Showing posts with label Travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Travel. Show all posts

Monday, May 04, 2009

Back Again

Back. Yes finally am back to blogosphere exactly after one year. Honestly these 365 days have been one big roller coaster ride for me. I am doing okay. Though not everything is all right but what the heck, I can’t get everything I cant, right? Well, I travelled a lot. From June to Sept last year spent time travelling all over India. In October relocated to Paris from Bangalore. Joined Ogilvy. Set up my apartment in October (setting up apartment in Paris – another story for another day). Started discovering Paris and France the next two months (too many things to write, maybe another day – don’t want to bother myself and you with all the details on the first day). Spend a lovely Christmas in the Alps. And finally the New Year arrived. Things started falling apart (don’t ask me what) and I kept fixing them.

From Jan till now, I spent some time traveling to Italy, Switzerland and but mostly working mercilessly. Enrolled myself for French lessons. Made new friends. Lost some of them. Discovering new places in Paris, which are not mentioned in the Lonely Planet. Still in the process of discovering the museums, the monuments, the lovely evening walks in the boulevards, the wine, the cheese, the books, the music, the street music, the metro, the cafĂ©, bars and restaurant, the language, the french people, the french food, their culture, their sub-culture, the youth, the old, the middle class, the rich, the homeless, their society, their fashion, their lives, their behaviour, their complaining attitude towards everything, the endless debates on anything, their raising of voice to prove a point or being heard at a conversation during lunch or dinner, their pseudo-intellectualism, their arrogance, their criticism and raison d’accepter, their sweetness, their politeness and impoliteness, their apathy towards Sarkozy and govt…, the endless delay in handling paperwork in all Govt. dept, the late arrivals to feel important… I am observing and learning. Yes I do love this city, do love the people but haven’t exactly made Paris my home yet. And I miss my dog.
Have plans to visit Spain, Portugal (in the west) and Germany, Austria, Netherlands and Poland in the east… So I might take off again very soon. Depends on how much money I’ve in my pocket too. Always a poor planner, you see.
Yes, I could have done one of those ‘My Life in Paris’ blogs… with pictures and all in the last 6 months. I was accused of becoming a ‘Digital Recluse’ by Charles. He kept asking me what am I doing and when am I coming back? Rob kept in touch sending me mails once in a while asking how am I doing and if everything was alright… But I haven’t forgotten anyone. All this time I have kept myself updated on what happening in other blogs. Discreetly though. So I guess it’s not that bad being away. Kinda gives you a feeling of starting things all over again, afresh. Having said that I think this webpage needs a facelift - don’t you think so???

Alors. So here I am back again. Have some plans about my life, my career, my future and ofcourse this blog. You know mostly boring things which make no difference to anyone’s life… things like what I want to do next? What are the things I really care about? What are new things I am learning? What are new things I am doing?

Well, enough about myself. How have you guys been? Well, do anyone read this blog any more? I guess not. Anyways, do write back and let me know, how things are going at your end. Let’s begin a new journey together from today.

Cheers.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Coffee, Plantation and Walk in the Wilderness

Coffee Flowers
We (myself, Lucille and her mom) went to Madikere, a visit to one of our client's coffee plantation in Coorg to be precise. For me it was working in pleasure, for them it was holidays. And what a three lovely day it was. When your client deals with coffee, it's always better to see and know where and how the coffee beans come from. How is planted, sorted, handed picked, roasted and the whole gamut of it. Enriching - yes, indeed.

We spent the last three days walking through different plantations, wild jungle trails, songs of birds, running behind butterflies, getting drenched in heavy rain and identifying different spices, flora and fauna. In the end, the whole experience was much more than enjoying a hot cuppa. The aromas and after taste gave me answers to so many questions I had in my mind. Clients give you a brief but the way you interpret the problem makes a whole lot of difference. And I just couldn't help but make this trip to understand his problem better. Well, cannot give you more details of what we've come up with but be rest assured, it's kickass.

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Traveling Caravan

Finally, I could take out little time for myself last weekend. So I went to Mysore with a friend of mine on my beyond-repair bike. And I covered the 130 kms in just an hour and 27 minutes. Whoooo. A great feat given my bike is in bad shape.

We had loads of fun. Managed to click tons of picture, check out my flickr for all the fun we had. Next weekend we might (still on papers, ha) head towards Pondicherry - the french colony but this time on the TRIP bike.

Friday, June 08, 2007

Half Cup Please

Period.
At a Coffee Cafe in Indore. Drink Coffee, become intelligent, improve understanding, do more crapy work. ;-) Cheers.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Outdoor in Indore

I am at Indore, a 25 Lac+ town in India's heartland and a real experience. No sign of small town sensibilities here. Buzzing malls, speeding two-wheelers, mithai shops at every corner, pan shops under every tree and beautiful, nice people all around. Mishraji, my cab driver showed me IIM on my way to Sivaji International Hotel from the airport. He's proud of IIM, though he didn't know what makes IIM so special. but he does know about the kind of visitors and guests who comes there quiet often. He drives them around and sometimes overhears the "Talks."

Sivaji International Hotel is the biggest hotel in town. Comes as surprise when you see a huge 10 storey building with 300 rooms standing in-front of you. I was escorted straight to a Coffee Bar called, "Beat the Heat." Decked up in Hawaiian costumes, the waiters were friendly and the cuisine was Mediterranean. I couldn't resist myself from gorging the lasange, cottage cheese salad and grilled chicken breast in red wine sauce. Well, that when the Croc Bread caught my eyes.
A quick meeting with few people at 10.30 pm. A de-brief about tomorrow's meeting with the big bosses of the client. After that I was taken to my room on the third floor. A huge room with a mini bar. I took a hot bath. Bliss I must say after a long air journey of 4 hours late in the evening. Time to crash. Tomorrow is the presentation. To be honest, I haven't written a slide of it and I've no clue what I am going to say. I know I'll dream of something good, which I then need to powerpoint early in the morning.

See you soon. Hope things will be fine tomorrow. Good Night.