Marise’s friend Priyanka’s marriage was on the 15th and as part of our custom, both the bride and the groom have an individual roce which is a traditional function.

The roce was held on her building terrace in Kurla, which required me to ride in terrible traffic out there. Got there very early in spite of this.

Early did mean that I had to wait for a while before the function actually started… an hour later.

The usual dirtying of the bride-to-be took place followed by dancing. We left the place and I dropped Marise home.

The next day was rather silent. Saturday was the big day of the wedding. Being free in the morning, I decided to head over to Big Bazaar, this time in Mulund. My last two experiences were rather bad. However, since I had Rs. 1,400 in discount coupons, I had to go make and expense. Picked up a black sweather that shall hopefuly assist me this winter. I spent last winter borrowing jackets from Ravi.

Also picked up a salwar piece for Mom, who celebrated her birthday on Sunday.

Saturday evening was the wedding. The reception was held at St. Josephs in Bandra. Marise’s sister and dad were trigger happy and I was able to collect quite a few images.

For more photos check out the photo gallery.

Stayed over at my grandma’s that evening and convinced her to come back with me on the bike. That would have made an excellent photo

Sunday was Mom’s birthday. Just a quiet lunch to which Marise came over. She left in the evening.

Spent Monday visiting banks and my barber in the morning and the rest of the day at home.

Caught the first bus from Mumbai to Pune on Tuesday morning and reach here by 10am itself.

Classes began yesterday with a full four hour class from 6.30pm on Advances in Supply Chain, followed by Strategic Marketing and Advances in Supply Chain lectures today. Thus ends the lectures for this week.

Placements is just around the corner and well I kinda tensed. A well kept secret atleast on the blog was my Preplacement Offer from the company I was in for summers, which I rejected last week since it wasn’t up to my expectations. The scene is bad this year, so my fingers are crossed.

This turned out to be a very comfortable paper to write in 90 minutes. Had a quick breakfast and got down to packing for my journey to Mumbai. I love travelling light and infact that is what I did. Picked up my laptop and a few essentials and caught an extremely crowded 11.15am bus from college to Aundh.

Was fortunate enough to get a Metrolink volvo to Dadar immediately. Ticket prices were hiked considering that everyone is rushing to Mumbai for their Diwali vacations.

The bus was quick and we got little traffic on the way back and was at Sion in about three hours. Caught a rick from there to Bandra to my Grandma’s place. Had plans to meet Marise in the evening.

Met up with Marise and her sis and went to 5 Spice in Bandra. The prices have been jacked up there as well and it’s definitely more expensive than the one in town. We did eat and drink well, paid well and got back home. Was so zonked that I crashed almost immediately.

Awoke early morning (well not that early) to go for mass at 10am. Mass has become a lot shorter with shorter sermons

Marise came over for lunch and spent the rest of the day with me before she had to leave for a wedding reception.

The next few days are packed well. I really hope to get some studies done, but vacation can be a real big hurdle to cross when you want to study!

Have plans to go to Big Bazaar tomorrow to shop for anything I can lay my hands on. Got to redeem my Rs. 1400 in gift vouchers. So, what should I buy?

Had originally planned to come back to Mumbai on Thursday itself for Placements work. However, a thought improvement workshop interrupted these plans.

The workshop was conducted by CGN. The workshop is actually a program by The Pacific Institute. I had originally planned on going into details for the same, but I guess most of the same is copyrighted and it would not be correct. In brief, the workshop covers topics like scotomas, Reticular Activating System, Gestalt psychology. In all it was an entertaining three days. We did miss a finance test in the middle, which I would have liked to attend.

Left for Mumbai early Sunday morning and reached there by afternoon. It’s been starting to take too much time traveling to and fro between Mumbai and Pune!

My first job was to clean up the house. Took out the vacuum cleaner that I purchased oh so long back and cleaned up lots of dust from my computer primarily, and then the rest of the house.

Aditya was to stay with me for the entire week while we roamed the city visiting companies. Well, that’s exactly what we did, “roamed the city”.

The next five days were extremely exhausting, with us traveling in all directions, in buses, rickshaws, taxis and more importantly, the local trains of Mumbai. The five day first class tourist pass did not provide that much relief!

Left for Pune last Monday and took well over five hours to get back to college. The journey was extremely frustrating. Caught a volvo at about 9am, which reached Wakad around 1.30pm! I made the mistake of getting down at the Police Chowky, only to find no rickshaws. Had to climb mounds of construction work and walk a good deal to find the tumtums. Would have taken photos but I had my hands full with three heavy bags!

Walked another kilometer or so from the Hinjewadi chowk to college, wondering at every step of the way if I would make it back alive.

Reached my room only to find out that I had a class, which had already begun. Had a quick bath (it was a necessity) and rushed for the class, which was immediately followed by a test.

The rest of this week has been extremely lazy, with a good deal of electricity problems. And, it is the weekend yet again and yet again we are without power for full 48 hours!

Did I mention that in times like these I really really miss Mumbai?

We also managed to grab some vadapav and sugarcane juice, both of which will be eternal favourites for any Mumbaite.

I remembered that I could get my N73 repaired. The joystick button was messed up and so needed to get the entire pad changed. Dad too had lost the tiny cap of the joystick of his N73. Gave my phone for repair and spent a good five hours with an almost zero contact list!

Had to meet up with Melody and Cloreisha at Bandra, but both got cancelled as I could not collect my phone until six. Since plans got cancelled, I visited my grandma at Khar as Dad needed me to pick up some stuff. I still reached Bandra around 7pm. My other grandma wasn’t at home.

Decided to drop in to the Senior-Junior Mumbai meet at Biona. Biona has closed down their big joint and taken up a small place, which was way too small.

Didn’t spend much time there as I had to meet Marise and Ruth for The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. Dinner was just popcorn (a huge tub), samosas and pepsi.

Was so tired Saturday night that I just crashed into bed. Went for mass this morning. Today happens to be my cousin Alisha’s birthday and so Mom and me made our way to their place for lunch.

Marise came over in the evening and spent a good portion chatting with the rest of my family. We went out for dinner at the Subway in the area. Dropped her off at the station and got back home. I have to go to work tomorrow. Half of eClerx is on off.

Anyway, I came down to Mumbai on 14th on college work. Our job was to interview an entrepreneur. The problem, he didn’t really have the time. So, this turned out to be a failed project, where the three of us travelled to town, took photographs of a deserted room and then headed home.

Found out that Marol is now connected to Seepz by a flyover, which has cut down my commutation time by over 25 minutes.

The next day, i.e. 15th August is Marise’s birthday. Had planned to give her a surprise by dropping in, only to find out that my darling roommates had spoiled it!

The party was good and as expected I helped out. I’m waiting for her to update her blog with her tale of the events. Got home around 12am and awoke by 5.30am to leave for Pune.

Got back in time for my 16th lecture. The class celebrated my birthday with a cake.

Sadly, the jacket which was to protect my clothes from the unnecessary waste of cake wasn’t very useful.

The past ten days have been pretty normal with nothing special under than the normal college life. Have had absolutely no breaks and very little sleep.

The college website work is going well, though it could have been better. Updates on that later.

I also completed judging the WLTC Plugin Competition. The results should be out anyday.

Thankfully my Mom and Marise stepped in to ensure that I leave properly.

I made the rounds of meeting several friends in the past week and on Thursday, Marise came over and helped get my shirts all neatly ironed and packed (Thanks sweetheart).

Had originally planned on carrying two bags and my laptop, but with the pillow and the bedsheets etc. that needed to be added to the list, I soon ended up with one big suitcase, one big bag and the laptop bag, all of which were bursting at the seams.

Set up around 8am on Friday and met up with Navneet and Murtaza at Dadar where we hired a car to bring us to Pune, the benefit of this was that we could take the vehicle right upto the hostel… lugging around luggage in Pune is a pain.

Landed in the hostel, checked in quickly and came up to my room. The rooms are nice and spacious and are for just three people. This is a major plus point over similar MBA schools which have not so great accomodation.

Reported in college and got the assigments printed and submitted. Had lunch before that. Saturday was the big induction day, but that’s another story.

Went for choir practice yesterday after quite sometime. Picnic plans are being made for June 3, but by then I will be in Pune.

Received the email today with detailed reporting structure. I’m planning on reporting on 1st June. I hope I don’t have to do 31st May.

As part of the Foundation Course, I need to interview a CxO and an entrepreneur. I completed the entrepreneur interview on Friday itself. Had forgotten to blog about it.

Went today for the CxO interview. Had to travel to town and so set off around 10.30am for that. Landed up at the station in time, but spent 20 minutes standing in line to buy a ticket from a pathetically slow ticket counter. They’ve introduced computers to speed up things, but so far it has just been a major bottleneck.

Took a super-slow fast train to Churchgate and found the place easily. Finished the interview, picked up some coffee at Churchgate station to fill the empty station and caught a train back to Andheri. Found a bus standing outside so was home before 3pm itself.

Ordered pizzas from Pizza Way which has a 3pm to 6pm offer and has really economical and decent pizzas.

Have also got my brother to start teaching me basics of Accounts which I shall need for SCMHRD.

To sum up, my entire visit of Goa was fun. It was the first time that I went there, but I’ve learned how to get myself around it (hopefully)

Anyway, here’s the listing of the trip to Goa.

• Day 0 – Bombay to Goa
• Day 1 – The Hitchhikers
• Day 2 – Museum Hunting
• Day 3 – At Home
• Day 4 – Shopping and Walking
• Day 5 – Wining and Dining
• Day 6 – Church
• Day 6 – A Day at the Beach
• Day 7 – Goa to Bombay
• Photos from Goa

It began with Marise and me gardening, more like pruning the the plants out there in preparation for the monsoon, when they grow uncontrolled. This also meant my debut in this field

Before that, Crispin headed off to Badem to meet his grandmother. He returned with a huge box of mangoes… a huge, extremely heavy box that we had to lug back to Mumbai.

After lunch, the three of us, viz. me, Marise and Crispin, who would be travelling back set off with Ruth and Dora towards Thivim station.

However, looking at the size of our luggage we realized it would be extremely difficult to transport it without proper transport. Now Goa doesn’t have proper transport, unless you own it! We were lucky to find a rickshaw who agreed to take us and the luggage. Marise and me went in the rick with all the bags, while the others walked it out via a shorter route.

We were joined by Valley who came to the station after work.

We located where our coaches would come. The train was late by almost 30 minutes. Marise was in a seperate compartment, but we managed to get the TC to arrange for her to sit in the same comparment with us. And the man beside me kindly moved so that Marise could sit with the two of us.

The train ride was comfortable, except when the train went into the tunnels and we had the compartments all filled with smoke!

We reached Mumbai a little before midnight where Crispin’s dad picked us up. We dropped Marise home and then returned to Andheri.

Changed, deposited the bibic in the fridge and went to bed. Unpacking shall wait.

We had plans to go swimming in a nice swimming pool, but when plans didn’t work out, we chose to visit the beach.

The beaches in Goa are usually crowded and on a Sunday afternoon it’s at its worst.

And Baga Beach is among the most crowded of beaches as the picture above shows you. However, Valley knew of a secluded portion of Baga Beach, which is where we headed to.

It worked well, because we got the beach almost to ourselves, with the exception of a few lechers which is a disgusting characteristic of uncouth Indian men at beaches.

Had brought along a change of clothes, but wasn’t too keen on entering the water. Finally decided to take the plunge and we all spent a good hour in there. Marise sat on the rock like the little mermaid, but joined us later.

I didn’t need to change into my other set of clothes, because the sun shone down bright enough to dry up all my clothes.

We took the longer route on the way back because we didn’t want to get wet crossing the river again. We finally piled ourselves into the bus heading back to Mapusa, which took a long time as it stopped at Calangute, where it got stuffed to the brim (luckily we were seated the whole journey).

We got back to Thivim safe and sound and extremely exhausted. Changed and got cleaned quickly and hit the beds for a sound sleep.

The next day, we come home and if you’re interested, here are the pics of the beach day.