Back in a Studio Setting!

My hotel room in San Jose, California largely resembles the 180 sq feet room that I had rented out in Pali hill,during my stay in Bombay. It sometimes, is very comfortable having just your little space, where everything that you 'just' need can be accomadated. The only boring factor is that its a little lonely. There are people around from work, but having to forcefully get into an activity for not feeling lonely, is not a recipe for feeling good. I am better of being alone at home, doing my own stuff. Have a few books to read and am slowly using that as my comfort factor here. The internet and the telephone are obviously there to keep me connected to wife and family, but reading a book, somehow keeps me entertained.

Its so far been a dull couple of weeks. I have just been going to work, and back to the hotel. Havent explored the town around. Ideally I would have loved to explore the places around, but I thought it should be better once the workload stabilises. My to-do lists do run on for ever, but still there is a stable phase that should come soon, and that would mean, I can do my trips without the nagging feeling of work surreptiously interfering with my observation skills while exploring the country side.

The US is a pretty costly place, and here a lot of things look cheaper by the unit, when you buy in bulk. I am yet to cut costs by the cent! as I find it too laborious managing a bunch of things on my own. Its interesting for many reasons. I shall include a series on how the transport system is, how I manage my daily life here. Right now, its time to head back to work. Its 5 am in the morning, and I am just fresh out of a nice hot water bath. 44 Hours of my weekend remain to be claimed!

Relaxed Weekend!

This was the first long weekend, I was in Mumbai. Have been out on trips every long weekend this year. Since my company also works on alternate saturdays(I know its a yucky feeling! ), even the saturday holiday that I get is a mild long weekend.

Here are a few images from the weekend.

Saw the IPL jersey's at the Reebok store in Mulund. Liked the KKR and RCB shirts. But being a chennai'ite, I decided to go with the yellow Chennai jersey. Somewhere in the back of my mind, KKR and RCB had 'loser' written all over it, but I would buy the jersey, especially the RCB one in a while.

Saw a community newspaper shed in Mulund (East). People can come and read the newspapers like a library. This is for people living in LIC colony. Nice initiative!

A more clearer view of the community newspaper library.

Friday morning, I decided to go visit the health center in my apartment, which I forgot conveniently after paying the cheque a couple of months back.

Thats my apartment health center. There's a cardio and weights section as shown in the image to the left and right. Right above is a billiards and table tennis centre. Flanking on its side is the swimming pool, which is a 4 ft pool, where beginners like me can practise getting drowned with little failure.

Swimming with sun in between the buildings and a view of the Mumbai skyline is a lovely feeling. This was shot very early in the morning, before the sun god spews and spits his rays. With IPL on, I dont have to compete for spaces in the pool in the evening, and in the morning, the kids in the summer break dont want to get up at 6 am. Time to cash in on the lack of crowd!

I was sitting the garden, on the swings reading a book. The fresh smell of wet earth as the gardener was watering the grass was heavenly. I decided to de-addict myself from the IPL to look at other things in life that I have hardly observed in the last few months.

The Week That Was!

BOWLED HIM! NECK AND CROP!
Navneet and I decided to play cricket at Nirmal Lifestyle. He won in a 3 over match by beating me by 24 runs. This is one of those moments when the bowling machine castled him(or was it when he hit a boundary? ). I shall assume when it was bowled, as he beat me by 24 runs.

Kartik 24/2 in 3 overs
Navneet 48/1 in 3 overs

Navneet bored me by forcing me to watch "Australia" and slept within 20 minutes of the movie starting. I atleast was awake till the interval, but decided to call it quits after the interval.

My friend Prasanna, had come from Chicago on Sunday morning. He left Mumbai shaken and stirred by the crowds that throng the stations. This was taken in a retaurant in Mulund where we washed our stomachs with some sambhar and dosas. I had a long day by waking at 5 am, and picking him up at the airport and taking him through a tour of Mumbai.

I had taken him on a long walk in South Mumbai. Caught a few kids playing cricket near Cama Hospital. Incidentally the Mumbai marathon was also on at the same time.

My neighbour's house tag- I thought "Tapal Petti" was a tamil word, learned that its a hindi word also.

Long Time!

Its been quite a while since I shared my experiences on my blog. I've been travelling too much in the last 3 weeks and for the better part of the 3 weeks I had been without access to an internet connection. each of the weekends I was in Chennai. Oct 9-10th weekend was a marriage of a close friend from Sulekha.com(Jairaj), Oct 18-19 was the marriage of an engineering friend, classmate from Vel Tech-Sakthikumar. His marriage was in Chidambaram. Last week for about 5 days I was in Chennai, came back yesterday morning by Dadar express. I have totally burned about 15000 Rs in my 6 trips( 3up, 3 down)(3 flights, 3 trains) and am going to curtail travel for a while. 'Rainy days' are actually here, and its time to save some money. I shall compose a long post with pictures sometime tonight on how the last 3 weeks went.

In those three weeks, My Mumbai house has been neglected a lot. Have some clothes to wash, iron and segregate. House is in a complete mess. This weekend too, I will be occupied, but thankfully within Mumbai, but no let ups, time to make the house a home. Right now filling in drinking water in the tank, which has been thirsty for three weeks. Need to bathe and catch the 8 47 am Churchgate Local. Quite a task!

While I was driving from Chidambaram to Chennai along the ECR, I came across the new Great Lakes Campus that is being built near Mahabalipuram. The 09-10 batch would move to the new campus, which is slated to be partially open for our Grand Alumni bash in January 2009. If you want to have a brief peek, play the video below

The Week That Was

So one Thursday evening, after a tired day at work, a few of us decided to unwind at Hardrock cafe in Worli.
The place is very customer friendly and so it will be when you pay 314 rs for a starter :-). Somehow I havent yet woken up to the idea of running huge bills at overpriced restaurants in the name of night life, with a few songs in the background

But you see, the world isnt like Kartik Kannan, they enjoy their smoke,drinks and dance. Looks like a tradition here where people dance for this song called "Y M C A" where even the guys who serve you, shed their inhibitions and dance along with the crowd. My classmate from Great Lakes was also dancing on stage, with his Godrej Pals.

Navneet may be a one step wonder, but he does have the enthusiasm and guts to go dance in front of a 100 odd people at midnight, which few people have. His team of Management trainees from Godrej, seemed to have a blast. Navneet Ganapathy was my batchmate in Marketing at Great Lakes last year.


Thats another Godrej guy, called Arunachalam Swaminathan, who chose to avoid the night at Hardrock, and joined me for lunch and "Contract" on Saturday. Arunachalam, is an awesome dancer, and has a highly contrasting reticent image of going into a shell when he suddenly speaks of terms like transcdental meditation,Vivekananda and Ramana Maharishi. He is actually vacillating between both these worlds, and is largely a follower of old adages, as and when he gets bored. BTW Arunachalam was also my batchmate in Marketing at Great Lakes.

The rest of the week was spent watching Aamir and Mumbai Salsa. None of the movies actually caught my imagination. Pretty average movies. The whole of Sunday was spent sleeping and catching up on unpaid bills. So here's to a new week and new resolutions to keep the room clean.

Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na- My Review

Sometimes you feel good seeing a movie promo on television, and instant impulse makes you to quickly lock the house and run to the nearest theatre screening the movie, to catch a glimpse of what you tend to expect after the promo has lured you to the movie. I did that with ' De Taali' and enjoyed the movie, and yesterday with "Jaane Tu...." and I never could have come back more happier.

Aamir Khan's production house after a near flawless 'Taare Zameen Par', pulls out another instantly lovable movie,with a great script,cast and good direction. There is a certain innocence the movie exudes, and here is where the winner is. The movie is likable because of the way the characters are well etched out and by the time you've come out of the theatre, you dont care if the movie is a Hit/Flop, but you loved it as the movie makes you feel a part of the "gang" in the way they tell the story. There is no one character that dominates the movie, but each person's bit adds to the lovely story!. I loved the garnishing provided by the 'dead' Naseeruddin shah in the small cameo that he does, and another character that acually provides the "topping" for the movie would be Nirav Mehta, the guy who plays the Gujju.

The Movie has a feeling of realness and a -boy-girl-next door feeling, as its extensively shot in areas in Mumbai,very similar to the Tamil movie" Boys", (that was all aboout Chennai) and one could also say that due to the common thread being that Genelia D'souza who stars in both. She has got a better role in JTYJN. and her bubbly,effervescent character against the backdrop of the Bandra fort, makes a few of her scenes really memorable. A.R.Rehman, strikes a chord with the lovely music with each track being hummable. Its running in an infinite loop on my mobile music device and the last time such a feeling happened was during Swades, where the "Yuhin Chala Chal" track was going on and on and on............

Other Updates

'Via Darjeeling' was a nice concept in terms of making a movie, but the ending leaves you seethng at the director, thanks to the innumerable cliched bollywood endings that we love to expect!

Went for a office party at Dio's in Tardeo's and saw what Mumbai was at a night dance party. What did i do? Just sipping Cranberry flavour , and feeling that the lyrics of the song Pappu cant dance was aimed at me :-). Mumbai is upfront about its horny culture, and that's so much a relief from the hypocrite-filled-Chennai culture(but I still love Chennai! )

Had another reunion with GL mates last night at Infinity mall with Vipul,Arunachalam and Navneet. Call it Arunachalam's birthday treat. He was bent on taking us to a place that accepts Sodex Ho food passes, and we ended up having Rajasthani Thalis, and then gossipping in the mall.

Have some weekend office work, so will grudgingly open the office laptop, even as "Pappu cant dance saala, screams in my ears"

Back in action

I am feeling relatively better now, though the proper reason of headaches and recurrent fever, is not yet sorted out. Doctor says, too much strain, lack of excercise, eye power increase and improper bowel habits may be a reason, which to an extent is true, but I am not really sure whether that is the only reason for recurrent headaches. I still have not got an appintment with the neccesary doc, but I guess over the course of the next few days, things should be sorted out.

Started the weekend in a lovely fashion, went to a lovely "Tam brahm Maami food festival" in Mylapore at the Deccan Inn and came back at about 11 pm last night. Then watched American Pie 4 and "The Guru" till about 2 30 in the morning with a couple of close friends and zeroed in our respective lives and our goals... till about 4, after which each of us fell asleep and got up at 8 am. It was one heck of a night watching and laughing laudly at both the movies, which could be described as the -sex comedy- genre of movies. I actually watched a full movie after a long time...and boy it was like reliving college day gang movie watching with friends in the wee hours.

I do plan to put up some photographs of the food festival, by the weekend.