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.

It was a really short visit about two weeks back, when I went to meet Akshat and Neha at the Cafe Coffee Day in Indiranagar.

Those who know me do not find it hard to imagine that I haven’t seen Bangalore even though I have been here for nearly 11 months.

I also realized that Indiranagar is not as far as I thought it to be! It’s about 7-8km from where I stay. But, it doesn’t take too long because of the wide open roads leading to the place. It has been a while since I cruised along so sweetly.

I’m still waiting to go out to Barista sometime soon. One day, when I am not that lazy!

Met up with Suchita today and we went to Fiorama, which is an Italian restaurant in Koramangala itself. The place turned out to have a good ambience, but unfortunately it was way to expensive for the portions and quality of food they had to offer. Reminds me of a non-veg Little Italy!

I also have clarity on the PayPal issue I cribbed about last time. Seems like the Reserve Bank of India woke up suddenly and asked PayPal to stop all operations in India until they “register” with RBI. This means that for at least another few months, Indian users will have a to suffer. Those who are freelancing and rely on PayPal as their main source of payment receipts are in for a major issue. I believe goods and services may still work, but that is left to be determined.

I don’t really blame PayPal on this, except for the total lack of communication before they took action, which is not acceptable for an organization like PayPal. Read PayPal’s update on the situation.

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

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!

After a brief stint in Pune to complete some college activities, I came back to Mumbai last Sunday. The primary purpose besides staying home was for a special purpose.

My parents were invited over to Lil white mouse’s house for lunch. I came down from Pune and went over to her place directly, while my parents came from my home.

The food was well prepared and delicious as usual. Everyone spent a good number of hours chatting about all topics under the sun.

We finally left the place post 6pm and took the 39 home. Got home and got down to work immediately. This is what would dominate the rest of the week.

I spent a good portion of last week working on my plugins. I released updated to Contextual Related Posts and Top 10. I also released a new WordPress Plugin called Add to Footer.

Lastly, I’ve taken over development of the highly popular WP Ajax Edit Comments from Ronald.

The last week wasn’t all coding. I spent a good amount of time with Lil white mouse. We managed to catch Pink Panther 2 and also made two visits to Dynasty, our favorite eating joint. We also dropped in to my Grandmom‘s place on Tuesday. Our original plan was to order from Subway. However, the outlet in Bandra wasn’t running the offer that is being run at the outlet here in Andheri.

So, we dropped the plan of Subway and instead ordered chicken tikka and chicken sheekh kebabs from the local joint opposite National College.

Spent all of yesterday at home on account of Holi and coding a brand new version of Top 10. You should see the release post in a few hours. Remember to deactivate the plugin before upgrading.

Also worked on my report for Research and Reporting. Have a submission in a few days. We’ve just be lazy at finishing this. Who said, we don’t believe in JIT ?

Dad and me plan to visit an Amway meet in the evening. I came to know yesterday that I have 100 persons in my network. Can’t take any credit for it. I do plan on buying more of Amway’s products, simply because they are excellent. I’ll probably make a post about this in the future.

Blame it on the coding or blame it on laziness or just lack of time due to other pursuits, but this blog hasn’t seen a personal update for a while.

Lil white mouse and me caught the first day evening show of Valkyrie on Friday the 20th on Suburbia, Bandra. Definitely worth watching once.

Prices of movie tickets are supposed to have been reduced, but I definitely didn’t see that!

Lil white mouse’s sister celebrated her 21st birthday on 10th of February and the party was held on 21st February.

She had a good portion of her family over on that day. Reached there a bit early to assist in the preparations for dinner. I love the chicken, mushroom and cheese pie that Lil white mouse makes. Dinner was excellent and the cake that she made was absolutely delicious

We played one game of passing the parcel and I was lucky (read: smart) to get away with a simple forfeit. Check out the other photos in the album.

I’ve been busy working on my plugins all of last week. The first one to to be updated was Twitter Counter followed by Contextual Related Posts and Open Browser Window.

I’ve an update for a few other plugins lined up as well as one or two new ones in the pipeline. Follow my updates on Twitter or via RSS.

Made my way back to Pune yesterday to complete the Finance Paper that we’ve been working on. Collected a mound of data and now the analysis before we meet the faculty tomorrow.

It’s terrible back here eating the crappy food! Did go last night to Fasoos, so it was a welcome change. I crave for pizza. Talking about pizza, Lil white mouse and me were able to get hold of a great buy one get one free offer from Smokin’s Joes last week

That’s it from my life. What’s happening with you?

No, I am not talking about the movie, but just the last 20 days of my life; life that has kept me so busy that you haven’t read about any personal updates.

So, here’s a quick round up of the last two weeks of my life.

The week from 19th to 24th of Jan was like any other week of my life. Spent all of it blogging, reading, eating, talking and sleeping.

23rd was the first and last test of this semester. The test was on Strategic Marketing. We were given a choice between a two simple questions and a case on TESCO. IMO, education should be practical and case based to ensure that people actually apply their minds to everything. A healthy mix of theory and practicals is ideal. However, MBA turned out to be primarily a learn by rote, which is something I simply can’t do. Hence, was forced to understand and write exams where results took a hit. No regrets on that, because I put in my best and did well so far

Aditya, Sneha, Namrata and me decided to go out for dinner on 23rd. After much pondering we went to Haka’s on FC Road, Pune. The food sucked completely and totally. Really felt like I was cheated of my money.

Took the early morning Volvo to Mumbai on 24th to spend the long weekend at home. Met up with Lil white mouse on 24th evening for dinner. I had to get the taste of the horrible Chinese food out of my mouth. So, we headed off to our favorite joint Dynasty. As usual the crab meat soup was delicious. We ordered the Seafood platter and it turned out to be sizzling and not dry, though I would have sworn it was dry the last time I ordered that.

Sunday, the 25th was a quiet day. Lil white mouse came over in the evening to spend some time.

26th is the Republic Day of India and so a public holiday. As a result the roads are usually empty and people stick home. This weekend was different because many had left the city for the long weekend.

I went over to Lil white mouse’s place in the afternoon and we then went shopping to Westside, near Opera House as it was the last day of their sale. Following this, we returned home and then to 5 Spice in Bandra. We were seated at the Non-Smoking, Non-Alcoholic sections of the restaurant, which didn’t make a difference, since it was a dry day.

The service here was a lot slower, possibly because the design of the place is such. The however, remains delicious

I initially planned on returning to Pune on 27th, but postponed that to the next day. Spent 27th at home, working almost all day. Took the earliest Volvo I could to find my way back to Pune.

The last few days has been dinner at Tamanna, dinner at Mezza9, a class and presentation for Strategic Marketing. Looking at my mention of that subject you may tend to think I’ve shifted to Marketing. Well, no, I remain a Finance graduate. That is just one subject

I’ve given Techtites a new look yet again. So, will be spending tonight working on that one.

Friday at 12am we brought in Sneha‘s birthday by cutting her cake and dirtying her.

After a long day of lectures on Friday, in which we gave two presentations in Strategic Management, we headed out to the city. Sneha and Namrata had finalized on a joint called TC’s in FC Road. We had booked the place for eleven people.

Caught the 7.30pm bus from college which drops us at Atur Center from where we caught rickshaws to the place.

TC’s is decently sized place with a good ambience and service. However, I really wonder why they needed to have the lights fading into various colors!

The prices weren’t that high compared to the other places we have eaten at, but then again, neither were the portions. We were offered 11 tequila shots on the house, a pity only five were consumed.

Then we desperately hunted for rickshaws back to Atur Center and rushed to catch the last bus back to college.

Woke up (or more like was woken up) early Saturday morning as all these folks were off to Alibaug for the weekend. I’m not much of an outdoor person and had tonnes of work so decided to stay back.

Went with Maria and her sister Tina for mass on Saturday. Was asked to and did the Prayer of the Faithful. After mass, we decided to go to Mainland China, which is close to where we had to catch the bus back.

This is my first visit to a Mainland China. The food was decent, so was the service. However, they really need to understand the meaning of the word “spicy”.

The bus back to campus was jam packed, but we were fortunate enough to get seats.

Sunday was a quiet day. We gathered together to bid farewell to Maria, who is the first among all of us to begin her job.

Am really exhausted now and will be hitting the bed soon. Have to still get my hands on photos of the birthday. Will put them in my album.

After a quiet two days at home, I finally ventured out on Sunday evening for mass. I?ve realized that I can spend days at home without evening stepping outside and not even think twice about it. Pizzas always get delivered, don?t they?

Anyway, Sunday the 4th also marked the 28th Wedding Anniversary of my parents and since Dad isn?t here I decided to take Mom out for dinner. However, she chose to order home and so be it.

Dinner was Chicken Manchurian, Prawns Masala and Chicken Fried rice. We tried a smaller new restaurant near my place instead of the regular one I ordered. While the chicken was good, the prawns was terrible. Note to myself. ?Do not order sea food from small places?.

Monday and Tuesday were normal days. Aditya was in Mumbai yesterday on placements work and dropped in after that was done. Took him to InOrbit, Malad whose sheer size had him all amazed.

Got back home, bid farewell to him and got ready for Seema?s birthday party. We were at her place gossiping and chatting till post 10.30pm before I drove back home. Had no energy to make any of the blog posts I had originally planned. Had also decided to make my way back to Pune and so needed to get some sleep.

Caught the second Volvo to Pune. The last time I was on my way back the bus tire was punctured and the driver and cleaner spent a good hour fixing that. Fortunately, today I didn?t face any such problem, though the bus that I missed by a minute broke down on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway. After our driver lent a hand, we were on our way.

Reached here in the morning, met up with friends and then got down to making those blog posts. The count of unread posts in my RSS reader is slowly mounting. As is the case of my Gmail inbox which seems to be locked due to Google detecting unusual activity. Now, me not checking my email for 20 hours is characterized as unusual Hopefully, this gets unlocked by tomorrow.

Tomorrow is a long day with a lot of lectures scheduled. We also have a so called Finance paper to work on tonight.