Ok, this new year's day, I made a firm resolution to finally start writing a blog (after countless other such resolutions which have gone down the drain over the years it must be said!). 2011 was a mixed year on the personal and professional front, but compared to the financial crisis that has been spreading like contagion all over the world, events in my life have been positively tranquil it must be said. I started a new job in September 2011 with Peugeot Citroen, the French automaker and one of the biggest manufacturers in the world. I moved on from IBM France after two great years with them and I'm eternally grateful to them for having given me the opportunity to make a career transition and for also having funded my MBA. But, in the end, what I have discovered is that working on something which is not close to my heart is not stimulating enough and maybe, just maybe, this will be the motivation that I need to kick on and do something which gives me more pleasure and joy.
On the personal front, I finally went back home to Chennai after three and a half years and though the trip was a short one, I had a great time catching up with friends and family who I hadn't seen in ages. It was surreal in a lot of ways because when I left the country in August 2008, my two best friends from back home were still single and were in a career transition phase; I finally go back in December 2011 and I find that they are both married with one of them even becoming a dad very recently!!!! Makes me feel a little bit old in certain ways certainly :) Nevertheless, I was happy to see them all and I hope to go back again in September 2012..otherwise, I did not notice much of a difference in the city itself..yes, there were more buildings, people and more flyovers and not to mention malls, but then fundamentally, Chennai 2012 is practically the same as Chennai 2008 (except for the monstrous inflation that seemed to have blown prices through the roof!).
I also had the good fortune of travelling just a little bit in 2011..chief among them was a trip to Prague in March 2011 with a good friend from business school who is my room mate now. I had a great time during the trip and I would definitely go back again to visit the city..I found Prague to be a beautiful city, welcoming and fun and with some of the most beautiful women I have seen in the world..as a matter of fact, I even ran into a beautiful Czech girl in a crazy art school party who spoke perfect Hindi..unfortunately, I don't speak the language and for the first time, I regretted not having learnt the language (she was a beautiful girl after all :P).
2011 was also a pretty year for my beloved Liverpool football club..we were in the mire with bankruptcy a looming possibility in late 2010 with our then American owners (more like cancerous leeches leeching off LFC), but we were rescued by John Henry and co. who also own prestigious sports franchises like the Boston Red Sox. The new management team in place know their stuff and I am really happy to have someone with their heads properly screwed on running the club. On the pitch, there have been huge changes in personnel and we lost our star striker in Torres to the chavs (Chelsea) but then we got in Luis Suarez and Andy Carroll (a bit unfortunate with that transfer :()..we also got back our talismanic skipper Stevie Gerrard after a long injury layoff and also managed to tie him down to a new long term contract to stay at his boyhood club :) We lie 7th in the table, 5 pts off the crucial 4th place (needed for securing entry into European football in 2012-2013) but our strike force has been a cause for worry all season long as they have failed to fire. The defence has been magnificent after the shambles that it was last season and there is still plenty to look forward to and play for in the rest of the season!
