Good bye Bangalore and hello London !!!

Dear friends,

I know it’s been a loooong time that I gave sign and have sent some words describing what I am up to and I am sorry for not finding the time or will to do so earlier. But I never forgot any of you and am happy to tell you now about my whereabouts of the last months.

After the fabulous wedding of Sunaina and me in Berlin in August and in Jaipur in November 2016, we were still based in two different cities on two different continents for another six months.

She in London and me in Bangalore. But this sorrow time had finally and end when I decided to move to London and take up another project as a postdoc at Warwick University in May.

Leaving a place like Bangalore after six years with such great friends and such nice colleagues at work was not easy, emotionally and practically. Many boxes were to pack for shipment to Berlin and London, many other things in my apartment had to find a new owner or been discarded, and many of you will know, how much stuff can accumulate in six years. But I was quite lucky: a couple from UK joined NCBS just about the time I was about to leave, and they were looking for all sorts of house equipment that I was about to give off, a classic win-win situation. In addition, I made a good bargain to ship off my parcels with cloths and books to Europe, and the company even came to pick them up. But even then, I found more and more things popping up in the apartment and just a few days before my departure, I think, I made a couple of students very happy when I invited anybody from NCBS to come and pick up whatever they wanted. It was funny to see them going through and getting excited about all the things I was about to throw away.  

a part of me is still in Bangalore...;-) 

And then came the day of my departure and I was deeply moved that my friends came to help me with the packing and to spend the last hours in Bangalore with me. It turned out that I underestimated the remaining amount of clothes and I had troubles to get everything into my suitcases. Finally, I had to sort through my T-shirts and jeans and make a tough selection to the amusement of my friends who were not believing that I would give off my super colorful shirts or torn jeans with sequins at the back 😉. 

Our plants also found a new home and after a last beer together, I got into the cab and went off to the airport together with my friend Kabir. I was a bit nervous at the check-in counter, because my suitcases and hand luggage were quite over the limit, but the staff was very kind and didn’t ask me to remove anything.

Arriving in London, I was very happy to see my beloved Sunaina and to hold her in my arms. London was grey and cool, but that didn’t matter as we were just happy to be together.After arriving, the work just started: finding a new apartment, getting paperwork done to start my new work, phone, bank, National Insurance and so on. Fortunately, my wife already screened through and selected several apartments, and it took us only seven apartment viewings to find our new home. Because my work is in Warwick, I have to take a train from London Euston station, and we found a lovely apartment just a few minutes from that station. It’s of a nice, old style, with a fire place (not in use anymore) in the living room and big windows which let in a lot of light.

view from our living room

Moving to the new flat and setting it up, meant a lot to us, as this is our very first apartment that we set up together and that we can properly call HOME for the next couple of years. After living in student hostels, shared flats or apartments provided by the institute, this was a big step for us. And it feels fantastic to see now the place and to know, this is our space, our retreat zone, where we can relax, read and unwind after a day of work.

portobello market

London differs, of course, drastically from Bangalore in all terms: weather, architecture, nature, traffic and people. It is such a pleasure to just walk on the roads here, passing by the bustling pubs and cafes, seeing interesting things in shops. Then, there are those wonderful parks with their trimmed lawns and bushes and people sitting on benches or lying on the green to read and chat (fortunately, we had summer weather). Of course, life is much more expensive here and we cannot find tasty, Indian chaats, but this place offers a lot to experience and we are looking forward to spending the next years in this energetic, multicultural and open city.

ducks at the pond next to our lab

My new work place in Warwick is also better than I expected. The campus is very green, and well sized. I share a spacious office with three other postdocs (from Singapore, Japan and Russia), with whom I get along very well and it is sometimes hard to not get stuck into some discussion about new ideas that pop up all the time in this room. Everyone in the lab is very kind and they work all together well. I am again in a similar position as I was when I joined the lab at NCBS, i.e. it is a biology lab (this time with a focus on cell division in yeast) and they are now keen to implement biophysical approaches to visualize isolated parts of the machinery that is driving cell division. This will give me insights into a new model organism and I am optimistic that it will lead to some exciting new findings.

I hope to see many of you soon again and to keep in touch…so, as a good Britisher would say: Cheers!