Back to School

For those who were wondering whatever happened to me and my blog, well i was away in India for about 45 days, so onc e you are there you dont wanna do much, or lets say i didnt wanna do much, anyway now that i am back i will resume my chronicle of my trips. We start with the 25th of November, Perth. The day we played our first match against the Western Australian Blue's

Australia, 24th November

Day 1

So here we go, I can hardly believe that the day has come. We are going to the home of the world champions to play their game and hopefully to beat them at it. To be frank I was very skeptical till the very last minute about the trip, the OSL would say one thing and act otherwise. The visa was assuring though! The visa was another adventure, it took us 3 weeks to get a written note from the OSL that all of us are students of SMU. After much perusal from the EXCO the visa letter and the visa came about. Arjun (our team’s strike bowler and the treasurer of the cricket club) was organizing the visa process for the team. To get all 14 players papers in order is quite a task, especially as we have the characters that we have in our team. Anyway it did come through!

I had to get up early, and for a change I wanted to get up early. Though I was a bit sad that I wasn’t gonna see Shivangi for a month, but as it happened we did meet fleetingly as I landed in Singapore and was waiting for my flight to South Africa. As usual I was one of the last to reach:p but not late! After endlessly posing for “photo” sessions overseen by Fred we finally decided to board the flight in our Team SMU polo’s, the shade of which would border on red and bright maroon, the choice of that particular color is still unknown. At this point I must add that there were two more teams from SMU, one contingent was part of the combined university team in water polo and the SMU tennis team. The tennis guys were swell on the court and off it too.

The flight went off fine, with me arjun and garg (our in house bihari) sitting together. Most of us watched a replay of the ashes that Australia had surrendered that summer, I was just thinking, we are watching a team do something that every one, and probably the better part of the England team thought was impossible: To defeat the invincible Australians, yet they did it. I was hoping and praying we do the same, I was just wanting to win a few of the 4 matches which we were supposed to play. What was to unfold I will leave for later.

So we reach Perth, at first look, it was ghost town to me. I am not kidding, after the airport we didn’t see a soul for the next 10 odd kilometers. We were told that the city shuts down at 5 PM. It really did, with pubs being the obvious exception; we were after all in Australia. As we realized later the city was not dead at all.

Anyway, we checked into our team hostel, we were put up in St Catherine’s hostel, which is a girls hostel as the name might suggest, but with the exception of a few it was empty. Each of us had our own single rooms, however the anxiety of the matches ahead were too much for Deby and Arjun to bear, so they would run off to Garg’s room with their mattresses. So much for 20 year olds and then these guys have the gall to say that I cant sleep alone, hah!

The hostel was at least 30-40 years old and the rooms were nice, it had a table fan and a heater, I had a brilliant view of the courtyard in the hostel and too add to it, I had a balcony!

So we all set ourselves up for the next few days of cricket by having a long team meeting at the courtyard. Sudhir, one of my SRC (Singapore Recreation Club) cricket teammates was accompanying SMU as our coach led the discussions with It was quite chilly I remember, largely because most of us were in shorts so the cold multiplied as if we were on Everest, well of course almost none of us wore our jackets but the smokers saw it as an excuse to dig into their duty free cigarettes, that is if they ever need an excuse!

So after a early dinner and setting alarms, we were set to go to bed. We were playing The University of Western Australia’s Blue team (they had two teams, green being the other one) at 10.00 AM tomorrow. Its begun now.

My trips

A day late but i still start!
So what were my trips about? it wasnt a sudden backpacker in me rising and wanting to explore two opposite coners of the world. My trip to South America was confirmed by june 2005, however Australia was actually a trip not supposed to be initially. Let me explain, the cricket team was offered to go to participate at the Asian Rim Association Games(IRAUG) in about june 05, and i being the president of the cricket club along with Debarun (team manager) and Nandan (secretary) were organizing the the trip working with the OSL (office of student life) in SMU which was organizing SMU's participation in the games. The first time that i was told that cricket can go to Perth i was told that if we can organize our exams to be taken at a later date, as the tournament was bang in the exam week then cricket can go and participate in the games iwth a generous funding from the OSL. So we did email rounds with the members and got things moving, now all of a sudden we were told that cricket is not "deserving". SO basically cricket became underserving all of a sudden in 20 days, without us playing a single match! It was mind boggling, infact it was funny. They basically realized that cricket has 15 players in a squad and that they wont be able to afford sending the team, so they came up with this lousy excuse that we were undeserving.

Anyway, there was not much we could do as we didnt have a great season in 2005 prior to june, however in 2004 we had got a bronze in the inter varsity-polytechnic games. So we let this go, now when we return to school in august, again i am approached by Fred (osl rep) that they are "reconsidering" cricket going. So after 3-4 weeks of negotiation and about a zillion trips to OSL the cricket club was given the green signal to go to the IRAUG. It was a very unsure month (august-sept) for us as we didnt know till the very end if we were on that plane to Perth. More on the tournament and the trip soon. The trip was between 24th nov-3rd of dec.

Now South America, I was selected to go for a BUsiness study mission (BSM) to Chile along with 30 people, mostly unkown before the trip. We had the time of our lives while we were in SouthAm and we all became good friends too. The BSM was esentially to Santiago, the capital of Chile. We were there between the 5th-13th of december. We were then given between 13-21st as free'n'easy, so almost all of us headed down to Argentina after the 13th. I went to Argentina, by bus! travelling through the mountain city of Mendoza, where we (more on my group later) stayed for 2 nights and then moving on the Paris of LatinAm Buenos Aires.

More on Australia later today, for now its 3 am here i am off to bed!

The Roadmap

aarrggh.i wanted to start posting my stories from today, but i got back at 9.30 from work! Dont feel like writing..just wanna sleep now. However lemme list out what I am gonna be posting in the next few weeks:

1) background info and build up on my two trips to Australia (Perth) and South America (Chile and Argentina)
2) Australia and the IRAUG games between 24th Novemeber-3rd of December
3) The Flight to Santiago (really eventful one!) 3-4th December
4) Santiago 4-13th of December
5) Bus ride from Santiago to Mendoza (Argentina)
6) Mendoza -13-15th December
7) Buenos Aires 16th-22nd December
8) River Tigre (part of Buenos Aires) 21st december (my favorite part of the trip)

so much for the roadmap, hopefully you like what i have to say. You will not find a travel blog or ONLY stories about what happened to me, what you can expect is my opinion on two different parts of the world, about people, places and the culture. For now its bedtime for me. Nite!

Addendum

Cirrus Minor, is a song by Pink Floyd and it was the inspiration for my nom de plume however the interpretation is mine. Such is the beauty of Floyd, they never provide possible interpretations of their songs, they leave it to us fans to come to our own ones. My first post was taken from one of my favorite songs Shine on You Crazy Diamond by Pink Floyd, that was my way of welcoming my Blog:)

Why Blog?

Since every Blogger starts with this Boggling (no pun intended:P) question, so i too decided to join the crowd. Surprisingly i do know why i have started Blogging (wow!). Primarily i want to chronicle my Trips to Australia and South America last year. Memories of which i would hate to forget. As i list what i did and what i could have done without doing and what i could have done and i did'nt, i also intend to talk about my other passions; Music, Cricket and anything that could make for an interesting read for others and me to write on.

For those wanting to understand what my nickname means, It is in Spanish, (as i could not get cirrusminor.blogspot on which the last post was 4 years back) cirro menor literally translates into English as, Cirrus Minor: Cirrus, the thinnest a cloud could possibly get and the highest a cloud could possibly reach, its actually just small ice particles that form the cloud as the region it is found in is the coldest cloud region, in short it is the purest of the clouds; the king of the pack. Minor, is self explanatory, it means small. Together Cirrus Minor can be interpreted as a small cloud (cirrus minor).

Together, Cirrus Minor also reminds me of how far and high man can reach, but in the end we all go to the same place, every prince and every pauper to a place which understands neither.

Well You wore out your welcome,
With random precision,
Rode on the steel breeze
Come on you raver,you seer of visions,
Come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner and Shine!