The last week has just flown by with most of my time was spent not studying.

Wednesday – Party 1

On Wednesday, we were singing for a Silver Wedding mass. The mass was held at Atma Darshan and the reception was at Le Royal Meridien, for which the entire choir was invited.

Had just dorned my normal formals for the mass, so went home to pickup my blazer as well as drop off the bike (Never drink and drive my mama said )

U. Conrad picked me up and we were among the first to reach the reception. Ate, drank, danced and feasted on food and desert.

Got dropped home a little after 1.30am and came home and crashed into bed.

Thursday – Dinner 1

Spent the entire day at Melody‘s house working on her blog. Convinced her to add adsense (which is performing really bad overall for me currently). Also added some internal pages and top CSS navigation bar (I’m getting good at this).

We went out for dinner to 5 which is near Yoko’s in Santacruz. The place is posh and the food is good, however the service is simply pathetic. It took us 10 minutes to find someone to take our order and then it took another half hour to get served. In addition he messed up the bill, by not informing us for an extra charge. At the end of it we were pissed off.
Expensive places!

Friday – Party

Saakshi threw a “Welcome Home” party for Melody and invited a good amount of the junta from the Indian Bloggers’ scene and their friends. Met a few of them for the first time, while others for the second… well I’m not a regular.

My phone came handy to click a few photos, though the quality wasn’t too great. Anyway, here are a few: Knocked off on request.

Saturday – Lunch and Dinner 2

Met up with Krupa, my ex-office colleague for lunch and a movie. We went off to watch Life in a Metro which tells the tale of several people in Mumbai. The movie was rather slow. Can’t say it was great, can’t say it was bad.

Watched the movie at Chandan in Juhu. It has been several years since I have been to Chandan. The theatre remains the same, but the area surrounding it has developed a lot!
We went to Pizza Hut in Juhu for the late lunch and got a drink free because the guy forgot to put it on the bill.

Lil white mouse came over after work and she stayed for mass. After mass, the two of us went to Lucky’s for dinner. It has been a while since I visited Lucky’s. Tried some different dishes this time which were yummy.

And then there was Sunday

Lil white mouse came over today for lunch. Mom seemed to outdo herself today. Lil white mouse left in the evening and I got down to getting some work done.
Tomorrow I study.

It has been a while that I have gone out and it sure has been a while since I visited my Grandmom, so decided to spend Wednesday at her place.

As has become a trend, my internet was down in the morning (actually since the previous night) which basically meant that I couldn’t do any of my normal blogging that I had intended.

Set off at 11, dropped in at the internet guys… established nothing… and then continued the journey. Travelling to Bandra is getting really irritating now-a-days because of the traffic which is same at any point of the day!

Reached there after noon. Had originally intended to pickup lunch on the way but was strongly dissuaded from doing any such thing. Lunch was great as is the case with my Grandma’s cooking … so you can believe that I ate my fill and finished it off with some strawberry pudding =P~

And for tea there were dosas… I think i’ve put on weight

Met up with Melody after this to get her blog template redesigned. And finally ended the day with Chinese at Gondola’s in Pali.

They have done up the place since my last visit and the prices have also increased, which is possibly a direct consequence of the renovation, but the food was good, could have had a greater quantity though for the price.

Reached home at 11pm and got down to work after that. Thankfully the net was up at that time and could finally get some work done.

It’s been a while I’ve done so much in a single day.

Awoke a little past 9am. Wanted to sleep more but I had an errand to run.

Was really zonked in the afternoon so took a short nap before heading off to Our Lady of Victories Church, Mahim for a funeral mass.

Met up with the Mouse after that. Sat at Biona’s for a while. Their service sucks! I went up to the counter and asked that guy if I would be served today or not.

I guess they have a very laid back and lazy attitude towards their customers. Definitely not a place to go to for “fast food”!

We also dropped in at Melody‘s home after that. She shouldn’t be grumbling for a long time hopefully What do you say Mel?

Am home now. The weekend begins. Study continues…

Now this deserved a blog post a long long time back, but well here goes.

For a few who know, I started out in the field of web design with a site on Sherlock Holmes. This was way back in 2000.

Over the years, this website underwent several transformations and names.

All the time it steadily rose the ranks of Sherlock Holmes websites and today is at the very top of the charts at Sherlock Holmes Web and has been there since early 2004.

Early this year I got together with Melody to give the site a much needed revamp.

And revamp indeed. Got rid of an ancient frames design and designed a tableless CSS design. Have put up all the original content, and there is a lot more to be added gradually.

In addition also started a new TopSites for all mystery related sites. Well, the only site in it today is mine, but if you are run a similar mystery related site do join our topsites.

Also generated a Google Sitemap (more on this in an article I plan to write) and redirected all the .html pages to the .php equivalents (had ported the site from HTML to PHP to save bandwidth and make it dynamic)

Ohh, btw the URL is http://sirconandoyle.com/

So what do you think about the site?

The chauffeuring continued on Wednesday. This time it was for Mom and the venue was JJ Hospital in Byculla.

Well, atleast that was the intention at first.

However, when we reached Dadar, it started pouring and Mom was more than happy to get off the bike and into a cab!

Went over to Melody‘s place after this and got back only late evening.

Went with Dad to Ranbaxy in MIDC for his tests early Thursday morning.
We were a little irritated with them because they kept taking other patients before us, even though we were there first, only because they were from companies.

Anyway, went with him in the afternoon as well, after lunch. And then set off to meet a mouse.

Got back home late in the night. Had a small noodle dinner, made a traffic getting post and slept early this morning! :O

Picked up the report this morning. Then went with Dad to the Oberoi in town for a great lunch (well it was his meeting and I tagged along )

Haven’t got much plans for today. But, two things I have to do. Sleep and study! (not necessarily in that priority)

Yesterday was Lil white mouse‘s Birthday. Went over for lunch. Well not just lunch, but morning mass (for our Lady’s feast), breakfast, lunch, desert and tea (boy can I eat )

Was a small celebration, but which was really good and I did enjoy myself a lot. Thanks dear!

And today was my birthday! I am now 24 years “old”

Thanks to everyone for all the birthday wishes. Thanks to Orkut, I received so many birthday wishes that I almost lost track of them.

Big thanks to everyone who remembered

Lil white mouse cam over and Melody dropped in to give me a surprise! Yes I was surprised my darling sister

Going to end the day with a quiet dinner at home.

And tomorrow, it’s back to the books!

Went for the 8.30am mass, but headed straight home and spent the rest of the day home because of my a splitting headache.
the Li’l White Mouse came over in the evening for a while as she was in the area. Anjali paid me a visit later in the evening. Falling ill sure has its advantages

Began my last week at work before my vacation. Didn’t realize how stressful it would turn out to be.

Met up with the Li’l White Mouse after work. Went for a pizza to a rather noisy Pizza Hut.

Work the next day was just as bad. Need to get two units ready and still wasn’t able to manage the same. Managed one and a half before I left (

Met up with the Li’l White Mouse yet again on Tuesday. This time at McDonalds in Andheri West. It’s been quite a while since I visited that one.

Had to meet Melody a bit later and so left the Li’l White Mouse home. This time the journey was by train (something I haven’t attempted in over a year!)
Dropped her home and ricked it to Vinalaya where I met Melody at and then headed home.

My bad streak at work continued all through Wednesday and Thursday.

Met Anjali on Wednesday evening. Went to Birdy’s and had a disgusting chocolate brownie fizz.

Thursday meant two more days of work, one card to go. Started feeling a bit feverish after lunch, but brushed it off.
Only when I got off the bus in Andheri did I realize that I probably had fever.

A visit to the doctor confirmed a 100F. Hoped to get better by Friday morning so that I could go to work. Unfortunately it just got worse and I woke up with a 102. Called in sick and spent a very agonizing day at home.
the Li’l White Mouse paid the “marize” (patient in Hindi) a visit in the evening. My fever had somewhat subsided by then, but only to be back to 102 on Saturday morning.

Doc prescribed a stronger medicine. By now I was starting to get freaked because I had to fly on Sunday.

Insisted on an injection in the evening. Austin very kindly obliged to take me to the doc and back to save me the walking and exertion.

The fever went down pretty quick after the injection and so had a less troubling flight to Muscat.

I had meant to write individual posts, but am going to be really lazy.

It all began before 20th of May when I asked an erstwhile friend to come with me to watch The DaVinci Code. Due to various reasons that deserve a post of its own, the DaVinci code didn’t release as planned on 19th. However, the 20th of date rendezvous stood and we decided to go out for lunch.

After a lot of deliberation the place decided upon was Tunga, a place I haven’t been to since my dad took me there over 10-12 years back. (it has grown a lot since then)

We went to Something Fishy, which is a nice, but expensive joint. Food is good, but we ended up with a huge bill between the two of us :O (my highest to date)

We next headed over to the Dollar Store at The Hub in Jogeshwari. Ended up picking up some chocolates and juices

And the cashier forgot to put a can of shaving cream into my packet, and I forgot to check it. Realized only in the night, so post 9pm saw me riding back there to get the can. Didn’t face any problem as the same guy was there. Next time, I’m going to be more careful!

Spent almost the whole of Sunday at Melody‘s place revamping my oldest site. It’s still not complete and I really hope to get this done by this week.

It was back to work on Monday. The whole week at work was jam packed.

Went for the prayer meeting at Bandra on Tuesday after a long long time! Felt good.
Melody decided to have pani puri at bandstand. It was real fun to see madam munching the pani puri. Here’s a pic I managed to get of her (it is difficult to click a person moving, hence the bad pic)

Met up with Anjali on Wednesday for pizza at the Pizza Hut near my place. It’s been a while… the pizza that is

This weekend began with a presentation to the director of my company and whole of Saturday morning went in that.

Reached home, rested a little while and the went to sing for a wedding mass at 3.30pm (in the hot sun!)

Because of the good time gap between the two masses, we all headed off to The Hub (once again), but this time to McDonalds for some burgers. Ate well

Came back, sang for the 7pm mass and then headed back home immediately.

Sunday was movie day. Caught the early morning show of the DaVinci Code. Didn’t live up to the book, as I had heard.

Met up with the Li’l White Mouse in the evening after a long long time! Went to a beach parallel to Juhu beach. Parked the bike there and had a mini-adventure getting the bike out while going home due to three levels of bikes being parked behind mine.
After a bit of wandering, we went to the Barista in Santa Cruz before dropping her home.

It’s back to work for the past two days. Had two good days at work. Didn’t go for the meeting today because my bike once again giving problem and it had started to drizzle.

Have my CET GD/PI tomorrow. Wish me the best of luck

Didn’t go to Mahape on Thursday and Friday because of the Effective Business Communication programme. Since I reached home early on both days I was able to give the bike for servicing. Got it fixed and brand as new

Spent whole of Saturday at home, a good part of the morning and afternoon cleaning around the house and with computer work.

Spent Sunday morning at home glued to my TV (something only one programme can do). Went over to Melody‘s place in the afternoon and spent the rest of the day there with site work.

Met up with Cloreisha for a while before I head back home.

Went over to Melody‘s place on Sunday morning to complete the work on her new computer.

Bowling

Elvis loves to go bowling whenever he is down and so after lunch me and Melody joined Elvis, Delilah, Clint and Alisha for a round of bowling at Fun Republic in Andheri W. They were already playing when Melody and I reached there.

Fun Republic is one noisy place. Added to the noise of the people there, you also have to bear blasting music. Telling them nicely didn’t help until we fired the guy.

This was one of the longest rounds I’ve played of bowling, since there were six of us. I suck and bowling and I don’t know why the folks think otherwise. Lost once again in the last round when Delilah overtook me by four points
And when I say lost I meant I don’t consider Elvis or Clint who are experts!
The pic on the side shows our final scores.

By the time we finished bowling it was past 6.30pm and then we started off towards Bandra. But…

Bikes

… Flame (my bike) decided to disagree. I need to get the battery changed and the only option now is to kick start the bike. However after several kicks the bike just refused to start. On checking I found that petrol was leaking. I’m not an expert on bikes and so my dilema!
Took it to a mechanic in the area who got it working. And Melody was really click happy as you can see!
But the problem just wouldn’t get solved. While we were stuck in heavy traffic in Juhu, I once again got the smell of petrol, only to find it leaking again. Thankfully turning off petrol via the lock stops this outflow!

To make matters worse, I was on reserve so was hoping I wouldn’t run out of petrol. Filled up two litres at a pump and managed to get the bike started again. Petrol continued to drip! But, atleast I wouldn’t run out of it.

Traffic, bike woes ensured that we reached Bandra only by 7.30pm.

I had plans to meet up with school friends, but had to cancel them

Bingo, Booze and BBQ

Bandra Gym had the 3Bs night running, viz. Bingo, BBQ and Booze?
Didn’t get the Bingo, the BBQ wasn’t tempting enough and I don’t booze. But, I love to dance and so did jive a bit. Melody was in her “irritate Ajay” mood (as usual) and refused to follow!
Alisha says she was new, but followed well enough.
I didn’t have my regular jive partner. Plans on for Wellingdon soon (?).

Independence Cafe

After Bandra Gym, we went over to Independence Cafe on Hill Road for dinner. I haven’t been there before and seems like a nice joint.
Food was good but the Sun Shine Splash was watery!

Ate almost a complete roast chicken. Was helped by Melody, Elvis and Delilah to finish the mashed potato and vegetables surrounding it