The Journey: Uttering a hundred silent thanks to my manager
for nominating me, I headed to the Bangalore airport to attend the much-awaited
STC conference. It was relaxing to hang out with a colleague without having to
worry about deadlines (both at office and home). As soon as we reached our rooms, we were welcomed by another
colleague who had arrived from Hyderabad.
The Stay: So what if the rooms were smaller than expected?
The cleanliness of the rooms, the friendliness of the staff, and the yummy,
fresh, and healthy breakfast were enough to ensure we had a good stay. It also
gave us a good platform to get to know one another and discuss about work too.
The Conference: There were more than 200 technical writers from
various domains, experience levels, and ethnicity. Contrary to our belief
that only highly experienced people would be presenting at the conference,
there were people like us. It made us feel confident that next time we too
could come up with an idea or a concept to present. One thing common among all
of them was the ever-so-bright smile and warmth in greeting one another. During
the two days of the conference, we attended sessions related to xml-based
authoring, automation in writing, contextualized writing, and many others – even
the sessions that we felt were not relevant to us had some take-aways for us.
It was amazing to see the world of technical writing expanding; when I started
my career, nobody even knew about our profession. And oh! The food was
sumptuous.
The Re-Union: The moment I heard I was going to visit
Mumbai, I devised a plan to meet one of my best friends, Mrunal. Being the
early bird that I am, the day after conference, I woke up at 5.30, got ready,
and saw myself in front of her house at 6.30. Poor thing had just woken up, but was super-thrilled to see me. Munching yummy poha, both of us chit-chatted
excitedly, and woke up the rest of the household, who also joined us in our conversation.
I told her family how important Mrunal’s role was early in my career.
The Sight-Seeing: The moment I stepped into the city, I fell
in love with it. Be it the pollution-free air, the pace at which the
city-dwellers moved, the willingness to help and adjust in an over-crowded
train, the presence of people 24X7, or the flea markets with unbelievably low
prices, the city impressed me. Therefore, it did not take me a lot of time and
money for shopping. And oh! how could we return from Mumbai without visiting the
Juhu beach? Thanks to the fast-paced world of Mumbai, we did everything that we
wanted to do – shopping, sight-seeing, and visiting a friend.
The Return: If at least one thing does not go wrong in a
trip, then what’s the thrill? So, we ended up in terminal 1 instead of terminal
2 to board the flight. Luckily, we had enough time to catch a taxi, and reach
terminal 2 on time. Oh wait! Is this an airport or the palace of God Indra? It
was so picture-perfect that we forgot how much work awaited us back in
Bangalore. We just enjoyed the moment sipping kokam sharbat.
The After-Effect: For the next two days, I was happy, excited,
and smiling all the time. I had to tell myself to come out of the ecstasy, and
focus on my job.
