The Genesis

"You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford."

-Samuel Johnson

London had always seemed as if it were some distant dream in my mind awaiting to be lived. Never thought I would come the day when it would be such a magnificent reality. I always had this notion that if the world were to have a capital, London would be it simply because of its cultural, economic, and political prowess. To be honest, I could never quite imagine what London, or the U.K. as a whole, would be like. But after landing at Heathrow and commuting to Regent's Park, the mere glimpse of what I had scene had far exceeded my expectations. This city truly lived up to its grandiose reputation as rightly told in the novels of Charles Dickens.

So this is the genesis of a new piece of my literary work and a new page in my life. For some strange reason, it seems to me that London is where I really need to be at this point of my life. Ever since arriving to Charlottesville in 2006, I immediately started craving the big city life of my former residences, namely Cairo, New York, and New Delhi, and from that point on, London had always seemed as the ideal place to move to next. Why? Well, from my general knowledge, London seemed to be a very cosmopolitan metropolis, which has a rich history and cultural scene as well as vast career opportunities for anyone seeking to "make it" in any profession.

The Londoner Annual will hopefully serve as a blog in which I publish all of my experiences as a Londoner for the coming year. I have just commenced my postgraduate studies at London Business School, one of the world's top business-schools, with the hope of living me dream: i.e. to succeed in life to the extent that I would be able to impact the world in a positive way. Now this seems like a very lofty, vague mission statement. But the fact of the matter is that I believe that it's possible to achieve this goal in an infinite number of ways; its just a matter of finding your "right fit" and that's what I'm here in London to do.

Already, I have to say, I'm infatuated with this city and with my program at LBS. I consider myself blessed to be attending a school where over 130 nationalities are represented and a city where all of the world's ethnicities mingle in harmony.

This blog doesn't have any specific objective other than reflecting my life in London. It might end up being a messy combination of musings, experiences, travelogues, critiques, etc..., but I hope that by the end of my year here I'll be able to track some sort of progression in my writing, outlook, personality, and life.