Afternoon Siesta

Anyway, Its only been 6 days here in Noida/Delhi and its been good so far! I’ve been going around and seeing a lot of new places, and met some old friends after ages and also made some new ones on this trip!

On my first day here last Thursday I met Animesh, who took me to Noida’s Sector 18, where all the malls and shopping and food places are and we had a great evening checking out different places and eating yummy road side food and getting a good experience of Noida’s night life (which does tend to die down rather quickly though!!)

Then on friday I met Animesh again along with another old friend from my Microsoft Academia days, Sayor and we went to Delhi – first to this place called New Friends Colony community centre for some great Dilli Chaat and later to Khan market for dinner at Chunas.

The whole market/community centre concept to hang out at is really nice and comes with a good mix of old and new shops, eateries and modern cafes, books and gadgets, corridors and narrow lanes and lots of people! I havent seen any similar areas in Bangalore to hang out at. Delhi is filled with places like this as I discover over the next few days!

A view of NFC Community Centre

Saturday morning I went to more ‘markets’ – the M Block and N Block markets in GK 1 – with Badri’s sister, Netra. She took me to a great place for lunch (Cafe Turtle), which had some good pasta and a nice ambiance as it was in a book store. As Niti said of the place, it was very comforting being surrounded by books!

Saturday was a long day (and night) – after lunch Niti and I went to Humayun’s tomb [more in seperate post] and in the evening I met more friends who took me to Connaught Place (CP) and then to India Gate for some awesome Kala Katta Chusti and finally dinner at a restaurant in Pindara road!

Sunday was relatively lazy in the morning and in the evening I went to Delhi’s Sarita nagar, from where we went to Dilli Haat, which is this government run bazaar kinda place with food stalls from every state in the country and a lot of interesting handlooms and handicraft items to shop.

All in all a great start to my Noida/Delhi trip!!

We left early Saturday morning and picked up people on the way and had breakfast at some restaurant in Jayanagar and proceeded to Sangam (where Kaveri and Arkavathi rivers meet). Time flew in the cab amidst games of Antaakshari and Dumb-charades! We reached Sangam by around 10:45 AM and stopped our cab there and then started off on a 4 km ‘trek’ (rather walk) to Mekedaatu.

Mekedaatu

Following an interesting walk and some time spent admiring the gorges and scenery at Mekedaatu and many photos later, we returned to Sangam on a rickety old bus, sucking on a ‘lolly’ (ice-candy), on a bumpy road!

We then spent the rest of the evening playing in the waters at Sangam. There were quite a few water-battles between us and we had lots of good fun! We left the place by around 5:30 PM.

The day out was good and the place is ideal for a one-day escape from the madness of the city. Made a lot of new friends and some good ones, especially one special person, and will never forget this trip for the people I met. It felt like my soul was covered with dew drops!

More photos here

The demented and jealous Sun enters as the unsuspecting Sab works hard on the comp

Sun back stabbing poor Sab

“Et tu Sun?….aaaahh!! help!!!” - Sha and Sab are shocked and scream for help…but alas…

Sun then targets Sha and chokes him on the bed

Sab is barely alive…and this time Sun goes for the throat

Once Sab and Sha are out of the picture, Sun goes on to steal their code and ideas

As Sun is about to leave with some gadgets, he notices the camera capturing his every action

 A desperate Sun commits suicide in front of the camera…or did he?

No one knows what happened next…

Apart from these photos, nothing was recovered. No bodies. No code. No idea…

Wait a minute…the idea with quite a few modifications recently resurfaced at some distant land…could it be….??

Disclaimer: All characters are purely fictional and any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental.

The first time Anshu accelerated from some 30 kmph to 120 kmph, I was like – “holy f*ck – this is awesome!”. We went from Old Madras Road to the Indiranagar – Koramangala ring road where he ripped some more on what is probably the best road for ripping in Bangalore! It didn’t stop there, somewhere near Koramangala, we turned and headed back on the ring road and we had some clear road and Anshu (being Anshu) accelerated even more and God, the turns were really scary! Apart from the speed, what was even more scary was that there wasn’t any proper place to hold on to for the pillion, I was hugging the fuel tank for dear life so tight my hands are aching now! We soon (very, very soon actually!) reached the new airport road junction flyover, and that’s when he got even more crazy and suddenly set off with a wheelie that nearly threw me off the bike and that’s when we touched around 160+ kmph!! Amazing acceleration, never experienced such a rush before! God I loved it!

It was my first time on a real superbike and like another friend said “Speed is orgasmic”. Amen to that.

The three day weekend was the perfect chance for some of us to get away from Bangalore and have some fun. The planning bore fruit and although Rishabh couldn’t make it, another champ, Ankith joined us.

After leaving office early, we — Sunil, Sharath, Ghana, Raghavan, Ankith and myself –finally left on 28th April (Friday) evening in a Qualis (cab) to Kerala!

Our cab for the trip

The start wasn’t very good. While waiting to pick up Raghavan on Hosur road, we witnessed an accident. A mini bus tried to avoid a speeding two wheeler and swerved straight towards us, he then swerved again and the bus went flying and landed in a ditch, barely a few metres away from us. Luckily noone was hurt, except for probably the bike rider who was thrashed by the public for causing the accident and yeah the bus was a goner, it probably had to be craned out of the ditch. Later our cab developed some problem and we had to stop at a service centre for quite some time to get it fixed.

At the service station

The rest of the onward journey was long but fun! We all had a nice time talking various things. The major theme for the evening was love and relationships, which the “newly-in-love” dudes were busy talking about, while Raghavan and I enjoyed laughing at them and reminiscing about our own past relationships…they have no clue what’s in store for them!

Food!

Most of us didn’t sleep much that night in the car, or did so only in brief phases. We were all excited about the trip and eager to reach Munnar, our first stop. Next day early morning – we were treated to the most awesome entry into God’s own country, Kerala. Will write about that in another blog post!

I’ve been attending some training on advanced oracle and sql tuning since Thursday at work and by Friday it got too much and I just had to go out and have some fun. Met Anshu and a friend of his and had dinner at Desmond’s on Lavelle Road. We had lots of fun talking about life at college (PUC) and spent a lot of time laughing the night away!

After a long time I went to office on a Saturday, to attend day 3 of the training and as usual most of it went over the head and so as to not fall asleep and also getting into football fever, Kiran and I spent the afternoon playing book-football (dont even ask how it is played!!). The matches were exciting and close, but finally I won the series 3-1!! ;)

Went out with mom in the evening and I got home in time to finally see Saw. The movie comes under the genre of dark/psychopath killer/horror/crime and was one of the best movies I’ve seen in this genre apart from Se7en. The movie revolves around this psychopath killer, ‘Jigsaw’ – (but you can’t really call him a killer, because he doesn’t kill anybody. He just gives his victims a reason and the means to kill themselves) – who abducts people whom he accuses of not being grateful of being alive and puts them in a ’game’ as he calls the sick situations wherein they end up pretty much killing themselves or others just to stay alive. Lots of gruesome stuff and definitely not a movie for the faint hearted. But overall a great chilling thriller. The ending is a blood curling unexpected twist and just leaves you wanting to see Saw II.

I followed Saw with Mission: Impossible III. It was an okay movie. Nothing new. We’ve seen this kind of action before. Similar hero, hero’s babe, villains, babe gets kidnapped by villain, fights, gadgets, plot etc… similar to any number of movies in the past.

Hmmm thats about all I can remember about my lost post. A nice Sunday afternoon now and about one and a half hours to go for the British Grand Prix. I hope Schumi wins!

On Saturday met up with some of my friends from college to celebrate Sashi’s birthday. We originally planned to go for Da Vinci Code, but thanks to the protests it wasn’t released this weekend, so we ended up going for Pink Panther at Inox. The movie was hilarious and though not in the league of some other comedies (like the Naked Gun series), it was good fun! We later had a nice long lunch at Cosmo Village near Garuda Mall.

I had to leave after lunch and join parents in visiting my sister’s new place near South End circle and after that to visit grandma (mom’s mom) who was my at my aunts (mom’s sister) place in Jayanagar. Returned home to watch India lose a good match.

On Sunday had to wake up really early to go to Dad’s brother’s place for a family get-together and puja. Met lots of cousins and relatives!

Had to leave the function after lunch and head to Rohan’s birthday treat. Rohan is probably one of my oldest friends – i’ve known him since standard 1, when we were classmates in Bishop Cottons! Deepak Pillai and Sandeep Rao also came and we spent some time at Crosswords looking for a gift for Rohan and later went to Mojo’s for lunch and to Corner House for dessert!

Spent the rest of the Sunday at home reading a novel I bought at Crosswords – Holy Cow by Sarah MacDonald. Also read many friends’ blogs and uploaded more chapters of Ashok Banker’s King of Ayodhya at epicindia.com.

Thanks to some sudden work at office, on Thursday and Friday, I was unable to go on the Rameshwaram trip :( Many of my cousins went and are having a great time. They should return tomorrow morning.

On Saturday called up Anshu and Kannan and Prakash and we met up for Anshu’s belated birthday treat! I wanted to go for the Air Supply India tour concert at Bangalore but ended up going to coffee day and then to Star City for a great close game of bowling. Prakash, Anshu and I were tied at the same score at one point but I managed to beat Anshu by 1 point in the end and win the game! We then went to some salad bar and had a whole lot of vegetables (mom will murder me if she gets to know about this, since I hardly eat any vegetables at home!). After this the guys had to go back home, but the night was still young and I still had to have dinner.

I then called the usual movie gang (Sunil, Sharath, Ranganath, Ghana and Raghavan) and fixed up dinner (at Bobby da Dhaba) and a late night movie plan (Tom, Dick and Harry at Innovative Multiplex), although in the end only Raghavan and Sharath could come. The movie was ok and had a lot lacking and the comedy was just about ok. The actors could have been utilised in a better manner and the villain could have been a lot less silly. Sharath stayed back at my house that night and left by about 9 AM on Sunday. 

Sunday was no different and I met more friends once again. Through orkut – we organised a reunion of sorts for students from my class of 10C at Bishop Cotton Boys’ School. We (Neeraj, Rohan, Angad, Gautham, Deepak and myself) met up at Barista near Koshy’s and waited for long while without power due for our orders. We used the time to talk about a lot of old memories. About incidents that happened in class and also about our other classmates. It was nice and all of use were very nostalgic about the good old school days. The power had still not returned so we cancelled our orders and we (minus Gautham – who had to leave) headed to Corner House. After ice creams and more nostalgic moments Angad and Neeraj left and Deepak, Rohan and myself lazed for a while at Amoeba hoping to get a bowling lane, but to no avail. We then had dinner at Empire and headed home. I’ve uploaded some photos of the reunion here.

A great weekend for me – and incidentally I managed to meet friends from almost all spheres of my life, including School, PUC College, Engineering College and the Microsoft student champ program. Only office friends and some others were left out! I guess they are for another weekend now! 

Ghana, Rags, Rishabh and me at Garuda mall
(Also in the pic – Sunil’s S2 IS and the all important diary with all the trip details)

After a lot of talking of every other topic and a little brain-storming about the trip over lunch and some awesomely yummy dessert we came to some conclusion and if all goes according to plan we will be leaving on Friday (28th April) evening to Munnar and Alleppey and return on Tuesday (2nd May) morning!

The next three weekends of mine are now booked for trips and incidently in three different states! This weekend being the Kerala trip. Next weekend to Coorg (in Karnataka) for a colleagues’ wedding and the weekend after that to Rameshwaram (in Tamil Nadu) for a religious trip as conclusion to my earlier Kashi trip.

Now I just can’t wait for this week to end and for Friday to come. Monday morning blues already! Sigh!

Anyway after a long time I finally went for a haircut (much to the delight of many people, especially mom!). I was supposed to meet a friend after the haircut, but unfortunately this got cancelled, so I decided to go for a movie (Taxi 9211) with Sunil, Sharath and Ranga. The movie was at 7.40 PM at PVR Cinemas, and this meant I had about 3 hours to kill before the movie. I ended up shopping (all alone) at Lifestyle. Got myself some clothes and then proceeded to the multiplex.

Taxi 9211 was a nice and different movie, although the ending kinda became cliched and predictable. Great acting, nonetheless, by both the lead actors.

On Sunday went out with parents for more shopping and later I took them out for dinner at Tandoor.

Back to work on Monday after a long break and had some pending work to finish up and got some new tasks to work on. Tuesday and Wednesday was spent in the training hall for the Business Communication Skills training session, taken by a Ms. Lata. The session was great and all the participants enjoyed the two days and I learnt a whole lot of stuff and discovered a lot of common communication mistakes and how to be more assertive and communicate better. On the second day we had to give two presentations and I chose Photography as my first topic (and so did Chandru) and Blogging as my second topic.

Also bought a few books from Crosswords on Tuesday and hope to finish some of them this weekend!