The love affair

Things I currently love in London.. Don’t know how long this love affair with London is gonna last:

• You can hear the birds chirping. In the hotel, in the office, in the restaurant, in the house, everywhere around.
• People are at their courteous best. To the extent that it sometimes bugs you. From hulloing each other on the streets to holding the door open(their favorite).
• Apparently you don’t need a beer to say cheers!! Every conversation/mail ends with a cheers.
• The London tube map. You have it in your hand and that’s all you need to get to any damn place in London.
• The winter effect on the trees, every tree is so bald/barren. Not a single leaf in sight.
• The traffic. In 3 weeks of stay here I have only once heard a driver honk.
• The London buses and their amazing turning radius(am not sure if that’s the right term). The turnings that the bus can cut are amazing.
• The girls and the short skirts. No matter how cold the day, the fair sex is out showing their long legs.
• The hairstyles. Men are so particular about their hair, everybody has a distinctive style. Not many like me who jus brush their hair to one side and walk. Spikes and Mohawks and army and straight and so many more unnameable styles..
• The cold!!! As unbearable as it is at times, it comes as a welcome change from the Indian sun.
• The joy in the faces when there is an occasional sunny day. You can actually see people facing the sun and soaking in all the warmth. Lots of sun, lots of fun(line from a cosmetics ad in India, which of course is totally wrong in the Indian context).
• The sri-lankan restaurant Papaya and the extremely spicy Kothu Stringhoppers.. So spicy that I could bring tears in your eyes. And to wash the spice down with Lion beer(sri-lankan) is such a joy.
• The amazing queens walk by the Thames. So crowded with families and yet so tranquil.
• The expense. The city is so expensive that I forces you to calculate and think before spending even a pi(or should I say pence?).
• The smell of incense and kumkum when you walk into some Indian stores.
• The hand dryers in the rest rooms. So powerful and they blow real hot air. But the absolute absence of tissues is disappointing, London is going green(or so they say).

And lastly, the anonymity.

2010..So far, so excellent..

And finally we have a car in the family. A dark green Ritz. This was only the last of the good things that happened in the family in 2010. It has been a very luck 2010, touch wood, for everbody at home.

I guess Pappu started off the luck badwagon at home. He first got himself a new job at Infy and now he can rest assured that he would recieve his pay-cheque on the first of every month. And then it was my turn. I too got myself a job at Infy and that too Mangalore, got my referal bonus and my referal gift of plane tickets worth 15k from Aditi. Lady luck was still smiling, I got an even better oppurtunity - travel to London from Aditi. I lapped it up and here I am in London. Then it was my sister-in-law's turn whose 2 years of hard-work paid off and she got a seat in MMC for her MS in Ophthalmology. Finally, it was the eldests turn to buy a car. A shining green beauty. Can't wait to get my ass on it and go for a long drive, but that will have to wait till I get back to India. And I almost missed to mention my score of 98.32 in XAT this year, pity that I did not clear the sectional cut-off for XLRI and pity that I did not apply for any other colleges from which I could easily have got a call.

Hoping that the good luck continues, may the lady keep smiling...

Initial impressions on the TZ6

After a lot of research(a misleading term for the googling I did) on compact cameras, I decided to buy the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ6(Panasonic TZ6). I was very clear on what I wanted: A compact digicam with the highest zoom in the range. And the right price(read low price) of course.

So my search began and the truly speaking there were not many options. There was a Canon 110IS(which I definitely did not want because my bro already had the same model, an excellent camera but why have the same model again in the family?), a couple of FujiFilms - Finepix F-72(super good glossy finish), Fuji S-2000 HD(some very nice shooting modes which every amateur photographer actually needs with an excellent grip and HD recording) and a yet to launch Finepix F-80 which I believe is the best looking super zoom compact, a Casio, a Sony and an Olympus. But any site I visited, the TZ6 seemed to be the favorite. DPReview thinks it is a must have, CNET rates it a very high 9.4 or so and a few other sites I visited all suggested the Lumix TZ6.

The price in India was a little above my budget and so I decided to buy it in the UK. It was actually quite a huge difference of about 8000Rs. With the camera delivered last Friday, I set out on the streets of London to click. I first went to the Wembley Stadium. I clicked, I reviewed the pic. Something was definitely wrong, after all the reviews I had really high expectations. Blaming it on my poor photography skills, I put the camera in iA mode, panasonic's intelligent auto mode and the results were even worse. I don't know if its the London sky heavy with dark clouds or if its the camera. I tried the 'clouds' mode in the camera and clicked again and then played around with a couple of more modes. Not that the photos were bad, its the high expectations I had. I thought just setting the auto-mode would produce excellent pics.

Some sample pics on a very cloudy day:

Yesterday I went to the British Museum and tried some indoor photography. Every object of interest was differently lit - day light, indoor halogen lights, florescent lights, incandescent lights etc. Objects within the glass cases were just impossible to click with the reflection. And again, the iA mode disappointed. Fiddling with the other options in camera proved to be more fruitful producing some nice pics.

Either the camera is a let-down(which may not be the case considering the amazing reviews its got) or I still have not figured out the right modes. So there is some more midnight oil to burn reading up the manual.

Curtains down on 'Day 4'

Its 6 o'clock in the evening now and its already pitch dark outside. After a brief chat with my friend and a double-entendre comment on buzz, i am here to blog. Come to think of it, blogspot has become my personal diary now. Wonder if mine will become the new-age Anne Frank diary, i mean only the fame bit of it.

Friday I went to work, my first day in the Ladbrokes office - all suited up and smart(have a slightly high opinion of myself after wearing the suit).


It was a tough first day, a real tough first day.

• First of, i was introduced the team, and what a team it was. 2 Greeks, 1 Italian, 1 Chinese and 1 Brit. Well, the introduction did not go as expected, my managers back in India would have been a tad bit disaapointed with my performance. I was clearly told, again and again, to get introduced and hand-over my business card to the client. I had mentally rehersed meeting each stake holder individually and handing my card to them, but with the whole team around me and with their Friday dressing and their cool, jovial attitude and with the introductions happening on a first name basis I just could not slip my hand into my pocket to pull out my business card.
• After the introductions I had nothing much to do except stay put in my place. I just acted busy, all serious in the face and all suited up below the face.
• The lunch I picked seemed to have tiny pieces of something stuck all around the pasta. Sensed something fishy, or rather chickeny, and left all of it.
• It was soon 6 PM and it was a Friday. Friday nights in Ladbrokes are the 'Village Inn' nights, a pub just 200 mts away. So, off I went with the team and downed a couple of glasses of beer. A Carlsberg and a Guiness. The greeks in the team were totally amused by me being vegetarian and all conversation with me revolved around it.A couple of hoours in the pub and then we called it a day.

Clearly, a very difficult first day.

The plan was to go and check out houses on Saturday. An eager beaver that I was, woke up early and started looking at the ad's in GumTree.com. A bit of Monica creeped into me, I created an excel with color coding to make of list of houses that I would check out and the I would not and so on. The excitement did not last very long - most house-owners did not in recieve my calls, and the ones that did wanted me to check out the house on a weekday. Such a waste of a weekend I thought. Finally, one guy invited me for a viewing. A sri-lankan with 2 persian cats in the house and a strong smell of something not very nice in the house. I walked back dejected. A lil while later Ageesh decided to drop by to my room for drinks. We went to the nearest Tesco(huuuuuuuuge) and grabbed some beers and chips and drank away to glory and then the day just ended. I survived yet another day in the alien land, but had still not seen snow.

Today was great. Quite simply, I found a house in a street right behind where my office is. The rent just what I was looking for. The house very clean. The owner, a very sweet sri-lankan lady. So what if the room is tiny, every room here is tiny (reminds me of the Munnbhai dialogue about the hostel room - 'Bhai yeh room to shuru hote hi khatam ho gaya'). Grabbed some rice and chole and had a good lunch. Saw some stupid shows on TV. Had a nice relaxed bath in the tub(hope I don't used to the tub, definitely wont find one in India). Will now read a book and go to bed. A nice day of solitude.

Wonder why I keep playing the 'Careless whisper' in my mind...

The journer so far

I can barely stay awake, fighting hard to not fall asleep. And the music I am playing does not seem to help either, Sonu is yelling in the 'Jaane nahin denge' from '3 Idiots'. Nearly 26 hours after I entered the BIAL, I reached London. 26 freaking hours.

From the past 1 month my getting to London was an uncertainity. First it was the client approval, then the VISA which took close to 3 weeks and when everything was settled and I walked in to BIAL I realized the Emirates flight was delayed by 4 hours. Missed my connecting flight as well. The next flight from Dubai to London was 7 hours after I landed in Dubai. My initial tensions gave way to a sense of happiness, the delay meant that Emirates would provide me with hotel accomodation and a transit VISA to stay in Dubai. Though I did not get to roam around Dubai, I did a few firsts in my life. Like for instance taking a relaxed bath in a hot tub, it was so soothing to my bruised body and soul. And a few more firsts I cannot mention in the blog. Checked-out of the hotel 4 hours in advance and went all round the Dubai Duty Free and finally boarded the flight to London - hoping for an uneventful flight, the final leg of my journey to London.

The short stay in Dubai made me decide one thing - that I wanted to work in Dubai at some point in my life. The damn place was literally a melting point of cultures. I probably saw people from all races and countries and ages and religions. I read somewhere that people from over 100 countries stay at Dubai. Never before had I seen such a mix of people, and all this in just the airport. Everybody seemed to know every language (except for the white robed dubai natives of course). And at every turn I could hear the all familiar Malayalam :) The airport and its environs looked so beautiul at night. In spite of the delays I experienced, I will take the Emirates again just so that I can go via Dubai again.

Todat at 7:30 AM GMT I stepped out into chilly London. My cab driver Eduardo, an Italian was already waiting in a Mercedes Benz. This was again a first, getting a ride in a Benz. Eduardo was non-stop, we covered quite a range of topics - from IT in India to his sick pet dog and how bad his health insurance was. The first thing I noticed as the cab went past residential areas was that every house looked the same. Every single house. In fact it reminded me of the Privet Drive from the Harry Potter movies. I even noticed a few houses with the world famous Mangaluru Hanchu.

After settling in the hotel, I decided to go out and explore Harrow a little bit, just so that I don't fall asleep in the room. I took the world-famous London Underground and man was it a let-down. After having travelled in the spanking new Delhi metro last year the London Underground looked so antique. As I stood for my train, a girl in pink tights and pink shoes and Orange nail polish came over to me and asked for directions, she also had a pink bag I believe. As I looked around I saw that a lot of girls were in pink, I rather expected the entire town to be dressed in black and grey. The first thing one would notice in Harrow is the Indian community. 50% of the population was Indian. From Gujju hotels, to punjabi hotels to Mughalai to even a Saravana bhavan on Rayners lane.
I also experienced the famous, unpredictable London rain. One moment it was raining and the next it was gone and then again it appeared outta nowhere.

My first day in London has been quite exciting till now, looking forward to work tomorrow. Time to tuck myself in and have a good nights sleep, its been close to 40 hours now since I had proper sleep..YAWN!!!!!!!