Its still vacation time. Some more time spent in idleness. Some more time in relaxation. Pretty much stayed at home for most of the time. Had a small weekend trip to Mahabaleshwar. A cozy little family outing. Mahabaleshwar was ok. But not nearly as cold as Bangalore. Damn, the place was hotter than Mumbai in the day time. The evening was better. More in line with Bangalore temperatures.

Today, we start on a longer trip. A perfect holiday planned for the next one week. A visit to the eastern regions of this country. My first trip to the east. A week of chilling out in Darjeeling and Gangtok. Well, lets hope the trip is all that it promises to be.

Received my goods from Bangalore. After a 10 day delay. And after a lot of franic phone calls, and after a lot of lies from the bloody transport agent. May all the devils piss on his head. All readers of this post, next time you get to interact with someone called Allianze Packers n Movers, run away from him. A totally unreliable, expensive, unscrupulous, dishonest bunch of liars. And if possible spread the word about this shady outfit to any friends you might have who may be considerin shifting their goods.

On a totally unrelated note .. this vacation has given me sometime to catch up with the state of affairs of my engineering class. The 1999-2003 batch of Information Technology at PSG Tech, Coimbatore has been doing rather well. Surprisingly well in fact. At last count some 30-35% of the batch has been abroad in the last year. And these are not the MS people. Most of this crowd is comprised of currently working engineers and programmers. Most people who joined TCS Chennai have visited Chennai. A few are settled in UK. The batch now has people working in all sorts of IT companies. Quite a few have also jumped to more lucrative jobs already. Considering that we were the first batch of graduates in the department, the excellent performance of the batch has been a noteworthy achievement.

Well, thats it for now I guess...

I studied my 7th and 8th grade classes in Mumbai. A quaint little South Indian run school in Andheri(West) called SRWS. Some really bad memories of that period. From the academic viewpoint, it was most definitely the lowest phase of my life. The other spheres of life were not that bad. Cricket. An overriding passion in those young days. Was always the 13th man in the team(the man they call in when the 12th man is indisposed. Tough luck.) But well, I was always this enthusiastic cricketer who never minded his serious disabilities in the sport. Tried Badminton. It definitely wasnt that big a disaster. But well not much to write home about. Tried various versions of street hockey(Dont even ask me what that means), football etc etc. Consistent performance in all these activities. By the time I left Mumbai, I was one embittered soul. And the reason I left Mumbai wasnt pleasant either. Shiv Sena had just come into power. And they declared Marathi would be compulsory for all. Damn those people. Learning Marathi all new in my 9th standard wasnt exactly my cup of tea. So I was packed off to my Grandparents' in Trichy. My first seperation from my parents. Damn this bloody Mumbai.

My next fling with Mumbai was several years later. My summer internship at ICICI. Last year to be precise. Was a not-so-bad, definitely-not-unpleasant experience.

And now, Im back. To Mumbai. My posting with KPMG is at Mumbai. Thank the lord. Mumbai had been my first preference when they had asked me. So, after almost 5 years of hostel stay, Im back home. Back to my parents. A small moment of euphoria.

Yeh hai Mumbai meri jaan .. Damn!! I still dont like this city.

In the 15 days of the vacation that I spent in Bangalore, my life schedule was rather simple.

Eat.
Sleep.
Read Novels.
Watch Movies.
And an infinite repetition of these activities in no particular order.

A rather pleasant existence I should say. A lot of my friends spent this time travelling to Kerala and Goa. Me not a big advocate of spending your time on travelling. No sir. Not at all. Any given day, I would rather chose to lie and laze around in my bed. Ah, the pleasures of lazing. Like the day I watched five movies in a series. Or the day when I was out of my bed for not more than a period of 3 hours. And managed to finished 3 novels.

Well, we did make one short trip. Me, Gowri, Sarath, and Sridhar went on a one day trip in Sridhar's Scorpio. Sridhar also managed to get his driver along for the trip. We made a trip to Shravana Belgola, Belur and Halebid. A nice little trip. Rightly timed. Of the right duration. A day is just the kind of time period you want to spend on a trip like this. Especially considering the levels heat in late March.

The vacation was a proper vacation in most senses of the word. I checked mails far less frequently. Never replied to any mail I got. Didnt make any phone calls. Didnt touch my blog. In short, went into a freeze. Froze all communication with the rest of the world. Went into a cozy little shell. Now Im slowly starting to step out.

Hello World!! I'm back.

p.s: Have any of you checked out Yahoo! 360 ?? Well, if you liked Orkut, you'll like this more. It is still in very very nascent stages. And I have a lot of invites left with me. So, if you want one, just let me know. Just post a message on the ChatBox in the side. Or leave a comment with your email id.