Destination UK - Part II

This is a photo Travelogue.(as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words)

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Destination UK - Part I

Dear diary
My First International Trip, my first Global Project.... Here I am sitting in London UK, writing the first part of the travelogue.

so I started on this voyage on the beautiful day of Sunday the 30th... september.. It was a morning Air India flight to London Heathrow... and luckily I got a window seat.. yippie..
hey.. no offence to anyone but Air India will be on the low ranks of beauty scale.. you know what I mean.. anyways, leave that aside..

So the flight got delayed by approximately 45 minutes and we took off at 10:45 AM.. I reached London by 03:00 PM local time. As I was travelling westward you need to adjust 04:30 hrs in total travel time. In the journey I flew over English Channel, and put my digicam to a good use. One more thing, I always use to fancy Sherlock Holmes so I bought the complete Sherlock Holmes series. I have already completed first two novels and I must say, this guy impresses.

so there I reached, in a new country at a new place for me... first thing i did was to find out from where can I get the taxi.. I found out the taxi stand and enjoyed a ride in the famous london cab. Read more about these at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackney_carriage. We lost our way and the cab driver didn't know the final destination so it took us a while to reach my booked apartment. finally i was there..

Next day morning..
To the office...

Travelogue: Mumbai

So, this was supposed to be my first ever official trip. And I was the chosen one along with my colleague Saurabh Diwan who was sent to attend Microsoft Techmela from HCL Comnet. Right from my day one at HCL, I have been the face of technical community at HCL. So rightfully, I was commissioned to attend this great congregation of tech gurus and tech displays.

So I reached there one day before. HCL has booked a hotel for me in Santa Cruz which was very close to the airport. However the conference venue was Hotel Renaissance in Powai.

Day One, Yours truly managed to wake up on time and reach the venue. It was a picturesque hotel with a backdrop of Powai Lake. I, being shutter friendly and having recently bought my digicam, clicked a lot. The first day started with a Keynote, followed by technology specific tracks. I won't get into those details as they may bore you to Shut Down.

Time to head home and wander in the lively city of Mumbai. This was the first time I was in Mumbai so I haven't seen much of it. Tripat and Nidhi Jalan arranged to meet me at Bandra. After losing my way twice I managed to reach there. Also went to Bandra beach. And then a trip to roadside flee market, some nice spicy chaats and time to hit the hay.

Day Two: I was delivered to the venue on time by the auto. Able to finish the day being still alive with sore thumbs and fingers while playing Forza on kiosk Xbox.

After the day was over, the real challenge was to get to some tourist like place and see something. Saurabh came to rescue and suggested about Juhu Chaupati. Hired an auto and reached there just in time that it started raining heavily. Eight O' Clock in the evening, drizzling sky and a perfect ambiance for a nice walk at the beach.

Day Three: Time to bunk the second half of the sessions. ;) Rush to Church Gate, also invite some childhood buddies and walk down Nariman Point. What a perfect setting. Then go to Gateway of India, take some photos of Hotel Taj and have a walk at Colaba flee market. Another enjoyable day


Day Four and luckily a Sunday: reached Santa Cruz station, made way to Andheri. and finally to a multiplex to watch Jhoom Barabar Jhoom! yups, such a tragic end to such a beautiful story. The story of guy who went to Mumbai first time and enjoyed first three days and ended the journey by watching such a pathetic movie!!!

Hey, as Shahrukh Khan says in Om Shanti Om - "Picture Abhi Baaki Hai Mere Dost" . So that was not the ending. Had lunch at a food court. And then, time to meet Suhas at Joggers Park. I confess, I haven't seen the movie so I wasn't expecting much. But then, it started raining and our plans to have a jog at the park were short lived. However, we had a nice tea at Irani Restaurant near Mehboob Studio. Also did some impulse shopping at Fascination (The place to buy cheap smuggled stuff. Rating: 4/5.. I got compliments from everyone in the office)

Evening time and time to get back to Delhi. A one hour date with Tripat at Balaji Cafe at the airport. and I bid adieu to Mumbai.

At Gateway of North East

On 28th of April, I boarded early morning IndiGo flight from Delhi Airport which landed at Guwahati Airport at 08:30. And the first thing I noticed was the pleasant weather. This was a breath of fresh air for us Delhiites who suffer from aggressive mercury and rising pollution levels. There was greenery all around and last night rainfall was adding that extra chill in the air.

Now the purpose, I went there for a cousins marriage. The ceremony was grand as they had two Performance Evenings, one by professional artists (including Gaurav Sharma of Laughter Champion fame and Juhi Parmar of Kumkum) and second one by family members. And a big reception and dinner party the third day. The whole ceremony lasted whole three day which is kind of rare these days. I also put my camera's 10x zoom, 2 GB card and 6 megapixel resolution to good use ;)

And it seems that being an MBA and working as MT in a Top 5 Indian IT company also makes you most eligible bachelor as I gave introductions to 20+ uncles/aunts of mine, many of them I have never seen before.

Last day, I went to Kamakhya temple but somehow didn't like that place much. No offense.
I also roamed in Fancy Bazaar which is quite famous but was a disappointment for me.

One more thing, there is a railway line which goes across the city and there is only one flyover. At ll other level crossings, 50% of the time the traffic is closed to pass the trains. Other infrastructure is not upto the mark either. Being a state capital and The Gateway to North East, the city deserves bit more than that.

So after four days of welcome break from tiring work schedule, I returned on next Wednesday when for a change the weather at Delhi was also likable.

Shooting @ 10x

I have just bought a cool Nikon Coolpix S10 digicam.

And the two best things about the camera are a whopping 10x Optical zoom and a swivel lens. Alongwith it I am using a SanDisk 2GB SD card which can take 680+ shots at full resolution and minimum compression...
You can read the review of the camera at http://www.dpreview.com/news/0608/06082411nikons10.asp

Some observations till now:

• The Optical zoom is awesome and works like a breeze
• The swivel lens allows to take snaps from creative angles without you needing to bend
• It has an exhaustive list of scene modes
• You can't use optical zoom while capturing a video
• It has a Time lapse mode for movie which allows you to shot movie snippets at regular interval which can be used for making a Time Lapse Movie
• It has a sports composite mode which take 16 composite shots of a sport scene and make a 4x4 collage of that.
• The UI and controllers take some time to get used to
• There is some noise in night landscape images.
• While shooting at 10x, the hands should be extremely steady. Tripod recommended.