vcr_tales

This was my first big trip - where I interpret "my" as being my own, outside of family trips - and is a nice continuation of the previous tale. [Pix below are from the web.  I took a camera with me and still have photos and film negatives somewhere … will upload if/when I find] It was early in the summer of 1980, I was in the first year of the two-year MBA program at the IIM-Calcutta (Kolkata, now), and a classmate suggested a backpacking trip to the Sunderbans.  The Sunderbans (which translates to "beautiful forests" in Bangali) is part of the one of the largest mangrove forests in the world, straddling India and Bangladesh, and home to the famed Bengal Tiger, among other fauna. The idea appealed to some of us, although collectively we had ZERO experience with backpacking or camping.  Except for the guy who made the suggestion, who claimed he knew what he was doing.  So five of us decided to make the trip, on the cheap, since money was scarce.  We packed bags w...

  This is a tale that revolves around my first job, although the job itself is not the highlight. The job was with Hindustan Computers Ltd., (HCL) in 1978, as a field Engineer, and I got the job after a day-long series of tests and interviews on campus. Campus was the College of Engineering, Guindy, in Chennai, India, established in 1794!  HTTPS://EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG/WIKI/COLLEGE_OF_ENGINEERING,_GUINDY HCL was founded in 1976, I graduated in Electronics Engineering in 1978 and was recruited by HCL as part of the very first batch of ten Engineers to support their newly developed computer for running business finance systems. HCL was a pioneer - the first Indian company to design and build their own computer - all other computers in India at that time came from IBM, Burroughs and the like. HCL is now a behemoth with over 200,000 employees:  HTTPS://EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG/WIKI/HCLTECH . HCL was one of the first companies to recruit on campus, and at that time I had applied to MBA ...