While making my last post, it completely slipped my mind about our visit to Appa Balwant Chowk in Pune to sell our MBA books. ABC is a well known place in Pune where you can pickup second hand books for MBA, engineering and other streams. There are several raddiwalas there who buy your old books and then resell them to eager buyers who can’t afford a brand new copy.

Hence, every year ABC sees a stream of students dropping in with their old books. We joined this list of students to sell the books we collected in the past 20 months. Any money is good money!

So, Aditya, Akshat, Sneha and me took the afternoon bus to the city. We were joined by Namrata, who had already sold her books the previous day. Got down and Atur Center and took rickshaws to get to ABC. The moment we alighted we were “received” by book sellers interested in purchasing the books. Boy, can they smell students interested in selling books from afar!

One thing I can’t do is bargain. But luckily for me Namrata and Akshat are the experts at this and Sneha and Aditya can provide decent backup! So, I stood with minimal talking while they bargained and sold all our books for a cool 3K. My share Rs. 600

Show me a college student with loose cash, and I’ll show you a student waiting to spend it!

Since we were free, we headed off to Dhole Patil Road which was a good Rs. 50/- by rickshaw to eat Katti roles, some pastries before realizing we just had nothing to do there!

So, it was back to Atur to catch the bus to Aundh, where we dropped in to Idlicious. We learnt to our surprise that they had stopped serving customers and only offered parcels. The reason: the Pune corporation now only permits those with allocated parking to serve customers. This has resulted in the closure of several restaurants across Pune, including Cafe Coffee Day. So, we picked up parcels and then headed back to college where we ate the idlis.

And, that was the closure of an interesting day

With the Mouse‘s exams over, it was unwinding time.

Met up with her on Tuesday and we set off to town accompanied by her sister to catch The Namesake. The movie was interesting and all the actors do their parts well. I will write a detailed review of this sometime soon.

The movie was followed by “cheap” Chinese… it wasn’t that cheap but we definitely ate our fill for less than 200 bucks.

Then began the journey back home. We took a train from CST, which makes it the first time in my life that I have travelled by Central Railways (did I mention that I am a bike person?)

Got home at almost 11pm and as usual, my internet was down, which is a nightly feature. Anyway, I have picked up a Reliance NetConnect connection. I am supposed to have the first two months free for the 1GB plan that I chose.

The last two nights I have used the plan. I haven’t hit my daily target but I have to keep checking the account. I plan on shifting to the Night Unlimited plan once I get to Pune.

Yesterday, was back to town again, this time was a totally different purpose. I first met the mouse at Metropolis Medical Center. Nice place inside, horrible building outside :O

Lunch was pizza from Garcia’s which is normally good, but was a real disaster this time.

We finally set out to town in the afternoon. Our first stop was at the Strand Book Exhibition at Sunderbai hall. Didn’t find any of the books that I was looking for.

Next stop was near Regal to pick up tshirts from the Tantra outlet there. Women can sure spend a lot of time shopping. And the final stop was at Chimanlal’s to pick up expensive paper!

While there, we roamed the streets of town and I managed to pick up a great deal of books for little amounts of money. Among these I picked up The Alchemist, The Kite Runner, The World Is Flat, The Old Man and The Sea, The Catcher in the Rye and Angels & Demons.

And did I mention that I downed a huge glass of sugarcane juice??

After a rather fulfilling shopping experience and two aching legs we finally found our way back home.

This has been one really really killing week.

Killing because in addition to work being non-stop and tiring and frustrating at times, I haven’t been keeping too well.

Saturday was the worst because I had a terrible headache right from Friday itself. Saturday just made it worse. Not sure what is the exact reason, but it could be lack of sleep.

Watched Walk the Line last Sunday and Syriana on Friday.

Work tended to be rather frustrating because once again my friend Murphy played his role to perfection. However I was satisfied by the end of the week, because we did manage to iron out a lot of bugs in the system and got it into some working state. However, I still have an uphill task ahead of me, which translates into an exhausting week ahead.

I didn’t make it for the prayer meeting this week, yet again (I think I should stop mentioning this) because my bike went for servicing. Her battery’s drained out (so was mine).

However, did make it for Monday choir practice. Didn’t go on Saturday because of the headache.

Dad was down last Sunday for a couple of hours on an office trip. He was back on Friday night and so as is customary we all went out for dinner to Gajalee. Ate well

U. Conrad is out of town for a while and so this morning’s mass was sung without him. A. Janice had a guitar with her, so we weren’t devoid of music. The singing was good and so was mass.

Spent the whole of today at home. Managed to get Fedora Core 4 installed properly. I have a long way to go before I get to know Linux as well as I do Windows. However, this is one thing I keenly plan on pursuing.

Am off to bed now. Don’t want to end up with yet another splitting headache. And I am just beginning this week!

Been a while since Melody Tagged Me.

I don’t really know why I am doing this, because I’m not much of the book buyer / reader.

Well here goes:
Total number of books I own – Not many and I haven’t counted lately

The last book I bought – “Who Moved my Cheese” by Dr. Spencer Johnson

Last book I read – “Who Moved my Cheese”.

Five Books that mean a lot to me