Having started the discussion on the training days at Syntel, I would be telling you some incidents or events during my Mainframe training program that still remain etched in my memory. The training went on smoothly each day – with the regular routine of starting at 9 am, followed by lectures all day with an occasional practical session being thrown in for us to get our hands dirty on the CA simulator of the IBM Mainframe. Tea / coffee breaks were looked forward to by most of us (not particularly by me as I was not so crazy about them) but it was a welcome break from the theory lectures on JCL, COBOL in the chilled, air-conditioned classrooms that we had. The day ended at 5 pm and we eagerly waited to get out of the premises and either head home or go out somewhere to have fun with newly made friends.
Training days were all about Mauj-Masti too as our little group of VESIT people had been formed with a few others and we were constantly having fun without sacrificing on the learning in the training. November was the month of gelling with the new people, making friends, hanging out with them for lunch and finding out what they like and dislike – even if it meant friends of the opposite gender. Not that I was shy of the girls in our training batch but I was hesitant to be too friendly or comfortable with anyone, as initially my mind kept me reminding that it was going to be a two-month journey with most of them.
Birthdays started coming in with the routine wishing and singing the infamous birthday song for the fortunate one – but it was such a boring phenomenon that I thought that we should use this birthday occasion to break the ice amongst all of us. I planned to do something different for my birthday which was going to be in the middle of our training.
Even during the training sessions, we used to play Flash games like the now-famous Copter game which I have noticed employees of so many companies playing that I can tell with some evidence that it’s the most common Flash game to have being played in offices around. Then, there was the miniature Golf version which was fun to be played as a 2-player game – me and my friend (the one about whom I told you in my earlier post – who I met on the first day) – we competed so fiercely that we forgot that our original lecture was going on with the instructor inside. Them, there was a game meant strictly for boys named LP Challenge (read LP as London Pilsner, guys who drink should know what I’m talking about by now) and the objective of the game was to collect as many LP bottles as possible that were flying down from the sky into your crate – the more you collect, the more you strip an accompanying Playboy model whose picture was kept right next to the gaming area in the Flash game – this game was so popular among guys that they used to literally slog it out for LP beer bottles. The height of popularity of this game was see when I saw few guys breaking records in this game and fully stripping all the available 3 Playboy models and then going to the far extent of taking a screen shot of the 3 Playboy models to immortalize their achievement. This was seen as the pinnacle of success achieved for any Flash game ever in our training. And, it was our guys’ ability to keep things within us so as not to let any of the girls in the batch know about our achievements – cause stripping 3 Playboy models by collecting dozens of LP beer bottles in a crate is not something worth proclaiming when projecting a Mr. Nice Guy kind-of image.
The first time we got something to feast on, when there was a birthday of one of the colleagues in training, was plenty of Gulab Jamuns. Marks started trickling in occasionally for each quiz and I was doing well by scoring consistently above all the others, when looked at cumulative scores. It was not that my intentions were to score more than others, but I wanted to stay above that 60% barrier and improve on my own previous score, if possible.
As I told you in the previous post, there was this Marathi girl who used to travel with me in the train. Now, we were into December and by now, we had been good friends, travelling often together and constantly having some or the other discussion. One day, she asked me what colour I liked and things like these, etc. I was bit surprised but still answered to the extent possible. Some other day, she asked me what kind of clothes did I like to wear and I was again amazed to know why all of a sudden she’s asking me all this, but I still did answer as much as possible. Spending those brief moments with friends either in the Syntel bus or with her in the train are so special that you still remember them vividly.
Now came my birthday in that year – December 16 2005 – and I had planned to give the entire training batch a lunch party at one of the hotels inside SEEPZ. I had set aside a budget for the party. When I went inside the classroom at 9 am, I was pleasantly surprised to see a birthday cake waiting for me to cut and the entire class was looking at me, smiling as they saw my surprised look. They started singing the Happy Birthday song for me as I stood in disbelief, staring at them and the wonderful cake that they had brought – it was a great moment to relive. Once I cut the cake, I offered it to each of them – receiving plenty of wishes, hugs and handshakes in return.
Then came the greatest surprise – a surprise gift handed over to me by that girl – and I opened it to see a black and blue combination, Adidas T-shirt inside which was really nice. It was then that I figured it out that she had been getting information from me for so many days about my likes, dislikes, clothes I wear, etc for choosing a birthday gift. Such a long planning and I was amazed to know how easily girls can fool guys without the guys even realizing it. I still have that T-shirt with me and as I write this post right now, I’m actually wearing this same T-shirt. What a co-incidence!
For lunch, all of the 24 training batch people went to ICH (referenced in my previous post) and had a sumptuous meal. It was the first time ever that someone in our training batch had ever invited the entire batch for party for a birthday. I was the trend-setter for the lunch party in our training batch and then, many more lunch parties followed. It was a great occasion for the entire batch to get together outside the classroom and interact.
The training was going to end with a group project (actually termed a case study) which was supposed to be executed and inspected by the training-in-charge (the strict guy who taught us JCL, COBOL, etc). This project was all-important to each one of us and we had been working hard to implement a flawless case study. There was this one group consisting of all girls – who used to sit on the first bench in every training class throughout the entire 2-month period – they were facing many errors and issues while working on their case study. They were working hard on it, still facing some issues and they were frustrated to the extent that they had started believing that there was a ghost in the PC in which they were running their source code as it was behaving inconsistently and was not responsive at times. Some of us decided to play a prank on this troubled group and it was on the second-last day of the submission of the case study that we decided to swap the PC CPU on which their source code was residing with another CPU which was not used by any of the other groups. We swapped the CPUs late that night and left at 9:30 pm by boarding the last Syntel buses – we also had finalized our own case studies by that day. I was not directly involved in this prank but I was an eyewitness to the prank being played and I decided to stay mum, as suggested by my friends. They had thought that they would disclose about the prank to this girl-group on the next morning after some minutes of them trying to search for their case study source code and becoming worried. It was supposed to be a friendly prank and we had no intention of causing anyone any harm with respect to their marks.
The next morning, the girl-group arrived earlier than the others, as usual. They were frantically searching for the case study inside the PC and were shocked to see it disappeared. I came inside later on with the Marathi girl who was with me in the train. She was also a part of this group. I realized that the prank was on and the group was already worried. I went to my place and sat there quietly, looking at my own case study and checking things. My friends who had played the prank were already seated and were smiling and softly giggling as the troubled group was in panic mode. One of the girls in that group was a girl who didn’t like pranks at all and she was not too open-minded at that time. She was the kind of girl that you would not want to mess with but still my friends had taken the risk as they had kind-of a score to settle with her, although n a friendly way. She saw them giggling behind and came to the conclusion that my friends were the ones who would have definitely played this prank. She warned them that she was going to complain this to the training-in-charge and stood up to leave the classroom and go to the staff room to complain. My friends admitted to playing the prank and told her that it was purely done in a friendly manner and with no malicious intentions but she wasn’t ready to listen to them. Some of her group members include the girl with whom I travelled in train, tried to calm her down and told her to take the entire episode in a lighter spirit. Finally, after some convincing, she was pacified ad she didn’t complain. The funny thing about the episode for me was that none of the girls ever thought I had been an eyewitness to this prank. They thought I was clean. Feels safe when you have a nice reputation, right?
This was the prank which I still remember and which brings a smile to my face till date. After the training ended, on the last day, our ranks, percentages were declared. I stood first in our training batch and I was glad to have exceeded my original expectations of staying above 60%. My college friend, a Catholic, stood second in rank and I was happy for him too. There was a prize distribution ceremony in which the top 3 rankers were awarded books on contemporary topics like DB2, etc. I was given the DB2 book authored by CJ Date – a deserving award at that time.
Finally, the time came for declaration of what projects and in what locations were we going to be allocated as our training came to an end. It happened on the same day as the final results and awards ceremony. I was fortunate and deservingly got a place to work for the biggest client of Syntel, that is American Express and my location was going to be in Mumbai – Unit 89 itself (on the second floor in the other wing of the same building SDF 3 in which our training had taken place). All the others also got the locations that they preferred, with projects ranging from clients like American Express, Allstate, etc. Since it was a Friday on which this was declared, we had to report on the coming Monday to our various contact persons on these projects.
On the day that our training was going to end, the guys celebrated by opening a bottle of Feni brought from Goa and started drinking it inside the training room itself before any instructor could catch them. It was one of our training batch friends who was from Goa had gone to his home for New Year’s Eve and had returned with a bottle of Feni as a gift to the guys. That room was then filled with the fragrance of Feni all over and then we had to quickly wrap up the Feni program before it was too late. One of the craziest things to do when at the workplace surely!
Many of us had been selected for American Express but it was only me and my friend (the guy who I became friends with on the first day of our training, who was the one reading the newspaper) who were selected into the same project team. It was sheer destiny as he told me often, "Rohan, I had told you in advance that you and I would go in the same team." Lucky chap, I wonder, to get his forecasting 100% correct. It was a start of another journey with him on this new project in American Express that we both were looking forward to.
The date that we reported for the first time on our project was January 09, 2006. My friend, as I will refer to him as FD henceforth and I were going to work on a live project for the first time in our lives – there was plenty of anxiety and excitement in our minds.
Will take a break here and start the project life in the next post as life takes yet another exciting turn for me and thus begins a new chapter in my life named GMAPS, little of which did I realize that this GMAPS would stay on with me and in my memories for the rest of my life.
If you feel that I’ve missed out on anything in this post, kindly provide your feedback and I’ll make sure I’ll write it in my next post.
Signing off now. See ya, friends!
