Laura Lovegood - Part II

Just heard from the car dealer...the car will be available this evening!!!

Yippeeeeeee!

So I can pick up the car this evening and the number plate will be available by tomorrow afternoon. Until then, I have to drive the car without the plates. Which should not be a problem as the car has been registered and I will get all the papers in my hand today itself.

Can't wait to get my hands on the car keys and can't wait to drive my new car.

Man, I'm so excited!

Laura Lovegood

Since we have moved back, we have been looking at buying a new car. Not that we have a problem with the old one, but that's been around for more than 8 years and is a bit cramped for us now (not that it was no cramped then...but that was all I could afford at that time). The specs this time were that the new car should have a lot more space, be more comfortable (three out of the five people in my family hover around the 6 ft mark), be powerful (my input to the list), be economical (my wife's input) and be cool (my daughter's input). Finding something which fit the bill was going to be a challenge.

Going by size, we thought we will get an SUV. Naturally, all the usual suspects were in contention. The Ford Endeavour, the Honda CRV, the Mitsubishi Pajero, the Chevy Forrester. Of these, I personally think that the CRV is a bit to cramped for my taste and definately not value-for-money. The Pajero, from all the reviews I have read, is an old version which they are hawking into the Indian market at a hefty premium. And Chevy is not exactly a great brand in India, mainly because of their support capabilities from what I have heard. So it came down to the Explorer.

When the car arrived for our test drive, I was impressed with the size of the thing. It could intimidate any vehicle on the road! The seating for the front passenger and driver are extremely comfortable. The beast has some power too. The diesel engine delivers a fair bit of punch and the car is quite manouverable in traffic. But what I didn't realize, and something that my wife pointed out to me, was that the seating for the back seats is not exactly comfortable. She was sitting in the back for most of the test drive to judge just that. As I got out of the car to check this (and by this time, I loved this car), I had trouble getting into the back seats with ease. This was going to be a BIG problem. Mainly because my mom has recently undergone a hip replacement surgery and so getting in and out of the car would be a problem for her. That nixed it.

When we got back, my daughter was all for the Endeavour as she loved the third row of seats which, she said, was just perfect for her "and her dog". We had to do a Strengths Weaknesses listing on paper as part of our evaluation. Obviously the car failed.

So one afternoon, my wife and I were just going around town doing some shopping for the house and we happened to pass the Honda showroom. I had sat in my friend's Civic and so had had that experience, but I wanted to know how the Accord feels. When we walked into the showroom, I distinctly remember feeling like the people there were pushing the Civic more than the Accord...almost like they did NOT want to sell the Accord. They did not even have a brochure for the car! So we had a looksie. We sat in the car, absorbed the marketing banter and then took the car out for a test. I was intent on the Automatic transmission (as most people in Bangalore will attest to the traffic conditions and the incessant gear changes that one has to make). The car felt quite agile and responsive...until I stepped hard on the throttle. It took almost a second for the car to upshift and rev up to go the way I wanted it to. Sure, it has a few nice things...like F1 like gear paddles to shift up and down in a semi manual mode. But overall, it felt OK. They did not have an Accord available for a test drive.

So we left the showroom and were circling back towards home when we noticed the Skoda showroom. In we went.

I was promptly shown the Skoda Superb, an Audi A6 class car which has all the trimmings that you would expect from a luxury car. It is immensely spacious, has a bunch of features and is very comfortable. Looks great too (to someone like me who likes European styling more than the Japanese look). The only problem was price...too darn expensive.

So the guy then smartly manouvered us to another car which he claimed has almost the same number of features as the Superb, but was a bunch of money less expensive. The moment I sat in the Laura, I was in love. The dashboard stole my heart! Clean, elegant and informative. They had achieved perfection. And then the guy started to talk.

The car has a bunch of features which are mindblowing. Nowadays, every car has ABS, but this one has Acceleration Skid Restrain which manages skids and slides, it has traction control (they call it the Electronic Stability Program) which makes for a smoother ride around twisty terrain, it has SIX airbag protecting the entire cabin, has an electronic tyre pressure monitor, it has a four point parking sensor which tells you exactly what is how close to the car. And this is only safety. It has another bunch of stuff that makes the spec sheet drool worthy.

And then there is the car.

We took the car for a spin (all three of us had to do it together, of course) and so the car needed to come home on a weekend for us to drive it. The moment I turned the ignition (actually, even as I just held the car key in my hand, I knew this was it), I loved the way the car behaved. Not a waggle, not a murmer, not a tremble. Commendable for a diesel.

Once on the road, the car purred along and behaved better than my small car traffic. The way it handled sharp turns and roundabouts, I was amazed at how a car of this size handled it with such grace. When stepping on the power, it roared away instantaneouly (no lag) and gave me the feeling that I was extremely under control even at extremely high speeds. The car just feels safe and solid all around.

The individual climate control was under continuous threat from my daughter (who insisted on sitting up front in "her new Girl car") as she twiddled the knobs and set the temperature until she felt comfortable. Then we opened the skyroof and just the look on her face made it all worthwhile. We had connected our iPod to the car's music system (12 speakers...more than the number in my home theater) and were happily enjoying the thump of the music system. I even tried enabling the parking system in traffic. It was so responsive that the display would light up mometarily when a bike went past us, so fast that the indicator would come on before I could see the bike come around!

As we entered the basement of our complex (to see if the car will fit in the parking space), the lights came on by themselves (I was told that the wipers would come on by themselves too if it were raining and that the sunroof would close by itself as well). The lit dashboard looked even better. We stepped out of the car to admire the lines and the Skoda guy continued badgering us with the features of the car.

Intelligent rear view mirror to cut glare, air drag coefficient of 0.30, huge boot space (my daughter actually climbed into it and sat there comfortably while we closed it!), nice little touches like lights under the side mirrors which enable stumble free access to the car, a nice sun screen to pull up to avoid the Sun scorching one's back. I can just go on and on.

So there we were. Stunned and pleased as punch with the car. So much so that we did not even feel like looking at anything else. In our mind, we had bought the car. It was only a matter of logistics before it came home.

That day, Laura Lovegood was born. Taking off from the Harry Potter character (Luna Lovegood), my daughter pounced on the fact that the car is called Laura ("so she's a girl, Pappi") and christned the car Laura Lovegood. She even got home and made the car a birth certificate. She was clever enough to leave the day of birth space blank!

So now we have been waiting for the formalities to be completed. There was a lot of running around to be done, following up with my office Finance team, the leasing company and the Skoda dealer in Bangalore. Finally I have been told that most of the formalities are done and that the car should go in for registration tomorrow. If all goes to plan, we will have our new car, the lovely Laura Lovegood, become a part of the family by tomorrow evening. Hopefully!

Until then, it's just waiting for the "World's Most Beautiful Car" (as they called it at the Italy Car Show).

Blitzkrieg

I wasn't going to post today, but Yuvra Singh's assault on the English bowling lineup deserves this one.

As you will watch below, Yuvraj hit 6 sixes in one Chris Broad over to hit the fastest fifty in any form of cricket. Only the second batsman in the history of international cricket to achieve this feat, Yuvraj completely decimated this over, launching one ball after another over the boundary.

Kingsmeade was on fire!!!

Phew!

This weekend was a killer!

If you had walked into the house on Friday, you would have seen a zillion boxes lying around. And this is despite my wife's steller attempts at unpacking a lot of stuff. Most of the unopened boxes were in my daughter's room as her room was the one that needed setting up the most. Mainly because of all the furniture we had bought for her.

Her whole room is to be a Princess room with the furniture in baby pink (what else?) and white. The modular stuff that we bought included a desk, a bed with a side table and a cupboard. The people who came to unpack for us tried to setup some of the stuff (mainly the cupboard), but they took so long in figuring out how to do it that I told them to drop it saying I will do it myself. That meant the weekend.

So on Saturday morning, I had to tear down some of the things that they had done (they had used components of some other part to build parts of the desk) and start afresh. Surprisingly, it took far less time while I was working alone as compared to the three people working to put up the cupboard. After an hour and a half, the desk was completed and installed. Another 45 minutes and all the drawers and movable parts were in. A few more minutes and the side table was done.

While I was in the middle of all this, the guys who were going to mount my plasma TV on the wall had come up. That put a STOP sign on my woodwork as I watched with trepidition as these two people first put the brace frame and then hoisted the tv (read...my heart) onto it. Now that this was done, we moved to the second room where we needed the smaller (older) tv to be mounted on it's frame as well. This chore completed, I returned to the woodwork, only to realize that it was time for lunch.

And this is no ordinary lunch. It was my favorite festival of all. Ganesh Chaturthi. This is the festival where we traditionally bring an idol of Lord Ganesh to our home and honour him for the time that he is with us (a day and a half as per our family's tradition). Because of our recent move from Singapore, we had no choice but to have the idol placed, not in our house here in Bangalore, but in my sister's house in Mumbai. This would also be the 2nd time that I have missed the festival in my entire life. I hope it never happens again. Some of my oldest childhood memories are associated with this festival and I absolutely love these two days every year.

So it was back to the carpentry and in a short while, the room looked like the one that my daughter would like and no longer like the store room that it was looking like just a few hours earlier. Most of the boxes (which were full of my daughter's stuff anyways) were promptly emptied by my wife and daughter and put in their rightful place as soon as the furniture was up. That significantly reduced the number of boxes left in the house. During all this time, I tackled the other boxes in the master bedroom which were unopened.

My Home Theatre system!

So it was another hour or so to set up all the cables, connect all the components, test the setup, configure the amplifier to suit the new environment. And then, as a bonus to myself, I also set up the Wii!

As you might recall, I bought the Wii sometime back (my daughter's birthday, to be precise) and have come to love this gaming platform. So this was connected and tested (Prince of Persia, of course) and because of the place where we have installed the TV screen, there are no shadows and unnecessary lights that fall on the screen. This makes the colours richer and a lot more fun. It is also a bonus because the screen is now almost at my eye level. This makes playing the game a lot more fun.

So all in all, it was a fairly exhausting, but fun, weekend!

PotterMania strikes again

My daughter has always been a Harry Potter fan, ever since she watched the first Harry Potter movie. She likens herself to Hermione, because she's the clever one who manages to help Harry get to wherever they are going. She steadfastly refuse to be Harry, even though the story is all about him.

All this while, she has been intent on just watching the movies and has refused to read the books. Only recently, the books that she has been getting at school have been a little too puny for her taste. Reason: She has finished reading the book before she has gotten home from school. So obviously, she needs something to read which will at least last her a week. Now I have been asking her to read the Harry Potter books saying that the book is always a lot more fun than the movie and that it has more information that the movie can never have. All this time, she has patiently refused.

Until this last week.

I came back home from office to find my daughter burried in the Philosopher's Stone, the first of the Harry Potter series. Granted that she was only on the first chapter, but she was so completely engrossed in it that she did not even notice that I had entered the house. When she did finally look up, the first thing she said was "You were right...the book IS more fun than the movie! And it has a lot more information than the movie!"

YES!!!!!

Until last night, she has chomped through almost half the book and has to be dragged to bed as she has school the next day. That too with an assurance from my side that she can pick up where she left off when she comes back from school. Now there is an unwritten rule in the house to not disturb anyone when they are reading (something that my wife is not completely in agreement with, but gets over-ruled by my daughter and I). So she uses that to convince my wife to let her continue reading.

The rate at which she is reading, she will probably finish the book in the next couple of days. And then there is going to be that unavoidable disection of the book and the inevitable comparison with the movie and how it falls short and where it is wrong.

I look forward to that discussion :-)

85,79,92

Before you think this is about some statistics, hold on. I am talking about something completely different.

The sabbatical is over!

I can play Golf again :-)

As some of you might remember, I had given up on the game a few months ago after a few fairly disasterous rounds. The biggest reason to do so was that I was not being able to give enough time to the game and as a direct result, the game was suffering. Well, that is no longer the case as I am in the middle of familiar company and back with my old golf buddies (all of whom have gotten a lot better since I left).

So to inaugurate the game again, my buddies and I went to the Bangalore Golf Club (BGC), my favorite course in Bangalore, for my first round in three and a half months. And the tee shot set it all up. All that practice on the driving range years ago paid off. The ball soared off the 5 iron and drew slightly (as it usually does for me) and landed squarely in the center of the fairway. A nice approach and I was on the green in regulation. And just like that, I had my par.

All in all, the round was about discovering which parts of my game worked and which I needed to work on. And so I was not entirely disappointed with the 85 I carded that day.

The very next round was a revelation. All parts of the game came together and I was hitting the ball as sweetly as I could imagine. Wherever I missed the green on my approach, I either made an up and down or put it in the hole. The whole round was almost blemish free save for two holes where, both times, I got really bad breaks. Once my ball came to rest right next to a tree and I missed two strokes trying to get it out. The other time, my tee shot found a fairway bunker and the ball was lying on the upp slope of the bunker, right next to the lip. A desperate 9 iron out of the bunker and then a excessively drawn 5 iron later, I found myself on the downslope of a greenside bunker. Needless to say, had these two holes not been that bad (the only double and triple bogeys of the round), I would have played lower than my current lowest score.

So there is still hope.

Or so I thought. Until I played on the last weekend. The highlight of the round was that I kept toeing the ball almost all through the round. Just could not figure it out. I rarely miss sweet spot on my clubs, one of the biggest reasons to buy the completely unforgiving Mizuno MP-32 set of irons that I am playing right now. This entire round was an education in how to play unforgiving irons when one is not hitting the sweet spot.

All in all, I have had a yo yo of a few rounds. But there are glimpses of the game that can be. So as a true golfer, and therefore an optimist, I look forward to the next round this weekend.

Until then...

The left side moves faster

Aah...finally back in Bangalore. Yes, we have finally moved. The Singapore chapter of our life has come to a close and a new chapter begins in Bangalore.

My wife and daughter had moved in ahead of me, mainly to get the school admissions done. While we had spoken to the admissions personnel at the Vidyshilp Academy School in Bangalore, the enrollment confirmation required my daughter to sit through an interview with some of the teachers of the school to test her on English, Math, Hindi (her language) and Physical Education. While we had no apprehensions about three of th four parts, her language preference in Singapore had been French and she had not had a lot of exposure to Hindi (apart from the stuff that we taught her at home).

The feedback we got from the interview was fantastic. She found all the questions on Math quite easy (it's her favourite subject at school after all). When she was asked what her hobby is, she said she liked to read. When asked who her favourite author was, she firmly replied "Roadl Dahl". From the teacher's expression, it was clear that she was surprised, but not convinced. So the teacher asked her to name some of the Dahl books she had read. And so "The Twits", "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", and other names were rattled off. I think that sealed it. Her other interviews also went well and she was admitted to the school. She has already started going to school and has already made friends. The school had it's Parent-Teacher-Meeting last weekend and, even though she had been there only for a couple of days, all the teachers had very positive things to say about her.

That made me feel immensely proud of my daughter. She has adapted to her new surroundings in a new city with the utmost ease and is making both me my wife feel guilty about how we are handling the change ourselves.

Then there's the house. Some of you may know that I have my own house here. We bought this about two and a half years ago. The last few days (I have landed here on the 30th of last month) have been completely consumed with making the house habitable. Nothing could have prepared me for the shock as I entered my house. The condition that it was kept in was - to use the most appropriate word here - appalling! After just one look at the place, I knew there was a lot to be done.

So the whole of the weekend and then some more was spent on getting the house upto scratch. The painting is done, the plumbing is fixed, the curtains have been drycleaned (they hadn't been washed for 2 years!), the floor is cleaned, the loos are fixed and now the place looks like something that I can stay in. We also managed to get in some appliance shopping on the weekend. So a huge 490 litre refrigerator and a washing machine has been installed in the house. So has the AquaGuard water purifier. A lot of the carpentry has also been taken care of. So it has begun to feel like the home we had lived in before we left for Singapore.

Of course, the bulk of our stuff has not landed yet. I understand from my movers that the container has landed in Bangalore, but is now awaiting Customs clearance. Hopefully that will be sorted out in the next few days and hopefully (again) my stuff will have come home by the weekend. So (hopefully) the house will be completely functional in a few days.

My first day in office was a revelation. The welcome very warm and it immediately felt like the place I had left only a couple of years back. What was fun was the laughter and the converstation that flowed through the day. It is one of the things that was a big differentiator to the days in Singapore. The fact that so many people were busy with the things that they do and yet managed to squeeze a little bit of time out of their busy schedules to have a laugh and just kick back and relax. The camaraderie was palpable.

What took me completely by surprise was the very short time it took me to adjust to driving in Bangalore. I had become used to taking cabs and busses and trains in Singapore and also the driving style in Singapore. But within my first few minutes behind the wheel, I was back at weaving in and out of the Bangalore traffic which, by all estimates, has only become worse since I left. The key to getting ahead and getting to where you are going is to stay, not in the fast lane which is on the right side, but on the left side. That side, contrary to normal traffic conventions, moves much faster than the traditional fast lane. It's surprising how much you tend to miss when you are in the middle of these situations, but notice only when you have been in a different environment.

All in all, this week has been about getting the house in a condition decent enough to live in and about buying all the things that we are not carrying from Singapore. Rest is something that we will have to take one step at a time.

And hopefully, now that most of the changes have happened, I will be able to blog more often. Here's to hoping.