2008 went by but who cares?

so, how did i spend my christmas vacation? by roaming around scotland. no don't worry, it wasn't too cold. the least temperatures we faced were -7 celcius only. so it was fine. but sadly not much snow to be seen either. so what places did we go? i know no one cares to know, but i will list them out just to act as an archive.

edinburgh - we left by train from southampton to reach the capital of scotland. it was a long journey obviously. but edinburgh looked fantastic. all the buildings look ancient, the cobblestoned and often winding roads giving it quite a character. and ofcourse, there were tall cathedrals and a hill-top castle, a river with many bridges across it et al. in summary, edinburgh is definitely a city to be visited. and i guess that is the reason it is the most visited place in the uk after london. sadly, we couldn't go on one of those ghost tours or even the free 3 hr city tour.

aberdeen - am not sure what it's claim to fame is, but it seemed like any other city. and it surprisingly seemed to have a huge indian-origin population. nothing much to see in the city though, went to the beach to enjoy icy-cold waves and wind.

inverness - it's claim to fame now is that it is the northern most place that i have visited, in the world. ofcourse, it is also famous for being next to the notorious loch-ness which is famous for housing the legend of the never seen nessie monster. i liked inverness, especially since it had a river flowing through it and was very cold. the lochness also has a castle next to it, is very very long and has a visitor attraction center for monster sightings etc. also has quite a few drinks named on the monster ;).

glasgow - i had briefly seen it before, and saw a bit more of it this time. it is like a poor cousin of london, as busy as london, but lacking in the character and feel. nothing much there ...

edinburgh - yes, then we came back to edinburgh to welcome the new year by participating in the edinburgh hogmanay street party. it was true to its billing as one of the best new year parties in the world. the number of people attending was unbelievable, must have been in hundreds of thousands (was apparently a record attendance this time). the fireworks were definitely the best that i have seen live. the funniest part was however this- on our way back, we did come across lots of people dancing on the streets, mostly to scottish music etc. however one group of people (which included british, other europeans, chinese, south-asian etc) all dancing to "hare rama hare krishna" with one white guy playing the dhol kind of thing!!

anyways, i shall end talking about the trip. let's see, what else might 2008 be remembered for? my brother's marriage, me buying+wearing a suit for the first time (for the marriage obviously), trekking up a mountain and then almost sliding down, flying a glider (with an instructor sitting behind me, ofcourse), presenting my research paper at a top international conference, forgetting everyone's birthdays, reaching the £1000 limit of my credit-card, enjoying trips to brussels, portugal and india (twice), and many other things that cannot/should-not/will-not be mentioned here ;)

finally, my friend prashant jaikumar aka paccha aka thread aka rmstar and i have started a blog to post the collection of open login mails that our IIIT batch (UG2K2) had to endure over the four years. ofcourse we don't have most of the mails, just a few that were too good to not be deleted from our inboxes. here it is - link