The Boston Duck Tour

Boy ! Too many things, too little time!! I seem to hardly have time to write about anything nowadays. Anyhow, here's my earnest effort to try catching up with the latest stuff. Last week, Mahi & I were in Boston, attending Focus 2007, Sierra Atlantic's mid-year sales conference. We were put up at the Marriot, in Norwood - pretty close to our office there.

As part of the recreational activity, we all went out on the Boston Duck Tour. At the outset, let me assure you that it was in no way related to any ducks or birds. The Duck which is actually the DUKW is a six-wheel-drive amphibious truck that was originally designed inside General Motors Corporation during World War II for transporting goods and troops over land and water and for use approaching and crossing beaches in amphibious attacks.

Duck tours are generally very liberally spiced with humor, and ours was no less. Our driver was Seargent Meatball, and he had a Hawaiian hula skirt around him, over his clothing. He kept rattling off details about all the places that we visited as part of the tour, and had several anecdotes about each.

The duration of the tour is 90 minutes, in which he took the DUKW through several key landmarks in Boston, including the place which had the infamous Boston Tea Party. Towards the end, he drove into the Charles river, and then continued the tour from there. It's at this time that one also get a chance at navigating the DUKW. A couple of our colleagues did try their hand at it, and it was a whole lot of fun!!

Anniversary with Sierra Atlantic

Today, I completed 7 years with Sierra Atlantic. It's been a really long and nice journey. On behalf of the company, they sent a basket of flowers home.

It was a nice gesture on their part. As you can see, I went ballistic with the photographs, as I really didn't expect a basket to be at our doorstep when we got home....

SASCON2007 - The Annual Sierra Atlantic Sales Conference

Today, we formally kicked off SASCON2007 (Sierra Atlantic Sales Conference 2007) at HICC (Hyderabad International Convention Center). The tag line for the event this time was Opportunity. The last time the tag line had been "Achieve the next".

The venue is really fabulous. The HICC is part of the Accor group, and the whole setup is not even a year old in Hyderabad. Everything is squeaky clean, spic & span.

As part of the kickoff, we had an inspiration sales video running, which i put together over the last few days. Nothing special, just mixed a bunch of photographs and text together.

We also had a traditional Hyderabadi Chowki dinner on the evening of the 18^th. The Chowki dinner is symbolic of the Nizam rule, and was the royal formal dinner of that era. It involved sitting down on the cushions and eating out of silver plates and drinking from silver / golden goblets. While we definitely didn't have the golden goblets, we did have highly polished plates, and silver serving bowls. Each Chowki could accommodate six people, and all in all people had a whale of a time. The dinner was very well received and kudos definitely go out to the entire arranging committee, including us (as usual - no modesty!!!).

Will try and upload the video too that I had created, space permitting. For now, you can feast your eyes on some of the arrangements and decorations for the dinner.

Celebrations 2006 for Sierra Atlantic

Yesterday, we had our organization's anniversary party - the 13^th one. Had this at the Laserium next to Lumbini Park. In true Hyderabadi style started half an hour late at 7:30 pm and went on till late into the night.

Was a pretty good show. Included a classical dance, an Audio Video Presentation, service awards, 2006 reflections and 2007 plans, a dance medley and the laser show.

If you are in Hyderabad, don't miss the laser show at the Laserium. This takes place at 7:30 pm on weekdays, and on weekends has an additional show at 8:30 pm too. It's the first of it's kind in India, and has a mix of laser & multimedia. It showcases the entire history of Hyderabad - how the name came to be, then and now. All the projection is done on an aqua screen. The fountains and the designs are mind blowing and reminded me of the fountains at Bellagio in Vegas. Quite nice.