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!