Well guys.. July 24th we (myself and Harish) were ready to pack and leave to an International conference at London... before i tell the story, harish and i (Dove and Eagle), great buddies! we met during our MBA and took quite a number of challenges to do something out of the box and we have been doing the same till now.. many small excitements with success like winning the national social impact award, setting up an NGO - The XVIII Horse Foundation, few international conferences on the project we had worked during our MBA, now entrepreneurial adventure! all these are of course after a lot and lot of failures. Cant say whats keeping us still with the same spirits but there is an urge to do something really big.... this is not only our thinking but also people around us are expecting something big from our end! will have to wait and see... i have no idea how else to describe our friendship journey so far, but i can only say that this is just a beginning.
Well that was just a small intro to our past. With this blog i wanted to share a small story which ended drastically few days back. Yet again, we received an invitation for a paper presentation for an International Conference at London which is going to happen in London this July 25th. We were excited as always and the last date for the paper submission was June 30th. Till 29th we had not done much work on the same but we had decided on the title of the paper though. Paper titled Traditional Indian Grass Roots Vs Global Warming! interesting isn't it?? yes, thinking about the title itself gave us so much confidence that we started reading materials and gathered enough information. Google the Savior! but still lot of practical aspects were to be borrowed from researchers and different organisations to shape up the paper to the acceptance level of the other participants in the conference.
It was 29th june and i was busy with my house shifting to a new place and had not even called harish to enquire whats the status of the paper. At 9 pm, i called him and asked wassup?! he was like.. i am down with fever and could not do much. phew! suddenly i have no idea where we got the energy, we pulled ourselves in front of the system and started collating the materials we had collected. Lot of thoughts went in and paper took some good shape. We were of the belief that it has come out really well (well this was to our best knowledge) and sent it to our guides for review. Our guides, who knew that 30th was the last day, were checking with us whats wrong with us and why are we working on the paper on a last day.??? but still, they were supportive enough as always and guided us further.. finally! the paper was all set to be sent and it was 10pm our time and 5.30 pm in London we finally emailed the paper. The conference is scheduled to happen on July 25th till July 29th and was conducted by WGGWCC - Working Group on Global Warming and Climate Control. sounds still interesting???
Phew! now the actual story begins.. 3 days after we sent the paper, there comes the bounce back message to our email stating the email is not delivered. What???? exactly our reaction was WHAT??? immediately we called the organisers (sandy williams) who gave us an alternate mail id to send the paper and we thought we are lucky enough and sent the paper. But there was a doubt - how can the mail bounce back like this?? as per them they said there is a technical problem.
And after 3 days again, we called up the organisers asking for few clarifications and the process that is to be followed like Visa, Hotel Reservations, Tickets etc.. we sent them an email as well seeking clarifications.
8-July-08, i received an early morning call from Hari surprisingly at 9.20 am saying "Maga... we are going to London and our paper got selected". wow... yes my reaction was just WOW... just WOW.. we called up all our guides who were happy, called my closed ones who were happy... ofcourse we were happy and excited. We have received all the mails on tickets, hotel reservations, visa processing.. as if there was nothing left.... and all set! there comes the doubt after few minutes of happiness... why is it that they are asking us to pay for hotel reservation now itself? why is it that they need reservation receipts even before we get the Visa papers and Tickets Confirmation... WHY? it was not a small amount for us.. even though they had told that they will sponsor for the whole event except for hotel reservation, we were not big enough to pay 485 pounds! yes...thats the question... why??
Is this event FAKE?????? yes.. guys... we got trapped in the name of Global Warming...Global Warming has become Global Warning... we explored that the whole event is fake and the mail id of the hotel reservation is under scam organisation's website. They are just doing it for money! we were lucky that we never booked for the accommodation else we would've lost 485.. sorry in Indian rupees a sum of 40500/- ...google! again the savior...
hmmm...this was the story which took of our few moments of happiness... The efforts which went into the paper, amount of reading, writing, discussions... phew.. what all.. just took off our moods on 8th july leaving us just that hope that the paper is good enough for the next conference!
Leaving the past behind...only our spirits have kept us cool and left us with loads of challenges again!
WGGWCC.............. isn't it sounding too weird! i just love it! phew!
Hari... kudos to you! me also! :)
