Sudipta's Life

In the old days, there used to be wars; fought with swords and daggers and hoarse battle-cries and men looking murderously at each other from horseback. These days, the action has shifted to the playground. Wars are still fought, on football and rugby fields amidst rain, snow and mud. The men still look at each other murderously, and the spectators still cry themselves hoarse in support of their team --- welcome to British rugby and soccer. We went to a football match between Hearts and Aberdeen some time ago, and it is an experience worth telling. Both these teams belong to the top Scottish division in soccer, and so the match promised at least a good game. It was scheduled to start at 3:00, and we went there to support Hearts!! (Direct dil se ;) Well, the real reason we were supporting Hearts was that three of our colleagues from Edinburgh (umm, not colleagues, really -- client system admin, client associate manager and project manager) were Hearts supporters. We met at 12:00 noon ...

Thank you, dear reader, for imagining me to be 'saint' in the title of the post. Actually, he is the other saint who was the talk of the world yesterday: Saint Valentine. On popular demand (where one person is the whole of the population who demanded it), this is an account of what I saw happening in the run up to the day and on the day itself. I would have loved to post this one with pictures... but they are unavailable due to various reasons... and so you must see through my eyes as of now. We had gone sightseeing this Saturday and Sunday... to the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the Royal Museum, the Edinburgh Dungeon, etc. and it was really then that I realised how much the term 'love is in the air' meant. Right from the supermarket to the footside store, everybody had prepared something special for the Valentine's day. In TESCO, the local equivalent of D'Mart, the entire row selling wines and champagnes (yes, there is an entire aisle with bottles on both sides at...

Ok junta, I know that some of you have been waiting for this new post to come up. Actually blogging is a problem here.. don't get much time to surf, and whatever time I get, I usually end up spending on checking mails, etc. But don't worry -- I will have something good coming up very soon. For now, I think that this post is best said with pictures. So read on... "Edinburgh is", someone had said, "what Rome should have been like". This place is indeed beautiful... with all the old-era buildings and statues and monuments, I get a fairly good idea what that man meant. A couple of weekends back, we had set out for the castle at about 12 noon (now, don't squirm please... even in Scotland you cannot do without a 12 hour sleep on Friday nights). But outside, it was still cold, windy, and as good as a 6:30 a.m. morning at home. Take a look below -- that is how it looks at 12 noon here: At the top of the hill is the castle... and the fountain you see in the foreg...