Awesome weekend

What happened??? Beer happened!!

Foundation Day Celebrations - The award, the songs and the booze

Well..it happened a week ago. I was too lazy to write about it then. The Foundation Day celebration is one of the major events in my office. Its a day of boring presentations, awards, cultural events and the most important part - a booze-filled evening. Its fun. We dont have to work the whole day since we leave the premises at 1:00 pm .. and the time before that we discuss what would our drinking strategy be. This is important because the bar opens at 7:40 and closes at 10:00 (sometimes before if ppl get out of control). Hence, me and my friends decide on how to go about it to make the most of it. As Sumit puts it...increase our CTC. The day began with me getting late to the office since I had to come on my own. I took the metro for the first time to Noida...and damn it was really crowded. There was some space left by the time we reached Sec. 16..but before that, it was jam packed. I met up with Viral and Rajesh at Sec. 18 and we took an auto to the office from there. The office was in a festive mood..not many ppl were glued to their seats working on the machines like usual. We had an elongated coffee time and soon it was time for me to leave for the venue since I was performing with my band Segfault. Segfault is basically just me and Alesh and bunch of volunteer singers. Come to think of it, its just the volunteer singers with me and Alesh playing for them. The set list consisted of the folksy song "Country Road", some other "popular" Hindi songs - Wake up Sid, Hai Junoon and a "remixed" version of We will Rock you. Remixed because it had hindi songs bits in the middle of We will rock you. Although it sounds bad but it wasnt that bad. Anyways we practised with the sound at the conference room and we were pretty happy with it. However the cultural event was outside and hence there was this feeling that there would be last minute glitches...and trust me what happened with me and Alesh was a more than a glitch. Anyways, the conference began...there were presentations from the top management, some ppl from NEC and stuff. There was a break for tea where I ate a lot of cakes. Back inside, the award ceremony went underway. I managed to get two awards - one for the L3Switch team - the project which literally made me spent my days and nights in the office and the other for a category known as a Team Player. Happy with all of this, it was soon time for the cultural events. We were up last. First up were the Japanese interpreter/translation team with their trademark Japanese songs. Thats when I realized we would suck since the sound was terrible. We took the stage after 20 minutes..and started off with Country roads. Barely into the song.. my vocalist forgot to sing into the mic and she was singing with her mic in her hands beside her waist!!. I kept shouting "Sing into the mic...sing into the mic". She finally heard me and started singing again (all out of tune)..but by that time, the chorus who were singing into the mic had messed up the song. Hence there wasnt much that could have been done! It was soo bad! Next up was Hai Junoon. The singer went into fast forward. The song ended up being twice as fast as the original....and to make matters worst, my mic suddenly went off. So it was just the vocalist who started singing the same stanzas again and again!! Next up was Wake up sid. It was going well..till again my mic went off midway into the song. It was hell...we finished up We will rock you without my guitar because nobody actually waited for me to plug in. They started without my go ahead! One can hear ppl shouting "Ruk jaao..ruk jaoo..Rakesh ka guitar kharaab ho gaya!!" in one of the videos. Nevertheless it was all over in about 20 minutes. I had had enough..and was dying for a drink. I spent the rest of the night boozing and dancing with my friends, colleagues, managers..basically everyone there. As expected, the bar was about to close early since some ppl had some pent up frustrations within themselves which they couldn't hold and vented it publicly. We had our dinner and the cab ride back home was bad. The cab guy was drunk and out. There was a lot of mismanagement and there were cabs which were empty and there were cabs which had 12 ppl in them. I, sadly, was in the 12 ppl category. I finally got back at about 11:30 and straightaway went to sleep. It was kinda sucky this year..I couldn't enjoy much because my mood was off thanks to the sucky performance on stage..although really happy with those 2 awards..it was kinda cool.

2 x Booze

Whew!..wat a day..wat a night! We had our last working day yesterday and there was a small office party at one of the conference rooms (for which I paid 1000 Yen). Anyways so I was working at a frantic pace yesterday when my Business Development Manager - Samir san came to my seat to invite me to a party to be held at the JV's office. That was at 5:00 pm. There was a huge smile on my face (as per sumit). Two parties meant 2wice the booze and 2wice to eat :D . Also drunk japanese are really fun ppl to hang out wid. They laugh at your sickest jokes...and really hard too (and am full of sick jokes :D). Anyways so we reached there..opened up a few beers..some wine..came back to beer..sushi..and repeat. Samir san tried his hand at magic and failed miserably ..it was soo funny. Ppl actually walked off (maybe that was just me) from where he was showing his thing. He asked permission to practise and then come back! He finally did it .. and it was kinda cool. Phew! at 6:30 we rushed from that building to our own. I was feeling the excitement build up in me. The last time we had a party..I sang a song at a Karaoke!! .. u never know what you are getting into! Anyways we reached there to find things had already started . My client Wakabayashi san offered me some beer..I happily lapped it up..had champagne..sake .. back to beer..more sushi .. yah sushi is cool! There were some biscuits for sumit...ohh and juice! Japan is mean towards vegetarians! Anyways ppl started leaving but me, Wakabayashi san, Iguchi san and Sumit talked away till like 9 pm. Thats when the building guys told us to get out! :D .. we had to shut down our machines and all. I was sooo drunk by that time. We 3 were dangling with every step. Sumit was laughing right till we reached back home! I reached back at like 9:45..slept at 10:45 ..really early..but cudnt help it. Phew!..wat a night!..had the best time. It was not only the booze (tho I agree it played an important part) but the conversations with these guys which was sooo interesting. Wakabayashi san is like a world renowned person and an expert in High Level Synthesis. That guy is a visiting professor in Stanford and often the "general chair" of many IEEE conferences. So me and sumit were in awe of that guy and we really had a nice time chatting with him..about everything. Iguchi-san is like 28 and already a PhD in Physics! It was like 4 friends getting drunk (ok..3) and talking like crazy! I never laughed soo much! Whew!..big thumbs up to last night! a big f*ckin 10 fingered thumbs up!!