Ever since I came to Bangalore, I ha e been suffering from wheezing. Also infected with cold. Cold aggravated wheezing. Today I couldn’t bear it and visited the hospital for medication.
Even after taking all of those medicines, I am still suffering from wheezing as I type this. Only in these incidence, I understand the truth in the saying – health is wealth.
Hope I am able to sleep well and wake up well for the new year.
There isn’t any big achievement this year. But I learnt quite a bit. Learnt to seal tough with the client when they cornered me.
Spent good time with family. We visited Bangalore, Coimbatore and of course India Gate. We also went out almost every week and ate out at least once a week.
Hopefully next year I will get something done.
We started at 5.45 in my BIL’s spacious new car. Though I offered to drive he drove the whole way – up & down. Driving itself was for about 10 hrs and he did it with ease.
We stopped for breakfast at Anand Bawan, a road side restaurant. The food was good and we started within 20 min. Within few min of driving, Piyo started vomiting and that was a matter of concern. We stopped briefly, cleaned him, and started again. He was dull until we reached the mount.
I light up two candles – one for our family & another for Joy’s. Piyo behaved well in the church. Then we left to BIL’s house. His mom took care of me well when I stayed in their house for more than 3 months. So I make it a practice to visit her whenever I’m in town. This time I had a doubt if Piyo would be comfortable there. He was. Much more. He played; he laughed; he was not a crying baby. I felt happy and blessed.
Then we drove back. Full packed day and a satisfying day.
One of the primary objective of our trip this time was the trip to St Thomas Mount. Over the years I have grown fond of this place.
Flash back : My life was in shambles in 2003. I had just returned from Belgium and I couldn’t digest that it happened so unexpected; then had other personal issues. I started to visit the mount almost on a daily basis; most of the time just sitting there and weeping. The rational side of my brain questioned (sometime ridiculed) all of these efforts; but sitting there gave me peace & strength to continue.
Slowly situation started to improve. I got a car; switched job. I continued to visit the mount without much requests. Even when I shifted to Bangalore I visited few times. Then when I left to Delhi, we visited as a family. I had a stable consultancy engagement. Importantly had a son. If anyone would have told any of these in 2003, I wouldn’t have believed. Now I’m visiting after 2 years to say thanks. I also paid a visit in April this year with a specific request after a family mishap. That also successfuly resolved in this year itself. So there is a lot to be thankful of.
(BIL is driving so that’s another thing to be thankful about)
So far it has been ‘un-experienced so far’ holidays.
The confusion started on 23rd, the day we had to start for Bangalore on Christmas holidays. It started with shift in metro stops, which led to some confusion but I igored or rather it didn’t even register since I was too excited about the travel.
Then when I booked cab for pickup there was a confusion as well. I use Meru Cabs, which has been giving an excellent service. Previously when I used their service, I had to book only about 5 hours early. They won’t book prior. But now when I called at 3 pm for a 5.30 pm pickup they said there is a convienience charges since it is less than 24 hrs. They had changed their business model to lynching customers. Btw, they said, there is an increase in the per km charges too. Again I ignored it.
Then I got the message that our flight is delayed by half hour. That has happened before and expected in India.
I left office at 3 and didn’t expect much crowd in metro. But there was huge crowd owing to the shifts in stops. It was madness. I treated it as another irritant.
Another round of confusion ensued at home. Rani had assumed we will be leaving late since the flight was postponed (I had it is better to spend hours in airport than stuck in traffic which happened last time). So we had to rush.
As we rushed to the airport we were informed that our flight is delayed by an hour!
None of the above events disturbed me. Having done my share of travel, I knew these were common, though doesn’t happen all at once.
Then came the call which I didn’t anticipate. The flat owner called and said I have to vacate the house by mid Jan. Even after two days I’m still not able to digest that. Why that and why on that day? So I have my hands full when I go back.
Here in Bangore, I got wheezing so I couldn’t do as many things that I liked to do – especially photography.
But in all of these the good thing is that Piyo adapted well this time in Joy’s house unlike last time.
Oh I got to drink a fine 5 year old German wine which Joy brought few years back.
Recently I did an interview of Stever Robbins who wrote a Get It Done guy book. They launched their Marketing Video today. My blog appears in that video for a second. You can see it in this link at 1.33 min:
http://www.steverrobbins.com/blog/2010/12/book-launch-social-media-video/
Tomorrow PM will be inaugurating India Corporate Week’2010. Today I attended the rehearsal of the event where the 32 minutes was played out thrice.
The secy is a egoistic person (he wanted his wife – a no govt person to sit with him on the stage, which was of course rejected by the PMO) and he continued to change speech and announcements to pamper his ego unashamedly.
We planned to leave at 2 and reach India Gate at about 3. Then we’ll spend 2 hours there and then will return. The planning reveals that I have forgotten the first rule of travel – double the time.
We could start only at 2.30; the taxi came only at that time. We reached within an hour. Piyo started sleeping as we were approaching India Gate. I was telling Rani that we may not be able to carry Piyo and enjoy roaming around. So we may have to leave early. How little I know of kids? Soon after we started walking and as soon as Piyo heard the noise of the crowd he woke up and wanted to walk. We bought a ‘punchu mittai’ (no points even if you guessed correctly who demanded it). We were engrossed with how Piyo was walking around that we completely forgot that Air Force band was playing there; and there was ‘amar joyti’. We were only enjoying Piyo walking around.
Then we started walking on the Raj Path towards Presidential Palace. The lawns were well cut and maintained (can’t discount the fact that Republic day is just a month away and so these lawns may have gotten a face lift). We spent a lot of time playing in the lawns at the far end of Raj Path since there was absolutely no crowd (we were as if it was our back yard). You could see the video and see how much Piyo enjoyed too. By then we realized we crossed the 4 hour timelimit. So we called the driver and increased to 8 hours. After dusk, we wanted to go to ‘Saravana Bawan’ fir dinner, but it was so crowded so we went into McDonalds near-by. As like in KFC, Pito enjoed the food – especially finger chips. We returned home at about 8.30.
If you are still wondering, if we will take future trips, how can I answer that?