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Partyin' Around the World
By BITSAA Chapters & Event Organizers
HYDERABAD
Winning over ISB…in defeat: BITS Pilani lost the Sierra Atlantic Cup 2005 match 0 - 3 to ISB, but looked outstanding in their new uniforms and gained enormous respect from ISB Director and the students who showed up. It was a great match, led by Kaushik Mukherjee of Pilani. VK Menon, ISB Director said it was the best showing of any event by ISB students. He was very impressed with the organization, the smart uniforms and mementos. There were over 50 BITSian supporters. ISB has organized and invited BITS-only exclusive events around in India, USA, and Canada to substantially increase 2006 admissions. 
We are thankful to Sierra Atlantic Chairman, Raju Reddy for his generous sponsorship of the event.
SAN FRANCISCO
BITS Annual Dinner: It was that time of year again. Instead of filing our annual income tax returns on time, we BITSians of the Silicon Valley Chapter decided to throw a regular five-star Pilani bash – the BITSAA SVC Music Nite 2005. April 9th was a night none of us will forget in a hurry. In the ground floor of the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Milpitas, CA, people met old friends, made new friends, and engaged in lachcha. About 180 BITSians and spouses of all age groups showed up, from the batches of the 50s and 60s right down to the late 90s and beyond. Prem Jain’s stylish safari suit caught the eye of several admirers, and the ladies were looking absolutely delightful in their colorful saris and salwar kameezes.
 After an hour of mixing and matching around the BITSian network, the alumni were ushered into the banquet hall, where the event started. Karan Bhople, the emcee and son of ’74 alumnus Chandra Bhople, took charge of the proceedings by giving a mirthful and advice-filled intro to the event, and then handed it to Deepu Rathi ('73). Deepu then gave a very informative presentation about what BITSAA’s latest efforts to improve the campus have yielded. He then introduced our keynote speaker, Cypress CEO TJ Rodgers.
The next speaker, Jerry Singh ('64), presented his plan to “make the Rajasthan Desert bloom.” He described CDDT, an effort to bring effective irrigation to the desert surrounding Pilani.
The final and most awaited part, of the evening was the Music Nite. The organizers did a terrific job in a getting a live band – EasternWinds – to perform as it really got the crowd on their feet and dancing. Boy was it something! BITSians and their spouses performed several songs on stage to the immense delight of the whole audience. Vibha, wife of BITSian Jayan, Kohinoor, wife of BITSian Srijit, and Shalini, an Eastern Winds band member, sang some lovable slow filmi songs such as “Yeh Hain Reshmi Zulfon”, “Aage Bhi Jaane Na Tu”, and “Yeh Mera Dil” while Siva, the founding member of EasternWinds, Jayashree, wife of BITSian Vijay, Deepa, wife of BITSian Pete, BITSian Bharat from the ’91-’95 batch, and the rest of the EasternWinds  singers performed famous hits such as “Chaiyya Chaiyya”, “Dil Dooba” and “Gori Gori.” Anand, BITSian from the ’95-’99 batch, perfomed a stirring and magnificent rendition of “Vande Mataram” to the raucous applause of the audience, and everyone got up on their feet and showed off mad dancing skills to the tune of EasternWinds’ “Aisa Jadoo Dala Re”. Finally, everyone was amazed that the best dancers were also the senior-most guests: Satish and Sujata.
The event was a huge success, and everyone walked away feeling excited and a little overwhelmed by it all. Naturally, none of it would have happened had it not been for Gopal Garg and Ashish Garg, the two main organizers of the event, Karan, the MC, and the many BITSian volunteers: Pethe, Mansoor, Sharvari, Shashi, Mayur, Gurpreet, Nachiket, Lakshmi, Krishna, the second Ashish, and Unni. Kudos to them for putting together undoubtedly the best BITSAA SVC event in the chapter’s history. What a night!
More pictures: www.bitsaa-svc.org/bitsaa-svc/photos.htm
East Coast
BITSAA-TiE Invitational Golf: The BITSAA-TiE East Coast Invitational Golf was conducted in June, for which 52 golfers showed up. Rahul Banerjee took the Outline Systems' trophy for best golfer with his overall score of 82. Uday Mahtani (TiE) finished with 85, which won him the Radiant Systems trophy for second best golfer. The Wissen Inc. "Longest Drive" award was won by Jon Hilbert (TiE). His drive cleared 310 yards. BITSians Sandeep Nalgundwar, Jatinder Singh, Alladi Srinivas, and Senthil Kumar won the Nuware prize for the second best team. The PavilionShop.com "Best Lady Golfer" was Sheila Kuchibhatla.
Many thanks to BITSAA sponsors Radiant, Wissen Inc., NuWare and PavilionShop.com and to TiE sponsors GCI, KaizenTek and Outline Systems for their support.
BITSAA urges everyone to support our sponsors, without whose help the event would not have been successful.
ARIZONA
Chilling out at Cold Stone Creamery: Fourteen people showed up at the Cold Stone Creamery. Among those that showed up were Anusha, Kunal, Ankur (from Tucson), Naveen, Siddarth, Shilpa (whom we have to thank for arranging this event), Vidya and Sanjay, Satyajant, Shiyam, Ram, Gopal and Neelu.
It was fun to have 'intros' and catch up on some laccha! Thanks people for making it a success.
 A special thanks to Neelu, Sanjay and Sara for being a part of the event. Hope to see you at many more events in future. Also thanks to Ankur for driving down from Tucson! Hope we can organize the next event somewhere closer to Tucson.
This group was created with the main aim to socialize, relive some of the memories and have fun. Also to get together to do some social work, network and learn some new skills and have fun in the process. It looks like we are well underway!
Contact: Shilpa Gupta (shilpa249@yahoo.com)
SYDNEY
Cricket at BITSAA, Sydney Picnic: The Picnic in Bicentennial Park turned out to be a great event, with an attendance of 48 persons: 15 alumni and their families, including 18 children from the age of 3 to 21 years. We had excellent sunshine, a lovely lunch, cricket, games, chat, tea and photos.
We had the usual BITS style cricket at the picnic - tennis ball, two teams with anyone who wanted to play. As you will see from the scorecard below, the size and makeup of the two teams were unusual.
The game started around 12 noon, with Team One captained by Atul Sood going in to bat first. We stopped for lunch when Team One were declared all out; their score was 34 runs, with Bapi the top scorer at 16 not out. Team Two captained by Nandu Thundatil batted after lunch; they scored the requisite runs, with a wicket to spare. Aditya Ganesh was their top scorer with 17 runs.
Everyone bowled - some short overs, some normal overs, some Australian overs and some extra long overs.
No, we did not select the Man of the Match, though I reckon we would have selected Aditya Ganesh for his top score.
Big thanks to our spouses (which alumni should please pass on) and kids for making it a thoroughly enjoyable gathering.
Contact: R. Nagarajan (rnagarajan@gmail.com)
Silicon Valley
Meet Dean (Engineering), UC Berkeley, Om Prakash: That’s what a twenty-something group of BITSians did on 22nd October 2005 at the India Community Center in Milpitas. OmPrakash, commonly known as Dean Richard Newton is an Australian by birth. Dean Newton was re-christened Om Prakash by his host family during his visits to Kishangarh, a tiny village right next to Pilani, Rajasthan.
 Dean Newton charmed his audience with stories like these and his sense of humor while taking everybody down the road of memories to Pilani. The group also discussed ideas on how UC Berkeley and BITS Pilani can work closely on projects like the ones undertaken by the Center of Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) at UC Berkeley. He also encouraged more and more BITSians to apply to UC Berkeley stating that in order to make Berkeley the best engineering school, he would like to see more bright Indian students apply and get accepted.
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