Moments of Happiness - the idea behind it...

Unfortunately it is an oft occurring event, that in our strive to achieve happiness we often tend to either overlook, or forget to enjoy & celebrate and forget too easily those sudden moments of happiness which brings forth that elusive nirvana within yourself, even maybe for some moments.

As I often recall that quote from (for some reasons) a favorite movie of mine - The Beach - as Richard poignantly puts it:

"…And me? I still believe in paradise. But now at least I know it's not some place you can look for. Because it's not where you go. It's how you feel for a moment in your life when you're a part of something. And if you find that moment... It lasts forever…."

So as an ode to those sudden moments of joy, happiness and peace in our lives which we often ten to ignore, I thought of starting this 'Moments of Happiness' where I would try to recapture some moments from my life where I felt at peace with myself and the events which built up to it.

Will try to keep it short and as accurately as I remember it, just such that years later, these memories can still stay fresh I my mind and can be relived again…

Travel memory: Thailand | The leap of faith...

When: Aug 2012

Where: Somewhere in the vicinity of Ko Phra Ngan/ Ko Tao, Thailand

We looked down from the cliff…the water was at least 30 feet down. To us  - it looked almost 60 feet down!

(swallowing gulps…) "Guys are we doing it?"

"Only if the rest are doing it and they survive…"

(Silent nods of agreement)…and we step back to allow the rest to take the leap first!

[Cut to - 10 mins before the above conversation]

We were on a day excursion from Ko Samui across the islands of Ko Phra Ngan and Ko Tao. It was an absolute tropical paradise with blue crystal waters, coral reefs in the water and loads of marine life!

We made a lunch stop at Ko Tao and had just finished a superbly assembled Thai lunch with all the delicacies you can think of; and was just about to stretch our legs and rest for a bit when suddenly the guide bounded towards us in general with fingers pointed and issues the challenge in his unique style;

Thai Guide (pointing at various people including our group): You man? You man?

We: (interpreting it to be an invitation to some kind of challenge to prove our manhood, kinda looking at each other in a bit of confusion and trying to apprehend what's coming next)

Thai guide (more emphatic and almost with a finger on our collective chests): You man-o-not? If you man, come-wi'-me...

Being brow-beaten into accepting the challenge, 3 of us khudirams (a close English approximation of this would refer to those fools who tread where angels fear) - Messrs Chatterjee, GuhaThakurta and I, quietly stood up to follow the guide to whatever it was we had to prove our manhood with or by. We turn around to the rest for a bit of moral support expecting them to join the ranks too…& this is what we got:

Chiki: Aami chhobi tulchhi toder ja korte cholchhish kor, tora jaa (I will click the photos of whatever you guys will be doing, you go ahead)

Vag (as a quiet undertone): aamio chhobi tulchhi…tora jaa jaa (I am clicking snaps too…go on, go on)

Bodhi: Already aamake diye snorkeling koriyechhish, byass ei t(r)ip'e aar adventure dorkar nei (already you made me do snorkelling, that's enough adventure for this trip for me)

Goba (leaning back with legs crossed over each other & rubbing his belly): ei just kheye uthlam boss….(I just ate…)

Pantu: (purposeful deadpan expression which effectively stalls any further querying upon his participation)

Proj (to me & Chatts in a super confident voice) - Chol to sala…aamra kori…! (Leave them, let us go do it!)

…and that is what brought us to the cliff-top!

[Cut to - the present]

Proj again (a marked decrease of bravado in the voice): Damn…it's high man

The Guide (gives a running start) - this is what you doooooo…..(one running leap into nothing…and splash!!)

We quickly run to the ledge - the man is already swimming towards one of the boat.

We quietly make way for the rest - and before long the first gent has jumped in! we check on him from over the edge…and we see this man has survived too and swimming towards shore! And that kind of opened the floodgates of the brave jumpers…one after another the small group jumped and some even came back for their 2nd dive, while the 3 of us continued to check out the safety aspects a bit more! ;-)

Suddenly the voice of the guide cuts across the group and finds us - You! Jump or not? Be a man?

Acutely conscious of not taking any insult to the manhood in front of this motley crowd (and especially when we had quite a bit of audience inclusive of beautiful women watching the action with interest) we start taking strides towards the cliff edge…and then a quick internal consultation:

Who's going first?

(Proj) - come on you guys…one of u start!

(Me): But you were the one who was most enthu…you brought us here!

(Proj): That was before I saw the height of the jump from up here…Abhi thoda phat gaya na! (essentially: scared shit a bit!)

(Chatts, me - with nods of agreement) - Me too. Me too.

(Guide, voice from a bit afar): Be-man…

Suddenly a scene from The Beach came up in my mind….while Di Caprio and the other guy (Etienne) argued over who would jump down the waterfall first, the girl (Francois) had taken a running jump - bisected them - and had jumped off the cliff into the waterfall…

Far from as dramatic, and with confidence that i didn't feel at all I heard myself say - OK…I am going first

With the life-jacket tightened, one last look down into the water to gauge the distance I need to jump to avoid the cliff-face, a running start and geronimo! I find legs flailing in thin air and then soaring and then the plummeting descent - the water surface getting closer and closer, my legs breaking the surface and then surrounded by  blue as you're 6 feet under!...and I survived!

My leap of faith...

 With a new vigor in my voice - Come on guys…it's super!!

I look up to see Chatts come to the edge of the cliff and almost making a pose to dive head first (yeah yeah, the mouth was still open)…

Shouts from all direction - Take a running start…

Chatts takes 2 steps back and suddenly he too is flying off the ledge…and quite a splash! Seconds later his head bobs out, mouth opens again with a smile on it - all's good!

Chatt's leap follows...

Last man standing - Proj. Go for it man…

Proj jumps (quite close to the cliff if we must say and almost feared for a second whether he's gonna hit the wall) and a splash later his head bobs up & we knew we survived to tell the tale!

Proj completes the leap-cycle

Almost like heroes we swam towards the shore (conveniently ignoring the fact that some of the over-enthu guys were making multiple jumps) and got onto the shore rocks!

To the guide: We man?

Guide (smiling) : You man!!

High-Fives all around…. :)

Public Photo

-------------------------------------------------------

Legend to the Buoys:
Proj a.k.a. Prajato Guha Thakurta
Chatts a.k.a. Arjun Chatterjee
Chiki a.k.a. Abhishek Sen
Vag a.k.a. Agniva Mookherjee
Bodhi a.k.a. Bodhisattva Banerjee
Goba a.k.a. Abilin Mukherjee
Pantu a.k.a. Parantap Basu

Travel memory: Scotland | A serendipitous find - the Commando Memorial

When: May 2012
Where: Scotland

Circa May 2012, a few of us from the Geneva Bong-gang (namely Kranti, Pavel and I) decided upon a Scottish road-trip partially owing to the fact that our esteemed Dr Kar (an erstwhile Geneva resident) had then moved base to Glasgow and we decided to make good use of his station.

A high level route of our trip was along the lines of: Glasgow- Loch-Lomond - Oban - Fort William - Isle of Skye and back - Loch-Ness - Inverness - round the north shore to Aberdeen - Stonehaven - Dundee - Perth - Stirling - Glasgow.

While writing about our entire Scotland trip - even a synopsis - would take quite awhile, given the sights, sounds and whiskies of the land & I will try to do it justice sometime; one of the incidents that stand out is our discovery of the Commando Memorial near Lochaber in the Scottish highlands.

This incident took place while we were on our way upwards from Loch Lomond via Fort Williams towards Eileen Donan and then Isle of Skye.

From Fort Williams onwards we had started getting quite a bit of hill terrain where the roads were undulating with the sway of the hillocks and the glens…and before long we had Dr Kar (also sometimes referred to as Deepak) and Kranti complaining of nausea with threats of a pukish follow-through. We were on the A82 highway having just crossed the Spean river and couldn't make a stop without a proper shoulder as it was a 2-lane highway mostly. With assurances flowing thickly from Pavel and I that we would definitely stop at the  next opportunity that he gets while hoping fervently the other two manages to hold it in for sometime we raced towards the next rest-pit on the highway.

Anyways, pretty soon we figured a sort of flatland opening ahead on the left side of the highway with a couple of cars swinging onto it and a statue of some kind rising up from there. Figuring it must either be a pit-stop or a view-point and seriously testing the sickness-retention capacity of Kranti and Deepak we swung onto it…and even before we stepped out of the car we knew this would be one of the finds of our trip!!

(Did I forget to mention that in all of this antiperistatical excitement we had failed to register that we were driving almost against a backdrop of the Aonach Mor and Ben Nevis…? This is what we were amidst...)

Ben Nevis and the Aonach Mor range

After taking in the absolutely majestic surroundings where we landed up -Ben Nevis towering right up front with the Aonach Mor range skirting it, the glens on the other sides and the Commandos' statue in the midst of it all, we started reading upon the antecedents of the statue and the history behind it.

It  figured that we had stumbled upon one of the oldest commando training grounds in the war history with this facility being set up during World War II for the original British Commando Forces and the statue was a commemoration to it and has come to signify the spirit, bravery and valour of Commandos since. It was like the prequel to the present British Commando forces like the SAS and all the ones worldwide which had drawn from this mode of specialized soldiers.

Some of the gutsiest men that walked the earth....whose lives might have been the stuff movies were made of....

This link might help to get a snapshot upon the history : Commando_Memorial

"United We Conquer"

...also there was the 'Garden of Tributes'; where friends and families of fallen Commando soldiers would pay their tributes to the fallen brave...the love of the Country and God etched forever in the memory of those who knew and these poignant surroundings. 

In memory of those who made the maximum sacrifice in the line of duty

The tributes, the sentries and the mountains beyond...

A wonderful find and one that stands out as a memory from Scotland.

Creatively procrastinating...

the last post from me on this blog has been years back...and it is not for lack of attempts on my part that it hasn't been replenished with fresh posts, but more for the lack of success of those random attempts that failed to convert the myriad thoughts in my head to some composed text over here. on top when i spoke to some near ones about re-starting it -i almost got branded as a dinosaur for wanting to get back to a blog in the age of micro-isms like instagram, twitter, fb, pinterest, etc. :-)

but...i am at a point again where i think i really need to re-order stuff in my life (like often) and one of the things i would like to bring on track is to catch up on my reading and writing; it is easier said than done - believe me.

...and to think that the things which consume most of my leisure bandwidth are the internet and smartphone; and here i am partaking the internet's ability to post my thoughts which i hope to gather away from the net and the phone...(the image expresses my present feelings)

i was thinking of putting in smaller pieces instead of long-drawn ones, maybe that will enable a higher frequency of posts. 2 themes that were swimming in my head were: (i) stand-alone incidents from my travels, (ii) moments where i remember experiencing happiness and sort of bliss...

as i write this sipping on some Spanish red, i have all the motivation reqd in my head...hoping to translate some of that onto the pages even when the wine has passed...

11 things i did at NYC

It’s called the Melting Pot of the world…the Financial Capital. The home of the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building. The Big Apple. The City that Never Sleeps. Batman’s Gotham. A city I had grown up being fascinated about and had always wanted to visit and work out from the time my grandmom had visited it and told me stories about it. As it’s said in Urdu, ‘Shukr Alham Du Lillah’ (Thank You, God) that I got a chance to visit this magnificent city and was suitably awed by it from the 1st moment i stepped out of the PATH onto the streets of Manhattan. I find it apt to describe it as the ‘Centre of the Universe’! A snapshot below upon some of the things I managed to squeeze in during my time there…(in random order of preference)

1. On top of the ESB (Empire State Building): A friend said what’s in it…would you pay over $30 to look at buildings from the roof? And I thank God I thought it was worth to.
Choose a sunny day…and definitely a day visit over a night visit. It’s a study in perceptions…that you could be so high up and look down upon the ant-life below.
West-side – Right up you see the circular expanse of Madison Square Gardens…beyond which you get to see the entire expanse of New Jersey across the Hudson…from the posh Newport area with the GoldMan Sachs HQ on the south-eastern side to the expanse of rest of jersey city northwards heading off to rest of upstate NY too (maybe a shade of the Palisades Park).
East Side – Queens borough on the left side and Brooklyn on the right side. Before that you will see the UN HQ right on the river-edge and the Roosevelt island beyond it bang in the middle of the river. And loads of flights headed for JFK or La Guardia.
North Side – Unmissables: Chrysler building, PanAm building (now MetLife) and then – Central Park. The vast expanse of Central Park resplendent in the color of the season…green, deep jades, red or white. Jackie Onassis reservoir sparkles in between that. Further up you see the entire borough of the infamous Bronx – pretty safe from this distance.  On a good day, they say you could see upto Massachusetts from here.
South Side - …and my fave direction. Right in front you see the Flatiron district with it’s flagship building The Flatiron, the Credit Suisse clock-tower and the serene Madison Sq Park. Further on you see the bustling Union Sq Park region & the Village. Further down – the southern tip of Manhattan – the financial district with it’s glass & titanium sparkles in the sunlight and tapering into the peninsular-tip…the Brooklyn bridge rises on the south-east side and the tiny Statue of Liberty holds sway over the South-West side…

Whatever anyone says – don’t ever rob yourself of this view over the NY skyline…it’s worth it!

Round off the experience with a visit to the Rockerfeller Center and the Bryant Park skating rink.

2. Day at Central Park: Grab a camera and just go. Arrive such that you can get a share of bright sunlight and approaching dusk. Subjects abound - for you to click upon or to gaze upon.
I started from the famous 72nd street entrance made famous after the most-famous Beatles and his mindless assassination right outside it…walk through the ‘Strawberry Fields’ and the homage paid to Lennon year-in & year-out from fans around the world. You could get on the documentary channel of some foreign channel waxing eloquence abt Lennon & the Beatles. The you see the Calcutta-rickshaws (the cycle drawn one), the myriads of bridges, the water bodies, people lazing all around in various moods contrived by the human kinds…artists, health enthusiasts, tourists, vendors…and the views all around.


3. Brooklyn Bridge walk + Pizza @ Grimaldi’s: A Must-Do. From the southern part of Manhattan near City Hall across the City Hall Park get onto the bridge. It’s pedestrian-friendly and more bicycle-friendly so look out for those. You get a quarter up the way and the Lady Liberty becomes visible on your right…before that obviously you have a ringside view of the majestic skyline. Some parts of the bridge are covered in corrugated sheets and you feel thankful for them and the railings at times as the wind is so hard.
And if you do make this trip there is a tradition you just cant forgo – Pizza at Grimaldi’s on the Brooklyn side (http://www.grimaldis.com/). Stand in the queue for an hour if required – but pls don’t miss the pizza there. Yes, it’s literally un-missable. The taste and smell will linger for weeks and you will keep craving it at random times. I am doing so while I’m writing this.

4. Carnegie Deli - http://www.carnegiedeli.com/home.php
At 55th street and 7th Avenue. Thanks to Kakish & Reshmi for taking me to this gastronomic spot in the middle of Manhattan. Usual queue should not deter as it’s definitely worth the wait.
Close your eyes and go for the Woody Allen – a smorgasbordic creation of corned beef & pastrami, and the famous gherkin pickles! …And go for anything else if you have the tummy for it after that...the roast tongue comes highly recommended. Even if their cheesecake comes with high ratings, my vote goes for Mr. Allen out there. See if you can convince them to post your snap on their walls too 

5. Times Square!! : Any day in the evenings you feel like you got nothing to do – this is one f the best mood-lifters in town. The neon will dazzle you the 1st time…and every time after that. Its as if the universe comes together over here – everyone’s talking, walking, eating, dancing, looking, laughing, selling! Head to any pub and ure gonna strike a conversation with someone across the world in 10 mins flat…be choosy about who you wanna head back home with 
There are dozens of those stand-up comedy shows on offer…research any one and just go for it…you will hardly be disappointed. Better to buy the tickets at the venue rather than from the street-peddlers. Spend some time watching those super-athletic street dancers…they’re awesome! Get a portrait or a caricature done from the street artists. And no – you really don’t need to shell out dollars for the weirdo sitting with the sign ‘Need Dollars for Weed’!
What I missed: A broadway show. Need to tick it off next time.

6. Watch a Yankees game at the Yankees stadium: Courtesy – my mate Booboo Behari! Acquired tickets from his colleague…even treated me to the game. NY Yankees vs Boston Red Sox at the new Yankees stadium at the Bronx! 3 ppl – 2 Indians & a Brit – none of who has any idea of what baseball is all about -troop to the stadium in the Yankees wrist-bands & lending their support voice with the masses. Understanding the game, watching through series of balls & strikes, munching on hot-dog & beer, screaming at the home run and celebrating the Yankees win completes the experience. Oh – did I forget to mention returning from the Bronx at 1:30 AM at night?

7. Watch a game at the Madison Square Gardens: Another day – another American sport. Major difference being – venue is the famed Madison Square Gardens…home to some of the major sporting spectacles of the world including most of the major heavyweight boxing title defenses. Well…we didn’t go for a boxing match, but an equally violent sport as per my opinion – Ice-Hockey!
We watched the NY Rangers vs the St. Louis Blues…needless to say lent our voice of support for the Rangers. Was glad to view 2 of those famed ice-hockey free for alls apart from the numerous bone-shattering dashes against the fibre glass boundary wall! NY lost to St Louis…but we had our money’s worth!

8. Wall St & the Bull: I always had a fascination for the Bull. Guess being a Taurean had something to do with it. And that it lays reign over the Financial epicenter of the World (dunno for how long though)…
Go to Wall St….the NYSE building is really impressive. And then wait for your turn to hang from the Bull’s horn or rub the Bull’s balls (supposed to bring the investors luck) along with varied travelers of the world.

9. Liberty Island & Ellis Island: One of the must-dos. Take a ferry either from the NJ side or NY side and do the Ellis Island, Statue of Liberty stop. Ellis Island is where the immigrants first landed when they came to the Promised Land and kept in quarantine till they were cleared. Wonder how they must have felt at seeing the Lady Liberty when after so many years and viewing so many things – I was still pretty awed by it! If you wanna go up on the pedestal of the Lady, buy your tickets online or you gonna get stuck like me to circumbulate around the pedestal structure. Me & Kakish doing the Patel trip…afternoon well spent.

10. Travel interstate in a car: Got together with a bunch of mates and decide to drive from NY to Boston. Took us around 5 hrs or so after an early morning start from Edison, NJ where we had camped for the night. Did contain some pit-stops in between to refuel on coffee to counter the numbing cold outside. Colors of falls retreating into winter as you drive down NJ, NY and right across picturesque Connecticut into the erudite state of Massachusetts. All the more enjoyed when Bhangra booms from the car audio all the way through!

11. And for #11 & stuff…either I gotta be real drunk to write about it…or I need to be real old to write about it! Since I ain’t none yet – will hold onto these yet away from public consumption! But 1 thing I will say – tougher to get a friendlier place than NY…so party hard guys! 
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places i stopped by around- mebbe for a whistle-stop or mebbe for a li'l while...

visited 53 states (151.%)
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my first thoughts on Sydney and Australia

[written long back & shared with some mates via email...thought will post it here]
Landing into the Sydney airport is one of the most beautiful sights I hve come across….the runways seem like they merge into the sea….so when ure landing onto the runway, it's almost as if ure flying from the ocean and straight onto land…

The first thing that strikes you when u enter the land down under – is something which strikes you at most foreign places….the cleanliness of the place, the smoke-less air. There's a certain order in most processes, and the integral thing being - people are willing to follow some rules to bring by these ordered processes.

Aussie civilization is to do with the coastline…all the big cities AND the densely populated ones are around the coastline…from perth in the west, darwin in the north, cairns, Brisbane, Sydney along the east coastline & Adelaide in the south – the aussie love for the sea is very evident all around. The centre of the aussie mass-land can just boast of the ayer's rock, the alice springs desert and the extensive outback bushlands!

As with most modern Indian towns, Sydney too has a hub-n-spoke kind of city proliferation. There's the central throbbing Sydney CBD (central business district) which never sleeps- always pulsating with traffic, both human & automobile – the nightlife, the neon lights and the multi-national faces on the streets; and as you start moving out of 'sydney city', u start coming across the various suburbs – glebe, leichardt, parramatta, baulkham hills – the farther they are from the central district, the more sparse and farm-like they are. Most people prefer to stay in the suburbs, even if their work has to bring them into the city. This is due to both economic reasons (lesser rent charges, etc) as well as the sense of peace and calm that the suburb atmosphere brings them.

The Workplace
The best part of aussie work places is the multi-racial mix that you encounter there, which is but a rarity at most other places. From personal experience at my workplace in Sydney, the department I worked in had around 15 ppl which comprised of 3 Indians, 2 Chinese, 1 Iraqi (who at 1 time had served in Saddam's army), 1 Serbian, 1 Russian, 1 South African, 1 American & 1 Pakistani among the Aussies. The other departments too had their fair share of multi-national hues. This multi-racial workplace was a revelation in itself as you tend to learn so much about the world that you live in, about places you haven't been to, about lives you knew nothing about. You hear a first-hand account of how it was to live under the rule of Saddam in Iraq & not a jingoistic-American glossed version of it. You hear of some of the horrors of the serb-bosnian war and the hardships that they had to undergo to leave their homeland behind to carve a new life for themselves in this faraway foreign land. You get some rare glimpses into the lives within the Great Wall into Dragon land, and you realize sitting there – 1000 of miles away from home – that you're not really that different from that colleague of yours from Lahore.

About the work culture, the people are not as work automatons as the Americans or the Japanese – yes – they do work hard during their work hours, but they also like to take their frequent 'ciggie breaks' accompanied by their cuppas (coffee/ tea/ coke). Work starts pretty nearly at 9, and must definitely end by 1730…1800 at the most! Weekends are sacrosanct – they definitely don't want anything to do with work then. And most places have a 5 day week. Lunch is an hr and half of relaxation accompanies by lotsa food, but again ppl are bck at their desks by around 14-1430 for intense work for the remainder of the day. Fridays are a different time altogether…Friday lunches are commonly wet lunches ( something I would luv 2 have back in India), tad longer….and post lunch sessions on Fridays are just an extension of the weekends – it's just used to send out mails - the essence of which are – 'ya…it may be/ may not be a problem, will definitely be looked into on Monday…hve a nice weeknd'….and comps are switched off!! J

The People
One word that definitely comes into mind after spending some time with the indigenous aussies is 'bindaas'…the ppl are damn chilled out….they do their own thing – lets you do their own thing. Slightly haughty at the onset, they warm to you pretty fast if u don't rub them the wrong way. Crazy about sports, fitness and exercise of any and every form, greater percentage of aussies look and feel pretty fit and energetic. Most males do have an intimidating physique, and they flaunt it pretty much….and the females, though big-boned, do have a sculpted fitness aura about them. Often you will see them running on the streets with just an ipod for company…the swimming pools are filled with people doing their laps….the beaches – aahhh…wat do i say abt them…the beaches and the ppl (read ladies) on the beaches...swimming, surfing, snorkeling….running on the beaches, swimming and then lazing under the sun….perfect idea of a weekend!! Ppl just take a backpack stuffed with a towel, a sun-block, a book, an ipod….and dats it – they can just spend the entire day lazing at the beach….absolutely my kind of ppl!!
And one more thing abt sports – u defeat the aussies in the sport of their choice – and you hve got their respect for life!

The Food
The thing that I miss the most – the food and the beer!.food enerally consists of meat, meat & more meat!! J beef, pork, lamb, kangaroo, chicken, turkey…u name it - u got it. And then there's the sea-food! My diet generally consisted of meat and beer…and I had nothing to complain about it! Sometimes I did make an allowance for a little salad to enter my system, but generally stuck to meat and beer. Even McD's had a burger called the 'quarter-pounder' – a simple burger of a quarter-pound patty of beef, a cheese slice and a lettuce…dat's it! awesome in taste! A pity that none of the Indian McD's serves beef….a travesty of food justice. The beef was just too good for words….the porterhouse steak, the eye-fillet steak, the rump steak….u could almost smell the freshness of the meat! Apart from it, there are loads of fruits, sauces, veggies, cheese, milk products, asian foods….

And the best part – the beer!! I could go on and on…but the beer variety wont stop! Apart from the usual international names like Bud, Heineken, Guinness & Stella Artois– we had the Aussie favorites of Victoria Bitters, Toohey's, Crown, Coopers…each region having a different fave (like VB for Victorians, Coopers for the Adelaide mates)..and there is the japanese asahi…the german, ducth & belgian beers. And yeah – for all u guys out there – most aussies hvnt heard of Fosters'…and neither do u get foster's anywhere out here (u still do come across Kingfisher)…so much for 'australian for beer'!!

So…by and then…ppl will mostly have a nice time in Oz-land…the pp are tolerant….incidences of racism is pretty low and not that rampant. The rare incidents which do occur are mostly by the teenage crowd. The average aussie is pretty much against racism on the outside, not bothered about what they mite feel inside. There is an element of frankness across the people…they make away with formality pretty easily, and though it takes a little time to get a hang of their 'aussie lingo' – it somewhat grows on you…pretty soon you get to realize that what they mean by 'mite' & 'dite' is actually 'mate' and 'date'! most ppl I hve met there are proud of whatver they work at….every work of skill – whether it be masonry, plumber or a consultant, has an element of pride in it. No occupation is looked down upon, every work is accorded a place of respect and class. And ppl do their work passionately and with love. Every restaurant you go to – the waitresses will greet you with a smile and actually make u feel at home and as a wanted customer, and not just that – random ppl on the streets also pass by with a greeting whenever you cross each other.

you get to meet a lot of ppl….ppl from across the world….u realize that the Lebanese women are among the most beautiful women on earth, that authentic Chinese is a world different from the Chinese food you get in india, that a feeling of fitness and sports passion breeds better in an atmosphere of it and that a little bit of cleanliness ethics among the ppl makes a world of difference to the cleanliness of the people.

So that's a lot of things that you don't get in India…the lovely beaches, the awesome food, the cleanliness around, the multi-racial work culture….but at the end of the day – when u land back in india and get the familiar stink which greets you upon your arrival – you cant help but think – 'no worries mate...I'm back home!!