If you were born in the 80s, raised in the 90s and made it to 2020: You have lived in 4 different decades, 2 different centuries, 2 different millennia and you’re not even 40 yet! Anonymous a.k.a. a WhatsApp forward As 2019 draws to a close and with 2020 on the horizon, I’d like to begin this post by wishing you a Happy New Year 2020! Keeping with a very long term tradition, below is a snapshot of my life in 2019. Life In early January, Ashwina and I took Fr. Michael out for dinner. This was a farewell dinner as he made his way to Rome to finish his…
Journey to the Isle of Wight
We’ve typically taken a holiday in September but due to several different reasons, Ashwina and I decided to book the first week of October for a holiday. Destination: Isle of Wight. This post has been due for two months, but, as they say, better late than never! I had been looking forward to this holiday for a long time given our previous holiday was in April. After 6 extremely busy months at work with a tonne of travel, I needed this holiday. We took a train from London Waterloo to Portsmouth (one of our shortest train journeys in the UK). And then hopped on the Wightlink FastCat to cross the…
Exploring Bath and Stonehenge
The last weekend was a long one cause of Easter and we’ve typically not done much on the Easter Monday bank holiday. However, Seema and Rodney, who were in London and bunking with us, had already booked tickets to visit Bath and Stonehenge. So, Ashwina and I also tagged along. We arrived at Victoria before 8am well ahead of our scheduled departure. It allowed us to get some decent seats in the middle of the bus. We set out towards Bath first which is about 2.5 hours away from London. We luckily didn’t encounter much traffic given the early start. Bath We reached Bath around 11am on a relatively bright…
Living in a Lighthouse – Part II
When it rains… look for Rainbows When it’s dark… look for Stars If there is a Part I, there has to be at least a Part II. What I didn’t mention in the last post was how big the cottage was. We knew this place sleeps 10 people between the 6 bedrooms. Besides that, there are several other rooms across two different floors. One of our favourite rooms was the one with the ping pong table. It has been a while since we have played table tennis and the bad weather gave us a lot of time to hone those skills. The weather throughout our holiday was pretty lousy with…
Living in a Lighthouse – Part I
It isn’t often that one gets to live in a lighthouse. Ashwina wanted to find out what it feels like to live in one. So, to celebrate her birthday month, she booked us into the Lighthouse Keepers’ Cottage at Lynton, Devon. Getting to the Lighthouse Keepers’ Cottage The Lighthouse Keepers’ cottage is perched on the edge of cliffs in splendid isolation with unrivalled views of the Bristol Channel. On the remote and impressive Foreland Point, the most northerly point in Devon, the cottage sits partway down the cliffs alongside the Lynmouth Foreland Lighthouse that was built in 1900. If you managed to get all the way down to my New…
From Mumbai to Pune
After a week in Mumbai, Ashwina and I set off to Pune to spend time at her place with her Mom and Dad. I like going to Pune because, unlike Mumbai, I get to spend a lot of time resting and relaxing. As expected, this holiday also delivered the same. I even had time to work on my WordPress plugins as well as catch up on office work. Purchasing a car Ashwina planned to buy a car in Pune for her parents to replace a very old Maruti Suzuki Alto. She had shortlisted the Maruti Suzuki Ignis and we had the vendor send us a test drive vehicle on Friday.…
Holiday in Mumbai
Ashwina and I embarked on our annual visit to Mumbai and Pune on Feb 1. In 2018, we visited India in March. However, this year we decided to stick to our Feb schedule. To Mumbai We booked ourselves on premium economy with British Airways as this was the best deal we could find. Unfortunately, as I did the bookings in October, we couldn’t take advantage of the reward flights and the Amex BA voucher. Speaking about reward flights, I feel that British Airways has gotten quite miserly about them! I’ve always loved Heathrow Terminal 5 and we took advantage of my status to use the First check-in and security which…
Happy New Year 2019!
Sitting here on the final day of 2018, I’d like to wish all my regular and irregular readers a Happy New Year 2019. Keeping with my long tradition, here’s my life in review post for 2018. Do you agree with Dilbert’s view on resolutions? I know I’ve barely kept mine from last year. Work Work takes up a significant portion of our lives, mine included. 2018 was a long year for me at work including a tonne of projects, long hours and quite a bit of travel. Life 2018 involved quite a bit of travelling for Ashwina and me. India We started the year with our annual trip to India.…
Closing the holiday with Montreal
Montreal was the last part of our two week holiday in September that began in New York and continued in Canada. We decided to drive from Toronto to Montreal which in retrospect is not for regular train travellers like Ashwina and myself. Two hours into the drive and I realised that I had forgotten the bag which had my laptop, iPad and most importantly my specs and contact lens. If it wasn’t for the latter two, we could have just carried on. However, this big mistake cost us dearly as we had to drive back to Toronto to pick the bag up. We finally made it Montreal late in the…
Niagara Falls 2018
Having spent the first day in Toronto, we set out on Monday to visit Niagara Falls. Niagara Falls is less than a two-hour drive from Toronto and so can be visited in a single day. However, my dad got a good deal with the Sheraton Hotel in Niagara Falls so we decided to bunk there for a night. We grabbed lunch in Toronto before heading over to Niagara Falls. Niagara Falls clearly is a busy town by the falls complete with several eating joints as well as a casino. Walking by Niagara Falls We settled into our hotel rooms and then headed down to take a walk along the falls.…
