Its Birthday Time already

Older by another year. This year, birthday mood set in a lil too early - in the last week of January when moxievanilla's card arrived! Turns out it doesn't take all that long for a card to travel from Chicago to Pune.

For some reason, most of my friends have not got it right after all these years. They randomly choose a date between Feb 1st and Feb 15th and wish me one fine day every year. And it was funny to receive wishes this year on the 7th, 13th, 15th and one last afternoon. The point is they remembered and thats what matters. Thank you all.

Writing this, I feel too old to make birthday such a big deal, so I better stop now!

Goa & Cidade de Goa

Cidade de Goa, the hotel we stayed at Goa, is located at Vainguinim Beach, Dona Paula. Dona Paula, known for its water sports and bargain shops, forms the central part of south Goa. One can see a string of 5-Star and 5-Star Deluxe hotels along the South coast of Goa.

The holiday mood set in as we stepped in the hotel at 7:00 a.m. As can be expected in Goa, all the hotel staff were clad in a floral dresses. We were greeted with sea shell garlands, which my blue teddy - Pilu, now proudly wears:).

Beaches and Ambience
Cidade de Goa, rated 5-star is beautiful, covered on all sides by a Fort-like wall natural structure. The ambience is nice if you are a foreigner or a honeymooner as they form the majority of the hotel's guests. At one point, I got so tired of seeing the white and red bangles and hands full of mehendi on every other India woman.

Hospitality is not at its best at Cidade de Goa. The decor is nice. The hotel tries hard to sport a Portuguese look. Except the "Caval Heiros and Senhoras" outside the restroom, there was nothing Portuguese about it. The rooms are not designed with taste and not spacious enough like the Taj. You get only the beach for free :), every other facility including half an hour of a Shuttle game is charged. On that account, I wouldn't recommend this hotel at all, for the price you pay!

All roads in Goa lead to water. The hotel has a private beach which is protected by cliffs on both ends, a natural barrier for trespassers. The beach as such is quite small compared to the other South Goa hotels. Nevertheless, it is clean and very well maintained. The moment that we enjoyed the most was after sunset when all the sunbathers had retired to their rooms. The feeling of lying on the beach under the huts, listening to the waves lashing against the rocks, palm trees swaying to the wind, with music playing at a distance in the background, is beyond description.


I've heard the Baga and Palolem beaches are very good but we couldn't make it there. When you have a private beach that is just a few meters away from your room, you just don't feel like getting away from it. Close to this one, is the Miramar beach. This is a public beach and its fun to go there in the evenings as the sunset is very beautiful, owing to the vast expanse of the sea that one can see from here. There is also a lot of free entertainment in the offing on this beach, as you see couples posing for pictures like a Bollywood dance sequence and some were quite funny.

Wining and Dining
Before we left on this holiday, friends advised us to try the Pomfret Fry and Feni at the Beach shacks. But we never got a chance to step out of the Hotel's Restaurants. The food was absolutely delicious at the Hotel's Restaurants - Laranja & LaGoa Azul that we looked forward to it.

I still can recollect the mouthwatering desserts - Mousse (Strawberry, Lecheee, Chocolate, Mint, Mango), Channa Rabdi, Kalakand, Shahi Tukda, Black Forest to name a few and a range of icecreams.

Vivek enjoyed the Palm and the Cashew Feni at the Taverna Bar as some of his/my favorite numbers "Country Roads take me home", "Wonderful tonight", "Something stupid like i Love you" played ...

Sights and Sounds
It is an amazing experience waking up in the morning to see the train passing through Goa's varied terrain and meandering rivers. I was in for a pleasant surprise when the train pulled out of the Madgaon Station ....there lie the Arabian Sea. I don't know how to describe it...all this while you were seeing nothing but greenery and bang! there is a huge body of blue water bordered by palm trees on one end, long clean beaches as far as the eye can see. It was a treat to the eyes and so very refreshing. You gotta travel by train to see this magnificent view and the Konkan.

As far as the sightseeing goes, we were taken on a half day trip to Old Goa and Mangeeshi Temple. The old styled Portuguese homes in Panjim is worth seeing. The place that I liked the best was were two of Goa's rivers - Zuari and Mandovi meet the Arabian Sea. The Cathedral and the Basilica where St. Francis Xavier's body has been kept since the 17th century, drew a lot of crowd. These are the places of historic significance.

The good time was not meant to be forever. Well, what can I say. It was good while it lasted. After 3 days of total indulgence, we returned with our minds full of wonderful sights, a 256 MB card full of our Kodak moments and a bag full of pebbles.

Categories: travel,, goa

Related Posts: Goa - The Good Life
To Raj and Richard - Discovering India

Aquareans and Patience

When Aqureans were created, HE forgot to put the patience chip in them. Restlessness, impatience, an urge to jump onto the next BIG thing is so inherent in us that it makes me want to change my Sun sign! I just stumbled upon one of my earlier Performance Appraisals where VD had commented - "Also when certain decisions may not seem
right to her, she has to be patient". So true! Couldn't have re-read at a better time.

Team Composition - No women, no cry

This is the scene in a cubicle at work - Blabbah blabbah blah. More talking (read : gossip mongering, argument), than work getting done. Long e-mails. A lot of bitching. A heated atmosphere reminiscent of the cold war era. Humor, what is that? A long face and always curious what the neighboring teammate is upto. It gets worse if one of them gets extra attention from the manager.

Well, you know what's probably wrong in here. There are too many women in the project. More than 2 women can never be friends or see eye to eye in a project! The thumb rule is women should never be more than 50% strength of your team. If it is close to 80%, you are doomed - a perfect recipe for disaster. Whoever said this "Opinions are like asses. Everyone has one, and mine is better than yours." was very wise! As a Project Manager, you would find yourself judging whose is better, spending more time mediating feuds than taking the project to delivery. Things get worse if the Project Manager is a woman too. Now you know what I've gotten myself into, don't you :)

My lessons - For the success of a project, Diversity is very important in all forms - age, gender, educational background, experience, region of origin, aptitude etc! Just been a long day and what can be a better way to let off steam than blog about it!

Categories: project management, team building

To Raj and Richard - Discovering India

Vasco-Hazrat Nizamuddin Goa Express, the train we took from Vasco Station until Pune, was almost empty that Saturday afternoon. The a/c coaches were all the more empty. Since Vivek and I didn’t get the side berths, we shifted to the adjoining empty coupe’s side berths. At Madgaon station, boarded a huge white gentleman (the WWF type to quote Raj) with an Indian kudi, and took their places in our coupe.

Hours passed by as Vivek and I were mesmerized by the scenic beauty, the green valley beneath and the numerous waterfalls/waterways as the train waded through the Western Ghats. The train passes through more than 10 tunnels dug through the Sahyadri range. Occasionally we glanced to look sideward as the WWF person read aloud sentences that strangely sounded like Hindi/Punjabi, from a hand scribbled notebook. The Indian lady who had been frantically writing in her journal would stop and help him with the difficult words. We discovered later she was teaching him Punjabi.

I broke the silence when a chai wala stopped by. Our introductions revealed Raj (the Indian kudi) and Richard (the WWF gentleman) from England were on a 6 month trip to India. I was in complete awe to learn the lengths and breadths of India they had covered in the past 2 months. From Kanyakumari, Madurai, Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu to Bijapur, Badami in Karnataka to Trivandram, Cochin in Kerala and Goa they had seen just about every place in South India. They were on their way to explore the Central, West and North India over the next 4 months. Their trip was to to take them to Mumbai, Gujarat, Udaipur, Jodhpur, Amritsar, Shimla, Ladakh, Himalayas culminating in Delhi.

All set to explore India equipped with 2 backpacks and a Lonely Planet guide, their spirit of adventure is worth talking about. Here were 2 people who had taken a break from their full time jobs to travel to a nation that we as Indians had not explored in the past 2 decades. Reading about it in History books is one thing and experiencing is another.

Here they were, doing this journey by trains, buses and living modestly. It was good to hear about their experiences - some funny, some scary and some adventurous. Having lived a good part of my life in Trichy, it was interesting to know from Richard that you get the best Gobi Manchurian in woodlands, Trichy. Now thats indeed something!

Entering a second class Train compartment at 3:00 a.m. to Kanyakumari and flipping the switch on to disocver tens of cockroaches creeping over your fellow passengers, I don't think is funny. Which is when they said, they decided to take only a/c coaches for overnight travel. Isn't it scary to be mobbed by 100 people in Badami? As they narrated their travel by a cab on a no-road 12 Km stretch enroute Palolem in Goa from Londa keeping their fingers crossed in the hope of making it alive, it sounded you need to have nerves of steel to attempt something like that. To quote their own words, "Everything is an adventure".

10:40 p.m. It was time for them to leave. They got down at Miraj to board a connecting train to Pune at midnight, and we bid goodbye. The journey continues..and it was the end of a happy conversation. On a closing note, it made us reflect on our existence as compared to the "life" R&R were living.

Related Posts - Goa - The Good Life
Categories: travel,goa,train

Pain in the A*

You wanna know who is a pain in all the places...all these kids from IIMs who think they are the smartest species on this planet. God, do I HATE these MBAs ? No offense to my MBA friends..

They love to talk and they love to argue even if it is leading nowhere just to have their way. And on most occassions it is a monologue. They love to hear their own voices. Can't ever take NO for an answer and carry a huge ego on their shoulders. Well, did I come on too strong? You know what is funny .... with a meagre experience of 0 or 2-3 years / zilch exposure to customers and a year or 2 of classroom sessions and cramming and case studies, you put them out there in the real corporate world to work on real projects. Ofcourse, all under the neatly packaged, fancy tag of "Business Analysts". Dishing out formulae and how PE ratio is calculated does not necessarily mean understanding technology. You know what B Schools perhaps lack - how to get that perfect blend of Business Knowledge and Technology.

And here I get a whole lecture on Value Addition to Customers. Give me a break! But I was determined today ..either my way or the highway! Not giving up so easily baby...