The Craziest Week - Part 1

Okay, so here I was, working as usual, when I saw the GTalk status message of one of my friends. It said "Goa this weekend!" or something to that effect. Upon inquiring, I found out that some of the students pursuing PS2 (a six-month internship course at BITS) in Bangalore had booked train tickets to go to Goa on Friday evening.

Unfortunately, the tatkal quota was already full, and I was about to abandon the idea of going along when another person on my contact list IMed me and asked me if I wanted to go on a spare ticket she had. Thus began the almost impromptu trip to Goa and the beginning of one of the most craziest weeks of my life.

Day 1: Friday

I was excited, (a couple of months back, I could not even fathom the idea of going back to Goa) don't know why. Anyway, after a day of work and when I was just about to leave, my Engineering Manager (my Manager's Manager) comes up to my cube and starts chatting with me about random stuff... I am anxious to get out and get going so that I'm not late for the train. Anyway, I finally told him that I was catching a train to Goa that day, he let me go after teasing me about what I would be doing in Goa (yea rite!)

It is true that when you want something really bad, the world conspires to help you every step along the way. As it happened, the list was on my floor when I reached the lobby, a bus came just as I reached the bus stop and a second bus was waiting at an intermediate signal, which took me home. It was probably the record time I had clocked to get home from my workplace.

Anyway, the place I was to meet my fellow passengers... was actually 5 minutes away, but the bus I boarded took twenty minutes to reach, thanks to the circuitous route it took, resulting in my ring tone irritating my fellow passengers in the bus as I could not reach my pocket with a suitcase in one hand and the people around me in the jam-packed bus.

The station we were going to board the train at was in the middle of nowhere and we reached there thankfully way ahead of time by auto-rickshaw. After getting the platform number right and making a mental note of how obsessed a specific gender is with cellphones (:P) we boarded the train.

Some idle chit-chat later, the train reached its first station, stopped for half an hour, and surprisingly started moving in the reverse direction (O.o) and maintained that direction of travel right till Goa. We had bought some junk food to keep us busy and we finally retired to bed at about 10 pm (I think)

Day 2: Saturday

Morning chores in a train are always a bore (Note the rhyme) I woke up as usual at 0645 due to the cold morning air. My first fellow passenger woke up shortly after at around 0800. The second at around 1100 (:-|) Anyway, that's not the point. The journey was quite uneventful to be honest except for some music and solving a sudoku there was hardly anything we did.

I have always believed that life is a learning experience. Every second is an opportunity to learn new things. We all learn from our experiences (or we must) both good and bad. We were quite hungry when the train reached Vasco and we decided to have lunch at a restaurant in Vasco itself. Lunch was quite an experience in itself. No... nothing was wrong with the food, I've dined at the place plenty of times in the past. Afraid I can't say the same about the company. Let's just say I found out the true meaning of "We are known by the company we keep." Let's just say I was fortunate that I did not have to interact with certain people for all these three and a half years I spent at BITS (before that day)

Onward.... we reached BITS (I was controlling myself.... My temper does get out of hand very easily and I need to spend considerable energy on keeping cool...) Anyway, I met Voldy at the gate, smiling as always and in his Microsoft t-shirt. I support open source just as much as he supports Microsoft (:P) After settling in, (it was evening already) we went out to Nes to relive our mid-day meal after CG class last semester one last time. Maggi + Iced Tea have always been a pleasing combo and a pleasant conversation with humor surely made the evening fun. We were joined by Ara, Charlie and Pooh. Then we headed off to Mongi to meet Era and KG who had come by bus from Bangalore. Then I went to Addu's room to meet him. I watched a couple of episodes of House that I had missed, and chatted quite a lot with him about new happenings at BITS.

Later, just like the old days, we played a couple of games of Judgement with the gang. It was great fun. I wasn't too keen on dinner, but my friends quite literally dragged me to NC to get something to eat. A pleasant walk later, I was back to bed, dreaming about random stuff, as usual.

To be continued...