Emotions

Came across this ..
Sorrow, Embarassement, Fear, Love ...

Journal Part (II)

Okay my dear blog, I am back after a long long time..

The past few weeks just flew away in a flurry of activities. I finally made the release of the software I was developing last Thursday. Thankfully the weekend being a long one on occasion of "Good Friday", I caught up on my much needed sleep. I guess I must have slept 12 hours each day for the last three days! Went to Church for the Good Friday service and the Easter Night vigil. Had a one on one with God after a long time. Was kind of good since I didn't have office pressing on my mind this weekend for a change. So as promised earlier here is the much awaited Journal Part-Deux.

So lets start from where I left in my last Journal entry, The point where I just dropped from thin air at Bristol. The weekdays were kind of drab out there. Got up at 6:30 in the morning and after my usual morning ablution watched an episode of "F.R.E.I.N.D.S" from 7:30 to 8:00. Never fails to tickle your funny bone! Went to the hotel restaurant for breakfast and on the way booked a cab to the office for 8:30. Tore into a "Full English Breakfast" or a "Continental Breakfast" depending on the condition of my stomach ..i.e. if I can stomach all the food :) The cab usually arrived dot-on-time (some things I like about the British!). By the time the small talk with the cab driver reached its crescendo, reached office by 8:45 am. The traffic snarls at a small pace like Bristol is comparable to the ones we have in Delhi!

Once at office I usually settled down to work after a cup of black coffee with colleagues. After my innumerable trips abroad I have developed a taste for black coffee without sugar! Jumpstarts your day. Then I got down to work on my project, the details of which are confidential. Ha ha ha ..its not confidential, but I assure you that the details of it are immensely boring ;) Went for lunch at around 12:30 pm at the company cafeteria. I'd rather not give the details of the same since boiled potatoes, mashed potatoes, potato casserole and potato fries doesn't exactly qualify for a sumptuous and scrumptious meal. The deserts were passable, but the names were quite interesting .. roly-poly with custard, rumble-crumble with custard, treacle-pudding with custard and Apple-pie with custard sound tasty, but believe me they are not .. and I have not yet deciphered the English penchant for custards!

Getting back to work after lunch and a coffee break somewhere down the line constituted the rest of the day. Usually left for the Hotel by 6:00 pm. Sometimes on the way back I asked the cab driver to stop at Wal-Mart, from where I bought my stock of "Red Wine". Once back in the room I would watch TV .. BBC-1/BBC-2/BBC-3 and a few movie channels that showed run-of-the mill crap, nothing interesting but was OK time pass while I sip my bubbly. Went down to the hotel restaurant for Dinner which was much much better that the office stuff

Usually had Pizza or curry or chicken steak...hmm nice. Sometimes went out for Dinner to a local Indian/Paki restaurant. Would get back to the hotel by around 9:30 pm, read a novel till 11:00 pm. By the way I finished "Nemesis" by Isaac Asimov and "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini during my stint at Bristol. So you can well imagine how boring the entire stay was. The novel reviews will follow sometime later. Ohh..and by the way I haven't mentioned my one weekend at Bristol. Was quite eventful, the details of which will come later in my next post. I have uploaded the Bristol Pics you can get them here: Bristol Snaps


So till my next post ..ta da ...

Back To Square One

I am back!

Back to the maddening crowd and sultry weather. Every time I come back from a trip abroad I spend a week lamenting on the state of affairs in India. Why is India the way it is? Its because the people out here are incorrigible I guess. But what makes them so? What is so special about the western countries and its people that they have a flourishing developed society? Beats me.

At Amsterdam airport when they called out passengers to come in a orderly manner to board the plane (they were calling for passengers according to decreasing seat numbers) all the people of "Indian Origin" rushed to the gate irrespective of their seat number. Tugging, pushing and falling over one another to enter the plane first. Now all these MORONS are literate, can read and write English, infact 99% would be graduates. I guess they think that the plane will leave without them or someone else will occupy their seats if they don't rush. Having taken their seats first is an achievement of sorts. You can notice the winner's smirk on their faces. These very guys spend the next one hour fretting and fuming because the plane will leave only after everyone has boarded and that too at the scheduled time. That's the prize for coming first you BUFFOONS!

When a "white" fellow passenger after witnessing these acts asked me if I was an Indian, I was too ashamed to answer.


PS: The Bristol pics with Journal Part-II will follow soon. I am in the process of uploading the pics. and I am a wee bit busy too !