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.

Marise 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 Marise’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!

Visit: Techtites - Your Daily dose of all things tech!

So, why was it called boring. Because, it has been a while since I made a personal post.

This blog sees two types of visitors, viz. those who visit my blog for the personal posts and those who visit my blog for the WordPress related posts, plugins and the theme.

When I started ajaydsouza.com in October 2003, I had only one thing in mind, blogging about my life. In fact, even till today, most of my posts are still filed under Personal.

Over time, things evolved. I got into WordPress plugin development, released my first and only theme and then started blogging professionally. So, little surprise that this blog moved away from the traditional personal blog to a blog that targets multiple audiences, those who read my personal blog posts, those who come for my plugins, those who read my reviews and those who come for the jokes.

And, I try my best to please them all.

So, what determines my blog posts?

It’s always been the life that I lead. When I was in engineering college, a lot of this was visiting restaurants, watching movies and trying to pass engineering.

When I got into work life, it revolved around visiting restaurants, watching movies and working my heart out.

When I got into MBA, I stopped blogging that frequently. This was primarily because MBA life didn’t give me a minute to blog.

In the second year of MBA, life eased out a bit. I was able to take up blogging professionally again. I also revived Techtites, which was dead for nearly a year before that. In fact a lot of my “free” time today is spent on planning posts on it.

Now, in my current day job, it seems a lot similar to MBA life when I didn’t have time to dedicate to my hobbies. However, if you’re tracking me on Facebook, you’ll realize that I do my best to do something besides work.

So, to wrap up this post, here’s what I have been up to recently:

Vincent and me when shopping for a new laptop he needed to buy. We ended up picking up the Gateway ID series laptop.

It is a really beautiful high-end laptop at just about 50K. As for me, I’m a Dell person. This December, my beautiful, but now old, Inspiron 6400 should get a much needed cleanup. I hope Dell support is as good as it was a year back!

We also attempted to visit the Pizza Hut in Forum, but they are under renovation. So, we ate at the Sahib Singh Sultan, which in my opinion is really out of place in a mall like forum. The restaurant was really delightful.

The restaurant is a tribute to a bygone era and everything from the interiors to the culinary experience is reminiscent of a mix of the traditions of Indian royalty and the British Raj.

The restaurant will transport you to the year 1853, when the first Indian train made its run from Bori Bunder to Thane. Much care has been taken to recreate the feeling, with the tastefully done décor, silk tapestry, and exquisite silver ware.

From one end of the wall to the other, there is a Pullman-style carriageway which makes you feel like you’re dining inside an actual train.

On the technical front, I have moved this blog to Media Temple. I’m not sure if this is the best option! In my bid to cut costs, due to limited income, this seems to be a compromise. I also need to work on optimising this blog, which is painfully heavy for some strange reasons. If anybody knows why please do let me know!

Now, it’s time to hit the sack. I begin a new week in a few hours. But, I promise to blog really really soon!

Visit: Techtites - Your Daily dose of all things tech!

Began the Saturday by picking up some chocolates from Monginis and getting myself a much needed shave. After which, I went over to Marise’s place to help out. Didn’t do much of helping except for the hanging of the balloons and moving the furniture to prepare the house for 30+ guests who would trickle in the evening.

Lunch was at home itself, and my darling made every effort and succeeded in feeding me a few vegetables

I also picked up a 1TB hard disk and a 500GB portable hard disk as well as a new battery for my laptop. I finally have a good 2.5+ hours of backup time, much needed in a city like Bangalore.

The person to come in the evening was Rixon, who was also there in the morning to help out. The batch to come in were Sneha, Arijit, Akshat, Neha and Aditya. Marise had managed to arrange this surprise for me and managed to invite all my friends. The most surprising of them all was Aditya who flew down from Chennai for the party! Thanks dude!

Well, he did get his money’s worth when they mercilessly beat me up!

The party was in the usual characteristic style, with games, singing and dancing, cake cutting and lots of good food.

And as I was really anxious to get started on it, I called up Dell and asked them to send an engineer over today itself.

He came over and completed the installation and checked the entire system. Dell has a nice diagnostic CD that checks everything.

Windows Vista Home Basic Edition seems to be decent so far.

I was a little irritated that the C: is 100GB and the inbuilt shrinker didn’t work. It’s great that I will have (in another 12 hours) an external 120GB hard drive and a 2GB pen drive.

That’s a picture to the right. If you’re looking for more pictures, then check out this Flickr photoset and for those interested, the configuration.

We had practice on both Monday and Tuesday in preparation for Good Friday. Our line up is good (as usual). There are a few of our legacy hymns as well as some new ones so practice is needed.

This is going to be my last Holy Week in Mumbai, atleast for the next two years so I’m going all goes well.

I also joined the the SCMHRD community at Orkut, so spend a good amount of my time in the forum there. It’s good to get to know some of my future classmates.

And, my laptop arrived today! Atleast the box did. Hopefully, the engineer drops in tomorrow so I can start playing with the baby.

I’ve never been a laptop person. I find them too cumbersome and prefer the computer with all it’s individual units. However, MBA makes it necessary for me to have a laptop and so I began my hunt for the same.

I had my eye on three brands viz. Dell, Lenovo and HP Compaq. Dell has a shipping duration of almost a month, while I believe Lenovo and HP are quicker in this respect. But, since I had time in my hands Dell was a good option. Have also received good feedback about Dell from two of my friends. Lenovo bought the IBM Think brand so I guess those are good. And my experience with HP Laptops has also been good.

So the main deciding factor was price in which Dell definitely beat the others.

Enough background details, here is the configuration of the laptop I picked up.

• Dell Inspiron^TM 6400 Notebook
• Intel^® Core^TM2 Duo Processor T5500; 1.66 GHz, 2MB Cache, 667 MHz FSB
• Genuine Windows Vista^TM Home Basic 32 bit (English)
• Intel^® 945 Chipset
• 120 GB SATA Hard Drive
• 15.4" Wide Screen XGA TFT Display
• 1024MB (2 X 512MB) DDR2 SDRAM
• 256MB NVIDIA^® GeForce^® Go 7300 TurboCache
• Internal 8X DVD+/-RW Combination Drive with dual layer write capabilities
• Dell^TM Wireless 355 Bluetooth Module
• Intel^® PRO/Wireless 3945 Dual Band 802.11a/g 5 4Mbps Wireless Mini Card
• 90W AC Adapter
• 6-cell 53Whr Lithium Ion Primary Battery
• Internal 56K Modem

I was able to get the laptop for around Rs. 62,000 including taxes. Dell had a special promo running wherein I saved nearly 10,000 because I got an extra 512MB RAM, the DVD Writer and Rs. 4000 off!

I also made sure I took the 256MB GeForce card to ensure that the laptop stays top speed even if I graduate to higher versions of Windows Vista in the future.

Sent off the acceptance letter to SCMHRD and the folks from Dell came over and picked up the cheque for my new laptop.

I’m not sure what the next step in the SCMHRD formalities are, so time will tell.

As for the laptop… she should be here in a month

My center for the test was IES School, Dadar. I wasn’t sure of finding parking, so took the train out there. Reminded me of the times at Agrawal’s for my HSC classes.

This time I was a lot more prepared than last year and hence attempted the paper better I believe. However, I don’t think I did well enough to get me into JB, but time will tell.

The paper was a lot more calculation intensive this time. However, there was a pattern that I observed. There were many sets of five questions which has all the different five answer choices within that set. Hence, if I knew four, I guessed the fifth. No negative marks definitely helps!
On the downside, you will get only one correct for every five that I attempted

I rushed home immediately after the paper as I had to make it for mass. Had intended to go in the morning, but just slept through the entire thing!

I received my SCMHRD offer letter yesterday and spent most of yesterday and today getting everything ready. The packet is ready to be sent

Had to take new stamp size photos for the same, also got a huge bundle of my certificates and marksheets attested (Thanks Mouse).

I’ve also finalized on a Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop. It’s working out to be around Rs. 62K including taxes. Will post complete specs once I get the baby, which should be four weeks.

The rest of the week was rather uneventful, but for few exceptions.