+ hours)! Previous post indicated one, now its time to write about another such long day.

We had completed our 10 day trek in 8 days, by not taking a rest day plus covering 2 days distance in 1 day (27 kilometers). So we got two spare days and we made most of it!

This day, we started at 6 AM in the morning from Mudh Village in Spiti, again by a local bus We took 4 hours to reach Kaza too which is in Spiti. After around 1 hour for breakfast, we could rent a vehicle which would take us to Manali for about 9.5K.

So we started from Kaza and we had travelled around 47 Kilometers, our tyre went flat. The driver changed the tyre and within few meters the spare tyre burst out!

We were stranded in Spiti Desert for almost 3 hours with zero support. As there was no vehicle which to take us. Very few vehicles plied on that road leaving us with no option but to wait on the road!

Finally after 3 hours, we could manage a spare vehicle from Spiti itself, a 10 seater TT and we resumed our journey around 3 pm. Reached Kunzum Mata temple and Kunzum pass around 5 30 PM and Rohtang pass around 11 PM.

Made it to Manali and then Naggar around 12 in the night. So there it goes 18 hours of travel. Some pictures from Spiit Valley are below!

When a journey from Himachal Pradesh to Punjab took 12 hours during the day - TTTT 21

It was one awesome journey from Manali all the way to Amritsar. Yes it took 12 hours by road. And it was done all during the day! It was fun, but it did take away one precious day, which we could have explored Himachal Pradesh, never mind, we got to see Punjab as well!

Day started at 7 am when we got ready and packed our belongings from our homestay in Naggar / Himachal Pradesh. We managed to catch a local bus heading towards Kullu and from there we hoped we could get a direct bus to Chandigarh.

Kullu to Chandigarh shows 270 kilometers by road, so it would be close to 7-8 hours. We were hoping to hop on Volvo as going by ordinary bus in the hills would be much slower. Boy we managed to reach Kullu around 10 15 AM and then there was a Volvo bus heading to Chandigarh around 10 45 AM, booked the tickets.

The bus started on time and made all the way through the hills with loads of curves with pretty good speed. Only thing was, there were sharp turns to an extent where many people started throwing up. We managed to stop for lunch around 2 PM and then finally got down at Ropad/RoopNagar Punjab at around 4 15PM.

The main road where we got down and the bus stand of  Ropad are atleast 3-4 kilometers far. We managed to check out the Ropad Railway station hoping to catch a train which would make our journey quicker. But the only train to Amritsar was in the morning and we were left with no option but to go by bus and we walked all the way to the bus stand.

I was already feeling the heat. I was sweating badly and then we had to walk too with the luggage, boy it was tough, finally made in time to Ropad bus stand where we got a bus to Amritsar, All this was at 6 PM.

Distance between Ropad and Amritsar is around 190 Kilometers. I wondered if we could make it before midnight. We reached Jalandhar around 8 15 PM and the bus broke down leaking diesel fuel. We were put on a replacement bus and finally reached Amritsar around 11 PM.

What a day it had been. Luckily there were plenty of lodges around the bus stand and then got a room and finished dinner at around 11 40 in the night and slept off. Thoroughly entertaining day, considering we hopped on multiple buses, walked by foot, went to a railway station too!

Cheers,

When I travelled by foot/road/air/rail/water on a trip - TTTT 20

One such trip / travel I remember in my memory where in I traveled by foot/road/rail/water/air.

When I had been to Sikkim on a trek, I did travel by all the means mentioned above.

1. Travel by foot
    - The Himalayan trek
    - In Yuksom
    - In Gangtok/Kolkota and almost everywhere we did walk.
2. Travel by road.
    - NJP /Siliguri to Yuksom
    - Gangtok to Namchi/Pelling/Ravangla and finally NJP.
    - Yuksom to Gangtok
    - Gangtok to Changu Lake
3. Travel by rail
    - Sealdah / Kolkota to NJP/Siliguri.
    - NJP/Siliguri to Dakshineshwar / Kolkota.
4. Travel by air
    - Bangalore to Kolkota and back.
5. Travel by water.
    - Boat ride across Hoogly river / Dakshineshwar.

Ain't that fantastic, what memories!

Cheers,

When I refused to eat an apricot and wild strawberry on a trek - TTTT 19

This time during our Himalayan trek we had few interesting encounters, yes with flora and fauna of course. During the first day, we ended up having encountered numerous apricot trees.

Couple of my friends ate apricot. But I did not eat them. They are generally fresh and boy they were fresh. There were couple of reasons why I did not try them.

- All my focus was on completing the trek. I did not want to eat apricot and end up with upset stomach or something else.
- This fear took the better of me, and did not allow me to eat.

I do not have any such regrets, that I did not try. I completed the trek without having any stomach related illness, but was regularly teased throughout the trek for being over cautious.

Did I mind, nope, I wanted to finish the trek, and that's it.

On Day 3 we encountered wild strawberries, did I eat them, well, no infact!

Cheers,

Lonesome days

July 2016, I had been on my 4th Himalayan trek, and boy o boy it was fun. It was difficult, it was different. But then, now its done, I got many such sweet memories, which I am waiting to write down, but unable to do so due to time shortage, other commitments, no mood to write, lazy etc.

I traveled by foot, air, by road, by rail, ahh man, travel by sea was one thing missing! Ahh, I can post one more entry when I did all the above on a trip,

Its almost 3 weeks since I have come back from Himachal and I have been as lazy as I can, unable to train, having some dust allergy which kinda of ends up with me having a blocked nose repeatedly. Luckily I guess I am through with the allergy.

Busy with work and traffic in Bangalore makes me go nowhere. Trying hard to get back to writing something atleast hoping it would inspire me to write some more.

I haven't yet taken off the pictures from my trek/trip out of the camera. High time I do it. There goes the extent of my laziness.

Let me make a comeback of sorts into this materialistic world of ours. Here it goes!

Cheers,

Break from blogging

Well, I had taken a break from blogging. Too much of work coupled with leave and personal milestones, had taken a toll on me, and I preferred to stay quiet rather. Hence no posts.

Firstly, completed my 4th Himalayan trek (July 18-26). This too was in Himachal. Then traveled through Spiti valley, Kunzum pass, Rohtang pass. Then on towards Jalandhar, Amritsar then Delhi and Gurgaon and now Bangalore.

All in all 15 days of travel, 10 days of planned trek which we completed in 8 days. Loads of stories to tell.

Personally, I felt best because, I had not trekked in the last 3 months, I fell sick with some stomach infection after drinking water from the forest somewhere in April and people had advised me not to venture into tough treks.

I had 1.5 months to train back and get ready for the trek. The Himalayan trek was called on a short notice period and we had only 2 participants from Bangalore. It was like icing on the cake, lesser crowd means better synchronization altogether.

It was tough on my parents, because they were always worried about the rainy conditions plus landslides and the thoughts of Himalayas melting.

Somehow, made it through, completed the trek and now feeling quite better posting this update on blog after coming back home yesterday!

Cheers,

When I was sweating like a ... in Amritsar - TTTT 18

This was one such incident I would like to forget. I was in Amritsar recently, and I just experienced some heat. The day began with visit to Golden temple. I had kept most of my luggage in the baggage counter and in the process forgot to carry my bandanna and cap into the temple.

Then, after completing the temple visit and having lunch at the langhar, it was decided to keep the baggage at the counter and visit Jallian Wala Bagh and then Wagah/Attari border.

As we proceeded out of Golden temple, what hit me was the heat. I was sweating, sweating as if there is no tomorrow. It did not end. All along the way to Attari Border I was sweating, even while I entered the stadium there for the parade, I was sweating. The parade got over and again I was sweating. Believe me, it was a tough and embarrassing day.

I have learnt my lesson, hence forth, I shall keep a bandanna and cap handy everywhere I go.

Cheers,

When many people in the bus vomited / threw up, while travelling - TTTT 17

What a strange post to make a sort of comeback. I have to write this before I actually forget!

While travelling from Kullu to Chandigarh in the Himsutta AC volvo, during the day, (10 45 AM start), I noticed, throughout the journey many people started to throw up.

The reason being it was hills hills and more hills. Turns climb then again turns and climb. What else you expect people to do, who just had completed their morning heavy breakfast and waiting to munch on lunch!

I'm not exaggerating but the people sitting towards the rear end of the bus were all kind of feeling sick. Your's truly, well, I did sit at the rear end of the bus, did have breakfast, but somehow managed to calm myself not to throw up.

how could I have observed this if I was sitting up front and would I be even writing this, if I was one of them, who threw up! (no points for guessing I did not throw up!)

Meaning I did not throw up. Once the bus crosses Swarghat (HP) and entered Punjab, there you go, you find flat roads and you are out of the hills!

Cheers,

PS - You can avail the hill sickness bag if you wish to throw up, and all the windows are sealed, so.. 

When half the trip team comprised of INTROVERTS - TTTT 16

One such epic trip it was. I do not want to disclose where I went to during this trip, nor I want to disclose who all were there.

So all in all there were like 10 people and out of which I figured out 5 people were introverted.

Apparently during the trip, I could not figure out who's who. But now after so much time is through, I did realize half the team was actually introverted.

Now ain't that a beautiful coincidence.

Do we end up finding so many such people in one go, I don't atleast not on many occasions. And one such occasion was this!

Cheers

When the city of Kolkota charmed us, in a unique way - TTTT 15

Its been almost a year and half since I went to Kolkota. I was travelling to North East, Sikkim to be precise and there you go, I had to go through Kolkota/NJP and then cross over to Sikkim.

So both while going to and coming back from Sikkim we were like in transit through Kolkota leaving us with less time each time.

Kolkota has its own share of beautiful things to offer, like the street food, the metro, historical buildings and much more. So while coming back to Bangalore from Sikkim, we again made our way to Kolkota and this time, our team member chose to alight at Dakshineshwar railway station.

 I really do not know why we chose to visit the Dakshineshwar temple and visit Belur Math, considering we had only till afternoon, after which we had to board our flight to Bangalore!

It was indeed fun, the temple visit, the jetty ride, seeing the place once occupied by Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, the big statue of Swami Vivekanand. It took us right down the memory lane reminding us of what has been Kolkota's contribution to the Indian Freedom struggle.

So many awesome people came from the same land where we stood, it felt good, it felt sentimental, and we had nothing but loads of respect. So many greats not only with respect to freedom, with respect to intellects like Sri Rabindranath Tagore and self awakened men like Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Swami Vivekanand, Sri Ishwar Chandra Vidya Sagar, had once moved on the same piece of land where we actually stood.

It felt so good. The dust which blew over us, once did too on these great men. The jetty ride across Hoogly river, the Belur Mutt, though it was closed, was so much awesome.

Then finally the Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose airport, the same airport, where once, the Great Netaji had moved along, stepped onto, just reminded us of Bengal and its contributions to the great Indian freedom struggle. Much can never be said, but one has to experience the air which moves around this great land, the dust which just blows over in order to get a taste of how it feels like to be a part of this great city and state.

So it was not the street food which charmed us, but the history which indeed did. And I do have loads of respect for this great state and city, its people, without which our freedom movement wouldn't be the same and literary contribution too, wouldn't be the same!

Cheers.

When a stranger called us his children in Uttarakhand - TTTT 14

This tale is almost an year old, when in 2015, we had a trek in Uttarakhand. We had completed our Auden's Col trek and had traveled to a hill station called Kaddukal. This place is famous for Sarkunda Devi temple which is at a height of 9500m. Going to the temple is a good 25 minutes uphill walk.

Apart from the temple there were few houses which we mostly into the hill. There was a guest house where we had taken accomdation. Along with it, we had a solo hotel where we had our breakfast/lunch/dinner evening tea whatever.

This place seemed to be crowded during the day and over the evening it was tad empty. None whatsoever. Though the temple seemed to be open 24 hours on the occasion of a festival.

So we got introduced to this owner of this hotel. Since we were staying in this hill station for 3 days, we pretty much got pretty comfortable with the owner of this hotel.

And on the second day, we had come out to have dinner and the owner of this hotel a man in his 60's I guess, was there having his evening drink with his friend. So when we wished the owner of hotel, his friend curiously asked him who are these people.

To which the owner replied - "Yeh log hamare bete jaise hi hein.. Bangalore se aayein hein.. ".

It was indeed a surprising sweet gesture. By the way the above statement translated to - "These people are like my sons, they have come all the way from Bangalore.."

India is a very nice place, you end up getting connected, all out of nowhere!

Cheers,

When we ended the beach trek with a swim in the waters - TTTT 13

The best part of a beach trek is that, we get to take a dip in water whenever we would like to. But most of the time, people are busy walking so taking a dip in water all alone is not entertained.

But we generally do not miss out on a dip in water once the trek is through. This time too, we abandoned the trek around 5pm along Haldipur beach. So we boarded the vehicle and then moved ahead to some unknown beach before Apsarakonda and then took a dip in water.

Evening tides were pretty high and it was fun. Less crowd and entire stretch of beach all for ourselves. What more we can expect?

A pleasant end to the day and the trek. We then proceeded towards a hotel in Kumta for dinner and then by 10 pm we were ready to depart towards Bangalore. Another attempt in travelling to coastal Karnataka had been a success!

Cheers,

a pic from the beach!

When we cooked an awesome dinner on a trek.- TTTT 12

Beach trek is one of my favorite treks, the reason being, its relaxing. There is no need to hurry it up. There is no train to catch, no time restrictions to complete, come out, which usually happens when inside a forest. Plus anytime we get bored, we just end up saying quit since the road runs parallel to the beach!

So this time, on our trek from Gokarna to Honnavara, we decided to stop at Holanagadde Sri Ramanjaneya temple. The best part of this stop over is that, the temple is capable of accomodating many people. There is place to cook and a place to get refreshed. So before starting the trek, we had requested our van to come over to the temple premises.

With many people on board this trek, you can imagine a good fair amount of ration was in store.

We had many such vegetables alongside fair share of rice too. Evening menu was Bisi Bele Bath and sweet payasam. We had expert cooks on this trip and believe me, this dinner turned out exquisite. With all the dry fruits and clarified butter (ghee) it was second to none. Ate till stomach was full and then slept in the temple premises.

But the way preparation went it was just pretty awesome and we sat in a line and took turns to finish cleaning. And your's truly that is me was responsible for washing and cleaning the cauldron and few other utensils. By the time, I finished cleaning many other people had settled themselves up for a good long night's sleep.

And by the way, I have not mentioned how many people were there as a part of this trek group. Well the number of people we cooked food was 30. Yes, 28 team members of the trek and 2 including driver and cleaner. You can now imagine how many vegetables dry fruits and ghee has been consumed!

Cheers, one more such tale! and who would have imagined we would end up cooking and eating such an awesome dinner, something to cherish for a lifetime!

Cheers,

When I lost my way in a trek.- TTTT 11

One of my all time favorite treks is none other than the beach trek. No matter how many times, I do a beach trek, I shamelessly end up registering for another. This time was no common.

We were on the Honnavara to Gokarna stretch. I covered this stretch. But around this time, it was Gokarna to Honnavara, yup exactly reverse the stretch covered previously.

We were supposed to camp at Holanagadde beach, rather, camp at Sri Ramanjaneya Temple Hollanagadde. So on this first day, we had to cover from Gokarna Om beach to Holanagadde.

And in between we do encounter a stretch which needs to be crossed on a ferry since there is an absence of land to walk on!

And its over here your's truly lost his way. The tadadi port ferry line starts at the entrance of the village and it is a deviation from the main road.

Since I was coming alone jay walking, I did not find the deviation and instead ended up right in the village following the main road.

As I leapt ahead I could not find others and kind of freaked out. Few people who had seen me go this way, had followed me. And now, I was amidst the village.

Along the main road in the village, I could locate an area where the fishing boats were parked or a harbor kind of thing. These were actually commercial fishing boats. They brought fish from the sea to be transported by trucks. So I ended up amidst a bunch of fishermen, who were taking a break after hard work.

I enquired where was the ferry to Aghanashini available at and they pointed to me a location almost 400 m from where I was standing. They in turn asked me my where abouts, where I was from and what was I doing in the fishing yard.  I told them and proceeded to locate my trek mates.

There you go, when I reached the boatmen was shouting because the boat was getting delayed by us and believe me this was the last boat for the hour, next boat would be only after 1 hour or else we had to charter a boat for ourselves which would rather be expensive.

So I got in and there you go, full team was on the boat and we crossed river Aghanashani!
One more interesting encounter.

Cheers,

When we started cooking dinner at night 11 30 (PM) - TTTT 10

There are days when we travel to far places to trek. So travel time itself is huge! It was one such occasion. Reaching Honnavara from Bangalore was the plan.

Late start from Bangalore and there you go, reaching Honnavara was a big ask. It was nothing short of 500 kilometers. And then, we went through Sirsi and there you go, one more pitstop a temple visit and all that.

So it was 12 in the afternoon when we finally made it to our trek start point. We started in the summer heat with temperature around 38 degrees and high humidity.

After two hours we reached our camping place, base camp. We had our lunch, the problem is the water falls was a good 6-7 kilometers away and it was all rocky path.

So we started around 3pm towards the water fall and boy we made it around 6pm, when it was about to turn dark. Soon we took turns to visit the waterfalls bathed in waterfalls and in another 45 mins we were about to start.

It was turning dark and it was full moon day, We were up against a dark dark night amidst forest all for ourselves. Navigating with torch lights, sure it was fun. But we reached back to our base camp at around 11 PM. Once we made sure our tarpaulins were all laid out we soon embarked on the journey of cooking.

And there you go, cooking at 11:30 PM in the night. Above that, your's truly that is me was trying desperately breaking a big tree trunk with a blunt machete.

It was fun, doing all those crazy antics in the middle of the night. Once dinner was ready at 12 AM, we ate, it was rice with puliyogre mix.

So there goes the after effects of starting a trek late and ending it even late!

Cheers,

Motivation for writing about cab/shuttle drivers and about tales from travel

I have been writing about cab drivers and tales from travel, wonder what motivated me to write about it. I am not sure, I have really opened up about that, if not, I guess time is ripe to let it out before I forget and it takes months together.

Reasons include -

• Increasing number of posts.
• Getting the number up with burst of short posts which take lesser effort than long story telling, well, that is my motto.
• Interesting encounters
• There are tonnes of interesting encounters which I had in the last couple of years owing to travel, writing would end up in a book for that matter.
• Getting to know myself
• Writing opens up more info about oneself than anything else. 
• Experienced hands.
• Meeting different people, not only gets their culture going, but also lets out their experience speak. People who are driving vehicles for large part of a decade, the problems they have encountered, what makes them click, its all part of learning curve.
• To write about uncommon things
• Who could have imagined, writing about travel/tale experiences would lead to recollecting and reminiscing so many funny and awesome incidents.
• Its not everyday that I tend to notice intricacies involved in other activities, like travelling.
• Sometimes, we are so much head over heels about our jobs or profession that, we fail to notice, other people too, what value add they bring to our ecosystem. Like the guide for our treks, porters, helpers, these people come in handy when it requires the most.
• I think, meeting them, interacting with them, opens up a whole new box of knowledge which ceases to exist within books.
• Experience is a great teacher and believe me, their experience just shows.
• Reading books and gaining a degree is one side, braving a real storm is another!
• Met drivers who were themselves ace mechanics.
• Met drivers who drove from Bangalore to Bihar/Assam/Kolkota on trucks/car/pickup.
• To add later

As of now can recollect these points, but sure shall add more,

Cheers,

Shuttle driver #15 - A driver who previously drove a truck, 10 wheeler

As I try to do multiple tasks at the minute, I recollect having a wonderful shuttle driver recently. Once in a while we do have shuttle drivers who have driven exceptional vehicles. From an ambulance to a, soda bottle carrying 6 wheeler, and now a proper 10 wheeled truck.

So, this driver, was a temporary one, probably for an evening's drop. He was around 5 ft and looking very slim. He started out with the vehicle in a very rough way. I mean it crossed potholes rather hurriedly. I was quick to assume that the driver had poor visibility and thought he was in a haste.

Then, since the vehicle as pretty new, we asked the driver about its ownership details. He told us it was his own self vehicle, and a week old, thats it. So we asked him what was he driving before and what made him buy a new vehicle.

Considering, he was so slightly built, I some how got a feeling, he was probably driving a 6 wheeler, but the real surprise came when he said, he owned a 10 wheeler Leyland truck on partnership with one more person and had run into loss. His family feared accidents would happen while driving a truck and hence scaled him down to a Tata Indica.

Its not very often we get a driver who responds to our question and has previously driven a truck. So the conversation began with a small hint that the driver was eating betel nut and gutka / zarda whatever. It somehow turns out people from North Karnataka eat pan masala gutkha while drivers from South Karnataka smoke cigarettes. The pattern is consisent.

Over here too, it matched, the driver was from Raichur and had been in Bangalore for over 15 years. For the good part of 6 years, he had owned and driven a truck and prior to that, he had joined as helper for a MAN Truck. I wonder, MAN Truck existed in India 6 years back? Need to check on that.

So we asked where all he had been his truck and about his bad experiences while visiting other places. He had been to Bihar, Assam from Karnataka and had carried loads of potatoes, onions, groundnuts and few other things for that matter.

Regarding bad experiences, he told he was robbed of his stepney in Mumbai once and nothing else. He also insisted he carried less money and had only a ATM card with money, so he felt very secure.

We also spoke about Tata trucks versus Leyland trucks. I was under the impression Leyland was in huge demand and performed better. But he corrected me saying, Tata trucks were better off pulling heavy loads when compared to Leyland. I'm sure its individual perception, but still, TATA has a loyal customer in him, even though he owned a Leyland truck.

There goes one more driver intro, almost 5 months have passed since I have written about the driver series, the reason being we had consistent Toyota Innova cab till March.

Cheers,

PS - Now back to some reading!

A driver who gave sweets/chocolates for his birthday - TTTT 9

I would like to key in this post, before I forget this incident. It happened so, on one of our trek/travel, we found a very jovial driver. He was very much casual, and friendly.

So once the trek was over, we were about to return to Bangalore and the driver proudly announced, it was his birthday. He was organizing a liquor party and cake cutting with friends once he reached Bangalore. But before that the most unexpected thing happened.

Well, he purchased sweets and chocolates and distributed them amongst us travellers, me my friends. I mean, what more can you expect, even after many years of travelling, this was the first one of a kind incident.

Cheers,

Last 2 weeks at office

Last two weeks at office have been pretty rough. It all started with me losing 20% of my bonus. It came as a rude shock as quite a bit of money was in jeopardy.

I really did not know what to do, the amount was yet to be given to me on paper. I had seen on the basis of amount given as a part of salary.

Nothing was going well this season. Temperatures around was horrible, travel this month was almost impossible. Working out during summer and following a diet has been thrown off gear. Loads of reasons to crib about. And on top of this, I get nothing in the form of bonus.

I could be quiet and quite satisfied with the outcome, had I not performed. In fact the non performing team members had gotten more bonus amount than me. I literally lost my sleep. I felt like beating the living hell out of everyone out there.

Well, I can say non performing, the reason being, I was continuously working on production issues, end user support, talking to onsite people, local QA, onsite QA, doing screen sharing with onsite QA for issue replication, giving builds/fixes for production issues, doing hell a lot of work and there you go, whilst the others, yup, I bet, did lesser than this, though they were working on development issues. I do development work but highly occupied into production sustaining work since last 3 months plus atleast.

Yep, development work gets far more time and no one to return back to until QA passes it. Production work has the management standing on you, asking updates from you and the questions of timeline. Its like asking for trouble.

And then the inevitable happened. Lack of exercise due to summer was taking a toll on me. And then the stress levels were increasing too. On top of that, was continuously being pin pointed to in the meetings for being quiet and not participating.

So finally, I had to really stretch some muscle and tell people who's who in the team.

When I was finally called for discussion regarding performance bonus, with our Sr Director, I told, let me bring my laptop. Though my director insisted on not having my laptop for meeting, I still carried it over there.

And boy, did I make a big dent over there. I made clear what work I had done, and I even pointed to what work others had done and I unleashed hell a lot of uncomfortable questions which our's truly director gave answers, which according to my standards, were nothing short of unsatisfactory.

I even showed exact statistics of how people were misusing official time, going for food courts, how when I was on leave, people were so apathetic that, they could not do even a screen share with onsite team. Just shows, whose got real guts after all to deal with US/Europe teams. (Well, one is me of course, now I can say that proudly!)

Finally the tide turned to my side, and the meeting ended abruptly, when two people interrupted us, since our director had other meetings too.

Before leaving, he told, meeting is not fully done and held back the bonus letter, not before folding the paper exactly in half.

So there you go, its almost a week to that incident, and I anxiously wait for my new bonus letter which should have turned up with a 100% number. (though I was targeting 120%).

And my biggest achievement was not losing temper. If I generally lose temper, I do not care who is around. So this time, I kept quite and directed all my difficult to answer questions to our director.

Next installment of our meeting, well, few more statistics and few more uncomfortable questions, and I guess, more embarrassment not for me though!.

Cheers,