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.

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While I worked from home two weekends back, I spent almost whole of last weekend in office. Thankfully, I enjoy my job, otherwise, I would have gone crazy.

I did manage to find some time to release a few updates to my plugins.

And, then I woke up last week to find out that PayPal has stopped personal payments to India.

And, the worst part is that all this is without warning. Now, I’m not really sure as to why this has been implemented. But, according to PayPal, they are waiting for some of their “business partners” to approve.

While we can still receive and send payments as “goods”, I find this entire workaround really stupid. And, once again we see PayPal’s lack of professionalism.

As for me, now I have to patiently wait it out and see what happens with PayPal. Unfortunately for them, I see a major move away from all parties, since we Indians form a really big part of the internet!

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By light, I mean, I have been able to leave at a official times or maybe an hour later.

Last week was also eventful. Maria celebrated her birthday on the 8th and she invited me for dinner at Magnolia, the most convenient place in Koramangala.

I reached there a bit earlier and before Magnolia we went to the Cafe Coffee Day nearby. This one is in a rather weird location. This one is located on the first floor of a supermarket!

While I spent last Saturday at home lazily around, I spent a good portion of Sunday outside the house. Vincent and me first went to the Pizza Hut in Forum. This was under renovation the last time we went there and so we couldn’t eat there.

After pizza, we watched Sherlock Holmes at the PVR in Forum, followed by some window shopping at Landmark.

Work caught up this week, again, not as bad as last year. Won’t be heading off to work tomorrow, however, I will be working from home.

On the WordPress plugins front, I have two new plugins that I plan to work on over the next two weeks. I also have updates for three of my plugins. Should start on the updates tomorrow.

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Marise came over this morning to spend the last few hours before I left for Bangalore. We took a rick to the airport. One stark difference about Mumbai and Bangalore airport is the security checks. Bangalore airport is a lot stricter (They didn’t allow me to carry my bottle of water past the security point!). For a change, am actually taking a good lot back to Bangalore and so had to improvise by carrying a bigger suitcase which I checked in.

At the check-in counter I was told that the flight will be delayed by yet another 20 minutes. This was in addition to the rescheduled 35 minutes. I usually reach the airport well in time, and so this meant a wait of over two hours

The two hours wait just got extended further when the flight actually took off post 9.20pm. The original booking was for 7.35pm. Go Air flight to Bangalore has been rescheduled to 8.10pm, so even then it meant a delay of well over an hour!

Had already rescheduled the Airlift cab that I had booked for 10pm to 11pm.

The last time I flew to Bangalore I noticed the well lit, extremely beautiful Mumbai skyline. I was a bit disappointed this time since I got a perfect view of the wing of the airplane mainly!

Grabbed dinner on the plane, since the next time I eat is for breakfast tomorrow.

Just had to pick up the one bag that I had checked in and rushed to get the cab. Unfortunately, I couldn’t make it on time and had to take the 12am cab which got me home by 1.30am

I resume work in another few hours. A new day in the new year! Will just take the bike in to work tomorrow. Am hoping it is a short day!

Once again, I wish you a happy and prosperous new year. Keep on reading and if you haven’t already, do subscribe.

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Looking back at 2009, I must say that it has been a rather successful year for me on all fronts. While I may not have achieved most of the goals I set for Techtites, it was definitely a lot better than 2008.

I have refrained from setting any goals for this blog, primarily because it serves as a personal blog.

At this time of the year, I normally make a very detailed post about my activities during the year. This year, I’ll refrain from a very detailed post and just make a short and sweet summary.

I began the year knowing that I had a good job in hand. I spent the first three months of the year completing my MBA. I joined the bank in early April and have slogged patiently and diligently over the last nine successful months.

I have also ensured that I continued making regular posts both at this blog and at Techtites during this duration. It’s a hobby that I have ensured that I have not given up, despite the long work hours.

On the coding front, I took over the development of Ajax Edit Comments in March from Ronald. Honestly, I didn’t make much progress on that front and a few months later, Ronald returned to continue the development of the best comment editing plugin for WordPress!

In December, Ajax Edit Comments became a premium plugin available to all users on a paid subscription basis. And, for a limited period you can get the basic subscription for only $10/year.

The downloads of my other plugins have also increased over the last year. I have released several updates to my plugins and my theme. I also plan on quite a few updates on both these fronts. I have had a few themes that I hoped to develop just lying around, so am hoping to finalise and release some of these.

And, lastly, the highlight of year 2009 without doubt was my engagement to Marise.

Looking forward, I hope and pray that 2010 turns out to be an even more successful year than 2009!

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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!

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1. Met up with college friends for Pizzas at Pizza Hut
2. Went to church
3. Had a good amount of spicy Punjabi food
4. Went for Tina’s birthday treat
5. Played lots of Poker and other games on Facebook
6. Grumbled about the electricity
7. Worked like crazy!

That’s exactly what I have been up to this past week or so.

New Plugins

So, the past week has seen a new plugin added to my already growing list of plugins. Over, the next week I intend to continue work on the plugins. I plan on scrapping a few ones which have long since served their purpose as well as reworking others. The latest ones could also do with many feature additions. So stay tuned for a few releases

New look for Techtites

I’ve also been working on a brand new look for Techtites. With the help of Moin, I’ve been able to revamp the entire site to a much better template. Have spent a good portion of the week working on the template. The first and major step was making the theme ready for WordPress 2.7 commenting system.

There’s still much to be done, especially the sidebar. Better ad placements has also meant a better click thru and so a wee bit more income.

New Look for Marise’s Blog

I also revamped Marise’s blog. We picked up a new theme. However, it being too narrow for a single column, I spent a good amount of time “expanding” the same for better placements of images etc. I still have to make the theme WordPress 2.7 compatible, with respect to the threaded and paged comments. So, that’s a task I plan on fulfilling over the next few days.

New Look for Weblog Tools Collection

Mark has still not widely proclaimed it, but regular readers would have noticed the brand new theme at Weblog Tools Collection. I’ve been working with him over the past week to convert the XHTML / CSS template into a WordPress theme.

This is indeed rather painful especially if the template and theme are not designed by the same person or in the standard WordPress default theme format.

New look for AjayDSouza.com

If you’re reading this in your feed reader, then take a look at the updated AjayDSouza.com.

I recently stumbled upon Glassy Evolution by iSoftwareReviews and the theme just leapt out of the screen and I decided to use it. Thus ended a long hunt for the perfect theme. Well, sadly, this wasn’t the perfect theme either. For one, the theme doesn’t support WordPress 2.7 threaded and paged comments, so yet again, I went ahead modifying the theme for the same.

I’ve also made changes in the footer, getting rid of an About section. That is still a WIP as you can see. So is the sidebar, which will do well with some of what existed in the old theme.

I’ve added some social bookmarking plugins at the bottom of each post, so please do use them for promoting the posts you like

So, below is the old look and the new look.

I’ve also opened up the option of purchasing 125×125 advertising on this blog. There are currently four advertisements available for purchase at only $50 per month which is excellent considering that this blog is a top 100,000 blog as per Alexa, with over 700 pageviews a day.

Some Personal Life

With me blogging on both Techtites and here, I really haven’t had much of a personal life out of the ordinary. Did watch How to Lose Friends and Alienate People and Outlander.

Dinner and lunch have been out quite often, with Talk About, Tamanna, Andhra Mess and Mudra being the joints that were frequented.

The entire next week is lined up with four assignments to complete, as well as a Finance paper that we’ve been working on for college.

If you’re interested in keeping track of my life, do follow me on Twitter.

For starters, we had to get through a barrage of exams, that just didn’t seem to stop. Everyone desperately looked towards March 29th, the last day of the exams, also the day when we could all rush home.

Exams were ok, though they seem to be at some point of my distant past!

Headed to Mumbai on 29th, dropped off my bags, picked up my bike from ABJ, who has been taking good care of it.

Work began on April 7th. I got placed at eClerx. The place turned out to be in Ghatkopar, a part of the city I don’t normally frequent. It turned out that the place is just 20 minutes from my home when I ride through Powai. Also end up skipping most of the traffic.
The place is good. Was given a choice of my project and chose one which turned out to be live in the field of Finance, IT and a bit of Operations. Well, I’m glad.

The first week was spent with reading as my immediate guide was on leave, but the week after that things took off at top speed. Jobs great so far. Doing well I guess. Hope it continues that way for the next five weeks.

Also been spending a good amount of time with Marise atleast on weekends. We watched Transformers (my review) and The Spiderwick Chronicles (my review).

Had plans to catch many more movies, but for some strange reason there is absolutely no good movie running! Isn’t this summer vacation time?

That’s just about everything I have been up to, viz. work and weekends. No holidays, except for May 1, which was treated as another weekend

Had a lot of plans these two months, but have surely been out of touch with a lot. Going to take a while to get back. I’ll be back

When I came down to Mumbai on January 4th, I did receive a welcome surprise from my Mom and Bro.

Started off the Diwali vacations with mass on Sunday followed by a decent haircut (the last ones were two and half months back)!

Picked up my bike from Abhijeet Jana, who has been using it while I’m out here in Pune and then went with the mouse for Nancy Drew on Sunday evening.

Spent a good deal of the week at home and with the Mouse. We did manage to put in some of the things on my todo list, including visiting Subway (the prices have gone up in Mumbai), Lucky’s for biryani.

During the week, I was invited for a well cooked lunch followed by Stardust

Left early on November 12 by Volvo and got back to Pune and back to work!