Memoirs of ONMS Saga (Part 2)

Errata to Part 1: (Thanks to Prasad G) - Coke Car belonged to Prasad, Partha, Surya, Gopi and Praveen. The Pepsi Car belonged to Rammohan, Badami, Murali and Yugandar. Such is the Pepsi-Coke tale..

Clarification to Part 1: (Query from Sushma) - Oh ! the 'badami' story - the 'badami' turned out to be a 'he'. Well - that was my first contact to Nagaraj Badami. Luck or Karma :-(

Those were the times when induction training was in full flow. Moreover, we did not have laptops. Returns from office used to be quite late and we used to envy anyone who used to say 'See You tomorrow' by 6-7 in the evening.

Even in the mornings there used to frequent trips to office - as telecons were placed quite early in the morning (7am) with teams from Japan/India. But then Red Hill, Lucent office was only 20 min(s) away - not like the current Murray Hill office which is around 1.30 hr(s) away from Eatontown.

From our perch at the Eatontown apartment (25B), we once saw - across the parking lot - one of Group 4 climb into their 1st floor (indian : ground floor) apartment through their open Kitchen window. Seems they had locked themselves out of their apartment. Not to be outdone, later we heard rumours - that another of our colleagues, who had locked themselves out, do a repeat performance to their 2nd Floor apartment (indian: first floor).

Guess what - one of the adventurous types seems to have climbed the pipe, entered through the open Rest Room window and unlocked the apartment ! Hmm...so much for community security....

Off course, weekends were for what they were. Usually a three car caravan will be doing a tail-gating around - travelling places. Then again - there was a protocol...the cars used to follow each other. In case any other car got in between (in the high-way), our (one of three) car used to de-accelerate so that this other car would change lanes and pass. So much for the car following protocol. Remember the time, when we (Thanks to Gopi - our lead car Navigator) took a wrong turn into 'Middletown' !!

Later that 'Middletown' (well, there was an equivalent place close to our house also) - happened to be ~100 miles away from home. After taking the wrong turn, we parked on the kerb to ask directions from a 911 car already parked - with flashing lights. Guess Three cars suddenly parking around the 911 car must have done something - as suddenly the flashing lights were switched off. God ! we did not know what to do...so we risked it and decided to enquire somewhere else...

Then started the competition for the Best Navigator Award. The cause was championed by the Group 4 basically and then seconded by Group 8. Finally after a lot of group discussion, secret ballots, campaign and what not - we choose Praveen (a.k.a KNP) as the Best Navigator. But, KNP still will surely say that he is not the 'best' navigator.

By the way (for your information), KNP also became famous for his 'Yellow Dal' (thanks to Badami) which almost everybody in Eatontown has devoured. Well, let us say - there were no options !!

More folks joined in. Which off course meant more celebrations, parties and entertainment at Onsite.

The more the better. By this time, the Offshore team had also got created. New people joined the team, new folks came to Onsite. More folks came on board (onsite) - Subhojit Dasgupta, Ramasame K, Bhavana Adhiyal, Mehaboob, Giri, Roshen, Santosh, Abhay, Suyog, Prasad, Abhinesh. Offshore team also started growing - Anamika, Dharma, Sripradha, Navin etc.

And then there was the cost-cutting and the Offshore-Onsite and vice-versa rotations. Some of the folks choose a different county for taking new apartments..we still remember real-estate agents gullible words..."we have the Beach"...

As more and more folks shifted to Offshore, there were lease breakages/re-shuffling of folks and furniture [:-)] ....as we consolidated the heads and the apartments....and finally 25B, Eatoncrest Dr.,Eatontown became the ONMS HQ.

To be continued....