Ooty and Coimbatore visit — Our last I.V

Hello folks. It was a great week that I enjoyed. It all began with the victory in the hostel day flood light cricket tournament, Thunderknights. The victory was a memorable one as our team beat the “Sultans” team. Satish Solomon played a great role with his controlled batting. That very night, the students of the Dept. of CSE started out for their final Industrial Visit – A trip to Ooty and Comimbatore. We were suppoed to visit BSNL in Ooty and CTS in Coimbatore.

We were to reach Coimbatore by train and from there, board a rented bus to Ooty ( Thanks to Ashok for he took care of this) . The train at Madurai junction was at 12:30 and so half the studnets were almost sleeping. So couldn do much on the way. Just had a few snaps with my Sony Digital camera at the railway junction. The next morning, we boarded the buses ( 2 buses had been arranged for the 90+ students and 4 staff ). We has a quick breakfast at a nearby restaurant and proceeded to Ooty. It was a boringly long journey, partly because of the slow driving. But managed to get a few snaps of scenic beauty en route. We reached Ooty at about 13:00 hrs and proceeded straight to have lunch. Then we were forced to visit BSNL which took about half an hour.

Then we went to the youth hostel, booked for us( Thanks to Karthikeyan for he took care of this ). It was about 16:00 hrs by that time. It it was only now that we were able to realx. We had a quick bath and by 17:30 we were all ready for our trip to Botanical Gardens. It was really a nice place. And for the first time, I started to feel the cold of Ooty there. We spent almost an hour there, wandering around the lush green gardens. Had quite a few snaps taken there. And it was 19;00 hrs and almost dark when we were out of the gardens. Then myself, Saikrishna and Venkatapathy went to have some good vegetarian food and all of us were back to the youth hostels by 21:00 hrs.

It was here that we had the fun of the trip. After playing some lazy games from some time, a few of us went to bed by about 23:30. The rest of us, who were all playing various card games seemed to have got bored and they had decided to play some prank on us. So they had planned a nice game. The game was that, they would change the time displayed in the mobile to something around 6 or 6:30 and they all would act as though they were preparing for the day, though in reality the time was hardly 1:00 am. Initially they tried it on Arun Prasaath who it seems had clumsily got back to sleep without bothering what was happening around. Then it had been Ashok. But unfortunately he had put his mobile in his night pants’ pocket and so they couldn meddle with it and so he had got away. The next was me. They had cleverly changed the time of the mobile to 06:15 and due to tiredness I didnt eve notice the alarm go off. They all shook me awake and played the prank on me. I believed that it was indeed morning as afew lazy wakers were also up. I changed to shorts and went about doing my daily duties. And when I returned back just thinking how I was to bath in this biting cold water, i found to my surprise that all lights had been switched off and all those who had waken me up were under their blankets. It was only then that I understood their game and I agreed to join it. The next target was Chennapan. He went a step ahead and finished his daily duties, brushed and had a shivering face wash, all at about 1:30, while he was thinking that it was 6:30. The next to fall was Balaji Srinivas and he was the Man of the show when he wnt to the reception desl and asked if hot water would be available soon. And there he had learnt the truth that it was not even 2:00 am. The others who fell to this game were Kalimuthu.A, Karthikeyan and Chandrasekar. The people behind it were Harishankar, Meenakshi Sundaram, Kalimuthu C, Abilash, Ashok and Ravi.

The next morning, we vacated at about 7:30 hrs, had a breakfast there itself and moved on to Pykara falls. It was certainly a beautiful place and we all enjoyed it. Had a lot of photos taken en route and there at Pykara. We also had a nice group photo taken there. With that, our trip to Ooty had ended and we started the decent down to Coimbatore. As usual, Chennappan had his vomiting bouts, this time accompanied by Chandrasekar. Finally we reached Mettupalayam at about 15:30 and had lunch there.

Our next stop was at CTS, saravanapattinam, Coimbatore. We had a nice welcome by Mr. Srithar, HR, CT. Along with him, another manager gavce a brief general lecture. Then, a project lead, Ms. Tamilselvi gave a small talk on SDLC and project management. We were all served with biscuits, plum cake and coffee/tea. Meanwhile, our ‘B’ sec friends had some problems with their bus and so had to proceed to Coimbatore straight away.

Had our dinner at the Railway Vegetarian Refreshment Stall and boarded the train to Madurai, scheduled for departure at 20:30 hrs. We had a nice time playing dumb charades in the coach till about midnight. Then we had some chat and when all were tired and were willing to doze off, we reached Madurai. Venkatesh and others promptly waked up the guys who were sleeping and at about 02:30, we reached Madurai. The college bus was waiting for us and we reached hostel by about 03:00. Thus ended our happy and joyous final industrial visit.