Come new years eve, most people stop and take a look at the year that was past. I am no different. The end of 2010 also brings together the end of the first decade of the new millennium. And, what a decade it has been! And, what a year 2010 has been!

For me 2010 has been one of best years professionally and one of my worst personally (or so I think currently). I began 2010 with a clear future in mind. I had my usual 5 year plan ready, complete with a Plan B in place!

But, as they say, man proposes, God disposes, little did I know how my plans would all go for a toss.

In March, I was informed that my secondment to London has been finalised. It took nearly a month for the entire paperwork to be completed and I finally made by way to London on May 3. The first four months of 2010 had already been tough with extremely long hours and at work and little did I realise that those would pale in comparison to what I would have in store.

I jumped right into the fight and my body did not have time to understand the meaning of jet lag, so if anybody were to ask me, I am totally clueless as to what jet lag is!

The next two weeks would see my role change from the junior-most junior to the senior-most junior. With this came a lot of responsibility and I must say I am happy that I was able to deliver. My secondment was initially meant to be for six weeks but this got extended till end October. My plans of coming down in July were also thrown out of the window when I realised that it takes six weeks to get a visa extension!

In August, I spent my birthday in office till 2am, definitely not one of my greatest moments. Starting a week later and for the month following that would be the worst days of my personal life, maybe even the worst days of this decade. Most of you who know me will know the reason for this and I thank everyone who was there during those trying times. This is a shock I am still reeling from, but not for long.

The last week of September was excellent for my career when two of the deals I was working on got announced in the same week. This would be followed by two more deals in December, with me closing the year with four deals on my resume

October was another excellent month, when I signed my contract to move permanently to London. I have applied for my visa (which is taking forever to come) and this is the final stage of the process of turning me into a frontend investment banker.

I hope to be home by end January to pack up my stuff in Bangalore, before stopping over in Mumbai for a while, before I head back to London.

Thanks for reading. Have a Happy New Year and a prosperous 2011! Keep reading and commenting.

I made my last personal blog post four months back. Since that very date, my life has changed, a change I never expected to come to pass, a change that till today makes me wonder if it is for the better or worse.

Since then I have been involved in many things, including a few parties and the Arsenal vs. Fulham game.

And, if you missed the match, here’s a video of Samir Nasri scoring the first goal

I also had my first experience with snow about two weeks back when I woke up to falling snow. Set out with great excitement, took two steps and landed flat on my back. The next time I set our I slid the way to work. Still need to go out and buy good shoes, scarf and some head gear.

Currently am sitting at home on a two week break, twiddling my thumbs and wondering about the possibilities.

Surprise! An update in less than  one month

Two weeks back I went off to the O2 to watch Inception. Since then I have caught three more movies, viz. A-Team, Knight and Day and Karate Kid.

I have taken the unlimited movies plan at Cineworld, and I have already made that up for this month by watching two movies in the last two days By my math, I’ll need to watch just 18 movies in the next three months. Call me thrifty

Work has been crazy as usual with me finishing my fourth all-nighter at work in the three months that I have been here. Not something to be proud about, but hey, it happens! This week promises to be light. Then again promises are meant to be broken.

Back to movies, there is a whole set of movies in the pipeline that I plan on watching:

• Toy Story 3
• Shrek Forever After
• The Last Airbender
• The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
• The Expendables
• Salt
• Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
• Piranha 3D
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I

So, which movies do you plan on watching?

Finally got a day to myself and hence the point of this post. Ideally, by now, you should be able to see a million photographs on my photo album. However, a total lack of social life explains the un-updated album!

Since then, I have been slogging like crazy at work with minimal amount of fun. In the last 6 weeks I have:

1. Worked almost every weekend and almost every day till at least 11pm
2. Watched Robin Hood
3. Went to Piccadilly Circus area and had amazing pizza at an Italian restaurant
4. Shifted residence, well, almost

And, that’s about it.

There is one bit of good news though, my original assignment which was to be for 6 weeks  has now been extended till the end of October. So, am hoping that across the next few months, I’ll be able to visit the many places in London.

As a result, I’ll be completing my shifting tomorrow morning to a new place. I love the view from there. Will put up some photographs soon!

Update: Just uploaded some more photos in the London album on Flickr.

My secondment at my company got me flying off to London and I fell in love with the city the minute I stepped out of the airport. And, I have grown to love the place even more in the past three weeks.

I must confess that I haven’t seen much of this place, because I have been working a lot more out here than back in Bangalore! But, the work is good and responsibility is even better. I am hoping that the week to come will be a bit lighter.

I landed here on the 3rd which was a bank holiday out here in UK and so grabbed complete opportunity of seeing some parts of London.

Hope to get some more tomorrow.

Photos on Facebook: http://su.pr/566o5r

I’ll upload some to my album soon. Still need to get the T-Mobile Content Control knocked off!

It was a really short visit about two weeks back, when I went to meet Akshat and Neha at the Cafe Coffee Day in Indiranagar.

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.

The last month reminds me of 2007 when I just entered SCMHRD as a budding MBA student. Life was totally crazy then since I just didn’t have the time to blog or even check my email.

That is something that I have been feeling off late. Well, blame it on my exhausting job. In my line of work, the only thing that keeps us going is the level of enjoyment we have at work. Otherwise, I am sure I wouldn’t have survived! On the work front, I’ve been working non-stop on a good number of weekends!

Lil white mouse came down last month, so I finally got to spend sometime with her. Though, I must confess that I am one of the most boring hosts ever.

The only two places we really went visiting was Star Bazaar, to pick up much needed supplies, that would last us over the weekend. We also dropped in at one of her friend’s place for dinner.

I had an extra day off in which I tried really hard to complete a new version of Better Search. However, I wasn’t very successful, since I had to scrap much of the changes.

I also realised that the feature rich Media Temple wasn’t the best solution for this blog. I’m really surprised at the kind of resources this consumes, but I almost shot way over the 1,000 GPU cycles. Had to move my blog out of there in a hurry. By my estimates, I would have easily had to pay $20-30 more.

So, I finally took the plunge into a VPS yet again. This time I decided to give ServInt (aff.) a shot, since it had a really good plan.

Spent a good portion of the week after that optimising the server. Am pleased with the results so far. I’ll make a post on Techtites sometime soon on basic optimisation tactics.

On the fun angle, to bid farewell to one of our colleagues, we went off to Purple Haze on Friday. It’s a nice pub in Koramangala. It was a good break after the crazy work life.

And, in another six days, I’ll be in Mumbai!

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!

Even before I came down to Bangalore, I was warned and scared into understanding that finding a house in Bangalore is one of the toughest things I could encounter.

So, as I landed in Bangalore, I made all the necessary plans to begin the house hunt from last Tuesday itself, but work doesn?t allow us the luxury of the same.

Hence, the entire house hunting experience was postponed to Saturday and three of us contacted brokers and owners and hunted all through Koramangala. Aditya came down from Mysore and met up with me in the evening as he joined me in hunting a place in 4th Block and 7th Block. I liked the house in 7th Block, however, the availability is only from May 1. So, after hanging out at a coffee shop in the area, Aditya dropped me back to the guesthouse, before going off to meet his friends.

Sunday began with the same purpose of finding a house. We headed off to 4th Block of Koramangala once again to meet the broker who would be showing us a few houses.

The area has some flats that are really beautiful and well beyond our budget, while others were not places I would even think of living in. Then, we stumbled upon a flat…

This one is located in one of the few apartment buildings of Koramangala. When Vincent and me walked into the flat we realized this is one place we would love to stay in. It also made us change our mind from staying alone, to sharing a house. Sharing turned out to be a good idea, as we end up splitting the rent and the cost of other appliances. We sign the agreement on 16th along with the advance and other details.

Having closed the deal, we went to Forum to meet Aditya. Forum is one of Bangalore?s larger malls. It wasn?t that large, but definitely quite old and way too crowded on a Sunday. But, well, crowds aren?t something new to me!

We had lunch there and hung out for quite a while, before heading back to the guesthouse. And, yesterday I began a new work week. I?ll be moving my things on Saturday. Also, need to get all my things from Mumbai transported out here.

If you?re reading this post, I?m already on the plane or maybe even in Bangalore. If you?ve been following this blog for a while, you?d know that I got placed through my college last November. As required by the job, I have to relocate to the city of Bangalore and the time has finally come for it.

This is in fact the first time I?ve ventured out of the safety of Mumbai into the unknown. Two years back when I set out to do my MBA in SCMHRD, Pune, I knew that I had everything planned and fixed with no need to worry about food, clothing or shelter. This time, it?s a question of shelter. So, if any of you reading this in Bangalore, know of a good 1BHK in Koramangala area at reasonable rates, please do drop me an email.

My office is located in Bellandur, so any suggestions regarding where to stay are also welcome.

Another purpose of making this post is regarding support for my WordPress plugins and themes. I?ll be tied down at least for the next two weeks and I?m pretty sure for two weeks after that as I hunt for a place to stay, get accustomed to the new city and job and get all the basic connectivity, which includes a decent internet connection. I do have my Airtel GPRS connection and a Reliance data card, but I hope I get a good signal to ensure I don?t get too frustrated to stay online.

Hence, for the next month, I won?t be able to fully and completely provide the support at the speed I have that I have for so long. Please do post your support requests in the forum. I?ll try to check in once a day or at least once every two days and respond to queries. Sending me an email won?t help. Read why.

So until then, do wish me luck. I?ll try to stay active on Twitter as well as Facebook (at least in the nights).