But lets go back to the day I came to Bangalore. I was all prepared to say goodbye to my home as it was the first time I was going away for so long. Nobody knew how long but I had an intuition that it wouldn’t be a short trip. But there was something else in store for me. When I woke up that day, I felt that my face was a little too stiff and it hurt when I touched it but it was ignored because there were more important things to do.

I boarded my flight in the afternoon and when I saw myself later in the wash room mirror of the plane, I realized that most part of my nose and nearby parts of my right cheek had hardened and turned red. As my flight kept flying, landing and taking off (It was a Lucknow-Delhi-Hyderabad-Bangalore flight) and time kept on passing, it kept getting worse. Finally, after arriving in Bangalore in the evening, it had turned into a big blister.

My sister and bro-in-law were at the airport to receive me. They took me to see the doctor as soon as we got home. It tuned out to have been caused by a Blister beetle. It might have attacked me while I packed my stuff the night before. I didn’t go out of the house much in the next few days because I didn’t want all the people to see me for the first time with a huge pussy blister on my face. Ah! it was terrible but it does make for a great story!

Unfortunately, the rain gods weren’t too happy with my plans. And as has happened on countless other occasions, it started drizzling as soon as I got out of my apartment. By the time I reached MG Road, the rain got worse and in the 2 minutes that it took me to find a parking space and get to a safe place which could shade me from the rain, I was completely drenched. I spent the next 15 minutes inside an ATM waiting for the rain to let up but when it showed no sign of weakening, I decided to do something drastic. Now, I am generally really cranky in such situations but I felt like a really fun guy for the rest of the evening. Since I was already totally wet and dripping, I got out of the ATM and started walking towards the bookstore in the rain. I was walking swiftly but slowed down from time to time to look at the people who were standing at the entrance of shops to save themselves from the rain and give them the look – “Hey sissies! Look at me! I’m not afraid of the rain!”. Yeah, I can be a real jerk at times! Although, some people did look at me with a hint of admiration in their eyes. Or so I imagined.

Anyways, I soon spotted a Bombay Dyeing showroom and an idea popped into my mind. I went in, with a trail of water following me, and asked for a towel. Now whats interesting is that the shopkeeper and I spent the new few minutes figuring out which size and color was right for me even though there was a huge puddle of water that had dripped from my clothes around me. I decided upon a dark blue, medium sized towel and bought it. When he tried to put the towel in a bag, I asked him if I could use the towel instead. He smiled and said yes. And then I happily dried my head, face and arms (all the parts accessible without taking off my clothes) and then I put it in the bag and proceeded to the bookstore. I quickly got the book I wanted but spent the next 20 minutes or so to look for a book I could gift a friend. My clothes were still wet and stuck to me. When I came out of the store, it was still raining but it wasn’t as bad. The temperature had dropped by a couple of degrees though and wearing wet clothes didn’t help much. So I thought of going to the nearby Barista on Church Street. As I was walking towards it, a girl who was walking behind me on the sidewalk took to the road instead and suddenly started tip-toeing. In the middle of the road!!?? (I wonder if the new Shoppers’ Stop ad inspired her to do so) I couldn’t help but smile. Some other people were also looking at her but she didn’t seem to care. And then she stopped and started walking normally again.

I was still trying to make sense of what had just happened when there was a huge blast-like sound and bright lights emerged on my right. I turned back a little and it was the the electrical meter of a building that was giving out huge sparks. I tried to keep walking but others came running towards me and one guy kept his hand on my shoulder(??) for support, I guess. He was still looking at the meter and after a second or so, he went back where he came from cos the sparks had stopped. He never even cared to look at the guy he had been holding for support. I was laughing and then I saw that the tip-toe girl had also stopped because of the whole ruckus and she was also smiling.

I started walking again. It was still raining and I was still wet. Only now, I felt like I was in a Seinfeld episode. The rest of the evening was uneventful. I spent a total of three and a half in my wet clothes before I finally reached home and got out of them. Phew!

The first picture is of a shop on Whitefield Road that I pass everyday on my way to work and back. It was first noticed by a friend who shared it with me and its been the reason for many laughs for the two of us since then. But I felt something like this should be shared with the whole world so here it is in all its glory:

Notice how there’s no space between U and S which makes me believe that the apostrophe was just an afterthought. Now you know where not to go for all your refractory needs!

The second picture was taken by me just before the sunset last Monday from the terrace of my new apartment. Everything was just perfect and I was lucky enough to capture the sunlight piercing through the clouds:

The picture made one of my friends a little envious cos he’d been trying to get such a shot for some time now. I think its beautiful! The sunset can be seen here.

What this move also means is that I don’t take the shuttle to work anymore. Though I won’t miss the venom-spewing buses, I will miss all my friends on the shuttle, some of who always listened to my long stories and rants about the smallest of things early in the morning! I will also miss some unusual and funny characters on the shuttle including ‘Loudy & The Kingfisher’, Jesus Man, Laptop Killer, The Twins and Toad (nicknames courtesy me and a friend).

I accepted this move as a challenge. I have never lived in a hostel or with roommates and I felt that this was the last opportunity for such an experience. So I’ve made the move and things have been good so far. I just hope it doesn’t turn out to be a mistake. Wish me luck!

• On my first day to work after coming back, my cell phone’s alarm stuck to following the German time zone (even though I had changed the time zone) and went off at 9:00 am which meant I had to go through a harrowing experience of getting from the centre of the city to Whitefield during the peak traffic hour.
• Last Sunday, Sonia Gandhi decided to visit Bangalore and since her rally took place near my home, the traffic situation was horrible. No, not everyday-Bangalore horrible, this was at a totally new level. I’ve never really liked her but now, I hate her. It now seems like Congress might be fined for all the posters they put up all over the city. But don’t we all know that its not really going to happen.
• It’s good to be back home and watch Indian television after a month. I missed it. Last Sunday. I turned on the TV and saw the headline “Salman ke ghar Ganesh” (Ganesh in Salman’s home) and it felt so familiar and good.

Edit: I posted the pic of my dirty shoes I talked about in the last post on the request of two people but then decided to just give a link to that pic on flickr. Go watch it there and if you find it gross, don’t complain.

Anyhow, here are some of the pictures I have taken with my new digicam.

Some small different colored flowers in the office campus.

Some plants in the office campus.

A giant cloud as seen from the office terrace.

Hope you like them. You can see these and few other new pics on my flickr page as always.

Note: I do not plan to turn this blog into a photoblog so I won’t be posting pictures here unless there’s some special reason. You can always find all my pics on flickr.

As one might have noticed, I didn’t write a post in the last 10 days or so and since it’s important that I blame someone, I would like to place the entire blame on some people in my blog neighborhood who also happen to be my blog’s loyal readers (at least three of them) for not reading my blog and commenting on the posts in the past couple of weeks. The only consolation is that they are genuinely busy which can be proved from the fact they’ve not been updating their blogs. So it’s not like they are just ignoring my blog.

Last Saturday, amidst all the rain and the accompanying madness, I bought a new digicam. It’s a Canon Powershot S2 IS. It’s absolutely fabulous. What this means is that you’ll soon get to see lots of pictures on this blog. None today though cos I haven’t taken any worthwhile pictures yet except for a pretty neat picture of my dirty rain-soaked shoes.

But in just one week, my life has changed a lot.

My old office was quite centrally located on Infantry Road which is just 4 km from my home and one could easily walk to Cunningham Road, Commercial Street and MG Road from there. My new office is in Whitefield, completely outside the city. There is nowhere to go from there. There are big office campuses there and nothing else.

Also, since my home is far from my office, I need to take the office shuttle. The shuttle comes to my stop at 7.15 am in the morning which means I have to get up at 5.30 am. Tragic! I even had to run half the distance yesterday (I woke up late) with people on the road looking at me all funny.

Anyhow, the first day I went to catch the office shuttle, I saw something completely new. A world I never knew existed. There were only buses and cabs belonging to software companies on the road apart from a few private vehicles. And there were atleast 20 people waiting for their respective buses/cabs. It was surprising.

I’ve almost got used to the new routine and all the commuting somehow makes me feel more like a part of Bangalore’s IT brigade.

Update: Forgot to add a funny incident. One evening I was sitting in the bus as were 4-5 other people. The driver came in and held up a book which said, “Know Your Limits”. Within a second, it was clear that he had found it in the bus and wanted to return it to the owner but I wondered how funny it would have been if he had actually bought it and wanted everyone to read it and then stay within their limits. Maybe its one of those things where you have to be there for it to be funny bcos it was really funny and I couldn’t control my laughter, which I finally had to bcos there were other people there (who I don’t speak to) and they would have assumed that I’m nuts.

I got relieved from my first company on Tuesday and joined the new one on Wednesday which was great because I didn’t take a single day’s break. But my first day in my new company was shortened because a huge (not in size!) film star had died. Coincidentally, my first day at the new job also turned out to be the first day I saw burning tires in the middle of the road. Exciting!

I got a long 4-day holiday and was able to eat lunch on Thursday only because an Army-run supermarket in my neighborhood was open.

I don’t know what to say about the shameless things that happened in the city. I am just mad at the police for not firing on the low-lives. I mean they lost a constable and only 5 morons died! This is so unfair. They had a tremendous opportunity. The scum of Bangalore was gathered together in front of them, which happens rarely, and the police could have easily wiped them out. The death toll could have easily been 5000 and I would have been a happy man.

Coming back to the job change, people in my (now previous) company were very helpful and I felt really bad about leaving the job. I felt equally sad about saying goodbye to my office PC. I did transfer my personal files to pen drives before leaving though.

In other news, I made my first “real” trip to a bank this week. It was a nice experience. ICICI bank is far better than I expected it to be.

I haven’t been able to read blogs but I’ll try to catch up on all of them now.

I’ve noticed that it’s not just me whose post frequency has gone down but a lot of other bloggers I know have slowed down as well. I’d like to believe that it’s because of me. (Cue for people to say, “Yes, I miss your posts so much that I can’t get myself to write anything!)

That I haven’t written too many posts is no reason to believe that there’s nothing interesting happening in my life.

Just last weekend, I was looking for a particular “Main” and “Cross” in the godforsaken place called HSR Layout. And yes, it’s called so because nobody in the department, which names areas, was smart enough to come up with something better than Hosur-Sarjapur Road Layout.

In any case, I saw an aged man sitting outside his huge mansion and I assumed that he might know about this place but he only spoke Telugu or so he said. He directed me towards his neighbor’s daughter (or maybe granddaughter) who was playing with a football. She must have been 9-10 yrs old. So I thought to myself, “What does she know? She’s a kid!”

But I didn’t want to insult the old man so I went ahead and asked her the address. And guess what she said! “I don’t know. I’m just a kid!” It’s difficult to believe, right? She had the exact same thoughts as me. I smiled and said, “Its okay. I’ll ask someone else.” and got out of there.

In blog news, something huge happened on 11th March when somebody (from IIIT, Allahabad, according to Statcounter) wrote the longest comment on this blog and then few minutes later topped it up with a far bigger comment. Sure, most of it has been copy-pasted but so what? I would like to encourage others to write such long comments too in the future.