Great distances, great deals, great friends and a great time!

Q : So what does all of the above have in common?
A : The word "great"!

Yeah. I know it wasnt that good, but hey, it was worth a shot J

This post is about my trip to Bangalore last week – 30/06/2005. This was definitely the shortest trip I made to the city and everything was so rushed that it got over before it even started. But nonetheless, it was one of the most memorable times of my life!

Here’s a brief summary of what happened, what I did, what I bought most importantly what I learnt.

I reached Bangalore at 12:00 PM on Thursday. This was as opposed to the 11:00 ETA! Spicejet really need to stop being cheap and offering crappy biscuits on a 4 hour flight! But hey, at least they had pretty(helpful and polite) air-hostesses ;).

Once I got there, I got into an auto-rickshaw probably the ONLY slow auto I’ve ever been in. This guy was seriously in his senses because he drove like a human being not like the super-charged adrenalin junkies in India that drive auto’s to make a living and an occasional killing. Took me about 45 minutes to get to my fiancé’s house. Once I got there, I promptly got a call from my good friend Krishnan (http://cafedigital.blogspot.com/ ) and we decided a time and place to meet. Now if you read my very first post, you will notice that I told you about some great friends I made on the Skoar! Forums (http://www.skoar.com/forums). Krishnan, a.k.a enoonmai is the best friend I’ve made here, or in real life for that matter. The POA was to meet up, recharge our batteries (read eat something) and go off to buy hardware required to build a PC for my fiancé. I was pleasantly surprised when I met Pradeep a.k.a Born_to_Frag as well (http://insanegaming.chumhost.com/?id=index2). The little guy is a genius and one day he’s going to make gamers proud.

So the 4 of us, Krishnan, Pradeep, Anu and me, raided Pizza Hut and ate till we almost exploded. Of course, for me, it was just an afternoon snack. Something to keep me charged for about 3 hours. Once we were through with that, we headed off to SP Road. Krishnan took us to a shop he knew well and we decided to build her an AMD based system. So we picked up an AMD Sempron +2200 and decided to build the computer around that. With the parts in place, next came the bill. Gave me a little heart attack, but hey, we men will do anything when we’re in love J. After that, it was just a matter of plugging, fixing, fastening and powering on the system. That’s when I realized how the mad scientist must have felt when he created Frankenstien!

With the computer ready, we bought the OS, some games and a some other essentials – MORE GAMES J.

We then decided to send Anu home with the computer while we fished around for other useful software. By the time we returned, this WonderWoman™ had actually managed to procure a computer table as well! Darn! In less time than it took for us to decide what parts we needed to buy! We set up everything and pushed the power-on button with gleeful eyes and blistering excitement. Kaput! Nothing happened. No nice glowing LED’s no hum of the CPU fan – nothing! That’s when Krishnan slapped me on the head and told me to check if the SMPS switch was on! Sheepish grin. Gave her another spin and our monster was ready!

That was a very fruitful day. Anu and I celebrated later in the evening at a nice restaurant and some really nice vodka later at home.

The next day we decided to meet Krishnan again and the guy was a gem to offer to come home first AND bring us lunch! Little did I know, he wanted to show off his uber-cool MP3 player! We also struck a deal for his old GBA SP, which I bought from him. After a little more tinkering with the PC, we went out and did some more useless stuff. Took Anu out to dinner that night too.

Day 3. My trip was coming to its end. Krishnan and I suffer from acute short term memories. But that’s strange because I still remember what’s probably the most difficult cheat code of all time. The NOCLIP cheat for Doom. It’s IDSPISPOPD! See! I still remember! Anyways, once we were sure we had everything installed and in place, we went out on our game buying adventures. We picked up a few games for the PC, GBA SP and a few for the PS2. Very refreshing indeed. Later Anu, her friend, Krishnan and I went to a nice Chinese restaurant and had some nice and some not-so-nice stuff. I was happy coz hey, I live to eat! Later, when everyone was ready to leave, we almost had another incident when Krishnan forgot to take his PS2 from me and got into an auto to go home! LOL! That was too funny!

My trip was almost at an end. Anu was playing Fatman adventures on her new PC while I was enjoying Super Mario Bros 3 on my new SP! All the while wondering where had all the time gone to. Why’d it have to end so soon? Why does a Monday (sorry CipherJ) seem like an eternity but the great times you’re having seem like a nano-second? But I guess that’s the way it works.

Sunday evening I flew out of Bangalore. Of course I had to make the flight back a memorable one too, so I beat Metal Slug Advance in all of 2.5 hours!!! I’m a God!

Anu was happy. My trip to Bangalore was a success. The smile on the face of the one you love is really worth all of it. So what if the trip was just 3 days? So what if it cost me more than a months salary? So what if the flight to and fro was crazy. That 1 smile and that look in her eyes made it all seem like an easy card trick.

But what I really learnt from this trip was :

• Friendship knows no distance
• Great deals can get you great happiness
• 3 days can feel like 3 seconds
• 3 days can feel like 3 lifetimes
• A woman’s smile can make seem running to the moon and back like a jog in the park
• Pradeep is very shy in reality
• Krishnan is a gem of a friend.
• Futurama is better than The Simpsons.

That’s all for now dear reader. I hope I haven’t bored you too much. You’re lucky I haven’t shown you holiday videos yet J.

It’s true - Great distances, great deals, great friends and a great time! You can have them all at once!