On Another Trip & the Year That Was

As the year begins to fade away my travel stars seem to be shining brighter. I’m setting off on another trip, the third one this month. I haven’t been anywhere this year for a long time and suddenly as if to compensate for it I am being sent here and there. This time I am being sent to Visakhapatnam. Vizag is infinitely better than the other two places I have been in the past couple of weeks- Guntur and Zaheerabad. Apart from many things in its favor Vizag is a seaside place and I simply love being near the ocean. I will be in Vizag on New Year’s eve so I plan to spend the last day of the year watching the sunrise by the sea. It would be a nice way to end the year which has been a mixed one for me so far.

The one major highlight of the year was that I finally managed to complete writing my book. I guess it brought me within inches of being a published writer. However I haven’t been able to stick to my deadline of completing the revisions by the end of the year but that’s okay. I will do it in the first two months of the coming year. Other than that, writing the blog regularly has been another source of satisfaction. I’ve managed to write two hundred and twenty two posts in 2008. Though I did not have anything published in papers and magazines (as if I do it quite regularly!) I am satisfied with the posts on the blog which has brought me more friends than I could make otherwise. The blog has brought in a haul of friends I am happy to be in touch with regularly.

As far as books are concerned I found plenty of them, a hundred thirty to be exact. My friends are envying me for finding some really good books. I picked up many books by my favorite writers- Elmore Leonard, Dave Barry, Paul Theroux, Pico Iyer and others. I have listed all the books I have found this year somewhere on the blog. But when it comes to reading I haven’t read as many books I should have for various reasons. Whatever books I have read have been good so far, books that changed something within me. I will continue to read more books though I might be picking up fewer of them owing to a space constraint at home.

Of course, the high point has been getting a Mont Blanc fountain pen as a gift. I also found a couple of nice fountain pens the latest being the ‘Swarna’ black fountain pen I picked up at Guntur about a week ago.

On the job there haven’t been many highs though I have learnt a lot of people in a particular industry hate me for sticking to rules. I am glad I had the opportunity to show these greedy and rapacious industrialists how it feels when the government flexes its muscle. The surprising thing is that there have been no attempts to shift me from my post and instead there’s a new respect for being unbending and straightforward. But it is very tough to remain unruffled when there’s wholesale corruption all around you.

I made a few trips on the job and had excitement at the end of the year in form of the anti-corruption operations in December. I will remember the one where I was part of an operation to trap a corrupt cop. It felt like I was in a movie chasing someone through heavy traffic. The low was that I was not promoted this year too and maybe next year I will move a step up the ladder.

I am not making any resolutions for the next year because I haven’t been able to keep the resolutions that I had made last year. I wasn’t able to listen to music and was also not able to buy an iPod. The other resolution was that I wanted to learn to cook but I was nowhere near the kitchen. I just ate.

So that was a little bit about my experiences in the year that’s gone and I hope none of you have fallen asleep while reading this post which is one of the lengthiest I have done so far. I hope and am also confident that 2009 will be a better year bringing every one success, happiness and lots of money which is something I badly need. Why? I have to buy bookshelves! Where else can I keep my books?

Wish You all a Happy New Year. Keep reading the blog. Thank You very much.