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!

Christmas is the time of the year I’ve always looked out for. This year has been a very fulfilling year, which I shall write about in a future post. I took my core leave from 18 Dec to 3 Jan, which is the longest duration of leave that I have ever taken till date!

Had booked the tickets in August itself, so it was only the matter of getting to the airport. Unlike last time, where my cab arrived early and the plane was late, I reached the airport at 10am on Friday. They have become a lot stricter at Bangalore airport. I wasn’t allowed to even take my bottle of water past the security!

The flight was on time, but I didn’t get my usual row of seats. Was stuffed somewhere at the back, but the leg room isn’t that bad.

The flight was quick and I was home rather quickly and the first thing as usual was to reactivate my internet connection at home. This time my laptop is out of commission since I don’t have a spare internet connection.

Lil white mouse came over in the evening to spend some time with me.

On Saturday, I met up with Sneha, who had complimentary coupons for the ITC, where we feasted on a really good buffet. I ensured that I sampled all the meats and many of the deserts. (No vegetables for me!)

Went over to see the ENT in the evening. Have been suffering from a bad ear ache in addition to my usual nose trouble, so it was high time I got this checked. Also need to visit an ophthalmologist this time.

Went over to Lil white mouse’s place on Saturday and we watched Avatar on Sunday. Had booked the tickets for the 9.30am show at PVR, since they were a lot more affordable than the normal shows!

Returned home via Bandra. Got a lift from her and her family, who were on their way to Bandra. We took the Bandra Worli sea-link which was my first trip on the new bridge. It has been done well and looking up at the suspended portion at night is beautiful.

Spent the entire day at home today. Had a visit from Swagatika, who I met after nearly two and half years. Have a lot of catching up to do with a lot of friends!

For the past two years, I’ve made it a point to come down to Mumbai from Pune to celebrate both Lil white mouse’s and my birthday. Just because I was in Bangalore, it doesn’t mean I would let this change!

So, once again I booked my tickets via Go Air. However, this time it wasn’t a Rs.3,000 return as I got it last month. It was a full 2k more and well, it is well worth it!

I booked the Airlift, which is a really good investment when you are travelling to Bangalore airport which is a good 50+ km from city-limits. My mistake was that I booked the cab for 8am, which arrived earlier than that and I landed up at the airport about 9am! And, as luck would have it, my flight was delayed by a good 30minutes, so my wait at the airport was well over three hours, in which I spent a good amount of time in the Barista at the airport.

It was also interesting to watch people wearing masks all over the airport in fear of contracting H1N1 which seems to have ravaged the country! This was even more in Mumbai which is also one of the epicenters of the pandemic. In my opinion, the whole thing has been overhyped, since, there are more persons dying of other illness than the total suspected H1N1 cases. Anyway, some protection is better than none!

Being Independence day on the 15th, there was extra security checks at the airport. In fact, our luggage was checked twice. Once by the normal security and once by the Go Air personnel. On reaching the plane, there was a lot of confusion and I gathered some information that there was confusion about the number of passengers. We finally took off almost an hour late, but the flight was really smooth and we reached Mumbai rather quickly.

I dozed off on the flight when the exhaustion finally crept up on me! I landed at Mumbai airport and had to walk a small distance to get an autorickshaw guy willing to go by the meter and not trying to fleece me! Gosh! They think I am not from Mumbai!

Found a rickshaw guy home and I first stopped off at my local cable operator to renew the internet connection at home. Lil white mouse came over later in the afternoon to spend some quality time with me.

I went to meet Sneha afterwards and Arijit joined us for a quick dinner at Pizza Hut.

And, yesterday was Lil white mouse’s birthday celebrations. But, that’s for another post!

I had mentioned last week that we had our new BSNL telephone connection installed. This was the first step to getting an internet connection. It was supposed to come this week and we agreed to “speed” up the process by actually going and picking up the modem ourselves.

Our first visit today was to the ICICI bank in Koramangala to make a demand draft to pay my road tax. The draft did get made, but the tax did not get paid, because our agent was out of town. So, once again, this has been postponed to next week

After a good amount of searching, we finally found the telephone exchange in Koramangala. We picked up the wireless DSL modem and set it up ourselves (not that there is much of setting up to do).

However, we weren’t able to test it until almost two hours later because of the really irritating load shedding we have in Bangalore. Lunch was a simple biryani from “Biryani @ Koramangala”, on which we stuffed ourselves.

We’ve been facing a really irritating problem with the internet, as the connection tends to drop at regular intervals. A restart of the modem fixes it, so I have a feeling the modem isn’t able to take the load of two connections downloading data continuously. We intend to complain on Monday, so lets see how it goes.

This is definitely a great improvement over my GPRS connection that I have been using for so many months.

I may need to work tomorrow, but that I shall come to know in a while. I intend to get some coding done today. My plugins would do well with updates.

I managed to watch Transformers last week, making it my first movie in Bangalore since I came here more than three months back. My initial plan was to work on Saturday morning from home, but al my hopes were dashed when the electricity out here conked off at 10am and didn’t return till 5pm!

If I thought that Pune was bad with its power problems, then Bangalore has started to win! The compromise was that I had to work the whole of Sunday. The good part was I caught up on much needed sleep.

Vincent and me went over to the BSNL office in the afternoon to apply for a new broadband connection. Airtel turned out to be a really crappy alternative, when they found it “not feasible” to give us a new connection. We were surprised at the efficiency and speed of BSNL, which, despite being a government firm, has some very efficient staff.

Airtel has turned out to be a rather painful connection when I received a message a few days back billing me 50 bucks for downloading some game that I didn’t even know existed. Calling up the helpline is rather useless, nor is visiting their help center. I’ve been asked to check back on the day of the new billing cycle! I’m well aware of others in the past as well of being incorrectly billed by Airtel.

We had plans to catch the movie in the evening. However, before that we headed off to Garuda mall and spent sometime in the Barista out there. It has been a while since I went to a Barista and every time I go there, I realize that I prefer it anytime over Cafe Coffee Day. Will make sure I go off to a Barista when I go to Mumbai next.

We caught the movie at that place. 200 bucks was worth it for Transformers, however, it just isn’t fair when Lil white mouse watches it at half the price in Mumbai!

We headed home after the “late” night show and crashed rather immediately, since both Vincent and me had to go to work the next day. Spent a long long long week in office with several late nights. Friday was the only relatively light day.

Today was spent at home. The persons from BSNL came over today and fixed the phone line. The modem should be here in a few days and we’ll be hooked onto a 512kbps unlimited internet connection!

We initially at plans to go shopping, but laziness and sleep won over it. So, possibly next week, I’ll target a few shops that are offering sales.

Tomorrow shall be yet another lazy day. However, I do need to put in a few hours of work. May also work on some more of my WordPress plugins. I already released an update of Ajax Edit Comments today.

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).

After a good long party, I went off to watch The Day the Earth stood Still on Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday were relatively lighter days. Went off to McDonalds for dinner on Thursday. Was so exhausted, that I just crashed after coming back.

Friday was lecture day with me attending a Strategic Marketing class. The strategic marketing class so far has been filled with cases which makes studying a pleasure. I hate subjects that require us to learn by rote and vomit it out at the exam. While theory is necessary, it is important that there are a good number of cases.

The internet connection at college has been as terrible as ever. The experiments by the network folks are a massive failure and we are starved for a decent connection at one the finest business schools!

Spent all of Thursday coding. I’ve worked on upgrading Connections Reloaded to the next version. I have submitted the same for approval at the theme repository. Given the current controversy, I’m sure this approval process is going to be a while.

I also released updates for three of my plugins, viz. Open Picture Window, Add to Feed and Auto-Close Comments, Pingbacks and Trackbacks yesterday.

Ohh, as for Mumbai, I came back here late Friday night. Was accompanied by a friend who had some personal work out here. We have painting going out at our place in time for Christmas which requires me to spend a while at home. Have some plans for the next few days. Will let you know how it goes.

Those of you following me on Twitter would have seen a status message that read:

Room 103 is the first room in college to get placed.

Akshat and me were place by November 25 and late last Thursday night, we got the good news that Aditya too was placed. In fact he’s got an excellent job with one of the highest salaries in campus

And, we are a hungry group.

So, we booked a cab on Friday night and headed out to Stone Water Grill in Koregoan Park. This was recommended to us by a friend and it was a first visit to the place. Turned out to be a really good location with great service and a good ambience.

We ate and drank and they danced and we brought up a bill that justified Aditya’s high salary.

I’ve still to get the remaining photos. I’ll upload them to my Flickr album when I do so.

Anyway, we reached college at 2.30am, which excluding New Year’s last year is one of the latest I’ve returned.

The last few days have been as lazy as it has been. One extremely irritating thing is the lack of a proper internet connection because our excellent network folks (I shudder to use the word admin) are busy experimenting with the wifi adapters. I plan on writing a really dirty post about this so called “wifi connectivity” that is promised students out here.

Made a 30 mark worth presentation yesterday for World Class Manufacturing. A day’s work that completes one half of the valuation for that subject. This week is a little tight with lectures (well comparatively)!

If you want a crappy internet connection, which is always down. If you want to get fleeced of your money time and again for a “broadband” connection then go for Exatt.

If you think Sify is bad, then you need to shift to Exatt to find the pathetic.

Sify atleast at customer service. Exatt doesn’t care two hoots about their customer. It’s all about making money. They lack professionality and respect.

You can never get through to their support and the only way you can ensure that your work gets done is by actually visiting their office and shouting at them. And then again, they are so used to customers abusing them, that it doesn’t make a difference.

But, they will without fail land up the very next day that your connection expires to collect the money. And even then they will not renew your connection. Which means yet another visit to their office while you ensure that they renew the connection in front of you.

What can a working person like me do? I have zero connectivity during the week, until I visit and get them to fix it. It lasts for the weekend and then its off again.
And why am I on this crappy connection? Because they have the monopoly in my area!

Still looking for alternatives. I may just go in for MTNL’s Triband, inspite of the usage limits. Atleast then I will be able to check email and blog!

Woke up early Monday morning to find that the rains had only worsened. It has been pouring right from Saturday morning, so I have no doubt that a good portion of Mumbai is flooded.

Finding a rickshaw was extremely difficult. Finally managed to convince a guy. Had to take a different route because M.I.D.C. area was badly flooded. I’m surprised how Sakshi manages to travel every single day to MIDC. She has to go through lot more waterlogged areas on her way from Juhu.

I was fully clad in my new rain jacket and the rain pants as well as my floaters so I remained very dry all the way to work.

The company bus was a little late, which was expected because of the rains. The journey to work however was no problem.

I really wanted to take photographs but didn’t want to risk getting my cellphone wet.

The rains worsened as the day passed and a good portion of Mumbai & Navi Mumbai offices let their people leave early. Not mine. We expected to but we only left at 6.15, usual office hours.

Travelling home was surprisingly absolutely no problem. I reached home a little past 8pm. The reason: No traffic.

As expected my internet connection was down. I still have to upload the pictures of my Muscat Visit. Now I am wondering when!