Community Council..

HCL Team in San Antonio kick started the community council two months back. It's very interesting to enroll, maintain the roster and getting the team together. But, I need to appreciate few individuals who were the backbone for putting this team together. Gopi, Mohanraj and Sendhil has been outstanding support and carried the entire initiative. Now Minakshi with the perfect background on this initiative joining the bandwagon is an added advantage.

The Best part is the entire team agreed to put Minakshi as the front face understanding her appreciative and stands true to the objective. Yesterday was our third event and would say one of our best outings.

We helped in organising the entire event (NSF Foundation, San Antonio chapter) and evaluation basically end-to-end operations.

Our first outing is participating in the Habitat for Humanity, non-profit organization, helping in construction of homes. The second one was relatively lesser hardwork and closing working with Children's Hunger Fund on their Haiti Project.

It was a great team outing with a genuine objective. Hats off to everyone.

Naren

Special Week End...

Wow..I never had so much planned for any week end. This week end, we have so much things to do or events happening around.

Randolph Air Show 2009

I have been here in San Antonio, every year somehow managed successfully to miss the Air Show...Hope I make it this time...

http://www.randolph.af.mil/library/2009-randolphairshow/index.asp

WurstFest 2009

Last year, we had really big gang of guys to hang out and desginated drivers to enjoy this Beer Fest.

Food, Beer and hang out where you can supposedly taste or drink all brands of Beer. I don't think I will be going this year.

http://www.wurstfest.com/

Malic Gem Show 2009

This is more of Gem, Mineral and Jewelry show...I am not interested in this but some of my friends would be...

http://malicjewels.com/show-information

And we are all planning to hit the Mexican restaurant for the Karaoke, could celebrate Antoneita's Birthday.

And we do have Selva's Birthday Bash midnight.

And I am going to play morning cricket which I missed for last couple of weeks.

I will update what I did actually but I am excited to have this much to-do list other than my work. :)

Diwali Celebrations...

We had a great Deepavali celebrations in our customer office, huge one. It is rather Indian Cultural celebrations, projected India's North, South, East and West regions, folk dances from different parts, regular mehendi stalls and Bindis, bangles are give aways.

People who attended are so excited and always wonder about India. I was involved in putting the North Region stall displaying the places to visit, monuments, food, dress, dance, music and wedding. Why am I picked North, because South had more volunteers. And I wanted to learn about North and I learnt a lot.

We all felt like exams are over because too much of craft work, chart, banners, decorations and finally we felt nothing to do.

Another interesting thing for Deepavali celebrations, Tamil, Kannanda, Telugu and Indian Association had separate celebrations. And on top, City of San Antonio bursted fireworks for the first time and Mayor did a speech for Deepavali.

I always waited for the 2 days to come so that I could do fireworks. But, this time I felt too much celebrations without parents, sweets, new dress, fireworks. Then what the heck was this for...

Newsletter...

There are around 350+ HCL consultants working for my customer at onsite alone. This is kind of huge presence for any company or any customer. Two months, I argued with my director about people coming with various ideas and different channels to implement it. Another friend suggested of having a newsletter. My director asked me to take up this and use as medium.

It was very tough to take everyone back to their times where they lived with passions and different interests. I thought this idea of bringing the creativity should help people of refreshing their minds. But, the response was bad or pathetic. Luckily at least 8 people were supporting me and joined of team.

We had no clue of designing or content creation and did not get any support from many people. This was a challenge. We created our own content and designed the newsletter using Microsoft Word 2007.

It was great feeling to work with Word 2007, it removes all the needed softwares for design and gives a plug in to safe as PDF document. So, the magazine was designed with great care and more professional way.

It was published this Monday and the response was too good. I didn't except any positive remarks but it was great feeling. Every one in this Creative team felt good.

It felt great when you drive things and implement your vision to reality. Lot more to accomplish.

Tower of the Americas..

It's been nearly 1 year and 3 months in San Antonio and I have never been to Down town, River Walk or the Tower of America, one of few places to hangout in San Anto.





Yesterday went in San Macros with Kumar and today we decided to visit the Tower with Pannir's family.





Pannir and Palani had decided to go back India and wanted to visit few places along with us. Everything was planned, we are supposedly to visit the Tower and River Walk until the rain played a deciding factor.





Later evening, Sun brought some extra cheer to us and informed couple of others to make the plan reality. It was really good time to pass around 2-3 hours in that area.





We also have 4-D Ride to Texas show after visiting the Observation deck. Worth spending time to cheer up your dull Sunday..

Image taken from below site..

http://www.toweroftheamericas.com/