Personal Diary of Atanu Phukan ( year 2005 )

30/12/2004 - 2/1/2005 : Trip to Pune. Went to Pune to meet my M.Tech friends and celebrate my New Year. Reached Pune on 30th Dec. It was Anil's B.Day too. So went out for dinner in the evening. On 31st went to Karla Caves, near Lonavala. It was really great fun. Evening was party time. Went to Club Indira with all my friends and had the new year bash. Came back home late at 3 am on new year day. Slept hard but woke up early. went to collect my railway ticket for journey back to Bangalore. Also went for the movie Alexender, in I.NOX the multiplex. It was too tiring and we slept early. The next day I had my train. Went to see anils office. He is working in Cummins R&D centre at Pune. Then it was time to board train for Bangalore. It was really a nice trip with lots of fun.

16/1/2005 : Magh Bihu in Bangalore. Magh bihu was celebrated by the Assamese community in Bangalore. The day started with Meji Projyolon followed by traditional dishes and games. The events followed with cultural performances by local and invited artists. The biggest attraction of the day was performances by invited guest artist's Krishnomoni Nath and Manash Robin from Assam.

17/1/2005 - 19/1/05: Training at IIT Bombay. Left the Magh Bihu celebration halfway to catch the flight for Mumbai. Reached Mumbai at night (be careful of the Mumbai Taxiwalas. They are big time cheaters). My room was already booked at the IIT guest house. Called up Biplab. Met him and Pranay (both my B.Tech friends) and had dinner together. Next day (17) registered for the 3 day CEP course on MEMS. The trainings went well with lots of good learning experiences. Also visited HiraNandani and Vashi. Saw the BARC campus with my training colleague. It was really a nice campus, the largest I have seen. Training ended on 19th evening and reached Bangalore at night.

13/2/2005: Aero India 2005. Went to air show of the Aero India 2005. It was my first experience with something like this. Worth visiting except the horrible traffic and dust. Seeing the LCA fly high and displaying its exceptional capabilities was so satisfying, it being made in India. The display of the "Suryakiran" team was mindblowing.

17/3/2005: MNST offsite. Went to Golden Palms for our MNST (the lab with which I work with) for an official offsite. (For your information its owned by Sanjay Khan of Tipu Sultan fame. We even saw him there). The day started with a good breakfast and team building games. Good brainstorming session and lots of talent show with songs. I even tried to torture peoples with my song. The lunch was as superb as breakfast as breakfast. Spent rest of the time playing tennis and pool. Day ended well with dinner. Reached home at 11:00 pm night.

19/3/2005: ASHRAYA trip to Bannerghata National Park. Went to Bannerghata National Park with the kids of ASHRAYA (a Home for Orphans). It was the part of General Electric's voluntary group ELFUN efforts for community service. We were eight adults, me, Amit, Anuradha, Sachin, Nitin, Anu's mom and two teachers from ASHRAYA. It was a fun filled day with some of the most enthusiastic kids. Spent the time with the Tiger safari and on the zoo. The day was tiring but we enjoyed a lot.

25/3/2005 - 26/3/2005 : Trip to Yellagiri. Planned for a trip to Yellagiri (~150 km from Bangalore) on Bike with five of my other friends. Three bikes and 6 peoples made a perfect combination. Started early morning (5:30 am) on 25th to avoid traffic and scorching heat. Was soon on the highway connecting Bangalore to Chennai. The highway was too seducing to stop us increase our speed. We touched 100 many time and 80 at low. It was a sweet ride until we diverted to Yellagiri from the highway. Then it was a ride in curved roads beside the hill. We reached Country Club (the resort we booked) before lunch. The days next schedule was planned out. It was hot (not expected in a hill station), and there was hardly anything we could see. One of the main attraction the waterfall was dry. So we cut short our trip. Went for boating in a lake. The it was trekking to the hill top. Day ended well with a camp fire and gazals by Pandey-ji. The next day we were back to our drive for Bangalore. The best part of the trip was the long bike ride.

8/04/2005 : Trip to Chennai for Visa. Went to Chennai for my Visa interview in US consultate. Interview was over preety soon in the morning (got my Visa). The hot and humid weather made me stay in my hotel room for the rest of the day. Reached Bangalore late due to 2 hrs of flight delay by Jet Airways.

22/4/2005 - 6/05/2005: Trip to US. This was the first time I was going abroad, that was kind of quite exciting. I with five of other EEDP team members visited US for IMPACT training. It was held in Crotonville, 1.5 hrs drive from New York. Its a business/finance training as part of the EEDP training. That is one of the best training I ever had, mostly due to the kind of involvement they let us had with real time hands on training experience. The weekend was spend in New York. Saw most part of Manhattan and the Liberty Island. NY is just like Bangalore, very cosmopolitan in nature with peoples from every part of the world as every part of India in Bangalore. The next week was spend in the GE's Global research centre at Niskayuna (Albany). Overall my first trip abroad was very succesful and informative.

26/6/2005: Trip to Hogenakkal. Planned for a trip to Hogenakkal (~170 km from Bangalore) on Bike with four of my other friends from the EEDP team at GE. Three bikes (a Thunderbird & 2 Pulser) and 5 peoples was preety good. Started early morning (6:00 am) to avoid traffic and scorching heat. Was soon on the highway connecting Bangalore to Chennai via Hosur. The highway was too seducing to stop us increase our speed. We touched 100 many time and 80 at low. It was good till Dharmapuri (via Krishnagiri). From Dharmapuri till Hogenakkal was a decent road too with lots of scenic beauty around. Hogenakkal is a series of waterfall (its believed to wash away diseases, but looking at the water it didn't seemed so). We had a nice coracle ride. There are kids who jump from an unbelievable height of more then 20 m for 2-5 Rs. On way back, we took a short route. The roads were very bad compared to the way we came. Only satisfaction being coming back with a shorter route. It was a memorable trip for us. ( The team: Me, Manthram, Murthy, Mohan & Debananda).

20/07/2005 : Bowling & Gardening. Jerry, the GTL for our EDMM lab was in Bangalore for project review's and updates. A half day activity was planned with him. We first went to a school at Whitefield, as part of GE's ELFUN efforts (its an voluntary organization of GE). We did gardening, planting 60 rose saplings. Then it was fun time, with bowling at AMOEBA in Church St., Brigade road. It was nice team effort of our NEWTRON team, lead by Jerry, as we came out as the best bowling team. We then went for dinner at Mainland China. Delicious chinese cuisines made a good end of our team activities.

30/07/2005: Painting the school. We a team of 6 went for painting, in a school for construction workers, as a part of ELFUN (http://www.elfun.org/) a voluntary organization of GE. Group of 6 enthusiastic person (Me, Amit, Sachin, Carol, Karen & Mimi) made a perfect team. It was cleaning of the door and windows (dipped in cow dung) that took most of the efforts. Group of professional painters of Mimi/Carol/Karen (.. just kidding...) lead the painting efforts. Sachin single handedly painted the lime on walls. I tried my hands on cleaning/painting, Amit clubbing in everyones effort and coordinating. It was a nice experience as well as fun.

17/09/2005-02/10/2005: Visit home. The long awaited trip after more then 1-1/2 years (check my diary when I last went home). This time it was very special, WHY? Arre yaar... mere bhai ki shadi hain na. Excitement was building up months before I was ready to leave. When I reached home, it was hotting up. The complete 2 weeks I stayed, was filled with lots and lots of fun. It was hectic though, travelling 400 kms to get my Bhabi form Guwahati. Got a new member for our family, Novanita. The excitement of having a bhabi is really great. All I can say, this was the one of the trip home.. which I can never ever forget.. (no pictures to be shared in common platform.. Sorry for that)

30/10/2005 - 06/11/2005: Trip to Mangalore/Udupi. It is Diwali time. Just back from home and now a week long vacation. Nothing else to do, going with Arvind to his Grand-parents house at Mangalore/Udupi was the best choise. The trip was lot of fun, seeing new places - meeting new peoples - and of course new food, HOME MADE. Visited Mangalore first. Saw the beach and temples. There was a beautiful procession that took place at Mangalore in the Diwali evening. Also took part in a Diwali festival with Uncle (Chikappa) in Subramanya club. Next stop was Udupi. Went to Uncle (Mama) house. Saw temples and Malpa beach. Next went to Tilak (Arvind's cousin) house. Its in a green surrounding of village. Went for a small trek near the river. went with Chikappa to Sringeri (pilgrimage). On the way rested near river Sita and Agumbe (hill station). The whole trip was quite packed and fun filled. For pictures visit link below.

17/11/05: GRADUATION DAY. Finally its time to graduate from the EEDP program at GE. It started with Team building activities of all the EEDP's at the centre. The task was to built the tallest tower using newspaper which can support the most weight. Then we had an panel discussion with the leadership team. Finally the certificates were distributed to the graduating team.

18/11/2005 - 19/11/2005: EEDP Offsite. Went to Coonor and Ooty, our final offsite with the EEDP team - after our graduation ceremony was over yesterday. Plan was to start off early. But everything started late, and continued with that, we reached late evening at 5:00 pm on Taj Retreat. That's the place where we were supposed to stay at Coonor. We were hungry, and started gulping our (late) lunch. Some rest after lunch and we were back to our rooms for a small rest. Then its cricket time at flood light in night. We were back to some team building exercise with treasure hunt's. Finally at late night - it was music, bar-be-cue, and dance. Ended the tiring day with dinner. 19th was early too. Got fresh and was out with friends on a bike trek. There was lovely tea gardens with morning sunrays. Just lovely. Back for breakfast, and then sight seeing in Coonor. Back for lunch and a thrilling narrow gauge train trip to Ooty. The view from train was just escatic. Followed with sight-seeing in Ooty, ended with boat ride at Ooty lake. Dinner and the back to Bangalore. Awesome trip it was.....

10/12/05: JFWTC Family Day. It was annual family day at our centre. Looking at last years celebrations expectations for this year went high. The organisers didn't dissapoint. There were good mix of GE internal and professional performers. The magic show and musical show my eminent karnataka musicians were phenomenal. The laser show was also an additional attraction. The only dampener was the rain, though it could hardly dampen the spirit of the enthusiastic croud.