Life and its twists and turns

Its been a loooonngggggggg time since I posted any blogs after 2010.  Today its 25 December 2013. During the 3 year period, life took its own twists and turns.  Life had various experiences - sometimes I was on top of the world, and sometimes I felt like I was buried underground, but definitely it has given me experiences for life time.  Without getting into the details, in short would like to recap the past 3 years.

2011 - It was a time when I did different things in life.  KPMG was generous and kind enough to choose me to send to UAE on a 3 month secondment.  My days at UAE was filled with fun, joy and happiness with my newly found company, Sadaf Zahid who was from Pakistan but by fortune became my roomie.  Could have not got a better roomie than her.  We roamed around, cooked together, worked together through the night to complete assignments, shared rooms, fought with each other, but we knew that we were the best friends we would have ever made.  Not to forget, living alone without parents for the first time, in a totally different country was a totally new experience and an opportunity that God gave me.  After coming back, I continued my work in KPMG and suddenly a thought, of starting classes and quit the place by August 2010.  My mentor at KPMG, Mr. Praveen Warrier knowing my passion for teaching and also who then joined Grant Thornton (GT) knew that it would be the best place for me to continue the profession and also continue my passion.  Got into GT as a Senior, after a round of hectic interview which was jointly taken by Mr.Lakshman (one of my favourite managers) and Mr. Vaidy(anathan), met new faces, who were wonderful humans under the sun.  I was enjoying my job at GT, not to miss out the fact that my partner, Mr. Sumesh was one of the best employers I would have ever got.

2012 - It was a time when I was having fun in my personal life.  The year started with my convocation which was held to felicitate the qualified chartered accountants and that was a moment which made my beloved parents feel proud about their daughter.  Also, I had a friend for my life, Sathya who kept guiding me throughout my career growth and because of whom I got promoted to an Assistant Manager. Thanks to Praveen Warrier and Lakshman too who were my mentors who gave my partner the assurance that I would definitely perform and was eligible to be promoted to an AM.  It definitely came as a surprise, but I tried to live up to my expectation.  There were a lot of other marriage proposals which came my way, but I was able to escape the trap. ;)  The year went by smooth with lot of work at office and living my bachelorette life with my beloved friends. Towards  the end of the year we planned for an office trip to Wayanad and with the help of the managerial group and Vasil (one of the brightest trainees I have ever met) we were able to organise a trip.  That was when I found that I was also good at organising events.  I was able to successfully organise games and events at Wayanad which kept the group of 30 odd colleagues engaged for a whole evening.:). Randomly the MI7 (my group of friends at GT) was formed during the trip and we were able to be continue our friendship successfully till date.( :) .. touchwood)

2013 - This year was definitely a roller coaster year.  Not sure if this is what my future is gonna be.  To start with the year began with wonderful time with my friends.  But by the end of March, my marriage was fixed. Due to certain circumstances, I am still unable to find out how I agreed to get married to Mr. Senthil Nathan when he was still a student and how it all happened.  My engagement was held on May 20, and the marriage on Sep 16.  The period of 6 months went on.  Nothing big to share nor anything great to explain.  But understood that people are not the same.  We choose friends of our own wavelength but if there is anything that goes wrong in the relationship we cut it and move on in life without any hesitation.  But that's not life.  I understood that we need to live with those differences of opinion and mismatch of wavelength at times. Amidst all this, on 16 July, my besssttttt friend, my life giver, my mentor, my guide, Sathya cleared his long pending CA final and became a chartered accountant.  What more, I was happie to see my friend who was behind my qualification clear this attempt and move a step forward in his life.  Truly he made it with a clean sweep :).. happie for him. The group MI7 has lived its friendship throughout the year (touchwood), though filled with differences and fights, but we were able to make our trips often and would definitely never forget the trip to Palakkad and Attapadi hills in one of Praveen Kumar's car.  It was one of the most funfilled trip with Vidya, Nanda, Ance, Praveen, Karan and Fahim. We had the best times in one of the best resorts (thanks to Nanda and Praveen). Their friendship was one of the best things that happened in my life.  The year is soon gonna end and I hope I will be able to have another year filled with happiness and fulfillment. My prayers will be definitely be with my loved ones and my sweet hearts forever. :)

2 days of my life :Read it only if you have some spare time.. Quite long one..

I have participated in debates, given speeches, have gone out with my friends outside the city, but this trip was something unique. Thanks to my friend Sathya who organised to participate in a SICASA conference at Vijayawada on 8th and 9th July 2010 for the three of us who were participating for the first time. Well, the 3 of us are Subbu (Subramani), Bharat, and Me.
Jouney to Vijayawada:
We four, Sathya, Subbu, Bharat and I boarded the train the night before i.e. 7th July 2010 at around 11 PM. Without realising that it was late night and that it is actually time for sleeping for others, we were chit chatting for quite sometime without giving ears to the warnings of an old man. Suddenly the man came in with the TTR and shouted "If these guys are gonna shout again at night, i will pull the chain, stop the train and make sure these guys are pushed out". Oh gosh!, we apologised and went to sleep. Poor guys, prepared my PPT the whole night in the next coupe while i was sleeping ;-).
Day 1 of the Conference - 8th July 2010
We reached Vijayawada at around 7 AM and there was a volunteer who had come to pick us up. Great day to begin, it was drizzling outside and the climate was super cool. We checked in the hotel rooms and got ready by 8 AM to reach the conference hall. Subbu and Bharat had their sessions on the first day, first session after the inaugural function. Poor guys were waiting for about 2 and half or so, for the inaugural function to get over. Don't ask me what happened at the inaugural function, i could understand only the portion which was spoken in English, the telugu part was greek and latin!!! Subbu and Bharat completed their sessions successfully. They did a good job of their first attempt. And yes, i had by then found a very friendly person, named Snehaja who was from Hyderabad who was our fellow speaker the next day, with Sathya and me. :). Though Subbu, Bharat and Snehaja were new to me, we really had a good time during the 2 days. It was great to see and speak to the coordinators and particularly the enthusiastic students at V'wada and the members of our Insti. They were fantastic bunch of eager students (around 1800 of them).
After all the sessions on 8th July 2010, we, the speakers of the both the days, Sathya, Snehaja, Subbu, Bharat, Ramanujam, Sharma and myself decided to visit the famous durga temple in the evening and then we headed to a restaurant to have our dinner. After the dinner, it was Sathya and my turn to prepare the whole night since we had our session the first thing next morning and after preparing until some 2 o' clock the next day, we slept.
Day 2 of the Conference - 9th July 2010
Oh my god!, the next day, the local telugu newspaper had printed our photos with the interview that they had taken the day before. After hearing from our telugu friend as to what was written against each of our photos, we started to the conference hall and ya, i was very much frightened and afraid. Not because of the crowd or that it is the first time, but because, i had to keep up Sathya's belief in me who had actually recommended us for the conference. We were called up to the stage, which had our name plates. The guest for our session, Mr. Shekkizhar appreciated each one of our presentations and take my words, i would say that our session went on really well and was the best among the 4 sessions. :) (Sorry subbu and bharat, i know truth bitters sometimes ;)) We were so much relieved after the session, that we had great time spending time talking about the time we took to prepare and the struggle we had to undergo in the train (remember i mentioned earlier about the old man???) ;). Later another friend of ours, Srihari, who came to V'wada on that day from Chennai finished his presentation. Oh man, the main thing is that we were surprised by the audience, who flocked to us to get our autograph after our sessions. Oh God!, don't really know what we had done, but they were taken aback by the way we presented our papers and we would have autographed to around 100 students to whom we give our heartfelt thanks to have listened patiently to our presentations. Kudos to V'wada students :).
By afternoon, all our technical sessions got over and we had planned to go out for lunch. We were all very hungry and were badly searching for some decent hotel in the scorching 1.30 PM sunlight in the streets of V'wada. We had our food and were pulling Sathya for many things and some how we wanted to embarass him and to make him pay the bill, we turned the lunch into a birthday party :). How?? well, it was Sneha's idea and we all started singing birthday song for Sathya :). Ha ha!!, he was dumbstruck and did not know why we started singing!!! And then after the so called "treat" by Sathya, we headed back to the hall where it was all set for the session to be addressed by Padmashree T.N. Manoharan. Wow, the hall was jam packed and lo, we had our Manoharan sir arrive on time and he gave such an inspirational speech to the students who had to give their exams. And then, the V'wada SICASA honoured Manoharan sir with lots of flowers, boquets etc.etc.. We, "The Speakers", took a photo with him and after all the autograph given by Manoharan sir, the Conference ended with a valedictory function. And this was a great valedictory function. Ask me why, I never understood what was spoken there, cos it was all in telugu and the Chairman of SICASA got a little emotional that the Conference was a grand success. I only understood that, then and there, he started praising us, the Speakers. I was there clapping when the audience clapped and laughed, when they did it. ;) (This is what you call, "When you are in Rome, be a Roman" hehehe;)). After that we all went back to our rooms, packed everything and checked out of the hotel. We decided to have dinner outside and we went to a very nice restaurant. Had a good food and started to the railway station.
Guys, Don't think that the blog is over.!!! Read on, now comes the fun part!!!
Journey back to Chennai:
It was the same Howrah mail, that we boarded on 7th. We understood that the AC was not working in the train. Now it was 5 of us. (Let me not give you the trouble of guessing, it was Sathya, Subbu, Bharat, Srihari (the one who joined us the next day from chennai) and me). We had earlier narrated our train story that we encountered to Srihari. Since he knew better spoken Hindi, he had given a suggestion to one of co passengers saying "Arey yaar, aap chain kichiye aur gadi ro kiye, TTR definitely aa kar, AC ko repair karne ka praband karega". Basically, he gave an idea that if he pulls the chain of the train, the train will stop and automatically the TTR will come and solve the problem. Gosh, guess, the Co passenger was desparate to hear it from someone, that he immediately did the same. We were chit chatting and did not know the reason behind the train stopping suddenly. Poor co passenger, he wanted a support and called Srihari. Oh man, Srihari was astonished to hear his obidience ;) . But somehow that guy was not caught, cos this had created a chaos and the public started fighting with the TTR for not repairing the AC. May be it was Srihari and the co passenger's good time. (Good gracious, otherwise, god knows, what would have happened to have stopped the train!!!). Then it was an hour's job and the AC started working. These guys badly wanted to sleep cos, everybody literally slept for hardly 3 hours for the past 2 days. Sathya and me got a seat together, but we chatted for about 2 hours or so and slept by 12. (I know what you guys are thinking, "When did we reach chennai, because of the delay?"). 1 hours' delay had caused, 4 hours delay to reach chennai!!! And wait, this is not the end of the story, when the train was delayed by more than an hour, it was stationed at one of the towns outside chennai, name, "Adambakkam" (Guess so, but it sounded very similar to "Arumbakkam" in chennai, which is about 45 minutes from central station). Now, it was Bharat's turn to mess up things ;).. Somebody asked where this place is, and, Bharat, the enthusiast was on his toes to give the answer. But, either he should have checked whether it was chennai or not from someone or checked out the name of the place properly. But he is so intelligent that he told one of the families who enquired about this place, that this is in Chennai and that Central is just 45 minutes from here. The irony is that Chennai is about 3 hours from this place, and also there is no railway station in Chennai's Arumbakkam. (God save that family that day:) !!!!).
Finally we reached Chennai and had to start our routine.
Everyday, i still wish it was the 8th and 9th of July, 2010.
To put it simply, "It was 2 days of no work, no deliverable to be given, just friends, new friends, new place, great presentation, fantastic audience, good food and great chit chatting". What else you want re!!! ;-). I bet none of us would forget these 2 days ever in our lives. Our heartfelt thanks to Sathya to have made this happen for the 4 of us, thanks to Bharat who was also a Bakra, whenever we wanted to pull someone, thanks to Subbu for his sense of humor which had a perfect timing and Srihari for whatever he did for the delaying the journey to Chennai ;-). And not to forget, thanks to Sneha, Sharma and others who were a good Company for us throughout our stay at V'wada... Good old days to Cherish.. :)

Life after Qualifying CA

Its been a 6 year struggle and hard work and now I am a Chartered Accountant (June 2004 to Jan 2010). :) Life has changed a lot. The work place looks even better. I have started loving my job; A new energy within me; I am just loving my life now. But then, it has also its cons. I have to now manage my finance. I will have to decide so many things for my future which i don't find in the near future :). I will have to be even more responsible and I am no more a student. At the end of the day, the result is that I have grown and matured enough to manage things on my own. That's life. I love it......... :)