Life in 2012 and wishes for 2013!

Hoi readers,

How are you all? I have been thinking from a while to write again, but you know, I am a lazy man! My work load is pretty high and I have been travelling during a lot of weekends, so time is flying at the moment. I have met so many people in past few months from KGP, its actually pretty awesome to think about it. Shivaji Bose, KC, Chuha, Sonam, Abhi Da, Dholu, Bhangar, Nirav, all passed by Holland and I got a chance to show them around and spend some quality time with them. It was great to meet you all guys! In this globalized world where people are living everywhere for work and education, it has become very hard to maintain a meaningful long term friendship. It needs a lot of hard work, calling each other, making efforts to remember important dates and most importantly, not missing a slightest chance of meeting each other. Lets hope this series of visitors never end!! My doors are open for you guys :)

Well, 2012 is coming to an end. In few hours, it will be 2013! As the trend goes, I have also made some New Year resolutions and I want to share them with you:

• To invest in property in India
• To gain decent proficiency in Dutch language
• To get in shape :P
• To write a blog post once every month
• To publish at least 1 research paper
• To trek from Rohtang Pass to Ladakh
• To take a train from Amsterdam to St. Petersburg via Moscow

All these wishes, I aim to fulfill in 2013. I have more wishes, but their execution is not totally under my control. Hence I am not making them my resolutions but I still hope they come true.

As of 2012 … well, I have to say, it was an interesting year for me! An year of emotional ups and downs, an year of personal achievements and an year of making great new friends. Here are few pics that summarize the year gone by:

Himanshu, dipping his chips into my coffee :P 

With KC and Abhi da @ Amsterdam Central Station

With Gangwal, Kshitij, Havas and Yogi @ Ranthambore Fort

Snake dance with Priyanka @ Arnhem for Holi

ISTANBUL with Saima!!

   

With Chuha and Sonam @ Montmartre, Paris

Rock and Roll party in Antwerp, Belgium!

With colleagues @ Efteling theme park :)

With colleagues @ MARIN open day

With Bobby and John @ Copenhagen

Shankar Ji on his birthday! 

Me, John and Iris made masala dosa and sambhar :)

with Eva, one of my two new awesome flatmates! :) 

For the moment I wish all the readers a very happy new year or a Gelukkig Nieuwjaar :)

Cheers!
Karan 

Whirling in Istanbul!

So ladies and gentleman, when I visited Istanbul on 6th of July 2012 for a long weekend, I fulfilled a long-cherished dream. A city like no other, Istanbul is overdosed with history, filled with pride, bustling with energy and dreaming of a glorious future. After all, before the modern settlement in the America's, it was the center of the world.

I went there for a long weekend, so i left Friday evening from Holland and i was back on Monday evening. I was joined there by my adopted sister Saima and her friend Tanzeen. Saima did most of the planing, and as always, it was flawless.  

In front of blue mosque (or Sultan Ahmed Mosque)

We stayed in very nice and cheap Piya Hostel, a 10-15 minute walk from most touristic sites. Saima flew to Istanbul from Toronto and Turkish airline left all her check-in baggage in Canada! Luckily the luggage was delivered to her in 2 days but she was very stressed about it in the beginning. But she did some shopping and managed pretty well. If I was at her place, I would definitely not be able to stay so calm.

Me and Tanzeen @ Baklava festival 

It was my first time meeting Tanzeen, saima's best friend. And it was great to meet and talk to her. Very smart, funny and straight forward person, someone whom you can easily make a friend. We had some great conversations about India, Pakistan and our lives in general.

One of the many clicks @ Sultanahmet Square

Next morning, we had a filling breakfast provided by the hostel and left for sightseeing around 11. I wanted to leave earlier but 11 is the best you can expect when you are travelling with two other girls :P. We covered Sultan Ahmed Mosque, Aya Sofia and Basilica Cistern by 5 in the evening. They are all magnificent and dominating structures with weird mix of Christian and Islamic influences. Istanbul might be the only place on earth where Islam and Christianity have come to peace with each other to achieve a common goal: to create a prosperous and modern society.   

Inside Aya Sofia, first a church, then a mosque and now a museum!  

In the evening, we went back to the hostel to rest a bit and then left for eminonu around 8 pm. Eminonu is the place where you go to take most of the ferry tours in Istanbul. It is an extremely crowded location, with locals and tourists everywhere you can see. They say that best fishes in Istanbul are served here in boats that make a fresh catch everyday.

One of the many fish restaurants by the sea @ Eminonu

my favourite click! @ Fish restaurants, Eminonu

We took the 1.5 hour boat ride which showed us the European and Asian sides of Istanbul. One of the things i highly recommend! We were completely exhausted by the end of the day, so we went home and crashed around midnight. Next day, we went to see the Topkapi Palace. It was the primary residence of the Ottoman Sultans for approximately 400 years (1465-1856). The palace is twice the size of Vatican City and half the size of Monaco. I usually don't go to museums, but this place just blew my mind. The amount of history stored in here is unprecedented (Prophet Muhammed's cloak and sword are just few examples). Presence of Saima and Tanzeen helped me a lot to understand the artifacts as they could tell me the stories behind them and their importance in the Muslim world.

We left Topkapi palace around 3 pm because we wanted to go to grand bazaar. Unfortunately, when we were outside the palace, we found out that the bazaar is closed on Sunday!! Ah, gross disappointment. I was leaving back to Holland next day @ noon! :( ... Oh well,next time.

So we decided to go and sit down at the sultanahmet park and eat watermelons. You can find watermelon outlets everywhere in Istanbul and they are most delicious! Turks love watermelon. But this was a very unfortunate moment for us. When we finished our watermelon and wanted to getup and leave, Tanzeen realized that her hang bag is missing. It had all her cash and documents including her passport. So for next few hours we were running around with Istanbul police trying to figure shit out. Tanzeen was obviously super stressed but police coordinated very well with us and we got things figured out fairly easily. Police didnt recovered anything but registered a stolen passport FIR and gave Tanzeen a letter stating the same. Next day tanzeen went to Pakistan Embessy in Istanbul with that letter and got a temporary passport. I hope this never happens to anyone, it is one of the worst situations you can get yourself into. 

So all tired and upset, we went back to the hostel after all this drama. Tanzeen wanted to take some rest, so we left her there and i and saima went out to do some shopping for me as i was leaving next morning. Later that night, all three of us had nice dinner together and then went to bed. Next day morning, i did my goodbyes and left for the airport around 9:30 am.

Things bought: a turkish lamp, game of backgammon, postcards with whirling dervishes and lots of baklava :)

The best thing about this trip was a chance to hangout with saima again :D     

Me and Saima posing as Ottoman royals ;)

Hope you all are having a great time as well!

Yours,

Karan

Netherlands - Part 2

Hello everyone,

So it has been more then 4 months since i came to Wageningen. Life has been very interesting since then. I have met some really cool people in town and my job at MARIN is very challenging. So life has been good! I dont have a lot of time to write at the moment, so this blog post will be with lots of pictures instead ;)

• We celebrated Shankar Ji's birthday in style

Birthday celebration of Shankar ji :)

Us fulfilling the 'cake in your face' ritual :)

We had a picnic at the Rhine river before Birthday celebrations!

• We went to Texel island for a weekend

Brunch with the twins before catching the ferry

We biked almost 30 km that day on texel

Enjoying at  the beach!

Break from biking :)

With Kuppu (R) and Shankar (L) near the harbour

The Texel Gang!

• Me, John and Marta hosted a big Couchsurfing meeting @ my apartment

The CS crew

I love couchsurfing :)

Food @ Spicy potluck in wageningen!

Watching Holland-Denmark soccer game with the CS gang @ the doctor's pub

lol :)

The CS crew after the match @ Wageningen Center

• My legs in Holland!

The most precious thing i own in wageningen!

• Claire came to visit me in Wageningen from France and we went to see Perrine :)

Flowers and Claire :) 

• So one of the best Holi celebration of my life was in Holland! 

Holi 2012 @ Arnhem

• I traveled to Antwerp with Elske

Yes we are tourists :P

Belgian beers and me... mmmmm

Rock and Roll party at Antwerp

We time traveled to 50's that night :)

So that's all for the moment! I have few things lined up in coming weeks and i am very excited about them. I am going to Istanbul in July to meet Saima!!!! And then Ewa is coming to Wageningen for  2 weeks in the beginning of August :)

Good times!!! :)

Tot dan,
Karan

First post from The Netherlands :)

Hello dear readers,

First of all, i hope you all are having an amazing time in your life :) Second, i apologise for not updating my blog for so long. A lot has happened since my last post. I finished my masters at Memorial University in Canada, went for a 40 day vacation to India so that i can spend some time with my family and friends and on 31st of January, 2012, I came to a small city called Wageningen in The Netherlands to start my new job. I will be in Netherlands for atleast coming 2 years, as that is the duration of my present contract. I will be working as a project manager with a hydrodynamic consulting company called MARIN (http://www.marin.nl/). 

So first of all, let me highlight the fact that tough i am super excited about my coming 2 years in wageningen, i really really miss St. John's and the people i met there. I made some quality friends there and i consider them a part of my family now. Ewa, Cristy, Saima, Ranjeet, you all are very special to me. Ewa, you are special because you taught me how to care for somebody you love, cristy, you are special because you are the most freeking cheerful person ever :), saima, you are special because of your cooking skills :P (just kidding) and because you are an awesome sister, and ranjeet, man you are special because i have never met some one as true as you. These pictures are for all of you guys!. St. John's would not have been same without you. 3 cheers for all those cooking together nights, those sentimental moments, those long walks, those birthdays, those parties :) :)

The Gang :)

Cristy @ Holi :P

Ewa, the sexy bunny ;)

Ranjeet @ Signal Hill 

Saima, so happy on her birthday :)

In India, it was a whole another story! I was visiting home after almost 2.5 years. That was the longest i had stayed away from home and i was really looking forward to meet everyone. My parents came to pick me at Kolkata airport. 

Papa, mummy and bro @ our home terrace in Sitamarhi 

It was a bit awkward moment to say the truth. I just didn't knew how to react when i saw them. 2.5 years is way to long to stay away from home and I highly recommend any one who is living away from their parents to visit them atleast once a year. Anyways, things quickly became normal and i was in Sitamarhi in no time. It was clear to me that Bihar is not going to be the same in coming few years. The pace at which infrastructure is developing in Bihar is tremendous! It was good to be back home :) I was lucky that immediately after i reached home, many of my family members from different parts of India visited Sitamarhi for winter holidays. For few weeks, our home in  Sitamarhi was packed with people. It was such a blast. 

Apart from all the fun with family at home, the another major thing that was going on (and is still going on back in Sitamarhi) was construction of papa's clinic. I was there for a lot of time just to over see the construction workers. The ground floor will be ready soon and papa will start practicing there after a big pooja (religious ceremony) which is planed sometime in coming April end. 

Papa's new clinic

After staying for a while at home, I had to make a trip to Delhi to apply for my Dutch visa. In the same time, I and a bunch my friends made a quick trip to Ranthambore National Park, a famous tiger reserve in India. It was great to meet everyone after so long!

Me, yogi, steel, havas, gangwal and madam @ Ranthambore fort

And the best things about travelling in India? The mighty Indian Railways and the sense of freedom it gives:

     

Onboard some train from Delhi to Muzaffarpur

The soulful music that you find in every corner:

Rajasthani musicians playing at out hotel in Ranthambore

And the unlimited variety of street food!!

en-route from Muzaffarpur to Sitamarhi, we took a stop for some street food, literally :P (in the pic is upender ji, our driver, eating some sugar cane) 

Well, eventually my trip to India came to an end. I took my flight from Delhi, landed in Amsterdam and came to Wageningen by train on 31st Jan 2012. I found a nice apartment here which i am sharing with a Belgian post doc student of Wageningen University (one of the best in the world for life sciences). 

My apartments living room

Don't be fooled by the blueness. It is a clever dutch trick. The sky is always grey here :P 

New city, new friends :)

So lets see how life unfolds in Wageningen. Apart from work, I am learning Dutch and Salsa and I have started playing Squash. That keeps me busy at the moment and intellectually simulated as well. So I hope i gave all of you a brief account of my past few months :) As i explore the city and the country and have new experiences, i promise to keep you all updated. 

I will sign off now as its already 1:00 am here and i have to wake up tomorrow at 7 to get ready for work.

Peace and Proost :)

Karan