London

Hi, all!

For almost a month now, I have been itching to write to you all about my day-trip to London. But it so happened that I was buried under a mountain of assignment work that I only just did away with. So, here is how my London trip went...

Eight years ago, I spent a day in London and left with no special memories. Whatever I saw, I saw in a great big rush... it was all a blur. The weather had been gloomy and the city did not endear itself to me in any way. I was eager to see how and if at all my impressions of London would change this time around. And I assure you, they absolutely, incontrovertibly did.

On a fine Saturday morning in October, we (my friends Aparna, Abhilasha and I) set off along with other members of the Travelling Society for a day-long trip to the world-famous city of London. Gregory, the president of the Travelling Society, would drive us there and back. The journey itself was pleasant. Drops of rain welcomed us into London but thankfully parted company soon. We eventually arrived close to Liverpool Street Station and parked near it. Gregory walked us to the station, showed us our pick-up spot and bade adieu for the day.

We had already planned our day out. We had picked out four places we wanted to visit, looked them up on the map and identified the stations on the London Underground that would get us there. We had also packed sandwiches and some other goodies to last us the day.

As per the plan, we bought day passes on the Underground and took the yellow "Circle" Line to Tower Hill. Our first destination was Tower Bridge.

The moment we stepped out of Tower Hill Station, we saw the London Wall and the Tower of London right in front of us. Two minutes into our adventure and we were already floored. We then made our way to the magnificent Tower Bridge.

"Simply splendid" is what we thought of the Tower Bridge. Our day got infinitely better when they raised it to let a barge through!!!

Once we got over the thrill of the Tower Bridge experience, we took in some more of the view across River Thames. But for the shortage of time, we would have visited the HMS Belfast warship and explored the Tower of London as well. But instead, we headed back to Tower Hill Station and onwards to our next destination, Westminster, where another beauty of a sight awaited our arrival.

Ah, Big Ben! Needless to say, we were instantly enamoured with this beautiful structure... how could one not be! Photographs and pictures do not do it justice. One seldom gets the opportunity to revisit a landmark such as this. On my first trip, I had only vague memories of it, which is why it really made me count my blessings to be able to come back here and truly appreciate the magnificence of this beloved clock tower. The Houses of Parliament (which I always mistook to be Westminster Abbey) were quite spectacular as well, eerily quiet but dazzling all the same. We also caught a quick glimpse of the actual Westminster Abbey and then headed on along Westminster Bridge, laughing away at our hair being whipped up by the suddenly fierce winds. On the other side of the bridge was another London hotspot... London Eye.

My parents loved it... my friend Reema loved it... and God knows who else... we knew we just HAD to ride the London Eye. We had already decided that it would be the only place we would spend our precious money. In fact, we'd already bought tickets online. Closer and closer we went, it looked more and more awesome. We made ourselves comfortable at the foot of the LE and had our sandwiches and cola. After that excellent and hearty lunch, we queued up. Within minutes, we were within one of the capsules, serenely ascending over mighty, magical London.

We were on the highest observation wheel in the world and the view was beyond heavenly! London and more gorgeous London as far as the eye could see... River Thames with its many uniquely pretty bridges, Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, St. Paul's Cathedral, the "Gherkin", Charring Cross Station, Waterloo Station, Wembley Stadium... and so much more! To put it simply, London took our breath away.
We descended with heavy hearts... it was not easy letting go of that killer view. But we cheered ourselves up by indulging (economically) in some souvenirs. We walked along the banks of the Thames for some time, popping peanuts and amusing ourselves with the colourful characters around.
We then went back to Westminster Station, but only after we gulped in some more of the Big Ben's breathtaking splendour. Our next destination was St. James Park. Once there, we put our map-reading skills to test as we made our way to yet another landmark... Buckingham Palace.
During my last visit to London, while we drove past several London landmarks, Big Ben and Buckingham Palace were the only places where we stepped out of the bus. The only memories I had from that visit to the palace were the colour of courtyard and the fact that the sun being at an odd angle made all my photographs come out pink. This time around, I quite loved Buckingham Palace. It may not be the sort to have an extravagant exterior, but just being in such close proximity to real royalty gives it an edge that few places in the world have. We were also full of admiration for the rather grand statue of Queen Victoria as also the impressive gilded gates.
Some extra time in hand led to a brief period of indecision about whether or not to go to Piccadilly Circus. But we decided to wind up the day early and head back to St. James Park Station instead. Along the way, we noticed (just as we had done all day long) that London had several exquisite buildings. One could spend an entire day just walking around admiring the architecture here. Anyway, We took the train back to Liverpool Street Station, bringing our day out in London to a close. As a celebratory drink, we got ourselves some nice hot chocolate and I got myself some Millie's cookies (super-duper delicious milk chocolate cookies... best I've ever tasted!!!). Soon, we met up with the rest of the group and Gregory drove us all back to the university.

It had been a long day... we were completely exhausted, but also utterly satisfied with how the day had gone. As much as I enjoyed discovering London, I think the day was made more memorable by the company of my friends. They have not only made my life here easier to live, but with this trip, they have helped me make a day to remember... a day I can look back on and know that it will always make me smile : )

Signing off,
Kay

24

Hi, all!

Welcome to Birthday Week!

My second week here was better than my first one by a long shot. For one thing, I turned 24! When I was younger, my parents used to throw me rocking birthday parties. In the recent years, things quietened down and we (the three of us) now mutually prefer to spend birthdays simply, without fanfare as such. In any case, I was a bit worried when "Birthday Week" dawned that I would perhaps feel their absence more distinctly on that day... which of course I did... but even so, the week unfolded rather unexpectedly for me.

One thing new this week was ... lectures! Our academic semester officially kicked off that Monday. Our very first lecture, E-Commerce Programming, was a brilliant one. Taught by Prof. Richard Williams, it was everything I had expected it to be and I felt rather content at the end of it. The lab session that followed was not such a pleasant experience to begin with. But I got over it pretty quickly given that programming is my bread and butter.

Tuesday morning, I naturally woke up with a smile on my face. My 24th birthday had arrived. Starting with my parents, pretty much all the people important to me managed to wish me in one way or another... phone, text messages, emails... so except for the distance, nothing really felt different. The day was choc-a-block with lectures. In the evening, I took my friends out to dinner at a Pizza place on campus, Mondo's. They even got me a gift and chocolates! We spent a really nice evening together and then headed home. Yes, I was finally starting to call my room "home" and that was as good as it got... or so I thought!

At Mondo's (Clockwise: Aparna, Ritu, Me, Abhilasha)

Wednesday and Thursday are the light days with not too many lectures. So, that week, I made ambitious plans to visit Anu maushi and Siddharth dada in Orpington. It was a long way away and a rather complex travel plan had to be conjured for this. I was fairly confident about the whole travel, having gotten all the instructions from Siddharth dada. Here's how the journey panned out: I bought a straight return ticket to Orpington, started from the University at 11.15am, took a bus to Colchester North Station, took a train to Stratford, changed over to the London Underground system, took a train to London Bridge, changed over to the South Eastern Line, took a train to Orpington, finally took a bus to Wellbrook Drive and finally reached their house at nearly 3.30pm. Gosh! It was a long 4 hour journey... but a pleasant, comfortable and educational one.

Anu maushi greeted me warmly and made my day even better with a lovely lunch spread full of my favourite things. We spent the evening chatting about this and that, life here, life back home... our conversations flowed so naturally, it was hard for us to believe we had only met once before. Siddharth dada, whom I was meeting for the first time, joined us soon and we celebrated the evening with some wine and beer and then went out to an Indian restaurant, "Tamasha", for dinner. For someone who likes cars (not claiming to be an expert, I just think they are eye-candy :D), it was a special thrill to sit in their lovely grey Mercedes on the way to dinner and back. The dinner itself was quite delicious and was exactly the kind of flavour I was sorely missing. Between dinner and dessert, something unexpected happened... suddenly, I heard birthday music playing in the restaurant. I started to look around to see whose birthday it was, when I realised that it was playing for ME! The servers gathered around and even sang for me and served a special fireworks-laden kulfi complete with candles to blow out... I was taken totally by surprise, giddy with happiness, and completely overwhelmed. We wound up the evening with a delicious orange rind-laced coffee that was their in-house special. As if that wasn't enough wonderfulness, Siddharth dada gave me a little spin around the block in his... wait for it... awesomely spectacular blue sports Mercedes... with the top down even!!! Having revered cars of this sort, being inside one gave me infinite pleasure. I will forever be thankful to him for that. So many memorable moments rolled into one evening!

At Tamasha - Birthday Girl having a blast

Ah, eye candy!

I did return back the next evening and somehow, the loneliness of the first few days caught hold of me again. The fantastic time I had spent with Anu maushi and Siddharth dada reminded me of all that I had left behind. It made me sad again. But thankfully, the sadness faded away by morning and life was OK again.

Saturday, Aparna and I went into Colchester and did some winter shopping (because it was on sale). That Sunday was the first day I spent indoors. When I woke up in the morning, I looked outside my window and saw nothing but thick white fog. I found the sight quite unique, almost like looking out at endless sky! By mid-morning, the immediate surroundings cleared up and by late afternoon, so did the beyond. In all of this fog business, I also achieved the great feat of studying! Well, at least beginning to study. In any case, it was a pleasant and productive day.


All in all, in fact, it was a pleasant week.... a great week... and a memorable one!

Darkness and Rainbow

Hi, all!

It's now time to look back on my first week here:

Those who've read Harry Potter will be familiar with the concept of Dementors sucking happiness and warmth out of the air around you and leaving you feeling nothing but hopelessness and despair... like you can never be happy again... like nothing will ever be right again. To begin with, that was exactly how I felt.

I spent my first three mornings crying on the phone to my parents, begging them to allow me to come back home, to leave the pool of misery that I found myself in. A million worries clouded my tired mind... the pressure of fending for myself, the impending burden of studies, no reassuring familiar faces around... I had probably never felt worse. Thankfully, my parents did not take pity on me and relent. They (gently) reminded me why I was where I was and that I had put in all this hard work for a reason - for a better future. They made perfect sense. I had no choice but to trudge on.

There seemed to be a permanent chill in the air. Up on the 12th floor, the view from my room windows was to die for. But I had no desire to appreciate this gift. The beautiful green university campus looked up at me invitingly. But I felt no attraction to it. There was so much to explore, to learn, to see, to do. But my heart and head felt heavy... like I could burst into tears any moment. I somehow managed to get through the formalities, one by one... attending induction talks, accommodation talks, workshops, opening a bank account, an English Language Assessment Test and most importantly, registration.

My days would thankfully be spent in the company of my new friends, Abhilasha and Aparna. Evenings, it was just me and my loneliness.

On the fourth morning, I woke up with a thought in my head: I should take some photographs. Those who know me well know that I'm a travel photography freak. I take and take and take photographs tirelessly. Given my state of mind, I had refused to absorb my surroundings so far. So it was a slight improvement for me to want to take photographs. I, therefore, pulled out my camera from the drawer and stood by my window. The most amazing thing happened that very moment. There were grey clouds in the sky... and suddenly, straight ahead, was a giant rainbow!!!! I couldn't believe my eyes. A rainbow was precisely what I needed.


That evening, after a final crying session with Mamma (who rightly told me off this time), I made my mind up that I would be stronger. I would be as strong as I had already proven myself capable to be. I would do this right. I would do this.

The Campus Tour was a great idea to discover exactly how wonderful this campus was. The Colchester Town Tour was an even better idea... its such a cute and colourful town! It really upped my spirits.

I also had a rather nice and calming conversation with Anu Maushi, a close family friend of ours, who is in the UK visiting her son, Dr. Siddharth. But more on that in another post.

I also finally managed to get my Internet up and running and resumed to some extent my correspondence with "my" world and opened doors to my new world. This went a long, long way in bringing a semblance of normalcy to my life (and the speed here is wicked fast!!!).

Friday, I also had some opportunity to meet people, students and staff, from my own department. We also visited some classrooms and labs. This added somewhat to my sense of belonging. I even did my laundry that evening! The pieces of the jigsaw were slowly falling into place.

Life became even better that Saturday. My friends and I went grocery shopping at Tesco supermarket. I took comfort from the fact that this place had pretty much all that I needed to sustain myself here. Then, we had a great time at the Freshers' Fair where I signed up for the Travel Society, Computer Society, French Connection Society and the Film Society. We went to Colchester that evening to meet Vinaya, a friend of Aparna's, who took us to another giant supermarket, Asda, where we shopped some more and saved a whole lot.

Sunday dawned on us with typically British weather... rainy and gloomy. We had lofty plans of going to London to acquaint ourselves with the place and also help Aparna buy a laptop. But alas, that was not to be... We improvised and decided to go to somewhere closer by, Tollgate, which also had places to buy electronics from, such as PC World and Curry's. That turned out to be an accurate decision. Not only did Aparna get her laptop, but I got my printer as well. The rain faded by the time we headed home. The trip turned out to be a great bonding experience and its only gotten better for us since then.

Thus ended my first week here. Lots of tears. Lots of new experiences. But more importantly, lots of new beginnings.

Darkness

Hi, all!

My first day here was so eventfull that it deserves its own blog post:

8.30am. So here I was at Heathrow Airport, passing formality after formality. The final step was to go find the group meeting point where I would meet a representative of University of Essex. It so happened that this meeting point was at Terminal 3 and I was at Terminal 5. These terminals at Heathrow are infamously far away from each other. When I was on my way to the intra-airport shuttle train that runs between terminals, I found Aparna, who went on to become one of my two closest friends here. Both of us, new Uni of Essex students, began to make our way to Terminal 5.

Too soon, we hit a roadblock... the first of a long series that would follow during the course of the day. Luggage trolleys were not allowed on airport shuttles! So we had to haul our collective seven pieces of very heavy luggage into and out of the shuttle trains. When we managed to find new trolleys, they were the worst possible ones. We put all our focus and energies into exiting the shuttle station and locating the meeting point. Once we found it, there was no one there!!! Thankfully, we did locate them in some time. We were both on the 1pm bus and we requested to be put onto the 11am one. Big mistake!

The 11am bus was finally ready, they told us at 11.45. Just as we were about to enter, roadblock no. 2 came along and they announced that the bus had broken down. Back we went, into the airport, frustrated and low on energy.

An hour and a half later, they told us our replacement bus was here. Great! we thought. Luggage loaded, we sat comfortably in good seats on the upper of the double-decker. Another 20 minutes later, we were on our way. Just when we were ready to say 'Thank goodness!' and start enjoying the scenery, roadblock no. 3 showed up to add to our overflowing misery. Half way through, the bus got a FLAT TIRE!!!!!!!!!!!! In the middle of nowhere, for nearly two hours, we sometimes stood, sometimes sat on the insect-filled grass of the English countryside in chilly English weather, wondering what on earth we had done to deserve this fate. The only plus from this outing was that here I made another friend who also went on to become one of my closest friends, Abhilasha. In the meantime, they managed to call a professional tyre change mechanic to do what turned out to be quite a complex job. Finally, we hauled our exhausted bodies back into the bus. I slept soundly through the next hour or so. Finally, at nearly 4.30, we arrived at University of Essex.

Once we had picked up our keys, we began the arduous task of getting our bags into our rooms. Abhilasha and I were located in the North Towers, she in Rayleigh and I in Tawney while Aparna was to be in Harwich Court. Before parting, we decided to meet to grab a bite. I finally made it to my tower and then to my flat on the 12th floor. When I entered my room, roadblock no. 4, the most evil of them all, came at me so unexpectedly that it knocked me off my feet: loneliness.

I managed to hold my nerve till I told my father that I had reached my room safely. Then I broke down. Regret flooded me. I cursed myself for doing what I had just done. I had left behind a perfectly happy, cozy life full of people I loved for a life full of nothing but responsibility and despair, to be spent alone in a tiny room which I had to take care of singlehandedly, in a flat shared with strangers. I wanted to run. I wanted to go back.

I met Abhilasha for dinner. It was 7.30pm and a Sunday. Just the one restaurant was open: Happy Days Diner. I wasn't even hungry, which was lucky for me since there wasn't much I could eat there anyways. I used my food coupon to get a free coffee. We sat down and talked for a while, the exhaustion apparent on our faces and in our voices. I couldn't get myself to finish my coffee and she couldn't get through any more that half her hotdog. We soon said goodnight in the hope that we would bump into each other somewhere the next day.

I went back to my room half-heartedly, dreading the emptiness and the pressing silence. I steeled myself a bit and decided to unpack. Despite being bone-tired, I unpacked every single bag before I went to bed. Sleep, at least, was kind to me and came upon me quickly to relieve me of the horror of having to think any more about what had been, probably, one of the darkest days of my life.

Say Goodbye

Hi, All!

First of all, a roundup of the day I departed:

I woke up on the morning of the 27th pretty much packed and ready, anxious and yet coolly confident that I could and would pull this off. Like a good and seasoned traveller, I had left little to do on this day except little things here and there, meeting family and friends and most importantly, staying calm. The house was full of people all day long... the arrival of my 3-year-old niece Madhushri made the atmosphere even more cheerful and lively.

My friends joined us in the evening and then nearly twenty of us set off for the airport. It was like a cavalcade and they sure made me feel like a celebrity! Having reached early at the airport, we took a gazillion photographs (which, by the way, no one, except Prashant, has sent me yet!!!). Before I knew it, it was time to go. Tears suddenly welled up inside me. But I had promised Mamma that I would not cry and to keep that promise, I dashed off inside in a hurry, leaving behind my family, friends and life as I knew it.

Trupta, my bestest friend, works for Jet Airways and was able to accompany me into the airport. This was a huge relief as she made matters much simpler for me once inside. But even this seemingly long distance between entering the airport and clearing immigration disappeared in a flash. All this while, some of my cousins and friends were still tracking me through the windows and waving at me frantically every time I looked at them. Now, there was no more window left. I said good bye to Trupta and wished her all the very best for her own cool new life (she is getting married in April). Finally, I was on my own.

Despite an hour and a half delay, I felt fine. I enjoyed my flight, just as I always do, lack of consistent sleep notwithstanding. London arrived soon... I even caught glimpses of the Tower Bridge, London Eye, the Houses of Parliament and even a football stadium or two! Finally, early Sunday morning, with a big bag full of all your blessings and best wishes and four bags full of my stuff, I landed into my "cool" new life.

Breaking the silence

Hi, all!

My apologies for the month-long silence. I should have broken it sooner.

You have all been tremendously supportive and kind to me and I thank you once again for that.

My time here has been interesting to say the least. My first week, particularly, was not one of my best. Things got a little better in the second week. The third week has somewhat gotten me back on track.

To do justice to my "cool" new life, I will talk of each week separately in different posts so as to give you a better picture of my life here.

Ok then... I better start blogging... before memories fall out of my head! : )

Signing off,
Kay