Chennai Damaka

It was an eventful week last week. I made a long trip to Chennai with a tightly packed schedule and had a lot of things in mind.... getting my Letter of Recommendation from my College professors and Transcripts from my University, meet family and frens, movies... to name a few. But smack down in the middle (literally) of my vacation was the main purpose of my trip, mein Geburtstag ("my Birthday" for the uninitiated).

17th July Sunday : The vacation has jus started and I happy to meet some of my frens after quite some time. I also had to forcefully pull out some of them from their (MBA) classes and went straight for a movie, only to be bombed. "Sorry sir, no tickets" was what we got.
Big deal!, we thought, now we have some thing better to do, Foosball ! ! !. We drove straight to the our favorite (and only) Foosball hang out Du Bowl, only to be bombed once again "No Foosball sir, its not working". Having had enough of this we jus left for Cafe Coffee Day (formerly 'The' hang out place, but now it's losing its sheen). After some chit chat and some bird watching we headed to play some Pool at Pot Shot. The evening was brought to a close with the *famous* sandwich-around-the-corner.

18th July Monday : Spent most of the day at Madras University (it took more than 2 freaking hours to get a single D.D.). And after running helter-skelter from one block to the other I was finally able to submit my application for Transcripts. Phew!!! Talk about things being unorderly, talk about Madras University!

19th July Tuesday : Bought my mom a nice pair of earring and a saree. Did a little shopping for myself.

20th July Wednesday : My Birthday! - spent the day with family... with special breakfast, even more special lunch and I-had-enough-specials dinner. The day went by talking to and mailing frens, reading their wishes and spending quality time with meine Familie apart from a little shopping again. A Saturday night party with frens was also planned.

21st July Thursday : Nostalgia! Back to college. Spent the better part of the day there getting my recos, meeting professors and having a snack at the ole bunker..err... canteen! Nothing's changed here so I headed back home.

22nd July Friday : Met a lot of relatives, grandpa, grandma, aunty, uncle, cousin... etc... etc... After all that I needed some time to chill. It then dawned on me that one important intent of my visit was still unfinished! So I decided to call some of my frens and headed for Satyam theaters.... the movie - Anniyan.

It was nostalgia again... this time the fun of watching a movie with Avaiz (aka wtfdude). I almost forgot how he used to scream and joke during most of the movies I have seen with him, I clearly recall his antics during Matrix Revolution and it was fun. Every thing came back again when he started screaming ANNYIAAANNNNN now and then and I cudn't help but laugh. Of course I can't blame him, I made him watch a movie that he has already seen umpteen times!

23rd July Saturday : Another day another movie. This time it was the movie "Sarkar" with Ajay and Deepak (aka Alpha) at Mayajaal where I also met a very close school buddy of mine, Idhris. The movie was really good as wtfdude had said in his blog. It was really fast paced and deviating from the usual Indian masala movie it did not have any song-and-dance sequence. Another point is that unlike the usual movie plot where the first half is jus laying the foundation of the story and the second half is all drama, in "Sarkar" felt I like it did not have any typical first half. It was all action and drama right from the word go.

Next was party time.... at Mainland China. It was great to have a mini get-together of frens. It's been a long time overdue. Although I missed "Hog-king" Shafi, I was glad to see Zuber after a long time. And of course the long time contender for the "Hog-King" title, Avaiz was more than happy to fill Shafi's shoes. As the lone vegetarian in the group Deepak had some troubles. His "Veg-XYZ-ABC Noodles" was untouched by others, so was his vegetarian side dish which Ajay described to be a vegetable salad only a little wet! I tried it and concurred with Ajay. Tariq still dressed in formals (effects of Great Lakes institute) had his eyes riveted on the birds in the neighboring tables. As they say 'A bird in the bush is better than none in hand'. Jus kiddin Tariq ;-)

After a filling dinner I was surprised by the guys when they brought to the table a birthday sparkler and a cake! But there was another surprise awaiting me and it was truly the icing on the cake....literally. And the icing was me! This is when Avaiz shoved my face into the beautiful cake while I blew the candle. To add sweeteners over the icing, Ajay took eons to take a snap with the whole population at the restaurant laughing and gigling at yours truly!

I crashed into my bed well past midnight and by the next day my vacation will officially be over.

24th July Sunday : Relaxed for some time with the help of my idiot box and started packing off to the wet and windy H.Y.D. On the train there was this newly wed couple sitting straight opposite to me. I concluded them to be newly web based on inference of their behavior and nothing else. Dam... more often that not I jus wanted to shout at them "Get a room!!!" I tried to focus on the book I had and not be distracted but people shud know what is acceptable by the Indian public and more importantly what's not!

Anyway I am back to my office after a long break and got some new things on my hand right away. Catch u guys soon!