Bandeau Aid

My buddy and I are planning a trip to a certain nordic country somewhere in the first few months of the coming year. Knowing the frigid temperatures in that part of the world, not withstanding the current snowed out conditions in most of northern Europe, I know that I have a tough time there, especially for someone who is not very fond of cold weather.

For most of my adult life (and a part of my childhood as well), I have had the tendency of my hands and feet getting cold with the slightest hint of cold weather. I'm not even talking snow conditions...even if the temperatures go slightly below 20˚ C, my hands and feet go colder than the ambient. Given this tendency, I prefer to be in places which are predominantly warm.

You would realize now that Nordic weather will be quite a challenge for someone of my body characteristics.

One of the big "To Do" items on the list is to buy warm clothing. This includes mostly inner wear, jackets, shoes and the like. I recently added another item to the list...and just got possession of it.

The place where I got it lists it as a "Bandeau Multifonctions" or Multipurpose Headband. It is also sometimes referred to as a "Buff" or a "Snood" (Samir Nasri of Arsenal wears one for every cold weather game, so if you see him play, you know what I mean).

This Bandeau / Buff / Snood is a tubular garment which is supposed to be worn around the neck or head to protect against the cold. The key character of this garment is that it stretches only sideways and not towards the edges. This allows me to wear it as a tubular neck scarf, a skull cap or a bandana. The most important way of using this would be where the back of the neck scarf is pulled over my head and the front is pulled over my lips, thereby shielding me from the super cold temperatures I will encounter once we get there.

My trip just became a little more comfortable...in my head. Hope it goes that way too :)

Thump and Stump

The last two nights have been a bit crazy. Thanx to the snow storms hitting parts of the UK the last 2 weeks, a lot of football matches were postponed which made the post-christmas period a mouthwatering prospect.

Unfortunately, all the games scheduled on weekdays would start really late in the night :(

Monday night saw Arsenal play Chelsea, a highly anticipated fixture especially after Arsenal were coming off a loss to my beloved United the week before. Cutting a long story short, Arsenal played some beautiful football and thumped Chelsea 3-1. A very nice game to watch indeed.

Now comes the sad part. Last night, thro a position that looked comprehensively offside, Birmingham equalized to draw the match against United 1-1 :(

Net result: two sleepless nights. Now I gotta catch up on in before new years. Can't have my quota backlog run into next year :)

Sent from my iPhone

11 call drops

Let me begin by saying that Airtel sucks! How can one of India's largest mobile services provider have such a crappy network that causes at least 11 call drops on my way to / from office?

It starts just after Richmond Circle, near Kudla. That's 1. Then before the turn at the stadium. 2. Just before the entrance of Cubbon Park. 3. At the turn in Cubbon Park. 4. Near the Planetarium. 5. On the airport road next to BGC's 3rd fairway. 6. At Windsor Manor. 7. At Mekhri underpass. 8. On CV Raman Road. 9. After the CPRI gate. 10. At the Ramaiah Hospital gate. That's sure shot 11 call drops on my way home. 11!!! ELEVEN!

This is of course not counting the extra few that Airtel throws in every now and then at the Magic Box overpass after Windsor Manor, Kaveri Circle, before the Cubbon Park gates. It is sooooooo frustrating to be on a call and have it drop so many times. Even worse if you are in the middle of a conversation with some call center or the other where you have to go thro the entire rigamarole of getting them to the point where u dropped off in the conversation.

I even called Airtel customer care once to illustrate this point and asked the lady to give me a number where I could reach her all the time as I was driving to work to show how many call drops I got. Guess what? They can't do that.

I am sincerely waiting for Mobile Number Portability to become fully operational so that I can test a few other providers (my eyes on Tata Docomo) so that my mobile phone usage is a little less frustrating than it is now.

Cast away

My little angel twisted her leg two weeks ago. The doctor suggested a cast as a precaution so that her growing bones are safe. And she's been hobbling around since then.

Tomorrow the cast comes off! And we're very excited to have her back to running around and being the bubbly exciting child she is.

Fingers crossed for tomorrow!

Sent from my iPhone

All those magnificent men / women in their flying machines

Nope, not talking about the movie, but am using it to reference another set of machines.

I have been busy digitizing and reformatting my entire media collection the last few weeks in anticipation of the arrival of my AppleTV device (which needs the help of someone coming in from the US, so if anyone is heading in that direction and back, please give me a shout!). I finally managed to convert most of my video files to work in the AppleTV format and added them in the library. Only way to test how they would look is if I went into Front Row on my iMac and saw how the library would show...since I assumed that's how the AppleTV interface would look like too.

To my surprise, my Movies section was showing every piece of video I had added to my library. Now some of these videos are part of TV series' which I am in the process of ripping from my DVDs. Things like "Yes Minister / Yes Prime Minister", "The West Wing", "Coupling" and "Seinfeld". Problem is, all these shows with all their many episodes from many seasons were now showing up in the list of Movies in Front Row.

To my dismay, the solution on the Apple support website was anything but. It said I had to change the media type of the files to something other than TV show, then move the files out of the library, delete the media references from iTunes and then push them back and change the media type back to TV shows. This is no solution! There had to be an elegant way to do this.

Evidently, Doug thought so too!

He created these Applescript scripts which can be added to iTunes and which help fix this problem with ease. An adult solution to a problem that should not exist in the first place.

This is one magnificent man in his flying (computer) machine!

The reason my post title says "men / women" is because of another reason I had to go to the community to solve my problem.

I have been trying a new software which will help me backup some of my stuff from my iPhone a little easier than iTunes can. Was having a bit of trouble getting the connection to work and so thought I need to restart the phone. Ended up restarting in recovery mode (force of habit what with all the hacking to jailbreak my current and earlier iPhone). Here's where another set of magnificent men/women came to my rescue.

All I did was download iRecovery, type in "setenv auto-boot true;saveenv;/exit" and there it was! My phone booted like normal.

There have been so many instances when some selfless coder sitting in some remote part of the world has come to my assistance without even knowing it. These people put out these pieces of code just because they encountered some problem and thought that making the solution public would help someone. Or maybe just because they love this stuff. Either ways, people like me benefit from the brilliance and work of others.

This post is to thank these magnificent men and women. They have made my life a bit better and a little less stressed. Thanx a lot, folks!

And nothing else matters

For an audiophile, last night was an extremely gratifying experience! To be surrounded by the cleanest sound I have ever heard and that too from songs that I have loved and adored my whole life was simply one of the most amazing few hours I have ever spent.

My ex boss, Anil, is into actually making audio gear. From stereo speakers to subwoofers to his very own class A amplifier, he's made them all. If you walk into his home theatre room, the first impression you would get is that there is WAY too much equipment in that room! There's a HUGE, and I really mean huge, dual cone subwoofer with 15" cones thumping out some serious bass frequencies. That is surrounded by at least 4 separate pairs of stereo speakers, all of them with their own sound signatures and characteristics. There's the open baffle configuration, there's the Altec theatre horn and LF box and then there's the one that blew my mind away!

Quite simply, this floor standing box with a labyrinth as part of its innards produced the cleanest and purest sound I have ever heard in my life. I have not heard stereo music reproduced this beautifully. Period.

What surprised me the most of this setup was the versatility of the sound and the purity of the reproduction of every single sound that was part of the compilation. We heard Hindustani Classical, Instrumental, Indian fusion, Bollywood music, Classic Rock and even Heavy Metal. Simply put, the speakers blew my mind every time I listened to every one of the songs.

To top it all, we played songs like "Stairway to Heaven", "Brothers in Arm", "Nothing Else Matters", "Beat It" and "The Pianoman" on LPs and the added warmth these speakers added was simply amazing. I never really appreciated Stairway to Heaven quite as much as it should have been up until last night! And to hear Jimmy Page's guitar play so clean and so crisp coming out of these wonder boxes just left me getting goose bumps all evening.

Thanx a lot, Anil. You made my evening. An amazing experience. The cleanest and the most wonderful sound I have heard till date. Thank you so much.

When your body refuses to listen to your mind

I have to warn you upfront...this is a golf specific rant! Read on at your own peril!

Sunday promised to be a nice day for golf. The weather in Bangalore has been near perfect for a round of golf with temperatures in the low 20s and cloudy days to ensure that you don't burn your skin walking around the course. To make the most of the weather, my golfing buddies and I had planned to hit the Eagleton golf course very early in the morning to ensure that we finished quickly and had most of our Sunday to ourselves. Little did I know that this was going to be torture on a scale of comparison to Torquemada!

We started off from the back nine with me making three double bogeys in the first three holes. Now that's not so alarming as I could attribute some of it to bad luck. And I had always bounced back from a bad start. But that was not to be the case today. Today was only promising to go from bad to worse...only I did not know that then.

To avoid adding insult to serious injury, I will spare you the description of the front nine and will only say this. Seven double bogey, a bogey and a par made sure that I finished nine holes with a score higher than my handicap! My partner and I were already two down by then (thanx to some stellar play by my partner) and had already lost the front nine.

The back nine is when I tried really hard to focus and get my game right. And I was completely focussed. Only, this time around, my body refused to cooperate with what I was intending in my mind to do. Nothing worked. Absolutely nothing. Even a birdie on the 17th hole did not stop me from coming in with 8 over on the back nine to make it an infamous 23 over for the round. I don't remember playing this badly in a loooooooooooooooooong time! In fact, I don't remember posting such a bad score in a few years.

Usually when I play a bad round, there are a few good take aways from the round to make me want to go back. A good shot here, a good chip there, a nice putt to save the hole. This round was different. All the 95 strokes I played on the course were forgettable. Every single one of them.

I think I have lost my swing somewhere. If someone finds it, please let me know. In the absence of that, I am going to go back to my old coach Mr Vijay Divecha to see if he can track down my swing for me. Until then, it's a sabbatical from the golf game on the course and my attempts to not make a fool of myself swinging a golf club like a circus trained monkey.

Addicted to a series?

How often does that happen to you? You watch one episode of a series that someone recommended...and then handed you the entire season of that series on DVD...and you end up watching all the episodes back to back?

The first time it ever happened to me was with The Office. Not the American version. The British version. The original. The one with Ricky Gervaise in it. I was recommended the series by one of my buddies from the Singapore office when I used to work there. He even got the DVD sets for the two seasons the series ran for. At that time, I waited for everyone to sleep before I started watching, mainly cause I had been told that the Office needed a different kind of humour appreciation to enjoy it. So I stuck the first DVD in, fired the first episode and watched in horror as the first episode hurtled past. Really didn't understand what the hell was going on. So almost gave up on it. But then I thought "might want to watch another episode and see what happens". By the time the second episode came to an end, I was starting to get what the series was all about. By the end of the third episode, I was laughing freely. And before the DVD came to an end, I had to bite down on my finger to not laugh out loud! So I had to go into the special features section to see the outtakes and see Ricky Gervaise just keep hammering at some really funny stuff that would have been great in the series. Needless to say, I was done with both seasons in 2 days (well, two nights) and would have loved to watch more.

The next time that happened was with The West Wing. I had heard of the series for a while, but never really managed to catch an episode, so didn't really know much about the series except for the part that it was about the White House and the President of the US. So when my buddy from the office volunteered to give me the DVDs for the first two seasons, naturally I jumped at it. And guess what? I'm addicted!

I watch episodes back to back. I love the characters and the twisted scenarios that come up every episode. And I have come to appreciate the role that Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and yes, even George W. played while in that office. I also realized how difficult it is to enact legislation in a country which is a bit more mature than my own country. So I can only imagine the horse trading that must be going on for getting a single piece of law passed.

Now you know that both the above series have a bit of continuity in them. As in, the events of the previous episodes have some bearing on the current and future ones. But there are the remarkable sit-coms which I am addicted to as well. First there was M*A*S*H which was, in my opinion, one of the finest shows I watched growing up. Then of course is Seinfeld, which is still the funniest series I have ever seen in my life. And then came Coupling, the british series which is currently my second ranked funniest series. All of these make me want to watch the next episode as soon as one ends...and then the next...and then the next...and then the next.

And then of course, there's the Big Bang Theory. My third ranked all time favorite comedy series. Once again hilarious, smart, intelligent and sometimes just plain crazy. The only thing that makes BBT stay alive with me more is that the series is still ongoing and is currently in it's 4th season. It is also the only series to which I do not have access to DVDs of, so I am stuck to watching these episodes on free streaming site which have a time limit on how much one can watch in one shot without having to pay for it.

Now the question I have for you folks is: Do you have a series that made you watch one episode after another?

PS: If your answer is "24", then please spare me!

708, but never a dull moment

Did I say before that I love my car? Ummm, maybe a few times. Ok, a lot of times! Fact is, I really love my Skoda Laura. And now I love it even more.

My lovely Laura ran for 708 km in one tankfull. That's almost a mileage of 13km/l in peak city traffic conditions! Isn't that fantastic?!?!

This along with the additional pleasure of driving an absolutely gorgeous car. One of the most rewarding things at the end of the day is to drive my automatic car in peak traffic and not be bothered with shifting gears or getting irked with the honking that is going on all around me. Just me. my music and a lovely drive.

But now here comes the rant.

It's the part after I have gotten out of the car is when the problem starts. The amount of honking that the people in this country are capable of is not even funny. I did this experiment standing outside my office building - which I might add is in the middle of a mostly residential area - to figure out how long the traffic outside can go without honking. Guess how long it was between honks?

4 seconds was the longest pause!

4 seconds!

That's insane!

There should be a law enacted that puts a fine of Rs 500 for anyone who honks.

The country would be a lot better place if it got a little bit quieter.

Her first cast

My little girl twisted her foot getting into the school bus after school. Luckily she has no fracture, but the doc has advised immobility for 2 weeks, so she's sitting still wearing her first cast.

She was so embarrassed that I shot the entire cast making process :)

Will post the video later :D

Sent from my iPhone

A craving for Rock On

Let me begin by saying that I absolutely love the movie! I think it is one of the most flawlessly made movies - not just Hindi movies - of all time...a timeless classic that I would love to watch even 20 years from now. But that's not the point of the post.

I used to carry the Rock On DVD in my bag so that I could watch it often after it was released. Then a colleague of mine asked to borrow the DVD. No harm, right? WRONG!

I got the DVD back as if it had come back from the dry cleaners...or worse thro a car wash! It had so many scratches, it looked like Baloo the Bear from Jungle Book had stuck it to his back while he was scratching it against a tree. And as with any scratched DVDs, it gets stuck as soon as the plot gets interesting. I f'n hate that!

Now the big problem is that I had not ripped the DVD as soon as I got it...so I had lost a perfectly good movie and I couldn't watch it when I wanted...which is the objective of buying a DVD in the first place.

So I went on FlipKart.com and ordered it...and it landed in less than 3 days with free shipping and at a discount to boot! I was impressed!

Guess what the first thing was that I did? I ripped the disc :) Yep, in Apple TV resolution as well as iPhone resolution. And now that I have it, I can watch my DVD in peace whenever I want. And I'm never lending my movies to anyone. Ever!

RIP, Sir

My friend's father passed away two nights ago. May the Force give him, his mom, his sister, his wife, his kids and his entire family the strength to deal with this.

I'm here if you need me.

The score does not tell the truth

Another round of golf. Another tale of woe. Another parameter to misjudge.

A very early morning tee off from the back nine saw me hit 6 pars, a bogey and two double bogeys to shoot 5 over for 9 holes. This was including two putts that lipped out that had no business not dropping in. Aah, to hell with it, says I. That's how the game goes. Some days they drop, some days they don't.

The front nine started very nicely. A great drive, a delicious 30 yard chip and then a 3 foot putt to make birdie. I should have known that it was going to be all downhill from there. Two magnificent double bogeys, four bogeys and two pars later, I had scrambled down to a fabulous 13 over round for the day :(

Problem is, the score does not show how badly I played. I played some exquisite shots to compensate for absolutely horrible shots elsewhere. A few absolutely beautiful chips and a few putts which either dropped or didn't made me feel better about myself and my game, but overall I was soooooooooo disappointed with myself and my game.

I need to do better. I know my game has the potential, but I am not playing up to it yet. Need to work harder.

Flipkart rocks!

I bought a couple of things on Flipkart.com, you know, DVDs, books, etc. And was really impressed! Not only are the books available cheaper than at most places, they are also delivered home FOR FREE! And the delivery is prompt and speedy.

Full marks to you, Flipkart. You have found a repeat customer.

Sent from my iPhone

The only one there

I got this weird reminder on my phone two days ago. It said "Challenge to meet at Koshy's" for the 8th of Dec between 7pm and 8pm.

Now I remember sitting with a few folks where we were talking about how friends decide a time and place to meet a few years later...cause in today's world, we don't know where we are going to be. So the experiment was to pick a random day and see if we could keep a date with each other.

Naturally, I landed up curious to see who all were there...assuming anyone even turned up.

Guess what?

I was the only one there!

I sat by myself for an hour, hoping that someone would turn up. But alas, I left alone.

40,000 and 13

What's the relationship between those two numbers, you ask?

My lovely Skoda Laura just crossed into the 40,000 km zone since I bought the car in September of 2007. That's a lot of comfy mileage that I have clocked in this super car. A few long drives to Pune and Goa, a few short trips in and around Bangalore and a LOT of drives to the golf courses around here. Which brings me to the second number.

Played 13 over at KGA on Saturday. An early tee off from the back nine saw me play bogey golf for 9 holes with 2 pars and 2 double bogeys with every other hole played to a bogey. In this time, my partner and I had already lost the nine hole matchplay by being a hole down. Then started the front nine where I made birdie to square the match and my partner and I quickly ran up a 3UP lead. Finally managed to play to 4 over on the back nine to make it 13 over (85) for the round.

Also, this was the first time I was playing with the adjustments made to my Scotty Cameron putter on thursday. Until then, I had to change my putting stance and grip to be able to square the putter. Now, the putter has 4˚ less lie and has 2˚ more loft on it which makes it easier for me to hold in a regular putting stance. Only problem now is that I am missing more putts to the right, something that I need to correct soon.

A clean bill of health?

Now if you remember a post a few days back ("A weird dream"), I dreamt of my buddy from engineering college who passed away a year and half back. I just happened to mention this to my friend the next day and he said, in a solemn voice I might add, that nothing is a coincidence and that I should get a health check up done.

Now most of you who know me know this about me. I am not superstitious nor am I religious and I certainly don't believe in this stuff. But something about the way he said it got me spooked.

So I scheduled an appointment at the Columbia Asia Hospital for a general health checkup yesterday. Had to go there early in the morning without breakfast for a bunch of blood tests, x-rays and ECG tests. Then some breakfast and more blood tests after two hours. Then the long wait until the results land in my hands...which would be 5pm in the evening.

So when I land up at the hospital to collect my reports, they tell me that the reports will be available when I come for my doctor review appointment the next day. Bull Shit, I say. I was asked to come at 5pm and I'm not leaving without my reports.

So I did get them.

Blood pressure 120 / 70.

Almost all blood tests normal...except for LDL and Triglycerides which are on the higher side. These have always been on the higher side for me ever since I can remember, so am not sure if it has to do with something genetic about me or something of my lifestyle that is causing it. Will know when I go for my doctor's appointment in the evening.

X-ray normal.

ECG report not received yet, so will know by end of day today.

All in all, I'm hoping to be given a clean bill of health...and for the doctor to tell me that I'm doing fine and that I should continue with the debauchery in my life :-D

Fingers crossed!

How can anyone be late for a timesheet?

We have an early morning slot at KGA for tee off at 7:05am. What that means is that unlike the usual state where we land up at the golf course and wait for a slot to open up, we actually HAVE a slot booked 5 days in advance where all we have to do is land up on time and tee off.

How hard can it be, right?

Wrong!

Some guys don't take that little thing called time for granted and will be landing 30 minutes past our scheduled tee off time.

There's an hour of sleep I'm never getting back.

Sent from my iPhone

Ganne ka russ after a looooong time

Have you guys tried Cane Crush? It's apparently a chain of food joints serving sugarcane juice. It's clean, hygienic and economical (Rs 10 per glass).

Had a glass yesterday and couldn't stop at one. Took me all the way back to my engineering college days when we used to stop by the local stall after a day of studying hardly :)

But what it really reminded me of was a time when I was in the 8th standard and had gotten a bad case of jaundice. As part of my recovery, I was told to have a lot of sugarcane juice to build up calories in my body for it to fight back. So what my mom used to do was go to a particular sugarcane juice stall - which was quite a distance away from where we lived - just to get the juice for me. That wasn't enough, tho. She would make the stall guy thoroughly clean the crusher and then get the first bottle full for me. Amazingly sweet of her isn't it?

Thanx Mom!

Sent from my iPhone

A weird dream

I am at a beach resort of some kind. I am with people I don't know. I am carrying my camera. And there's some activity happening on the first floor of an incomplete building structure.

And then, as I am walking towards the beach, I notice a few people playing beach volleyball. And all of a sudden, I notice one of the guys playing there. It's my buddy from Engineering College. I say "Uddhav, what the hell are you doing here, man?" and he says "Hey Mally" recognizing the fact that he was one of the first few people to start calling me Mally. And I say to him "you're supposed to be dead" and then he just smiled.

That's right. Uddhav Jagadale died April of last year while on a business trip to Malaysia.

Wonder what made him pop up in my dream.

Food poisoning, top of the table and terrible strokes

So I dropped the ball the last couple of days. So sue me :)

Had an impromptu evening dinner with a friend. We were supposed to go to a photography exhibition by a friend and since it was close to another friend's house, his wife wanted to join us. So we went, looked at some fairly ordinary pictures (decided I could have an exhibition of my own after seeing this one) and then went back to my friend's place where the evening progressed along just fine.

As the time approached 8:45pm, I was getting queasy as the Manchester United game against Rovers was on and I was missing it. So the TV was switched on and I had the pleasure of watching United thump Rovers 7-1 with Berba hitting 5 goals! What a game! We were level with points against Chelsea, had recovered the entire goal difference we had with them and were temporarily sitting at the top of the table! Now the only thing needed was for Chelsea to draw or lose their match on Sunday to keep us on top and to make this a good weekend.

We had an early morning tee off at KGA on Sunday. I was having a disturbed tummy for a while, but that got aggravated more during the round and I had to go for a "download" after 9 holes. Was definitely off my stroke, was unhappy with the way I played but wasn't entirely unhappy with the score (13 over) for the round. It's a different story that my partner and I lost the match 5&4 and got quite convincingly thumped!

The saving grace was getting back home and watching Chelsea manage a weak draw against Newcastle and ensuring that we are sitting at the top of the table with a 2 point cushion!

All in all, a nice weekend. Could have been better, but then again, could have been a lot worse. So I will take it the way it was.

Lights and roller coasters

Do you ever feel like you are on a roller coaster in life?

One moment, everything is fine and looking like it's on the way up. A steady rhythm clicking under your feet as you shuffle thro the day. And then all of a sudden…BAM! The floor leaves your feet and you find yourself plunging down towards some hell hole drawing you nearer like a magnet whose pull you cannot fight. It could be one call, one meeting or even a chance reading on someone's blog. And just when you thought gravity is going to crush you under the might of it's force, you pull out of that free fall are gliding on your path like the hell hole you just left behind never existed. Once again, the chance call from a friend or a piece of good new or just a funny video someone share on Facebook saves the moment, presenting the necessary distraction.

And then another plunge and another lift…and then another…and then another…and yet another. Until at the end of the day, you are exhausted and just want to sleep. But the ride does not end there.

Even in your dreams, you plunge and you soar and then plunge again, only to wake up covered in sweat to some unthinkable nightmare that you cannot even remember. And then a peaceful slumber in the arms of a beautiful dream…that you could not remember yet again in the morning…only remembering that you had a nice dream and that it made you smile as you woke up.

What has all of this got to do with Lights, you ask?

Absolutely nothing! He he he…

The only reason lights is in the title of the post is because I went out and bought a remote trigger for my speedlight yesterday. Yep, it's one of those cheapy Chinese made stuff that is good only for firing a strobe remotely and nothing else. But I tell myself that I am not even fit to be called a novice in this area and therefore don't deserve a PocketWizard or ElinKrome set of transceivers. So with my wallet a couple of thousand rupees lighter and the spring in my step a couple of inches higher, I tried out the combination last night. And came away with a big grin on my face :)

Just thought I will let you know. After all, I won't have a rant every day to put up here. And so this is my attempt at blogging at least once every day to get back into the habit.

It's what you say later that matters

Yep, this is me trying to get back to regular blogging. I know it's been a couple of days, but I've had a bit of a back ache, so sue me.

So you might recollect that I mentioned my buddy is in town. He is usually the one who carries my stuff from the US and his family is the one I piss off most with all my shopping packages landing on their doorstep :) Anyway, I had bought the Vibram FiveFingers (the most comfortable pair of shoes I have ever worn) online and needed someone to help me carry them back. Enter DC. So I got these guys together so one could pass on my shoes to the other to carry back. Lo and behold, they hit it off and had a lot of fun. So naturally, when this guy from the US lands up, we get DC involved and meet up for a drink…and that was last week.

DC invited us for dinner on friday night and most of the evening was spent ragging each other mercilessly…mostly everyone ganging up against me to try and get the better of me…apparently I am hard to rag…

That got me thinking (yeah, what were the odds) about what we say out openly and what we don't. I mean, when we were all together, we spent most of the time screwing the other guys…all of whom are close friends. How often do we say out loud what these friends mean to us…especially when they are not around?

Which makes me think…ideally, your best friend is someone who stands by you and speaks in your favour when you are NOT around. Anyone can give lip service and support you when you are there to defend yourself, but of all those people, how many of them would give their full throated defense to your case when you were not around. How many such compliments would you get? How many would you give?

Do we really know who our friends are any more?

You can make out from my tone that I have gotten even more cynical than what was earlier believed possible. Meatloaf was right…"Life is a lemon and I want my money back"

The world is your spittoon, the country your trash can

I'm finally back…after 6 month and a few days. Yeah I know…this is becoming my usual theme. I promise to be back and then there's a long silence and then a post.

So here's hoping to an improved attitude towards blogging and trying to be regular. I am immediately reminded of Master Yoda's statement: "Do…Or do not…There is no try". Now you know why I am not a Jedi Master yet. Wish I was tho. Would have loved to do the Jedi mind trick on so many people.

Now to the reason for the irate heading. And here starts the rant…

My buddy and I were walking from UB City to the office (had to do some shopping at the Apple Store) and we had to cross the hellish intersection that is Richmond Circle. In the space of a few minutes that it took us to cross the road, we heard so many car honks that we could not hear each other think, least of all hear each other's voice. And every one of those people who honked somehow had the impression that honking would make them move faster.

On top of that, in the same time span, I counted at least 7 people spitting or throwing trash out of their car. What the hell is wrong with these people? And to top it all, the traffic police constable at the intersection was the model of apathy. Can't really blame him for being apathetic, cause he probably sees what I saw a few hundred times every day. It's easy to get desensitized when you are overexposed to these things.

Now that got me thinking as I was driving back home from office. It was a rare occasion that I was leaving office before peak traffic hit and so made it smoothly home in 20 minutes. As you folks would have read in my earlier posts, I have a very intelligent car that is the Skoda Laura. On it's mainframe display, I get readouts on how many kilometers I have driven since the engine was turned on, what speed I was driving at and most importantly, how much fuel I consumed on my drive. And to my wonder, I had run a mileage of 14.7km/l for my 20 minute drive back from work. Which meant I had consumed less than a liter of diesel to get from office to my home. The worm in my head started chewing on something.

The next day, I hit peak traffic on my way to work and noticed that this trip, I had averaged 9.8km/l and taken 40 minutes of starts and stop traffic to get to office. Hmmmm! That evening, my buddy and I were meeting for a drink at The Beach in Indiranagar and thought it would be best to drive straight from work. Guess what…we covered just 3km from the office in 41 minutes! 41 minutes! That's insane. By the time we got there, we had spent almost an hour in the car (for a short 8km) drive and averaged 8.2km/l.

Now let's do a bit of math.

If I did not hit traffic every day, I would average between 3 km/l and 5 km/l better during every drive. My car has a huge 60l fuel tank. Even if I use the pessimistic number of 3 km/l, that means that my car would have run for a hundred and eighty kilometers more on the same amount of fuel! That's a saving of more than 15 liters of fuel…translating to more than Rs 600 for every tank of fuel I pump into my car! An improvement of 25%!

Here's another interesting figure. I have had my car for the last 3 years and am on the verge of hitting 40,000 kilometers in it. That means I am averaging about 12,500 kilometers every year. Now extending the same calculation as above, considering the same efficiency (that is not completely accurate as I tend to do long drives - I love to drive - and that drives up the fuel efficiency even higher…so we are still pessimistic in our calculations), we would be able to drive the same amount of kilometers every year with 33% less fuel. Let's see how much we save, shall we?

12,500 kilometers x current average of 11 km/l = ~ 1140 liters of fuel = ~Rs 48,000.

12,500 kilometers x efficient average of 14 km/l = ~ 890 liters of fuel = ~Rs 37,000.

A saving of Rs 11,000! Eleven Thousand Rupees saved by one car! Just by improving traffic conditions and therefore fuel efficiency!

Not to mention the implied benefits of lesser smog (from lesser stops and starts), lower noise pollution (hopefully) and time saved for everyone.

And here's the kicker! As per the Petroleum Conservation Research Association, 51% of India's domestic fuel consumption is done by transport vehicles…cars, busses, trucks, rickshaws and all the rusty old things you see on the road that make you want to get a Tetanus shot just from looking at them. From the same PCRA website, India has more than 75 Million registered vehicles. Think about the sucker punch I'm about to throw at you.

If every vehicle saved Rs 10,000 annually due to better fuel efficiency achieved due to better traffic conditions, we would have saved…wait for it…16 BILLION DOLLARS!

16 BILLION DOLLARS!

Say it again after me…

16 BILLION DOLLARS! Savings!

Savings worth 16 BILLION DOLLARS!

Imagine what part of that money can be invested to better the traffic conditions going forward. And as technology improves, we will have better, more fuel efficient cars which will only improve our savings number.

How's that for analysis?

But for sure, there are people already doing this analysis. From the PCRA page again, we learn the New Delhi alone burns more than 990 Crore Rupees due to stopping at traffic lights. Just imagine!

And here I come back to the heading of the post…part of the money that we save can go towards putting trash cans every few feet. I think the current problem is both lack of social decorum as well as lack of opportunity to demonstrate it. To give you my example, I carry litter in my pockets until I see a trash can (which can sometimes be once I reach home). More trash cans and a cleaner city will only shame some people into not spitting everywhere and making this country a better place.

Seoul Curry, lots of Kimchi and people touching my feet

Ok, I'm sure you think I'm getting way ahead of myself when I say that people touched my feet. To be really sure if I'm kidding or not, you'll just have to wait for a bit and read along :-)

I was in Seoul (South Korea for those who don't know) for a few days helping out my counterparts in that part of the world with a customer who needed particular expertise (which we have in India). Naturally, I wanted to see the city and what it had to offer outside of Kimchi, Shoju and, as I had heard a lot about before, the prettiest women in all the Asian countries.

We landed at the Incheon Airport and a good hour later, mainly thanks to the ridiculous traffic in Seoul, we had reached the Intercontinental COEX (the tower you see on the right). After checking in, we decided to check if there was a decent place to eat, mainly because I was famished from not having eaten most of Tuesday and very little on the flight. The last thing I wanted was to be sleep deprived AND hungry during my meetings that were to start the next day.

So we walked around, finding Sushi and seafood places, but nothing that meant wholesome tummy filling food. And we definitely did not want to go and order something we did not know anything about. We did find this tho (apparently everything here is Samsung) :-)

The meetings in the office were very nice, cordial and very halting. A few of the people in office had trouble communicating fluently in English and they would frequently switch into Korean and then someone would translate the same to us. It made the meeting look remarkably long. The local team there was very nice to take us for a traditional Korean dinner where we all sat at low stools and ate what I thought was a hell of a lot of food. Not to mention way too many types of Kimchi to be seen on one table! The conversation was very nice, in a halting sort of a way.

The next day was the most bizarre of them all. We went to meet the customer where, for two and half hours, everyone in the room spoke rapid fire Korean to discuss the problem statement and the possible solution. Every now and then, I would lean over to one of my Korean colleagues to check if I was following the conversation correctly, mainly picking up on the technical terms that were in English. It was the most bizarre meeting I had ever been a part of. After a long time, they distilled the conversation to 5 questions that I was to answer. "Speak very slowly" advised my colleague. Wise woman, that one. So I slowly recited my answers to them, which were ultimately translated in Korean anyways for clarity. And after a bit, the meeting was over. Everyone bowed and said "Kamsahamida" which is Thank You in Korean and that was that.

We had what my Korean colleague termed as 'Military soup' for lunch. It's called Bulgogi and literally means sweet meat. It was cooked right on our table and was DELICIOUS! Absolutely outstanding. I would recommend it to anyone who's going to Korea. It's marinated beef cooked with herbs and vegetables and noodles made from sweet potato (these noodles look transparent

and are a little more difficult to eat as compared to regular noodles). The entire combination is really yummy and I ate till I could not eat any more.

That left a little bit more work and then a trip around the city to check out what it had to offer. So we worked around the schedule and used the subway system to get to the City Hall station. It's quite easy to use the subway system, mainly because signs have English on them as well. Even the ticketing machines have English as an option and they have single journey tickets to every place. City Hall station was closest to Seoul Plaza and the Deoksu Palace. So there we went.

The pins tell you where the pictures are taken.

You can see all my Seoul Pictures here (tho I guess you have to be my friend on Facebook to see them…which I am assuming you already are, since you're reading my blog in the first place).

All thro the subway ride, people kept staring at my Vibram FiveFingers, everyone very curious about these shoes that they had never seen before in their life and this strange dark skinned man who was wearing them. And then they would look up and see my Joby Gorillapod attached to my Nikon D90 and they would have an even more curious look on their face. 'Where did this man come from?' While walking around the Deoksu Palace compound, I had a couple of Chinese gentlemen walk over and ask me (in broken Engrish) where I got my tripod from. Another Korean gentleman asked me how he could get shoes like mine ('They rook so comfortaberr!'). I quickly realized that both these items on me were great conversation starters.

The Seoul Plaza was hosting the Friendship Festival and there were a lot of colorful performance going on. We stayed for a few (the Russian troupe was fantastic), but could not stay long as we had to get on with the itinerary. So we headed down the street from the Plaza to take the Seoul City Tour Bus (we took it mainly because it costs the equivalent of USD10 and that's a great price to roam the city while having the ability to hop on and off the bus at any stop).

From here, we headed out to Namsong market which is supposed to be the place to buy electronics stuff. It was quite a disappointment as it looked more like a Sim Lim Towers from Singapore. We left in a hurry. On the way back to the Seoul City Tour Bus (SCTB) stop, we were treated to a fashion show in the mall. Pretty cool, watching the pretty Korean women waltzing up and down the runway to Vanessa Mae's music.

Next stop: Itaewan (pronounced Eat-A-Won). This is the tourist beat where there's something for every tourist, from shopping to eateries to massages. And you get to see way more foreigners than Koreans here. It's a nice place to while away your time, but nothing spectacular.

A weird thing happened at Itaewan. While the local were used to seeing foreigners be a bit different, but they sure as hell did not expect a brown skinned man walking down the streets in shoes that looked so different and that they had never seen before. At least 20 people asked me to show them my shoes and then launched into several questions (where did you get them, how much are they for, do you get them in more colours, how comfortable are they, do pebbles hurt). One guy actually bent down to touch my foot to feel the texture of the shoe (see I told you someone touched my feet) and then walked away with animated gestures…my guess is that he was planning his next purchase already :-)

After a bit of shopping, and mainly getting tired of that area, we headed to the Namsan Seoul Tower.

This tower is not that fascinating, and not as tall as the Minara Kuala Lumpur (where you can look down at the tallest twin towers in the world…the Petronas Towers), but still this was something that my Korean colleagues had told me I had to see, so I went. The best part of the trip to the tower was the cotton candy on the way up to the tower and the hanging human wire figures which set out nicely against the blue sky of the Korean evening. Even the view from the top of the tower was average. You could however see the traffic jams of Seoul clearly from way up there.

The thing that I wanted to do most was to visit Dongdaemon Gate, Korea's national treasure #1. So it was off to the subway station and a ride to the Dongdaemon Arts and Crafts Museum station. Even in the subway, people kept staring at my footwear. One guy, with a bevy of cameras hanging off him, asked me more about the shoes and then asked me if he could take a picture. Sure, I said. And so he shot off some 5 or 6 shots of the shoes, then politely thanked me and got off the next station.

The walk to the Dongdaemon Gate passed several malls where there were occasional stage performances with locals gyrating wildly to very peppy local music. It would have been fun if we hadn't been running out of time. So to the gate we walked. And it really was a nice place. Old, traditional and traffic running all around it. I tried to capture a long exposure of the gate and here is the result.

And that was the end of the day…and we had one more day to go.

So the next day started off at Namsangol Village, a small area that has been restored to represent the housing of the aristocracy of the olden days.

Needless to day, the houses look like miniatures of the palaces that we had been to yesterday. I soon tired of the curved roofs. But here we got to see the making of tofu (bean curd) the traditional way, saw a traditional Korean wedding taking place (with a hapless White guy and a Korean (I'm presuming) woman) and played some of the sports that the olden day folk would play. It was a nice tour of the living conditions of those times…and these people sure lived well.

From there, a bit of shopping (I finally found my Tag Heuer Track spectacle frames) and then the last thing…the Bongeunsa Buddhist Temple which was conveniently right across from my hotel.

A temple built on the slopes of a mountain, it very nicely follows the curves of the mountain as you climb higher and higher towards the praying hall. And it has a HUGE statue of the great man himself, the Buddha.

Here, people had put up colourful lanterns (my guess is to remember the loved ones they had lost over the years). It was a really pretty site. But the prettiest site for me was this one below…

And all at once, the trip was over. We were heading back to the airport and back to our desh. That did not stop me from doing a bit of perfume and alcohol shopping on the way :-)

All in all, here's to Seoul with it's beautiful women, it million types of Kimchi, it's Shoju, it's polite people with their broken up Engrish and absolutely beautiful weather. I had fun there :-)

A bizarre day

I had known for a while that I had to travel to Seoul, South Korea for
work this week, but I didn't know that the VISA process will take so
long. The consulate here wanted notarized documents in original (thank
the force they did not ask in triplicate) and the office guys in Seoul
forgot to send the documents via express delivery.

Naturally, chaos ensued.

It came down to the fact that if I did not get my VISA by Monday
evening, I would have to call off the trip. Thankfully that came thro
and so I was on for the journey. Here comes the hiccup.

I needed to travel to Chennai for a day today, something that had
business implications and ergo could not be pushed ahead. That meant
that I would have to fly to Mumbai from Chennai (as the passport was
there for the VISA stamping) and collect the passport at the airport.

And here began my day...

A flight to Chennai, a failed attempt (read missed flight...Damn You,
Indian Airlines for closing the counter 5mins early) to get to Mumbai
sooner and eventually taking a flight that took forever to land in
Mumbai.

To top this, I needed to pick up currency in Mumbai, but the ATM
machines in chennai refused to cooperate with me. So the inevitable
mad dash from the airport to the ATM happened and I got my $$$s in my
hand. Now the final hurdle...reaching the airport in time.

Which I did!

Checked in...ate something (been hungry the whole day) and now am
seated in the flight with an almost dead cell phone battery (being
charged by my handy Sanyo USB charger), blogging from the phone and
looking forward to a couple of quick drinks and a direct flight to ZZZ
land.

And thus comes to close my crazy day. Dare I ask how your day was? ;-)

Blogged from my iPhone

A long time ago...

Thirty six years ago to be precise, an abomination on the face of this earth was created. This useless weight on this earth has trundled around and stumbled along in life, starting from becoming a boy, then a man, then a father and finally an annoyance to everyone who knows him.

And yet, today, so many of these people stood up and wished him a happy birthday and completely overwhelmed him. He was touched by a few thoughtful acts by people, kind and considerate statements from quite a few and mainly, warm wishes from so many people who accepted the abomination and learnt to live with it.

I thank you all for making my scourge-of-a-birthday a lot more tolerable.

Songs have such acute memory recall

I was driving home last night and, as usual, the music was playing out loud in the car.

What was different this time was that every time a song would come on, my mind was going back to a time when I either heard the song for the first time or something special was happening with the song playing in the background.

I floated from the pages of a book, to a dance show, to a stage performance, to a bus ride, to a restaurant. And just like that, I was home…floating on a cloud of memories, all of them triggered by as simple a thing as a song coming on.

I've had the same experience with perfumes, but this was far wilder. And there were so many memories that crowded my car as I drove home.

And I realized that I enjoy these songs, the ones which have a memory hard coded in their MP3 tag, a lot more than most. Must be something that makes them sweeter.

More than a 1000 people have something to talk about

So I might as well scream from the mountain tops.

I LOVE MY NEW SHOES!

This might make me sound gay (and as Seinfeld rightly pointed out…Not that there's anything wrong with it), but I just have to tell you guys about the shoes I have. They're called the Vibram (pronounced wii-br-um) Five Fingers and they are the closest I have felt to barefoot while still wearing shoes. You have to check these out.

I got these shoes two weeks ago and ever since I have put them on, I have not wanted to put any other shoe on…and if I have to, I do so grudgingly.

Now these shoes don't exactly look like the shoes you are used to. These are distinctly different and actually have a pocket for each toe, hence the name Five Fingers. They look a bit different and so get used to people staring at you. If I'm in the elevator, the whole elevator stares. If I'm in the bus at the airport taking me to the airplane, the entire bus stares. If I'm in the office, the entire office has asked.

Since the time I have gotten these shoes, there must be at least a thousand Tamilians with a new story to talk about. And at least 200 Bangaloreans. Which should tell you how much time I have been spending in Chennai for the last few weeks.

Long story short, the shoes attract attention…and usually the wrong sort of attention with people sniggering or smiling or just shaking their head at the contraption I am wearing on my foot. And most of your friends will try to make your life a living hell over the shoes. Only 2 out of those >1000 people have looked at them and said "They look really comfy. I wanna get them."

Luckily for me, I really don't care about what anyone has to say. And at the end of the day, my feet thank me. And that's what matters to me.

Thank you Vibram for creating this fantastic product and I am proud to be an exponent of this fantastic piece of footwear.

My feet are sooooo much happier these days!

Another reason to hate the IPL

Now I'm a long time cricket basher, so this should not come as a
surprise. But this tops everything.

I thought it had begun well. I was checking into the Park Sheraton in
Chennai and was told that the arrival of the Mumbai Indians was
imminent.

And just like that, I saw God that day. Walking calmly and smiling at
everyone. What a man, that Sachin Tendulkar!

The next day, I realized that despite me telling the hotel I was
staying the entire week, there was a goof-up in my reservation which
had me checking out on Tuesday. That was compounded by the fact that
the IPL teams were staying there and the security teams had taken up
additional rooms on short notice. Suddenly, the hotel was chocker
block full and not a single room available. Guess who was on the
receiving end of this charade?

So I had to check out, go to a hotel called Savera (which by the way
used to be a hotel beyond my grade when I worked for Digital and which
has now sunk to a pathetic hotel with poor lighting in the room, bad
bathrooms and an AC that barely works...not to mention poor Internet
availability in the rooms), stay for one night and then check back in
to the Park.

Just because of these IPL fools, I could not send the couple of mails
that had to be sent last night and had to spend my night in a hole.

I hate the IPL and cricket in general.

Blogged from my iPhone

This nightmare should tell you a lot

I had a great round of golf yesterday. Played with my buddies at KGA,
didn't start very well, but finished strongly to come home with an 8
over for the round which had three birdies and could have had 2 more.

But that is not the point of this post.

It's about this dream - actually it qualifies more as a nightmare -
last night.

I had a flight to catch in the morning and had a fairly disturbed
sleep, waking up every half an hour or so to check if it was time. And
somewhere during that patchy sleep, I remember this...

I was standing - in my dream - on the tee box with mu buddies and it
was my turn to tee off. And tee off I did, the ball soaring off on the
perfect trajectory ...only to see the ball flying back at me and
landing back at my feet.

I woke up with a start.

I read into the dream. What does it tell you?

Blogged from my iPhone

DC sucks!

I'm out having a drink with my friend Aarti and her husband Debashish
Chakrabarti (DC for short). We're having the drink at the Jaymahal
Palace and they are showing the IPL matches here and guess
what...today the match is between Mumbai Indians and Deccan Chargers.

MI just thumped DC...and as the match drew to a close, another patron
walked by saying "DC sucks!"

You should have seen Dc's expressions as he heard this statement! "You
have no idea how much that cuts into my heart" his words verbatim!

And now he's arguing with me about the bill..which I am sitting
on...physically :-)

I agree with the other patron...DC sucks! Hahahaha....sorry DC! he he.

A candle lit dinner and a fabulous game

Saturday was Earth Hour. It meant most people in the know shut off their lights between 8:30pm and 9:30pm to save energy and to show solidarity with the energy conservation movement that's gathering momentum all across the globe.

I was pleasantly surprised to see 90% of my apartment complex go dark and stay that way for the entire hour. And since it is slap bang in the middle of dinner time for most Indians, we had a nice dinner in candle light. Not the least bit romantic, but functional nonetheless.

What followed was the match between ManU and Bolton where Berba showed all his detractors why is is worth the money paid for him. His beautiful control over the ball, a couple of amazing flicks (one which was ridiculously hard to do and was saved by Jaaskelienen) and then a couple of goals. But the highlight was the completely stupid own goal by the Bolton defender who neatly slotted the ball into the far corner of his own net.

A nice game, a return to the top of the league table and a delicious match to look forward to when we host Chelsea next week. Hope we get over the exertions of Champions League football since we are on the way to Bayern Munich on wednesday.

All the best, United. Two more cups to go!

What a round, Sirji!

Oooh babe…

So we teed off this morning for a nice round at BGC. The weather was hot, but the breezy morning promised a good round. And good it was! Oh yeah, it was!

It all started with a horrible drive and a lost ball which put a triple bogey as the very first entry on the score card. A bogey followed soon after. And I was thinking that the round was going to hell in a golf cart (and that was the only golf cart on the course, so that should tell you something about the score card and it's affordability). At this time, I had to remind myself that the two holes had passed and that there was nothing I could do but to play the next 16 holes the best I could. I promptly put in a 20 footer for birdie on the very next hole :-)

On the old Index 1 (the current Index 3), I hit a pipper of a driver to the center of the fairway and was 90 yards to the pin. And then I hit one of the best shots of the round…to 6 inches from the pin. A tap in birdie.

The very next hole brought the best of the round. A good tee shot yet again and a decent approach left me 25 feet to the pin with a double break. And the putt rolled from right to left at first and then straightened and went left to right, all this while with just the right speed to plonk into the back of the cup. Back to back birdies.

The amazing part of the round was that I had a total of FIVE birdies. On the 18th, I was left with a 15 footer downhill putt. And my partner mentioned that I should put in one more, just for the sake of the round…and I DID.

Thro the entire round, I read the line and the speed myself and that made the 5 birdies even more special. And at the end of the round, I had a score of 8 over. A decent score. I would have called it a great round, but I missed at least 6 putts by a whisker (or bad luck) for birdies, so I could have been at a lot lower score. But like every round of golf, you take what you get and you get what you take.

But I had fun…and we won…and that rhymes :-)

Epitome of inconsistency

Ok, so I'm going to talk about golf again.

I'm sorry, but I can't help myself. It's the one sport I have played (and I have played a lot, believe me) that is at the same time gratifying and frustrating. It is unlike any other sport that I have ever played and challenges you to better yourself, even when things are not going well.

Let me illustrate.

So a few people from the office and I were playing golf at the Bangalore Golf Club (BGC from now on). I had come in on the back of a few good rounds in the last couple of weeks (a 7 over, 8 over and another 8 over at KGA, which is a tougher course), so I felt pretty confident about my game. The confidence showed as I hit my first tee shot which sailed gloriously away to the fairway 250 yards away. But as I walked up to the ball, I saw it sitting in a horrible lie in a bunker with the only option for me to blast it out and then try to make something with the 3rd shot (thank the force for the Par 5). I did manage to get it out, but the next shot and the one after that left a lot to be desired and just like that, I had double bogey.

OK, I say to myself. Shit happens. Move on to the next hole…which I parred. But after a lovely drive down the fairway, I screwed up again and had double bogey yet again. And that was the story for the rest of the front 9. I came into the club house with a horrible 11 over, more in just 9 holes than my entire 18 hole scores for the past 3 consecutive rounds. Needless to say, I was cursing myself.

What changed was all of that cursing to myself made me angrier about making stupid silly mistakes and to focus more on the game. And with that, I played one under for the next 7 holes. I had a couple of pieces of bad luck on the 17th and 18th making me drop a shot each, but I had played the back 9 to just 1 over, finishing the round with a respectable 12 over (something close to my handicap).

Now while recovering on the back 9 felt really good, I was left with the feeling that I have the game in me to shoot the 1 over on both nines, maybe even shoot under. What I lack thus far is the focus thro every shot in the round.

So for the next round, I am going to try something different. I am going to take 5 seconds and just try to shut my mind even before I get to the ball. Then, once I get to the ball, I will take 5 more seconds than I usually do to visualize the shot. I do this already, but I think I need to spend more time on this to will the shot rather than just swing the club.

Let's see how it works out. You will hear about it right here. Wish me luck!

How can they be happy at a time like this?

I was flipping thro the channels on a lazy Sunday evening and "Jaane Tu…Ya Jaane Na" came on, right about the time when the friends have gone on a drive when the car breaks down.

So while they are cursing the guy who owns the car and are looking for someone to give them a lift, there's not a word about what happens to the car. And then they get into the back of the truck and start singing a song. No worries that their car is in the middle of nowhere.

How can you sing at a time like this?!?!

Or maybe it's the ability to sing especially at a time like that is what I need to learn. Shit happens. Shit happens on a daily basis. So why worry.

Only problem is: My folks would have kicked my ass all the way to Guantanamo Bay had I left my car in the middle of the road. I would have heard about it every time I took the car out for a long drive. Oh, now I remember why I can't sing at a time like this!

But hang on, I didn't get my dad's car to go on long drives anyways! The first long drive I ever did was when I bought my own car. And even if it did break down, there's very little hell my folks could put me thro. After all, it is my car! So I do need to learn to sing at a time like this!

But then, what about all the luggage? What about vandalism? What about people just taking my car apart piece by piece? After all, I am paying for that car with my blood, sweat and tears. Plus it's my first car! So you can say I am quite a bit attached to the car! So I would worry and I would worry some more till I got the car back home and to the garage. Hmmm, another reason not to sing at a time like this.

So much confusion!

I guess movies show a lot of young folks living care free lives and having a ball. And as A-Ha said more than 20 years ago, "The Sun Always Shines On TV". But most of us, who live in the real world, have to worry about these things, but subconsciously we are all fed the same fairy tale. We all want to be care free and really live every moment to its fullest rather than get bogged down by worries.

I guess responsibility is life's way of saying to us: "Hey now, Hey now, Don't dream it's over!"

Aromas of China, Taste buds in Heaven

Felt like eating Chinese food for lunch today, for no rhyme or reason.

After a lot of deliberation, we decided on Aromas of China at Richmond Circle. When we entered, we noticed the festive decor celebrating Chinese New Year and we were informed that they had a special menu for just the occasion. So we decided to order things from that menu and boy, was I blown away!

We ordered the Sliced Chicken with Peanut Butter Sauce (Chicken Bann Bann if I recall correctly) and steamed spiced wantons. The chicken just blew me away. It was spicy and sweet and tangy and my taste buds had a field day. Perfect start.

For the main course, I had chosen the Mongolian Pepper sliced lamb. This dish rocked! The lamb was ever so thinly sliced and cooked so nicely that it seemed to melt in my mouth. And the flavour, oh the flavour! I could not resist ordering more just so I could take it home and eat it again (which I did…for dinner) :-)

I recommend you try it!

I'm looking up...

By me, I mean my blog :-)

OK So I know I have just started writing after a long absence, but that does not mean that I gave up on all the vanity I have accumulated over the years. So obviously I was curious as to how much traffic the blog is getting. Here's what I saw:

I started out towards the end of 2004, so I ignored that year. Between 2005 and 2006, I started to write quite often and saw a nice rise in the number of people coming to my site. The peak seems to be 2007, but there were fewer people coming back to the site.

Here's the astonishing part: I didn't blog much during 2008 and not at all in the whole of 2009, yet there are over 5500 hits and over 3000 unique visitors to my blog. And since I have started, I'm averaging as much as I was during the peak of 2007, so I guess that's a good start.

But there is another thing: 75% of the people who land on my blog usually land there because of some search string they keyed in on Google (usually some variant of the word "bakwas") and they leave within 5 seconds after they realize that these are nothing but the ramblings of a deranged man. But then…

If they stick a little longer than 5 seconds, they invariably tend to stay on for between 2 and 5 minutes. And these are the people who usually come back and stay for between 5 and 20 minutes. And that is the 25% that make my regular returning readers.

And it is to you, my 25%, that I want to thank for putting up with the bu11$h1t that I am infamous for posting up here.

I will keep endeavoring to make my bu11$h1t more tolerable and easier to swallow (yuck!).

Scheduled Maintenance

We usually get these mails from our System Administrators down in the office telling us something or the other in the backend is being upgraded or repaired or installed anew. But this topic has nothing to do with computers at all.

It's about me.

The last couple of weeks, I realized that I had had a little too much of the old nicotine stick, so much so that I had gotten to the point where I was fidgeting for one if I had nothing else to do. And I realized that the more inactivity I had, the more I was going towards it. And not because my body needed it, but because my mind had nothing else to do.

So I waited for the party yesterday afternoon to get over with, had one last stick (for a few days anyways) and have not picked it up since. I know it's been a very short period of time, just 24 hours, but I'm there and I have not felt like lighting up the entire time.

As an added bonus, I have decided to take a break from alcohol as well…for a while at least. Usually, alcohol is the reason people revert to smoking and I don't want to give myself that reason for temptation. Will go into dry dock for a few weeks till my body feels like it used to before I started binging.

So the system is under scheduled maintenance and will be unavailable for smokers and alcohol parties for a few weeks.

Early 30's

I was wishing a friend of mine on her birthday and she mentioned how she was still in her "Early 30's" which got me thinking.

Of course, this thinking has been on for a while now, specifically as I was hurtling towards my 35th birthday last year. The thought all this while was that I was approaching Half Time in this game that is my life and it had been a pretty uneventful first half with no real goals and not enough creativity in the play. So the whole of last year was about changing all the things that are dragging my life - and my performance in the game that is my life - down and to embark on things that stimulate my thought and fire up my spirit.

While I have been successful with a few of those - I have started writing again (still sketching the framework for my novel), my photography is improving (but is still a long LONG way to go), golf has never been better - I have not yet seized my life and taken complete control of it. Which is where the catch is. I still haven't found what I'm looking for (Sorry U2).

And so the chat yesterday about the early 30's rang a bell in the same tiny part of me that is my brain, reminding me of the quest I embarked on more than a year ago.

In a couple of months, I will no longer be in my early 30's. I will have officially stepped across a boundary, all in the matter of a few days, which will carry me into the realm of the late 30's. Everything after that spells O.L.D. Even if you say you're in your early 40's, it's still old, isn't it?

So here I am, on the crossroads of my life, on the threshold of starting the second half of this game. Let's hope I will do better in this half and that this half will be a lot more exciting than the first half (which was boooooring).

Wish me luck!

1411

That's how many Tigers are left in India.

Just to put things in perspective…

1. There is 1 tiger for every 830,000 people in our country.

2. There is 1 tiger for every 5 square kilometers of "Tiger preserve" marked reserve forest.

3. There is 1 tiger for every 100 kilometers within India's Wildlife Sanctuaries.

Let's face it. As a people and as a race, we are not helping the environment. And I know it is easy to say that this is all talk and that nothing happens in this country and that nobody does anything. But think about it. Even if two people read this blog, and those two people tell it to two more people, who tell it to two more people, eventually we will have together raised a lot of awareness and hopefully some action to solve this problem.

After all, this is the Year of the Tiger (according to the Chinese calendar) and we owe it to every single species that shares this planet with us.

If you have a better idea, please share it and we can all get behind it. If you don't, the least you can do is spread the word and increase awareness. Help me.

U.S.B. 2.0

I have a daughter who's 9, but thinks (and behaves) like she's in her teens.

The other day, she kept going on how her hair is not right, how her skin colour is too dark and how she is - in general - quite ugly. No matter what we said or did could change her opinion of herself. And she really is quite a pretty girl (if I might say so myself), so I could not really understand where this was coming from.

So I went to youtube and showed her a couple of videos (specifically this one and this one) to show her how, as a society, we have a distorted and false image of beauty and that it matters more to be a beautiful person from the inside rather than worry about what people think of you from the outside.

I knew I had softened her opinion, but I had not won the battle.

So I went reverse psychology :-)

By some sheer coincidence, an advert for "Ugly Betty" was coming on TV at exactly that time. So I said to her, "yeah, you're right. You're just like her. But you're not really ugly, so you must be stupid! So from now on, I will call you Ugly Stupid Betty…USB for short!" And I would call her that every now and then. Every time she complained about it, I would remind her that I was merely agreeing with her original opinion, so she had no right to complain.

Finally, she looked at me and said "look, see my face, do I look ugly? I don't! So stop calling me USB"

So I changed it to USB 2.0 (Unbelievable Sundar Baby)…for those who don't understand Hindi or Marathi, Sundar means beautiful. So now she's USB 2.0 with the caveat that if she ever reverts to her original opinion, I will revert to the original name.

She hasn't once mentioned anything other than how happy she is with the way she looks the last few days...

Crisis averted! :-D

I hit an Eagle…literally

I had a buddy of mine visiting me in Bangalore and by sheer coincidence, his friend - who happens to be an avid golfer - was also in Bangalore. Needless to say, we planned a round at KGA.

One word can describe the way I played. SHANK!

So obviously I was playing quite badly. But the thing that surprised me the most happened after I had teed off on the 7th hole. My drive landed in the fairway bunker and I had to play an aggressive 8 iron to the green from there from a tough lie. I thinned the ball a bit and it flew over the lip of the bunker and…went and hit an eagle who was beyond my line of sight. I didn't even know I had hit it till my caddies shouted out that I had hit an eagle. From where I was, there was no way I could have hit the green and sunk it.

It was only after I saw this poor bird lying on the ground did I realize what he meant!

I was feeling so shitty then, this poor defenseless bird getting hit with a really hard object traveling at quite some speed.

Luckily, I was there to see the eagle soar and fly off.

Aall is well! Thank the Force!

Answering your iPhone in the cold

A couple of my buddies did a very interesting tour across Europe during the last couple of weeks. They went from Vienna to Budapest to Warsaw to Krakow to Auschwitz to Berlin to Copenhagen to Munich and back! PHEW!

And the killer point…it was snowing quite heavily!

So naturally I was curious as to what they did on the trip (as I want to do a similar trip, but not in the cold).

One of the funniest things I heard was how they answered calls on their iPhone. And the reason its so funny is that since they were in multiple layers of clothing and heavily gloved, and the iPhone needs the user to "slide to answer", they used the strongest muscle in the human body to do it.

They used their TONGUE!!!

Yep, thats right! They used their tongue to slide and answer the phone.

I thought that was really REALLY funny and yet and amazing solution to answering the iPhone in the cold.

Just make sure that the phone is clean and has not been to any disgusting places :-)

What nationality?

Now before there is furore, let me clarify right away. I am a proud Indian thro and thro! Love this country (despite all its flaws and its problems) and very strongly believe that it's people (not the number of them, but their characters and culture) that make India different from any other place in the whole world.

But this post is obviously not about my patriotism…

This worm started with someone accusing me of switching sides when Schumi (Michael Schumacher for all you F1 neophytes) joined the Mercedes F1 team this year. Having been a long time supporter of Schumi and therefore Ferrari, I was very much a part of the Tifosi, the largely in red support group around the Prancing Horse.

And that got me thinking…and I realized:

I am Indian when I watch cricket.

I am Swiss when I watch tennis (except when it's doubles, where I am Indian again).

I am American when I watch golf.

I am British when I watch football.

I used to have dual citizenship (Germany and Italy) while watching F1, but have turned in my Italian citizenship to be an all and out German.

I am Indian again when I watch hockey.

I am Finnish when I watch the World Rally Championship.

I am American again when I watch basketball.

Wow! When it comes to sport, I am a global citizen :-)

Fire!

I landed late last night from Delhi and the last thing I wanted was a
truck catching fire right in the middle of the airport road.

But since luck and I didn't share the best of relationships, there it was.

So we spent 25 minutes waiting for the smoke to clear and then finally got on our way. Hope no one was hurt in the fire.

Q(uite a few) B(eers) A(fter)

Facebook surprised me yesterday. I put a status message that I had landed in Delhi and got a comment back telling me that my buddy from Singapore was also in Delhi. So of course I called him and we agreed to meet in the evening for drinks and dinner.

The place we decided to meet is a lounge called Q'BA (pronounced Queue Baa) at Connaught Place. It turned out to be a surprisingly nice place. Music not too loud, comfortable seating, nice food, great service and an option to either sit in or go to the open roof top seating area. Since it was Delhi in the winters, we chose to sit in.

I ended up meeting a couple of his colleagues (one of them turned out to be from my first company and somehow knew me…go figure!) and his engineering-college-time buddy, a boisterous and animated Mr Amardeep "Dippy" Singh. Together, we regaled ourselves with stories of a long gone era, reliving our days in college and of hostel life. And in the process, consumed quite a bit of alcohol. That led to the idea of going out being relegated to the trash can (I use a Mac, so no recycle bin here) and we decided to order food at Q'BA itself.

Which turned out to be a good idea. The food was nice and we saved ourselves an unnecessary tour of Delhi late in the night trying to hunt for a place serving decent food.

Only thing against Q'BA was the bill…or rather the amount that we had consumed. Thank the force that we had someone with us who earned in S$ :-D

A nice place, I would recommend it to anyone who wants to have a conversation without screaming at the people around while sitting comfortably having nice food…albeit for a price.

Print your blog?

Was surprised to see this link on my blog composition page. What is does is takes your blog link and gives you a preview of what your blog would look like if you do choose to have it printed.

Curious as to what it will look like, I tried it. And it does not look half bad. And I realized my blogging would result in a mammoth 357 page tome!

But here is the catch:

Do I look like an idiot to spend $140 on printing the drivel that I dish out? Insane, isn't it?

But I admit, I am tempted to get the digital copy for $8. No harm in spending $8, no?

What do you say?

i-dont-Pad

Yesterday, I watched Steve Jobs create the now familiar Reality Distortion Field when he took the stage to announce the "iPad". And as expected from Steve, words like Amazing, Fantastic, Revolutionary came thick and fast as the new sleek iPad was unveiled.

It's a really nice looking gadget. 9+ inches of screen real estate, up to 64GB of flash space, Wifi/3G, etc. And to start at $500.

And all thro the presentation, I was thinking to myself…all of this I can do on my 2G iphone! Everything except the iWorks part (which I really don't want to do on my phone). And it became a YAWN device for the moment. For the following reasons:

1. $500 for something that I absolutely don't need and that really does not add any real value.

2. I'm getting started with eBooks, having bought a couple of them from the Amazon store (Kindle edition), but I read them on my iPhone with the free Kindle app. So all I end up paying for is the book…which is 30% of the printed book cost. So that works for me.

3. One more device to carry around. I'm always going to carry my iPhone (I sometimes forget my wallet, but never my iPhone) and I'm going to need my laptop to do stuff the iPad will probably never. Case in point: Aperture! My photograph manipulation software that I need to sync my Nikon to when I'm going crazy with the shutter. So the iPad will be just another device that I will end up carrying with me and will only make my already heavy bag heavier by a kilo (it's only a kilo, so what?), not to mention the accessories that will eventually come with this device.

4. The number of books available for the Kindle is far greater than the ones for the iPad. Of course, you can say that's because there is no iPad today! But in 3 months time, when it is available, I believe the Kindle will still have a decent lead on the books available as compared to the iPad. And since I can buy the Kindle edition books and read them on my iPhone, I don't need to spend $500 for this.

5. I keep coming back to this $500 part, cause it's easy to misrepresent. For 500 bucks, you get the Wifi only 16GB version of the iPad. If you want the 64GB 3G enabled one, it's going to cost me $829! Now that's a lot of money to spend on something that I'm not sure I will use to the fullest today.

6. I wish Apple had put a tiny iSight camera on top of the iPad. Now that would have been a really cool thing to do. Then you could have used the iPad to do video conferencing on so many different platforms. Now you can chat with your friends on Google or Yahoo, but if you need to switch from chat to video, it's not a click away…it's a full device away.

I'm a huge Apple fan and usually love all the things they do. I like the iPad a lot as well, just don' t think it does much for me just yet. What I do believe is that it will probably bomb away the Kindle market and a large part of the Netbook market. It also might be a nice thing to give to kids, rather than a whole computer, but I did not hear too many things from Steve about Parental Controls on this device and so am not sure they thought about this market slice.

I'm hoping that as it happened with the iPhone (cost reduction by $100 within a few weeks of launch), Apple will lower the price for the 3G 64GB variant. Cause that's when I will seriously consider buying this thing. Until then, it's nice to look at, but that's all it is!

Who did you identify with?

As soon as I walked out of the movie theatre, having just watched "3 Idiots", this was the question that sprang first to my mind. It would be superfluous to say that it is a very nice movie and that one should watch it at least once. But all thro the movie, I was seeing my classmates from yesteryears appear before my eyes.

There are so many people I remembered back from my college days while watching the movie. The guy who would pray before every exam and the day of the results; the guy who would cram for 18 hours during exams; the guy who was always scared; the guy who didn't want to be there, but his father wanted him to be there; the guy who would do whatever it took to get more marks.

But I want to know, who did you identify with in the movie? I haven't come across too many Ranchos to believe that many of you identified with him. So am curious as to who you guys identified with the most.

I know one person who in fact was like Rancho. Never studied to get marks, was more interested in learning, was the only person who was calmly sitting having a coffee while everyone around him was doing last minute cramming. But unlike the movie, the system is the one who judged this person's knowledge and eventually he graduated, not at the top of his class, but a lowly second class. Nevertheless, I'm glad to say that he's done quite well for himself since leaving college. So I guess his (and Rancho's) philosophy does work (a bit).

What do you say?

80

The title should tell you what the post is going to be about :)

Of course its Golf!

On the day that is Republic Day, four of us drove down a few hundred kilometers to play a round of golf at the Eagleton Golf Club. OK, so it's only 33km from Bangalore, but trust me, it feels a lot longer. Especially after a full round of golf. And even longer if you've refreshed yourself afterwards with a beer or two.

Anyways, I digress. So we landed there and found out that there were not enough caddies for all of us. So the inevitable and unenviable wait…these are the most hated moments on the golf course. So near and yet so far. You're there, but you can't start. Finally after the caddies consented to accompany us on our round, we landed up at the first tee.

For the company that we usually play in, it is more often than not the feeling that we are good players and so we prefer to play Eagleton from the Championship Black tees. After all, we need more challenges than the ones our own game would be throwing at us.

We started with an all par first hole, a rare occurrence. If you had a look at our tee shots, you would have never believed that we all got on (or near) the green in 3 and made our pars. And just like that, the round was underway. I was playing so-so for the first 6 holes and then made two back to back birdies on the 8th and the 9th to finish the front 9 at 4 over. The back nine started very similar to the front and I started feeling a little more comfortable with my swing, but not quite.

Funniest moment of the day was when my ball was on the edge of the water hazard on the 13th hole. I had to stand with my spiked shoes on the cemented lip of the water tank to hit the shot. Only problem was every movement I made would make my shoes slip and as I tried to hit the ball, my feet moved from under me as my club barely touched the ball to start its roll into the water. Penalty!

Ended up shooting 80 (8 over) which, considering that we played from the most difficult tees, is a pretty good score to shoot.

The thing different about this round is that I was carrying my camera with me all the time and shooting everyone's swing. I am planning to make a video on it, should be ready by tomorrow evening :-)

All in all, am happy with the way I played, despite not playing close to my best. After all, grinding it out when you are not at your best is a good sign that there are better things to come when you do hit that occasional and rare peak. And that's what golf does to me, keeps me in the hunt for the next round!