Bells, Ornaments and Tinsel Gardens

It's Christmas time. Another two days to go and we are celebrating Christmas on campus. Oh yes, we are a bit early this time. Of course, the students of ISB celebrate festivals according to their schedule. Well, we had to time a gala event along with the Alumni reunion that is happening over the weekend and then we decided - why not keep the reunion with the christmas theme.

so today was christmas shopping day. i have always like shopping. oh, i am a bit different. i like to shop, not unlike others who complain about going to shop. i have spent most weekends in london shopping for stuff that i want. and i have spent hours shopping for clothes. even though today's shopping experience was very christmassy, i still enjoyed it, but for the heavy traffic and the noise pollution caused by the horns.

christmas at london used to be fun. atleast 15 days before christmas day, canary wharf used to be full of decorations and the whole place used to glitter with the mood of christmas. there used to be groups of very pretty women playing western classical music. i used to spend about 30 mins listening to them on my way back to the train station. everything used to be red and green - right from the Coca Cola bottle in the Tesco's to the decorations at the citibank cafe. the best part was the christmas lunch that citi served at the cafe - turkey and venison. it dinn matter much to be coz i was a vegetarian. but it was fun - bursting small crackers, reading out jokes and having hot christmas pudding!!!

so we decided that we needed to buy bells, streamers, and other hangings for the tree. all of this took about 4 hours and during this time, i was introduced to the real hyderabad. we began from general bazaar in secunderabad and went on till all the bazaars in the muslim areas in old hyderabad. i came back tired. the taxi ride all the way back to campus was the most dangerous and bone-cracking experience i have had in the last few months.

its 3am now, and in between this, i had my dinner, joined my friends at the nearest pizza hut for a quick bite and masala lemon juice. then drove till the airport. on the way stopped at a barista thinking that it was open and then stood outside the parking lot to spend a few minutes talking about totally unproductive stuff like girlfriends.

the next day is a very long day. three continuous classes and perhaps other things to do as well - esp. for the alumni reunion thats coming up over the weekend.