A new day and new life

So the times have changed and now there is Parth blogging away his heart’s desire on this platform.

I feel nothing but proud for his achievement for doing a blog post as often as you can sometimes you get stuck with punctuations and line breaks but its okay. I find it interesting and intriguing that he suffers with the handicap that comes with technology but in short term.

I believe there will be a time when he will become a good blogger and a fluent author.

Question about his blog over cricket it came to the light that a batsman can get out by the following methods in cricket.

“Bold, catch, lbw, runout, stumped, obstructing the field, handling the ball, hit wicket, hit the ball twice, timed out.”

Real Time

The days are going very slowly. I am not sure if this is due to my efforts for being mindful for each thing I am trying to do or I really am waiting for something to happen.

Well, it is true that I am waiting for payday but it is also true in equal measures that with coming months, it would be a certainty that status quo will change as well.

I am looking forward to moving on with next chapters of life. With the news of finally being in the pay grade that I deserve and finding the mental balance to be able to think reasonably, makes present a bit slow.

As I’ve always mentioned, I hate waiting – but it is almost time.

Passage of time

Factoring in time as a unit may be different for everyone as situations and mental states have the power to alter the perception for each individual.
I never used to think about time in lengths – to simplify, for me 10 years was just that. 10 years. But it always seemed like yesterday.

People talk about events happened a long long time ago – which are just 2 years in the past. For me, it was just the other day. May be the measuring of time was not my strong suit. May be this is due to my stronger memory than average.

Things do not seem far in the past. And this accelerates the speed at which future happens or time passes. Time to smell the flowers gets buried.

This has changed since last couple of months. Time is just not budging. It seems that events since October happened a long time ago, may be in another life time.

Is this due to the fact that a lot has changed?

I am not completely hating this new arrangements inside my head, but would really enjoy a tiny bit of acceleration.

Success Recipe.

To shine bright like a sun, you have to first burn like one.

I read this quote almost a decade ago somewhere in corporate communication and got reminded of it from some older posts on this blog that I was reading.

Kalam sir said this or some other leader or philosopher from the past, but the thought holds true in every context of success.

It may be valid that some people get the best of the platforms or spring boards but for each flight, the bird has to flap its own wings. To succeed, you may have parents like Mr. Bachchan or Gavaskar, Friends like KJo or MSD or SRT, your guts and skills and hunger will be the factors to get you past the finish lines.

1% luck is required as well.

Life before mobile phones

When randomised, thoughts can often lead to places you never know existed. I am one for flight of stories that one tells to himself. Of future, of hope, of fantasy and all things nice.

It is not same as living in a wonderland of one’s thoughts. This was merely a way I found to distract my self while travelling on a bus or train to pass time. This led to the realisation of complex life problems, ways to resolve these issues and possibilities of how the future may turn out.

Sometimes it may begin with a logical start, sometimes you jump right in with a blanket scenario where no explanation or context is provided. These cases varied based on how much in hurry I felt at the time to escape from reality.

This way of pushing oneself to tell stories is different from day-dreaming, which is involuntary, or hallucinating, which is induced by external catalysts. This is because the act is done by will and comes with undo functionality if at any stage scenarios require to be adjusted.

These are the sort of plan making which puts one on the path for the life if they are brave enough to put action and efforts behind them.

A new journey

They say this is going to be the exercise of clearing the mind. I am sure this is going to help but absolutely need to think about how should I be staring about it. This page is open since 2nd of Jan and this is 10th and finally now I am here to type about something to clear my mind.

Was I trying to avoid the place where I can just commented on my current mental state? May be? But to be quite there, I am still trying to get back to my true self after going through personal losses in recent times.

I used to write a lot with my blog from 2004 till 2010. From Yahoo 360 to WordPress. But there seems to be a time where I just never felt the need to keep on logging my life.

Anyways, meditation helped me a lot in getting over the trauma of the recent times but then I read this article online which was talking about how it helps to just type mindlessly and without the worry that you might have to read it someday.

I think it may be true. Still having the upper limit target of 750 words is probably a bit of a challenge. But I can now see that at 200, it is all about feeling that burn, running out of ideas and make sure that voices in side the head are all addressed while you type.

At office, motivated then earlier this month as an appraisal is confirmed and I have also taken up another assignment to mentor fresh minds in the domain that work in. This is going to be an added responsibility but I think it is needed that kind of commitment that I was looking for for some time.

Office work life is good and as I look ahead to jump into the routine, I have now quite a few personal factors to consider. I am a bit skeptical about how I placed work above all until a couple of months ago and the only path ahead seems to be the same.

I know there are many personal changes afoot in the next couple of months as well but finding the balance between the two is what I am striving for. There are times when I feel like all at sea but then I have to force myself to get back to ground and now.

It is hard. I think this is how the life actually shapes us. Being strong does not mean absence of pain or fear or tears, it means pushing ahead with pain, fear and tears.

Do I consider my self strong, yes. I am strong. I have gone through highs and lows enough for lifetimes for some and still consider my journey to be incomplete.

Farewell

With great sorrow and regrets I need to inform you about my certain departure from this country which I called home for last 5 years.

You were the first people I happened to know when I first arrived here and most of you became my good friends right away. You have shown nothing but acceptance and support for all the oddities, weird habits, creepy innuendos or sometime unintended rudeness from my lack of few gentle qualities.

My endeavour to look for a new life in a far away land was doomed from the beginning. As it happened, it came at a great financial cost which followed the cancellation of the promised 2 year Post Study Work Visa by UK government and desperate attempts landed me in the arms of employers where work, life, movements and even choice of my weekend activities seemed to be taken away from me.

Even though there is still sometime left in my visa, the employer has decided to end the sponsorship as the client projects are coming to an end. Effectively pronouncing me an illegal immigrant after 28th of August if I chose to stay without a new sponsor.

There are many contract and permanent jobs available which for which I am not just qualified but even asking for lesser money than advertised. But given the short window of time, I am not sure if it is possible to find a sponsor – and even someone who does not wish to exploit.

You know, people are asking upto 25% of my income for a sponsorship?

Which means if I earn – say £20,000 from a contract each year, I’ll pay £5,000 to the sponsor, £5,000 to HMRC as taxes and keep the rest 50% – HALF of what I am going to earn with all honesty and hard work – for the remaining term of my visa.

Plus I’ll be the one to pay all the visa fee occurred during the process, an introductory fee of about £3,000 AND monthly income tax on an imaginary income till I can find a contract.

It is illegal, referred as body shopping and leaves me at the mercy of sponsors and whim of UKBA.

Am I tempted? Yes. Will I do it? No.

Short term, long term, remote, commute, on-call – for the next 4 years before I can claim for a long term settled visa for myself. It is nothing short of slaving away without a shimmer of hope for a settled family life.

Is there really no place for the so called ‘best and the brightest’ in this country? Is there no place for a well educated, qualified, experienced, hardworking and tax-paying person who does not wish to commit a visa fraud in developed world?

So I am leaving this country to my childhood home which we sold and one mortgaged apartment to fund my studies and a still outstanding education loan to pay back.

I am not going to dilute remarkable journey I was on where I not just made friends like you but made memories, celebrated life and to some extent found myself.

A few basic lessons which I learned from all the people I knew here are empathy, acceptance, courtesy, inclusiveness and respect for individual’s choices.

Not once a person who was not from Indian Subcontinent commented on how fat I was or my greying hair or how old I was to make me feel conscious about my body image.

Just to make things clear, this post is not just complaints against the government of UK, it is just an attempt to express how grateful I am to ever met you guys and how the life sometimes plays tricks on you just by putting you at a certain geographic location at the time of your birth.

The mental trauma is unbearable. The pressure of uncertainty about life in coming weeks, resettling in India after a privileged lifestyle, change which was unforeseen until 30 days ago when I payed a deposit on a new house to rent here in UK. I feel helpless and sad. And there is really nothing I can do about it.

In the words of the famous Doctor David Tennant, “I don’t want to go”.

I wonder what visas all these taxi drivers have?

I’ll be in Bristol for a last hurrah from 1st August till 11th August before boarding my flight to Indore, India from Heathrow on 12th morning.

Exploring Britain!

Here is a list of all the towns and cities where I have been to in the UK. This is just to keep track and remember those wonderful experiences:

1. Bristol
2. Slough
3. Bath
4. Cheltenham
5. Chippenham
6. Malmesbury

I know, London still does not feature on this list! Because, I have never been there, thats why!

A trip to Sussex is on the cards next week and it reminds me something funny from the past. As kids in small town Sanawad in India, we used to participate in local tennis-ball cricket tournaments with a team from our locality. Priyank, out of no where suggested we should call it Sussex. He had heard this name somewhere in the county cricket news on TV and his argument was, when breaking up this name ‘Sa-Sex’, the ‘Sa’ in Hindi, means with and ‘Sa-Sex’ will become ‘A team with so much sex appeal’.

*face palm*

Teenage Hormones! 😀

Anyways, we never won any tournament or won more than a match. Sussex Cricket Club from Baheti Colony Sanawad remains in memories.