Southall - Mini India

If you are in London and/or If you are an Indian, you must visit Southall once during your travel. It will help you get rid of any homesickness. The place is a hybrid of London and India. You will find BMWs, Mercs and Jaguars running on the road while there will be Gurudwaras, Temples and Mosques.. and it also has ICICI Bank and SBI Bank..

It is the only station I saw which doesn't have a ticket validating machine and surprisingly the station name is also inscribed in Gurumukhi on the platforms..

And it is the best place to have some decent Indian food if you can't have that bland English food every time. For my Jain friends, this place also has some purely veg restaurants which is a rarety in London.

Formula 1 : The Final Five Face off

The Formula 1 season has entered the final five races and it hasn't got any closer than this in recent past. There are top two teams and four key drivers swapping podium places in each race. Now it will all boil down to Ferrari's reliability and McLaren's speed. Lewis Hamilton is performing well and all set to win Drivers' Championship in his debut year provided he doesn't suffer any mechanical failures or punctures tyres.

Another pleasant surprise of the year was Massa. Initially dubbed as driver no. 2 for Ferrari, he is giving his teammate Kimi Raikkonen a run for his money. Both of them have a very positive competition going on between them unlike as what we saw between Alonso and Hamilton.

One more team to be watched is BMW who are constantly performing well all through the season. If they keep this up during the off season testing and development, they will be a serious title contender for next year's championship

So let's close this post on a positive note. Vijay Mallya has bought a 60% stake in Spykar. His company Kingfisher already has a sponsorship with Toyota. Both of these and a recent visit by Hermann Tilke are all good signs for some INDIAN hopes on F1 radar.