Striking Contrasts , Frequent Travels and Catch up with Chennai

Hellloooooooooo and a big hi to all of you following my blogs . There are loads and loads of stuff to pen down and I guess i would probably take ages to fill in this blog as well . Allright my last blog said I am waiting for my summer timings .

Err.....things took a rapid turn , I wasn't there to see my office summer timings ,it all started in the month of February when I was getting into the search for other job mode , well there wasnt actually any strong reason to Quit except for the Vitamin M factor . I basically wanted to scour around to see how much is the market outside and thus began a journey ,a choice between paths .....and thus the story begins .

I am now onto a new job into the ever famous 2nd Idiot box field , ie the software industry . It was a very very hard choice to make considering my previous employer treated me like a king and the current one only had money to lure me and nothing else . There are very few people in the world who would want to get out and get hurt and learn life , trouble is I chose that path .

April 5th was my first date with the new Office , one ramshackle place about 30 odd kilometers from home .First glance ........woaaaaaaaaa , wearing ties in chennai ! ! . This city is such a bloody sultry place , you would end up with soot in less than 20 mins and have a million sweat baths in a single day . I was shown my system , looked like a trash , discarded pc from some raddi wala , a far cry from my swanky 2gb system and intel dual core at my prev place . And then was this suicidal task of filling up a 50 page form . gosh I must have written my fathers name and residential address atleast a 100 times .

And then was this endless wait for someone to come I was sitting in the induction room with the docs ready and for 4 hours there was no one to even attend to, not the kind off welcome i expect from the HR considering that this was my first day in office . They seem to say , welcome to the land of laziness . Rubbish was the only word , The infrastructural facilities was poles apart . I take back every curse I might have said about the AC not working , blower only on at my prev place ,cos here I have to search like a rat to get cool air at some nook and cranny of the room .

I asked the guys around , you think the ac is working ?? to which they promptly replied . oh yes it is working take a walk outside and come back this is colder . Hmmph some logic and thus ended my first day .

The next day I was at bangalore to another office an this one day trip was fun , Starts of with a 40 minute plane ride from Chennai and then 2 hr Bus ride within Bangalore city goin round and round. And finally I reach this office , wow this office was swanky and just like my prev place . i would love to work here . Later the following day I met up with my classmate shruti in bangalore for like a quick 15 minutes and off i go back to chennai .

Well by now . I am more or less falling into a routine , i think i can say this as my grumbling about the new place is going down by the day and I am now reaching that stage where I can say from the good old tag line . 'What was once a problem is now routine " My day begins at 7am to the office and back at 7Pm . And I catch up my ever favorite pastime of sleeping in 3 hour combined Bus ride to the work place and back .

Soon the 7am to 7pm screeched to a halt as the weekend arrived and I just lazed around with the evng trip to the beach . The beach trip was a nostalgic one with the good old kites flying , the 5 bucks peanuts which is now 15 and the beach is smashing clean .

Well tht brings me to the end of this blog , Chennai has changed a lot and looks promising to throw some surprises at me . Really looking forward to those ......

Till the next time ..see you all take care and keep smiling

2010- Year of the Flowing Thoughts

19.33 on the clock and here I am sitting in front of my laptop on a Sunday evening . They say that idle minds is a devils workshop . I am not sure how true that is , but i am sure being restless.

Decided to do something useful by writing this blog .

By now all of you must have noticed I never keep my promises of writing my blogs on time ,so I promise not to make promises .Lets see if i at least keep up this promise .

Allright the new year has been good so far ,though I was a little upset about a few things which i will mention as we go further in to the blog . And for people who have been asking , whether i have kept my resolutions . The answer is YES . I have ....

January was a speeder , the month just flew the usual work home routine and stuff there wasnt anything special in january except for the fact that I made frequent trips to my favourite highway to get rid of my furios mode . Feb is where the action and the roller coaster ,this month was a goner and by no means a cakewalk ,For starters things on the relationship was'nt good and the on off ,on off saga seemed to drag on ,until a day came where i had enough to put a full stop to it . Wasnt an easy one to choose , but feel it was the right one ,and then came the period of post break off which was even worse . I was just getting out of it when the ever famous hike letters came over and it was needless to say a big dissapointment . My CTC now looks like a Bata Shoe store Price tag .. 99.99 something . Yuck!

And that whole week was me grumbling and lost in a myriad of though process whether i should stick around to the company , go for an other one , go for my further studies . And during these stages did i come to no a certain part of myself , which i thought never existed . While browsing though the net for jobs and found some jobs in other cities countries etc , I noticed me holding back something , a kind off hesitance to fill in the application form . Somewhere at the back of my head was this reluctance to move to another city .

Now for all you guys who know me , I always keep saying Mumbai is my home , but the fact is time has flown and now the ever so famous hyderabad is the place I have stayed the longest till date and all the time i ve hated this city . Coming to think of it and when I introspected myself it was just down to one thing Friends.....

Cities are not the show stopper for me , but friends are , the very reason I loved Mumbai for my friends there and the time we had is just repeating itself here in hyderabad . Of course the best times I had in Hyderbad are still not the same as compared to mumbai , but they are strong enough to keep me rooted to this city .

And somewhere down the line , there seems to be this bonding between friends ,where we havent talked for years ever since we left school , but there is that trust that we are there for each other . My connection with my school friends have increased, we meet up every day on chat and still talk about the old times , distances are so huge , that we all are now scattered across India and that leaves all of us to grumble ... when will we ever meet up .

Nevertheless things must go on and so it is .. i have been having a tough time with my choice of words offlate and it is not doing any good for me with the people i know .I dont seem to do it intentionally but I if i look back on it ,and look at it from an other person perception it does seem intentional and i would agree with those who pointed out the mistake . Man life is complicated!

I am trying to get rid of my flipsides sooner , and i really need to do it , the sooner I do it myself the better for me is what I understand .

Well apart from these , the upsides were there too and pretty interesting ones at at ,for starters the month of Feb was shop shop month . Me and Mom raided the lifestyle sale . And then was this first experience of clubbing . I must say ,I had never been so reserved and my feet just would'nt move at all . not that I used to dance ,I was not the dancer guy , but i do shake a leg or two to some numbers which i would know , but on this occasion ,i guess the signals werent reaching the nerves in the legs and hands ! hehe . And then were these long drives which was really refreshing .

March will come soon and summer will be as well ... I am just waiting for the time channge in my office .

Well that sums it up for now ... till the next one . peace and love to all

2009 , Reflections of the Year

3...2...1...here he goes .

All right the lazy guy is back again with some mad idea in his head to write down his December in this blog . So lets see how good he can get ....

Ahem greetings guys ,allright from what you see above , thats my imaginary blog space bitching about me . Yea all right , I am lazy blah blah etc .

Waking up to a Morning on a lazy Monday morning , I just gaze at the open wall and I say to myself 2009 is coming to an end ,Shyam you need to remember this year . 09 has been a year of sorts , honestly both professionally and personally its has been one heck of a year .Plus the events unfolding with the recent bandhs , asking for a separate state and all has certainly added the masala touch to the year .

I tried my best to rewind and start from January but to no avail , so i am going to go backwards as the latest thoughts are fresh and as i pen them down i will get a hint of the previous months ahead . Starting with this week , well its romantic December ever since Christmas began . Well I was supposed to be in Mumbai the Christmas long weekend which did not materialise as my mom was unwell and I had to take care of her . And besides was this god forsaken Telangana Bandh . I dont know what these politicians want but in my opinion Its all about Money honey for them to ask for a separate statehood .

Same time around came one of my moms students . Shivangi was her name , had come apparently for some MBA college look out ,well so off I go to pick her up and the 5 days from 23- 28 went like a whizz. Allright guys one way I was happy that I have someone here to take care of my mom while I hit office. We had fun , took her out to an Italian restaurant and had some amazing Italian buffet . And yes a drive to the temples as well . Work front has been nice as well all December basically doing the odd jobs around and training people and stuff . Yes there have been those up down days when you feel like a total wreck .I attended the Departments year end bash and since it was the first time for me i quite enjoyed it and was it good .

And the Saggitarian guy turned 23 , well the birthday bash was no less than exciting , this birthday was well celebrated and would go down as one of the memorable ones for a long time . Gifts poured in from all ends , friends made it a happening one this time .. From the movies end I watched 3 Idiots , Hangover , Kanden Kadhalai ,. Movies were good , enjoyed them all . 3 Idiots will go down as one of the best movies I ve seen so far . And plus the December has generally been my month with holidays , birthdays, parties , travels, movies etc .

Well coming to my close of my blog this time ,2010 looks very promising .

I can feel the energy in me waiting to be fully utilised to perfection . Resolutions include doing 5 push ups a day , doing a Quality Project at Work , get myself a rise in position .Lets see how the year unfolds

Wish you all a very happy new year ….

My tryst with the Garden City

Hello Again

Its a lazy Sunday morning , and with a coffee for company , thought its best that I start blogging soon before the next round of laziness sets in .

Right so Thursday evening off I depart from Office to Catch the Bus to Bangalore . I reached the bus station with loads of time to spare. I thought I should have a quick snacker before I get into the travel . Had a Corn Something Snack at Subway .Well I was too engrossed to watch the match in which Sachin was on a roll , but every time the ads come these tb screens would go blank . So I decided to do a last minute checkup to see what i have and wats lef behind . I did know that i left my camera behind , but then realised I dont have a soap ! did put the soap in the dabba at home and all , still missed it . So went tot he shops nearby and asked for soaps and he utters chandrika medimex and lux . Hmmm

I thought for a moment ,I have never used the other 2 brands , while Lux yep i di once in contingency mode again as there was no soap the previous time as well . So I decided to go for the tried one , which was lux . I know lux is often terme the girls soap and all , but does it really matter ??? .

And the bus too was quite a new one , swanky new garuda volvo. The local government always had the dubious disinction of screweing new buses in maintainence or make even the new buses look trash . But this bus was in pretty good condition .Nice blue and white livery ,including the interiors as well . I settled down in my seat and noticed the bus wasnt full . i began thinking how y co passenger would be , but as he departure time camy by tehre was no one to sit an there I had teh whole 2 seats for myself .i quickly made my self extra comfortable hehe .

And with music in my ears , decided to keep looking at the road , i always like road journeys for one reason is that one i like long road journeys and also wanted to know if my dad was just exagerating the fact that the banaglore road is bad and hence you cant drive down in the car.

Well The road was smashin good . 4 lane and all and i was awake till like 1 am still gazing ,.. I was to come to a conclusion that dad yor just dint want to drive down in the car .

I said crap the roads gonna be good and settled to sleep , 30 mins later , i wa being trahed around left right and suden braking and throwing , i still did no open my eyes and kept saing shyam bad roads in dreams . But the rocky ride inspite of being a volvo was too much to tolerate and one look at the roads outside ....I take back all my words and agree with dad . There isnt any road and the recent floods and road widening and all has made the roads so horrible that it shows on a volvo !I decided to snug myself to sleep but yes my back was taking a beating .The next day I woke up at 6 to see that i am back ona 4 lane highway and it said New Airpor Devahanalli , I do remember dad using these words before in conversations and I was startled, bangalore already !!!

As per the bus timings , it wasnt supposed to reach bangalore before 8 am . And thats still 2 hrs away . I frantically called up my aunt ad sure enough this bus was in the bangalore outskirts .

And yes as feared this bus dumped me at the last point a good hr and 15 mins early.Well before uncle picked me up .I had enough time to grab a cuppa coffee at the kamat hotel ,and thenn came the scooter ride to aunts place .

The morning was just like any other house ,unpacking and setlling down . By afternoon i was treated to a good meal and I was charting out plans . I did not have any major plans as such just meet a few friends. This was more of a family visit for me .

Evening me and my cousin went out for dinner , we were spent some time yapping around .

Saturday was slow and cosy as it was raining , but the lunch was quite was a quite a spread on mexican food / mmm quite a feast it was .

The evening was spent well with me meeting my good old pal Aditya , was it good to be with after a long time , we had our conversation with cofee again and when it was time to return home he gave me the much awaited ferrari cap which finally came to me after a 18 month hiatus .

Sunday flew and before i could even wink my eye it was over and i was back on the bus to hyderabad .

And guys i apologise but this blog was kept umpteen times in the draft mode ,so although it began on a sunday 2 weeks back it is now ending on a saturday 2 weeks ahead . So there is a considerable time lag .

There has been lots happening in the following weeks , will update soon on them too

till then tc

The weeks that went ....

Welcome back to all those been following my blog . Trouble is I cant see any hint that my blog are being followed so if any of you are , please do post your comments . Brickbats or Bouquets whatever .... All donations accepted .

Okay..where do i now start with the last one of mine was many Monday,s back. Well what was then a trouble or problem is now a daily routine , so the then 3 kms walk to the Office bus is now Routine . 4 Songs on my mp3 player usually does the trick of me losing track of the time taken to reach the bus , but sometimes these hooligans friends of mine pester me saying me bus has come and i am left running ,puffing and panting only to realise that there is no bus .Well all part and parcel of pulling legs . But generally things have been really great going , office front too has been good ,well jobless actually .Personally everything seems just fine ,something of which I have become suspicious off. After all the ups and downs ,when things are actually good good , i still see some thing wrong as , why is my life so perfect ???. Wierd nah

October month has been a month of surprises its been diwali ,plus mom and dad's 25th wedding anniversary celebrations .

I was looking forward for the wedding anniversary celebrations ,because friends and relatives would turn up making the house a little lively . And that wasnt the icing on the cake , I had enough leaves to take in month of october . So Diwali was good and awesome with thatha around . I was working the sunday though thanks to some extra work but that did not in any way dampen my sprits . We did burst crackers and light up the sky and all .

As always I hit my terrace , to enjoy the fireworks and took a few pictures with my camera .

And generally the diwali has been fun and now i was looking forward to the next week ,whic is my parents wedding anniversary . Couple of functions at home and people coming over.

Well that week turned out to be pretty hectic , running around for little errands . And by now ,I was frustrated by taking leaves because everytime I say i am at home , all I get is a big list of errands and cobwebs to clean ...... . I just motivated myself saying its for the anniversary and chugged along doing them .

The anniversary day did arrive , and boy was it hectic , going up and down , giving smiles to people whom i have never met in the distant past .Worse all the people kept saying in some melancholy stretchy south indian tone .... you have grown big ,"I saw you when you were ths small" . Drove me nuts ,dont people grow !!

The celebrations did end well and had some time to catch up with my cousin ,had some plas in my head on probabaly going out for dinner or some thing . For me its more about the time i spend wih my family rather than the food in this case . Ahem not that I dont care about food..

But that wasnt to happen ,but yep I did get some time after all .

The next evening they were to leave for Bangalore again ,and usually they would say come over to bangalore,but somehow things never meterialised that way . and I said , I will come over.

Would that happen ? Would I go to Bangalore soon ? Hmm . this time I decided the next long weekend I will go . When and which long weekend was the question ? .

The following Monday , I hit office after a gap of 5 days the weekend pus 2 of my leaves taken .It seemed like ages since I had been to office .

Things seemed preety ordinary and lazy and I was trying my best to show that i had some work . That wasn the case , as my manager called me to his desk and said , Shyam there is still no important work and you are still high on leaves . so go on vacation again .

I was like ..what!!! and said that I cant be just sent on leave ,I want to choose my leaves . Then he says llright but you gte to choose only one day out of the 2 alloted to you . My head whirred into action and like on leave eh ...Friday ! . I asked for the friday and noticed that it was heavily blocked by people with leaves .Well they say be good to managers always and sure , that helps , he just removed on the other guys fridays leave and allocated to me .

I stretched it a liitle bit and asked , can I go an hr early on Thursday , and he said yes . By this time , The Temporary itinery in my head for the Bangalore trip was sealed . Next step make it true .

Got my tickets booked for the Thursday Overnighter .

This post ends here .Rest in my next one . Well actually too lazy to continue writing and besides I thought its worthwhile to mention about the Trip one a dedicated post to it . .

See you folks till next time ....

The Monday I Would Like to Forget and Move On

Hello again , and for all those who have been reading my blogs , I did mention in my last blog as to how the Mondays going to be .

The weekend was a mixed bag as of course the Saturday , I was working and after the drive down from the office in the ever never let go rains ,I was no less than a crumpled trash can .
Come home and my Mom is waiting for a shopping List to complete .I did not want to dissapoint her this time as I have been evading that for like weeks . So saturday was lost in driving around doing the odd jobs. Sunday again was going to be a shopping day again ,but the morning started with me and my mom grumbling . I had agreed for the morning until i realised that the f1 races which is usually in the evenings is in the morning . So the morning was done with me engrossed in the F1 , bad results for my team ferrari though . Then a 3 hour wait at the Vet for Bruce ,thanks to him spraining his leg .I was little pesky about the vet becuase he ahs been heftily charging on the medicines for the last few medicines with tonnes of medicines for bruce and the charges were going up,I just wonder if Bruce really needed so many tonics and stuff . nevertheless his medicines seems to work so no grumbling there .

The evening was great as we went shopping and I must say that I have become preety brand specific. I remember that I dont mind wearing as long as the clothes are of good quality . This time I went for Allen Solly (pardon me if its spelt wrong).And tried a new Alu tikki wala , well the ragada in it was a disaster ,but the tikki was yumm.. . Back home and I logged onto my usual networking sites and thats when things really changed for the worse with my emotions .i was looking at a few albums of my friends and I was the only person left out .Not that they did not call me , they did . I couldnt get leaves .And suddenly it sank preety heavily that I am missing my friends .I am still trying to get rid of my 'No friends worth me in Hyderabad'attitude.

I could sense that Mumbai is beckoning me again , but that will have to wait till December.Also most of friends have moved to London where I intend going next year for Work and Higher Studies so i really wonder if the trip is worth it . And then these wierd thoughts of me in Hyderabad, lonely,working and losing my good part of the life when i am supposed to enjoy took over me . I sighed and shut myself to sleep.

The next day was no better . Inspite of putting aside the night behind , I was still a lost soul .So much was I lost that the 3 km walk to ctach the office bus was with me listening to lounge and instrumental. i normally never listen to instrumental in the morning . That itself was reflection of my mood. The hike was not too pleasing , and then the bus was even more worse , looked like condemnded bus repainted to make it look roadworthy .The roadworthiness was sound to be felt as the bus stopped midway and the driver shouted Diesel over. Grrrr Was i now really irritated .

The bus started after 15mins only to break down again on a busy flyover a few metres away from where we resumed our journey . So another delay to wait for a backup bus. Reached office and no matter how much i tried hard to concentrate on my work . I could not .The new change in timings is also the added woes to the list of irritations in me , as that meant I would work and extra 30mins into the night .

i seemd to have lost all my kineses at the work place as the night began to unfold like a horror movie . First I had a look at my desgnated cabby for the day and when the combined roster of my morning and evening showed on the screen , It was no less than that of a Railway Reservation chart . I wonder if my managers and Laloo has anything in common ,I would nt be surprised if they implement the second row desking and double decker row seating in the cabs as well . Anything can happen these days !!.Walking out from the office also wasnt going to be easy .I had to wait in a Queue to get myself out at the swipe gate ,aww was I now reaching the Saturation point .Matters worse as My card did not let me out and I had to get it reset and again stand in the Queue. eventually I did come out only to notice my Cabby point worse than a City Bus Stop the Culmination of 2 peak logoffs was no good .By now I definitley agree with Shashi Tharoor on the cattle class remark .I was in Winger and catle class it is sure enough. The winger was filled with absolute strangers, employess whom i have never met and talked . This was enough for me to break down completly.I went into a Silence mode and by now even the instrumental music was noise to me .The striking contrast of me walking out happily ,boarding the cab of known people , the orange sticks , the winger stops all came crashing down like a pack of cards . Never Have i felt so bothered about my personal space being so narrowed down .

Do I have a choice , I asked myself ....there was no answer . But One thing is for sure , I am not going to take this trouble the next day as I will be driving down to office .Thats the only thing which will make me feel better . So really looking forward for the next day .

A fancy winger , forgottten twister and a Quick Scamper ,for a good nite !!

This blog is certainly earlier than I expected to write .
The last 2 days have been no short of Excitement .where do I start from ??? . Allright . I will begin with my friends first in the Office , We usually travel back in a winger a big van with like 10 People more like a Gang . And that comprises of Myself,Aarti,Anusha,Swarna Kumar,Avinash,Andrea,Prashanti,Gulzar and Namrata.We try to be professionals at work but when we hit the Winger,boy do we let loose out our tails . One heck of a crowd, talk about foodood and you will probably not need the Times of India Food Guide. We would have just about anyhing from the Routine Orange Sticks ,to the maharaja Chat , sometimes the KFC etc .

The last two days have been marred by torrential rains here and thanks to it we were given manual drops (ie no specifc vehicles, so we had to fight it out for a vehicle ).Though we are a big bunch of screamers ,we seldom use our voices to shout at the right time and thus the effect of it ... standing for 1hr 45 minutes waiting for a cabby , we did get the occasional cabs where some of us could actualy split up and go . But here no one wanted to split eventually we all stood together whining for a cab .Time was to be killed with the Buying for Fried Corns ,a Quick Tea but at the end the bell did ring in all of us that we need to go home .

We booked a private taxi to cram in 7 of us , and quickly grabbed a snack in the cafeteria .All well and ready to go home , when the last row in the Taxi seem to have had an extra dose of energy , it all began with Gulzar,Anusha and Nams three happy go lucky gals and at the back.Played a few numbers from their cell phones .And there the fire was lit ,all of us started singing . We liked one song though which goes like "I gotta feling that tonights gonna be a good night"

And the last row went berserk , dancing and singing ,we soon found out that it was the Red Bull gives You wings effect . Time flew in the cab and we reached home

wzzzzzzzzzz we forward to the evening of the next day , you may ask whats in between the nights. Sleep and Office ...thats about it . Okay the next day again with the same gang minus a few ,it was pouring heavily when we came out for our cabs. The winger what we got was a fancy one ,as in with deluxe seats . I was elated for a while until the trasnport guy and shooed us to the reception to pick up more people . I was adamant and let only one in inspite of our vehicle having three empty seats . Off we go until we decided to have Some snack at KFC and we drove instraight to thje drive in to place our orders , I was getting impatient as we were getting delayed and although we have stopped the wingers for many a time , this stoppage seemed longer . I was losing patience when we got the snacks delivered . Then we pushed off when we realsied that one sanck iten called the twister was missing, I said hang on and ran bk to the store and asked him for the twister . It was quite a scamper to run and come back because the winger has to go ahead and take a U turn to hit the main road while i could cut across and sure enough I was there just in time for the winger to join me again. The stoppage was definitley worth it as we had our snacks and numerous thank you's . And whats more we relaised that all the othr cabs were still stuck behind us in traffic jams all over the city, I couldnt help grinning to myself.

Well thats the end of this one , Monday is going to be a day of me walking 2 kilometres to Catch the Office Bus . Wonder wats in store .