Not being big on Christmas it has always been just another day. If you are in a school, college or office environment then leading up to the 25th you will see lots of programs, carol singing and being dressed as Santa (with the scary. creepy Indian masks; I dunno why India can’t get better looking masks for Santa) and some stupid contest or the other. They usually have a Secret Santa thing going on which I like.

With this year working from home, I have not had any of that ofcourse. And as usual Christmas is just another day for an atheist. It is a holiday for my department however this year they had wanted one of us to work on Christmas and New Year as a backup / emergency / just in case. I volunteered for the 25th as I knew it would be an easy day at work and I would also get Monday off. On Monday I will be going back to the hospital and when I come back I will be tired and hence will want to take a nap in the afternoon which will be difficult as my shift starts at 3:30 pm.

So today I was working from 3:30 pm till 12:30 am but I would have to say that I was available for work during that time but I hardly got a peep. I even contact some of the service delivery managers informing them that I am here and ready to help out if any issues do come their way and was almost begging them for something to work on. Instead I watched Youtube videos, listened to music and chilled. By 7:15 pm I ordered food for me and the parents. We had butter naan, butter chicken, bbq chicken wings and fish fingers from BBQ Nation. Delicious.

By 11:30 pm I realized that nothing is gonna come up and watched the latest episode of Star Trek Discovery and by 12:30 am I logged off and shut down my work station. I will watch a bit more tv before falling asleep.

After almost 3 weeks I finally went out. Since I get most of my groceries and other stuff delivered to my apartment building, I rarely do need to go out. But yeah twice a month I do try to go out, get some money out of an ATM, do some other errands if needed, buy some beer and other liquor, check if there any parcels waiting for me at the post office, maybe get some lunch outside and anything else I need to do.

I have a cab driver, who uses Ola & Uber but since he is a nice older guy I call him up and ask him if he can come for my errands twice a month. I enjoy his company and he waits and is fair when he charges me; even giving back some money that I wanted to give him extra because he felt that the total ride wasn’t that long. So I call him up the previous night and then arrange for him to meet me the next afternoon at around 12 or so. Yesterday it was at 1:15pm since I woke up so late.

At 11:40 pm I had a mayo sandwich for breakfast with coffee and then shaved and had a shower. By 12:45 I was ready to get dressed and iron my shirt. By 1:15 pm I got into the cab and before I went out to Palarivattom I needed to check something. An Amazon order from Amazon.com was left along with my packages last Wednesday and it turns out it was for an A Gopalakrishnan in an office nearby. However try as I might I couldn’t find the office and decided to let the post office know. I then went to Palarivattom to drop off some documents.

Then I went to buy some beer and unfortunately Couchyn/Grand Hotel had run out of beer. You see you can buy beer and liquour from bars at the regular price but they had run out. So I bought a bottle of Ceasar brandy for my dad and then went to Lotus Club so I could buy some beer. I bought 3 Beck’s Ice and 4 Budweiser Magnum. Then I went to buy some groceries, get some money outta an ATM and then took a quick lunch of a beef mince burrito at Cafe 17 with a Peace Ice Team and then headed home.

Yesterday was my birthday and I celebrated it almost the same way that I celebrate most of my birthdays. Initially the plan was that my sister and her kids would come over for dinner but that changed. Instead, since my niece has online school classes starting at 6:30 pm, my sis and niece along with my oldest nephew came over for lunch. My sister decided to make some simple chicken curry with a few potatoes in it to accompany the rice and veggies that my mom had made.

As usual my sister brought along a cake. She has my niece to order one online as long as it isn’t chocolate since my dad doesn’t like chocolate. Funny enough he will eat it if it is ice cream! Anyway, my niece choose red velvet, which to be sure isn’t my fav flavour. Infact I do not like it much but this one was good especially since it had a lot of cream on it. But I can’t more than a thin slice as it still feels quite heavy. My niece managed two!

After that I tried to watch a movie but I fell asleep half way through and took a nice nap. My sister and her kids went back to their apartment and I said that I would be ordering food and called them up in the evening. By then I had managed to get a hot shower (it was a cold day) and shaved. As I toweled my head I got some coffee and snacks and ofcourse more music on Youtube and stuff. By 7 I ordered naan and butter chicken for my sister and her family (2 sons, 1 daughter and her husband) and some Baskin n Robbins. I ordered chicken fried rice, with golden fried prawns and dragon chicken (pictured above) for me and my parents.

By 12 after the good food, a couple of vodkas and the ice cream I was content and watching another movie before sleep caught up with me.

What can I say? It was a great experience. Escape The Room has three escapes rooms – a prison/jail cell, an ancient Egypt/archeological setting and a Sherlock Holmes themed who dunno it theme. I reached there only by 7:30 pm as there was a huge traffic block in Kaloor and Palrivattom. We separated into teams and I was in the prison cell challenge.

We were the only ones who completed our challenge in 1 hour while the others ran out of time. It was a lot of fun. Once we were done, we took some pics and then headed to Zataar restaurant nearby for a team dinner.

The food was excellent as always. We had alfam chicken and chicken mandhi and some beef platter. FOr the three vegetarians – one permanent and the other two temporary veggies – there was panner two types and veg fried rice. One person had a veg grill.

We ended up with some sweet lemonade and then left. Some of them had to go back to the office but since I had an earlier shift I hailed an Uber and came home. I rested for a while before watching a movie and then fell asleep.

This arrived at around 3pm at my apartment building. It took only 32 hours to reach me from the time of ordering it which I think is an awesome turn around time. I handed over my almost 5 year old Dell and entered the OTP that Amazon India had sent to my account to ensure that the delivery guy was handing it over to the right person and then signed for it and accepted the box. I unboxed it and started the setup.

So this is the HP 15 Core i3 7th gen 15.6-inch Laptop (4GB/1TB HDD/Windows 10 Home/Natural Silver/2.04 kg), 15-DA0326TU. And it is now purring like a kitten and is as smooth as silk or melted chocolate. I will be copy back some of the files that I had backed up to a new external hard drive soon.

And I must say that although I was tempted to stick with the black theme and get the same device in black, which was around Rs.500 more, I opted for the natural silver finish. Which is a really good one I must say. I’m glad I opted for a change in colour as well cause it looks good.

Here are the specifications:

• Processor: 7th Gen Intel Core i3-7100U processor, 2.4GHz base processor speed, 2 cores, 3MB cache
• Operating System: Pre-loaded Windows 10 Home with lifetime validity
• Display: 15.6-inch Full HD (1920×1080) WLED display, Display Features: Diagonal FHD SVA Anti-Glare WLED-backlit Display
• Memory & Storage: 4GB DDR4 RAM Intel HD Graphics 620 | Storage: 1TB HDD, HDD Speed(RPM): 5400 RPM
• Design & battery: Multi-touch gesture support | Thin and light design | Laptop weight: 2.2 kg | Average battery life = 7 hours, HP Fast Charge battery, Battery: 3 Cell, Li-Ion, Power Supply: 41 W AC Adapter W
• Warranty: This genuine HP laptop comes with a 1-year domestic warranty from HP covering manufacturing defects and not covering physical damage. For more details, see Warranty section below
• Preinstalled Software: Windows 10 Home | In the Box: Laptop with included battery and charger Ports & CD drive: 1 HDMI, 2 USB 3.0, 1 USB 2.0, 1 Audio-output | With CD drive Other features: Anti Glare Display