From Vada Pav to Biryaani

This post has been long over due.

I left Paradox Studios and moved to Hyderabad in persue of my hunger to know more, to make more and to love more games.

Last 2 months was lot of reshuffling and re-settling. Its not easy to switch cities, till now I thought only To-Do lists (Note: Plural) on your desktops and approaching demo deadlines where the stressors, but Boy! Moving cities is a big pain in the *$$. Especially if the city you are leaving is Mumbai (THE CITY of India).

This recent experience made me come up with a To-Do List for moving Cities.

Assuming you know your date or month to relocate.

• Finalizing a place to stay in the city you are moving to.
  
  
• Fire up your internet and Google for the city’s websites
  
  
• Keywords – City Name – Cost of living – Rentals – Commuting
  
  
• Nice to have details
  
  
• City Map
  
  
• Bookmark Forum’s on rentals/sales.
  
  
• Telephone number’s of estate agents.
  
  Call up and pretend that you are the richest dude around, make sure you sound as if Bill Gates just applied for a job in your company. This will give you a list and rentals for the best localities around.
  
  Call up another agent and now pretend you just got fired and filed for bankruptcy yesterday. This will either get you nothing or bunch of cold words, in which you should try to figure out the names of the locations and try to remove the (int) part as they are the rental costs.
  
  So now you have yourself a price range.
  
  
• List of friends or friend’s friends and/or family members. (This might give you a good chance of locating few more in your family tree, the ones you have never heard off).
  
  
• List of Hotels/Motels/Guest Houses according to your price range.
  
  
• List out modes of travel to that city from yours.
  
  
• Optional – List of wine shops J
  
  
• Your bank Branches.
  
  
• Your Cooking Gas (LPG) Company’s Dealer.
  
  
• Your Mobile operator Branches.
  
  
• Plan a weekend trip to the city (you might want to extend the stay so have leaves applied for)
  
  
• Reach the city and park your gear at your decided temporary accommodation.
  
  
• Buy all local news papers having “Classified” section for rental ads, start calling, try getting lucky.
  
  
• Hook up with an estate agent, but make sure that you tell him your budget which is 20% less than your actual one. My trick: I ask him to show me two sets of apartments:
  
  
• 1^st is for myself and my budget is X (less than my actual budget).
  
  
• 2^nd for my brother (if you don’t have one, create a fictitious one) which is approx. 10% more than my Budget. This because I am a range guy I like things in brackets. That’s just me.
  
  
• Get lucky – strike the deal –get back home before you leave runs out. I recommend having few days extra, one never knows how much paper work needs to be done and how long it can take.
  
  
• Finalizing the Packing plan
  
  
• This can be quite tricky, depends on how much stuff you have, if you are like me, married without kids and with basic house hold stuff and the company is bearing the relocation cost, I strongly suggest hiring a Mover and Packer agent.
  
  
• Get the list of all the Packers, again I am the brackets guy, inquire the price list from the best to the one with the funniest name, which might sound more like a game studio than a Packer company. Inquire INSURANCE details. Ask details for
  
  
• Packing material that they will be using.
  
  
• Transportation vehicle
  
  
• Packing time
  
  
• Ask them to show you photographs (They generally have one)
  
  
• COST.
  
  
• Hidden cost
  
  
• INSURANCE (Don’t fail ask what if the good needs to be stored for a day or two at the destination city).
  
  
• Pay the booking charges and get all contact information.
  
  
• Finalizing the Travel plan
  
  
• If you already been to the city once for finalizing your apartment, you know how good or bad the last mode of commuting was? If its good book your tickets if not then choose another mode of transport.
  
  
• Confirm the dates to
  
  
• Your current landlord (Notice)
  
  
• Your new landlord (Inquire for availability of keys et al.)
  
  
• Your mover and packer agent.
  
  
• Your maid (Notice period for Mumbai Bai, that’s cool huh!)
  
  
• Your cable operator.
  
  
• Your news paper guy.
  
  
• Your friends and family (This will help them find time for your farewell party)
  
  
• Yourself (you don’t want to forget it yourself in all the stress and anxiety)
  
  
• Request Change of Address to:
  
  
• Your Bank.
  
  
• Your Telephone/Mobile Operator.
  
  
• Your Credit Card agencies.
  
  
• Your Game Developers Magazine Website.
  
  
• Your Tax agents and Insurance Agents.
  
  
• Your Cooking Gas (LPG) Company. (Request for transfer as well)
  
  
• Your internet service provider.
  
  
• You are all set now.
  
  
• Packing, Moving, Reaching and Settling.
  
  
• If you have followed the list above you will be able to ease out Packing, Moving and Reaching.
  
  
• Settling might take a long time.

It has been over a month here and I am still settling in.

Will talk about my New Job is the next post and man! It will be exciting.