The small, brave and Strong Tiger!!!

Twitter has killed my blog

2011-08-27T18:48:00.002+05:30

Today when I saw this blog, the realization was bit shocking that I have not been blogging for years together. Life definitely has become 2000% more busier in past few years, but there is still some time to catch up on writing.

With changes at work and two babies screaming for attention all the time, it is no surprise that I am not able to spend more than 5 mins in a stretch to do any activity. And whenever I get few mins they are gobbled by facebook and twitter (and add g+ to the list now). It is weird the way we end up spending so much time on these sites. Whenever I see links posted to blogs on twitter I get an urge to write something, but it would typically last for few second - until I speed past to the next tweet. I never even got to login into blogging page.

Now that I am here, I am finding it extremely hard to write something more than 140 characters. Ahem!

Twitter has killed my blog.

Cute farfalle pasta

2009-02-08T02:27:00.004+05:30

I fancy things more often then I should. This was my second attempt to try pasta. The first attempt was about two years back.

I remember I had bought fusilli pasta last time (because I just loved that shape). And with a lot of enthusiasm I tried to follow the instructions on the box to cook pasta. Ahem! it was all rubbery and tasteless!! for one thing, it wasn't cooked enough and to add to it, almost 40% of the ingredients required to make pasta sauce were not available. (I think most of them were important ingredients). So that was the only time I touched that pasta packet. It kept lying on the shelf until I threw if off when we shifted the house.

This week, I decided to give it a try again. My friend, Saumya told me about her pasta recipe (which gave me a sort of confidence that pasta can be made at home after all). So here is what I figured out,

1. The traditional al dente is not what I like
2. Cheese gives nice (yummy) texture to the sauce
3. Buy the sauce too

This time, I picked up farfalle pasta (again, because I loved the shape) and got one pasta sauce bottle. Cooked pasta while checking every now and then to make sure that it is cooked the way I like it..... after that, it was just anybody's game.

I loved my pasta!

Collage using Tabblo

2009-01-31T00:13:00.003+05:30

Collage using Tabblo
Originally uploaded by vaishalee

It's pretty neat tool to create quick collages. There are options of uploading photos or selecting them from your flickr stream.

The interface is cool enough.... although I would have loved to tilt the pictures (for that messy effect). The drag-n-drop thing makes it damn easy to make collage with the flickr pics. Oh yes, you can add text in between as well. They have decent number of templates to choose from and even after choosing a template, you can play around with the photo placement.

A must try!

Backlog

2009-01-24T01:04:00.002+05:30

I never am able to catch up with the blog updates I intended to read. It can be attributed to the fact that I (may be) subscribed to too many feeds than I could possibly read.

Since the subscriptions are sorted, I end up clicking on Boing Boing every time I open my reader. I can never finish reading (not even scrolling) the whole stuff. And at the same time I don't want to mark it all read, since I really want to go through it all some time (eventually).

The number of unread posts is not a problem actually, if I just stick to the posts. But you know how it is... you click on a link and then other links and it's just never-ending.

:-)

Right now I see 1600 posts unread......

Yet another year

2008-12-04T02:00:00.002+05:30

Yeah, one more year is gone (almost) and my new year resolutions list is all ready. Actually I didn't have to do anything, since it's same as the last year.

LOL.

But on a serious note, I need to hit gym and reduce weight ASAP. Every time I try to get into my old clothes (lets call them Pre-pregnancy clothes.... it makes me feel much better that way), I end up feeling exasperated.

Why can't these extra kilos disappear on their own?

Sigh!

In search of...

2008-11-23T00:58:00.002+05:30

I noticed that it's been a while since this place was updated the last time. With Pari around, getting (any) things done is becoming increasingly difficult. I barely manage to post few things in the other blog, so this blog is being neglected for the time being.

Ok, this post is also related to her in a way, but I think it's not just about her. So decided to post it here.

It all started few months back when I stumbled upon this petti-skirts picture in flickr.

I was totally fascinated by these skirts, so decided to get one for Pari. But I could not find any shop which was making them in India (and these skirts are insanely expensive to order from US), so I decided to stitch one myself. I found some videos explaining the process in youtube. It all looked pretty manageable. Thus my hunt for Nylon chiffon started.

I checked couple of places nearby but getting right fabric was not easy (especially when you are staying on Outer ring road). May be I need to hunt in the central Bangalore area, for which I hardly have time. So I decided to check online, if I can find some place which sells the fabric online.

Well, all I got was some links pointing to exporters in India.

:-(

I sent a query to one of the exporter in Bangalore to check if at all he has the required fabric (so that I can may be go to his shop and buy it). But I think this site doesn't work the way I thought it would.

I am getting mails from exporter from all over Asia now. A typical mail reads like this,

Thanks for your inquiry. We mainly do Fabrics from T200-T1600,. width 63"-130" Bamboo, Tencel,modal, Organic cotton, Supima cotton, Egyptian cotton, pima cotton etc. If you need this, please contact us.

They would be so disappointed to know that all I need is about five yards of Nylon chiffon.

Dylan Moran and Eddie Izzard

2008-09-06T13:21:00.002+05:30

I love Black Books. Dylan Moran is brilliant in it. Aaditya got a dump of two three seasons from somebody and we were sort of addicted to it. I like the way Dylan has portrayed drunken, unsociable, eccentric Book shop owner. He is a good actor. Alright, he looks cute and that's why I like him.

:-)

Yesterday, I happened to watch couple of Black Books episodes and I was surprised to notice that Dylan has co-written the thing. Wikipedia showed that he is a stand-up comedian, so I searched on youtube and voila! I got clips of some of his tours..... Monster and Like, Totally. They are hilarious. I liked his style of shows... he drinks wine and smokes on stage (sometimes snacks as well). And I think the character of Book shop owner is what he is in his real life. I mean, except the shop owner bit, he is all the other things - drunken, unsociable and eccentric! LOL.

One of the comments on Dylan's episodes mentioned about Eddie Izzard. So the next thing I had to do is to see Eddie's performances. Thanks for youtube, nowadays watching videos is so easy. Ummm, Eddie has his own style (which is similar to that of Dylan's style in a weird way..... Ok, I think it should be other way round, since Eddie is about 9 years older than Dylan). Once you get used to it, you kind of start liking his clothes, his makeup and his shoes (oh, yeah!). And then there is no getting over it. I saw some of his episodes with drag and then there was this interview in which he was normal (I mean not cross dressed)... and I thought - Ummm, he looks more "interesting" when he is all made up.

LOL. May be, that's just me... you can checkout yourself and let me know.

Definition of wife - de la Vatsyayana

2008-08-25T23:27:00.006+05:30

Vatsyayana draws a picture of the good wife and may be taken as to be a faithful reflection of real life. The picture exhibits those qualities of service and self-restraint as well as sound household management, which have remained the hallmark of Hindu, wives down to the present day. The wife is supposed to devote herself to her husband as though to a deity. She should personally look after the comforts of her husband. She shares her husband’s fasts and vows, not brooking into refusal. She attends festivities, social gatherings, sacrifices, and religious processions, only with his permission. She engages sports approved by him. She avoids company of disreputable women, shows him no signs of displeasure, and does not loiter about at the doorstep, or in solitary places for a long time. She is not puffed up with prosperity, and she does not give charity to anyone without informing her husband. She honors her husband’s friends, as is their due, with gifts of garlands, unguents, and toilet. She serves her father-in-law and mother-in-law and abides by their commands. When in their presence, she makes no replies, speaks few but sweet words, and does not laugh aloud. She engages servants in their proper work and honors them on festive occasions. Above all, when her husband is gone abroad she lives a life of ascetic restraint: she gives up wearing all ornaments excepting the marks of her married state: she engages in religious rites and fasts: she acts as bidden by her superiors: she does not go out to visit her relations except on occasions of calamities or festivities: when she visits them, she does so only for a short while and in the company of her husband’s people. When her husband returns home, she goes forth immediately to meet him in her sober dress, and then she worships the gods and makes gifts.

Apart from attending to her husband and his parents, relations, as well as his friends, the wife has complete and comprehensive charge of the household. She keeps the household absolutely clean, adorns it with festoons of flowers, and polishes the floor completely smooth. She looks after the worship of the gods at the household shrine and the offering of bali oblations three times a day. In the garden attached to the house she plants beds of various vegetables, herbs, plants, and trees. She keeps a store of various provisions in the house. She knows how to spin and weave, how to look after agriculture, cattle-breeding, and draught animals, how to take care of her husband’s domestic pets and so forth. She frames an annual budget and makes her expenses accordingly. She keeps daily accounts and makes up the total at the end of the day. During her husband’s absence she exerts herself in order that his affairs may not suffer. She increases the income and diminishes the expenditure to the best of her power. In case the woman has a co-wife she looks upon the later as a younger sister when she is older in age, and as a mother when she herself is younger.

I just have one thing to say - I was definitely a husband in my last incarnation ( to be more specific, in the Gupta age).

Shipping to India

2008-08-15T19:55:00.004+05:30

Shopping for Pari ends up leaving me exasperated and exhausted.

Not because of number of things I had to buy, but because I wanted to buy the right things. Here in Bangalore, I am finding it really difficult to get good baby products. Most of the things in small shops are run-of-the-mill with low or mediocre quality and things in big shops are way too expensive with very little or no variety to choose from. So most of the times we end up buying very very expensive stuff, since there is no other choice.

It's not necessary that all the products of well known (thus expensive) brands are good. So just going by brand value doesn't really help. It's more about the usability and how well baby accepts it. So far I found that other parents' reviews are very useful.

I spent some time checking reviews in Amazon and decided on couple of products. To my surprise, in spite of being innovative and useful, these product are not expensive. But the problem is, none of them are available in India so I tried to order them from Amazon.

Guess what? They are not delivering in India. I got this message,

*** We're sorry. This item can't be shipped to your selected destination. You may either change the shipping address or delete the item from your order by changing its quantity to 0 and clicking the update button below. (See geographical restrictions.) ***

:-(

These are not bulky things, neither electronics items. I wonder why they are not shipping those to India. When I tried to find more information regarding their "geographical constraints", I found that they are delivering to all over US, including prisons (yes, they have mentioned about it too), but not to India.

I am annoyed!

The shock treatment

2008-08-13T00:37:00.002+05:30

Found this on weird universe.

It's literally shocking invention which is for smokers (who are trying hard to quit).

This lighter is supposed to deliver a shock every time you light a cigarette.

LOL.

Think about those "Have a light?" requests.... nobody is gonna light your cigarette for you.

TamTam

2008-07-30T12:46:00.002+05:30

Have a look at this miniTamTam demo video.

I was amazed by the number of things kids can do with this application. The UI is so much intuitive that they can figure out most of the stuff by themselves. But that's not all about it. The best thing is, one can actually make some serious music using this.

When I see these typical toy laptops in market, I feel sad. They don't offer much beyond couple of prerecorded melodies and some cheap learn A-B-C doodles. So once kids are beyond learn A-B-C phase, these toys are no more fun for them. And for such things you have to pay atleast half of what OLPC costs.

I hope they come up with something as bright and as fun as OLPC for all the kids (or OLPC becomes easily available for buying). I would love to buy this for myself.

:-)

PS- TamTam is written in Python using pyGTK as the GUI library. It uses Csound as it’s sound engine. I have started admiring Python all the more now.

Return of the Tiger

2008-07-23T19:05:00.003+05:30

Today I am feeling adventurous enough, so I decided to file my Income Tax return.... all by myself. The last year return filing was total disaster. I think I procrastinated for too long, and then to add to the problem I am lazy, so my last year's return was filed in January. That makes it about seven months late. But then, when you late, number of months don't really matter.

:-)

Anyway, that was what happened last time. But this time as a pleasant contrast, I decided to file my return on time. I wanted to hire somebody to do it for me. But since I am in Himachal right now, getting access to such agents is not easy. I saw couple of mails floating about (in our company newsgroup) online return filing. And I decided that today is the day to try it.

Now, I am doing this in parallel. I mean if I want to record my true feellings, I need to blog while actually filing the return. And thankfully the site is so enough to do this parallely.

6-30 PM Opened https://incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in
6-35 PM Page is visible... damn I need to open this in IE. Due to some problem or other these sites never work in firefox. Ahem!!
6-40 PM So IE it is. Page is loaded and I franatically look for the e-pay or e-file or something like that.
6-42 PM I see downloads and I jump for it.
6-50 PM I downloaded ITR-1 which is for individual or HUF (which is an excel sheet with macros)
6-52 PM I start filling in details. The form looks tedious and geeky. It says - Green cells are for data entry. Don not cut paste while dataentry. ITR--
:-(
7-00 PM Damn, what is my ward number? I have no clue. I don't have copies of last years return with me. I am soooooooo lost!
7-10 PM My brother told me to get the ward number from https://incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in/knowpan/knowpan.jsp
7-20 PM This page is taking forever to display result.
7-22 PM OMG, I think I downloaded wrong ITR form. The form says it's for 2008-09. Gah! need to click on e-Filing A.Y. 2007-08
7-25 PM Ok, I got the "right" form now. Also I downloaded itr1_excel_guide just in case. Now that has caused problem and that IE window is not opening.
7-30 PM I still don't know the ward number since the page is still not done.
7-35 PM I killed the IE and tried to open the excel guide link again.
7-40 PM Damn, Damn Damn, It opened the pdf document, but now my mouse has stopped moving. I am using only keyboard to navigate right now.
7-45 PM Thankfully things became better when the whole pdf download was complete. I should have saved the file instead of opening it in IE. :-( Anyway, I did that now.
7.47 PM So now I have the right form and the guide as well. I am all set.
7-55 PM This form is equally frightful and the guide file is scarier that the form. I tried to read the guide but abondoned the idea after going through 7 pgaes. (It has total 54 pages).
7-57 PM This was trying enough to make me hungry. /me goes off to eat something.
8-15 PM Burp! I am back to tackle the forms now.
8-25 PM Excel sheet has five tabs. I am done with the first tab. The guide says click on next button which is seen in the top portion of the form.
8-27 PM The button is not getting pressed. After 8-9 attempts I somehow managed to click the button. It switched to second tab and flashed this
"The cell or chart you are trying to change is protected and therefore read-only."
8-30 PM I still decide to go ahead and try it.
8-31 PM Ok, I am able to fill is details. I think some cells are marked read-only by IT dept. and they are throwing warning.
8-50 PM Sigh.... I am done with filling in details as per Form 16A
9-00 PM Huh, next page is asking for tax paid details. My form 16 doesnt have bank name and branch name. Do I need to fill in this?
9-05 PM I decided to validate the pages which are already filled. OMG, page 2 shows refund of 823426 Rs.
9-20 PM I have checked everything twice already and still don't understand how the self-assessment tax is calculated in this excel sheet.
9-30 PM I have no clue about how to fix it.
10-00 PM I am going to check with some CA tomorrow.

:-(

Sinful Khatta Meat

2008-07-12T20:10:00.004+05:30

I am not really known for my cooking skills. In fact, people are wary of my cooking, since they need to praise it (sometimes even if things don't taste good). The things I cook mostly involve about 30 minutes of cooking time. I firmly believe that, if something can not be cooked in 30 minutes, then it's not worth trying it.

:-)

Given choice, I would always avoid any of those meat recipes (especially Indian once). All of them consist elaborate steps and they take forever to complete. But when I tasted this Khatta meat, it made me want to try it myself. My father-in-law cooks this with such a finesse, that it's lip smacking taste lingers on for days together.

If you like your meat with a bit of zing, then this recipe is for you. It's sinfully dark (black with a hint of green) and just enough sour (to give you a kick). It doesn't need too many spices, just a bowl of good fresh meat and lots and lots of patience. So try this recipe, if you have at least four hours to spare.

Ingredients:

1. Meat (cut into medium size pieces) : 1 kg
2. Onion (coarsely chopped) : 500 gm
3. mustard oil : 200 gm
4. bay leaves : 2-3
5. garlic (crushed) : 5-6 cloves
6. ginger (finely chopped) : half inch piece
7. coriander seed powder : 2 spoons
8. Asafoetida : two pinches
9. turmeric powder : 2 spoons
10. Aniseed (sounf) : 4 spoons
11. fenugreek seeds (roasted and crushed): 1 spoon
12. green cardamom (make a slit in each) : 8
13. aamchur : 8 spoons
14. Daikon Radish or mooli (take only white part and cut into 1 inch long pieces): 250 gm (this is not mandatory)
15. Salt as per taste

How to get going:

Take big enough pan, so that the meat can be mixed easily. Heat pan and pour mustard oil. Once oil is hot enough (you should be able to see a sort of smoke rising), put onions and meat pieces. Add salt (will need about two spoons) as per taste and mix the mixture well.

Let it cook for about 60 minutes (yes, you got it right) on the lowest flame possible. Add Daikon Radish pieces and let it all cook for another 30 minutes. You will need to stir the mixture once in a while to avoid burning. Once it starts boiling, the onions will slowly dissolve and meat pieces will release juice. The pieces are to cooked in their own juices.

Once you see oil getting separated in the mixture, add the spices - coriander seed powder, asafoetida, turmeric, aniseed, fenugreek seeds, ginger, garlic and bay leaves. Mix the mixture until oil separates further. When it becomes sort of dry, add aamchur and cook for another 10 minutes.

Now the dry meat is ready. (You can eat this stuff as starter as well. It tastes yummy). Add water as required and let it boil for about 10 minutes. Tadah, your mouthwatering khatta meat is ready. Enjoy it with plain rice.

What's cooking today?

2008-07-10T18:17:00.003+05:30

Nowadays, the most difficult problem for me is to plan for food at home. I dread the time when my cook comes and asks me "What should I cook today?".

It's due to number of reasons. I never get enough time (mainly due to lack of interest) to find out inventory in my kitchen. Buying stuff in supermarkets is my favorite time-pass. I also enjoy buying vegetables from the street market. It's so much fun. You can roam around aimlessly and decide on which vendor has the freshest vegetables. Also there are so many vegetables out there that one can plan for the meal right there. I love deciding what to cook depending on what vegetables I see in market. Not to mention that I end up buying veriety of things whenever I go for veggie shopping.

Though I like to buy vegetables, I don't get to do that. Our new house is bit far from the market place, so I rarely go for vegetable shopping. Thus I never know what's available either in home or in market. There are very few dishes which one can make without any advance notice, so I have no choice but to choose from one of the vegetables available at home. In short, we end up eating bread-butter from breakfast, beans for lunch and capsicum for dinner (ok, sometimes we cook peas too).

Sigh!

Couple of days back, when I was looking at my outlook meeting calendar, one idea struck me. I decided to prepare a complete menu for breakfast, lunch, dinner for a week. This way, my cook can stock the required vegetables and preplan the soaking, boiling et al. and the biggest relief is that he won't have to come to me to ask the same question everyday.

Deciding what to eat is such a big challenge. When we don't notice, we can afford to gobble as many calories as we can. But when things are put down on paper, the whole equation changes. One becomes extremely "health" conscious. Hmm, if I have aloo-paratha for breakfast, I should have only salad in night. OMG, How can I have Rajma four times a week? And the list goes on....

It took me whole three days to plan the menu, but I am happy with the outcome. It looks colorful and delicious (at least on paper). Now that I am done with it, it will keep on repeating (until we get bored of it).

Lovely Himachal

2008-06-27T01:33:00.003+05:30

Last summer when we were in Himachal it was pretty dry. I distinctly remember our trip to Chamba. The road to Chamba travels through series of mountains. All the mountains were so dry and bare, it reminded me of Bandipur forest in summer.

But this time, things were different. Thanks to pre-monsoon, everywhere I can see lush green mountains. And I am not complaining....

You suck at photoshop

2008-06-18T14:55:00.002+05:30

ROFL!

I have to admit that I do suck at photoshop after watching these tutorials.

LOL

New kid on the blog

2008-04-27T21:53:00.000+05:30

To be frank, there was no time to write even a single blog entry, forget about starting a new blog. Making babies is one hell of a time consuming job. But I still thought that, it would be a good idea to keep baby-related-cribbing away from this blog. The point is, people who don't like to hear about other people's children (I am one of them) can steer away from the whole thing altogether.

Kidding!

Actually there is so much to write about the baby stuff, that I decided to start a new blog. It's going to be kinda diary of growing-up-of-Pari (at least I have planned it to be so far). I hope that she will have good fun, when she gets to read it some day.

I always wished that I had more memories of my childhood. But all I have got are few old photos and some certificates from school - no toys, no old notebooks, no dresses. So I am going to put together small small and totally irrelevant things happening with us.

I hope she would like to know about her childhood some day. It's going to be bizarre, since all I can do is "cribbing".

:-P

So if you are interested in knowing about what's going on with our little princess, then do click on this.

PS - Some seriously boring stuff can be expected, so avoid urge to click -- if you are in no mood to doze off right now.

Natural Fractal

2008-04-19T01:36:00.000+05:30

Awesome!

blogspot template

2008-03-29T23:40:00.003+05:30

Thumbs up to the new blogspot template editor...

Now it is so simple to customize the blog template and add all that fancy stuff that I already feel like a web developer.

:-)

A must try!

Random things I fancy

2008-02-09T23:29:00.005+05:30

When Sean (our VP) was here, I happened to ask him about his hobbies. Guess what, in his off time he makes planes. OMG! how k3w1 is that.... A plane, which can actually fly too. I think living in US has it's own advantages. Here in India, I am not even allowed to brew stupid beer at home.

Any way, talking about planes, made me serious about my hobbies. Considering the number of hours he had to put in his hobby (thousands of hours I was told), all my hobbies seem like mere passing fancies (as Aaditya likes to describe them as).

Like the other day, I decided to buy, rather make a telescope. I did some research, talked to people who are already owning one, even googled for shops in Bangalore. Apparently, it's pretty expensive to build a decent telescope. Ahem! May be, someday I will have enough money to spend on such things.

The other day, I read about a ball pit on xkcd blog. Seriously fun stuff to have at home, me thinks. Now only if I could find such crush-proof balls in Bangalore! I need to google.

There was one more crazy idea of having a jacuzzi setup at home. I would call it crazy because, both our bathrooms don't have enough space to even fit in a decent bath tub. So I came up with a workaround, to get rid of bed in the second bedroom and install jacuzzi in the middle of the bedroom. Aaditya explained to me that it needs lots of fitting (and not just in/out water pipes) to be done with cement work involved. Sigh! I don't think our landlord (yes, we have rented a flat) is ever going to happy about that part.

The only somewhat-doable fancy idea is doing-lot-of-paintings-in-Himachal. I am planning to carry my oil paints and brushes (damn, I can't carry my shiny new stand) and go around places to do paintings. I will need somebody to carry the stuff for me though.

;-)

PS - It is raining now... and I feel like walking near the swimming pool. But I won't (since its 12-30 AM now).

Make PDF from patent

2008-02-01T23:24:00.000+05:30

I came across this amazing software pat2pdf, which accepts US patent number and gives back patent document in PDF file.

Really Cool!

Everything you ever wanted to know!

2008-01-20T00:38:00.000+05:30

I am hooked to Bill Bryson books nowadays. I started off with A short history of nearly everything, but switched to Notes from a big country after couple of chapters. Not because it was a boring read, but mainly because I could not read that big book comfortably enough. At the same time, I wanted to read more from him.

His travel books are great fun. I must confess that it's been long since I had laughed out loud while reading book. He has a very peculiar style of putting things on paper, as he has experienced them himself. One needs to read his books to understand how exciting "travel writing" could be. He sure knows how make boring travel notes exceptionally funny.

But that's not all about him. A short history of nearly everything is a general science book. He took up writing this book when his son asked him something which he didn't know. He has done quite a research to put all those science facts together in that book. And he has managed to keep it enough interesting too.

I completely agree with him when he says that the science text book authors had been very dry and kept all the good and interesting stuff to themselves while writing the science text books. In fact, I think our lack of scientific curiosity is mainly due to our boring science text books.

I loved the way he has written about big bang. Now that I have completed his travel book, I can't wait to get back to the other book.

I wonder how much fun it would be to learn sciences at school, if text books are written by likes of Bill Bryson.

Bill Gates last day at Microsoft!

2008-01-11T22:59:00.001+05:30

This is absolutely hilarious!

Ever wondered how Bill Gates' last day in Microsoft is going to be? Are you curious to know what he would want to do next? After Microsoft what next? All this and lot more questions are answered here. A must watch!

Never doubt magic of software.

After all these years he is Finally taking work-life balance seriously.

Well, what money CAN'T buy!

Ahem!

Yooohoo! Driverless car!!

2008-01-09T22:40:00.001+05:30

I was too happy read this news about driverless cars to be ready by 2018. Can you believe, Cars that drive themselves — even park at their destination — could be ready for sale within a decade.

I always feel that driving is a highly stressful job. I already tried learning "driving" twice, but there is not much of improvement. For me, managing ABC and gears and watching the road at the same time is beyond human scope. So far I am comfortable in driving, provided there no other vehicles on the road.

I personally treat all drivers (no matter how good or bad they drive) with high regards. I look up to all those people, who can drive and talk on phone at the same time (something which I can not even dream to do in this lifetime). It overwhelms me, when I see people parking their cars perfectly. And reversing a car, while looking into the back mirror is something out-of-the-world thing to me.

Having said all this, it's no surprise that I would jump at the prospects of driverless car. but then, I should not be too happy, since such cars will be mostly available in US only. It will take another trillion years to get them working on Bangalore roads.... unless they invent something which doesn't require roads at all.

xkcd and Neil Gaiman

2007-12-23T21:01:00.001+05:30

I saw Randall Munroe talk at authors@google. OMG! He looks sooooooooo cute . Although I felt that he is way more witty on his xkcd cartoons than in real life. But he sure is very very famous, since Guido van Rossum and Donald Knuth were also present there and asked questions in Q&A session. Woot! it was great to see all these guys.

It got me more interested in authors@google series and I searched through whole stack of videos on YouTube. There are lot of videos posted by AtGoogleTalks. Well, apparently I don't know most of the authors, who have been there (looks like Aaditya is not buying enough "famous" books).... until I found Neil Gaiman. And I am so happy that I found him there. He is just amazing. He read his poems from his book "Fragile things" and talked about his writing and movies scripting and a lot of other stuff. I just adore him, he is too cool. It makes me wonder if they could invite Terry Pratchett sometime.

It's awesome to be able to see and hear these people speak. I wish Cisco could have such events too.

Risk Management

2007-12-12T18:04:00.000+05:30

Just finished my Risk management class, which has left me all exhausted. Next time when I get this urge of enrolling for any management training, I should remind myself about this.

I am not saying that it was a bad training. It's just that I was feeling out-of-place all the time. Mainly because, most of the other people were PMs or preparing for PMP (or something like that). I was being bombarded by all sorts of management jargons all the times..... completely wrong place for a DBA to be in.

Luckily, I survived three whole days and managed to learn a thing or two about the "risks" too. The instructor was fun and he managed to keep the whole class "interested" all the time with his puns (and questions.... oh boy, it's hard to sleep in the class, when somebody keeps asking pointed questions). One remarkable thing was that I could understand probability (finally) due to this class (alright, I can only do a dice stuff for now).

:-)

I wrote down certain jargons (e.g. scattered diagrams, extreme programming, Monte Carlo method.... there are lots) , and I am going to read about them soon (purely because I fancied them so much).

'allo 'allo and Only fools and Horses

2007-12-07T12:10:00.000+05:30

Aaditya has got hold of loads of episodes of 'allo 'allo, Blackadder and of course, IT crowd.

It seems 'allo 'allo is listed at 13th position in Britain's best sitcom list ,while Blackadder is way ahead at 2nd position. I tried couple of episodes of Blackadder, but i think I like 'allo 'allo better.

I was curious about Only fools and Horses, since it has topped the list. Thanks to youtube, I could watch some episodes of Only fools and Horses. I think I like this Del boy and Rodney.

LOL.

I miss my treo

2007-11-30T18:24:00.000+05:30

Today I spent most of the time searching for some decent games for Nokia E61i. There are lot of free games available, but I have finally concluded that playing games on nokia is really painful. I miss my treo, mainly for the touch screen.

Sigh!

I wonder why nokia didn't have touch screen in E61.

Bah.

Reading hat

2007-11-19T19:28:00.000+05:30

Woohooo,

Just finished Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman. I will start with Stardust now.

I am inching forward in this list.

Sushi

2007-10-30T23:59:00.000+05:30

Ma is here and she is vegetarian. She keeps making lot of things for me, so I decided to cook something different for her.

Suddenly I got up with this idea of sushi. I am no fan of raw fish, (but Aaditya seems to adore sushi). I decided to try out veg sushi instead, so that we all can enjoy it. There are plenty of recipes on net and the process of rolling sticky rice on nori sheets sounds pretty manageable to me.

Now the quest for nori sheets, wasabe and Japanese sticky rice has started. Can somebody help me in finding these things in Bangalore?

Further additions

2007-10-29T12:40:00.000+05:30

We got Halo3 and I am glad to accept that I suck at FPS. It took me a while (read days) to walk around and reach a certain river (this was my first mission). But I am doing better. Few more months (LOL) and I will be able to shoot people too.

:-)

Got Nokia E61i. It's bulky and squarish and I am looking for free apps and games for it.

Wall painting

2007-10-22T01:02:00.001+05:30

Wall painting
Originally uploaded by vaishalee

I was thinking that painting a wall would be same as painting on canvas. But I was totally wrong...

I decided to use whichever paints available in Himachal local shops. I was hoping to get at least plastic emulsion paints, but all I got was normal white distemper paint tin, with 4-5 small color tubes to change colors. I am sure I must have amused the shopkeeper to no end, when I demanded for weird things there.

So as you see, most of the picture is done with white (for obvious reason), and i used those color tubes to get some basic shades here and there. One big difference between these colors and oil paints was, I could not get the color gradient. Also, when I tried to use overlap colors, invariably it would mix and form altogether different shade. May be if I let one color dry for 7-8 days, it would be possible. But as I had decided to paint the front wall in the main hall, my project deadlines were tight. And of course, I could not use more color in one spot to correct something, since it would invariably trickle down the wall. Sigh!

So here it is, I am sure one can do a better job with better type of colors, but I still liked the end result (especially after spending three straight days in that mess).

Xbox 360

2007-10-20T01:03:00.000+05:30

Yes, we have a new addition to our family and all of us are glued to it. Today we spent about 50k and got lot of electronics (I could not stop Aaditya from his buying spree this time). Ok, at least I could deviate him from buying LCD monitor. Score!

(Note to myself - never take him to eZone again).

Coming back to Xbox, I loved it's sleek console and cute controllers. We ended up playing for straight 5 hours, as soon as it was unwrapped, so I think it was a good idea to buy wired controllers. I am wondering how long wireless controllers would last. I didn't know that the controllers come in pink color too, but I have no complains with these white ones either.

Too bad, we could not get much talked about Halo-3. We got Dead or Alive 4 and it's a good fun.

Blog Hopping

2007-10-10T01:09:00.000+05:30

Hmmm, blog hopping is no more fun...

In blogspot, out of 10 random blogs displayed, at least 8 are about porn. I am tired of flagging the blogs already.

:-(

Have money, buy one!

2007-09-19T22:04:00.000+05:30

Well, it's not quite as simple as that. It's not long back when I posted about D80 and longed for it. I wished I had money to buy it ASAP. Now I actually got the money (Thanks to Aaditya), but I am not able to make up my mind.

There are lot of confusions.

May be I have read too many reviews of 40D.

:-/

I wish I could hire somebody to carry the whole D80 (or any other DSLR for that matter) kit wherever I go. I have seen Chandra lugging around his big camera bag and I can't picture myself doing it. Aaditya has outright refused to help in that matter. Suddenly, lightweight cameras make so much sense.

I want to take my camera wherever I am able to go. On top of the mountain... in the rain... under water... everywhere. Pentax Optio makes me reconsider the purchase of any DSLR.

Lastly I don't know if I really need DSLR. I like to take pictures and I sometimes feel that if I had a better camera, I could take better pictures. But lately photos on flickr has forced me to think otherwise. There are some really awesome pictures taken with my current camera.

MakeMyTrip

2007-09-12T23:37:00.000+05:30

Today I happened to book air tickets after a long long time. We are planning to visit Himachal (again). I was all enthusiastic about planning the trip. But it looks like there are no low-fare airlines as they used to be.

We have a new airport in Himachal now, called "Dharamshala" (actually it's in Gaggal), so I was looking forward for trying it out. Only Air Deccan has flights on that route, and only makemytrip.com could give the connecting flight information. Yatra.com has Dharamshala in the destination list, but it ends up showing no results.

So I start booking with makemytrip for a return journey from Bangalore to Dharamshala. I selected the least available fare flights (we had to travel by air deccan, so there was hardly any choice there). Now the tricky part is, by the time it showed the final itinerary page, either departure or return or both ticket cost changed so drastically that it sounded unbelievable. e.g.

The fare for your return flight has changed. The fare has changed from Rs. 4948 to Rs. 6948 per adult. You can accept this fare, or click here to make another search.

I understand that, if I take long enough time to chose my flights, then the availability status would change, causing higher fare. But one thing I don't understand is that if start fresh search again, I can still see those low rates after say 5 mins. I tried this about 5-6 times. I also tried to click fast enough through pages (by blindly selecting first ever options it provided), and I still end up seeing fare changes in the last summary page, even though the whole process took less than a minute. It almost looked like one of those auction sites, where bidding amount changes every time you refresh the page.

I haven't seen this much fluctuation happening before. I wonder what's going on there! How can fares fluctuate so often? I think most of the people would find it too much of a hassle to search again from the beginning and end up accepting the new fares. MakeMyTrip is sure counting on that.

Is this going to be same if I call up their booking office? By the time I provide my details and credit card information, it will definitely take more than 5 mins. So am I going to hear the booking person say "Oh, by the way, the ticket cost has changed and now it's gonna be 2k more. Tell me within next 1 second if you want it or not."

Halebidu and Belur Temples

2007-08-19T17:51:00.001+05:30

Halebidu Temple
Originally uploaded by vaishalee

Few weeks ago, we been to Shravanabelagola, Belur and Halebidu. I specially liked Halebidu temple. The stone work there is so intricate and beautiful, that this temple has been described as an outstanding example of Hindu architecture and as the 'supreme climax of Indian architecture'..

Too bad that the temple was sacked and looted by Muslim invaders from northern India.

eVite party ideas

2007-07-11T17:23:00.000+05:30

I get almost desperate to do something, when I read one of those monthly newsletters from evite.com site. Basically they provide party ideas and party invitation ideas. The ideas are so cool, that I immediately start seeing myself enjoying one of those parties. Check out few party tips here,

Summer party planning tips

Think brunch is all about fine china and scones? Whip up a barbecue brunch with grilled fruit salad and spicy home fries. Summer is the perfect time to try this carefree spin on the midday classic.
Throw a sophisticated pool party at sunset. Serve light bites to eat like fancy canapés or sushi along with refreshing, citrus-infused cocktails. Float orchid blossoms or candles along the surface of the pool for added ambiance.
Bring your movie night outdoors. Rent a DVD projector, speakers and a screen, or just watch the movie right on top of your stucco. Set up seating on the grass stadium-style with blankets and bean bags in front, lawn chairs and barstools in the back.

Yoohoo,

For obvious reasons (read I-am-plain-lazy) I can't plan for any of those parties myself, but I would love to be invited to them.

Any takers?

Be innovative

2007-07-06T23:14:00.000+05:30

This might be useful. 10 ways to stop those telemarketing calls,

1) After the telemarketer finishes speaking, ask him/her to marry you.

2) Tell the telemarketer you are busy at the moment, and ask him/her if he/she will give you his/her home phone number so you can call him/her back.

3) Ask them to repeat everything they say, several times.

4) Tell them it is dinner time, BUT ask if they would please hold. Put them on your speaker phone while you continue to eat at your leisure. Smack your food loudly and continue with your dinner conversation.

5) Tell them that all business goes through your agent, and hand thephone to your five year old child.

6) Tell them you are hard of hearing and that they need to speak up..... louder..... louder..... louder!

7) Tell them to speak very slowly because you want to write every word down.

8) If they start out with, "How are you today?", say "I'm so glad you asked, because no one these days seems to care, and I have all these problems.........."

9) Cry out in surprise, "Helen, is that you? I've been hoping you'd call! How is the family?" When they insist they are not Helen, tell them to stop joking. This works especially well if the telemarketer is really MALE.

10) Tell the HSBC call center guy to call on your office number. And give him the ICICI call center number.

I am not sure if you can stop those calls with these, but you will at least enjoy them.

:-)

Movies

2007-06-19T14:08:00.000+05:30

The list is long and I don't enough time left to catch up on. Besides, all the good movies (read the ones which I really really want to watch) are being taken off very fast one after another. Thanks to Sivaji, all the other movies are condemned to a very short life, good or no good. While people are killing each other to get Sivaji tickets, I am struggling to get Shrek tickets. Before it all ends, I want to watch following movies.

1. Shrek 3
2. Pirates of the Caribbean: At the World's End (I like Depp)
3. Ocean's Thirteen (Ok, I like Clooney too)
4. Cheeni kum
5. Sivaji (Alright, I just want to see it for the heck of it)

Lets see who wins!

Wireless electricity

2007-06-10T16:27:00.000+05:30

It looks like, soon there will be a solution available for my cellphone blues.

Clap! Clap!!

Life does look brighter already.

One wedding, One boat ride and lotsa mountains

2007-05-30T21:54:00.000+05:30

That would be all I could say about my last trip. Weather was not so hot and we had really great time. I clicked loads of pictures and half of them are yet to be uploaded.

PS - Please vote on this photo, if you think it doesn't deserve to exist.

Off to Himachal

2007-04-26T23:58:00.000+05:30

With a well deserved vacation of two weeks, I am off to Himachal.

It's going to be warm there right now... but I think it still will be better than Bangalore and it's numerous power cuts.

:-)

Railroads

2007-04-24T02:53:00.000+05:30

I am currently hooked to this and its becoming hard to make myself work or do anything else, when I am not in office. As soon as I hit home, I want to play this game. Not having cook at home is not helping the situation either.

I hope I will get over it soon.

chopsticks

2007-04-13T14:44:00.000+05:30

My fascination for chopsticks is dated back to my Hongkong trip days. I would call Hongkong true blue Chinese cuisine place. You can get thousands of rice and noodles varieties, hundreds of dumplings and soups and lots of other Chinese delicacies (which I don't remember names of). The only problem was, by default they provide only chopsticks to eat your food. They expect people to eat with chopsticks and I felt they look down upon people who eat with spoons. Language was a pretty big problem, so asking for a spoon was another tough task.

My first experience with chopsticks was not so pleasant. We were at a lunch table and everybody else was eating with chopsticks (well, they all were localites) . When I told them about my inability to use chopsticks, they advised me to try using them first. People around me gave me all sort of tips and tricks to hold the chopsticks and pick up food. But there is nothing like a standard way of using chopsticks. If a certain way works naturally for one person, you won't be even able to hold them properly, if you try the same way.

So there I was, totally hungry and fumbling with a dumpling. Picking up soggy, slippery (and yet delicious) dumpling with a pair of chopsticks was almost impossible task for me. I tried to ask for a spoon and fork, but all I got was more instructions to use the chopsticks effectively. Somehow I got the impression that it's not polite to use spoons on the lunch table. My food was just circling in the dish. So I tried to poke into the dumpling to lift it, but all I could do was to lift it until it barely reached about 10 inches height.... and then I had to quickly lean forward to catch it in my mouth. So with a combination of chopsticks and rigorous neck exercise, I managed to eat those three dumplings (Now I know why Chinese people are so petite). I was all awestruck to see all those small cute kids eating seamlessly with chopsticks. Eventually they handed me spoons, but I felt a huge complex with that whole chopstick business.

That three week trip couldn't do much to improve my chopstick skills. When you somebody demonstrating it, the whole things looks so simple. But in fact there is no more difficult task than that. Chinese people do all sorts of tricks with chopsticks. They can roll the noddles, cut the noodles. pick up slippery dumplings, cut the dumplings, even eat a crab.

Sigh!

Interesting part is, I managed to learn to eat rice with chopsticks.

:-)

Ok, this chopstick episode was reminded because of this mail I got, which had explanation about "How to use chopsticks". There is no point going through the steps, since it doesn't help much. But the "Bad manners" listed in the end were quite interesting.

Bad Manners (Using chopsticks)

Mayoi-bashi: Mayoi means "dithering". It is bad manners to wave your chopsticks around aimlessly over the food, trying to decide what to take next.
Utsuri-bashi: Changing the food you have selected after you have touched the food.
Saguri-bashi: Looking for contents in a soup with chopsticks.
Sashi-bashi: Sashi means "inserting". It is bad manners to spear food with the points of the chopsticks as if they were a fork.
Yose-bashi: Yose means "drawing near". It is bad manners to pull the dishes towards you using the chopsticks. Always pick the dishes up in the hand.
Yoko-bashi: Keeping chopsticks together and using them like spoon.
Komi-bashi: Raking foods into one's already full mouth with chopsticks.
Neburi-bashi: Licking the ends of chopsticks.

Other tips

Don't eat with a broken or mismatched pair of chopsticks.
Don't eat twice in a row from the same dish except your rice bowl.
Don't stick chopsticks in your rice. This is commonly done at funerals, or as an offering which is placed on the alter at an ancestral shrine.
Don't dig under food to get the best pieces.
Don't eat food directly from the central plate, transfer it to your bowl first.
Don't lick your chopsticks. Don't stab your food with a chopstick.
Don't set chopsticks on your bowl of dishes. Chopsticks should be placed on the table, chopstick holder or tray. When you are not using the chopsticks, put them in front of you onto the table or a dish with the tip to the left.
Do not give food from your chopsticks directly to somebody other's chopsticks. Only at Buddhist funerals where the bones of the burned body are given in that way from person to person.
Don't make noise with your chopsticks.
Neither point with the chopsticks to something or somebody nor move them too much around in the air.
Don't reach across another person with your chopsticks.
Knife and fork are used for Western food only. Spoons are used for eating certain Japanese dishes, for example donburi or Japanese style curry rice. A Chinese style ceramic spoon is sometimes used to eat soups.
Making slurping noises while eating noodles is perfectly acceptable in Japan. There is no need to excuse yourself for making noises while eating.

All said, I am happy that I belong to a country, where I can choose to eat with hands and it is perfectly acceptable.

W00t: Cellphone with auto battery

2007-04-04T15:36:00.001+05:30

The battery life of the cellphones is a big concern. Of course, it's a great excuse to cut an unwanted call by saying "My battery is dying.", but there are more disadvantages than the advantages here. It's like Murphy's law - When you really need to call up somebody, you end up having low battery.

I am fed up with number of chargers lying around in my house. Every time you buy a new phone, you get a new charger. No cellphone manufacturers like to have their two phone with same charger style. They take pride in re-designing the chargers... new shape, new connectors, new voltage, new current blah blah. So if you have n cellphones, you get to have n chargers. So when you are traveling, you need to carry all your chargers wherever you go (since charging stations are not really reliable yet). I wish all the cellphone manufacturers could come up with something like an universal charger, which can charge all the cellphones.

Or better still, if there is some sort of auto powered battery... or something with a hand-crank to charge the battery manually. It will be awesome if they come up with a battery, which can get charged with sunlight, like those calculators. Or they can use voice to charge the battery.... more you talk, longer your phone will get charged.

LOL, it will work better for the service providers.

Hope

2007-03-20T16:46:00.000+05:30

Every time I login to my online bank account, I have this genuine hope that couple of millions would be credited there by some unknown account.

So far it hasn't happened...

US Trips

2007-02-26T01:41:00.000+05:30

It's been very busy lately.

I had to plan for my first ever US trip in real hurry, since my manager wanted me to go only during certain period. Thanks to Chandra and my brother (who came to see me off from Hyderabad), I could barely pack my bags in time to catch the flight.

In US, I had a real good time... Thanks to all my friends out there. Saanchi was placed in the same hotel and we shopped till we dropped. It was sort of re-bonding for us after our Hyderabad days together. Daku, Shekhar, Sandesh, Peshla, Kiran, Suresh, Rajiv, Madhuri, Jotsna and her husband.... list is long (and not all of them have blogs :-P ). They took good care of me. I had lot of fun and some really good food. My colleagues in US were surprised to know that I had so many friends in US. I think they were plain jealous.

:-D

I bought some bizarre things (i.e. camping tent, sleeping bags et al), due to which I had to leave some important things (read chocolates) back. I had to make numerous trips to the check-in counter, since my cabin baggage was exceeding their tiny 7kg limit. After a lot of struggle, I could somehow distribute the stuff in check-in luggage and cabin luggage. Daku was kind enough to keep my excess stuff with her. Thus finally I was back in Bangalore. It's good to be home.... back to husband. I missed him a lot.

I could barely settle down and then it was Aaditya's turn to go. Sigh! We are kinda weird couple. All such things end up happening to us. We go to places and enjoy them... just that it's never together.

;-)

Anyway, jokes apart, my previous packing experience helped me a lot this time. We were pretty much organized, except for the last part where we couldn't find Ashok (Aaditya's friend) on airport. ROFL.

So as I was saying, we were doing it really well. We made a checklist of things to be carried, documents to be printed, list of phone numbers etc etc. All the bags were neatly packed , tagged and we were all set to go. I requested Ashok to join us in his car, so that we can get ride back from airport. We loaded all bags in Ashok's car since it was nice big one. We (me and Aalok) jumped into the cab with Aaditya and Ashok followed us in his car. Somewhere on the way, he lost us and then we realized that we won't be able to call up Ashok, since none of us have his cell number.

At airport the departure gate was flooding with people (make sure you avoid flying on Friday nights), and we were so engrossed in packing that we didn't even decide the meeting spot. We ended up running around quite a bit to find him. It was a long painful wait before we could spot him again. The queue (trust me there was a long queue just to enter inside the airport) had tripled by then. But all is well which ends well.

Now Aaditya is in US and I am missing him . The cycle continues.....

W00t: MyKar

2007-02-24T03:13:00.000+05:30

Have you ever tried to find your car in a parking lot full of cars? I think it's pretty common. And the frustration when your car is not found is much more common. I never can remember the place where I park my car. Whichever things I decide as a landmark happen to be found at every other turn. If it's inside the building, I end up forgetting the level.

:-D

I wish there was some device which can detect the car and guide me to my car. Something with a small basic screen, which can show arrows and tell me where is my car.

Anybody working on it?

What's your score?

2007-02-16T12:37:00.000+05:30

I happened to read "Automated Targeting System" by Bruce Schneier. It talks about some program being run by U.S. customs agencies for past several years.

I am just back from US trip and I shudder to think what my score would be.

Slow Down Culture

2007-02-08T03:14:00.000+05:30

Today I came across this article about Slow Down Culture. It was about the culture in Sweden. The article mentioned one example. It goes like this,

The first time I was in

Sweden

, one of my colleagues picked me up at the hotel every morning. It was September, bit cold and snowy. We would arrive early at the company and he would park far away from the entrance (2000 employees drive their car to work). The first day, I didn't say anything, either the second or third. One morning I asked, "Do you have a fixed parking space? I've noticed we park far from the entrance even when there are no other cars in the lot." To which he replied, "Since we're here early we'll have time to walk, and whoever gets in late will be late and need a place closer to the door. Don't you think? Imagine my face.

It really got me thinking. I wonder how Bangalore would be if we implement slow culture. Will drivers let pedestrians cross on Airport Road? Will auto-fellas give up cutting into the lanes?

:-)

Dream on!

Fire Alarm

2007-02-08T03:05:00.000+05:30

Yesterday when I reached hotel I was pretty tired. I had to do laundry too.... It's been pending since past couple of days. I was sorting out clothes and suddenly fire alarm started screaming. I grabbed my room key and my purse and ran downstairs. I was kinda annoyed since I forgot my sweater and it was pretty cold.

Lot of people were standing near lobby. After couple of minutes we were told that everything was alright and we could go back to our rooms. It seems the bunch of Indian guys on my floor had managed to invoke fire alarm while cooking dinner.

:-P

San Jose trip

2007-02-05T04:16:00.000+05:30

Last few weeks have been really hectic. I had to plan for this SJ trip kinda abruptly. I had forgotten to pack lotsa things, since I started doing it at the last minute. But considering the fact that I was not even having enough bags to carry here (I had to borrow a bag), I did a pretty good job.

:-D

Days here have been good. I am seeing lot of places and uploading photos to flickr too. But I am missing home and Aaditya. It's almost time to go back now. Yay!

So far so good.

5 things most people don't know about me

2007-01-06T19:03:00.000+05:30

I am not tagged by anyone, but this sounded interesting. So here is my list,

1. I hesitate a lot before opening a conversation with unknown people.
2. I love the smell of roasted fenugreek seeds.
3. I wish I could be a painter.
4. I desperately want to patent something on my name.
5. I want to learn one foreign language.

Second Life

2006-12-13T12:49:00.000+05:30

I created a new name and downloaded Second Life client. I was all excited to find out what the whole thing is about, but I couldn't login.

:-(

It said "Unable to connect to Second Life, The system may be down".
Ahem! Whatever life you select this message is going to haunt you.

:-)

I am Tiger Moody in Second Life.

What are you?

I like momos

2006-11-30T13:38:00.000+05:30

Ok, So far I have figured this part out. Now the next thing is to find out how to make them.

What is "All-purpose flour" BTW?

W00t: Poogle

2006-11-22T12:45:00.000+05:30

Our house is a mess, thanks to our maid servant.

The usual scene is - Books piled up in the corners... clothes dumped on chairs.... newspapers spread all over the bed... fridge dumped with stuff which nobody is going to eat.... all possible chargers lying all over floor.... wires running from one end to another (which might make you trip).... bills tucked into various places etc. etc. The good guy in our home decided to let things be as they are, since it is too much of an effort to keep the place tidy. Gah! don't blame me.. I don't create this mess.

Though, I end up cleaning some of it, at some point off time. Thanks to all those things which go missing. It's no surprise that things go missing in that mess. Most of the times we don't even know about the missing things (since there are so many things around anyway). But sometimes when we really really need something, I am told to search for it.

So as I was mentioning, I end up cleaning the place in process of search. But that's the only good outcome of the whole process, since the chances of finding the actual missing thing are very bleak... just about 1%.

I wish there was some kinda log of our past actions, which we can google and get the missing things. Something like PastGoogle or Poogle. We can mark some parts as important, or tag some pages to be searched later, or may be simply rewind the whole thing and can see the past. Reminds me of "The Truman show".

I would really love to skip the "cleaning" part. It's time consuming and too painful.

:-(

Scent of a woman

2006-11-21T17:08:00.000+05:30

Wedding had left me with wide range of perfumes to choose from. Perfumes do make a good gift.

I like the ones which are kinda floral, non-spicy and long-stay. Ok, and I don't like any of those strong heady ones. It's been one year, so it's time to get another stock now. I hope I have given enough hints already.

;-)

That reminds me of this. I avoided one fella at work just because he used to use some weird perfume which made him smell like Parle-G biscuits (Did I mention that I hate those biscuits?).

:-(

Are you doubting my data?

2006-11-19T00:28:00.000+05:30

I hate meetings where one needs to present numbers and graphs and blah blah. I hated Fridays when I had to fill in weekly time-sheet. In fact I try to avoid all possible maths at work wherever I can.

I could never get it how everybody else is able to complete their time-sheets on time. Every Friday, when I struggled to fill it, I kicked myself for not doing it daily. But then, it never works that way.

It's the same with those Quality Control statistics. I always felt that It was a big mistake to take up quality control initiatives for the team. Before every meeting I used to be running around trying to collect numbers and getting those graphs ready. It's almost impossible to get all the right numbers and come up with not-too-perfect-and-not-too-many-problems graphs. I still remember how awkward it felt when I had to explain our team's error matrix in front of the management team, while all other teams had almost good graphs.

It was really difficult to get those things done on time, until I found out the truth. Instead of getting all the data, people just make up a bunch of data.

Does everyone do so?

Huh, are you doubting my data?

;-)

d80

2006-11-04T02:31:00.000+05:30

Looks good, isn't it?

Fallingwater

2006-10-03T00:35:00.000+05:30

What a house!

Yes, this is a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright aptly called as Fallingwater. The moment I saw this I was in love with the idea. A house partly built over the waterfall. I wish I could design something like this. More pictures can be seen here.

:-)

Heh

2006-09-22T14:39:00.000+05:30

He didn't like the curry
And he didn't like my cake.
He said my biscuits were too hard...
Not like his mother used to make.
I didn't prepare the coffee right
He didn't like the stew,
I didn't mend his socks
The way his mother used to do.
I pondered for an answer
I was looking for a clue.
Isn't there anything I could do
To match his mothers shoe
Then I smiled as I saw light
One thing I could definitely do
I turned around and slapped him tight...
Like his mother used to!!!!!

Sneezes

2006-09-21T01:07:00.000+05:30

Whenever I sneeze, I feel that my heart skips a beat. In fact, the whole functionality stops for a moment and it feels so good when you are done with it. It's almost like a new incarnation... After every sneeze heart resets it's counter and starts for zero again. Something like opening database with resetlogs option.

:-)

Aaditya always sneezes at least 5-6 times at one go. I call it a sneeze attack. I assume that there is some system problem, due to which his counter doesn't get reset with just one sneeze.

;-)

w00t: UBeento

2006-09-17T01:23:00.000+05:30

Heh,

It's nice to see the date and time, the exposure and camera details along with the photo. But lot of times, it becomes difficult to recollect the place where the photo was taken. It would be great if photo can store the details regarding place too.

Easy way to keep track of places you-been-to.

Things I want to do before I die

2006-09-13T00:01:00.000+05:30

1. Paragliding (that's pretty doable)
2. Loooooong bike trip through mountains, along the sea shore and through green fields.
3. Hiking through snow
4. Co-riding F1 car (well, it does look so much interesting from outside.. I really really want to see how the race track looks when you are sitting inside.)
5. Bungee jumping

And I do think that this list is going to grow...

w00t: FoodMeter

2006-09-10T14:05:00.000+05:30

I think I end up eating more than required... which eventually shows up. It would be great if I can get a FoodMeter for myself. It would show how much % food is left and I can see when it reaches 100% and stop eating.

Something like PowerMeter available in Laptops. I wonder if I can set "Maximum Performance" and "Maximum battery life" kind of modes in FoodMeter too.

;-)

Daily fortune, Bollywood Gossip and Relationship advices

2006-09-04T22:05:00.000+05:30

I am amused with newspapers.

Open any newspaper and you see same stuff everywhere. The page layout, the advertisements, the sections, and even subsections.... right from the first page until the last page almost every thing is same. Ok, sometimes they do try to be innovative and rename their sections a bit.

They are generous enough to share their articles, so that you don't miss anything. So if you miss this "How to find out if your man is cheating on you?", don't worry. You will see it repeating in some other newspaper. In fact, if you wait for 3-4 weeks, it might repeat in the same paper. Sometimes they don't even bother to change the headings. They bank too much on the short memory of crowd. ;-)

I find Daily fortune section most hilarious of all. I think they randomly pick up lines and put together this fortune section. Sometimes they also publish numerology and some such stuff, which is equally amusing. I usually read newspaper when I go back home. So it's fun verifying the fortune, which obviously turns out to be wrong.

Relationship advices are a good time-pass. It's mostly quizzes consisting of couple of questions and then you score yourself to identify your "type". Sometimes they publish those 10 step how-to articles. Be it relationship advices, scientific studies or technology related articles.... Most of the things are copied from net... and that too without much research. I think they google for a topic and copy whatever shows up in the top three.

The Bollywood gossip is full of pictures.. which is obvious. They repeat pictures, repeat gossip and sometimes they just make up stuff and print it. I think this section is also made up more or less like daily fortune section. You have bunch of photos, you have couple of stories and you of course have a list of actors. So you pick up random names and substitute them in the stories and print some random photos along with it... and bingo! your gossip is ready.

Keep guessing!

2006-09-02T00:09:00.000+05:30

"Never tell anyone that you're: writing a book, going on a diet, exercising, taking a course, or quitting smoking. They'll encourage you to death."
--Lynn Johnston

And that said, I am not going to tell you what I am upto .....

LOL.

w00t: TransMovie

2006-09-01T08:35:00.000+05:30

I am missing too many good movies, which are made in other languages. Well, one can also see movies with subtitles, but I don't really like that. When you see movie with subtitles, most of the times you are busy reading them and end up missing all the action on screen. Besides you have to wait until DVDs are available for that movie and even in the DVD one can't have all the languages. In fact, in case of Indian regional movies, they won't bother to put subtitles at all.

I think there could be some translator software made for movies. Cinema halls can provide headphones, if required. So if you go for a Tamil movie, you can choose the translation you want and hear it using headphone.

Watching movies will be more fun.

MeSsaGe

2006-08-17T16:29:00.000+05:30

Loved the way it was written in the doc. It sounds like some french word, isn't it?

Chennai Trip

2006-08-14T21:47:00.000+05:30

Nowadays, whichever airlines you choose, you have to face late flights. A book and some snack are must.... otherwise it is just impossible to kill your time at the airport. I think they should start a multiplex inside the airport. Flights are anyway becoming 2-3 hours late. At least people will be happy waiting for the flight. :-)

I didn't have particularly pleasant memories of Chennai from the last trip (which was about 4 years back). And I was successful in avoiding any further visits there until now, but this time I had to go. Flight to Chennai was only 30 minutes late. Wow! look at that... 30 minutes seem so less nowadays.

When you fly from Bangalore to Chennai, flight goes all the way to Chennai and then further down the sea (I mean, on the top of the sea) to take U-turn and then lands in Chennai. I had never seen a clear sky and so much water down before. It was kinda scary when the plane slowly started tilting to take the turn. The sea looked amazing with interesting patterns made by waves, but I would prefer white fluffy clouds to deep dark waters anytime. :-(

When we landed in Chennai, the climate looked cozy and dreamlike with those rain clouds and the deep blue sky. I was happy at the thought of rains awaiting (it's been a while since it rained in Bangalore) and the cold evening breeze to set the mood right. But the landing announcement came as a complete surprise. The outside temperature was around 34 C. LOL. That's Chennai!

We had real long buffet dinner at Hilton. It's annoying the number of dishes they keep for the buffet. Even if I decide to just taste every single thing, it would be as good as having three meals. So I gave up. In short, I had lots of desserts and felt happy about it. :-)

Next day I visited Marina beach. Nice! Water always fascinates me. Leisurely walk on the wet sand was mesmerizing. I wish I could do that more often.

On the way back, flight was late by about two and half hours. I was totally pissed off since I was so sleepy and the flight was getting delayed every hour. Note to myself, never book for the last flight in future.

In search of old friends!

2006-08-07T02:50:00.000+05:30

First time when I saw Orkut, I was very happy about the whole concept. Yay! Finding long lost school and college friends sounded so easy. I waited for a while for let it pick up. Orkut has become a huge community now. So I decided it's time to search for some old names.

It's not an easy task, as I had imagined. For one thing, I have forgotten most of the names. Actually, I have known them only by either their first name, or just the last name or some funny nickname. Considering how common the Indian names are, it's almost impossible to search people by their first names. So I tried to put together some full names. LOL, it took a while to get it right. It's amazing how we never used to worry about the actual names in school.... while it's all about names now.

Another big problem is, almost all girls would have changed their names after marriage, surnames in most of the cases and even the first names in majority of cases. I have no clue what the new names could be. Thus making is highly impossible to search them. And no, photographs won't help either... people would have changed so much by now.

I tried to search for school name, but it was not a good filter. Searching for the college name gave me such a big list that it will take ages to search. In short, I was not able to find a single friend. May be they still don't know about Orkut.

I am just hoping that I would find somebody, someday!

How famous companies were named!!

2006-08-03T14:45:00.001+05:30

Amazon.com - Founder Jeff Bezos renamed the company to Amazon (from the earlier name of Cadabra.com) after the world's most voluminous river, the Amazon. He saw the potential for a larger volume of sales in an online bookstore as opposed to the then prevalent bookstores. (Alternative: It is said that Jeff Bezos named his book store Amazon simply to cash in on the popularity of Yahoo at the time. Yahoo listed entries alphabetically, and thus Amazon would always appear above its competitors in the relevant categories it was listed in.)

[Tricksters!]

Fanta- was originally invented by Max Keith in Germanyin 1940 when World War II made it difficult to get the Coca-Cola syrup to Nazi Germany. Fanta was originally made from byproducts of cheese and jam production. The name comes from the German word for imagination (Fantasie or Phantasie), because the inventors thought that imagination was needed to taste oranges from the strange mix.

[This explains why Fanta was never one of my favorites. All that imagination spoils the taste.]

Google- the name is an intentional misspelling of the word googol, reflecting the company's mission to organize the immense amount of information available online.

[Googol is so k3w1.]

Kodak- Both the Kodak camera and the name were the invention of founder George Eastman . The letter "K" was a favorite with Eastman; he felt it a strong and incisive letter. He tried out various combinations of words starting and ending with "K". He saw three advantages in the name. It had the merits of a trademark word, would not be mis-pronounced and the name did not resemble anything in the art. There is a misconception that the name was chosen because of its similarity to the sound produced by the shutter of the camera.

[What's with all these people with fascination with letter "K"? ok, At least he didn't make it Kkodakkkk, or something like that. On the second thought, I am thinking about renaming my blog to "kmall kiger" :-P ]

Mitsubishi- The name Mitsubishi (??) has two parts: mitsu means three and hishi (changing to bishi in the middle of the word) means water chestnut, and from here rhombus, which is reflected in the company's logo.

[I am still to understand how chestnut turned into rhombus. It could have been easier if it were three diamonds or something.]

Pepsi- Pepsi derives its name from (treatment of) dyspepsia, an intestinal ailment.

[LOL, how accurate!]

Red Hat- Company founder Marc Ewing was given the Cornell lacrosse team cap (with red and white stripes) while at college by his grandfather. People would turn to him to solve their problems, and he was referred to as 'that guy in the red hat'. He lost the cap and had to search for it desperately. The manual of the beta version of Red Hat Linux had an appeal to readers to return his Red Hat if found by anyone.

[I was imagining that they wanted to name it something like "Red Hot" but thought it's too vulgar and settled for "Red Hat" instead.]

Yahoo!- a "backronym" for Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle. The word Yahoo was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book Gulliver's Travels. It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance action and is barely human. Yahoo! founders David Filo and Jerry Yang selected the name because they jokingly considered themselves yahoos!

[And for a long time I was thinking it has got something to do with Shammi Kapoor.]

Random thoughts

2006-07-18T14:36:00.000+05:30

On a lazy Sunday afternoon, while lying in my hammock I was observing squirrels around. One can hardly do anything else while holding a hot cup of tea in one hand and trying to be as lazy as possible, right? Squirrels are weird creatures. They usually look busy but I doubt that. They seem be having fun by just running around from one branch to another. I wonder if they ever sit back and relax on some swinging branch and observe people walk by on the street.

I love to watch people. We stay in a crowded place in Mumbai. I still like the idea of standing in the open window with nose tightly pressed against the window bar and chin resting on another for hours together. It's so much fun watching a dark rainy day as well as nice bright sunny day. People walking by, people chatting in the middle of the road, people riding bicycles, people driving cars, people trying to cross road, people buying vegetables, kids running around.... everything is so lively. I wouldn't get bored of watching people at all. Street markets are always full of life.

Here in Bangalore, we (thankfully) don't have any market road nearby to watch through window. I can't watch people on road, but I like to watch trees. Huge trees with monstrous branches and tiny leaves, swinging coconut trees, lovely colorful flowers and delicate patterns of sky visible through the tree branches. I wish we had a really big balcony, so that I could stretch a little bit.

Back on track

2006-07-15T20:37:00.000+05:30

I was out of white color, so oil painting had taken a back seat for a while. I am working on this one right now.

When I was painting the sky, halfway through my white color got over. Guru had told me to buy a really big tube of white color and now I know why. Three paintings and white is all over. The sky looks so weird. But the hut is almost done. I feel it looks perfect.... what say you?

I am planning to gift this one to Jennie. I promised her a painting.

Google Analytics

2006-07-10T23:56:00.000+05:30

I subscribed to Google Analytics for my blog site. It's fun to see the analysis and various summary reports.

It's been just two days since I subscribed to it, so there is not enough data. But I sure was surprised to see that my blog is read by so many different people from so many different countries (most of the names I have never heard of before).

Yay!

Broke laptop Screen

2006-07-09T21:46:00.000+05:30

My laptop fell down and it broke the LCD screen. I felt so sad. My shiny new T43 was looking so bad.

It made some interesting patterns on screen, when I turned it on. Thankfully, the hard disk was ok, so I got another T43 and swapped the disks. The old one is sent to IBM to get the screen replaced and to fix the keyboard tray (yeah, the tray got a bit of misplaced).

The standby is working alright, but I still miss the old one. I hope to see my laptop back soon.

I hate HPUX

2006-07-05T13:57:00.000+05:30

It doesn't have ptree.

Brewing Beer

2006-06-20T11:36:00.000+05:30

While looking for the mailer list aliases, I came across this one, home brew. I was so curious about it, that I added myself to this group.

Brewing your own beer at home.... sounds interesting, isn't it? But it looks like it's no simple job. When I read this, I was so much tempted to try it.

If you haven't tried it, and are so inclined, the Pliny the Elder recipe (or Pliny the Younger) is a fantastic brew. If you're a hop head, you'll absolutely love it, and I've poured it for women who don't like beer and they loved it too. It's truly a beer-lover's beer, and one that will even satisfy those looking to try a good home brew. I obviously can't say enough good things about it. It's *just* right, and the citrus overtones must be what captures the non-beer fanatics. :)

So I tried to read more about the beer making and how to start with it. I went through couple of mails and it started dawning on me that I don't understand anything of what they talk about (except of course for smell and taste of the finished products).

I tried to google for the "Getting Started" stuff. One needs a toolkit - buckets, bottles, carboy, hydrometer, thermometer etc. etc. I could understand the equipments but then I got lost.

What's all-grain? what's keg?
What's hops? and rhizomes?
what's extract brewer? and finishing cones? and lagering?

Sheesh, I feel so illiterate. Will I be able to brew any beer at all?

Compu Games and Me

2006-06-17T19:40:00.000+05:30

I love to play computer games.

Of course, I am not a big computer gamer like Alex, Nkv or Mridul. It's always fun to hear them talk about games. All sorts of complicated, dark games where mysteries are to be solved or tons of people to be killed or play roles or rule cities and what not. But that's about it. I can't sit for hours together trying to finish one game. If game requires too much of strategies and planning I get taxed. If there is too much of gore, it makes me sick.

I play rather stupid games. I don't like the look of the game if screens are too dull and dark. Even if I see people playing games which require hiding and killing, my heartbeats go up. Racing games are fun to watch, but I can't get myself finish any car race without literally trashing my car. I would have banged it so much all the while that if it were a real car, nothing would be left to prove that it was a car in the beginning of the race. I jump and scream so much that people around me end up getting headache. And after all this, I manage match the last or second last position :-D

I loved Tetris. At one point I was so much glued to it that my brother had to delete the game to get some time on computer. I read somewhere last week that they have tetris matches now. K3w1.

I like card games too. LOL. Almost all of them. But mainly Freecell and Spider Solitaire :-) It's fun to these play card games. Ok, I like "Four or more" and I also like this puzzle game of moving the blocks. Solving nice (easy) puzzles gives me high.

Nowadays I am addicted to this new bubble game, called Dynamite. It makes nice exploding sounds when you hit the bubbles. One has to keep bursting bubbles. Pretty stupid, but awesome replay value.

I don't know why I am listing these games here. May be I will start playing some rather cool games in future, and it will be quite funny to look back at this pathetic list then.

All work no play

2006-06-09T14:28:00.000+05:30

All work no play makes tiger a dull girl!

It's been a while since we had done anything fun. I like the way all weekdays pass by making this whooshing sound. Weekends are crawling with site-seeing activities. We are going to weird places in search of houses. We are literally exploring Bangalore. Finally it is dawning on me that Bangalore is not M G road, Indiranagar and Forum. A big value addition, I say!

Ok, there had been some fun when we invited people over dinner and I got to try my recipes on them. Now that that's said. you will understand how difficult it is to convince them to visit our place again. And that's not the end of it. We also tricked some of them to cook at our place. So all we have is this fast depleting source of friends. eVil me! LOL.

Daku is coming to India, but looks like she will stay away from Bangalore. Last time she was too tired and under the weather. I wish she would come by, so that we can go for a small picnic this time.

Sweet!

Wynad trip

2006-05-30T13:40:00.000+05:30

Sigh! I lost my post (Don't ask me how, it's kinda stupid), when I was almost about to publish it. It' so hard to write any post all over again. In other cases, I would have happily abandoned the idea completely. But I had to write about our Wynad trip.

So here it is.

Whenever I think about Wynad, two things come to my mind, lush green tea estates and mouth-watering Kerala dishes we had in Sultan Bathery. Rest all doesn't really matter. Kerala is truly blessed with the green color. I was surprised to see so much greenery in the month of May. I wonder how it would be in the rainy season.

As usual, we started late for the Wynad trip. Harsha was waiting on the M.G. Road for about 2+ hours (cursing all of us). I was fearing that he would just give up and go back home. But luckily he was there, acting as a road inquiry booth. LOL. On our way, we stopped by at Kamath's to have breakfast. That place is getting insanely popular. We had to wait for about half an hour to get our seats. While we were waiting, King of Mysore Mr. Wodeyar dropped by in his shiny Merc. Wooohooo, so we got to eat our dosa along with the king.

Rest of the journey was pretty uninteresting, except for the time when we missed one turn and took a wrong road. We asked one shepherd on the way if the road goes to Wynad and he just said it's too far from there. We traveled about 50 Km in the Ooty direction before we found out that we were completely off track. I wonder what did he mean by "it's too far". Did he believe that the earth is round and we will eventually reach the correct place? Anyway, after traveling for 100 Km, we were back on the track.

Once we entered the Bandipur forest, everything was pleasantly green. We even got to see some elephants... just like that. It's weird. In our last trip to Bandipur, we were fanatically searching for the elephants and here they were. Considering how dry that Tamilnadu part of Bandipur forest is, I would say elephants made a good choice by staying in this part of Jungle. We took some snaps but this fella didn't like being clicked and he was about to charge on us. I was hoping to get some good closeup shots, but Aaditya being a spoil sport, he drove away hastily.

Muthanga forest was lovelier. There were huge bamboo groves and I am in love with that place. I wish I could stay in the jungle, inside the bamboo grove.

We stayed at Sultan Bathery. The proprietor told us about this Jubilee hotel and we were just glued to that place. We religiously had our breakfast, lunch and dinner at Jubilee. We had some really good Kerala dishes and the lime tea was heavenly. Me and Harsha must have had about 50 cups and we got it packed as well. :-D

Ok, we did get some time to see two places in the amidst of this eating spree. Edakkal caves were ok. the jeep ride up to the bottom of the hill was thrilling. I wanted to do couple of rides back and forth but other were too embarrassed. They have built steps and put up ladders wherever possible. So climbing up to the caves is kinda easy. After that only Aaditya and Harsha went up to the top of the hill. It was a difficult trek, but the view from the top was so amazing that it was worth it (as per them).

Next day we went to see Soochipara waterfalls. Drive was nice. We were passing through the Malabar district and after one turn we suddenly saw this huge landscape with sprawling tea estates. Where ever one can see, there were tea estates on all the hills. It was an amazing site. So green and so lovely.

Soochipara waterfalls were ok. Considering it's summer time, there was enough water to splash. We spent some time near waterfall and watched people bath. Harsha took some nice pics (LOL).

We had planned to stay in a tree house in Muthanga forest, but it didn't work out. there is always a next time.

I am eager to go to Kerala again.

UPS goes boink

2006-05-29T14:15:00.000+05:30

Since past few weeks, whenever I see dark clouds in the sky, there is invariably a power cut in Indiranagar. Just when I decide to work from home, there is no power. And this is just May.... I shudder to think about June and July.

Two days back I got an UPS from my company. I carried that heavy thing all over to home without much cribbing. I was all happy. I plugged in my modem to the UPS and awaited eagerly for the next power cut. I didn't have to wait for long :-P

And surprise, my UPS can only run for about five minutes after the power goes off. I tried charging it for the whole night and what I got was few more seconds extra.

Gah! I wish I could just burn the damn thing.

w00t: Rename user

2006-05-24T16:07:00.000+05:30

Why there is no command for renaming any user schema in Oracle? I wish they give that option ASAP. It would have saved so much of my time today!

Annoying

2006-05-09T15:29:00.000+05:30

Even if I want to put my cellphone radio to loudspeaker, I need to connect my headset. Argh!
Sometimes my green peas curry ends up being an ultimate disaster. Even after boiling for hours together, those green peas just don't get boiled.
Just when I need to run to catch my office shuttle some random user will ping with some stupid problems.
Mosquitoes in summer
Endless advertisements on Radio City
Power cuts in Bangalore
Auto fellas asking for one-and-half whenever and wherever you want to go.
Maid who loves to bunk whenever possible

w00t: RoadAds

2006-05-07T23:21:00.000+05:30

We have been on roads every weekends, since past couple of weeks. And I would say, most of roads were not really a joy-to-ride-on. Actually we don't really need to go out of the city to face these bad roads. Bad roads and huge hoardings spoil the fun of a ride.

May be there is a way out to make roads better through Road-advertisements. Instead of hoardings, company can sponsor to maintain a piece of the road and their advertisement can be painted on that piece.

Hmmm, this way we can get rid of those huge hoardings and have good roads as well. Though I am not sure how we are going to deal with some of those loud colors painted on the roads.

Sigh! I so much love to see those long winding black roads. Or may be some colors wouldn't harm.

w00t: Translator

2006-05-04T17:40:00.000+05:30

How about translating the language while other person is speaking it? So instead of "Translate this page for me", there will be one button saying "Translate this person for me", and you hear everything in the language which you can understand.

Life will be so easy!

Bright ideas of Tiger

2006-04-28T11:51:00.000+05:30

This is a new series to record all my brightest (and brighter and even slightly bright) innovative ideas. LOL.

These ideas strictly belong to the small tiger and one needs to contact her before implementing any of them.

;-)

It will be called TigerIdeaFlash.

On the second thought, it will be called w00t.

8:10, old madras road, sunset

2006-04-26T11:31:00.000+05:30

Last one month was different. I mean, I have never woken up at 7 and never left office at 5-30 consistently for such a long duration.

I was bit unhappy about the new office in the outer ring road, but now I have got used to it. Mornings are busy trying to catch the office shuttle, so that I don't have to face the meaningless bargains with auto fellas. So nowadays when clock shows 8:10, I get this strong urge of hurrying up even on weekends (If I am awake i.e.). These days I fondly wait for the weekends to catch up with my weekly quota of sleep. :-)

The old madras road is the highlight of the most of the evenings on the way back home. The traffic is getting worse day by day, and the road condition doesn't help it either. Amidst of the thick fog of dust and pollution, I somehow manage to see a piece of sky through the shuttle window. Big red sun flickering through tall trees and blue clouds makes a lovely sight. Tiny birds flying back home in small groups make me wonder if it is easy for them, as there is no traffic jam up there.

I wish we could invent a pair of wings, so that we don't have to beg the auto fellas.

Himachal trip

2006-04-06T13:25:00.000+05:30

It took a while to upload photos of my Himachal trip. Even if it is summer here, there was rain there. Due to the dark clouds, the light there was not all that good. I had to edit almost all the photos in Photoshop, but the end result is good.

I thoroughly enjoyed this trip, which was kinda short (just about 6 days). I managed to visit couple of places there, including Chamba. Chamba is a pretty place, and kinda bigger than I had imagined it to be. It took about six hours by car to reach that place from Palampur and in the beginning of the trip, all the mountains on the way were so dry that I was kinda apprehensive about the place. I assumed it to be a small village with couple of houses here and there, but once we reached near the valley, the view was breathtaking.

And after this point onwards, things got better and better. When we were near the Chamba, it got bit cloudy. The light was poor, so I couldn't take much pictures. But this one will give you some idea.

All the mountain tops were covered with the soft white misty clouds and it was enchanting to see the lush green valley against the blue misty mountains.

We stopped by to see Chamera dam, which is on Ravi river. It was an amazing view.

And then finally we reached Chamba. It sure is a lovely place. No wonder most of the Bollywood films shoot their songs there. The place is a bit too crowded though. I mean, after Bombay, I had never seen so many houses built in such a small area. The top view of Chamba looks like patch of roofs closely knit together. You can hardly see the roads inside the colonies.

The green roof there is of Palace of the king of Chamba. This one is the view of the road near the entrance of the Chamba.

But the houses are surprisingly airy, because most of them are built on the reclines of the hills. The whole village is a huge maze of staircases. So one needs to climb at least 50 steps to get to any place. No wonder people are so slim there. On an average every person has to climb at least 500 steps everyday.... even if you chose to stay at home. Here are the steps inside our house there. Say, if you want to go to the dining room from the bed room, you need to climb 10 steps. :-)

They have a lots of cute little wooden houses and stone temples with elaborate carvings.

I just loved the place. While our way back we took the road which goes via Jot. Jot is the highest mountain top and you can see all other mountain tops from there. It was awesome. I am planning to build a house at Jot, so that I will be always at the top the world. LOL. This is the view from Jot. The row of snow covered mountains is the Himalaya range.

The place leaves a mesmerizing effect. While I am writing this, I can feel the cool fresh breeze on my face. I hope I will get to go there again.... sometime soon.

Meetings

2006-03-31T18:46:00.000+05:30

Right now, meetings are on my mind.

:-/

Changed job and I was so damn happy to be able to use thunderbird again. But meetings are such a big spoil sport. These meeting reminders are driving me crazy. I hate to enter every single meeting in reminderfox manually. I get way too many meeting invitations nowadays than I used to get couple of years ago. A sure sign of one turning into a management zombie.

I wish there was some extension to be able to mark meetings in mozilla calender automatically.

My wish list!

:-)

Quantum Physics

2006-03-15T20:59:00.000+05:30

It mentions that Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.

I am yet to read it, but it sure makes me interested. Actually the term "Quantum Physics" made me curious since quite sometime now. It gives an impression of something really really high profile... something which normal people wouldn't dare to find out. So when I stumbled upon this page, the first thing I said was "Ha! gotcha!". I promptly bookmarked it, but never got back to reading it.

I scan my list once in a while and read some random pages. :-) The reading mainly consists of trying-to-read-while-scrolling-down-fast. This page gave me really weird lines,

To understand the weirdness completely, you just need to know about three experiments: Light Bulb, Two Slits, Schroedinger's Cat.
Full English breakfast
If anyone asked why this was, he would say, "shut up and calculate"
What happens to the cat? you're not supposed to ask.
everything possible exists in one universe or another.

Interesting! I have to agree that it sure sounds weird already. Somehow, it gives me the impression that Quantum Physics is closely related to cats. Hmmm, I need to read this link soon enough. After all I want to find out who is this Schroedinger and what happens to his cat, eh?

Rose

2006-03-08T19:36:00.000+05:30

I had to blog about this. It's funny the way this painting has shaped up... rather colored up, to be more precise.

I wanted to paint a nice big rose in all violet shades. Something soothing... and full of light. So I started mixing the colors and to my surprise, I just couldn't get the right shade of violet with the oil paints. May be I didn't have the right reds and blues, or may be I didn't mix enough white in it. I decided to use that violet any way, since I thought it might look better on the canvas. By the time I finished putting the first layer, I was really disappointed the way it looked. The more I tried to correct it, it became more awful. It was kinda annoying. Here I wanted something in nice violet and light pink shades, and what I got was weird dull violet patches. The more I tried to correct it, more worse it became.

I think what I wanted was not possible with the oil colors. May be water colors will be a best bet. Any way, in any case that all violet rose was never going to look any better. So I decided to use some nice bright red, which I readily found in my palette. Matched that red with the violets and here it is.

As you can see, the colors are still wet, but I just couldn't wait for it to dry. :-)

I love it.

Bandipur visit

2006-02-27T14:59:00.000+05:30

We went to the Bandipur forest last weekend. It took almost a week to get things in place. I wanted to upload the pictures first, so that I can blog about it. And there were too many pictures to edit, which took a while. Now that pictures are uploaded, it's time to write about the visit.

We were six and we rented a nice car. Some of us had been there couple of times and Koushik told me that it is a good place, so I was all eager to visit Bandipur.

We started off on time on Saturday morning and we had booked the place called Bamboo banks guest house to stay. Since we started planning for this trip only on Friday, most of the well-known resorts were already booked. We got reservations in this guest house, only on one condition that we keep the manager informed about our travel status every three hours. Heh! I found that kinda amusing initially.

The drive was nice. Once we reached Bandipur, monkeys were in abundance. This fella was all ready to travel with us.

This guest house was near Mudumalai, which falls in Tamilnadu. So after we crossed the Karnataka border and drove about two kilometers, traffic police van caught us. It seems our vehicle didn't have any permit for Tamilnadu, so we had to pay a fat fine of 500 Rs. It's a privilege to be the software engineers.

:-(

The drive through the forest roads was nice. There were a lot of thick bamboo woods. Although almost all trees were bare (since it was the fall season), it was a nice view.

When we reached bamboo banks farm, it was about 3 o'clock. We had a nice lazy lunch there. Then we were showed our cottages. We stayed in the Brick house and others stayed in the Stone house. There was a play area near the cottages, which had swings. I had a nice time on the swing. At about 6 o'clock We went for a short trek in the nearby forest. The drive in the jeep was nice. I wished he would drive for some more time, but it was just 10 minutes drive. We walked through the forest for some time until we reached a small river. Ummm, all this time, the only animal we could see was a wild boar. It became dark pretty soon, so we headed back to the guest house. The rest of the day was a general fun with some nice dinner and a campfire.

We had decided to go for an early morning trek on Sunday. But unfortunately, I had a mild fever in the night, so I dropped the idea and me and Aaditya slept until late. We all were hoping to see at least elephants, if not tigers. I felt bad for missing the trek. But when they came back, we had a good laugh about the whole thing. They were led by some local shepherd, and he tried to make them walk through the thorny bushes (may be to give it a feel of jungle trek). After a while they figured it out, so he was the only one who used to go through the thorns. LOL. And all this time he was making sure that they walk kinda parallel to the road, since they could clearly hear honking of vehicles passing by. He herded them like his usual cattle for some time until they were caught. The trek through the forest are banned now. So the gang was caught by the forest officers and they were sent back. Gah! It was a tour full of getting-caught every now and then. I think we should have chosen for the safari instead.

But the stay in the resort was nice. We had a looooong and nice brunch and left the place at about 1 o'clock. We decided to visit Ooty, since it was nearby. I bought loads of chocolates and some nice flower plants (which are doing fine). When we headed back, we saw this on the roads of Bandipur forest.

To Do...

2006-02-15T17:32:00.000+05:30

One tends to get a bit of melancholy after birthday. Yeah, I had mine on 11th. Thanks to all of you who wished me.
:-)

I am not sure if I should put down a list of things which I did the last year (like the way most of the people do around this time of the year). Actually there isn't much to brag about... except of course marrying him. It's been nice to have somebody to fight with at home. :-D

I have been nice and working hard whole of the last year. I worked in the odd hours, on weekends.... even on the holidays. When I look back, I see that in this year I have re-invented myself. There was a point when I started hating my work, team, office... in short, everything about work. But last year was wonderful. I got the new zeal to work, to work harder, to learn new things and in general do better. I must be sounding little weird talking about only work here. So I will cut it short. My advice - If you don't feel like going to office and work, it's high time you change your job and the city (if possible). It works.

All that said, I think I should get down to decide on my "To Do" list for this year. It's interesting to think about one.

It's been more than year since I moved to Bangalore, and I have not seen much places around here. (I am not talking about Forum and MG Road). I am planning to go on short treks, visit nearby waterfalls and do a lot of road trips to the nearby places.
I do read, but I think I can do better.
Setup my house. Right now it is a mess. It almost looks like two bachelors are staying together. I am damn lazy, but I think it's high time I work on this.
Learn some Himachali cooking. :-P
Buy a tiny golden fish and setup a small aquarium. Awwweeeee, it will be so much fun.
Plan my finances for the entire year.
Work on the credit card expenses. Impulsive buys kill me. I need a better control.
Work on soft-skills. Do a lot of paintings (and gift them... LOL)
Learn some language. I think it's going to be Kannada for this year.
It's been a while since I have been planning to visit another country. I am going to plan and save for the tour.

Yay! As you can see, travel is in the focus for the next year. I will need more money for that, so I will have to work hard. The new mantra is

Work hard, travel harder.

w00t

2006-02-04T17:21:00.000+05:30

My blog is worth $2,258.16.
How much is your blog worth?

Gaim beta 2

2006-02-01T14:13:00.000+05:30

Gaim beta 2 rocks. Sametime plugin works... out of the box. I am soooooo happy.

yooooooooohoooooooooooo

Now I wish if thunderbird could hack into notes, my life will be so k3w1.

BTW, did I mention that T43 is absolute hottie?

Three Sunflowers

2006-01-30T21:14:00.000+05:30

It took me a while to start with the oil painting, but I am happy the way this one has turned out. I mean I am no Picasso after all.

:-)

And this one is sold the day it got completed.... for a blank cheque. Believe me, the painting looks much more decent than this photo. I tried couple of times but somehow I could never capture the exact shades in the painting.

It's fun doing oil painting. No matter what you do, it always looks brilliant. As you keep adding more layers of colors, the picture changes dramatically. The only problem is, it takes ages to dry. So when you want to add another layer, you have to wait for a least couple of days. It's a long process. But it is worth it.

I think if I start multiple paintings at the same time, I can do it effectively. While one painting is drying, I can work on another. But my bedroom will be full of turpentine smell all the time.

LOL.

I am going to do few more paintings, while I am at it.

No S Diet

2006-01-20T14:38:00.000+05:30

This diet is interesting. I am planning to follow it for a while. I am as much curious as you are to find out if it really works.

/me keeps my fingers crossed.

Vote for the best Indiblogs

2006-01-10T15:01:00.000+05:30

Heh, it's not mine. Vote for him.

I don't think a lot of people visit my page, but I want to do my bit nevertheless. I like his blog, so will you. Do vote for him.

Not that he really needs votes, he will win anyway.

:-)