And Life Goes On...

If I have cribbed about life being boring and me being totally jobless... then I sure was in for some surprise... it took a couple of days of my Christmas vacation to bring back the bubbly me on to track... at least to a certain extent...

It all started of with a usual gloomy evening with me sitting in front of the comp and randomly searching for songs on the internet... and then the message tone in my cell went off... was expecting another forward message from someone.. but this was from sammy and it took me by surprise.. she was asking me to check a mail she had sent and said it was about shopping and sight seeing.. I immediately logged on to see what it was all about... Sammy along with Karl & Dani had planned on driving down to Manchester the next day (Thursday) for some sight seeing and shopping and wanted to know if I would be interested in joining them... At first I was a little hesitant coz' then dips' would be all alone the whole day.. I anyways logged on to skype to talk to sammy about it... I told her I would love to join them but I might not be able to coz' of dips.. she asked me if abhi would be interested in coming along... got a green signal from him.. I asked dips and she said she wouldnt mind if I went.. and so it was all planned... Karl & Sammy were gonna pick us up from campus in the morning and the 5 of us were all set to rock! ;)

It was a 45 min journey with Karl at the wheel.. parked the car in some arcade's parking lot.. We first took a walk around the city and then went on to pick up a map from the tourist information centre.. Karl wanted to have coffee and immediately found a starbucks coffee shop.. Having served ourselves some hot coffee we set out towards the town hall.. This place was impressive although we had limited access.. Kinda reminded me of hogwarts!!! nice christmas decorations.. and they had put some jewels for sale... made me regret not getting enough costume jewelery from commercial street... I could have run a business here!!!

From there we went towards the cathedral.. on our way we even saw the manchester wheel.. just like the london eye.. looked good.. but obviously we didnt go in that... there was a huge shopping mall opp to it.. called manchester arnage..This mall had glass windows and the reflection of the wheel on them looked awesome!!! We then moved on to the cathedral.. had half an hour of peace and serenity.. found the experience quite soothing!! :)

After that we decided to enter one of the shopping malls and start the shopping spree... we entered manchester arnage.. awesome decorations as usual inside too!! started entering all the shops.. loads of choices and good discounts also.. shops for electronic gadgets, clothes, shoes, perfumes n so on.. sammy, & dani were the main shoppers :p we entered one shop called westone.. he had an awesome collection of tops and skirts.. I liked all their collections... It was here that I liked one pink & grey colored mix tube top a lot!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I tried the top and it fit me well.. everyone said it was looking very good and insisted that I buy it... I was very tempted but I didnt.. sammy and dani tried convincing me.. but I didnt give in.. finally danni bought the same top in a different color!! We continued the shopping.. had lunch in the mall.. again walked around the shops a little more and then decided to get out of the shopping mall and enjoi an evening walk on the streets. it was getting dark and with the decorations the lanes were looking very good.. We continued looking around.. we saw a store called primark and got in of course.. this shop had some good stuff as well... abhi bought a skirt for his girl friend, sammy bought another trouser and I bought a top as well.. we got out of primark and we decided to watch a movie in imax.. we went to the theater and checked out the movie timings... but neither could we find anything suitable nor were we able to collectively decide on a movie... so we decided to head back..

We planned to have dinner and watch a movie at karl's place.. had another round of discussion as to which movie to watch and zeroed in on Lord of the Rings III. Karl & Sammy dropped abhi, dani and me at the uni and went home to prepare dinner. We dropped what ever stuff we had/bought at home, changed into our night wear and went to sammy's place in Dani's car. We had spaghetti for dinner, watched LOTR III and came back home at 4:00 in the morning.. slept around 4:30.

The day was a whole lot of fun.. I liked manchester.. In comparison to lancs, it is a bigger city with quite some shopping malls and places on interest!! :) what enthralled me the most was the christmas decorations... the city looked absolutely fantastic with all the lightings and colorful hangings!!

Friday morning I woke up at 12:30... had my bath. prepared and had lunch.. then around evening dani, dipti and I went to sammy's place to bake cookies. The initial plan was actually dipti n me going earlier to watch the harry potter movies.. but all of us were tired.. so that didnt work out.. we went over only in the evening for the cookie baking session which was a whole lot of fun... it took us close to 7 hours to finish baking several batches of 5 different varieties of cookies.. but it was worthwhile since the cookies tasted absolutely *yummy*!! We got back home at 2:00 in the morning... dipti and I had maggie noodles for dinner and then popped off to sleep!!!!!

Saturday, I didnt do much.. got up late.. got ready.. studied a bit.. watched some movie on the net.. I think it was vivah.. typical melodramatic rajshri movie!!!

On sunday, abhi, jalpa, ayush, davin, dani and I went to sammy & karl's place for the christmas dinner.. that was good fun.. listened to christmas carols, had a nice dinner. We had to get gifts for one another.. all of us had wrapped a gift and put it in a bag and then each person got to pick one gift from the bag.. That was an interesting experience.. something totally new!!! and then we sat and played cards.. This was not one of those usual card games we play back at home.. this one was called flux and it had some weird rules!! however, after two rounds everyone got a grip of it and then on there was no stopping us!!! after four five rounds of the game, we took a break.. we were just chatting casually.. then suddenly sammy announced that they have another surprise gift for one of the guests... and then she gave me another parcel all neatly gift wrapped.. no points for guessing what it was!! sammy had got me the tube top I had liked a lot, as a christmas gift... and I think that was awesomely sweet of her to do so!! :) after that.. we resumed another round of the game, chit chatted for a while and got back home.. that was again at 3:00 in the morning.. and I went to bed at 4:00.

On Monday, I got up as usual at 11:00.. got ready.. prepared and had lunch.. studied a bit... then chatted with friends.. evening went over to another friend - vivek's flat.. sat there and chatted for a while about what each of us had done over the past few days and then I got back home. and suddenly plans of going to preston were made for boxing day (26th Dec). On boxing day, all the shops put up huge discounts on all their stuff as a part of the christmas and new year festivities!! Ayush, dipti, poonam, kanti, abhi, davin and I were supposed to go.. we made plans to leave at 9:00 in the morning.. Preston is about 15-20 mins drive from our place..

I got up at 8:00 on tuesday.. got ready as quickly as possible and was all set to go only to realize that abhi & davin were not making it.. but the rest of us went ahead.. we had booked a taxi to go to preston.. the taxi guy was an indian too. his name was younis n he was from ahamedabad. he dropped us off in front of primark, one of the popular malls around the place. I purchased a denim jacket, a tee-shirt [both for my bro], a small top for a little girl in b'lore - anjali, who is very very very close to me. I have known her since the day she was born and I am very attached to her.. then I got myself a black skirt and pullover. Dipti, ayush, poonam and kanti did some shopping too.. then we went to another store debbinhams.. awesome collection of clothes and accessories... but very expensive.. looked around all the shops in the street.. then in a shop called bossy boots in st.george's arcade, I bought a much wanted pair of boots... couldn't find anything else appropriate for anybody else in the family.. hoping do their shopping in summer.. We didnt get to see much of preston as the whole day went into shopping.. but the one thing I noticed was this place had a lot of Asians!!!

Got back home in the evening around 6:00.. dipti and me tried out all the dresses we bought (including my tube top) and clicked snaps :d sent them all home.. :) In the night, abhi, dani, karl, ayush, davin and I got together to have some german cake and cookies from dani's home for christmas.. played another 4-5 rounds of the same card game.. got back home at 1:15 or something.. wrote mom n dad a biggg mail.. then went to sleep...

The next two - three days were sullen... life got back to be boring & monotonic... but I was hoping that the new year would rejuvenate all of us!! :) I wanted to have a party and have fun on new year's eve!! Along with a few other friends, it was decided to spend new year's eve at my place.. we had dinner together.. listened to loud music... cut a cake at 12:00 to welcome 2007 and continued partying until 1:00 !! Vivek, Virat, Dipti, Jaya, Rushba, Nimit, Chandrma, Arsalan, Gopi, Amit, Ashish, Anupma and I were the ones celebrating together and I enjoyed a lot :)

And after all this fun, it dawned that exams were fast approaching and we had assignments to complete as well.. so the next two weeks until Jan 15th went into preparations, assignment completions, a little bit of masti now and then!!!