Thursday, November 22, 2007

And the winner is...

Ken Dod's Dad's Dog's Dead

Our team name at the wednesday quiz night. We won by 3 points and got a free pass for next week's quiz. The pub is not a great place but then the quiz-night makes it fun.

Got majorly intoxicated during and after the quiz. It's fun being out with 40 ppl from your company and then you actually see them in their real self.

After the quiz I managed to stumble towards the tube. I was at the Hampstead station for the first time and I took the stairs to get down to the platform. The staircase itself was a very narrow winding one and so I had to get down really slow to avoid tumbling down. After climbing down for almost 4 mins I realized that the stairs are not ending at all and thats when I had a brief panic attack. I could hear the tube going down below and at the same time I thought that I have taken a wrong staircase and this will lead me to one of those dark and smelly tunnels. Fortunately after 2-3 more mins, to my relief, reached the platform and got on the tube.

Today evening when I curiously googled about the "Hampstead tube station stairs", I got the following info on
Wikipedia.

The station platforms are the deepest London Underground station, at 58.5 metres or 192 feet below ground level, in the Guinness Book of Records, the 'deepest station in the world'. It has the deepest lift shaft on the Underground at 181 feet deep. The station is serviced by lifts and there is also a spiral emergency staircase, made up of 300 steps.

I want to go there once more and count the steps myself.

Maybe next weekend !!!

Thursday, November 15, 2007

I can smell it

Hickkkkk

You know what :)

After a surprising sober weekend, I am up for a nice turbulent and hazy weekend. Last week due to diwali and then a trip to some over-hyped castle, there was not enough(!) time to drink. I'll come up with the castle story later on.

Couple of friends were at my place last weekend and after a round of some vodka(I never said I did not drink) we decided to play Monopoly. As a kid I used to love this game, though I still owe millions(perhaps billions) to my opponents :D. We went to the nearest shop and bought a brand new electronic Monopoly. There is no banker in this game, instead we get 6 credit cards and one swiping machine. The machine has 2 slots in which you can swipe 2 cards and give or take money. Its fun. We played for almost 4 hours and as usual I ended up being the first one to go bankrupt. The credit card thingie is the best part. Its amazing how small small innovations can turn a slow game to a pretty fast paced game.

Yeah now the castle trip. We drove to Windsor Castle on saturday. Its supposed to be one of the best castles around. Its rubbish. No doubt, it's very well maintained and beautifully decorated. But thats it. I have seen much more bigger, royal and better forts and palaces in India and they're lovely. This one is a bit too commercialized. But overall the trip was good. Lovely drive and great food and then, ofcourse, the Monopoly.

Am meeting up with an old friend tomorrow. I haven't seen him for over 9 years now. Hopefully my work allows me to leave early.

The main topic at work was on why we do have 2 high and 2 low tides each day. The first one is easy to guess - because of the moon's gravitational pull. Am curious about the second. I read about it long time back but just cannot remember it. I know I can find the answer on google but then its not fun. I will think about it during the weekend and who knows with couple of beers down I can suddenly get the answer. Otherwise i'll search for it on Monday evening !!!

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

And am back..


After a fucking long time though...I dunno when my last post was !!!

Been busy, very busy. Naah, not joking. Moved to UK...the land of soccer.

Time flies...very fast. Took me a while to decide whether I should leave India or not. Believe me it takes a lot to leave the comfortable life I had in India to move to this cold and wet country.
Moved here in August. 3 months have gone by and I still miss India. I hope this continues so that my plan of coming back home materializes(have to move back within 5 years)

Hunted for a job during the initial 2 weeks. Yeah, I came here without any job. Have taken up a nice job in London(extreme north) and took up a place near the office.

Life here is strange. For one its very very slower than India. Everyone works, moves slowly. No concept of flexible timings(I miss this part the most). People are very pretentious. I guess they have this feeling of superiority for no goddamn reason.

Most of my time at home goes in cooking, cleaning and ironing. Weekends are definitely alcohol fuelled and last one was no exception. Had some very neat swiss vodka and loads of beer.

Am back in India for 10 days during xmas. Really really looking forward to that trip. In the meantime I promise to be regular here like before. Keep tuned for some more updates in couple of days.