Last week I posted the list of movies that I plan on watching over the next 3 months. Am pleased that over the last two weekends (and this one is not over yet), I have managed to catch four movies:

• The Last Airbender
• The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
• The Expendables
• Salt

And, here is the updated list of movies to watch:

• Toy Story 3
• Shrek Forever After
• Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
• Piranha 3D
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I
• Grown Ups
• Going the Distance
• The Girl Who Played with Fire
• The Switch

I plan on watching either Piranha or Scott Pilgrim tomorrow. So, let’s see.

As for the birthday in the title, I “celebrated” my birthday last Monday. It isn’t much of a celebration when you’re sitting in office till 2am. This is also the first time in several years that I haven’t been home for Lil white mouse’s birthday. Well, next year it will be chutti time.

Work, work and more work ensures that a simple person like me doesn’t get time to blog. So, here’s a post that summarizes the last two weeks of my life.

Team dinner

Every quarter the teams out here go out for dinner. Last quarter we went bowling and had a quiet dinner. This time work pressures ensured that we skipped the bowling and just went for the dinner directly.

Dinner was at Jalsa, which is in Marathahalli. I had originally inteded to take the bike to work, but dropped the idea. But, we had enough of bikes and so there wasn’t a problem.

Regarding my bike, the Bajaj service centre really seems to have screwed something up and the pickup has dropped and so has the top speed. Now, am hunting for a local mechanic out here. There are a few in Bellandur and Sarjapur area where I intend to give the bike. Let’s see…

Jalsa is a moderately priced place, designed in a very Indian setting from the times of the kinds of old. I stuck to starters as I usually do when I am out for dinner. Who wants the non-chicken part, right?

Got a lift back home thanks to a colleague who was passing this way.

Weekend Movie and Shopping

Last week, Vincent and me made up our minds, bought the tickets and headed off to watch G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, which turned out to be a good movie to watch. Bernard, who was bunking with me for the month, also headed off back to Mumbai, so I once again have my room to myself.

And, last Sunday, we went over to Oasis mall for lunch, followed by shopping at Spar. Whenever we go shopping, we end up spending a bomb

We picked up tonnes of stuff resulting in a very well stocked fridge. Also, got myself a tin opener finally, so its cheese time as well. We picked up a packet of pork sausages as well, but they weren’t as tasty as the ones I get in Mumbai.

Pizza Hut and shopping

We decided to go off to Pizza Hut today as well. Owning a visa card ensures that we get our pizza really cheap and within 600 bucks you can get a pizza, drinks, garlic bread and a Caesar salad.

We dropped into Star Bazaar as well and I have realized that it is a better place to shop than Spar. There are better offers and the prices are lower as well. We did a fair bit of shopping, especially for extension boards. The ones we had already were with two pin plugs resulting in no ground, which isn’t really good for electronics like laptops etc.

Am also hunting for a low end microwave, only for heating purposes. Unfortunately, Chroma didn’t have it either. Any suggestions for those who are from Bangalore?

Tomorrow I plan to get some work done from home. But, tonight, I need to sleep!

At long last we managed to get a weekend last week. It wasn’t much of a weekend cause I spent a good amount of time working from home. We intended to get our bike work done but last Saturday was the second Saturday of the month and all government offices out here were closed.

Instead we decided to go to Spar in the Oasis mall, which is walking distance from our place. Well, it is walking distance when you are going there, not when you’re laden with bags on your way back.

We ended up doing tonnes of shopping (our highest ever) and had to take a rick back home. The plus point is that now we have a fully stocked fridge with fruits and basic vegetables. We haven’t attempted non-veg as yet.

This has also ensured that I could eat corn-flakes for breakfast for the last three days

On Sunday we decided to go off to the Pizza Hut in Forum for lunch. The new menu has been made available in all the places!

On our way back we dropped in at the computer shop on the way. We finally picked up the UPS, which is an absolute necessity in this place where there is either constant load shedding on repeated power cuts. I also picked up a mouse, but it turned out to be a non-USB one, so will be exchanging that this weekend.

We had a training programme scheduled for this weekend, but it seems to be canceled now. So, hopefully, I will get the road tax for the bike done this week!

One thing I love about where I work is that I don’t need to wait six months before I can take leave. This is usually a requirement of most companies. Out here, I’ve planned my leave well in advance, the first one begins today, for a week.

This blog post will take you three weeks back. I’ve had three weeks which have been so filled with work (yes, that is a usual statement I make) that my initial plan of updating the blog took a back seat.

Anyway, three weeks back, I met up with Maria, who, along with her sister, has been complaining that I’ve spent more than two months in Bangalore and hadn’t even seen them! The main reason has been my prolonged effort to settle into the city that I haven’t yet called home and the lack of a full weekend out here yet. I haven’t seen much of Bangalore yet and I don’t know when I will be able to. The few places that I have visited have been Church Street and Brigade Road area on two separate occasions.

Maria picked me up from near my house in Koramangala on that Sunday morning and we headed over to “The Only Place” in Brigade Road. “The Only Place” is famous for its steak and I decided to try one of those. Well, it was also a while since I had some good meat. We then walked down Church Street to the Levi’s store at Brigade Road. My current pair of blue jeans had started to fray and rather than make a fashion statement, I decided to pick up a new pair.

From what I have seen, shopping in Bangalore seems to be more expensive than Mumbai. I’m going to verify this on my trip back to Mumbai as I hunt for some clothes. Anyway, I found a decent pair of blue boot-cut jeans for a little more than 2K and picked them up. It turned out to be a smart thing to do because my jeans finally frayed and well, they are now a pair of torn jeans that many people pay so much extra for!

After this, we walked over to one of the Cafe Coffee Day’s in Brigade Road, where they insisted that we have to take addons on Saturday and Sunday. I have definitely not seen this at any other CCD and we told him that we refused to do that. Why should I take chocolate sauce in my coffee, when I don’t want it?

We didn’t spend much time there, because we decided to drop into Garuda mall for a while, which is supposed to be one of the biggest malls in Bangalore. Well, I still prefer InOrbit in Mumbai, which is not only bigger, but definitely better planned than any of the malls here in Bangalore.

Anyway, I decided to go window shopping for suits. Saw some excellent ones which were 7K and above. Decided to check the same out in Mumbai over this week. I need a good business suit for work. The one we got in college was good for college and the one I got at home is too party types.

We hung out at Garuda mall a while and after that tried to find out the mass timings at the nearest church out there. We found out that we had to wait for at least an hour for mass and so decided to rush back to the one near Forum. It turned out to be a mixed language double-feast mass where we found ourselves standing far far away in the dust and the dirt and the crowd. We just gave up hope and headed back home.

Stay tuned for yet another post with the events of the last two weeks. Until remember you cankeep track of updates of my blogs and me of course by following @ajaydsouza on Twitter.

When someone decides to message you all of a sudden and grumble that you are not blogging, then it is an indication that it has been a while. Well, I know it has, considering the last post was a month back. However, my life is so full of work, that I honestly, don’t have much to blog about.

Anyway, as an update, I have been working long hours all through the week and the concept of weekend is a blur. e.g. I worked till 1.30am on both Thursday and Friday! Weekends that do come along are spent with me resting all day long.

Well, that’s life of an investment banker. I knew the hours would be long, but didn’t expect it to be this long. Normally, this would have been a problem, if I wasn’t enjoying the work so much, I would definitely have hated it!

Talking about investment banking, as of yesterday, I completed two whole months as an investment banker! I know these two months have been simply amazing. The learning curve has been very steep, but I think I’m doing just fine.

What about my plugins, blogging and the rest of the world of IT? Well, it is there. I did put in a few posts at Techtites a while back when I had a full two days. Otherwise, Umar has been doing a good job so far. And, Shahrzaad’s occasional posts have been helpful in keeping the blog alive.

As for the plugins, sadly, they require a dedicated amount of time which hasn’t been a luxury I can afford. However, I have tried my best to support the same in the forums.

I am taking leave at the end of this month, as a break and also to take a trip back home. Hopefully, I should have the time to get in some coding as well!

I published last week that I was house hunting all of last weekend and I had managed to successfully locate and finalize a house in Koramangala, 4th Block.

We met the owner of the house on Thursday and finalized the deal. Our plan was to move in on Saturday, which was also the last day of our scheduled stay at the guesthouse.

So, early Saturday morning, after we settled our bills at the guesthouse, we hired cabs and headed to what will become our new home. I hired a Meru cab, which is more easily available here in Bangalore than in Mumbai, where you struggle to find one. It was a nice comfortable journey. At the same time, my goods from Mumbai also arrived. Was a little irritated that the boxes weren?t plastic coated like they were supposed to be and one box had broken open. The bike handle was also bent a bit. Will have to get this fixed. First, I got to get the road tax done. May also get the number changed, but that is at a later date.

After settling in, we decided to shop for mattresses which was a necessity. We first grabbed some lunch at the Pizza Hut in Forum and after that, we went over to Star Bazaar to pick up mattresses. Didn?t find them there, so the next stop was Big Bazaar. We found one there and others had a delivery period of a week, so we dropped that place. The next stop was Total Mall in Madiwala, where we finally purchased two Kurl-On mattresses and got them delivered home by night.

After we got back, we also realized (much to our stupidity), that there is a Kurl-On dealer five minutes from our house! That?s where we will pick up the remaining two mattresses.

Dinner was at The Rendezvous which is also where we had dinner tonight as well. Seems like this is going to become one of our favorite joints. We did tonnes of shopping at the Smart Mart that is located near our place. We are very pleased by the location because almost everything is available here.

Today was yet another visit at Star Bazaar. This time we totally intended to shop and picked up tonnes of goods, buckets and other items, that we fondly refer to as ?restructuring charges?.

I begin another work week tomorrow, which may be more than just five days long.

No, I am not talking about the movie, but just the last 20 days of my life; life that has kept me so busy that you haven’t read about any personal updates.

So, here’s a quick round up of the last two weeks of my life.

The week from 19th to 24th of Jan was like any other week of my life. Spent all of it blogging, reading, eating, talking and sleeping.

23rd was the first and last test of this semester. The test was on Strategic Marketing. We were given a choice between a two simple questions and a case on TESCO. IMO, education should be practical and case based to ensure that people actually apply their minds to everything. A healthy mix of theory and practicals is ideal. However, MBA turned out to be primarily a learn by rote, which is something I simply can’t do. Hence, was forced to understand and write exams where results took a hit. No regrets on that, because I put in my best and did well so far

Aditya, Sneha, Namrata and me decided to go out for dinner on 23rd. After much pondering we went to Haka’s on FC Road, Pune. The food sucked completely and totally. Really felt like I was cheated of my money.

Took the early morning Volvo to Mumbai on 24th to spend the long weekend at home. Met up with Lil white mouse on 24th evening for dinner. I had to get the taste of the horrible Chinese food out of my mouth. So, we headed off to our favorite joint Dynasty. As usual the crab meat soup was delicious. We ordered the Seafood platter and it turned out to be sizzling and not dry, though I would have sworn it was dry the last time I ordered that.

Sunday, the 25th was a quiet day. Lil white mouse came over in the evening to spend some time.

26th is the Republic Day of India and so a public holiday. As a result the roads are usually empty and people stick home. This weekend was different because many had left the city for the long weekend.

I went over to Lil white mouse’s place in the afternoon and we then went shopping to Westside, near Opera House as it was the last day of their sale. Following this, we returned home and then to 5 Spice in Bandra. We were seated at the Non-Smoking, Non-Alcoholic sections of the restaurant, which didn’t make a difference, since it was a dry day.

The service here was a lot slower, possibly because the design of the place is such. The however, remains delicious

I initially planned on returning to Pune on 27th, but postponed that to the next day. Spent 27th at home, working almost all day. Took the earliest Volvo I could to find my way back to Pune.

The last few days has been dinner at Tamanna, dinner at Mezza9, a class and presentation for Strategic Marketing. Looking at my mention of that subject you may tend to think I’ve shifted to Marketing. Well, no, I remain a Finance graduate. That is just one subject

I’ve given Techtites a new look yet again. So, will be spending tonight working on that one.

The last two weeks have been busy, as usual.

Last week had a Software Project Management class followed by which I caught a Volvo to Mumbai to get away from the weekend long powercuts. Spend time with the special someone.

Came back to Pune and immediately got down to work with my FSA case. Was called away by my director to help restore the contacts on his Nokia N96.

After struggling for a good amount of time with trying to use Nokia Contact Manager to import the CSV file, I realized it was easier to do the transfer via Outlook Express and Nokia Sync. Everything went perfect.

Got back to Financial Statement Analysis yet again which took up the next two days.

Today, attended the first day of the Luxury Marketing symposium today. Well, I won’t be buying any Luxury brands for sure!

There’s yet another day of the symposium left. I also have my summer presentation to be made tomorrow. I’m already all set to go.

I haven’t had much time to get down to blogging what I have been upto in the past month. Having celebrated my birthday in Mumbai, I headed back to Pune to get on with life.

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?

August is always a high-activity month with a huge number of birthdays and other occasions.

Freshers’ Party

After being postponed several times, the Fresher’s Party finally took place on August 6.

Dance parties aren’t really my favorite and this is usually no exception, especially when the DJ should pay for playing the trash he dished out!

Without doubt, I spent a good portion of my time outside the venue, which was the SIU poolside.

Food however, was better this time, with chicken added to the menu. Needless to say I ensured I ate well.

Below is a photo of me with my date and below that is a photo of five of us in our group.

The Birthday

On 12th, was Sumukhi’s birthday. She threw the party on Tamana rooftop for about 40 of us. Food for me was primarily chicken. (Did I tell you that I avoid vegetarian food?)

Another thing I avoid is dancing free style. I prefer ballroom, the little that I know! Here’s Sumukhi with the three of us roommates.

Anyway, Suchi was the DJ for a good portion of the time until yours truly took over the laptop. Spent the next 45 minutes making people dance! For serious wanna-be deejays out there, Virtual DJ is an amazing software. The demo version works very well for a 21 day period.

Among other stuff

Our area has been facing major power cuts. We had no power this weekend and a good portion of the time the generator was also switched off.

We decided to go off to the city. We had to shop for Sumukhi and also had good time to kill. Went over to Pune Central to shop for the same. IMO, the place is very badly designed and it was horribly crowded being a weekend.

After some shopping, we dropped into Little Italy next door. Little Italy is a completely vegetarian restaurant, but they specialize in pizzas and pastas, so I could survive! The food was decent, service was bad and bill was high

We tramped back into Pune Central after dinner and landed up in Food Bazaar at the top floor. Did some heavy grocery shopping, picking up apples, biscuits, corn flakes and juices. We’re realized it makes more sense to go out there once a week and pickup food instead of regularly visiting Sweety stores in campus.

Ohh, btw, I’m in Mumbai for the next few days

And, have you visited Techtites lately? There’s a new look and regular updates.