Crazy 31st night !

New year is something most of them look forward to. I am a person who believes that we do not need a particular day to celebrate and hence birthday's and anniversaries do not excite me much. I thought Dec 31st will be just another day for me and I was right till 10pm. That's when my room mates told me about the Puri trip ! On any other day I would have written it off calling them weirdos & insane. But, I sensed the thrill the trip has to offer and immediately said YES.

We are 7 now and they have already booked an SUV (Scorpio it is ! Muscular and Powerful and more than anything it is manufactured by our parent company - Mahindra ! so loyal my friends are !!) We started at 11.40pm, that's 20mins away from 2011 ! Bhubaneswar to Puri is close to 70Kms. We had to wish new year at a petrol pump!! stop wherever we see a light to check if coke is available (found one after half a dozen stops!), ate tandoori chicken in the car, made pegs behind the wagon ! & the FOG ... my goodness! it was so sooo dense, we had zero visibility at times even with the fog lights on! There was a moment where the fog reminded me of movies like 'The Mist' & 'Silent Hill', so scary it was at the same time excitement made us scream. The driver brought the car to a standstill !! This was the most intriguing part of the trip.

We finally reached Puri around 1.30 am only to see the barricades and police on the beach road ! THE BEACH is closed tonight ! But there is a twist in the tale here... the driver took us to the beach from another road. When we stepped out and saw huge sand art exhibition on the shore... which was closed as well. But we managed to creep in without waking up the artists. We saw the giant Santa Claus from inches away... in fact touched it!! it was monstrous... after examining it we made our way to the beach.

The beach was completely vacant.. like a private beach, absolutely deserted... and guess what.. first thing we saw over there is a abandoned boat!! may be the one used by fishermen... we jumped in joy and the into the boat. Then the scotch flowed out... we talked, gossiped, sang, discussed movies, people, cities, work and what not.

What if we could not celebrate the new year in GOA, we did the same at the beach but a private one :P Spent a good 3hrs at the beach and between 4.30 - 5am moved ahead to Konark, to watch the sun rise. The sun rise point was totally crowded at 5.30am. We did wait for half an hour to capture the sun rise, but our driver was in a hurry and continuously honking. So we had to leave the place much before sun came out. Again on our way back, the fog haunted us! similar scenes... in fact better since it was the dawn... zero visibility. Never saw such dense fog when I was in Hyderabad.

In all it was a time very well spent. Was the most memorable time in Bhubaneshwar....

Happy New Year !

It has been quite some time since I last penned down my thoughts. Must confess that my interests are slowly changing! But Blogging is one of my favorites and there is no way I

am going to permanently stop writing. Once in a while I go into hibernation mode... but this time it was a lil longer. Anyways.. I am totally awake now and will do my best to provide justice to the writer inside me!! :P

Wishing you all a very happy and prosperous new year 2011. & Yeah ... any new year resolutions ?? mine is to stop procrastination :-)

Will soon post about my wild & crazy Dec 31st 2010 adventure! Signing off for now...

FIFA Fever !

Was BLOWN AWAY by the soccer mania, completely !! Had a gala time for a month... never thought Football is such a beautiful game. Have to confess... I was never a huge fan of football... I used to occasionally watch it earlier. But as they say 'you are known by the company you keep' , 'being with a winner makes u a winner' ... being with my football crazy colleagues made me thoroughly enjoy the sport. Watching football (any sport for that matter) with a bunch of crazy friends is one of the best times u can ever dream off.

We all follow club football keenly. But the world cup has taken the interest in this sport to the next level. There are hardly any moments/matches that went unnoticed (caught the highlights if I had missed the action LIVE). My Football knowledge would have easily got 5x in the past one month. Add to that my company's name on the ad hoardings. 9mins of advertising in every world cup match !! whoahoooooooooooooo.... best feeling I ever had about my company.... believe me ... I wasn't this happy ever so far in my career so far !!

Last one week of world cup has been even more amazing ! Reason - Prateek was in town !! yes... just to watch the last 4 matches with us. Been to sports bar, had a wild party at Vibhor's pent house, Watched few sick movies, got drenched in rain almost every night, had to go to the office without taking bath !! :P etc.. etc.. etc.. All this has come to an end last night. There will be a brief pause now. EPL kick off in about a month from now... :) I just hope, professionally, things will settle by then. Fingers crossed /\ More updates to follow in my upcoming posts... ciao

A Joy Ride !

For me, there were two much awaited events so far this year - KITES & AJAY's INDIA TRIP. (Un)Luckily both coincided !! I booked 3 tickets for much hyped KITES for the coming saturday evening on wednesday evening itself (@cineplanet).

Heads up - when we both go together, track record of getting things done smoothly is very poor.

So... saturday evening ... excited(not really, specially after reading reviews). We took our seats and the movie was just about to begin & .... & suddenly the screen has gone blank ! We thought there must be some technical glitch and movie will begin shortly & stuck to our seats with a fountain coke in hand. College crowd behind our row went wild - full of energy- each time a girl steps in :P The wait seemed longer than expected... wild college gang became calm, tired and weak... after 30mins, slowly people started going out(unable to bear the humidity inside - no A/C) ... we realized there must be something wrong. We trio followed them... moved out... only to learn that there is power but the problem is with the main transformer from where the power gets circulated!!! The F word came out loud :P Clueless... Helpless... people started queuing up to collect their (ticket) money back. Unable to withstand the crowd, we left the place without collecting the money.

Next Thursday ... a weekday... late night show... same place ... but different movie ... we were only 2 this time. After a lot of struggle we got our refund in the form of tickets to some other movie. We gracefully accepted as we do not have any other plans. Done with dinner, it is then 9:45pm... Show time - 10pm... we were just waiting outside for the gates to open.... and history repeats !! it's dark all around... again yelled the F word loud :P learnt from the security that this has become a frequent phenomenon in that multiplex !! It's 10.15pm now... we thought of calling it off... collected money back and thought of going to Prasad's to watch the 11pm 'The Prince of Persia' premier show. Prasad's is not less than 20kms from the place we are in that time. We have about 30mins to reach and buy tickets !! If we ride... with the kind of roads in HYD...I'm sure we can make it only for next day early morning show !!... I knew we have to fly to make it in time !! Challenge accepted !! I unleashed my monster bike - YAMAHA FZ... it was NH7 ... a heavenly stretch of 4kms... touched 100KMs/hr in no time :-) ... technically we were flying :-) what a ride it was :D

Finally we made it with a handsome 5mins !!! Ajay went to buy tickets... I went to park my ride. After all these efforts I got a call from Ajay in parking lot saying - TICKETS SOLD OUT :( never mind... I did not watch KITES yet... & tickets are available in plenty for this one :P we grabbed 2 and entered the cinema. This time no surprises... the show went on smoothly !! & interestingly it wasn't as bad as the critics rated... at least to me ! :-)

This ride will definitely worth it !! One of the memorable ones... tnx Ajay... hope you thoroughly enjoyed sitting on my pillion seat :P Sorry if the ride wasn't as sleek as it would have been in Abu Dhabi :P

Iron Man 2

Iron Man - 1 was stunning & captivating! It was so sooo soooo well made... you hardly get bored. Iron Man 1 was in the league of hardcore action movies like Dark Knight & Die Hard 4.0 !! But it's sequel Iron Man 2, I'm afraid, is not that good - but, still watchable.

Robert Downey Jr. is simply mesmerizing with his quick & witty one-liners like "I have successfully privatized world peace!!", "I am Iron Man. The suit and I are one", " I will formally apologize later" ... sorry guys, can't remember more... I felt the movie was a lil slow considering the benchmark set in the first part. The action sequence on the Monte Carlo F1 race track is worth watching a million times...

If you are a super hero fan, then you won't have many complaints. At the end of the movie you feel you haven't wasted money at all. It's much better than mindless, senseless & ridiculous movies of Akshay Kumar :P