Jetlagged Swatch

Watches do get Jetlagged... who said NO! I can prove it, and that too for 2 months or so. How?? Read along..

So in Feb 07 I reached San Jose. Keeping track of the time zones I'd pass, I would update my Swatch accordingly. When I reached the US, I turned the shiny hands for the last time (...or was it not the last). Well I had to adjust the date too. So all set, I left the watch aside and went to sleep.

Next day (well not for the watch) I saw the day it displayed was the day before's, so I began to wind the date wheel to the current date. Ok, what next? In the afternoon, it would take off to the next day? Ohh no, my Swatch's screwed. Alright I can do that again, I adjusted the date wheel back to today.

Ok, this went on for almost 2 months. I stayed awake till 12 at times to adjust the date ticker, but the 12 hours difference was not readily accepted by the watch and it would just skip 12 hours and display the next day. Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh I don't wanna repair it here :( It will cost me a bomb.

Tired of doing this everyday, one day I asked Tippul if he knew of any Swatch repair shop around, or for that matter anyone who could fix the problem. The guy stared at me and gave me a blast of laughter. "Dumbo", said he, "turn the hours hand 12 hours ahead and you're all set".

Wassup!?

It’s been almost 7 months since I last posted. The single reason being, I’ve been running along with the ticking time. And finally today, when I have absolute 2 full hours to myself, I thought of covering the glimpses of this period of time here.

My year started off with the return back from an awesome trip to Malvan with the most loved people, my family. Just had a thought when I was driving back, which literally came into action a month later. I told myself, well the start of the year went in traveling, maybe I’ll travel a lot this year. Just that happened, and by early February, I was in California :)

My first two months here went in finding time for myself. It was my first time onsite on a client project, a project where I was assumed “expert”. Knowing new people here, getting along with the team, taking offshore calls, endless late night discussions, production server restarts went on-n-on. Sometimes, I would get 5 minutes for myself and ask “Am I enjoying this? Or is it the idea of being onsite that’s keeping me on?” But it felt good. Good to see me busy and have grilling work after a long long time. On the lighter side, I made trips with my close friends to San Diego, Vegas and Los Angeles. Met some of my best friends here after a long time. Also bought a Yamaha keyboard, just for those moments when my fingers would tremble to hear the sweet piano sound and play some tunes which I learnt in the last couple of months.

In my 2BR/1BA apartment, I would squeeze in some time in the evenings and grab the California Drivers Handbook and read it during my rest(room)time :) It took a couple of sessions to complete reading it and immediately gave the written test. Within a week’s time, rented a car, drove a little in the city, got boosted, took a driving class, gave my driving test, gave the test again and got my license.

Getting the Driver’s License gave me a feeling of freedom, so much, that in the first couple of days, it would be irresistible not to show my license to anyone. It felt great to drive on perfectly smooth and marked roads and more than that to follow the rules. In the following weekends, took full advantage of this and drove to San Francisco, Sausalito, Muir Woods etc etc all the way to Point Reyes, some 100 odd miles North of San Jose.

These days I’ve been more relaxed than before. Try to get back home from work by 6, swim in the evenings and try my hands in cooking. Feels good to get back to 'you'.

To all my dearest people, I keep thinking of each one of you and miss you all!

Malvan… A trip into the New Year

Yup, it’s a little weird considering everyone drives to Pune or Mumbai during this time of the year to blow cash on the most ridiculous parties. And I decided to go to Konkan with my family. Why? Hmm… no dance partner for New Years, as simple :) So decided to go to Malvan, which is famous for its Sea Food (major point of attraction for me), its distinct spices and the Tarkarli Beach, which was around Malvan. Also because all the places in Konkan I knew were already booked and packed. The drive was going to be long, almost 400kms from Pune. We reached the small town after almost 10 and half hours drive.

Malvan… the land of ‘not so virgin’ beaches, narrow roads and gay dogs :)) I had already spoken to Mahesh from Dariya Sarang Resort (I got the number from here). We were to be put up at someone’s house which Mahesh had helped us in getting the contact. This was after loads of searches on the internet. It was very surprising that a place like Malvan does not have a lot of web presence. Anyways, so as soon as we entered this small town, we were hit by traffic jams. No, not because of heavy traffic, but because someone had parked a car on the road :P

The apartment

The apartment was a nice one and the best thing about it was it was barely 20 meters away from the water that flowed from the sea into the land. It was low tide then, so the exposed land was seen, which caught my eye and started off shooting the pictures. We first hit the Malvan Beach that evening to have a quick bite and then explore the beach. The beach has nothing much to be boasted about since it is a fishing center with many fishing boats to be seen. The good thing was, even though it’s a little busy, one could enjoy the crisp sunset there, gazing at the gorgeous Sindhudurg Fort, built in the sea some 100 meters away from the shore.

The view from our room

We had a quick bite at Hotel Sagar Kinara (located right at the Malvan Beach) and we moved to the Chivla Beach (North) from here. At Chivla, the locals were celebrating the Koast Fest (an annual festival of the locals). I was expecting a lot of activities here, but it was more of a “stalls that sell local spices and stalls food” place. We bought a pack of dry Kokum here. The major attraction here was Santa made of sand. It was really well crafted by 2 of the locals there. We sat there for sometime waiting for the sun to go down. Ganesh Visarjan was going to happed there, which I learnt was done every year at this time too. We didn’t wait that to happen, since the folks were waiting for some VIP to arrive. We moved from there since there was nothing much to do here.

The Sand model - Santa

It was around 7:30 and we didn’t want to go back home. So I drove towards Tarkarli (which was on the to-visit list for the next day) and looked around for a nice place to eat. We stopped at a place called Chintamani opposite to MTDC resorts, after trying to barge into some other hotel, who very conveniently said “NO FOOD” to me, since we didn’t stay there. Chintamani served “home-cooked” food. No fancy stuff, just a nice Maharashtrian lady preparing food for people staying there and now for us too. Xerxes and I took full advantage of this and hogged a lot. We had 2 portions each of Prawn Curry and Fish Curry with Rice and some ‘n’ hot chapattis with a glass of Kokum Juice. And our entire bill came to some 300 odd bucks including a bottle of beer. After the hearty feast, we drove back to Malvan to hit the sack and to end my long day’s tiredness. By now, all I could see with my eyes shut was prawns, more prawns and the highway :)

Day 2 coming up in my next post…

My Best Friends Wedding!!

Last week was one of the busiest weeks of my life, with literally no time to breathe. Yes, that’s coz my best friend Vishal was getting married to a beautiful and an adorable girl Shivani. And I was the “Best-Man” for the event (…ahem!!), which meant doing loads of shopping for me too. I was to attend the Sangeet ceremony apart from the wedding and the reception, each of them were on separate days. Thanks to my friend Risha, I could get things done as quickly as possible. From my suit trial, to buying traditional dress for the sangeet to buying Mojris and shoes, we did it all within 4 hours (which also saved me from paying an additional 5 bucks to the Pay’n’Park guy! :) )

Their wedding was my first complete hindu wedding I attended right from the Baraat to the Vidaai. The wedding took place at Sun n Sand, Pune on the 14th of Dec, 2006. I was to reach Vishal’s place at 4PM so that I could get some of his relatives to the venue. The baraat started just a block away from Sun n Sand (opposite the new Connaught Place structure). This would also be the first time I would actually be dancing on the roads in a baraat! Knowing my dancing skills I was a little tensed to start off. But seeing all the people around me dance and Raju with full enthu, I started moving my feet and this went on till the entrance of the venue where the bride’s father was waiting to receive the baraat. He joined us in dancing a little with each one of us and then with the groom. It’s a tradition for the groom to dance with the father-in-law.

As we entered the main entrance, the bride’s mother was waiting there with a thali. Here, the mother is supposed to pinch the nose of the groom and the groom’s side men have to avoid this from happening (by hiding the nose from being pulled). Raju did a good job here by being smart and prompt in avoiding the pinch and also smartly handling the distractions from the pujari :) Our groom’s eyes were filled with pleasure as the bride walked down the aisle towards him. We all walked down along the aisle following them and reached the mandap.

Our job started here. We were supposed to take care of the groom’s mojris, before the bride’s side (her sister and gang of cousins, 30 of them in total!!) could steal them and hide them. Before we could even get hold of the shoe, the bride’s side did a phenomenal job of snatching the shoe off (read as ripping us apart :) ) and running away with the shoes. Well as put by Raju in his words, they flicked the shoes in a record time of less than 20 secs. Soon, the actual wedding ceremony started. I didn’t know much of this apart from the Saat-pheres around the fire. The ceremony took close to 1 ½ hours.

After the ceremony got over, the bride’s side demanded for Rs. 30,000/- in return for the shoes. I tried my tricks on small kids bribing them with XBOX and Playstation 2 in return of letting me know where they hid the shoes. Naaah !! Didn’t work, kids these days are smarter :D The negotiations were on and they decreased the rate to Rs. 21,000/- This went on for sometime, when finally the settlement was done with the sis-in-law Shweta, who finally accepted to take the envelope with some unknown amount of cash in it, in return for the shoes. This also means that Mr. Vishal is going to get back to Raju and me for being unsuccessful in our task :)

For the next 2-3 hours, it was photo sessions, relatives and guests meeting the couple on the stage, people enjoying delicious Punjabi Veg food. Raju and I were standing by the stage in turns to collect the gifts and money-filled envelopes in bags.

The couple was to spend their night in one of the rooms in the hotel. And that was a little too much for some of us to digest :) So I teamed up with Vishal’s sister, Neha and we struck up a plan to stay all night in their room. First we went to the bakery and picked up assorted pastries for the couple, packed them and then kept it in their room later. I had talks with Vishal’s cousin Ketan to get some more ideas to trouble the two. We planned to stay overnight there in their room and call for room-service all the while. I was pretty excited about the idea :)

We all had dinner together with the couple and close family members. We were served some nice salads, great Punjabi food and the best of all, 3 desserts. I feasted on the sweets as usual not caring of the cal intake :P

The last ceremony was the Vidaai, where the bride’s parents hand over the bride to the groom. Its a little senti moment with mixed tears of happiness and joy in the bride’s eyes and her close ones. After meeting everyone, the couple sat in the car and her brothers pushed the car a little as a part of the tradition. We all left the place and few of us headed to Vishal’s house where the Griha Pravesh puja was to take place on the event of the bride entering the new home. The puja went on for almost 30-45 minutes and I was almost dead by now. With scary red eyes I waited for the puja to get over and them to get ready to leave for the hotel. We waited almost 30 minutes after the puja for them. By then 2 of his cousins (the ones who were going to accompany us all night, staying in their room) left and I was way to tired to stay back too :( We left the couple in peace and I drove back home after they left to hit the sack.

I wish both of them a very very Happy married life together!