I look forward to Christmas every single year. It’s the time of cheer and happiness with the place all lit up and decorated. I usually spend Christmas in Mumbai with an exception being last year, when I was stuck in London waiting for my visa.

This year, I booked my tickets in early August to take advantage of prices when booking early. I must admit that I am sceptical of this so called price advantage! Come December, as expected the pressures at work go through the roof as everyone tries to complete 31 days work in 15 before Europe and the UK starts to slow down for the holiday period. In my line of work, the word slow down is a mirage and this year was no exception.

Anyway, I flew BA to Mumbai on 15 December. The flight was rather uneventful, though severely delayed due to strong winds at London Heathrow. We reached around 40 minutes late at Mumbai airport. Ever since the privatisation of Mumbai airport, we have seen drastic improvements in the infrastructure and going through immigrations is usually a breeze. This time I had to wait a while since quite a few flights seemed to have landed at the same time.

One major issue at Mumbai airport is the terrible state of the baggage handling facilities. I have had to wait for at least 15-20 minutes for my baggage and this time it was a lot worse. After a rather long wait, that seemed like eternity in a terminal that seemed like a furnace my lone yellow bag rambled down the conveyor belt towards me. I managed to fish out the bag and slowly made my way through a sea of people all waiting for their luggage. With no trolleys available on a seemingly busy night, the wheels of my bags were put in motion as I spent another 20 minutes for the pre-paid taxis. By now, you would have expected that somebody would have realised that the biggest delays at the airport are the baggage handling facilities and the pre-paid taxis!

My stay in Mumbai was a lot more pleasant, which saw me visit several restaurants, few shops, a mall and a hospital. And, of course try to get some work done during my supposed “core leave”. Though, this time it was very limited since I wasn’t at home most of the time.

I made my way back to London on 2 Jan, taking advantage of the long weekend. It was back to work after I landed and back to grind for little over a month.

My next trip to Mumbai is in another 45 days!

Come new years eve, most people stop and take a look at the year that was past. I am no different. The end of 2010 also brings together the end of the first decade of the new millennium. And, what a decade it has been! And, what a year 2010 has been!

For me 2010 has been one of best years professionally and one of my worst personally (or so I think currently). I began 2010 with a clear future in mind. I had my usual 5 year plan ready, complete with a Plan B in place!

But, as they say, man proposes, God disposes, little did I know how my plans would all go for a toss.

In March, I was informed that my secondment to London has been finalised. It took nearly a month for the entire paperwork to be completed and I finally made by way to London on May 3. The first four months of 2010 had already been tough with extremely long hours and at work and little did I realise that those would pale in comparison to what I would have in store.

I jumped right into the fight and my body did not have time to understand the meaning of jet lag, so if anybody were to ask me, I am totally clueless as to what jet lag is!

The next two weeks would see my role change from the junior-most junior to the senior-most junior. With this came a lot of responsibility and I must say I am happy that I was able to deliver. My secondment was initially meant to be for six weeks but this got extended till end October. My plans of coming down in July were also thrown out of the window when I realised that it takes six weeks to get a visa extension!

In August, I spent my birthday in office till 2am, definitely not one of my greatest moments. Starting a week later and for the month following that would be the worst days of my personal life, maybe even the worst days of this decade. Most of you who know me will know the reason for this and I thank everyone who was there during those trying times. This is a shock I am still reeling from, but not for long.

The last week of September was excellent for my career when two of the deals I was working on got announced in the same week. This would be followed by two more deals in December, with me closing the year with four deals on my resume

October was another excellent month, when I signed my contract to move permanently to London. I have applied for my visa (which is taking forever to come) and this is the final stage of the process of turning me into a frontend investment banker.

I hope to be home by end January to pack up my stuff in Bangalore, before stopping over in Mumbai for a while, before I head back to London.

Thanks for reading. Have a Happy New Year and a prosperous 2011! Keep reading and commenting.

If you’re sitting in London right now, as I am, you’ll identify with Hitler in this video.

My secondment at my company got me flying off to London and I fell in love with the city the minute I stepped out of the airport. And, I have grown to love the place even more in the past three weeks.

I must confess that I haven’t seen much of this place, because I have been working a lot more out here than back in Bangalore! But, the work is good and responsibility is even better. I am hoping that the week to come will be a bit lighter.

I landed here on the 3rd which was a bank holiday out here in UK and so grabbed complete opportunity of seeing some parts of London.

Hope to get some more tomorrow.

Photos on Facebook: http://su.pr/566o5r

I’ll upload some to my album soon. Still need to get the T-Mobile Content Control knocked off!

Well, it’s been two weeks since I got back from Goa and I’ve spent the last two weeks documenting the daily visits of Goa.

To sum up, my entire visit of Goa was fun. It was the first time that I went there, but I’ve learned how to get myself around it (hopefully)

Anyway, here’s the listing of the trip to Goa.

• Day 0 – Bombay to Goa
• Day 1 – The Hitchhikers
• Day 2 – Museum Hunting
• Day 3 – At Home
• Day 4 – Shopping and Walking
• Day 5 – Wining and Dining
• Day 6 – Church
• Day 6 – A Day at the Beach
• Day 7 – Goa to Bombay
• Photos from Goa

As all good things come to an end, our exhausting but extremely enjoyable vacation in Goa finally drew to a close. We had tickets for the afternoon Shatabdi Express back to Mumbai.
But, the return journey didn’t mean we didn’t have an exhausting morning.

It began with Lil white mouse and me gardening, more like pruning the the plants out there in preparation for the monsoon, when they grow uncontrolled. This also meant my debut in this field

Before that, Crispin headed off to Badem to meet his grandmother. He returned with a huge box of mangoes… a huge, extremely heavy box that we had to lug back to Mumbai.

After lunch, the three of us, viz. me, Lil white mouse and Crispin, who would be travelling back set off with Ruth and Dora towards Thivim station.

However, looking at the size of our luggage we realized it would be extremely difficult to transport it without proper transport. Now Goa doesn’t have proper transport, unless you own it! We were lucky to find a rickshaw who agreed to take us and the luggage. Lil white mouse and me went in the rick with all the bags, while the others walked it out via a shorter route.

We were joined by Valley who came to the station after work.

We located where our coaches would come. The train was late by almost 30 minutes. Lil white mouse was in a seperate compartment, but we managed to get the TC to arrange for her to sit in the same comparment with us. And the man beside me kindly moved so that Lil white mouse could sit with the two of us.

The train ride was comfortable, except when the train went into the tunnels and we had the compartments all filled with smoke!

We reached Mumbai a little before midnight where Crispin’s dad picked us up. We dropped Lil white mouse home and then returned to Andheri.

Changed, deposited the bibic in the fridge and went to bed. Unpacking shall wait.

A week in Goa without visiting the beach is something very people would do. Well, we aren’t among those people.

We had plans to go swimming in a nice swimming pool, but when plans didn’t work out, we chose to visit the beach.

The beaches in Goa are usually crowded and on a Sunday afternoon it’s at its worst.

And Baga Beach is among the most crowded of beaches as the picture above shows you. However, Valley knew of a secluded portion of Baga Beach, which is where we headed to.

It worked well, because we got the beach almost to ourselves, with the exception of a few lechers which is a disgusting characteristic of uncouth Indian men at beaches.

Had brought along a change of clothes, but wasn’t too keen on entering the water. Finally decided to take the plunge and we all spent a good hour in there. Lil white mouse sat on the rock like the little mermaid, but joined us later.

I didn’t need to change into my other set of clothes, because the sun shone down bright enough to dry up all my clothes.

We took the longer route on the way back because we didn’t want to get wet crossing the river again. We finally piled ourselves into the bus heading back to Mapusa, which took a long time as it stopped at Calangute, where it got stuffed to the brim (luckily we were seated the whole journey).

We got back to Thivim safe and sound and extremely exhausted. Changed and got cleaned quickly and hit the beds for a sound sleep.

The next day, we come home and if you’re interested, here are the pics of the beach day.

We slept quite late (infact early in the morning) after the barbecue on Saturday and it was quite a bit of a problem awaking by 7am to make it for the 8am mass.

However, we did struggle out of our beds and get ready.

Now Thivim Chapel is right on top of the hill, which means a great deal of walking indeed! I had received strict instructions from Lil white mouse to wear formals. Walking is bad enough, walking up a hill is worse, walking up a hill in the heat can be a real pain, but walking up a hill in the heat in formals is a real killer!

By the time we were at the top we were totally drenched in perspiration. And the chapel was also overfull and we didn’t have any sitting place.

We ended up sitting in the corridor which had one lonely fan that did throw some breeze. Crispin and Valley arranged for some chairs, so, thankfully, we didn’t stand the full hour.

We headed back home after mass, glad to have a good fan over our heads. Lil white mouse wanted to visit St. Christopher?s Church, which is the main church in Thivim. However, before that I was treated by the friendly neighbourhood witch doctor for a major catch in my neck, the result of me sleeping on a soft pillow on hard ground! (for some strange reason sleeping in Goa was a problem)

Got some pictures of the church, which was all locked up before we headed back. Had to pickup some provisions and we treated ourself to fake orange fizz.

We also stumbled upon Valley who was drawing water from the well and so I decided to give it a shot (for the photo ofcourse).

Also found some touch-me-not plants out there so indulged in shutting their leaves… hey it’s been a while!

It’s late now, so I’ll keep the beach stories and pictures for another post. Until then…

We may have walked all over Thivim the previous day, but that wouldn’t stop us from travelling to Badem to visit Crispin‘s Grandmother.

Our last visit to Badem was pretty much a disaster as it involved us hitchhiking all over the place.

Our trip to Mapusa was by the usual bus. We were accompanied by Dora, who for some strange reason buys half tickets for all of us. And the stranger thing is that the conductor gives her them knowing it is for us!

Anyway, our journey from Mapusa to Badem was extremely comfortable as we got a ride in a car, yes a real car, and one with an AC as well :O

We bundled ourselves in and reached there quickly. Picked up charcoal on the way for the barbecue in the evening.

Crispin’s Grandmother greeted the four of us with ample food, cold drinks and mango juice. You know I love to eat, don’t you?

After a good deal of eating and some TV watching (the first in Goa for the whole week), we finally left the place a little past 2.30pm and got a drop right back to Thivim!

Barbecue preparations began a little after we got back. Well, atleast I began to cut up the dried coconut leaves, while Crispin and Ruth were away in the fields with Dora and Lil white mouse was out visiting a friend.

Did manage to get some PC work done as well before they returned, but I really missed the internet then (a geek’s only link to the world!)

The barbecue was good fun, with us eating, drinking and singing till midnight, after which we washed up and hit the beds. The next day would begin early.

After a rested day at home, Friday was a tiring and leg breaking experience!

Friday is the big Mapusa bazaar, which means lots of things to shop and lots of crowds to shop with… I’m not a crowd person.

Anyway, caught the morning bus to Mapusa and entered the bazaar. Ruth didn’t join us, so Crispin, Lil white mouse and I had to share the carrying of the bags.

We walked through the bazaar and picked up loads of vegetables, some bread and then visited the fish market for some bangdas (mackerels) and prawns. Then went to pickup the things we needed to take home, which included cashews, booze and Goa Sausages.

While shopping, we made sure we kept consuming fluids; sugarcane juice, lime soda (got fleeced), lime juice and flavored milk. Needed this as it was horribly hot and we really sweated like pigs!

After a good few hours of shopping and several heavy bags later, the three of us caught a bus back to Cansa Board. We should have taken the rickshaw but tried to save a good deal of money. The consequence was increased biceps after lugging the heavy bags up the hill and down into the valley.

We had lunch and hoped to get some sleep which didn’t happen and then set out on our next adventure. This time we were joined by Ruth, Dora and Vally.

I didn’t know fully what I was getting into, but within the first half hour of it I realized. Well, we walked… yes … walked and walked and walked some more and when we were finally done walking, we walked some more!

Walking was up a long uphill road, along which we found some cashew fruit, some other weird fruit (which meant more of eating unwashed fruits of a tree). We also stumbled on a Gold Mine, where they are mining and exporting gold ore for further processing. And after still more walking, we finally reached the place we setout to be, a small spring.

I was rather disappointed seeing the size of it, because it just wasn’t worth the walk. And, one thing about walking is that you have to walk back. So, we began the long journey back in the dark (the sun had almost set by then), with one stopover for water at a house.

We finally got back extremely exhausted, with my legs almost broken. Again, it was a quick dinner and sleep in preparation for yet another long day.