Little above a year back, a young man of 20 something, having finished a year at his new job, received the good news of his secondment to London. In preparation for his six weeks in London, the young man set out to a few shops in the city to buy the necessary attire for the new job profile that he would be in.

On 3 May 2010, this young man took his first long haul flight from Bangalore to London. As he walked out of the airplane and took the cab to his apartment, he fell in love with the city and hoped that those six weeks would be a lot more. Little did he know that his wish would come true. However, his work was recognised and he was given an offer he could not refuse. And, he didn’t.

The six weeks turned to six months and the six months turned to nine, as he waited for his visa. After a brief visit in Bangalore, he packed up his belongings and returned home to Mumbai. In Mumbai, as he struggled to adjust to the time zone difference, he tried to put his affairs in order and met a few friends. He was back to London in early March to begin his new job in a role where his friends would refer to him as “Banker”.

I don’t need to tell you that the young man is me and am happy to say that I have completed my first year in London, in a job I grew to love!

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. This isn’t the case with Ajay (yes, sad joke!), who is perfectly at home at his work place. But, I do go out and have my share of fun and this included a wardrobe improvement with the help of his new found friend Sveccha (introduced by the great Idea-smithy.

We went to Westfield mall, which is one of the largest malls in Europe (view on Google Maps). I picked up a few shirts at the T.M.Lewin store and at Marks & Spencer, a pair of shoes and something that makes me smell real good!

Some Vietnamese food, pastries and Starbucks completed the rest of the day. This was the first day of the long two weekends, the Easter weekend and the Royal Wedding weekend, most of which were spent in the confines of my super sexy apartment!

What use is a good, well furnished kitchen (courtesy Tesco Direct), when you don’t put it to use. Met up with Sveccha on Saturday and we decided to cook at home. She did the cooking and we did the eating. The prawns turned out to be super awesome and the rice and the dal were yum! Need, I say, I need to take up cooking as a hobby!

And, work continues as usual…

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.

Surprise! An update in less than  one month

Two weeks back I went off to the O2 to watch Inception. Since then I have caught three more movies, viz. A-Team, Knight and Day and Karate Kid.

I have taken the unlimited movies plan at Cineworld, and I have already made that up for this month by watching two movies in the last two days By my math, I’ll need to watch just 18 movies in the next three months. Call me thrifty

Work has been crazy as usual with me finishing my fourth all-nighter at work in the three months that I have been here. Not something to be proud about, but hey, it happens! This week promises to be light. Then again promises are meant to be broken.

Back to movies, there is a whole set of movies in the pipeline that I plan on watching:

• Toy Story 3
• Shrek Forever After
• The Last Airbender
• The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
• The Expendables
• Salt
• Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
• Piranha 3D
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I

So, which movies do you plan on watching?

Finally got a day to myself and hence the point of this post. Ideally, by now, you should be able to see a million photographs on my photo album. However, a total lack of social life explains the un-updated album!

Since then, I have been slogging like crazy at work with minimal amount of fun. In the last 6 weeks I have:

1. Worked almost every weekend and almost every day till at least 11pm
2. Watched Robin Hood
3. Went to Piccadilly Circus area and had amazing pizza at an Italian restaurant
4. Shifted residence, well, almost

And, that’s about it.

There is one bit of good news though, my original assignment which was to be for 6 weeks  has now been extended till the end of October. So, am hoping that across the next few months, I’ll be able to visit the many places in London.

As a result, I’ll be completing my shifting tomorrow morning to a new place. I love the view from there. Will put up some photographs soon!

Update: Just uploaded some more photos in the London album on Flickr.

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!

When I wrote Light weeks, these past two weeks has been, I was well aware that this was a temporary situation. And I wasn’t “disappointed”. I’ve been slogging it out for the past three weeks with life peaking last week.

While I worked from home two weekends back, I spent almost whole of last weekend in office. Thankfully, I enjoy my job, otherwise, I would have gone crazy.

I did manage to find some time to release a few updates to my plugins.

And, then I woke up last week to find out that PayPal has stopped personal payments to India.

And, the worst part is that all this is without warning. Now, I’m not really sure as to why this has been implemented. But, according to PayPal, they are waiting for some of their “business partners” to approve.

While we can still receive and send payments as “goods”, I find this entire workaround really stupid. And, once again we see PayPal’s lack of professionalism.

As for me, now I have to patiently wait it out and see what happens with PayPal. Unfortunately for them, I see a major move away from all parties, since we Indians form a really big part of the internet!

Work, work and more work ensures that a simple person like me doesn’t get time to blog. So, here’s a post that summarizes the last two weeks of my life.

Team dinner

Every quarter the teams out here go out for dinner. Last quarter we went bowling and had a quiet dinner. This time work pressures ensured that we skipped the bowling and just went for the dinner directly.

Dinner was at Jalsa, which is in Marathahalli. I had originally inteded to take the bike to work, but dropped the idea. But, we had enough of bikes and so there wasn’t a problem.

Regarding my bike, the Bajaj service centre really seems to have screwed something up and the pickup has dropped and so has the top speed. Now, am hunting for a local mechanic out here. There are a few in Bellandur and Sarjapur area where I intend to give the bike. Let’s see…

Jalsa is a moderately priced place, designed in a very Indian setting from the times of the kinds of old. I stuck to starters as I usually do when I am out for dinner. Who wants the non-chicken part, right?

Got a lift back home thanks to a colleague who was passing this way.

Weekend Movie and Shopping

Last week, Vincent and me made up our minds, bought the tickets and headed off to watch G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, which turned out to be a good movie to watch. Bernard, who was bunking with me for the month, also headed off back to Mumbai, so I once again have my room to myself.

And, last Sunday, we went over to Oasis mall for lunch, followed by shopping at Spar. Whenever we go shopping, we end up spending a bomb

We picked up tonnes of stuff resulting in a very well stocked fridge. Also, got myself a tin opener finally, so its cheese time as well. We picked up a packet of pork sausages as well, but they weren’t as tasty as the ones I get in Mumbai.

Pizza Hut and shopping

We decided to go off to Pizza Hut today as well. Owning a visa card ensures that we get our pizza really cheap and within 600 bucks you can get a pizza, drinks, garlic bread and a Caesar salad.

We dropped into Star Bazaar as well and I have realized that it is a better place to shop than Spar. There are better offers and the prices are lower as well. We did a fair bit of shopping, especially for extension boards. The ones we had already were with two pin plugs resulting in no ground, which isn’t really good for electronics like laptops etc.

Am also hunting for a low end microwave, only for heating purposes. Unfortunately, Chroma didn’t have it either. Any suggestions for those who are from Bangalore?

Tomorrow I plan to get some work done from home. But, tonight, I need to sleep!

I returned to college in mid March for the last two weeks at SCMHRD; two weeks filled with exams and vivas. Began first shot of the exams with the viva for our Finance Paper on 21st March. It was short, to the point and sweet with average marks. We also collected out hall tickets on that day.

Two days prior to that Sneha got placed. It was also the same day that Namrata manage to break a leg (and I?m not talking show business) while shopping. She sure got fussed over for two weeks.

My first written paper was for World Class Management on 26th of March and the paper turned out to be a real bouncer for the entire batch. We still await results, which are due in June / July.

On 26th we all set out for Sneha?s treat at Sigri in Dhole Patil Road, Pune. I had been to Sigri last year for one of the many admissions treats and liked the place. This time we went with the Barbeque buffet and it was simply fabulous. I stuffed myself up with fish, prawns and chicken and washed it all down with three triple scoops of strawberry ice cream.

And, the next day, I went out with the Admissions Team, viz. Anoop, Maria, Radhika and Ravi. Rashmi also joined for dinner. We went over to Rajwada, which I had visited once. The service at that place is painfully slow, but the food is decently edible.

We intended to stop off for ice cream and stuff but rushed to catch the last bus back to college.

The remaining days at SCMHRD were two more papers and a viva, lots of clearance forms and final packing as I headed back home to Mumbai.

The last week in Mumbai was actually just a few days as I got my belongings ready for transportation to Bangalore. Lil white mouse was a real blessing as she helped me a great deal with all this. During the time we manage to spare some time to visit Tunga?s Something Fishy, where we drew up our highest bill ever over prawns and fish and Zodiac, a place I haven?t been to since a very long time.

The transporters picked up all my stuff on Saturday and I dropped my bike over on Sunday before I flew down to Bangalore. The driver who received me at the airport was a very chatty guy and pointed out quite a few places as we passed them during the 90 minute drive to the guesthouse.

Today was the first day at work and was an excellent day. I like the place here. This week, I plan on searching for a good 1BHK in Bangalore.

BTW, in all likelihood, this may possibly be my second last post to be filed under College. The last possibly be the results, if I have the time!

If you?re reading this post, I?m already on the plane or maybe even in Bangalore. If you?ve been following this blog for a while, you?d know that I got placed through my college last November. As required by the job, I have to relocate to the city of Bangalore and the time has finally come for it.

This is in fact the first time I?ve ventured out of the safety of Mumbai into the unknown. Two years back when I set out to do my MBA in SCMHRD, Pune, I knew that I had everything planned and fixed with no need to worry about food, clothing or shelter. This time, it?s a question of shelter. So, if any of you reading this in Bangalore, know of a good 1BHK in Koramangala area at reasonable rates, please do drop me an email.

My office is located in Bellandur, so any suggestions regarding where to stay are also welcome.

Another purpose of making this post is regarding support for my WordPress plugins and themes. I?ll be tied down at least for the next two weeks and I?m pretty sure for two weeks after that as I hunt for a place to stay, get accustomed to the new city and job and get all the basic connectivity, which includes a decent internet connection. I do have my Airtel GPRS connection and a Reliance data card, but I hope I get a good signal to ensure I don?t get too frustrated to stay online.

Hence, for the next month, I won?t be able to fully and completely provide the support at the speed I have that I have for so long. Please do post your support requests in the forum. I?ll try to check in once a day or at least once every two days and respond to queries. Sending me an email won?t help. Read why.

So until then, do wish me luck. I?ll try to stay active on Twitter as well as Facebook (at least in the nights).

Went out with Lil white mouse after work on Tuesday. We decided to go to Sheesha which is on the terrace of Shopper’s Stop in Bandra.

The place is dark and expensive. Food was good. So no complains.

While we were there, the skies decided to open up and Mumbai got its taste of the monsoons this year. It poured cats and dogs for well over 30 minutes. I decided to spend the night at my Grandma’s place in Bandra itself.

Came back home in the morning to find my internet down as usual. Went to work only by 2pm. With just a few days to go, it wasn’t such an issue

My darling Flame turned four on the 4th of June. She is still giving over 46kmpl which is excellent.

Saturday was the last day of my Summer Internship in eClerx. I’ve spent two fulfilling months out there where I learnt a great deal and also decided to take the plunge into the world of Finance!

Had invited all the higher ups in the organization for my presentation and most of them turned up in person or on phone so I am totally pleased

Fingers crossed.

Spent today with Lil white mouse. We then went to watch the new Indiana Jones movie. Will write a review tomorrow