There's life after travel...

... trouble is: it sucks. We haven't posted here since returning from South America. We got back with a spring in our stride, a twinkle in our eye, <---insert cliche here---> . Since then the dreariness of the rat race has returned to shroud life. We've been meaning to write about the trip - and we will - but for the moment we shall blame our silence on a combination of a borrowed PS2 and live cricket on free-to-air TV. And LOST. And a little Scrabulous. Anyways, having acknowledged the error of our ways it is time to move on... watch this space...


Currently reading: Emma, Jane Austen. Quite clever; it must have been years ahead of its time because the style still works; but the subject's very chick-flicky which can be a bit of a drag.
Near-term goal in life: To get a full driver's license... course study is on.
Other activities: The grappling with Spanish is, also, still on.
Travel on the horizon: going back to Bombay for Christmas; Melbourne in early August.

A Sydneysider now

It's been about a month since I landed in Sydney, and since I am piggy-backing on an unsecured net connection, I might as well write about the first few days in my new city. First impression - Sydney is really pretty! It seems less dirty, less noisy, less rude than some of the other really big cities I have in mind. It's winter here, but the weather's sexy. The idea of dressing differently for different seasons appeals to me and one of my first lessons was that people in Sydney take their dressing fairly seriously. (I had to bury my American parka - excessively bulky and butt ugly - deep into the recesses of my wardrobe. Except that it doesn't have any recesses at all, really). I'm getting there.

I live in the city... in the affordably elegant Pyrmont area. Or so I thought. The rent went up exactly 10 days after I moved in... taking affordability out of the equation. I most likely will be moving again. :( That's not a welcome thought considering I've already hauled my FOB arse through two previous temporary dwellings thus far. The prospect of house hunting doesn't exactly cheer me up either... but that's a separate post in itself. I really don't want to move though... the location is just great. I can walk to work. It's about 30 minutes one-way, which I thought would be a bit much. As it turned out, the walk is gorgeous!!! It's right through Darling Harbour and is oftentimes the best part of my day. (I know - I don't have a life... yet!) Also, as those of you who've tactlessly made fun of my expanding waistline will testify, I definitely could use the exercise.

Work is smooth... after working in the Indian IT industry, it must be! After the 60-70 hour weeks in Bombay, I could definitely get used to the sane working hours... sometimes spent with a glass of red right by my laptop on a chilled out Friday evening! The office also has a table tennis, X-box room complete with a 40" plasma and a well stocked kitchen with breakfast, fruit, snacks etc. More importantly - the people seem pretty loose, office politics is conspicuous by its absence and there's no stress. It helped that I landed in time for the annual company kickoff outing and bonded with colleagues in a manner that only the inebriated can! I mean, the CEO spilled red wine over my brand new white shirt - what more could a new joinee ask for???

So, by and large, I'm happy. I miss Bombay a little and all the people that make it special... but most of them aren't around any more anyways. C'est la vie, I guess.

Updates all around...

The last month's been hectic and slightly stressful. I broke out the news about my future plans to the people at work. For the random surfer - cause all 3 of my readers know this already - I'm moving to Australia, Permanent Residency visa in hand, sometime in the middle of July. I put in my resignation a couple of weeks ago and will part ways with Accenture's India Delivery Center after an insanely long (by Indian IT industry standards) 4.5 years. Bleh. There was less drama than I hoped for. My boss didn't throw a tantrum, no tears were shed and no, the absurdly generous counter-offer was not made. Oh well.

So I'm excited about moving. I find myself thinking about it a LOT... partly because I don't have a job yet. I have a couple of firms that I'm talking to and hopefully one of them will come through. My folks are stressed and probably have mental images of me manning some gas station in a suburb of Sydney or something. I keep telling them that that's only my Plan B. But yeah, I'm excited! New big city, being out on my own again, setting up my own place. *smiles*. Leaving Bombay is made a whole lot easier by the fact that a lot of my friends are either not around any more or they have plans to move out. But it's still going to be tough. :(

With typically lousy timing, work has hit a bad patch... one of those 14+ hours a day stretches that invoked snide comments about how I was working harder in my notice period that at any other point in time. So I struggle to divide time between friends and the family at home. The result is guilt anywhichways. *sigh*

But I'm totally loving today. It's a Sunday and I'm just spending the day catching up on email, youtube shit, email, friends' blogs...

And now... The Random Updates Paragraph:
I'm still sufficiently turned off by Indian cricket, but reading about the tour of England coming up I felt a flicker of interest. But only a tiny one. Also turned off by Amitabh in-your-face-ponytail-and-all Bachchan. (This is how sickening it's gotten - I wanted to check on the spelling of Bachchan and instinctively picked up the newspaper over google. I found it on the first page I looked at!). And Sivaji, the latest Rajni flick, has gripped my imagination. My office lunch gang tried to get tickets for the movie at Aurora but got laughed all the way out of Matunga. The Federer-Nadal final was much-awaited and turned out to be pretty diluted. MadCat's gotten knocked up again. I'm craving an external hard disk - 3.5K for an 80 gig. So cheap... but then again, my being jobless is a rather compelling argument against the buy. Also craving an Adidas tee-shirt. I feel a dose of retail therapy coming up. Who all have seen the Happy Dent ad (maharajah's palace setup) and not loved it? Tell us your names so we can lynch you and be at peace.

Sunday lunch awaits. Later.