I booked my tickets to come to Mumbai last month, when my plans for a trip to the USA and Canada fell apart due to my crazy work schedule.

My past two trips have been on British Airways, but this time I booked tickets for our very own Jet Airways. I booked a cab to the airport and reached Heathrow Terminal 4 with time to spare. I must admit that I missed the awesomeness of Terminal 5.

The flight was very comfortable, though I did feel the service was all over the place. The flight was a good 10 hours with minimal turbulence and I did catch up on some sleep and three movies, viz. The Lincoln Lawyer, Rio and Pay Check.

I prefer landing at Mumbai Airport over any other airport in India because of the really quick immigration counters. During my last trip to Bangalore Airport, I spent a good amount of time waiting to get through immigration and then had to wait for my baggage. This time it was only the wait for the baggage that I had to handle. What can be improved is the pre-paid taxi desk at which I had to wait nearly 20 minutes.

Now, I need to book tickets for my trip to Mumbai in December. And, the prices are already over the roof!

I began my trip in Mumbai by going for Sunday mass in my church. It sure has been a while… Sunday continued to be a very quiet day with me spending the rest of the day at home.

August 15 is the Feast of Annunciation of Mother Mary as well as India’s Independence Day which we love to celebrate The day began quietly with mass in the morning and lunch at home. Mom and me went over to my Grandmas place. I also met up with Cloreisha after a long long time at Mocha Mojo in Bandra. Mocha’s definitely has a whole new atmosphere now that hookahs have been banned in Mumbai. Another stupid rule after the "no serving alcohol to persons below 25". I am waiting for Starbucks to set up shop in Mumbai.

Dinner was back at my Grandma’s place, who is always enthusiastic to order in! So, I had my first taste of Indian Chinese cuisine after a long time.

I celebrated my 29th birthday on August 16. This time it was a lot different from the years before. Last year, I had a very sad birthday stuck at work till 2am. This time was a lot different. I brought in the day with true geek style by redesigning this blog. I have a bit more website and WordPress work to do in the next two weeks.

Birthday lunch was with Ramya at Global Fusion in Bandra which is a place I will definitely recommend. The prices are a bit on the higher side and the place only has buffet. But, the food was really amazing and the ambience is pretty good.

Next stop was to buy me lots of really cool gifts at Shopper’s Stop. I was definitely disappointed because I didn’t find anything good at the sale. Managed a pair of jeans and some good Adidas deo, but the place was rather dry. I plan on visiting the one at Irla to see if I can find something good.

Spent the rest of the day at my Grandma’s place followed by dinner at home. A quiet, uneventful day to celebrate my birthday.

Yesterday and today have been quiet days with some bank work that didn’t happen and an internet connection that didn’t work and lots and lots of rains!

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…

Met up with Clayton, my good old friend from my days of choir singing. He decided to take me to Chennai Dosa, which is a popular Indian cuisine restaurant in Wembley and other places in London.

Travelling to Wembley on a weekend from Canary Wharf is always a pain because the Jubilee line has “planned engineering works”. So, instead of taking the Jubilee straight to Wembley, I took the Jubilee to Stratford (opposite direction), which will soon be the place of the London Olympics.

From Stratford, I took the Overground to Gospel Oak where Clayton came with his car. Going by road today turned out to be rather painful since we came across three accidents yesterday. The first one made us take an alternate route which was several kilometres all over the area. The second one didn’t restrict our travel.

Chennai Dosa turned out to be a pleasant surprise. The rates are much lower by London standards, but I couldn’t help running a quick 70x conversion to INR! The place was filled with Indians and is apparently run by Indians.

The mutton biryani wasn’t too good, but the other prawns and chicken lollipop was yummy

Clayton decided to drop me back to Canary Wharf, but for the third accident near London Bridge and I chose to get off at Waterloo and take the Jubilee back home.

Tomorrow is a new day and we’re still debating if we should go watch a movie or not.

Christmas week is always busy and the week this year did not disappoint. Began the week meeting a friend for lunch. Went over to Lil white mouse‘s place the next day to help wrap presents. Sat at home and coded and blogged the day after that.

Sneha came over on Christmas Eve for a while before mass. Mass was relatively short and sweet. The choirs have improved since the past few years, which is a good things. Returned home immediately after mass.

I met Lil white mouse and Ruth for dinner at the 5 Spice in Bandra. Being, Christmas night, we had to wait a while before we were given a table. We definitely ordered a good deal of food and desert, a lot more than our normal capacities

Went over to Lil white mouse’s place on 26th morning to prepare for the engagement. We went over to the church in the morning itself and engaged rings and vows. After a good deal of furniture movements, to accommodate 30 persons, I went over to my ENT for a follow-up.

The party at Lil white mouse’s place was fun-filled like any of our other parties. The only difference was that we had my part of the family there too.

Got a host of presents for Christmas from Lil white mouse and her family. It was like sweeping the Oscars!

Spent the night over at her place. And, the next day we went over to her grandaunt’s place for lunch. After a bit of rest, my weary feet found their way home.

I have uploaded more photographs of the engagement. Check out the engagement album.

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!

Met up with Lil white mouse both yesterday and today for dinner. Both yesterday and today were quiet days spent at home. I’ve been trying my best to recover all the sleep that I missed for so long.

The problem is that the sleep is constantly disrupted as I need to wake up before 10am as the water goes out here. This water problem is a big pain in the a**.

I met Lil white mouse in the evening at the Subway near my place. My once regular joint has become a once in a few months joint.

We had the “sub of the day” which turned out to be the Chicken Meat ball, which was also the first time that I had this sandwich.

And today, we went off to Dynasty. We were rather disappointed by the food out there today. While the spicy crab meat soup was good, we were left hunting for chicken pieces in the chicken schezwan noodles. Took a rick straight home after this.

Tomorrow I have crab for lunch

Hi everyone, I am still very much alive. I wish I could write in more often but by the time I get home I am usually too exhausted to get online and blog. Then again with work ruling my life, there isn’t much to talk about.

However, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy and luckily for us that is something that holds very true out here as well. So on Monday after work my team went out for a mini outing that involved bowling and a light dinner.

We first intended to go bowling at the Leela on Airport Road, but after reaching there we realized the place was super booked. So instead we went over to Church Street and finished a round of bowling. It has been a

I published last week that I was house hunting all of last weekend and I had managed to successfully locate and finalize a house in Koramangala, 4th Block.

We met the owner of the house on Thursday and finalized the deal. Our plan was to move in on Saturday, which was also the last day of our scheduled stay at the guesthouse.

So, early Saturday morning, after we settled our bills at the guesthouse, we hired cabs and headed to what will become our new home. I hired a Meru cab, which is more easily available here in Bangalore than in Mumbai, where you struggle to find one. It was a nice comfortable journey. At the same time, my goods from Mumbai also arrived. Was a little irritated that the boxes weren?t plastic coated like they were supposed to be and one box had broken open. The bike handle was also bent a bit. Will have to get this fixed. First, I got to get the road tax done. May also get the number changed, but that is at a later date.

After settling in, we decided to shop for mattresses which was a necessity. We first grabbed some lunch at the Pizza Hut in Forum and after that, we went over to Star Bazaar to pick up mattresses. Didn?t find them there, so the next stop was Big Bazaar. We found one there and others had a delivery period of a week, so we dropped that place. The next stop was Total Mall in Madiwala, where we finally purchased two Kurl-On mattresses and got them delivered home by night.

After we got back, we also realized (much to our stupidity), that there is a Kurl-On dealer five minutes from our house! That?s where we will pick up the remaining two mattresses.

Dinner was at The Rendezvous which is also where we had dinner tonight as well. Seems like this is going to become one of our favorite joints. We did tonnes of shopping at the Smart Mart that is located near our place. We are very pleased by the location because almost everything is available here.

Today was yet another visit at Star Bazaar. This time we totally intended to shop and picked up tonnes of goods, buckets and other items, that we fondly refer to as ?restructuring charges?.

I begin another work week tomorrow, which may be more than just five days long.

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!

I mentioned two days back that me and my dad were to visit an Amway seminar. Turns out that it wasn’t Amway, but this was actually conducted by Network 21.

Network 21 is a network of individuals who train you to sell the products. They are also the key people in helping you build your Amway pipeline.

The mathematics of the entire Amways sales process is extremely interesting. I’m no expert in it, and I doubt I ever will be, but by cutting down the middle man Amway is able to give you the profits. So, you end up getting paid to purchase and use their products.

The tier system is rather interesting. I’ll probably blog about this at a later point in time, when things are a bit clearer

Anyway, I liked what I saw and have decided to slowly switch my buying habits to Amway products both at home and when I move to Bangalore in April. The main reason being the excellent quality of the products.

Try and test… like and use… don’t like… dispose!

Met Lil white mouse last evening. Actually, picked her up from Vikhroli and we dropped in to the Subway at Powai. Seems like either the Rs250 for two subs and two cokes promo has been discontinued or it’s only at the Andheri (E) subway.

Yesterday was the Chicken Tikka sub, so we happily picked three of those and came back home. Washed one each down with Thumbs Up, which still remains one my favorite drinks (Coke is for kids!).

The third sub was left for this mornings healthy breakfast. Gosh am I stuffed now. Don’t know what plans are for lunch or dinner. And, I’m off to Pune early tomorrow morning.