The Quarter of Vacations

When I began this quarter I had a very arduous task on my hands - I had 50 vacations left and only 30 could be carried forward to the next year. So I had to take 20 days off work or lose my vacations. Surprising it was a difficult choice and I chose to go with taking 20 days off. That combined with our annual offsite (powered and sponsored by Google) made this quarter (Oct - Dec 2009) the quarter of vacations!

First up was the vacation to go home (Chennai) for my dad's 60th birthday. Had a lot of fun with parents and we went to an auspicious temple to celebrate 60 years of dad's wonderful and eventful life. It was during this vacation that I realized that it was okay for me to take a vacation from work. Nothing stopped working and my team mate Harshitha was easily able to hold the fort down while I was gone. Armed with this new knowledge, I boldly stepped into a territory I had never dared to enter before - a vacation that was going to last more than a week! More on that later ..

After the nice vacation home, there was another break for the Google offsite - this time we were going to Malaysia! To call the offsite awesome, would not do it justice. We got to see the Patronas twin towers, dine in the revolving restaurant, visit Genting Highlands (for a change I won some money in a casino there) and hit a lot of theme parks and clubs. I had a lot of fun and it just added more reason to make this the quarter of vacations.

When Mr. D0d0 had completed his transition to Dr. D0d0, he finally came out of his cocoon and recommended that we visit Rajasthan - the land of the Kings. I instantly loved the idea and we planned out the trip to be immediately after my Malaysia offsite. The trip lasted 10 days and I got to meet Dilip, Khurana, Harsha and Rishabh. We visited Jaipur (wannabe pink city), Udaipur (full of lakes), Jaisalmer (land of deserts and my personal favorite of the trip) and Jodhpur (wannabe blue city). No matter where we went, the food was mind blowing and I had ~7 meals every day! For a more detailed catalogue of our trip you can read Rama's post. The general culture in Rajasthan was very laid back and relaxed and I found it soothing after being used to the busy and fast paced life in Hyderabad.

Even after the massive vacation to Rajasthan, I still had 3 days of vacation left. What better time to take it than for New Years? And what better place to spend New Years than with your loving parents? Yes folks, for the final vacation in this quarter, I will be in Chennai and I will be celebrating the advent of the new year with my parents. I have now started liking vacations (I have no idea what was so scary about them that I never bothered to take a long one since joining Google!) and am looking forward to this one.

Wish you all a happy new year! And three cheers for this wonderful quarter of vacations! (Hip hip .. hooray)*3!