My second visit to Gibraltar lasted for about 5 months during which, quit unlike the last trip I got to meet a whole bunch of people from varied nationalities and cultures. All thanks to my friends Seshadri and Raghav for having introduced me to the Multi Lingual Customer Service team. The Multi Lingual customer service team was formed in Gibraltar as an add on to the existing English support for our product line and Sesh and Raghav were the trainers chosen to get the team up to speed. They did a damn neat job out of it and had fun in the process too. As a third party observer I personally think the crux of the whole call center culture lies in the training sessions. People get recruited into the company and get to interact with their team mates (not just team members) over a partly informal class room environment during which period they strengthen their personal bonds in addition to their professional working relationships. Anyways the ML CS team is a good example of a well oiled machine to which I was introduced on the social occasion of visiting the La Feria.
La FeriaLa Feria is a yearly fare which happens on the southern coastal towns of Spain. The Feria lasts about a week or two and is kicked off by a procession at the local church followed by the festivities like fire works, etc. The fare mainly provides 4 kinds of activities ...
- Stalls which give out soft toys and other such goodies to winners from a game of bullseye, ball trowing or target practice.
- Food stalls which serve all kinds of local delicacies ranging from Churros to Paella.
- Huge tents meant exclusively for wining and dancing.
- The rides.
My trip to the La Feria started with Raghav inviting me over to it and I met the "gang" at a small place right across the gibraltarian border where couple of people had gathered and started off with some Tinto Virano (Wine with a dash of lemon in sprite). I got to know one advantage of working in a multilingual team - no matter which European country you are dining or wining in, one of your teammates can always be summoned to rescue you from footing a misappropriated bill :). Thomas, who handles French + Spanish support was the hero of the night who got the bill changed to reflect the right amount of Viranos the women had. The gang had 2 Indians - Raghav and myself, 2 Russians - Olga and Natasha, 1 Chinese - Sishoon Chow, 2 French - Thomas and Nene and 1 Swede - Nicklas. Hmm interesting combination of people to go to a Spanish dancing tent. I was in my shorts and I definitely was no dancer so I found myself a cozy drinking corner of the tent quite near the bar where I was soon joined by half the gang because of the same problem / advantage - can't dance / its close to the bar :). Noman, joined us to add to our mixture of nationalities. He is of Pakistani orign. By the time we entered the tent we were all sober and the tent itself was sparsely populated with couple of people trying the much space requiring moves of the Flamenco and by the time I/We left the tent some of us were sloshed and none of us was not high to some extent or the other. While all of us were buying rounds of drinks one after the other, Natasha took charge of making sure that every body got a good share of intoxication. I personally had learnt about a new thing by the time I came out of the tent. I got to know from Nicklas what a tobacco bag is. It is a small capsule of cloth containing powdered tobacco, its more like a miniature version of a tea bag which you keep under your upper lip to get high. It is a very strong substitute to a cigarette which is popular all over Sweden and Southern America. Supposedly Swedish people just by virtue of being Swedish could import the tobacco bags or this lose variety of tobacco for chewing from all over the world. Interesting fact isn't it? Nicklas was good enough to share some of his limited supply of the bags with us and we tried it out just for the fancy of it.
La Bacherlor's Party
This is one more of my unforgettable outings with the ML CS Team. Raghav was to be betroth to Reena soon once he returned to India and people organized a farewell cum bachelors party for Raghav. I was invited too. The night started with all of us assembling at The Asoka, an Indian restaurant in La Linea a little further away from the border. This time around Sesh was with us too. The Indian starters we ordered were well appreciated. Marius, the tall Lithuanian biker dude who is into Russian support especially enjoyed the Samosa but, till this date he has struggle recollecting its name :). Nicklas quite generously handed out quite a few of his tobacco bags that night to the willing crowd and he also got us introduced to the taste of Captain Morgan's Rum straight up. I liked it very much. Almost all of us did shots of Captain Morgan's or at least Anisette Liquor. But, little did we all know that the most unforgettable moment of the evening was yet to come and that it was to come as a speech delivered by Sesh. Man that was an awesome speech of which I remember nothing but, the frequent repetitions of "Few things ..." and it got dragged to a good half hour having started as a 5 minute quickie. Hmm! That is typical speeching Sesh for you ladies and gentlemen. :)
The whole party then moved on to a nearby night club called the Molly Blooms. Molly Blooms is located on one of the prominent squares in La Linea and is quite popular as a local joint. The club sports a 6ft x 4ft screen and videos of the song being played are projected on to it. Sometimes if you get our of the drunken haze or the dance craze, you will notice that the video is totally irrelevant to the song :). Dancing isn't really my cup of tea but, I had the music videos to watch and my booze to guzzle. So I was happy and content. I found myself the cozy corner again and settled with my drink while watching Raghav pull up his Chiranjeevi steps from a famous Telugu movie called "Kondaveeti Donga" and Sesh pull up his ehem! err! well what can I say - dance. The others were busy having fun that night too while me and Thomas were all set to honour our choice of whisky by buying each other rounds of it. I watched the likes of Minati Mohanty a.k.a. Mini dance on the floor with such ardent enthusiasm that she kept on going in spite of being hurt and bleeding. Boy! people love dancing and it was uncharted territory for me so I had to make a move to hit the pillow for some good sleep after some great Whisky.
LaliBy the time I returned to Gibraltar, Nitin, my boss had a new PA who used to call us her boys and really used to take care of us. She is Eulalia Cortes a.k.a., Lali for short. Be it organizing a night out on the town or planning a fun filled team building activity or plane / hotel bookings and apartment troubles Lali was the do it all contact person for all of our Production Engineering Group fellows. PEGgies as we love to call ourselves :). We had great fun moments hearing to her jokes over the Friday evening drinks or discussing about the arranged marriage system and culture at the Social Committee get together. Tamara, from the front desk would quite frequently join our conversations. Lali definitely added the human touch to the otherwise workaholic crowd of our team back in Gibraltar. She moved out of the company and we will definitely miss her in office if we return to Gibraltar. I personally miss the wonderful mom of 3 who in spite of all her work and personal pressures held her spirits high and livened our work place with her sense of humor and brilliance.
LondonIt was time for Raghav to leave Gibraltar and fly towards bigger personal commitments like his girl and marriage back in India. I wanted to take this as an opportunity to visit and see London so he planned for a halt in London while I planned for my round trip from Gibraltar to London. It was my first time landing in the London Heathrow airport, one of the busiest airports in the world. I realized the expanse of the airport while the plane taxied to its designated bay. It was marvelous watching the 1 year record holding bridge at the Gatwick airport which lets even a 7E7 pass underneath it with 2meters of clearance while it was fascinating watching the mere number of planes scheduled to fly one every 5 minutes on the electronic display panels at Heathrow.
As soon as we came out of the airport we were exposed to a thing which is very specific to London, the black cab. We took a black cab from Heathrow airport to the Hogarth Hotel, Earl's Court, our base camp in London. We were amazed at the constrained sizes of the rooms which packed so much elegance in them. As soon as we entered the main lobby of the hotel we were greeted by an Andhrite who looked like he could be from Warangal and I was absolutely correct about it. His name was Srinivas and he was from Warangal, Andhra Pradesh. Srinivas quickly gave us our respective keys and suggested Star kebab house at the end of the street to be the only eatery option at that hour. We were greeted by more Indians at the Star Kebab house, Hyderabadis in fact. Hmm content with having devoured good portions of our humongous plain long grain rice portions with Aaloo and Mutter sabji we returned to the hotel to find out some local places worth seeing from Srinivas. We got our info and used my GPRS link to look them up on Google maps.
The next morning armed with our tube maps we set out to conquer London :D. Our first real piece of exposure to the culture of London were the tubes. The Earl's court station at the end of the street formed our entry point to it and we were only amazed by the efficiency at which the tubes are organized probably there are very few countries with public transportation operating at such amazing efficiency. A tube has only to be delayed by a mere 2 minutes for the service on that particular tube line to be termed bad. Our first stop for the day was the London eye, an engineering marvel accomplished by Boeing and maintained and operated by British Airways. Me and Raghav took a flight on the London eye which if not stunning at the least is very very interesting. We made a booking for the wax museum, Madame Tusauds while booking the London Eye ticket itself and reached there via the baker street immortalized by Sherlock Holmes, the legendary crime solver created by Aurthur Conan Doyle. Before we made our way to Madame Tusauds me and Raghav stopped over at a bar named Bonapartes in the waterloo station for a drink and that is where we (atleast I) had the best beer we had tasted ever. May be its not just the beer may be we were parched whatever it was it was an amazing experience both of us would remember and given a chance like to relive. The brand of beer we had was coors and the way it settled in our tummies was just superb. The wax museum on its own had nothing great to offer but, the ride along the corridor of "London experience" on a string of black cabs should certainly interest you if you are unaware of some of the historic events of London like the great fire. Following the recommendation of a manager at our hotel we set course towards a Kerala Restaurant at Oxford Circus for a late lunch / evening snack. On reaching the place we were a little disheartened to know that we had couple of more hours to kill before the restaurant can open up for the evening. We decided to visit the nearby Piccadilly Circus and pursue my long standing dream of dining at the Veera Swamy restaurant, one of the oldest Indian restaurants in London which I saw rated as number one Indian Restaurant on the UK TV food. After 2 pit stops at the local bars and some searching on Google Maps we finally reached the address on Regent Street of the Veera Swamy restaurant to find its rather tiny entrance adorned with photo graphs of the times when Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru had visited the place. Hmm ... impressive! but, we found that the Veera Swamy too had quite some time before it reopened for the evening again. After a pit stop at the local electronic store for buying a multi voltage laptop charger and a nearby italian bar for some garlic bread we reached the Kerala restaurant on time to treat ourselves to some Dosas and Avial which we hadn't had in eons. Both me and Raghav wouldn't mind dying for some good Indian food and we could not believe our good fortune that day. We found ourselves craving for Paan by the end of the meal. Then retired to the hotel early and settled for one more round of late night meal at the Star Kebab house.
The next morning we set out with a mission to visit Party Gaming's (our company's parent company) London office. My friend Ravi, my chief contact in London was busy tending to his new born so we contacted Santosh, our colleague and a good friend. We reached Veera Swamy first by lunch time and were joined by Vaibhav More, a friend and colleague from Raghav's team form our office in India. Veera swamy is a very upmarket restaurant but, the food is definitely worth the money. We were seated at a table which affords a good view of the regent street and we dined well in the company of Vaibhav while he shared some funny happening from Ivy. Once done we came out of the restaurant to find ourself in front of a corner ice cream stand attached to an Italian restaurant with eye catchingly and mouth wateringly laden ice cream. Since the other two were not interested I treated myself to a scoop of pistachio and a scoop of mango. I must rate it absolutely the best ice cream I ever had. I got sad as we neared the Leicester Square as my ice cream got over. We walked into a bar near the square to treat ourselves to something called white beer which is just a little pale looking liquid when compared to the usual beer and had a little more bitterness to it than the usual variety. Then we walked down to the nearby Trafalgar Square to see Mr. Lord Nelson mounted on the long pillar guarded by 4 lions on the corners, commemorating the Battle of Trafalgar. Behind the Trafalgar square was a National museum of arts where we passed a little bit of time with in a not so familiar territory, art and artists. I especially loved a painting which looks it is nothing more than a piece of canvas with various colors striped on it in parallel bands. Not until I read the description beside that I realized that the artist drew perfectly parallel bands of colors on the canvas without any aid from any instrument but, just by controlling the color flow on the canvas manually. Wow! that must have been quite some feat. I applauded for him in my heart. I don't remember his name though. Having gathered a good dose of art we parted with Vaibhav and rocketed towards the Monument station in a tube. The monument (near the monument station) is a long pillary structure raised in memory of all those who lost their lives in the great fire of London started by the royal baker accidentally. Santosh picked us up from the Monument station and took us to the office where we met up with some people while waiting for Santosh to finish up for the day. Party Gaming affords a nice office within the square mile (the square mile in london known as the home for the richest of corporates and their offices and their millions of dollars of transactions daily) on the King William Street. Having had a good look around the office we set out towards Santosh's home at Harrow on the Hill. We were joined by a colleague from India who had recently moved to the London office, Rajeshwar. Santosh's apartment afforded a good view of the greenery around which I captured over a couple of test snaps on his latest acquisition, a Nikon Digital SLR. Having finished for the evening with some drinks and dinner at a local Chinese restaurant which had some super quick service, we returned to our base camp, The Hogarth Hotel. Our fun trip had come to an end as Raghav was to leave early morning next day.
The next morning I took the tube with Raghav till Heathrow to see him off and returned to the hotel for some breakfast. Having stuffed myself with the omlet, orange juice and toast with marmalade I reached the St. Jame's Hospital to visit my friend Ravi's new born son. I also, met up with some old friends like RamP and Sandhya. Then I got to drive Vasavi's (Ravi's wife) mother, aunt and Sandhya to an Indian restaurant in Croydon. It was my first time driving out side of India and it was a little bit scary as one had to adhere to traffic rules and norms stringently in London. My tour de London ended the next day when I boarded a British Airways flight back to Gibraltar. I wish I had some pictures to share from the London trip. Sigh! Lack of a digital camera is a curse now a days; having one and yet leaving it at home proved to be an even bigger one in my case.
Selwo SafariParty Gaming, our parent company organized an all day event to a near by Safari park called "Selwo Safari" and invited all the employees and their families. This is when I met little Jacob, the child of a friend and colleague of mine, Marius Viskontas and the love of his life, Rima. Marius is the tall, happy and hearty Lithuanian who likes Samosas best of all Indian food. :) Following are few digitally captured moments of that trip ...
Paris
All I can say about Paris is that it is a very romantic and very beautiful place. Check out the pics ...
Pebble CollectionPebble collection is an impromptu hobby which me and Sesh kick started on one of our visit to the eastern side of the rock of Gibraltar. We found a miniature beach near the Catalan Bay fishing village which has a good collection of pebbles but, the crux of the fun in collecting pebbles lies in fighting against the rising tide during the evenings to catch hold of a pebble. Both me and Sesh managed to collect a variety of pebbles over our subsequent visits to the same beach.
London againI was back in London for a night's stay on my way back to India and I had a camera with me this time. I put it to the best use I could in one evening and here are the results ...
Thats all about my second visit to Gibraltar.
Cheers!
/PhaKuDi
