More than a year since I wrote the last post. I can come up with tonnes of excuses to hide the most obvious one, which is 'shear laziness'. Last year was the most eventful year for me. Lots to write about but this post is about the most important development in my life so far.

Sapna and I got engaged a few weeks back and will be getting married on the 8th of July this year. :)

The “meet the parents” and engagement part happened so fast that it took quite some time to sink in. The marriage venue is set to be in the great city of ‘Jabalpur’ and the marriage timing is set to clash with the peak summer heat.

Shopping, planning, more shopping and some more planning has been the order of life for the past few weeks. There have been quite a few funny changes in life ever since the engagement happened. The senior people in office crack atleast one joke a day on my life after marriage. A few of my colleagues make sure that they remind me atleast twice a day that I’ll be a married man soon. I have been calling up most of my married friends for the same queries about shopping locations in Bangalore and have been getting the same answers from everyone “Bangalore is too expensive for marriage shopping”. Have seen around a million shops looking for a sherwani and have had no success with it yet (suggestions invited). Every conversation that I have with my parents revolves around the updates about the invitation list/ shopping/ hotel bookings/ .. etc… etc.

Five more weeks to go for the wedding and I know that things are just going to get more hectic. Golden words of wisdom are invited from the people who have gone through this phase.

Last week was one of the most adventurous week I have spent in France. Tried my hands(and legs) on SKIING !!!

We have this amazing holiday package in office for a 'travel + lodgeing + ski resort pass' combo for half of the actual price. One week of skiing in one of the best ski resorts in the alpes, Avoriaz. The ski station itself has been made so beautiful that even walking around the small litle village is an experience in itself.

I went there with a bunch of colleagues and had some company in my beginner's group. So we took ski lessons every morning and then went out skiiing with the other group of colleagues who are pretty good at it.

As its very obvious from our Ski stance in the photo below, the two goons on the left(Jason and I) are the beginners and the two gentlemen on the right(Thiery and Patrice) are the professionals.



So, courtesy my extremely patient french colleagues, at the end of the 3rd day itself I was able to get to this level.

Another attraction of the trip was the visit to the France-Switzerland border. The coolest part is one can actully cross the border via a Ski track !!! Although, the track happens to be one of the most difficult ones there called the "Swiss wall" which looks something like this and it needs atleast a couple of weeks of practice to cross it. The photo below shows the closest I could get to Switzerland.


(Shane and I at the French-Swiss border)

Another amazing thing I discovered was how much importance some of the French families give to this yearly Ski trip. They treat it like a tradition to take their children for a week long ski trip and spend a complete week in the mountains. Most of the kids start learning Skiing at a very early age and it was a little ebarrassng to toddlers skiing around at twice my speed. Fortunately we went after the school holidays so the station was not very crowded with them.

The trip is over and another experience is registered in the books, I wish I knew when will be the next time I'll be able to Ski again !!!

Since the time I've arrived here I have been wondering how the hell will I be able to see the cricket world cup in France???

A month back Swaroop and I bought the 51 match world cup package on Cricspot.com for a damm good price, we have been going mad with excitement ever since. Made plans about watching the final together in Grenoble. I told absolutely everybody in my office about it, most of them find the game pretty stupid, but then, what will the French understand about cricket. I spent quite a few lunch discussions explaining my colleagues, the rules of cricket. Not that any of them understood anything but it was all about my madness about the game. I spent a month getting warmed up to watch the series.

And now..... 17th of March first match of India against the so called "Minnows", Bangladesh, I am watching Team India getting royally screwed(...waiting for a miracle to save us).

I won't write anything about their performance coz in order to describe it I will have to use a lot of words which are covered by the *BEEP* in the movies.

There will be theories the commentators will come up with for India still being able to make it to the next stage, they'll all be simple plain nonsense. The dream is over! Loosing with this big a margin to Bangladesh doesn't even have a good enough punishment defined in the books.

By the time I finish this blog the Bangladeshies will be scoring their last few runs...... *sob * *sob*

I so wish I had not taken this package on the internet to watch this disaster LIVE !!! I WANT MY MONEY BACK!!! BOOOO HOOOO !!!

How will I be able to let go?



I got this bike for a 50% discount at Decathylon around a year back. The price that I got was an absolute steal for an all terrian bike. Though according to French standards I haven't made much use of it. Still riding around this tiny little town has been good fun and a pretty entertaining form of exercise.

Fortunately my company offers this neat facility using which, when I return to India I can get a package upto 250 kgs sent to India with me. So, getting this bike back logistically is not a problem at all.

The problem is where the hell do I ride it in Bangalore ????

Everyday I get news of the new improved horror stories of the Bangalore traffic. So even if I dare to dream that I'll ride around early in the morning, I still leave a very high possibility of being run down. Lets say I do plan to take that risk, the "Customs people" will be waiting to take their share at the airport. I read on their website that any purchase made 6 months before leaving a country will be free of customs charges. But, from what I've heard, no matter what documents one carries, you can't avoid paying at the customs(I hope its not true).

Now the choice I gotta make is either sell off the bike before leaving this place or take all the trouble to get it back home without knowing if I'll be able to make good use of it.

A month to decide... I so wish these stupid choices were easier.

20th of December-06 I started the most exciting travel escapade I have ever made. A trip spread over 13 days during which I made 11 train journeys and crossed 5 different international borders. Starting from Grenoble, I and Swaroop set out for a voyage on the track shown in the map below.



We spent approximately two days each in Venice, Munich, Amsterdam, Bruxelles and Paris. Fortunately absolutely everything went as planned courtesy hostelworld.com and the awesome railway network here. Though I’ve got to give an upper edge to the Germans in this respect. Of all the fast trains we used the German – ICE undoubtedly takes the topmost position. It’s not as fast as the French TGV but the interiors of the train have been designed to perfection. The same goes for the hotels, of all the hotels we booked, we paid the minimum for the “Bed and Breakfast” in Munich and it happened to be the most comfortable and elegant hotel of all.

Our first destination was Venice, undoubtedly it’s a one of a kind place. There aren’t enough words that can be used to describe the city and neither can one take enough pictures to capture its beauty. It’s an experience which has only one challenge, “Finding directions”. I guess it’s the best place to master the art of map reading. We managed to survive two days without getting lost, big enough achievement for the trip I guess. In the picture below you can see a Venice local rowing merrily on their pride “The Gondola”.



Next was Munich. We spent all our time walking around the quite city centre since all the shops were closed for Christmas. It was freezing cold so we kept café/bar hopping around in the city. Compared to all the other places I have visited in Europe Munich is definitely the most systematic and neat city. Other than Olympic Park and Allianz Arena, we couldn’t see most of the famous tourist attractions their coz they were closed for the holiday but we made sure we mapped pretty much all of the city on foot. The pictures below are of a couple of the street signs in Munich which caught our eye.



Next in our list was the culture shock of a lifetime, Amsterdam! I had read about the “specialties” of Amsterdam but once you are there, no matter how much you know about it, you can’t avoid the thought “How the hell can all this be legal???”

Swaroop has written a detailed description of our trip here, which describes the Amsterdam venture. There’s one weird fact I noticed in Amsterdam. I’ve never seen any statistical facts but I have a strong feeling that Amsterdam might just be the only Metropolitan city of the world which has more bicycles than cars. Another strange thing is that they don’t use the modern shapes for the bicycles, even the new ones have a shape similar to the old design, like the one in the picture below. In a strange way, it’s kinda neat!



Of the two days we spent in Bruxelles, the highlight was the visit to ‘Mini Europe’. It’s a park in which miniature models of most of the famous monuments of Europe from pretty much all the countries are present. It offers a nice and inexpensive stroll across Europe. Though the most amazing thing we saw there was the ‘Atomium’. It’s a building which is very rightfully described in the website, http://www.atomium.be/, as ‘The most astonishing building in the world’.


We spent the New Year’s Eve in Champs Elysees in Paris. Which was a bit of an anticlimax coz the fire works show was cancelled this year, but nevertheless watching 400 000 people there jumping around spilling champagne on the streets of Paris was fun in a way too. :)

After I parted with Swaroop to head for the station to catch the train back to Angouleme, I went into a café in the station (Paris-Nord) to get a coffee thinking about how much fun the trip was and…… it got better. I saw Julie Delpy sitting there in the café!!! I stood stunned for some time after which I approached her for an autograph. Spoke to her for sometime and came to know that she would be playing a role in a movie based on the Bhopal gas tragedy releasing this year. Spellbound I boarded my train to Angouleme. It was a perfect end to an absolutely perfect holiday!

The two backpackers:

Tomorrow morning as the clock strikes 10, I officially complete 1 year since I set foot in France. Though the first feeling that i had when I came out of the plane last year, was to get back inside coz it was too freakin cold outside, it marked the begining of the most special experience of my life.

One fine day in the end of final year in college, when I was just about to leave our beloved mansion (Aish Niwas) for a movie. I had some time to kill so I ended up calling up the Schneider Electric HR manager to find out if I could get an interview there. Unexpectedly he agreed to give me a chance. Later that day, when I was having my HR interview I could have never pictured that I'm sitting in front of a friend whom I'll witness getting married a couple of years down the lane, in a small town in France.

Since that day, when I got the job in the field I so desperately wanted to be in, working at S.E has been a series of fortunate events. I was in the group of people who saw the S.E R&D centre in Bangalore get on its feet. The true sense of Globalisation of technology in an industry which requires so many different fields of engineering to work in parallel. Made some very good friends. Met some really inspiring people. And the journey goes on...

Work in Bangalore was good but since the day I started working in Angouleme, there hasn't been a single day when I haven't discovered something new from my extraordinarily humble and experienced French colleagues. The one thing that I admire the most about the people here is the amount of patience they can have in order to get things right. In short I can describe my colleagues as group of people who's social life revolves around different types of wine depending on what time of the year it is. People who treat lunch hours with the same amount of respect as the working hours. For them, a hand shake with all the colleagues every morning is as important as collecting salary every month. Very proud of their language and not very happy with anything the government does. It all brings together quite an entertaining and interesting set of people to have in the workplace.

Living alone for the past one year has brought out somethings which I never would have thought about otherwise,

> Who are the ones I miss the most

> What are things back home I crave the most(can't name, the list is way too long)

> How easy it is to cook (...edible not delicious)

> How much I love and miss Bangalore weather (...sans pollution)

> The fact that you don't get the same sweet smell when it rains after a hot afternoon in France than when it does back home

> What it means to watch a cricket match on a sunday afternoon with your friends no matter how pathetic the Indian team performance is

> The fact that the French can actually enjoy do-it-yourself work in their houses so much that they end up taking long vacations for it

> How difficult it can be to drive when everybody around you is ACTUALLY following all the traffic rules

> How much I miss having a personal mode of transport

> How big a part of my life the Italian cappuccino had become(Courtesy coffee day), the lesser said about the French version of the cappuccino, the better it is


I guess its gonna be a pretty long list of similar things which will keep updating for the next 6 months untill its time to say Au Revoir.

Travelling has been on top gear for the past six weeks and I am not even halfway through with my travel plans. I haven't written for quite some time so this entry is gonna be a pretty long one.

It started with the a long weekend in the middle of August when I spent four days with a few friends of mine from office, in the south west of France, The Basque country. It was the “Bull fight festival” time there, so we could see music, dance, food and wine all around. We spent the first 2 days in the French side of the Basque country where we visited Dax, Bayonne, Biarritz and St Jean de Luz. The picture below is from one of the fabulous beaches of Biarritz.




The third day we decided to step into the Spanish side of Basque native lands, drove around 75 Km into Spain to a city called San Sebastian. To describe it in short, its absolute paradise. Ideal tourist destination with mountains, beaches, islands, market place, excellent ancient architecture and to top it all spanish gourmet food. I guess the picture below give a brief idea of what San Sebastian has to offer.



Its got beautiful surfing beaches, Islands, mountains, well maintained ancient architecture and a huge market place. Spent a day admiring the cultural diversity across the border, enjoyed a beautiful sunset near the beach with some authentic Spanish food and by night fall we were back to France.

In the last weekend of August I went to meet up with Ankita and Vineeth in Paris. I have lost count of the number of times I have visited that city already and still I have a craving to spend some more time there. This was undoubtfully the best trip I have had to Paris so far. For once I wasn’t the tourist but the tourist guide. The best part of the trip was when we spent a few hours just sitting on the benches at Champs Elysées, watching Parisian traffic and talking about college days. Saw the majestic view of Paris from the tallest skyscraper of the city from where we could capture the beauty of the eiffel tower in bright sunlight and heavy rain,





A good friend of mine from my Bangalore office, Swaroop, has come down on a similar assignment as mine to France a few weeks back. We have chalked out a travel plan for the next few months and laid the foundation of the tourism down south at the capital of the French Riviera, Nice. There isn’t enough one can do to describe Nice. Fortunately the day we arrived there was the day of the Festival of the port there, so everything around was lit up for the big Fireworks show later in the evening. On the way to a garden on a hill top I was able to get this veiw of Nice city,





Swaroop happens to be an Formula-1 freak, which meant that going to Monaco was unavoidable. We walked around the racing track there and spent sometime trying to figure out how the hell do those drivers manage to drive around that crazy circuit. In the pic below the red scooter is just about to pass the pole position at the starting grid of the race with the podium visible right behind it.



I haven’t really tried adventure sports ever before, partially because i wasn’t really confident abut how safe they are. For the first time I tried parasailing and I realized what I have been missing out on. The thrill part of it was fun but the view of Nice when one is in mid air near the beach, happens to be breathtaking.




Just when I got a bit tired of travelling around I got an invite to spend the last weekend at l’Isle d’Aix. Its a small island in the west of France, surrounded by forts and silt beaches. Its a very small island and it took me around 5 hrs to see the whole place walking around. Walking around that place was like walking in a big designed to perfection garden, with custom built creeks for swimming. I couldn’t take too many pictures there but I could get a nice pic of the sunset at the port.



There is an old cars race in Angouleme this weekend called "Circuit de Remparts" so will watch the 1970s Bugattis in action around the hilly circuit at Angouleme.

Still to plan the next destination on the list, hopefully Germany. For the first time ever, I have been on a move on a regular basis and.... its fun.

The second semester of my stay here started with a couple of heavy financial disasters and bidding goodbyes to some friends I have made here over the past 6 months. I met a few americans here, who were in France for a year long assignment of teaching english to primary school students. I was pretty bad with spoken french for the first few months of my stay here, so they were the only people I could interact with outside office hours.
Alhough our friendship has been mostly about asking stupid questions about how things functions in each other's country, but I never knew I can get so attached to them in such a short period of time. They've changed most of the misconceptions I had about Americans.

Their departure has reduced the size of my socializing group here. So now, I am in the process of reforming my friend circle again.

I had planned to buy a car as soon as I got back here but I kind of set-backs i had with my bank account didn't allow me to go ahead with my plan and so i bought the next best thing.

An all terrain mountain Bike !!!
7 Rear gears+3 Front gears+ Digital odometer + ultra light weight = WOW


Gotta see how much I can make out of this newly found passion of mine.

Went to Bordeax for Bastille day to see the parade and fireworks. The day long plan included Sushi at an neat Japanese restaurant, visit to the Cathedral, Evening parade and enjoy fireworks late at night next to the Gironde River. The fireworks were truely amazing but the best part of the day turned out to be a surprise. There was a live performance by a band called "Heptagone", which started after the fireworks got over and went on till anyone in the crowd could stand on his/her feet. I have never enjoyed a rock concert as much before.

Plannig a short trip to Spain next month. The French go crazy in the month of August. All my colleagues are taking a month off in August and its the same every where. I took 3 weeks off to go home in june and as a result I guess i'm going to be the only person working in this office next month :(

Thats the life status so far....

I am yet to figure how the days in a holiday period are shorter than those in our day-to-day work life.

A month long holiday with family and friends just flew by. Played the role of the official organiser of my sister's marriage which took place in Jabalpur on the 8th of June-06. Although my relationship with my sis has been mostly about fighting about the smallest things possible, starting from TV channels at dinner time to use of our common 2-wheeler, but bidding her goodbye was the most difficult thing I have done in my life. But then I guess its all about moving on...

Met as many friends I could in bangalore but couldn't do a very good job with the socialising. Couldn't meet a bunch of people I wanted to and I can rightfully blame the Bangalore traffic for that. I'm hoping that the new chief minister improves the traffic management of Bangalore before another political turn around takes place in Karnataka.

Got tonnes of spices along and now i'm fully equipped to take on the cooking challenges in my way for the next one year.

Another good friend of mine is expected to come down to France in a month and we plan to explore Europe together, so I will be spending quite some time with "Lonely Planet" for the holiday planning on a shoe string budget. Suggestions invited.

A very good friend of mine did something that makes me very proud of him.

Below is a sad story of the state of affairs in Bangalore, or might just be any other city in our country.

http://my-bangalore.blogspot.com/

Please take some time off to read it. The least we can do is pass on the message.

Le Royaume-Uni, thats French for "The United Kingdom". Spent the Easter weekend in London. Established one hard fact about my tourism in Europe, "The European weather is not very fond of me". It either has to be raining or snowing or it'll be very windy or simply too cold to step out whenever I try visiting a nice place. It happened in Rome, 3 times in Paris, now London, wonder what else is in store for me in the coming few months. I was in London for 3 days, and it rained on all three....What the hell????

Fortunately the Rain Gods left a big part of the days for me to visit the main attractions of the city. We got the daily passes for the buses in London so it helped to make up for the damage the rains were causing. We used to get on the double-decker buses on the main line and just look around the city while traveling towards uncertain destinations. There are two very big advantages of doing this, one you get to see literally the whole city even when its pouring and two, its the cheapest mode of tourism. :)

The best thing I liked about London are the parks. Hyde park one of the most peaceful places to walk around in one of the busiest cities of the world. It is just too huge for words and inspite of large number of people in the park you get a lot of space to just sink in your thoughts for as long as the guards don't throw you out of the park. The picture below is sunset as seen from Hyde park.

The one thing that is amazing about all the major cities in Europe is the amount of work the government puts in to ensure that the Historical Landmarks and architecture stays intact even with the heavy modernization of these cities. I was surprised to see that all the Taxis, Buses and telephone booths in London, old as well as new look exactly the same. I'm sure the machinery in the new one's is of the best and latest technology possible but their exteriors remain unchanged since forever.


I couldn't visit one very important place in London, "The Lords Cricket ground". People who know me know that I'm a cricket fanatic and visiting Lords has been one of the things I have always wanted to do. Perhaps I will put the six months validity of my UK tourist visa to good use and make another trip to London again, specifically for this purpose. Another cricket fanatic friend of mine is going to be in London on a work permit soon, so hopefully I will be able to make my next visit soon.

After a couple of weeks of saving cash and sitting at home I finally gave up. Well this sunday was dedicated to a journey through the virtual world. Futuroscope...!!!

http://www.futuroscope.com/eng/plan.php

It's a theme park around 120 Km from Angouleme which has the most amazing collection of 3D simulated short movies. The movies were in 180º Imax domes with movable seats to give the exact effect of virtual reality. Well more than anything else I appreciate the hard work put behind 3D animation. I'm a big fan of this technology now and plan to spend some time to understand how exactly does it work. Of all the simulations the one I found the best was a half an hour movie of music composed using a series of the best percussion instruments around the world. The instrument from India was the "Mridang", a common ingredient of South Indian classical music. Overall had quite a lot of fun all day long.

The brilliant sunset timing here (8:45 pm) helps a lot in making car journeys a lot more fun and easy. The country side of France is at its best in spring and I got the first glimpse of it today. All highway routes have lush green landscape on either side, makes one want to just keep on driving.

One of the good parts of the trip was that I forgot to carry my camera, at times its nice to just enjoy a place without being bothered about capturing photos of each and every thing you come across. I do feel bad about missing out some really nice pictures I could have taken on the highway.

Quite a lot planned for the next couple of months, starting with a trip to the Atlantic coast(La Rochelle) next weekend, plan to spend the Easter weekend in London, followed by another long weekend in Paris in the beginning of May and then a month long vacation in India for my sister's marriage. Got some serious chocolate shopping to do before leaving for Bangalore, will be squeezing it in one of the weekends.

Right now I'm just keeping my fingers crossed for the Visa for London, I hope I get it on time. I'm not very good with vacation planning will be damm irritating to re-plan everything if the British embassy plans to play spoil-sport.

Rented a car to practise driving on the "right" side of the road this weekend. I was damm kicked about driving a european car like Renault, Peugeot, or Audi but the stupid car renting agency gave me a Hyundai Getz. Not that it matters coz I'm an amateur in driving and Maruti 800 is the only car I've driven before so I ended up loving "Getz". I should say I'm lucky to be practising my driving in France coz French drivers are undoubtfully the most patient people on this planet. It was amazing to see them smiling inspite of a funny Indian trying to get his car to move on an uphill road at snail's pace in peak traffic. I'm in one piece now and I did not kill anybody either, which happens to be a good enough achievement for the weekend.

I drove to a small village called Aubeterre around 70 Km from Anougleme, with a few friends. The route is one of the most beautiful ones I have been on so far. The pic below gives a nice idea of what the countryside is like...





Aubeterre is a very beautiful village which is full of surprises. To start with a huge Monolithic Church made out of one single rock,






Tennis ball trees, ya.... people have actually put up tennis balls on this tree,





The thing that amazed me the most was an insect museum. Though I found it a little gross and hence did not take the guided tour of the place. I came to know about it from a friend of mine who went in for the guided tour. The museum is owned by a person who claims to have visited 45 countries to carry out his reasearch on insects. His favourite insect happens to be the butterfly and he's found out some amazing facts about them. He said that in the ancient times it was believed that there are hidden messages in the wings of a butterfly. The picture below shows a collection of butterfly wings having all the alphabets and numbers on them.






We strolled around the village for a few hours but I was dying to get back to my driving escapade. In a span of two days I drove in bright sunlight, heavy rain and light snow. Looking forward to the next time I get to drive around. Will try to have a longer journey hopefully.

Two days are just too short to see the most beautiful city of the world.


Spent the last weekend in Paris. The weather has never been with me whenever I've been to Paris and the tradition continued. It was just too cold n windy all throughout the weekend. I had planned to take a walk around the most talked about area of Paris. Started the walk from the Eiffel tower to the Louvre Museum, through one of the busiest shopping streets of the world - The Champs Elysées. The picture below is The Champs Elysées seen from the top of Arc de triumph.

It was all going according to my time plan until I climbed the 284 stairs to reach the top of Arc de Triumph. This grand arch is located at the junction of 12 most elite streets of Paris, from where the view of the city justifies its fame. As a result I ended up spending two hours admiring the beauty of Paris from up there. I walked till the Louvre museum and well the distance on foot was very different from what it seemed from the Arc. Ended up in a dead tired state and headed back to my hotel room from there.


This trip of mine was not only about seeing Paris, I was there with a school friend of mine, Anupam, whom I last met seven years back. He's settled in the U.S and had come to London for a week long holiday. As it could have been expected from him, he missed his flight from London to New York and extended his trip by a week to meet up with me in Paris. We spent all our time catching up with the stories of the good ol school days. In the past few years I have thought of getting in touch with all my school freinds a million times but I could never find an incentive good enough to motivate me to put in the required amount of effort to it. But this time when I met him him I realised, its quite an amazing feeling to meet an old friend in a place you never thought you would. So well, I guess I'll give it an honest try this time.


With Paris, Grenoble, Bordeaux and Toulouse, I'm done with my big city travel for quite some time now. Will be exploring the country side of west of France over the next couple of months.

The more I see this pic the more I fall in love with it,

I took this photo one fine sunday morning. In the winter season the dew on the grass gets frozen, but the flakes are very small and they melt as soon as sunlight falls on them. The picture I have attached is of the banks of the charrante where the line parting the sunlight and shade is visible, and green grass can be seen on the part where the sunlight is falling and snow where the sunlight will reach in a matter of a few minutes. The river is anyway a beautiful sight in itself. I caught a very nice pattern of reflection of the buildings and trees on either side of the river .

I am looking forward to the end of winter so that its possible to just sit around this place read, chat with some frens here or just lie there. The limited resources of angouleme makes this sound like a big source of entertainment.

Another eventful weekend comes to an end...

Before coming to France I had checked up the weather condition of Angouleme on the internet. One of the websites very accurately predicted 1 day of heavy snowfall in the month of Jan. Well, that day happened be last saturday, the day Angouleme hosts the International Comic book festival called "Fete de la Band Dessinée".

The best comic book publishers and authors from across the globe come here to attend this 3 days long festival. Their best collections are on sale and people can get a cartoon made on the first page of the book they buy, by the author. My comic book knowledge is limited to Asterix, Garfield and Calvin n hobbes, but when I got there I saw that there's much more to comic books than humour. This proffession is taken much more seriously than I thought. Spent a whole day roaming around in the comic stalls and exhibitions.

The same night I had Sushi for the first time. Before i tasted it, all I could see was well decorated raw seafood on the table. But the taste was well worth the time we spent on preparing and decorating it. There is a Japanese herb called 'wasabi', which can be called the Japanese version of the hottest Indian chilli. Its supposed to be taken in very small amounts with each of the dishes of a sushi platter. Just for kix one of my friends prepared one roll with a crazy amount of wasabi in it. Well unfortunately the bomb fell on me, i just had a bite of that roll by mistake and ended up gulping water for a good half n hour. So much for the love of Japanese food.

The wine capital of France Bordeaux definitely lives up to its name.

Went to Bordeaux last saturday and is its beautiful or what? For the past few years, the French government has been trying to protect the architectural beauty of the major cities of France, from the steadily growing pollution. Bordeaux being the wine hub gets a priority in that aspect. The main street of Bordeaux is in the central market place which has the oldest opera house of France. All the buildings there have been cleaned by a special process so as to give them the look they had a few decades back. The result, architectural beauty at its best.

Tram lines are the backbone of the local transportation system in Bordeaux, but having a tram line means to have wires above all the streets of the city which ends up spoiling the view. To avoid this, they have adopted a new technology in which the electricity supply for the tram is underneath the train. I don't know if its very common outside France but I have seen the Tram lines in another city in France where they have overhead cables and it makes a siginificant difference in the looks of the city.

There is a small town called St.Emmilion around 30 Kms from Bordeaux where the biggest wine storage caves are located. Its considered to be one of the richest small towns in France, for obvious reasons. Throughout the drive from Bordeaux to St.Emmilion all i saw as far as i could on both sides of the road were..... vineyards. Its not the right season to visit since the plants are really small at this time of the year so all you can see there is that, France can support the wine requirements of other planets also. I took a tour of one of the biggest wine caves( storing more than 500 000 bottles of wine). Saw a few of the most exquisite wine shops. One of the shops had a small gallery where they explain the process of making and tasting wine. There were some really old wines which were more than 350 € for a bottle and I just couldn't get myself to belive that there are people in this world ready to spend that much on..... a bottle of wine.

End of the evening I was headed home. Me being a person who doesn't like wine had had much more information about it than i needed. I don't think it'll motivate me enough to start having wine but I'll never mind taking it up as a business ;-)

After a pretty long week my vacations finally come to an end. Will be returning home tomorrow morning. Kinda strange that i'm calling Angouleme "home" now, around a month back i was struggling to understand how will i survive this place for 18 months. Well, 1 down 17 more months to go.

Started my journey with Italy thinking i'll be in known company of an english speaking fren from grenoble for a few days but unfortunately his dad got really ill and he had to leave for India right away. So i saw the Roman architecture for one more day n changed the rest of my plan drastically. It would have been kinda difficult and expensive to see florance and venice alone and then having a long journey back home via grenoble (which i had already booked).

Frankly speaking i didn't really like Italy. It might just be because i had a bad experience but the place doesn't really give you the kind of appearance,that a country with that strong an industrial background would. Milan, the fashion capital of the world doesn't really have a very fashionable railway station. Only one out of the 12 public telephones on the staion was working. There was no attendant near the train to help you with the train destination and coach number you are looking for. To top it all nothing is dispalyed on the train either. An overnight journey train from Milan to Rome is as cramped as the general class coach of an Indian railways train and that too with people without reservation. An advice for people traveling to Italy, "please use air travel". Book the ticket well in advance and you'll get it for a very good price.

Unfortunately i came across some really arrogant italians but i don't think i met enough people to generalise my comment. All said and done the architectural beauty of Rome is amazing. I was at Vatican square on christmas eve and got to see the whole ceremony with a crowd of thousands of people around me.

Since my fren had left for India n i wasn't planning to continue the journey alone, i left for Paris to spend the rest of the vacation with a fren's family. I saw the streets Paris with them for a day since it was impossible to get out of the car because it was snowing heavily, after which i left for a small town in Normandy. Saw a French family reunion with exotic frenc cuisine for a few days. I have always seen country houses in movies n i always wanted to see one all my life n well got to see it finally in Normandy.

We were at my fren's grand parent's house for three days. It was a huge mansion with a seperate bakery shed, a back yard bigger than a basketball court, a fire place inside and a huge garage with around 8 bicycles. Saw the famous beaches of Noarmandy but the rain played spoil sport al the time. We went for a long cycle ride around the country side n boy!! it was a bloody long ride. I don't know what they thought my stamina is n my companions were just not ready to ride on normal roads. We rode on the hills for three long hours. It started raining for some time in between but no one was ready to stop. Its a strange thing but after around 45 mins i was dead tired but we just kept going on n on n well, i don't know how, but i came back alive. Had a nice long dinner on 31st night n were headed on our way back to my fren's house close to Paris today morning.

Well thats all for this vacation. Have used up some vacations from next year in advance no more vacations for me for a long time now. Also my sister's marriage has been finalised. The marriage date would be sometime in may so gotta save a lot of vacations to come back to India in May. Will use my precious weekends wisely now on.

Happy new year!

Yesterday I went to a city in the south west of France called Toulouse. The reason for the visit being a medical examination, a mandatory requirement for a person to have a resident permit in France. Just imagine a 3 and a half hour journey a side for a 10 mins medical examination. Well but I guess its worth the pain if the reward is a permit to travel anywhere in Europe, including non-schengen nations ;-)

For art loving people Toulouse is a paradise. Well unfortunately I myself don't fall in that category but still the architecture of the city was too neat for words. Toulouse is known for its red brick constructions and the whole market justifies that statement. Spent around 4 hours just walking around the city the only reason I came back to the station was that I was too tired to walk anymore. Hats off to the French train system, the only drawback in the system being that they don't have too many trains running directly east to west, so if I have to travel towards the south east of France I'll have to go to Paris in the north and then take a train to where ever I wanna go. one loophole for the system to work on.

My christmas vacations are all set, will be going to Italy for 7 days. Will spend the christmas eve in Rome. Hopefully the rains will not play spoil sport because according to a fren of mine this is that time of the year when only nice things are supposed to happen. I'll keep my fingers crossed for that.

I got the possesion of my studio apartment today and I'm damm excited about shifting in that place tomorrow. Well thats the update of my life so far, looking forward to christmas vacations.....

Well first of all i take my words back about the French food, the French people work a hell lot in making their food live up to its reputation.


I had an early christmas lunch in office yesterday and belive it or not it lasted for a good five n a half hours. All that happened all throughout the afternoon/evening was that we sat down on table yapping away to glory with exotic french dishes being served one by one. It was pretty funny because I was trying to make a lot of sense with my broken French and my colleagues were try to make me understand their broken English. Just waitin for the day when will be able to speak fluent French.


Tried wine and champagne for the first time yesterday. Frankly speaking I was dissappionted with both red n white wine, champagne was the only thing i could get a little close to liking. I know lots of my friends will hate me for saying anything against french wine, but well its just a personal opinion. The food was amazing just that my appetite is too bad from the French standards, so all I could do is taste a little bit of everything. fortunately the people around me were appreciating my desire to taste everything so it saved me the embarrasment of eating only the small amount I could.


We had a game of "Tambola" in the end. Its a pretty funny thing that since its a game based on luck my office people chose to leave absolutely everything on luck. They skipped the efort of reading out numbers and striking them off in small cards and giving prizes one by one, all they did was kept all the chits with the employees names on them in a bag and picked out around 10 chits and these were the winners. So it was actually a lottery in which people won things like a DVD player, music systems, champagne, etc. I'm sure even if my name would have been picked they would have kept the chit back since no one in my office is very comfortable pronouncing my name.

Trying to plan a trip to Italy this christmas, not very sure if its gonna workout. Suggestions invited for low budget holiday planning......

When anyone talks about France the first things that would come to his mind would be scenic beauty, amazing culture, fast trains, cheese and chocolat. But well its all nice when you are on a short holiday with no constraints whatsoever. The story is totally different from the situtaion where i'm stuck in. As i've mentioned in my previous entry i'm in the beautiful small town hidden somewhere in west of France, spent the past 2 days tryin to understand this place a bit more, walked around the whole town for hours and concluded the following,

1. Amazing scenic beauty (the postcard pic types)
2. Absolutely no one even close to being called an Indian in this place
3. The percentage of French people knowing english here at max 0.5 % ( and that english is very
difficult to be understood by normal english speaking people)
4. French food sounds better than it tastes ( chocolat the only exception )
5. All the places that i was planning to visit very frequently (a tennis club, place to learn to play the
guitar, the train station, etc....), are all strategically placed in the different corners of the city
which happen to be too far to be walked from the center of the town


The above conclusions would give a pretty good indicator of my mood right now. With the constraints of limited english reading material, no channel other BBC to watch on TV, no personal transport, no computer with internet connection in the hotel i'm put up in and most imortantly no friends to hang out with, life can be pretty difficult. To top it all French happens to be a bloody difficult language to comprhend. The French people compete with the TGV when they speak.

Amidst all these things which were making me feel kinda low I made my first set of friends in this place and things changed drastically right away. A couple from California, Scott n Kathy are here for some exchange program, they teach english in one of the primary schools and live with a few more americans in a close by apartment. I never thought speaking in english for half n hour would mean that much to me so finally i have started the process of making acquaintances here.

Anyway thats about it with my time here so far, anyone else who's had similar experiance can give me tips of coping up with alein environment till i get a good hold on French.....

Its just been a few days in France and this country doesn't stop amazing me with the system of work. I happen to be in a small place called Angoulême in the west of france close to the Atlantic Ocean. So far what I've gathered from the train journey I had from Paris to this place is that Angouême is in the middle of no-where. My office happens to be in the outskirts of the city which is approximately 8 mins drive from the city centre.

This town is surrounded with small hills all around which are visible from every part of the town. The temprature right now is between -2 to 5°C and the people here say its automn n winter is yet to come. I have no idea how the people here are alive in just one thin sweater. I'm the only person raoming about like an eskimo and still struggling with the cold. I'm yet to get an apartment here so still not comletely settled in this place yet.

The people around are very friendly, hopefully once i'm able to cross the language barrier it won't be very difficult making frens out here. I used to have an opinion that the french are a little laid back with their work, but its amazing to see the efficiency of the peiple here. The sense of autonomy and responsibility visible in the people here is way beyond one can think of. The workplace here is a pretty wierd one, they have huge tables of all possible shapes scattered in all possible directions and everyone's workstation is surrounded by mech/tronics hardware which gives more of the R&D centre look to the surroundings. Mine seems to by the neatest desk for the time being.

Will wait to see what other surprises are there in store for me.......