Going home...

Its vacation time!

How I longed for such a vacation while I was working. This is definitely a huge advantage of being in college..you get good long vacations! I am going back to India for 3 weeks. Lots of things planned. Will be visiting my native to attend a felicitation function of my Grandpa. A road is being named after him and a statue of his is being inaugrated. Will be visiting a few more of my relatives all over M.P and then head to home. Hope to have a good, long, relaxing holiday!

Bintan, Indonesia

The school has closed for Christmas vacations. Everyone is heading back to India in the next couple of days...but before that we decided to have some unadulterated fun. We headed for the Indonesian island called Bintan for a 2 day trip.
Guess what we did there? We did nothing!! No hurried sightseeing, no getting up early, no plans! Just relaxed...ate...drank...slept!
I surely did enjoy this trip...it is sometimes good to do nothing. Caught up on some music, some gossip and generally made peace with myself while lying down on the beach. Here are some pics....

The gang

Thats our boat

Bintan island

Our resort

Pax's birthday celebration

Total chill!

Quenching our thirst

Beach Volleyball

Lunch time

Soothing sea

Resort

Kick ass!

Taxi Talk!

The taxi wala's in Singapore can be quite interesting and knowledgeable. I have now had 2-3 episodes and thought its high time I wrote something about them.

Episode 1: As soon as i get in, the taxi guy says "Namaste, Aap kaise hain?"...and he was not Indian..was a Singaporean with Chinese origins. I reply to him and then ask him where did he learn this. He says from his passengers. Then tells me teach something more in Hindi.

Episode 2: This time its a local Singaporean muslim as the taxi guy. We are travelling back to the hostel and he starts talking about life. And i was taken aback, he had such passionate thoughts that he could become a preacher. Some of the things he told us,
1. "I do everything for a reason, I do not know why people go on vacations (we were coming back from a vacation in Indonesia). Its the same air, same earth everywhere. Its the same eyes and nose you have. So why go on a vacation? Its all in the mind about getting stressed or de-stressed."
2. "Mother is the most loving person on earth. If there are complications during pregnancy, the mother is ready to sacrifice her life to let the baby be born. A baby who is unknown to her. A baby who might not listen to her or might mistreat her one day."

Epsiode 3: Its again a local Singaporean guy. We ask him a general question of how bad is the taxi problem during christmas. And he says "Its bad during christmas, but will not be very bad this time around. The Singapore economy is not doing very well. People do not have much money to spend as compared to last year. Singapore has become like a saturated market and news jobs and company headquarters are going to India and China. Singapore needs to pull up its socks if it wants its economy to keep growing."

A customer friendly driver, a human behaviour specialist driver and an economist driver! I am impressed! Wonder if these guys did their MBAs! If not, then the MBAs of the world are in for some competition from the Singaporean cab drivers!!