So many things… so less time…

Hello Banagalore!!!

Anshu came here last week. We had a gr8 time!! He reached here last Saturday. We had an Italian brunch here at a great place named Casa Picolo on CMH road.

We asked Sriram where we could go. He told us about a great place to shop – Brigade road. Me and Anshu first went to MG road and set about searching for his memory card. We found a great lane there to shop which joined M.G. road at the middle from the left. We spent our time till the evening there going from shop to shop. From there, we went to meet one of Anshu’s friend Kriti, at Garuda mall. We took an auto to reach there. At Garuda mall, Anshu bought a few clothes for his interview. After that, she took us to Brigade road. We were walking that road, Anshu stopped suddenly and exclaimed, “I have come here before”. We were on Brigade road the whole afternoon and we didn’t know it!!. And we took an auto to Garuda mall, which was walking distance from there. I wonder which route he took us from. We went to cafe coffee day there, and them came back.

The next day, we went to a great place called Marathalli. It’s a great place for shopping. I got 50% off on my Rebook shoes! And Anshu found the memory card he was searching for the whole day on M.G. the whole day but had found only duplicate, China made cards !

Next Wednesday my mom is coming, and so now am making a list of places to take her to, and yes, all the above mentioned place are there in the list.

And ya, forgot to mention, I spent the weekend before Anshu’s visit in Google office in K.R. Puram, eating chocos and maggi, and playing pool and foosball.

This album basically summarizes what I did on that week’s Firday (the 13th)  : http://picasaweb.google.com/sahilahuja/ChennaiTripForVISAInterview

Time has flown by since I came to Bangalore. It’s already time for me to get ready for my New York trip!

Back to square one

I am back home at Faridabad now.

It was a great journey form Trichy to here. Me and Ankit came together. We caught Rockfort express from Trichy and reached Chennai around 5:30 in the morning. Once we got down the train, we leisurely checked the time for our next train – Gareeb Rath. We had to go from Chennai Egmore station to Chennai Central station to catch the train. And the time for the departure of the train wasss…. 6:10 am.

I walked as fast as I could to keep pace with the nervous Ankit, carrying my ridiculously heavy prehistoric suitcase. When we reached the exit of the station, we were in such a hurry, that we agreed to an autowala when he quoted the price Rs. 50. We got into the auto and the auto took us to the station. When he stopped, he stopped in the main road. He said it would be faster if we got off here and walked to the entrance of the station, saying something in tamil-english of which I could catch only the following : “round, longer, less time, entrance, route”. We got off, and found out none of us had Rs. 50 change. I took out Rs. 100 and asked him to please find change from somewhere. He got off, went to few autowalas, then came back running, got into the auto, and drove off as fast as lightning. Ankit was cursing him. This is the first time I got bagged so openly.

We went into the station, found our train, got in at around 6am. Ankit got off to get breakfast, which consisted of 2 sandwiches, 2 garlic chicken puffs, and 2 simple chicken puffs. We ate it at around 6:30 am. It was delicious. Gareeb Rath was a strange train. It had 84 seats instead of the normal 72 seats. They achieved this by mounting 3 seats in the side berth instead of the normal 2. The journey was quite smooth. We spent the whole day configuring his laptop. First we repartitioned his hard-disk to backup all his data. Ended up using all the utilities which I had burnt up for purnima into CD’s. Then installed Windows XP, then installed Linux Fedora 8, then setup all his repositories.

Then around 7 pm, we watched the movie Amityville. We put down all the curtains and turned off all lights. The compartment was almost like a movie theatre. We watched the whole movie, which I discovered after watching for the first 10 minutes I had already watched.

The train was 3 and a half hours late. Mom came to recieve me at H.Nizamuddin station. We cought a Delhi-Mumbai train to go back to Faridabad.

On the way I discovered that the hols won’t be as free as I assumed them to be when Mom started laying out my time table in front of me.. ” Tuesday Mama’s birthday, tomorrow movie, Wednesday back, Thursday carpenter”…. Gimme a break!

Tomorrow’s plan of watching “I am Legend”, starring Will Smith, got preponed to today, and I am writing this blog after coming back from the movie from SRS plaza – PVR.

Trip to GOA

I just came back from Goa today morning.

It was the best trip of my life. We stayed there 3 days (3rd dec to 5th dec) in a guest house that Saurabh Shirolkar (a.k.a. Badri) had booked for us. We got a really nice deal. After that (5th dec) I went to my tayaji’s (Jayant Rai) house to stay there for 1 day. The next day on 6th dec, I left.

The first day we went to a commercial beach where we paraglided. After paragliding we all came back to the beach and I and Cyber did water biking and the others did something known as a “banana flip”. After that, a few of us went for a walk along the beach. I stayed behind. When they came back they said they saw three topless babes. I cursed at them for not taking a pic.

After that we went to a second more peaceful beach and had a nice time. All of us had rented Activa’s for transportation. Activa’s are tourists’ primary transportation in Goa as all other means are simply maddeningly unaffordable.

The second day we went to Chapora fort. The same place where the movie “Dil Chahata Hai ” shot 2 scenes. It was a nice climb. The view from along the route was simply breath taking. I took a lot of pics.

The 3rd day we had a great time at the beach playing football. Then I went with my friends sharing the cab with them and they dropped my at my tayiji’s place (Navneet Rai). Around 2 o’clock their daughter Megha came back from school. She is studying in 12th std and is really fond of reading. She want’s to become a journalist and has taken art’s stream in her 12th in Goa board.

We got along really well. That night, tayiji took me to the market and bought me two pants and also a shirt for my brother. Jayant tayaji took me to the station in his car on the second day. I bid them good bye. On my way back to Trichy I had a 9hr stop at Bangalore. I bought new Creative earphones in Bangalore. In the evening I went caught the train to Erode from where I took the train to Trichy, from where I am currently writing this blog.