"Joy of Giving" week

This week, from 27th of september to the 3rd of oct, (the week coinciding Mahatma Gandhi's birthday) will be observed as the Joy Of Giving week in the country.

There are millions in the country who aren't as privileged as us. Trust me, you are really lucky; for reading this post sitting in front of a computer, when there are boys n girls, who haven't even held a pencil; for no fault of theirs. They were just born in a poor family. You can easily find people around you who could use a helping hand. And if you haven;t done anything yet why not start on the joy of giving week. Sachin Tendulkar, Saif Ali khan, Nandita Das, Rahul Dravid, Azim Premji, Geet Sethi are some of the celebrities supporting the cause.

At Amdocs, the community relations group is organizing few activities during the week. Most of them include collecting funds for conducting events at different NGOs in the city. The events organized are

• Special Kabala Shabath: At Amdocs, the teams have an informal get-together, called Kabala Shabat (means cake meeting) every friday, where we also buy some eatables, sweets, and colddrinks; and have some good time together. Next week we requested teams to voluntarily skip it once and contribute the collection for that Kabala Shabat towards the fund.
• We are facilitating sale of Diwali articles (prepared at Rachana, an NGO) and candles and diyas (made in Meghalaya hostel, another NGO). The amount collected would go towards the respective organizations.
• A special game of housie-housie conducted by instructors at dance institute of bollywood choreographer Shiamak Dawar. They would teach latest bollywood dance steps to the participants during the game.
• Delivering roses with messages to colleagues for a nominal price.

So this week, you too try to do something for another person. Draw a smile on someone's face; and find one on your's too. :)

Links:
Joy Of Giving home page and blog.
Follow JoG on twitter.
and me here. ;)

PS: In mumbai now, enjoying the 3 day weekend. :D

Friendship day at Annapoorna

Happy friendship day to all my friends! :D

Here at Amdocs, we have a 'Community Relations' group that engages into some small social work. I've joined them and we had decided to celebrate this friendship day at Annapurna and Salvation army schools; with the kids there.

I met the other volunteers in front of tower 2, Amdocs at 945 in the morning. We collected all the logistics and left in two cabs. The rest came in bikes and a santro.

The kids assembling for the national anthem

When we reached there the kids were havin their breakfast. After sometime they reached the school. There were kids from class 1 to 10. We started with them singing the national anthem, after which they were divided into 10 groups. Each groups consisted around 20-22 kids and two volunteers were assigned to take care of each group. Asmita and I got group four. The kids then tied friendship bands on their friends' wrists. We had bands of different colours for each group.

We conducted musical chairs for children from class 1 to 5. The elder kids played Hulla-hoop[i hope i got the spelling right.] They had to stand in a circle holding hands, then each child in the circle had to pass through a circular loop made of plastic, and then pass it to the next person. During these games the music system was on and some small kids in my group who were watching the others play, were very eager to dance. I asked those boys to dance on the side. Soon the number started increasing and the place started getting too crowded; so we promised them that they'd get to dance in the end. Then we had a game where a child in a group would be blindfolded and using his teammates' directions, had to walk through a path drawn on the ground. The fastest team wins. By then most of the kids were hungry.

The kids were taken in groups to the three rooms where food was being served. The kids ate well, and most of them in my group wasted no food. After they finished having the lunch all the volunteers forgot all the dining manners and attacked the food. All of us were starving. The rice was over. There were few puris and sheera left. We shared whatever was left and joined the kids who were waiting for us.

For the post-lunch session we had earlier planned a skit competition; we volunteers had to teach the children what they had to do in about an hour, the scripts for which were handed to us a couple of days back. Asmita had translated ours into hindi and marathi for the kids. But it was quite late for having the skits, as the morning session had taken a lot of time. On popular demand we decided to have few matches of kabaddi. We conducted separate matches for the boys and girls of the higher classes, and then for the smaller kids too. Then there was a match between us volunteers and the staff of Annapoorna. Dont ask me who won that match, but it as pretty close. Its the participation that matters, right? :P

Prize distribution

The game was followed by the prize distribution. The points for each game was added; and the winners were declared. The winners and the first runners-up won got their prizes. My group came third. [should I have a happy or a sad smiley here?]. Prizes were also given to students who passed class 10 last year. Two boys in class 10, Arun and Anil were also felicitated, for securing first and second ranks resp. Arun had also got an internship at Tata Motors. He was also given a new bicycle.

The kids dancing

After that, as we had promised the kids, we kept the music system on full volume, and everyone started to dance. The kids were so full of energy even after playin for the whole day. They started pulling us into the crowd and made us throw our limbs too. We called the cab from Amdocs at around 530 and left the place after having a great time with the children.

Some of my friends here went on a trip to Lonavala today and another group had gone on a trek to Singad. They wanted me to come along, but I decided not to go with either of them and went to Annapoorna; and I am really glad I did that.

PS: The pics here were taken on Abhinav's cam and my cell phone.

The photos of the friendship day celebration at Salvation army could be found at http://picasaweb.google.com/parimalgbhatia/

My new home ;)

In Pune now; reached here on the 7th. The company had provided us accommodation at Hotel Silver Crest, in Viman Nagar. The rooms are pretty good; they're air conditioned,have TVs and only after a couple of days did we discover that there was net connection too. But the luxury was intended for 15 days only. :( We had to find a place to stay by then.

Last few days, mammen and I were busy looking for flats to stay, somewhere close to Magarpatta City (thats where Amdocs has its office) or Hadapsar. We did contact many people and also check the flats personally and finally yesterday we decided on a 2-bhk flat in ECP Vastu campus, in hadapsar. Its a new construction with 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a hall, a kitchen and a balcony. All the rooms are quite spacious. The flat is in the 6th floor; so with the huge windows, there is good breeze coming in and is well lit too. And they have a gas connection in the flat already installed and a person would visit every month and take the reading to bill Oh, I forgot to mention the rent. Its Rs.7000 per month with Rs.25,000 deposit. I believe its a good find, as most of the flats were either too far from our office, too old, or were offered for a very high rent. So we're quite happy now and look forward to have a nice stay there. :D

Gonna continue reading 'The Godfather' now. Yea, I know I should have read the book long back; better late than never ;). Didnt watch the movie yet too, as i was advised to read it first.

I shall post a few pics taken in Pune soon. Until then, hf.

Got my joining date

I was slowly making plans for these holidays. I was expecting it to be a long one; atleast around 50 days long. But unfortunately, mammen called me up to say that we had to join Amdocs on 8th this month! Yep 8th...and today is 2nd! Wat the hell! Yea, i was hoping for an early joining date, with some of my friends having their offers canceled and some deferred. But isn't this a lil too early! My last vacation has just started.
Now all the plans have to be cancelled. I will prolly be leaving Mangalore on the 6th. That leaves me with just 3 days. I just got my unlimited net connection yesterday. But i can hardly use it now. :( Let me see what else could be done with these 72 hours. Hmmm...

PS: Ofcourse I am not very upset about the date with the current scenario; but perhaps it would have been better if I was informed abt an early date in advance. I'd have been mentally prepared for it.
PS: Nadal out, murray out! Will FedEx do it this time at the Rolland Garros?!