Decos Trip 2010 - Candolim Goa

On occasion of Decos India completing 10 years, company arranged a trip, and what could be a better place than Goa!

On Mar 12 we all left Pune around 11 pm in two Bercedes Benz and one Volvo. In Goa we had a two night stay at Candolim beach Hotel Fortune. Hotel is good, food is okay, I recommend heavy breakfast for veggies rather than expecting too much from buffet lunch , Hotel has its own spa, pool and gym.

 It was my first encounter with Mercedes Benz bus so I was happy, good start  :)

Had very a motivating session on Decos culture day and Flight of Imagination

I hit the beach early in the morning to get good snaps, However, too much fog was bit of a spoiler.

Sight of sunrise is always very inspiring to me

I have been to many beaches in Goa, but it was by first time on Candolim beach. Beach is clean and nice. It is kind of private beach as people staying in nearby hotels are the only visitors here. However, I would still rate Palolem beach of Goa much higher!

They say this ship is ported here since last 10 years, it came to this beach in year 2000, What a Waste! I had a good swim here though this beach is said to be not so safe to swim due to presence of this ship.

Another View. Even though it is visually pleasant to see such a huge vessel so close to a tourist beach, a large section of the beach has already been washed away because of the presence of the MV River Princess. Presently the ship is under legal battle.

These air bags would probably be used while moving this ship away fron the beach.

 Follow Me! Perfect Manager :) 

My worst fears came in reality when Admin and HR decided to take us to Calangute beach. I knew a good sunset photo on Goan sea will remain for my next trip here.The beach was as crowded as it can be! 

Well, while I left 'sunset over sea' snap for my next trip here, I did manage to capture the sun over trees.

I could capture these even when a lot of crowd around the scene. Thanks to my super zoom wide angle SP 590 UZ!

The King Bird Eagle. I always wanted to capture this bird, and I got it where I least expected. That's life anyway :-)

After sunset went wrong, I thought nothing can go wrong now, but one should never underestimate planning committee. Next big thing was a cruise ship ride. I was actually excited about it earlier, however what I didn't know was, it was the same thing I used to see in Mandovi river of Panji and think I am never going to ride this. Look at the crowd there, I opted for feet safety over wearing my dancing shoes for that floor.

 Next morning, I enjoined para-sailing and water bike ride for a sum for rupees 500. But if you are any fairer or darker than normal Indian skin, be ready to pay 10 times more for these things ;-)

My Team!

Decos Family. Do not try to find me there, I am in style = "display: none;"

 Some fun on the road back to Pune :). My (terrible) dancing skills were on display.

Office Tabs not working!

If you are still in stone age and using Microsoft Office without Office Tabs then, office tabs is an office add-on developed by some smart Chinese programmers. Well that made me believe that 'smart' can actually go with 'Chinese' stuff ;-).

This is something that would make Microsoft guys look stupid! How can they keep the users away for something like this for so many years! (something that can even be invented in China !)

This add-on gives tabs to word, excel and power point, much in the same way modern day browsers that opens multiple tabs in one window. (well, I wonder what took it so long for IE to become modern before they could come up with IE7!).

With this you get a clean task-bar as only one instance of word / excel is displayed in task-bar. Tabs can be created by double clicking on tab bar, double click and u close the tab.

You can even choose suitable skin for tabs and customize as per your liking.

You can download the add-on from here. And here is the link to original Chinese site. Both Ofice 2003 and Office 2007 are supported.

Well, while I was going gaga over this Chinese arrangement, it suddenly stopped working! Chinese after all :)
When it stopped working it made my life even harder than what was it before I used this silly add-on. The tabs were gone and there was only one instance of word / excel in task-bar, it became a lot more difficult to use multiple documents as to see other opened docs, I had to minimize the current one.

The worst part was uninstalling the add-on didn't solve the problem, and re-installing did not help. Googling went waste too!!!

After suffering the Chinese curse for around 20 days, I finally decided to take the bull by the horns. Following is how you can get it working again if you :

1. Close all the word, excel and power-point instances

2. Open a new instance of word

3. Go to word options

4. In Word Option select Add-Ins, in the 'Manage' dropdown box, choose COM Add-ins and tap on Go button. Following screen should pop up:

5. Remove the entry for WordTab and reinstall the office tabs. Thus should ideally work

6. However, In my case it did not work, if same happens with you, delete the WordTab entry again, and click on Add button

7. Browse to the path  where office tabs is installed and select the WordTab.dll, this dll should be typically found at: C:\Program Files\OfficeCM\OfficeTab


8. Close the pop-up window for COM Add-Ins, repeat similar steps for your Excel as well, do not forget to select ExcelTab.dll this time ;)

Thats it! the Tabs are back, Hindi Chini Bhai-Bhai again :)

Happy Tabbing!!!

Purest form of Art

I got this somewhere, loved it :)

Konkan Trip - 1/Jan/2010

I had a perfect start for year 2010 on Murud beach of Konkan :)

 Weather was awesome as this is ideal time to visit beaches…

We 8 friends were out there for the sole purpose of having a blast...

Evening time was lovely...

And the sunset was awesome... Crowd was there, but who cares when you are with 7 old friends, and actually crowd was much lesser than Baga and Calangute beaches of Goa..

Campfire!!!

This is if you don't know what does it mean by "I had too much" ;)

I went to beach early in the morning to have some good captures...

Snails... Have you ever seen them in a quantity like this!!!

And I always thought camel is something you find in deserts...

A lonely bottle on beach...

Well, I also tried my hand on photography with my new Olympus SP590 UZ :)

For the people who wish to visit the place, it is simple. Go to Dapoli in Konhan, if you don't have own/hired vehicle, lot of transport is available to this place, from there it is a 15 km run to Murud. There is lot of beach side accommodation available, we stayed at Sagar Tara hotel (+919271147003), the place is not hi5, but good for a group as well as family, they provide mosquito mats, good knight and other basic necessary things, service is also Ok. All this in RS 600. Lot of good food options available around where you get Konkan type food, especially sea food, I am a vegetarian, so I am not talking much about sea-food, particularly fish.... Veggies can still have Ukdi che Modak, Tandool Poli, Solkadhi etc.. :)