My Trip To England
- Part 3 -
By:- Aribam Herojit Sharma *
BEAUTIFUL SUNDAY:
By the time we reached Ann's place that was around 11.30 all of us went to the kitchen straight, start preparing all the ingredients with wine glasses beside us. I wanted to go for the chicken and Danny for the pork.
But after preparing the ingredients Danny said he will do both, which means I could sit down near the wine bottle, what a relief!!! Thanks Danny !!!
While they were in the Kitchen, I was busy using Ann's LAPTOP eager to know what is happening in Manipur, I was linked to E-Pao for more EEEs(bloods) pao(news).
In the meantime I got a called from Eli, a Nepali lady, who wanted to gift something to her brother-in-law in Delhi through me. She took my location and told me she will be there in few hours. We finished the bottles and sat down for Big Fat Meal(Feast).
It was good that I really have words to describe that. Yes that was the only occasion I was waiting for ever since I landed in England. I would love to travel thousands of miles to get that food. We all set to go some shopping place to buy few items for Baby and myself, we just walked, walked and walked to get to that shopping mall.
The weather was cold so we could walk otherwise we would have to spend few pounds for the fare. In my recent times in Delhi I don't remember walking THAT much in my memory. I got a LORUS wrist watch and Manchester United shirt on that day. But I felt extremely sorry for ann and dink i didn't get anything for them that day who are like my own sisters.
Girl's are you listening? My heartiest apologies for the blunder I made. But I promised again to gift you little memento for my London visit in next few months.
At 8 pm we came back to Ann's room and had tea as our bus is scheduled at 9 pm from Victoria but we were supposed to broad the bus from nearby station. As we came out for the station Ann & Dinku also came out to see off suddenly I felt sad for having have depart after all this wonderfull quality time.
That was like, those moments Ann leaving us for London every time she came to India, that was the feeling I got at that very moment my eyes were about to flow like a river, like a child leaving his family. Weird life!!!!
We went to Golder's Green station and waited for our bus number 561, it never came. At 9.45 pm I called up the bus service but they informed me that we cannot broad the bus from Golder's green as it only allow us to broad from main station Victoria. I talked to Ann as well she also tried to contact the bus people but to no avail.
After few minutes I saw a bus with that service number 561 I talked to the driver but he told us we are at the wrong station, we have to catch from the other lane we went there but no use at all. I talked to Ann and decided to catch last bus to Bradford via Leicester, Manchester, Leeds.
But we had to shell out more hard-earned money this time, for the journey we booked for 18 quips a week ago now we have to pay 50 quips.
No other option save pay, our bus started at 11.25 pm after going half of England we reached Bradford at 6 am but that was Monday bank holiday(public holiday). I went to my room and made myself fresh and went down to our hotel Bar for breakfast. After a heavy breakfast, I browsed DVD 's that rohit from our office gave us for time-pass.
In the Afternoon I talked to my Baby and I describe about the things we have done over the weekend we did talked about a lot of thing.
That night I was very sad thinking about work tomorrow morning but I had to go as I could not skip a single working day, Such is life, dearies. If that was in Delhi I would have call up my manager asking for leave, but alas, that's not the case here.
UK people enjoys weekend like anything but they really works sincerely in working hours. Ann once said 'when Friday comes everyone seems to be beaming with a smile in their face but when Monday comes all of them looks sad and dull'.
We went to work as usual, our team members were asking about London trip, I showed them our photos, strangely enough few of them said we have seen more of London than Them. That was also true because they don't need to travel to London to buy things as they have their own cities & International Airports around.
They are frequent travelers abroad like US and Australia but may be they have least interest in their own Country as grass is always greener on the other side. On the last working day Chris invited us out to lunch, he asked for our preference of Joint. Subway was near so we walked down Chris & Scott was like our childhood friend outside the office, we compared how the sun is seen in Delhi and England.
Chris had a plan to visit our office in Noida in July 09. He was looking forward to it, in the mean time Scott ask where we learned English in School or at work? I explained him we learned from our school moreover British Ruled our State.
We talked about difference between their accent and the Americans. They will understand American accent easily but the Americans will not understand them. On the way we explain them about how we got little American way of talking. In SUBWAY I ordered ITALIAN HAM small and Sprite.
After that we sat down on our seats doing our remaining work, Sukhy came in and asked me what did we have? When I replied she repeated 'hum' and that made me smile. She countered me why am I smiling? I told her 'we say hem you said hum', also told her 'we say London but you all here say Lundun' she started to laugh.
After that I took permission from Chris to leave early as I need to go for shopping he agreed. I walked down to everyone in the room to say Saiy-onara. We returned back our access cards in the reception and Chris came out to drop us till parking where the taxi was waiting for us. I thanked Chris Furminger again and again for the kind of understanding and co-operation he offered us.
Chris are you reading this? Mate, I promise you, one day I would love to be in your service. You really showed us a good heart which will be difficult to give back Today you told me in Skype you are going to self employed and not cuming(coming) to Delhi I feel heart-broken because in my life I will not be able to return your favor).
By the end of my journey i prayed for Ann, Dink, Chris, Scott, Sukhy and Tere for their well-being, they do have the heart of the precious diamond in the world.
Concluded....
* Aribam Herojit Sharma contributes to e-pao.net for the first time . The writer can be contacted at aribamhero(at)yahoo(dot)com or his blog at http://march11.hpage.com
This article was webcasted on July 18th, 2009.
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