The Adventures of TinTin and Snowy

As most of the UK woke up this morning, we were all still celebrating the Olympic bid victory over the snobbish French. Who the heck is Jacques Chirac to criticise British food when they, the french eat frogs and snails?

7:30 a.m: I had an early start and left home to head to Cumbernauld in Scotland for a meeting. The G8 summit at Glen Eagles was starting today and my meeting was barely 15 miles away from the place. To be honest, I was quite apprehensive that something could happen near the summit.

8:40 a.m: Rick and I stopped for coffee at a services and bought a paper discussing the Olympic victory.

9:30 a.m: We were listening to Green Day on a CD in the car, oblivious to events unfolding elsewhere in the country.

10:20 a.m: Rick's mum called him on his cell phone and asked him if he heard the news about the bomb blast on the radio. Bomb blast? What bomb blast? We switched on the radio and tuned into Radio 1. Elton John was playing. Radio 2. Ken Bruce was having his daily radio quiz. Radio 4. Some celebrity chat. Classic fm: Beethoven. We flipped through all the channels and nothing about any bomb blast. Was she serious? Old lady might have been listening to a radio drama on some channel. Forget it. We tuned back to Radio 2 to listen to music.

11:00 a.m: The news. London's Transport network has had some "major incidents" and the tube stations and railways have been shut down. All bus services in Central London has been stopped. It was speculated that a "power surge" may have blown a few transformers causing the "loud bangs". What the fuck? Three buses were also blown up. Power surges can't blow up buses. Bloody terrorists, we assumed. The London Metropolitan police refused to speculate on the cause and denied that it could be a terrorist attack at that point. We looked at each other and said "Yeah right! Bollocks! Fuckin terrorists! Please, anyone but Al Quaeeda again. I'm sick and tired of hearing about them." Back to Cold Play.

11:15 a.m: The news. The London Metropolitan Deputy Assistant Commissioner makes a statement said that it "could be" terrorists but he would not confirm it. He asked the media not to speculate the cause and cause panic. They're defenitely trying to calm down people. THIS IS BIG. REAL BIG.

12:00 p.m: The Prime Minister addresses the nation from Glen Eagles. He confirmed that it was terrorists. Tony Blair was at his best. He gave me goose bumps. He said he was going to leave the G8 summit and go down to London. He said that No One would change the way we live. We will Prevail. THEY will NOT. My hair on the back of my neck tingled. Fuckin Bush had run away to his ranch on 9/11.

News kept flowing in and the number of dead increased slowly. It stands at 33 dead now. I'm sure many more are dead. But what has made me puff up with pride about living in this country is the way that the people have been brave. There wasn't mad hysterical panic. People stayed calm and organized. All the major hospitals were swamped and people who were in the hospital previously for minor injuries, vacated their beds to make space for the injured. There was a building site near one of the hospitals and all the builders came to the hospital and volunteered to donate blood. One of the buses blew up near the British Medial Association building and all the doctors came out and organised the emergency services. Countless lives were saved as a result. The Muslim Council released a statement supporting the British government and condemning this act of violence. It urged Muslim Londoners to help out at the bomb sites and show solidarity. The mobile phone networks were swamped. Slowly but surely, the police and the emergency services have controlled traffic and crowds. Roads are being re-opened and stations have started their services.

Britain has come back up on its feet. We have persevered. Life will go on. Its only at moments like this that you realise how good most people are. You appreciate the kindness that you receive very day. We will survive.

Its been a busy weekend. Can't imagine where time has gone. Its Tuesday already.

The Friday Staff barbecue was awesome. We all met at the marina and sailed down Alex's canal boat. They don't look like much from the outside but his was quite posh inside. Its got everything you need to live on it. It had a big double bed, it had a shower and toilet, a kitchen with all the mod cons., a living room with a home theatre system and a fireplace and lots of storage. What more do you need? We cruised along while chugging back the beers and moored up at a nice secluded spot in the countryside. The bbq kit came out and pretty soon I was making tandoori chicken. That was a big hit with everyone. After that we cruised down to one of the numerous pubs that dot the canals and got hammered there. After a crazy pub crawl along the canal with the boat, one of my colleagues committed a cardinal school boy error of passing out after having one too many. We then proceeded to do all sorts of tricks on him. We singed his hair, trimmed his eyebrows, tried to balance as many things on his head as possible. It was hilarious. All in all, it was a proper drunken lads night out and it was great. I really needed the unwinding.

Woke up next day and I felt like the ground was shaking beneath me all the time. I had the most god awful hang over ever!! Parked myself in front of the telly and tuned into Live 8. It was awesome. 9 concerts all over the world happening at the same time. Its a concert that's going to go down in history. The Make Poverty History campain is the biggest global campaign ever undertaken. Africa is on the news everyday. Africa lives on the BBC 24-7. It was crazy to see Pink Floyd play together again after 20 odd years. Whoever missed that concert will live to regret it. I'm not going to patronize people by actively campaigning for Africa, but I've done my bit and the world would be a better place if we all did our bit for Africa.

Sunday saw us go to Manchester to catch a Hindi Movie called Parineeta. Its been a while since I saw a good Hindi film and it was refreshing to see Saif Ali Khan in a serious movie. Vidya Balan is drop dead gorgeous. And she's apparently a paandi- half Tamil half mallu. Its a pity that all the pretty mallus or tams just don't stick around in the south Indian film industry.

Monday was our 5th anniversary. Its been five years since that train journey on the Corramandel Express from KGP to Chennai. Five years since that night which we both didn't sleep just because we didn't want to waste a minute together on sleep. I remember what she wore that day. It was a small black and white checkered shirt and she wore jeans. At Chennai we went to that restaurant on the first floor and sat by the window and blatantly kissed in public. We must have shocked a few tam grandpas there. But we didn't care coz we were so in love and we'd finally told each other. The journey from Chennai onwards where we parted ways was excruciatingly painful. Its been five lovely long years baby. And I still love you. And I always will. It still feels like yesterday when we cuddled on the train.

Living in the UK for the past two years has really made me go soft. Well, pun intended. I admit, I have put on the odd pounds here and there, but to my credit, I am on the way to shedding a lot of it. I've already lost around 6 kgs from the start of this year. Its a slow and arduous path filled with succulent temptations, but one must at least attempt to look good for the wedding album.

What I mean about going soft is how I've acclimatized to the UK weather. Not only do I incessantly talk about the weather, like the British usually do, I've also developed hardly an tolerance for extreme heat. And in this particular case, I'm talking about a sweltering 25 degrees Celsius. I'm not joking. I'm really sweating here. The highest it hit here was around 31 degrees last week and boy did I want to go skinny dipping. Hardly a pleasant sight, but it would have been useful nonetheless. I installed ForecastFox on my Firefox browser and had some fun setting up different profiles of all the places that mean something to me. And to my shock and horror, 25 is the lowest temperature. Trivandrum has a high of 30 degrees this week. Bangy has 28 degrees and Al Ain in the UAE has a whopping 43 degrees. Blistering Barnacles!!! How on earth am I going to go home? Will I be in TVM, dressed in my mundu and jiba and sweating buckets during the wedding?

I remember the KGP days of sweltering 47 degrees with 90% humidity, and us lads would be lounging around in the wing dressed only in our undies...And praying for sweet relief under the useless whirring fans...I'd promised myself that I'd never change after coming to the UK, but I think I have.

I've been jogging every day now for the past two months and I've never really crossed the 30 minute barrier. After a tip off from my boss who runs marathons, I decided to ditch the tread mill, as well as the university campus perimeter circuit. I decided to venture into the country side and run aimlessly in the fields in a general circular route. This Saturday, I kitted up in a particularly revealing tshirt, skimpy shorts and shades, grabbed a bottle of Lucozade and headed towards the canal near my house. I made sure I stretched properly and set off along the canal. Now I half expected to quit in around 15 minutes and head home. I normally get these chronic shin aches when I run on the road. However, I stuck to running on the grassy paths all along the canal. It was really gorgeous. I've never really looked at the canal and the things on it. My interest normally ended at the different pubs located on the canal. But while jogging, I got to see so much more. Luckily I was carrying my handy Samsung D500 and snapped pics on the route. There were really nice little houses on the canal with beautiful gardens.

As the canal started bending towards Galgate and out of Lancaster, I cut across the canal and scaled a fence surrounding a farm. I ran down the narrow hedge path and everything seemed to be flying past me at thrice the speed.

I then burst into a lush green field where sheep grazed lazily. I gave quite a few of them a scare and they all gamboled off away from this sweaty strange beast.

In the distance I could make out the red brick warehouses on the docks of the River Lune and I cut across the field in that general direction. I ended up in a quiet residential area with children playing on the streets on little tricycles. As I ran past them, some of these little brats started chasing me on their three wheeled roadsters. Luckily for me, I wasn't in danger of being smothered by little kids and out ran the toddlers. I lost sight of the docks and got lost in the housing estate. After running around in circles(literally), for a while I managed to find the river.

The sun was out and it was glorious. It had been raining on this side of the river and a rainbow was out.

By this time I was completely spent, but I refused to stop. If Alex, 33 could do it, I could do it. If Abey Uncle, 50 could do it, I could do it. I ran along the river till the bridge and then weaved through traffic and the city to head back home. The last stretch was pure torture. The road to my house is a steep 50 degree incline. I picked up my pace to climb the hill and I kept saying "Push!, Push, Push" in my head. I burst over the hill and I could see that I had only another 200 m to go. My legs, my chest, were burning and were on fire. Everything else around me ceased to exist and all I was thinking of was "Push!, Push!, Push!" and I didn't realise that I started to say it out loud. I was just steaming ahead on the pavement and people swept aside to make way for me. Quite a few of them had startled looks on their faces as I surged past them. And finally, I reached home and staggered inside and fell onto my sofa. God. Home sweet home.

Its only when I finally opened my eyes and got off the sofa that waves of pain flooded me. I lowered myself into a hot bath and sat there wallowing in pleasure. Never before has a hot bath been so relaxing. I love that feeling, of pain and then you keep pushing your body beyond its endurance and the only thing that makes your body listen is your mind. And after a point, the pain sort of subsides but your mind gets consumed by wanting to give up. Its wonderful to have that war in your mind between your will and your body.

Did I mention that I ran for 1 hour non-stop? Next years marathons, here I come!!