LAKSHYA - Om the bow, arrow the soul

IT THING!

She had an 'IT thing' for quotes, I'm talking about my younger sibling.
I remember, once she had told me about her habit of writing quotes on her hostel room wall. She even had a collection of quotes.

Once she shared this quote with me.
"I beg young people to travel. If you don't have a passport, get one. Take a summer, get a backpack and go to Delhi, go to Saigon, go to Bangkok, go to Kenya.
Have your mind blown, eat interesting food, dig some interesting people, have an adventure, be careful. Come back and you're going to see your country differently, you're going to see your president differently, no matter who it is. Music, culture, food, water. Your showers will become shorter. You're going to get a sense of what globalisation looks like. Its not what Tom Friedman writes about, I'm sorry. You're going to see that global climate change is very real. And that for some people, their day consist of walking 12 miles for four buckets of water. And so there are lessons that you can't get out of a book that are waiting for you at the other end of that Europeans - come back and go, "Ohhhhh."And the lightbulb goes on.

- Henry rollins."

It felt like she whispered it into my heart, I was touched. From the moment on, all I wanted was a passport. But I was only a guest for a few months.

I'M NOT IN THE GAME!
In the past few years, a sundry of events has molded my life. Now I'm working at zyxware. The company was planning an all-employee outing. I was reluctant in taking part, because I’m not usually a people person. The person responsible for coordinating the tour was Marin. I tried my best excuses with her, but she wouldn't take no for an answer.
Grr.... I should've tried harder.

OMG! THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING!
The day has arrived, and I was worried that it was my first time on a train.
However, the concern did not last long as one of my colleagues, Jagadeesh, accompanied me from Aluva. In an hour, we were joined by others from Ernakulam and Thripunithura.
My first time on the train and everything I experienced was a wtf (I meant what the fudge!) moment, the chaiwalas (What are they doing in here!), the marvadis (Playing some instruments, Sounds good!).
We were split into two groups for the game, "Guess the movie". We had a confident Maggie as our leader, sort of. An outrageous Chithra on the other end. The geeks had destroyed the fun of the game by googling extremely old movie names (Cheaters!). At the end it was a tie. It was a lot of fun, the game brought out the charisma in Glenn and Emily, the playful persona in Jiji, Junaid and Tiju, the very much chirpy Chithra, always smart Arjun, Alfred and Maggie, our freakish Fathima.
I took a small nap and by the time I woke up, we were about to reach trivandrum in 5 minutes. 'She taxi' took us to our hotel. I was exhausted and starved, but we had an excellent sadya for lunch.
We spent a few minutes in the room before we rushed on to the venue. On the way what I noticed were the roads - they are more appealing than what we have here in Ernakulam, no waste junks to the side of the roads, and traffic signals at every junction.

THE PRESENTATIONS!
The trivandrum hall at technopark was waiting for us. On entering the hall, Anoop was on the podium on the left side of the stage, wrapped by well furnished arc shaped tables. A few people were scattered here and there. We were joined by Safallia and Marin who had come on their own.
We were a bit late and so we missed the introduction. The presentation was a long process. Over all, if my memory is alright, there were quite a few. After Anoop, we had one by Thomas, George, Vimal. They all talked about one thing specifically which is our “lakshya” - to reach 100 crores of profit and a thousand employee company! It was all strategy and what each one of us should do to fulfil it! Then it was the TCT team, Newsletter team, Hardware team. (If I forgot anyone, its not intentional, apologies.)

Anoop sir had briefed us on the history of the organisation, the efforts he and his initial team had put in to build Zyxware. He explained the various services offered by Zyxware as an organisation towards the different fields, and also the vision to build expertise on 5 more verticals. Free software and Freedom walk also took turns in his speech.

Thomas and George had more to say about the company’s growth and its governing strategies. George shared his experiences on attending a media conference, and the importance of media in the IT world.
Vimal had explained about the heights we could attain as a tech mughal. He had more emphasis on the technical strides to be covered in order to make the escalation process much quicker. He had quite a vision on the technologies that could be introduced to improve the organisation brand.

Other presentations that were decorated at its best were, Yohannan sir’s, and Abhai's.
Its easy to judge, but If I hadn’t mentioned these ones, I'd feel like I haven’t done justice to this piece.
Later, momentos were handed over by their respective superiors. The day ended with a dinner at ginger restaurant. I'm not a foodie, but all I could say is that the food was delicious. We went to bed praying for a blessed morning.

RUSH HOURS.
I was woken up by someone knocking on the door. It was Jji, she was all dressed up. It was 7.00 AM and we were supposed to join the team by 7.45. We were late!
It was an hour long journey to poovar. In between, Mubashir had some funny questions in hand. It was more brainstorming than funny I Guess! Phew! Yaser and gang entertained us with some folk songs!
From there it was a 10 minute boat ride to the resort. The mangrove, small channels dribbling to both sides, hushing meadows, streaming water was all breath taking.
There was a childrens park in the resort. There we saw our CEO play on a swing and later, our CTO trying to best his performance on another swing!

FUN TIME!
We went for a walk through the resort where there were many rooms. One of them was a prayer hall. A lady was performing prayers, the way it was performed, I guess she was a buddhist. Some time later, we went to one of those floating houses, it was a single bedroom, bathroom attached, perfect wooden furnishing.

The wind outside the house was fun filled. Altogether, it was awesome. After few minutes, we left for the beach across the river. I love beaches. I went to a beach once when I was 10, since then, I fell in love with beaches. The sand dunes were white, neat and tidy, water was blue, the tides were rather busy to wash everything off the shore. The sun was in its mood, brightest as ever. The wind too was holding its hands to make the atmosphere a bit mischevious.

After returning to the resort, a few had their seats registered around the tables, Anoop sir was joking around, with his fellow members Thomas, George and Vimal. They were in a casual mood. We didn’t get a chair. Someone had asked the guys to make place for ladies. It was only Anoop sir who had offered a chair. No one else was responding.
Premshankar : “Aarum kettilla!” (No one heard!)
The entire hall burst into laughter. Krishna and her team were then announced as the top dogs for the business game. We left the resort by 5.30 evening after a group photo.

Before having our dinner, we stopped by kovalam beach, but it was all dark. I could barely see the tides, leaving my wish to see kovalam beach unfulfilled.

THE END.
By 8.00, after having the dinner and saying goodbye to all, we left to catch our train. Everyone squeezed into their berths for a deep sleep, we had set alarm for 3.00 AM. I was feeling a bit nauseous on my way to sleep.
Trmmm.....Trmmmmm.. The alarm! Damn! In 15 minutes, we left Ernakulam station in “She taxi’s”. Felt sluggish for next 2 days as I was not used to travel and felt sick! I had to take complete bed rest. But those beaches, island, floating houses, they were all mesmerizing and the trip was worth it. To experience such things with my colleagues. It was fun! Hats off to the hard work of the coordinators.

QUESTION HOUR
In Zyxware questions are always welcome, so I'm not sure to whom I should address this, or whether I would be in trouble for this but I'll just ask anyway! We had an outing which was also a presentation, a media strategy session and many more. When are we going to have a real outing? I mean a day or two, only dedicated to fun. No presentations! No meetings! No strategies! Hopefully Soon?