Back!

Well... I'm back! ... after a brief hiatus of three days during which I did not blog, I'm back!

So, what did I do in these three days?! ... Hmmm! ... I had been to Oxford... of the East!! ... a.k.a. Punyanagari ... a.k.a. Pune!

I took the day off on Friday and drove down to Pune (with my parents) taking the fantastic expressway. In just under two and half hours after leaving our doorstep in Mumbai, I was opening the lock to the door of our house in Pune... (I can never overstress the joy of driving along the expressway, especially after the slow-as-a-snail drives on Mumbai roads!).

My main aim while in Pune was to get a few things done at the new house there. The walls needed some painting and the floor needed polishing. But, as it turned out eventually, only the paint job could be completed while the guy who was supposed to do the floor polishing never turned up even once during the three days I was there! :-/

Most of the day on Friday was hectic, which saw me running around trying to get the painters to start the paint job. These painters were one lazy breed of workers. They did some work for 15-20 minutes and followed it up with an hour of break followed by another brief spell of work. This weird work cycle seemed strange to me at first since I could not understand the logic behind it. After a couple of questions I learnt that these poor guys had been hired to work in night shift at a neighbouring construction site where they painted all night. So it was but natural for them to be exhausted during the day for the want of sleep. But they had no reason to slack for nearly 5 hours out of the 8 hour day-shift they worked on. Totally inexcusable! Common sense and sympathy prevented me from hollering at them. But when they stopped painting an iron railing halfway through the job, because it was 5:30 PM (end of shift!), I blew my top and gave them an earful... a very loud earful!! Needless to say... the railing was painted without any further cribbing from those painters! ... (it was a case of... "Beware the fury of a patient man!") *LOL*

Saturday was a waste! ... the entire day was spent in watching the painters paint the walls... followed by waching the paint dry! Have you ever watched paint dry?? ... Try it once... there's hardly any activity more wholesomely fruitless and inane than that!! ... but its good time pass! ;) ... I have to warn you that the smell of the paint might give a kick to some people. Its alright if you are interested in sniffing things to get your kicks but for the less-than-exciting personalities like mine... the smell is revolting... especially after being forced to sniff it all day long!

Sunday dawned and brought with it a slight bite in the air... something that had been missing before. The view from our balcony is panoramic. In the distance, from the left, the Bombay-Bangalore highway enters into the field of vision and continues along the base of the hill until the hill is no more. Then the highway curves gently to the right, hugging the hill till it passes out of view, behind it. A little further to the right, a serene Pashan lake breaks the monotony of landscape as a dense, luxuriant growth of trees defies the heat to provide a verdant relief to the eyes scanning the brown, scraggy landscape...(The lake looks especially wonderful at night as the interplay caused by the moonlight and the gentle nightly breeze cause silver shimmers on its surface. The mornings however are an entirely different thing to behold as thick layers of mist cling to the surface of the lake giving it an appearance of a vast snow covered plain!)

Coming back to where I left of... Sunday dawned with an air of anticipation. I was gonna meet people. Some of them after a gap of 3-4 years, while others for the first time. After a quick breakfast I left the house to meet two of my college friends whom I hadn't met for the better part of three years after graduation! It was wonderful to see both of them after a long time and we spent the better part of an hour catching up on old times and recalling some of the events that made our college life so wonderful!

I happened to glance at my watch and realised it was almost 11 AM, the time that I was supposed to meet Shuchita outside South Winds on FC Rd. My friends had to leave too, so we said our goodbyes and I made my way to the appointed place. Shuchita had said that she would wear a yellow shirt and blue jeans which would help in recognizing her. In the 10 mins that I waited I saw nearly a dozen girls answering to that description... until an autorickshaw stopped right in front of South Winds Café and a pretty girl stepped out... wearing a pink shirt and blue jeans. I was almost going to look away (lest she should catch me staring at her), when she asked, "Sameer?". So!! ... here was Shuchita! The only thought that was running in my mind at that time was, "This has got to be the pinkest shade of yellow I have ever seen!!".

We then entered the coffee-shop and chatted over cups of coffee. The chat was basically get-to-know kind of chat and in almost no time, an hour passed! Now... it was time for Shuchita (the shy youth trying to escape reality) to leave since she had to meet another fellow blogger, Ameya and couple of others. It was a great experience meeting her and I look forward to the next meeting. I had to leave since I had to return to Mumbai immediately after lunch, which consisted of delicious chicken dish (sober chicken, I'm afraid... not the drunken variety!).

After lunch and a quick nap (induced by the chicken... and not Café Latté!), I was ready to leave for Mumbai. We packed the bags and set off from Pune... and in exactly 2 hours I was at Sion (a new record for me!!) catching almost no traffic along the way. But then it was too good to be true and we caught some really bad mass of traffic at Sion which meant that it took almost 45 mins to reach home from there... a distance normally covered in 10 mins.

So... all in all, a weekend well spent!!

Thats it for now... as you can see *pointing to this long blog*... I'm back with a vengeance after the break! ;)

cheers!