Category: Travel

Holiday Season

I know holiday season in US and UK are still few weeks away but here in India the leaves and holiday are in full swing.  Starting from ganesh chaturthi (the Indian festival for the god of all things good) till holi (the Indian festival of colors), we indians are found in festive mood. so to continuing with the tradition i am off to my parent land for Diwali (The Indian festival of light). See you guys at the other side of my vacation. Till than stay happy the way u are or keep on cribing on your crappy life.. BTW its a 2 week vacation for me.. 🙂

What a Month!!

Disclaimer: This post may go to long. So if you don’t have anything do, just like me, then you are welcome to pass your time here :).

I think there are less than 2 readers at present who come and visit this ever dying website. And the hope taken even deeper plunge that after this post the number will reduce to 1.

So here is the run down of the events of last one month or so.

Let start from January End.

1. I started my night shift. Yes it was the last thing they could have done. I was asked to come to office at 12 and leave by 8 in the morning so none of my team mate could meet. In true worlds of my manager “Without you in the office the whole team’s productivity increase many fold. I never knew that just by reducing 8 men hours (that is mine) I could get extra productivity of 40 men hours.”

2. Around the same time XAT (XLRI Aptitude Test) score were declared. And your truly score a mere 97.06 Percentile in that. For those unknown XAT is entrance exam for the one some of the best B-Schools in India. Yes, I am planning to get a degree in Ymmm Bee Aye.

3. Left my last room which I shared with my class mates and shifted with a colleague. Reason of leaving None!!

Some time in Feb

1. Got a call for college interview from the best place in India, GOA (Institute of Management). Yeah. Party time!! I was so drunk that forgot the close the door of the house. The next morning I had lost 2 phones total worth 17,000 INR. Yeah GOA did it to me. Again. This was the 4th and 5th mobile and 4th theft.

2. Started the regular office shift.

3. Went for the Interview for GIM. Screwed it up big time. Yeah. Again. Bloody Incompatibility.

4. My roomie was sent on exile to Nigeria. Why the heck he was so happy going to such a place. Green Paper still rocks.

5. Got another interview call form worst place to go, Chennai. Interview on 12th March. More updates soon.

6. Was down with cold and Fever so no Holi this year. And no booze too.

Now in March

1. One of my friend’s Friend called, “Hey Santosh me at Airport. I am off to Canada for 11 months. My company is sending me. See you after that.” Bloody Green Paper.

2. Got another Interview call from 2nd Place in India. Mumbai. (NMIMS, the best call). Will in Mumbai for the interview in the month end. IF you are in Mumbai than meet you there!!

India VS India.

In my last post I said i will try to tell you guys about my observation of different entities while i was traveling through out India. If you have not noticed i was in north @ Delhi, South @ Hyderabad, East @ Kolkata and Home, West @ Goa in last 3 months.

So instead of writing about few of them lets pitch all of them against each other.

Round 1: Travel.

I won’t say a thing about the journey but the first hand experience of destination or origin.

  • By Train –  Hyderabad, Bangalore, Kolkata, Home
  • By Bus –  Goa, Bangalore
  • By Flight – Bangalore, Delhi(Terminal 1-A), Kolkata

I don’t know what’s your travelling preference but i always felt that train journeys are the best. if it satisfies one condition “You have a good company” I leave the choice of the companion to you it may range from sleep depravation to love or from a book to Girl Friend.

So here is quick comparison between the stations i have visited in recent past.

Hyderabad (Secundrabad to be precise):- A small and clean station. They have got adequate security and even though the same station is used for local trains it not that crowded.

Bangalore:- Its been quite some time before i gave bangalore station a visit. It was still the same crowded platform and even crowded ticket counters. But clean and chaotic.

Kolkata:- Huge station loads of people and little security. Its not that clean, though there are people taking care of cleaning but something, somewhere has gone wrong.

Home:- Really small station, not clean, no security, is in process of getting a face-lift. That include a new ticket window, generator, lights and fans on the platform but that betterment is still few years away.

Now comes the bus stands.

Bangalore: Has got a huge bus stand. lots of people. well marked platforms and dirty.

Goa: Medium sized, semi clean, not well marked and crowded.

Airports:- The fastest and (now not so) cheaper mode of transport. I chose this for last for the simple reason that i have been adding loads of air-mile.

Kolkata:- Really old airport. Small, crowded, Really slow security checks, No WI-FI, Shady Buses used for aircarft transfer(Most of them look like old city buses). But they do have a rail ticket reservation counter and post office at the arrival waiting lounge. fewer baggage claim belts and No AC taxi for stand. (One had to call for AC taxies)

Delhi:- Big, clean, with almost no crowd departure terminal. Even though its a new terminal baggage scan is mandatory(as compared to bangalore), WI-FI signal strength fluctuate every second.(In short it sucks, just WI-FI). Lots of shops including a Mc-Dee’s The arrival terminal is too crowded. even though they have 7-8 baggage claim belts the baggage arrival takes a life time. which makes the area even more crowded.

Bangalore:- Big, really clean, little crowded, No Baggage checks (which makes the check in really really swift) The check-in counter itself are dynamic(There no individual airline counter but any counter can be used by any airline. All the counters have a LCD screen showing the airlines name.) 3-4 ATM machine. 8-10 Self-Check-in counters. The arrival area is large and the baggage arrival is really fast max 5-10 min wait time. The only bone of contention is the location of airport. 25 KM from the city limits.

So if you are planning to go to any of these places plan accordingly.

Delhi

Statutory Warning: This post may turn out to be too long, So read on your on risk.

Note: This post is nothing to do with the book “Delhi” by the author Khuswant Singh  but may refer to both.

Just now I have reached home from a short trip to Delhi! By short it means that i was there for the weekend. Something in tune to a weekend getaway but the trip was more of “Getting In”

The start from Bangalore was both good and bad. Just for the record I left Bangalore on Friday, 20th Of November. Reasons the start was Good

The Goods:

  1. My manager was absent on the day. and i was able to leave early

  2. I got the airport shuttle minutes before it left.

  3. My flight was rescheduled to 7:10 pm (I had a 8:55pm flight)

The Bads:

  1. The flight took off half an hour late

  2. my friend who was supposed to pick me up at Delhi was also late by half an hour

The Ugly:

  1. The reading light was not working in the flight i was travelling

  2. The safety jacket for the seat in front of me was not attached to seat and was roaming all through the plane.

Now a quick rundown of my itinerary.

Day 1: Friday

  1. 7:10 Leave Bangalore

  2. 10:30 Reach Delhi

  3. 11:45 Reach my friends home @ gurgaon

  4. 11:47 Open a bottle of whiskey and start drinking

Day 2: Saturday

  1. Time Unknown: Go to bed after the bottle was empty, our belly full and mind screwed

  2. 10:00 am – wake up, get ready

  3. 01:00 pm – go and meet one of my online friends @ Gurgaon Central (Yeah i do meet my virtual friends. so next time you are Bangalore and need some one for drink you know who to call 😉 )

  4. 05:00 pm: Back at friend’s palace. Have couple of pegs and get ready to attend one of my school mates marriage (yeah this was the reason i was Delhi.

  5. 07:00 pm: Reach the venue for marriage just to find out the time on the invitation was written in IST. ( IST means that leave the house half an hour after the time mentioned on the invitation)

  6. 07:10 pm: Meet with some of my other school mate who were to attend the same wedding.

  7. 07:11 pm: Find a bar and order some beer

  8. 10:00 pm: has someone mentioned shaddi (marriage).

  9. 10:10 pm: order the last round and leave for the marriage venue

  10. 10:45 pm: reach the venue to find out the marriage is over. and reception is on

  11. 10:46 pm: lets have dinner than we will meet the groom.

  12. 11:00 pm: meet the groom. (it was a muslim wedding so we had to wait to meet our bhabhi. They have this tradition that the bride and groom cant see each other till the marriage ceremony is officially over)

Day 3: Sunday

  1. 12:15 am: After 3 rounds of deserts and half pack of cigarettes we (including the groom) finally get to meet the bride.

  2. 12:30 am: wish the friend and wife happy marriage life and leave for gurgaon

  3. 01:15 am: reach my friend’s place to find him with another bottle.

  4. 02:30 am: Sleep.

  5. 07:00 am: wake and get ready

  6. 08:30 am: Reach the venue for IIFT entrance test

  7. 12:00 pm: finish the exam and head back to friends palace @ gurgaon

  8. 01:00 pm: call up another school friend and decide to meet her at metropolitan mall @ gurgaon

  9. 02:00 pm: meet this friend over lunch.

  10. 05:00 pm: back to my friend’s place and pack to leave for Bangalore.

  11. 08:10 pm: board the flight for Bangalore

Those who have read the above itinerary. give your self a pat on the back (for achieving this milestone) and kick on the ass (for wasting your time). I am sure your jobless self will some questions coming up. So here is a quick faq

  • Why there are no names in the whole of the post?

  • Do you really wish to know names like tom (not the cat/dog), dick (not the body part) and hairy (nothing related hairs other than the ones on the head).

  • Why are the airlines name missing?

  • Here is the airline name. For onward it was a jetlite (formally Sahara) flight i was booked in. which was later changed to jet connect. for return it was Air-India (formally Indian Airlines)

  • What was the main reason for going to Delhi?

  • To drink what else? Rest were just lies created round this truth. I had changed my IIFT exam center from Bangalore to Delhi

  • How was the trip?

  • Pleasing and left me wanting for more.

Till next time. Where i compare Jet Connect with Air India and pitch BIA (Bangalore International Airport) VS  IGIA (Indira Gandhi International Airport) Terminal 1A.

Hriday, Home and Klueless

The three things which made me stay away from this blog for so long. Just for the record Hriday is my new found love for last 6 Months. Go Fish!

I had a trip down the memory… errrr.. home lane. Its was the same old house, same old room, same old computer and the same old pram in which i used to sleep and now my Nephew Sleeps 🙂

Photo0144

Here are some more of his pics and his antics. Click on the images for original image.

Photo0181 Photo0143 Photo0146 Photo0147 Photo0159 Photo0163 Photo0173 Photo0174

This year it was again the time for the online game called Klueless. It was called as always Klueless 5. I was able to crack this year’s edition bit late due to the home visit. I hope that i get more time next year to solve much faster. More updates and Klues in the next Post