Day 1: Astana

After a good night sleep in Kings Hotel Astana, I woke up pretty early at 6 AM as I am an early riser and unpacked my things. To my dismay, there was a iron and a kettle already in my room but I have had carried the same from India. :-( Anyways, after my unpacking, got ready and met Vishal and Sri for breakfast at the lift lobby. The breakfast was a complimentary from the hotel and it was huge. There were lot of varieties and to my surprise there was rice as well. :-D Even though it was not spicy, it was still rice which makes me close to Chennai. After our breakfast, we met Siew Yin (Our Team mate for #ibmcsc Kazakhstan) in the Reception and all four of us decided to explore the place around the hotel and have our lunch.

Ishim River View 1

 We headed down to the river Ishim where we walked for about 1 km atleast along the banks. This river is so different from the ones back home. In India, there is no definitely banks and it is full of soil but here, the river is so streamlined and managed well. As usual, I was the fun factor for Vishal and Srinath. All the jokes were on me and in addition Siew Yin joined them. We had a wonderful time walking around because the climate was so also nice. On our way back, we tried to exchange the currency to Tenge and shopped for some bananas, butter, etc.

Ishim River View 2

 The lunch is altogether a different and an entertaining story. We were looking for some restaurants and all the places had sign boards either in Kazakh or Russian. We found one restaurant with the sign board "Fast Food". It was a Japanese Fast Food place where the waitress and none for that matter can understand English. To top it, the menu was in Kazakh. :-( We had tough time ordering as none of us could speak or understand the language. We actually were using the sign language for showing Chicken wings and Chicken legs. Finally the waitress was able to find someone who could speak English and we managed to have a good Japanese meal for lunch. The restaurant also managed to give us a 30% discount. Yeppie!! :-) It was sunny on our way back to the hotel - it was Chennai sunny guys.

Sri and Vishal confused with the Menu

Our Menu

Thats my Lunch - Chicken with Cheese with Rice. It was Yummy!

On our way back to the Hotel

After reaching the room, I did some blogging and uploaded the fotos. Srinath, Vishal and I had some coffee and tea in Sri's room and had some very great discussion just about everything around us after which we watched a movie - Rockstar using my HD. :-D The movie was good and thought provoking. It was around 10 PM when we decided to have some dinner. Believe me or not, this city is busy after 10 also. We could see so many people during that time also. We managed to find a light music bar called Bear Resturant as Srinath wanted to shake his legs. There was light, music and of course drinks but there was none on the dance floor. So, Sri didn't get a chance but we will make sure that we go back there again. This restaurant had a English menu and so it made our ordering easy. Our Waiter asked us which country we were from and when we told him India, he was like 'wow' and the next minute we could hear a Bollywood number. :-) People in Kazakh are so sweet and welcoming. I am not sure if the same would happen back from where I come from but listening to some Hindi songs in a light music bar just because we were among them was great. I had some mushrooms for dinner and other two had Omelet with fried tomato. After our dinner, we headed back to our rooms and turned in for the night.

Thats a Crow

Destination: Astana

My flight was scheduled at 00:50 from Chennai to Kuala Lumpur for #ibmcsc. I was worried if they would charge me more for the excess luggage. Fortunately, they didn't but unfortunately the Malaysian airlines did the check-in upto Almaty only as it was my first point of entry to Kazakhstan. After boarding the flight,I watched a tamil movie(yep, a movie :-D I didn't sleep) and had some food served in the flight. My flight to Kuala Lumpur was not long, reached by 3.5 hours which was around 7:10 local time.

Since I was to meet Vishal and Srinath in the airport, I went to their arrival gate but couldn't find them there. So, I once again came back to the departure gate and caught up with Vishal. Both of us got our temporary boarding pass and went to have some breakfast at Olive Tree in the Kuala Lumpur airport. Mr. Nathan was so sweet to offer us two glass of chocolate Milk Shake - Reason: He got to know that I was from Tamil Nadu after seeing me sign in tamil :-) Back to the story, after our heavy breakfast, we headed to the departure gate C35 where we met Srinath. Vishal and Srinath got their boarding passes upto Astana and I got only upto Almaty as I have to clear customs in Almaty for my check-in luggage. The flight to Almaty was not full like the flight to Kuala Lumpur. So, each one of us had an entire row and sat comfortably. Even though I wanted to read a book, I didn't. I ended up sleeping the entire trip till Almaty for the next 8 hours, Woke up in between for food, water and some clicks. ;-)

 
Our route from Kuala Lumpur to Almaty crossed few good places like Andaman See, Bay of Bengal, Himalayas and also a dam near Lahore - So, we traveled across India, Pakistan and Afghanistan to reach Almaty. 








Once landed in Almaty, we went for the immigration check and I had to hurry to get my Check-in baggage and had to put it back for check-in to Astana and get my boarding pass. Unfortunately my hand baggage was also put as a part of check-in luggage and they asked me to pay extra for the hand luggage. I talked them out of it claiming that it was my hand luggage and they put it as check-in and I cant pay up for this. So, they let me go and I happily got my boarding pass and I didn't want to carry my hand luggage also. :-) The flight was nearly full and all the three of us ended up sitting in different seats.

Our flight was on time and we landed safely in Astana. Since we had completed our immigration check, we took our check-in baggage and took the car which was arranged by the CDC team and reached hotel safely. The sun set only after 9:30 PM and the day time is more here compared to India. After calling my home, I slept again.

The Team

I have exactly 12 days for my departure to Astana for #ibmcsc Kazakhstan. I am so excited about the entire trip and meeting my team for the first time there. The only means of contact is the weekly call we have now for the past 3 months chaired by Keith - our Mentor. As promised, I will introduce the Kazakhstan 2 Team and also mention some of their hobbies, fun facts and also their labels.

Divya, The Exuberant Voyager is from Bangalore has visited about half a dozen countries and is also into Scuba diving. Our Curious Scanner Gustavo is from Lima, who likes to play football has been to Berlin for FIFA finals in 2006 and also walked to the top of Machu Picchu. Yuji – Attentive Listener plays French horn in orchestras and loves skiing is from Tokyo. Divya, Gustavo and Yuji will be working with Kaznexinvest.

From Sydney, we have Belinda who likes traveling, cooking, reading. Brad is also a certified Scuba diver, our Gadget guy from Ohio and he is about to visit his 12th country. Zippi Sara likes to take road trips, is from Chennai and that's me. Atameken is our client NGO.

From Philippines, we have a celebrated Child Star, Chester - "Jack of all trades" as per our team label loves to sing, travel and eat.  Karla - traveling Kiwi likes playing netball, gardening, reading and traveling of course is from Wellington. Siew Yin – “Left Brain Thinker” from Kuala Lumpur plays golf and is also passionate about traveling and exploring new places. Optimism Incarnate Vishal, always looks at the good side of everything is from Bangalore. He loves cricket and live music. The client for Chester, Karla, Siew Yin and Vishal is Kazakehenroeksperitza (Central Asia Energy Efficiency Program)

Our Positive Attitude and Adventurous Srinath from Bangalore likes to play cricket and loves to dance. Tanner - Deeper Thinker likes to spend time outdoors like hiking, hunting and working in his backyard is a pescatarian from North Carolina. Srinath and Tanner's client is Legal Media Center.

My next blog would be about Astana! :-)

Zumba

I really wanted to do something outdoors and so I registered for  CTC - Chennai Trekking Club about a month back. I started getting mailers about the treks, cycling, mid sea dives and so on. About 10 days back, I got a mailer about Zumba class. When I heard the word Zumba, I immediately remembered - Zumbale Zumbale zumakku zumma. :-) Now, this was something different - a dance class which was also a fitness class. I forwarded it to my friend Vidya and she too was interested. Both of us registered for this class. This was the first time for both of us when it comes to any outdoor activity. We were so excited about it when we got the confirmation mail from Aishwarya - the organizer.

On Saturday-16th, both of us got ready in tracks and headed for the Miss Fit center in Choolaimedu for 11 to 12 Session. We reached pretty early and was waiting for the rest of the party to reach. We had 3 trainers and among them, Senthil was a certified Zumba Trainer. Our class started with some warm-ups followed by Zumba steps with some nice heavy music. As Aishwarya had said in the mail, Zumba didn't require any previous experience with dance and also the fitness level or age didn't matter. All the ladies had enjoyed to the core along with shedding some calories in the next one hour. I am pretty sure that if you ask me to workout or walk for an hour, I wouldn't do it. It would be too boring. But Zumba was something different. At the end of the session, all of us surely lost some calories! :-) Aishwarya said that she will make sure to have more Zumba sessions in days to come. After meeting some new faces and saying byes, Vidya and I left the center at around 12:15, had a nice lunch at Saravana Bhavan and returned home.

30 days to go!

30 days to go for my Corporate Service Corps - CSC trip. To those who all wonder what CSC is - It is like a Business version of Peace Corps which was started by IBM in 2008. This Program helps to develop the leadership skills of IBMers while addressing the socio-economic challenges faced by the emerging markets.

It all started last April, when we got a notification to apply for the CSC program. Like many others, I also applied for this initiative which had few questions along with essay writing also. I was eagerly waiting for the results because it was such a big thing to me. I had been waiting for 2 years to apply for CSC as there were some prerequisite to apply. I felt that I could contribute my skills in this program as well as learn a lot new skills and improve my expertise through CSC. Finally after a month and half waiting, I received a note that I have been selected for the CSC program. The waiting is not over yet. Now, I had to wait for a mail which will inform me about the location and my travel dates. My waiting was finally answered on 1st March 2012 that I have been assigned to Kazakhstan Team and I will be away for a month from July 12th.

My next few blogs will be about my preparatory work about CSC and also i will introduce my CSC fellows #ibmcsc :-)

Green Hands Project

I know its been ages that I have blogged. Hoping that I will keep up the spirit and blog continuously, I am gonna write something about that we did on Saturday - 9th June. My usual Saturday goes something like this - Wake up at 6:30 or 7:00, play with Pooja and Vicky, pay a visit to T.nagar and roam around. But last Saturday was something different. 

I started at 8:00 from my home to the Isha Green Hands (Pasumai Puratchi) Nursery in Adambakkam.

The first time, I heard about this project was when I was in college - A mass tree planting marathon was held on October 17, 2006. It resulted in 852,587 saplings being planted in 6284 locations across 27 districts in the state, by over 256,289 volunteers in just one day, setting a Guinness World Record(Courtesy: Isha Yoga Site). My college also participated in this initiative and as a result, I planted one sapling near the hostel and put up a fence around it. Later, when I attended the Inner Engineering activity under Isha Yoga, I again came across this Green Hands project. I tried to start a activity for this project under ODC but couldn't as I didn't know how or whom to approach. But this time, Padma pushed us to start this activity. Along with the World Environment Day celebrations, this activity was kick started on 9th June.

We decided to come in IBM T-shirts and assemble near the nursery at 8:45. Bharath anna explained the first batch on how the nursery is functioning and allotted us the work. Padma and myself were in-charge of mixing the soil. We have to mix the red soil, normal soil and manure in 3:1:1 ratio. Soon, batches II and III were allotted with work. They had to separate the weaker ones from the fertile ones, fill the gap in the samplings by adding the soil mixture, sort them based of the size of plants grown. With the given instructions, everyone set out to work. Thanks to Mother Earth, we had a good climate as well. We has 2 more Isha volunteers who worked along with us and we discussed so many things about the nursery maintenance. The land for the nursery was sponsored by a volunteer, 2 volunteers each day come to water the plants before going to their office and on weekends there are dedicated volunteers who help in the maintenance of the nursery. These saplings are the distributed in the outskirts of Chennai and they get a committed group from the local community to look after them. At the end of the activity, we had a small presentation by the Isha volunteers followed by a feedback session.  

We had lot of fun in the span of 4 hours. We saw few snails (I have never seen so big snails so far) and one or two frogs before our break at 11:00. We had some cakes, coffee bites, biscuits and lots of water during the break and continued our work. Suja akka prepared an energy drink for us after the break. Most of us had one cup, few had 2 cups and only 2 persons had infinite number of cups :-D.  This is when we saw 4 snakes - 2 very small ones and 2 small ones (Baskar said one was a viper). Finally, if I don't tell about the mango story, then this blog would miss something. The house next to the nursery had so many mangoes. The Ripe Mangoes were so tempting and few of us had the opportunity to get one before leaving. :-D How we got the mangoes is still a mystery. 

  
I headed home with a feeling that I have done something for the environment instead of just talking about it and committed that this will be continue in the coming weeks.

Blue @ Marina!!!

The Marina beach, world's second longest beach is also the number one landmark in Chennai. But the cleanliness on the beach remains a huge challenge. When someone says Marina, two things will come in our mind - Beach and Dirty. The pollution at Marina is pretty higher when compared to the Besant nagar beach and the other beaches in Chennai.

As part of the Celebration of Service Initiative, IBM joined hands with Exnora to clean Marina Beach on 25th June 2011. Exnora is derived from Excellent, Novel and Radical ideas (in solving environmental problems by involving those who caused the problem) which focuses on preserving nature and preventing environmental degradation.

We were asked to come in IBM T-Shirts and families were also invited to be a part of the initiative. People dressed in blue Ts were spotted at Triumph of Labour Statue @ 7:30 AM. The cleaning started with a small talk by Senior members of IBM and everyone was given a apron, mask, shower cap and a pair of gloves for protection purposes. One big green bag was given to each group to put the trashes. Baskar, Gayathri, Jacintha, Edwin, Scalet, Ramesh and I were a group. We started collecting the trash from one corner of the beach and covered upto half the stretch as the other half was taken care by HCL. I thought of listing the various trashes we found at the start of the cleaning activity, but I am not gonna list it down as remembering it itself disgusts me. I really wonder how people are able to pollute the beach to the core. No, I am not gonna take a lecture here. Anyway, most of us were exhausted bcoz of the bending and walking in 2 hours itself. I remembered our KG rhymes "Bits of Paper" while picking up the trash. :-)

At the end of the session, we piled up all the trash bags which was then collected by Chennai Corporation garbage trucks. IBM had also distributed Coffee, Tea, Biscuits and Sandwich which sort of made my breakfast. Point to be noted people, all the garbage and leftovers were put in bins only. :-) Had a photo session after it and we all dispersed.

Forgot one important news, I was also caught in action by Kalaignar channel and was telecasted in News. :-) Unfortunately I missed the news as I was travelling but my friends and colleauges were able to spot me.