First few weeks in London

The first few weeks in London I was very apprehensive about everything. New country, new people, new culture, new everything. I remember I was in the Whitechapel station being too timid to even ask for directions to Liverpool street which was just 2 stops away. All the tube lines and their color codes confused me. I didn't know what was allowed and what was not. A complete lack of confidence as a result of a lifetime of giving too much importance to what others thought of me swept over me. Over time, London proved to be very welcoming and I learnt the ways of it. I realised after years of introspection that I really restricted and controlled my behaviour in public in the fear of what people thought of me.

I started by going to all kinds of events to socialize - free hugs, laughing in the tube experiment, pub crawls and what not. In one of those events, I met Cri who was a tourist from Germany. We went around exploring London using the London pass which gave us free entry to most of the places for 10 days.

I started getting back together with Nat, albeit long distance. She wanted to move away from the constant night shifts she was doing and to learn the Web and join my project and potentially move to London. So there I started a journey of mentoring her teaching her everything I knew. She already had a Masters in Computer Science and in just a few months, after some rigorous late night trainings (as she was 5.5 hours ahead of my timezone), she moved to Bangalore and joined my project.

Soon, her success became a matter of pride for me. My mentoring came into conflict with our relationship. We found ourselves only talking about career and success. I wanted her to complete the assignments I gave her. I got restless when she didn't grasp certain things. I was too protective of her from criticisms and questions. But she persevered through it all and succeeded. I haven't had many students like that since then. I think it probably is because love is the core ingredient needed to really give it all to make someone succeed. We continued our relationship even though we had the same uncertainties as we did in Kochi about whether or not our families will approve of this relationship. But we decided to keep it mum until the time came.

Because visit to London was for a year, I didn't worry about taxes or anything. I saw it as an all paid trip from my company. I lived frugally and was able to save something. My saving journey started from 0 back in India from the time I got my first job and I never had any debts. In London, I was able to save a bit more. So slowly but surely, my savings account started accumulating some money.

At work, I created a name and a stellar reputation for myself in that team.