...shoOOonya...

The Year 2009 was a year of movies for me … I mean a year of watching movies in theatre. In the past several years, I haven't exactly seen many movies in the theatre. But 2009 turned out to be different. In fact, I think I have not seen as many movies in past 5 years as I have seen in 2009 alone. I managed about a dozen (13 to be precise) movies in 2009 4 each in Dec and Nov,  1 each in June and Sept (all these in Mumbai, India) and 3 in Dubai – 1 each in Jan / Feb / Oct Ghajini and Delhi 6 in Dubai with colleague Aseem A movie with Bro in June … and I have forgotten which one was it … Went to see Final Destination but instead saw animated 'UP' in 3D  in Sept ... Caught "Final Destination 4" in 3D i n Dubai in October Nov ... Ajab Prem ki Gajab Kahani & 2012 (in Hindi J with Bro) at "24 Karat" Multiplex and Twilight at "Fun Republic" … I also went to catch another good movie "The Christmas Carol" in 3D but th...

Reading always took me to a different world. I loved being in that world. Diamond Comics, Tinkle, Champak, Target, Chandamama, Nandan, … that was early childhood. I read a lot in my school days. In the school library I discovered Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Canon Doyle  and 3 Investigators by Alfred Hitchcock and read up every available title. Also, read up almost all of the popular titles like Around the World in 30 Days, 20,000 leagues under the Sea, Moby Dick and so on. We used to have one library session at the beginning of every week and we could borrow 2 books. I used to go to the library again on Friday and return the 2 (which I would have already read) and take another two. I used to do this at least twice every month. I remember i even received a prize in ou annual function for being one of the most voracious readers in school :P Year 1994. End of school. A break / pause to my reading habit. Reading slowed down to a crawl. Took up Science in college. Burden of Studies ...

Well … this post is about looking back at the past year I spent the year 2009 oscillating between Dubai and Mumbai … Travelled to-n-fro in March, June, September, November and finally came back to base (to Mumbai) in December. Writing this, I just realized that in 2009; I had a total of 9 international flights and 1 domestic one (considering my Dec flight was a Dubai-Delhi-Mumbai route) The year 2009 had begun with dismal market conditions, global economic recession and all the sad notes … and then we were hit by an entirely unexpected crisis of our own. When I say we here, it refers to We the employees of Satyam … Raju's resignation accompanied with revelations of financial fraud pushed Satyamites into their very own personal recession. Complete Crisis Situation ... with Media completely writing off the company and predicting sure shot doom for its 50,000 employees. Market ups and downs along with uncertainty within the company with no one sure of anything … life was tough ...

Experience is what u get when u don't get what u want.

I was planning to write the first post of this new year about how it has started out and all ... but here is something important first ... ---------------------- Here is a unique opportunity to reach out and impact thousands of lives through your blog. Yes, sitting at your desk, voting on FaceBook and writing a blog post can help educate 40,000 young Indians all over our country! One of India's most trusted and credible NGOs; GiveIndia is taking part in a competition on Facebook to win a US$1 million grant. The winner will be the NGO that gets the highest number of votes from Facebook users. The prize of $1 million will help put or keep 40,000 children across India in school for one year! Imagine the Indian Blogger/Twitter/Facebook/Orkut communities coming together to spread the word and help the underprivileged children of India. The impact would be tremendous and GiveIndia would be able to gather the votes we need to win. Voting in the competition is for one week o...

2009 has been a personal roller coaster ride for me ... A year ago i had posted about how 2008 had been a horrible terrible year ... and how I hoped 2009 to be better ... Well .. 2009 was definately better then 2008 in overall terms but by no means was it a good year ... The roller coaster ride of 2008 simply continued in 2009 ... with a couple of more shocks and sufferings ... the only consolation being it slowed down to a crawled in second half of the year and things started to look up towards the end of the year … But … during the first half of the year, things simply refused to look up… infact they simply continued the downward spiral journey I felt as if my life was responding to the global financial crisis in equal measures with a personal emotional crisis of my own :P The second half of the year was slightly better ... and i hope 2010 becomes a much better year as compared to last two ... keeping up with the upward trending wave that I am currently riding … With these hopes and ...

I spent about 10 days in Mumbai last week. As always, being home is a wonderful feeling. Home cooked mom-ke-haath-ka-khana is a treat unto itself. Its also a vacation for me where I don't really have to worry about office. I get to spend some time with my family once in a quarter for about a week.   During the weeklong trip … I attended 2 weddings. One wedding was in my family so I was there practically from 10 am to 10 pm meeting the entire extended family on my maternal side (metting several members after a long gap). It was actually nice meeting all people and yes, food was excellent. The second one was a Punjabi family wedding reception … wedding of the daughter of one of my Dad's business associate. I just went along since dad did not want to go alone. It was interesting to attend the wedding. Food was good J rounding off with dessert of Jalebi, Kulfi and Rabdi J     One of the things I do when in Mumbai is to watch movies J the economics and the logistics are s...