Mis(s)-adventures of a confused guy

Mid-20's Crisis

2010-08-11T19:35:00.004+08:00

Heard of mid-life crisis, but what is this mid-20's crisis, a term I happily coined jostling for some arm space in a jam packed train heading back home after another day of work? Well, it's something am sure everyone has experienced on this side of the twenties (the dreaded side of the 20's!). (Just learned that mid-20's crisis is a widely discussed topic on the web! So yeah, I wasn't the first one to use this term)

So what's all this fuss about? You know it when someone of the opposite sex (someone older than you) gets offended when you address them as "Aunty" or "Uncle" as the case may be. Let me give an example to illustrate my point here. The other day I was at a South-Indian restaurant along with my friends. We were seated right next to the cash counter and taking advantage of our proximity to the counter, we were directly ordering to the lady at the counter. Now I wanted to order a coffee and have to draw her attention to our table. I cannot call out "waiter", for that would definitely offend her; can't call her "manager" either for it sounds too snobbish, so I settled for the tried and tested "Aunty" which seemed to have offended her more than a "waiter" would have. My good friend immediately resorted to damage control, addressed her as "Akka" and placed the order. Now here's the problem: the rule in my "code of conduct" has always been:

If(age of person>my age)
{ if (married)
{ if (same sex)
Call("uncle);
Else
Call("Aunty");
}
Else
{ if (same sex)
Call ("Anna" or "Dada");
Else
Call ("akka" or "tai" or " didi");
}

Else
Call("First Name");

The "Uncle"s in general are more relaxed about being referred to as uncle but the Aunties can frown with a stare so furious that you would be searching for the nearest fire escape route!

This is not the first time I have got myself into this uncomfortable situation. But in the past occasions I always found solace in the fact that I was just showing respect towards the "Aunty" but now am starting to think it's time to rewrite my "code of conduct" to:

If(age of person>=2*my age)
{ If(same sex)
Call("uncle");
Else
Call("Aunty");
}
Else
Call("first name");

Do you have a better code of conduct? If yes, please do share with me. :)

First IndiSing Bloggers Meet

2010-06-19T12:42:00.017+08:00

Well, it finally happened. The first and I repeat the first Indibloggers meet outside India materialised yesterday in Singapore and I was fortunate enough to be a part of this meet-up. We met over sumptuous (if we can call it!) dinner at Mirchi-The Kebab Factory. As always the place didn't disappoint, be it with its ambience or the mouth watering kebabs they served. If only we had the time and the appetite to go for the full course meal, I wouldn't have had second thoughts about calling it a sumptuous dinner. Well it wasn't for the Kebabs that we gathered but for interacting with fellow IndiSing bloggers and the meet was everything about it.

The meet got off to a great start indeed, in the sense that we didn't keep up with IST (Indian Stretched Time) standards with around 50% of us turning at the venue at the agreed time. Not to be left behind, the rest of them turned up in no time and we started the informal round of introductions. Here's what I caught of the introductions:

Jamshed Wadia

By far the most serious blogger to turn up at the meet. He bought that credibility to the meet and without him we would have just been a bunch of doe eyed bloggers meeting for dinner. He opened our eyes to the potential of microblogging services of Twitter for GTD (Getting Things Done) and driving traffic to our blogs (we just can't have enough of it, can we?). He is a certified Social Media Practioner (didn't know there was such certification!) and has authored a couple of books and freelances for several leading dailies and journals. His profile might seem quiet intimidating but the guy is down to earth and friendly. To know more about this versatile personality drop by his personal blog and professional blog CorridorConversations.com.

Honey

I am not the first one to say this about her and definitely won't be the last, she is by all means the Perez Hilton of Bollywood and I totally agree with @sunnyv who adds "nicer and better-looking" to her blog's description in comparison to Perez Hilton's. A very chirpy gal , she can bring life to any gathering, be it with her Bollywood gossip or her sense of humour (if you aren't much amused by Bollywood ). She used to blog at The Midday Masala and has now shifted to her very own The Daily Honey, where you can get your daily dose of Bollywood gossip and the Friday night movie reviews.

Maria

If there is one person without whom the meet wouldn't have been possible, it has to be Maria. She is the one who initiated the meet-up and was instrumental in almost every aspect of organising this blogger meet. A wanna be author, she recently started writing for the-nri.com. Maria is an avid reader and is presently hooked on to Simon Mawer's Mendel's Dwarf (I hope I got the book right! Pardon me if I didn't). She is so full of energy that it's hard to believe we had to cut short our evening to let Maria put her six month old to bed. You can learn more about this wanna be author and NRI mom at her personal blog and the-nri.com.

Divya

A close friend of Maria, Divya can almost pass of as Maria's alter ego! The two gals have known each other since long and being good friends that they are, Divya has an eight month old kid to keep up to. Divya is a very friendly girl and someone with whom you can converse for long without knowing little about each other. It was during one such conversation that I learned that she happens to be fast friends with Mahesh Desai (or Mike), who hails from my hometown. You must now be wondering who this Mike or Mahesh Desai is? He has to his credits among other things: sculpting Hritik Roshan's physique for Dhoom 2. Coming back to Divya, she took to blogging only recently and can be reached at her personal blog.

Kritika

The youngest IndiSing blogger at the meet, Kritika surprised everyone who had turned up for the event. Nah, her age didn't surprise us, but her passport did! She was the only Singaporean at the event! Born in some part of Tamilnadu (which remains a mystery!), Kritika has been bought up in Singapore and is now into first year of Engineering. A fellow Chemical Engineer, I thought I would get to brood over fugacity and reaction kinetics but had to settle for some pep talk after realising that she is still in first year of her engineering. If I could give her any advice it would be, "Buckle up gal, for Chemical Engineering is one helluva Roller-Coaster Ride!". Coming to Kritika's blogging pursits, she can be found blogging about "random stuff" at her personal blog.

Avinash

One look at him and you will let him pass as a geek from a university! An electrical and electronics graduate student, Avinash was a bit reserved to start with and was all interested about monetising the blog. A kebab into the conversation he got more candid and the conversation drifted to procrastination and laziness, two qualities I absolutely adore myself! Avinash, this post of mine is for you mate. Let me know if you can beat me in that! Being a student, Avinash blogs about anything and everything that fascinates him at his personal blog

Anirudh

If Kritika was a Singaporean, Anirudh was on a flying visit to Singapore! Well not literally, it's been around 4 months since he hit the shores of Singapore, after being posted her on a job assignment. Mr. Cheerful and happy-to-pose that he is, he infused a light-hearted feel to the meet. Anirudh has been blogging since January 2009 and can be reached at his personal blog.

Krunal

The most senior blogger to turn up at the event, Krunal's enthusiasm befits a kid who finds himself in a confectionery store! Krunal is one of the few Indian bloggers (I know of) to blog in their native languages. Krunal blogs about things close to his heart and yearns to document his aspirations and thoughts in his personal blog, in his native tongue (Gujarathi). If Gujarathi happens to be alien to you, I hope C# isn't for Krunal also blogs about this programming language at his C# blog.

Chriz

Don't go by his wry expression in the snap above, Chriz or Chrony as he is better known as is a perfect embodiment of his personal blog, a humor blog like no other! The guy was down with fever on the day but that didn't keep him from the event and not only that he made sure everyone had a good laugh and is if to make sure he hasn't missed anyone he dedicated a song to all the committed gentlemen at the table. Humour aside, Chriz is a gospel singer, the primary reason which drove him to Singapore from the southern most tip of India. It's as if he could peep into the Gospel scene in Singapore from Kanyakumari that he landed here to pursue his personal and career goals. Anytime you feel your spirits are down, one quick fix is to visit Chrony's personal blog and couple of minutes into it, I can assure you will have a smile on your face.

Abhijeet Gandhi

Sporting one of the most famous Indian surnames (Gandhi), Abhijeet was easily the live wire of the blog meet. Not afraid to shoot anyone (with his 500D ofcourse), he was the man geared up for the event. I later learned from his blog post covering the event (to which he beat me by a few hours), he had prepared a keynote presentation on his Macbook, which he had kept handy for the presentation as well as his sketches. Unfortunately we didn't get to see any of them but we did learn that the man is on a mission to convince his friends to join the Twitter bandwagon. He also induced the Foursquare fever in the group by linking his twitter account to Foursquare which he tweets everytime he checks-in on Foursquare. All the photographs above have been his courtesy and you can learn more about this energetic Gandhi at his personal blog.

To sum-up it was a great event where each of us gotta learn about blogs and other interests we pursued. I would like to thank everyone who turned up for the event and hope that we have these meets on a regular basis.

Wage Disparity or Optimized Living Cost?

2010-06-08T23:45:00.003+08:00

You Decide!

PS-Thanks to Sameer for sharing this info

Home Sweet Home

2010-05-25T09:45:00.001+08:00

Here I am, This is me, There is nowhere Else on earth am gonna be... So goes the song by Bryan Adams, one of my favorite artists. This may not be his best track to date but the lyrics are something, that I just can't stop humming whenever I land in Bangalore or Mumbai, my first stop before heading home. This time I landed in Bangalore, and the humming was louder than usual as Laila had turned the Bangalore weather at it's awesomest best! I landed around 1030 hrs, a good 60 min off the scehduled arrival time but that was the last thing on my mind. As in my previous experience with BIAL, this was no exception. Immigration officers were courteous for a change and the baggage was already waiting for me on the belt. I was out in less than 10 min, can you believe that?

This may be my longest visit home since December 2007. A good 2 weeks is what I can afford after deciding to change jobs and thanks to the balance of 13 days annual leave I had left before my last date. I talked to my Prof and understandingly he agreed to let me off with just under two week's notice. There was a catch though. I had to finish up on the report I was working on and ensure there is sufficient background info for my replacement to take over from where I left my work. That meant working for late hours for two weeks on trot and I was game for it. So here I am after two weeks of breaking my back at work, heading back home.

The timing of my visit couldn't have been better, though my sis would disagree as with every other time, my visit is clashing with her end sem exams. Damn the VTU schedule! Coming back, there was this cousin's wedding in early June which meant I could get to meet all my cousins, after a really long time. I don't even remember when was the last time we all got to hang out together.

There are a hundred things on my To Do list right now, and I tick off the one thing dearest to me: updating my blog on the move. Yeah, am drafting this post on my iPhone sitting in a jam packed train(eventhough it's a reservation boogie), heading to Dharwad from Bangalore. Though the post will go live a little later, when I can find a wi-fi hotspot or a SIM card with Internet access, but the thrill of blogging is too strong for me to procrastinate. Yeah, stuff likes this happen from time to time with me!

I will be travelling around for a while now and may not get much time on the web. Till then, adios my friends.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Responsible Journalism Anyone?

2010-04-17T08:46:00.005+08:00

Well, it's been a long time (infact more than a month) since I last posted here. A lot of things have been happening around me and I was just taking my time soaking it in! I turned 25 some time last month and thanks to a bunch of friends it was one of the best days I have had in a long time now. Thanks a ton folks! Coming back to the title of this post, I have been wondering whatever happened to responsible journalism in our country? If you have been following News in Indian dailies across the last fortnight or so you would have probably cursed the Indian media on more than one occasions by now. First it was the Sania-Shoaib episode which was blown way out of proportion and then followed the Tharoor-Modi episode which have been hogging the limelight and front pages of the leading dailies masking the more noteworthy news related to the Naxals killing 75 CRPF personnel in Chattisgarh and the more recent failure of India's first indigenous cryogenic engine fired GSLV. Why were the last two episodes deemed not worthy enough for the front page? Who is to be blamed? Editors or Readers?

So much has been talked and discussed about the Sania-Shoaib and Tharoor-Modi episodes that I don't even want to talk about them anymore (but can't help raising a couple of questions on them though!). Infact I had no trouble finding good news articles for these two but for the next two I had to poke around a little. While Sania-Shoaib wedding was just a celebrity wedding going through it's hiccups, I was left dumb-struck with the way it concluded. I mean all that hullabaloo just for INR 15 000 (USD 300) alimony settlement? Who are you kidding dude? No wonder , rumor is that Shoaib paid close to INR 150 000 000 (USD 300 000) for the actual settlement!

Coming to Tharoor-Modi public spat, it's a pity that an event as successful as IPL is involved in this controversy. First of all, the Government should bell the Board of Control for Cricket in India aka BCCI (which at present is exempted from taxes) for it's no longer a non-profit sports body working for the upliftment of the sport in the country. It rakes in billions of dollars from several endorsement deals and the Indian Premier League (IPL) has even put the English Premier League (EPL) to shame when it comes to salaries paid for some of the top players. It's hightime BCCI opened its doors to the public eye and come clean on its financial transactions. It won't surprise me if it's learned (if ever), that BCCI's revenue is more than sufficient to fund the entire sports infrastructure of all the major sports in India! In a cricket-crazy nation like India, many of the indigenous sports have lost their sheen. With IPL hogging the front (controversies) and last pages (actual match coverage), the very fact that India won the International Kabaddi World Cup 2010 just a couple of days ago was lost somewhere in the unread sections of the dailies. Infact the first news article that Google pointed me to was A Pakistan News! What an irony? India beat Pakistan hands down (58-24) in India and the news gets more coverage in Pakistan than in India! Perhaps the absence of Pakistani players in the present IPL season has done some good for sports journalism in our neighbouring country.

Now coming to the more note-worthy news in last couple of weeks, the brutality of the Naxal attack in Chattisgarh points how ill-equipped our intelligence department is. Shortage of manpower or technology, am not sure, but 75 CRPF personnel were sacrificed in this heinous attack, which is a slap on the anti-terror infrastructure in the nation. All this happened after Maoist leader Kishenji offered truce and our Home Minister P. Chidambaram perhaps thought it was way beyond his dignity to place a call to a Maoist leader and hence the talks (if you can even label it a talk) failed. It's no consolation that the very minister offered to step down from the ministry after the attacks for 75 patriots lost their lives all for the minister's reluctance to initiate a talk. If the talks had failed and there was an attack, it would have been a totally different scenario but the minister failed to even initiate a dialog process which if I were to use to Twitter terminology label as: #epicfail!

India has always prided on it's indigenous Space technologies and Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is one of the most respected institutes in India and abroad. But the recent failure of GSLV has set the tongues wagging on the credibility of indigenous technologies. I couldn't find the exact stastics to support my argument but going by the number of launch failure news I have read over the years, my personal observation is that ISRO has a better track record than most institutes who have been in business for 20 years or more. We can expect ISRO to be back on track with it's next launch.

Now coming to responsible journalism, whose fault it really is? Should we blame the editors for pushing the eye-catching controversies to the front page? I don't think so, for all the editors are trying to do is feed us news we want to read. With the advent of internet and mobile phones, the shelf life of news has reduced exponentially. So just covering a noteworthy event is not bound to get enough eyeballs rolling on the article or hits on the webpage, thus forcing the editors to push controversial articles to the front page. Controversies increase reader participation in the form of comments (online news) and word of mouth (there are several talk shows discussing print news on TV) which translates into better sales (or hits in the online scenario). Come to think of it, it's the end users, readers like you and me who have forced this unwelcome change in the way news is being covered in our dailies today. Instead of blaming the editors, we should make it a point to appreciate noteworthy news and shun unwanted coverage when its thumped upon us. It's a two-way system and with better participation from both sides, we can ensure that the News industry maintains the standard without having to compromise on readership coverage or ad revenue.

International Women's Day it is!

2010-03-08T22:54:00.008+08:00

Today, the 8th of March happens to be the International Women's day, a fact I was rather oblivious to, till I checked my Facebook page late this afternoon and even that didn't touch any chords for me, for I thought it was just another fad. As I continued with my work, a female friend of mine, pinged me reminding me or rather demanding me to wish her on the occasion, and that's when the significance of the event hit me. The women folklore in our lives do deserve a little appreciation for the roles they play in our lives. So this one goes out to all the women community out there: thanks for being there for us.

This calls for the mention of one very special woman in my life: My Mom. Moms, what can I say about them, one of the few selfless people I know. I have always been a Moma's boy and I ain't ashamed about it. There are really no words that can express my gratitude to my Mom. All I can say is thanks a ton, Mom! I cannot even imagine what I would have been had it not been for your pampering and support all throughout the two and half decades of my existence. (Two and half decades, that's scary!)

After my mom, it's my aunts and grandmas who have again played a major role in my life. They have all showered me with love and affection, and guided me in the right direction whenever I was lost and looked up to them for guidance. Thanks a lot aunts and grandmas.

Next come my sister and cousins. We have been a close bunch of siblings and cousins who fought more often than we played together. But then with each fight we learned more about each other and that drew us closer. I miss hanging around with my cousins now that we have all grown up and taken to different career paths, based in different parts of the world. To all my sisters, thanks gals, you always gave me the female perspective of things, which has helped me immensely over time.

Now last but not the least I thank all my friends of the opposite sex, for all the help and guidance you have bestowed upon me over the years. I have debated at lengths the guy's perspective vs gal's perspective with several of you, only to realise that we just compliment each other. All the fighting apart, our worlds are just incomplete without the presence of other.

Just a small piece of advice to all the guys: take a little time out of your busy schedules and wish the important women in your lives on this occasion for we all know women play an important role in our lives.

Before all the guys start accusing me of gender bias, let me tell you that there is an International Men's Day as well, which falls on the 19th of November and is celebrated in Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Australia, India, United States, Singapore, Malta, South Africa, Hungary, Ireland, Ghana and Canada (Source: Wiki). I was surprised to see both India and Singapore in the list, where I have lived all my life, oblivious to existence of this important day. So guys, don't worry come November 19th, we will get (or rather claim) our share of appreciation from the women folklore.

P.S- Interesting co-incidence: Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win an Oscar for Best Director in the Academy Awards' 58-year history for her movie-The Hurt Locker, which beat her ex-husband James Cameroon's US $ 300 million budget (read over hyped, mediocre) movie-Avatar.

Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder

2010-02-25T16:11:00.010+08:00

Starting from where I left my 2009, I embarked on another weekend getaway, something a little farther from the shores of Singapore-Cambodia, for this Lunar New Year weekend. Lunar New Year or Chinese New Year (CNY) as it's popularly known as is the biggest of all the traditional Chinese festivals and is similar to Thanksgiving in the US context with families getting together, with elders distributing "ang pow" to the younger generations, which is usually wands of cash enclosed in attractive red packets. The bottomline is if you have a Chinese/South-East Asian friend, the best time to skim out a treat from him/her is the weekend after the CNY! After that brief intro, let me come back to my Cambodia trip now.

Like I said earlier, CNY is the biggest festival in this part of the world and that meant all of our ASEAN friends were heading home to be with their families. With some of our Indian friends heading home, taking full advantage of the 4-day weekend, our group was reduced to a group of 6, but that we didn't let that deter us from having fun and guess what, the fun started even before we boarded the plane!

I have always been a proud procrastinator and take pride in the fact that very few people can beat me in reaching the airport at the last minute. My personal record has been reaching the airport, 10 min before the scheduled flight departure time but my friends bettered that. Just how close they got to the departure time, is something you will find out later. A bunch of us (which surprisingly included me) had reached the airport around an hour prior to the departure time but two of them were stuck on road-an accident having slowed them down, were a good 10 km away from airport (25 minutes to the flight departure), with traffic showing no signs of moving. At this moment we had given up all hope of them making it to the flight but thanks to Shailu, who though opted out of the trip, did a great job convincing the ground staff to let us board the flight, when culprit party reached the airport just 2 minutes ahead of the flight departure time. Now 2 minutes is something I can never think of beating unless I have Shailu talking to the ground crew a good 20 min before I reach the airport. Anyways, the point is we made it to the flight and we just realised that the trip had indeed started off on a great note!

Day 1-Phnom Penh

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonde
At Phnom Penh International Airport

Having set off our foot from the shore of Singapore around 1620 hrs, we reached just in time for the sunset at Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, and contrary to the widespread rumours of corruption at the visa counter, we didn't see any under-the-table dealings at the airport. However, we had to shell USD 20 for the tourist visa-on-arrival and could have saved USD 10 had we opted for the online procedure at CambodiaonArrival.

Moving on, we were actually surprised by the architecture of the Phnom Penh International Airport aka Pochentong International Airport. It's not big or shopper savvy as the Changi Airport (Singapore) or as grandiose as the Suvarnabhumi International Airport (Bangkok) but it's kinda cute with its traditional pagoda design.

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
At Phnom Penh International Airport

After spending a few minutes with our shutter bugs at the airport, we decided to head straight to the Wat Phnom, and what's better than getting there on a tuk-tuk?

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
Thats the Tuk-Tuk we took from airport to Wat Phnom

Wat Phnom is one of the most important pagodas of Cambodia and houses statues of Buddha and Lady Penh, after whom city is named. At 27 metres, this is the highest point in the city and according to a legend, the pagoda was home to four statues of Buddha deposited here by the waters of the Mekong and discovered by Lady Penh in 14th century.

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder

Main entrance to Wat Phnom showing the grand eastern staircase, which is guarded by lions and naga (snake) balustrades

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
A closer look at the pagoda

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
Idol of Lady Penh

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
Statue of Buddha

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
One of the many murals adoring the walls of Pagoda

Since it was too late in the evening (7 pm), we couldn't enter the core of temple, so do make it a point to reach here before sunset to be able to see pagoda in all its glory. It was more of a photo session for us and given the low light conditions, we could capture only some flash-lit frames of the murals and some under-exposed ambient light shots of the pagoda.

By this time, over tummies were growling in hunger and we walked across to the riverfront in search of a vegeterian restaurant (yeah 3 of us in our group) and after walking for a while we settled at an Italian place called Fritz, courtesy Rough Guides.

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
Traditional Cambodian Music Performance

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
At Fritz, great food and ambience for moderate budget

After a sumptuous dinner, we headed to our guesthouse-TAT, which was again recommended in Rough Guides and I was actually taken back by the amenities and size of the room. At USD 12/night, we got huge A/C double rooms with 2 queen size beds each with neatly laundered bedsheets and towels.

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
In case you are wondering that's a towel

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
They provide bus ticketing too and we booked ours to Siem Reap for USD 5/pax

Day 2-Phnom Penh, Siem Reap

I may be a procrastinator but when on trips, I prefer making early starts so that we get to spend more time exploring around the new place. But traveling in a group, it makes it difficult to get everyone up and ready for an early-start but fortunately we didn't have to compromise on this front and our starts were always on schedule. We started with a quick breakfast at our guest house and headed straight to Royal Palace in a tuk-tuk. We took a small detour to stop by the Independence monument, commemorating the country's independence from France in 1958.

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
Independance monument at Phnom Penh

Though we were on-time for the scheduled opening time of the Royal Palace, we were denied entry into the Palace as the King was apparently housing foreign delegates for a private viewing of the Lunar New Year parade and other ceremonies. It didn't take much time though and the doors were opened to the public, an hour later than the scheduled opening time.

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
Dress Code for Tourists

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
Throne Hall at Royal Palace

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
A closer look at the monumental tower

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
Rules are Meant to be Broken-I (@Dancing Pavillion, Royal Palace)

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
Murals at Silver Pagoda

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
Nandi idol at Silver Pagoda

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
Entrance of Silver Pagoda

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
At Silver Pagoda

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
Exquisite workmanship!

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
Again at Silver Pagoda

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
Ant's eye view of Silver Pagoda!

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
Getting a feel of Khmer Music

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
Rules are meant to be Broken-II

The exquisite architecture and the richness of Khmer culture is very much evident in Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda. Having seen the brighter side of Cambodia, we headed to Choeung Ek Genocidal center aka Killing Fields, which is around 15 km from Phnom Penh, again easily reachable via tuk-tuk. Make sure you ask your tuk-tuk driver to wait for you as it's hard to find a free tuk-tuk around this area.

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
Buddhist Stupa which houses around 5000 human skulls of victims of the killing field

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
Barbaric Acts!

It's one of the most depressing places I have ever visited. It's hard to believe executioners were asked to smash babies against this tree before dumping them in the mass grave. There is a small museum within the complex which also screens the documentary movie "The Killing Fields", which is a dramatized recollection of the tragedy by live witnesses and kith and kin of victims.

After the heart-moving visit to the Killing Field we headed back to Phnom Penh, from where we set to Siem Reap by road. Tat had booked tickets for us in advance @ USD 5/pax with Sorya Bus Company and the bus was on schedule for the 1345 hrs pick-up. It was an air-conditioned bus but I don't it's the heat or the high standards of buses in Singapore, the luxury of cool-air was solely restricted to the window seats while the aisle seats were left at the mercy of ambient air! May be it was an air-cooled rather than air-conditioned coach. Not to be bothered by the heat, we made good use of the 6 hour travel time (300 odd km) playing cards and manning the toilet door! (Yeah bus coaches here have a toilet and unfortunately we were seated very next to one). It was around 2030, by the time we reached Siem Reap and Green Garden Home where we were put for 2 nights, had arranged for a pick-up. Since we were on time for dinner, the driver suggested we drop by a restaurant with live performance by Apsaras.

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
Apsara Dance Performance at Angkor Mondial Restaurant

After a performance lasting around an hour or so, the artists pose for the shutterbugs for another half an hour. I was amazed at the patience of these artists who had to meaninglessly smile at the cameras after a tiring dance session. They served a buffet dinner with a fairly impressive vegetarian menu and priced around USD 12/pax for dinner and Apsara performance. After a rather sumptuous dinner and eye-popping Apsara performance, we headed to our guest house and took to bed early as we had an early start (5 am) the next day.

Day 3-Angkor Vat, Siem Reap

Angkor Vat probably needs no introduction with it being the world's largest temple complex (this is a highly debated though with several temples challenging this claim and the Guiness World Records recognises Delhi's Akshardham Temple as the largest). Such is the popularity and influence of this temple that it takes a central place in Cambodia's national flag, anything less than that would haven't done enough justice to the beauty and charisma of this place. No wonder, it's on UNESCO's World Heritage Sites.

Captivated we were by this imposing structure and we set early to get a glimpse of the much acclaimed sun-rise view of the Angkor Vat. We started around 0500 hrs from our guest house and reached the ticketing counter around 0520 hrs and to my surprise the ticketing counter was bubbling with activity.

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
The 9-seater van we booked for touring around Siem Reap

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
Ticketing Counter

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
It was this dark when we first got there

Capturing these frames was as much a test for our cameras as it was to our knowledge of photography. Am no DLSR user but know a thing or two about photography and as I switched to manual mode with increased exposure and high ISO. That is as much the camera could do and now all I needed was a steady pair of hands, which I did manage judging from some of the snaps I captured. So there you go shutter bugs: a tripod is a must for sun-rise/sun-set or anything under low-lit conditions I guess.

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Sipping by a hot cup of coffee (chocolate drink for me ;)), the first glimpse of Angkor Vat bestowed upon us around 0600 hrs

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Slowly things started clearing up but the classical sun-rise view of Angkor still eluded us

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It was around 0700 hrs now and we still hadn't seen the Sun rising from between the monumental towers of Angkor

Since it was cloudy and well past the sun-rise time of O630 hrs, we decided to take a break and have breakfast, and just when we were about to leave, we got these beautifual shots below. That's when we realised that the 5 am start was every bit worth of it.

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
Sunrise at Angkor Vat

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A panoramic view of the sunrise

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I love this frame!

Having ticked-off sunrise view and breakfast off our list, we moved to the inside of temple complex to admire it's architectural beauty. Photographers and historians would love to spend a day or two just at the Angkor Vat but all we had was an hour or two at the max, so it was just halt, snap and proceed for us.

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
Bad Timing

Our task was made a bit easier with some of the parts being closed for restoration. We thought it was just bad timing but then later we realised that we didn't really have the time and patience to explore the entire temple complex. But, whatever we saw we were more than amazed.

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Entrance to one of the monumental towers

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View from one of the monumental towers

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Am guessing they are depicting Apsaras here

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I can FLY!

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This one goes to my "Jumpilation"

This was our last shot at Angkor Vat after which we headed to Bayon temple around 0930 hrs. It was starting to get hot and sweaty and but our high spirits dragged us through.

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
Entrance to Bayon Temple

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At Bayon Temple

By this time we were totally exhausted as the rivulets of perspiration were running across our bodies and no amount of wiping them off, seemed to cut the flow! Not surprisingly we took to the comfort of our air-conditioned van and set to our next destination-Ta Prohm temple, where a surprise awaited us:

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Surprise! The collaboration yes, the state of temple: unfortunately didn't surprise us!

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
Ta Prohm Temple

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Ruins Everywhere

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Ta Prohm Temple

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We hid the background which was supposed to be the highlight of the previous frame

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Huge Roots like these run across Ta Prohm temple

By this time, the overdose of temples and the unbearable heat was starting to tell its ill-effects on us. We wanted to head back to our guest house, take a shower and rest but then we hadn't flown across 1300 km to take a nap and so rather reluctantly we proceeded to Preah Kahn our last temple for the day!

Before even entering Preah Kahn, we had a refreshing coconut drink, which not only gave us the energy but also lifted our spirits for another walk in the hot sun. The heat was literally leeching out the energy from us and if not for the coconut drink, I doubt we could have mustered enough energy and patience to enter the Preak Kahn temple.

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It seemed like an endless walk through a series of never-ending pathways

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And then we found this Stupa lit by direct sunlight and the pathway continued beyond that

As per our schedule, we were supposed to cover the four temples by around 1600 hours but the overdose of temples had killed the enthusiasm and we had rounded all up by 1400 hours. Now we had time for more activities in Siem Reap but before that we had to feed our stomachs which were starting to growl now. After much discussion, we decided as always to stick with Rough Guides and narrowed down on "Kamasutra", yeah there is an Indian restaurant by that name here and we have no idea why they opted for that name. If it weren't for the name, I bet it wouldn't get half the customers it gets for we found the food was over-priced and not upto the mark either. This was one of rare occassions when Rough Guides recommendation disappointed us.

Since we hadn't planned anything for the late afternoon, we took our van driver's suggestion who drived us to the Tonle Sap, a lake-river system. It is the largest freshwater lake in South East Asia and is an ecological hot spot and is a designated UNESCO biosphere since the late 90s. There are communities of ethnic Vietnemese and Cham communities living in floating villages across this river, something similar to what we saw in Halong Bay in Vietnam last year.

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Entrance to the Jetty

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These speed boats go all the way to Phnom Penh from Siem Reap, 300 odd km, that's how big this lake is!

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They have an entire village on float here, complete with Churches

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Basketball courts

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and zoos housing Crocodiles and more

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This cute gal over here didn't even as much as blink her eye as she laid the Python to rest

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But we definitely lost some sleep over it

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After spending around half an hour at the floating restaurant-cum-market, we headed back to the jetty where our driver was waiting for us. It had been a tiring day so far so we asked our driver to drop us off at our guest house and return to pick us up after 2 hours for we wanted to shower and take a brief nap. As you might have guessed it was no brief nap and we were sleeping well beyond 3 hours and had it not been for the enterprising few members of our group, we would have spend the remainder of the evening happily sleeping in our rooms. Fortunately, that wasn't the case and we headed to the night market in Siem Reap. It's a typical touristy market where you will end up paying twice or thrice the deserving price, if you don't bargain. Other than shopping for souvenirs, some of us indulged ourselves in Fish Spa, which one can find in plenty here for as little as USD 2, inclusive of a free drink (Coke/beer). While I thoroughly loved the tickling feeling of the fish feeding on the dead tissue of your feet, some of us couldn't keep their feet in water for more than a minute. Take a look at the YouTube clip below to see the reaction of my friend with over-sensitive feet:

We had dinner at another Indian restaurant this time and this one was good. Great pricing, tasty food and the chef was actually an Indian, unlike the overly priced Kamasutra where none (waiters and chef included) had any idea of the dishes that were on the menu. After dinner we stopped by the famed Pub Street, but being tired and exhausted we didn't venture into any but the mix of Khmer Pop and English numbers coming out of these disco were worth a try had it not been a tiring day that it was for us. So we called it an early night and headed back to our guest house to get some sleep for we had to catch the 6 30 bus to Siem Reap the next day. On Guest House's recommendation, we had booked the pricier Mekong Express bus service to Siem Reap which cost more than double at USD 11/pax compared to USD 5/pax of Sorya Bus Service which we took from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap. The a/c wasn't any better than Sorya's but the service was better with the bus attendant announcing the whereabouts and a brief history of the towns and cities we passed through. They also served some snacks which had both vegetarian and meat options. Though the service was excellent, I still don't think it deserved the double price we paid compared to Sorya Bus Service.

Moving on, we reached Phnom Penh just in time for lunch and we decided to try our hands on local Khmer food this time around. It was a pity that we were about to fly back to Singapore in a couple of hours and we still hadn't tried any local Khmer food. So we walked along Sisowath Quay, till we found this Khmer cuisine restaurant recommended on Rough Guides (Gees! I forgot the name). The stroll along Sisowath Quay is one of the most recommended "must do"s in many a travel guides and we realised why it was. It has one of the best restaurants and pubs in Phnom Penh and the cool breeze by the river makes a walk worth-while even in a hot noon soon.

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Well not exactly for these guys

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But for this gentleman here, very much so

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Yee! We spotted the Indian flag!

My non vegetarian friends tried some exotic frog fried amok while I had a bowl of yummy vegetarian amok soup and Egg-fried rice.

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Vegeterian Amok Soup

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Another one of local favorites

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Cambodia also happens to be the dirt biking destination of South East Asia. Can anyone sponsor me?

We thought of stopping by the nearby National Musuem, but we ran out of time and called it off and headed straight to the airport again courtesy Tuk-tuk. This tuk-tuk ride was memorable though as we paid only USD 3 (compared to USD 7 we paid for the ride from airport to the city just a couple of days ago) for around a 15 km ride and the tuk-tuk swayed along everytime the driver slowed down. We were kinda afraid one of the wheels is gonna go flying off but then nothing of that sorts happened and we reached airport safely.

We had a good 90 minutes to spare at the airport and while one of my friend was busy talking to the airport officials on the imposed airport tax of USD 25 (foreigners have to pay before leaving the country), I was busy catching the live stream of the then ongoing Second Test match between India and South Africa. It was when Sehwag had blasted to 165 off just 174 balls in able company of Tendulkar. I watched Sehwag throw away his wicket as the ground crew was announcing the last call for my flight and I rushed to board the plane.

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At Phnom Penh International Airport

Onboard the plane, it was sunset time and it looked much better than the snaps I was able to capture.

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When we reached Singapore, we learned that we had missed the inauguration of the only casino in Singapore. Resorts World Sentosa had opened its doors and people had lined up over-night to get a glimpse of the first casino on the island. Now the Singapore map has a new destination for tourists and residents alike. In case you happen to land in Singapore anytime soon, Resorts World has made it easier to reach them from the airport with their exclusive free shuttle (Ofcourse, they know how much they are gonna skim you off once you land there! )

From Cambodia-Kingdom of Wonder
Resort World Sentosa Counter at Changi Airport

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Free Airport Shuttle to soak in the gamblers

Before I sign off, here are some tips for Cambodia bound travelers:

Take a lot of sunscreen and tissue (It get's really hot there)
An electrolyte drink would help once in a while
Currency mostly in USD should do the trick but some Riel would come in handy for small change
Guest Houses-Tat Guest house in Phnom Penh was great value for money (USD 12 for spacious A/C double rooms with two queen size beds, cannot ask for more!). Green Garden Home was awesome too (USD 25 for A/C double room with 2 single beds and free breakfast. Great ambiance as well)
Covering all the four temples in Siem Reap on a single day might be an overdose if you are really not into temples or architecture

iPad-Apple Could Have Done Better

2010-02-09T10:50:00.007+08:00

Yeah, the much awaited Apple tablet has finally arrived and it was Steve Jobs who delivered the keynote address at Apple's "Come See Our New Creation" event in San-Francisco. While the blogosphere has been strife with rumours and expectations on the latest toy from Cupertino, what Steve Jobs delivered proved to be a bummer.

After checking out the keynote address along with the extensive coverage by engadget, I was like: "iPad, really, is that the best you could do, Apple"? The name in itself is a big joke and is the fodder for some of the most of the hilarious YouTube content today. This one below is one of the most viewed in the last couple of days:

As hilarious as it is, it makes every point that I had against the iPad. It's such a pity that even Hitler has it all figured out, while the honchos at Apple are yet to get in terms with what the users actually want in a tablet device. iPad is disappointing but let me throw some light on some of the positives first (yeah it has some):

Apple's Homegrown A4 Processor

Be it sports or any competitive industry for that matter, you often see a player who comes and tears apart all the rules of the game and then goes on to tear down record after another in that sport/industry. Like Sehwag in Cricket, whose batting style is so unorthodox that purists (often Coaches) would reprimand a youngster mimicking his style for he lacks fluid footwork but he makes up for it with his ability to read the bowlers and his near-perfect timing. No wonder he is the lone Indian in the list of Triple centurions and the way he paces his innings be it a Test match, an ODI or a T20, very few batsmen can measure up to him. Before I lose track and start praising Sehwag (may be I should blog about him sometime), let me come back to my point: Apple's homegrown A4 processor is an industry revolution. Not merely for its impressive specs (1 GHz and low power-system-on-chip is all that is known at this stage), but for its development. I mean in the times where outsourcing is more a norm than exception, Apple has surprised everyone by resorting to it's very own R&D team to concoct a system-on-chip A4 processor for their iPad. Apple could have easily gone for say Qualcomm whose 1 GHz Snapdragon processor is the talk-of-town in top-end mobile phones but instead Apple opted for a processor of its own. An ingenious processor has two main advantages: Apple can really tweak their OS to get the most of their processor and design the processor to specifically get the most of the limiting battery life. While the mobile technology has seen an ocean of change in the last few years, battery technology hasn't catched up yet, with Li-ion based battery technology (first released by Sony in 1991) still being the mainstay of mobile devices. With battery technology going nowhere in the last 2 decades, chip manufacturers are increasingly shifting to low-voltage processors as evident from Intel's SUV series of processors for laptops/netbooks.

iBooks

Like iTunes revolutionalized the online music scenario over the last decade I believe Apple has very much the potential to do the same with their iBooks. With a customer and fan base as huge as that of Apple, it has the potential to single handedly change the fate of this genre, irrespective of the popularity of E-ink technology based Amazon's Kindle and Barn's and Nobles' Nook. E-ink is a better or rather a healthier technology since it's easier on the eyes for reading books compared to the glaring LED blacklit screen of the iPad. But am sure the glamour associated with iPad will overpower Kindle and Nook, unless they add some seasoning of their own to prevent Apple from gatecrashing what is definitely their party zone.

Now let me come to the negatives of iPad, which unfortunately are many. I will start with my biggest complaint: Why limit iPad with the limitations of iPhone OS, of which I have blogged about at length in my earlier post? Absence of Flash support is one thing and having to limit to one-app-at-a-time usage is totally another level of frustration for a US $499 16 GB Wi-Fi only device (and can go all the way upto US $829 for the top end 64 GB Wi-Fi + 3G model). The competition offers much better options here and I am not referring to mere ebook readers here. I fail to understand in what genre Apple wants to push their iPad into: for an ebook reader, they went a little overboard both with the pricing and specs and to be honest a LED backlit e-reader will definitely hurt your vision, if you happen to read a book at stretch on it. Netbook: am not sure they hit the min requirement on that either with lack of Flash, multi-tasking and no Office application, a business user will definitely not bother even looking at this device for his netbook needs and so will oblige a mobile professional. That leaves us with a customer base comprising of die-hard Apple fans who would shell their money on almost anything that comes out of Cupertino and unfortunately for industry but fortunately for Apple, that's a rather large base. So Apple will not only sell their iPad in big numbers but it will also wipe a fat profit off it.

Is iPad doomed?

I don't think so. If you see the track record of Apple you will see that this is not the first time the manufacturer is at the receiving end of criticism, Take for example the iPhone, which was written off by many a critics as it lacked 3G and to this day lacks a front facing camera, FM radio among other things but Apple sure know how to sell their products. They not only added 3G in the second generation of the device but also launched the app store, which totally changed the way people use smartphones and catapulted iPhone in the top spot overnight. Going by that trend, a similar iteration with iPad can also be expected with the second generation iPad adding multi-tasking atleast if not the Flash support for the device.

Would I buy an iPad now?

Obviously not for it still has some severe limitations but if Apple give Mac OS X on it, I would definitely think about it. So my advice for iPad enthusiasts is to wait for the next generation of iPad and till then if you want a ebook reader, Kindle or Nook should do the trick and if a netbook is what you are looking for, go with Hitler and wait for the HP slate!

2009! No more ALREADY!

2009-12-30T14:03:00.019+08:00

Ew, I can't believe I just said that! Wondering what am talking about. It's the title ofcourse. Of all the people, it's me using Singlish lingo in my day to day vocabulary. The latest fad of mine summarizes my 2009: acclimatising to the Singaporean way of life. The lion city as you know is everyone's envy; be it's reputation for being one of the cleanest cities in the world or it's (in) famous water reclamation technology (euphemism for recycled water!), it does give you a few extra nods whenever you mention you are based in Singapore. 2009 marked my second year here and it was another eventful journey for me. Not only did I learn a thing or two about Singapore but I also explored a few other countries, some of which I never fancied (more on that later), not even in the wildest of my dreams. Well, that's nothing new for someone like me who always finds himself in the right place at the right time but just by mere accident. Call it serendipity or whatever you want, I have always found success or happiness in places I least expected them. Since it was a great traveling year for me, let me start from my travel expeditions this year.

January 2009- India-Home

I started my year with a refreshing visit home, after a gap of around more than a year. Back then, I had just got my first few paychecks and was getting a feel of seeing amounts much in excess of my miserly student stipend I was used to seeing in my monthly bank statements. I realized it was a good time to pay a visit to my family, whom I was missing terribly. So I booked my tickets and was ready to set off to my homeland, but wait I was not done yet. I was going home after getting my first few paychecks and I still haven't bought bought anything for my kith and kin. The top priority on my agenda now was to find appropriate gifts for everyone I could think of. I kicked of my shopping with my biggest infatuation: the big G. No not gals but gadgets, for one you can't buy a gal off the shelf and two shopping for gals is one of the toughest jobs in the world and more so when you are not buying gadgets for them. Let's not talk about that and stick to the task at hand: gadget shopping.

Given my dad's infatuation to photography (he had a DSLR when he was 22-23 and a Camera in those days was a rare possession), I was hunting the electronic and print media for deals on DSLR kits but given my poor knowledge in photography, I was heading nowhere in zeroing in on a kit even after a couple of weeks of market and photography research. I was running out of time and I decided to forgo DSLR and turned to my specialty: cellphones. I was looking for nothing too fancy but feature laden for my dad's phone for that's how by dad prefers his machines to be. It was rather easy to decide on Nokia E66: elegant and functional it was just perfect for my dad but I was not sure how many of those fancy features my dad would use. And yeah, I also bought my Nokia 5800 in January from Malaysia (thanks to my friend), for it was not launched in Singapore yet and I was running out of patience after waiting for it for more than 3 months.

Coming back to my India tour, armed with a few souvenirs for my friends and relatives, I boarded the plane to Bangalore. Hitting Bangalore, I was more than surprised by the BIAL airport. I have already blogged about it earlier and as you may know, that post of mine is on BIAL's testimonial now. It felt great to be at home with my family and friends and yeah we even hit the road to OM beach over a weekend for one of my best weekend getaways. Before I could realise, it was time to fly back to Singapore and I was back at my desk by the next working day (after a weeklong break).

February 2009- Vietnam

This is one country, I never thought I would ever visit. Thanks to my Vietnamese friends for not only organizing this trip but also ensuring that we didn't face any difficulties finding vegetarian food in this beef loving country. I missed something rather important here: this main purpose of this trip was to attend our friend's wedding in Hanoi on 19th Feb, but being fun-loving people that we (me and my friends) are, we took this opportunity to get a feel of this beautiful country. We started our tour with a city tour of Hanoi on day 1 and then heading to Halong Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The next day we were back in Hanoi to attend our friend's wedding and thanks to his Mom, who arranged a Bollywood performance for us!

After the wedding day, we headed to Sapa, a hillstation known for it's ethnic minority groups comprising of Hmong, Dao and Tay live. I was personally amazed by the Hmong kids trying to sell some handicrafts to tourists here. You would be amazed by their English, which was better than that of our tour guide! And yeah the kids are persistent, take a look at this video (courtesy-Saurabh) to get an idea on how we were chased:

In all it was a great trip and the first one for our group after our graduation. We wished we could repeat this feat more often and we did!

From Vietnam trip-Feb 09

April 2009-Pulau Besar Malaysia

Photo Courtesy-Linh

If you happen to be in Singapore and you still haven't been to this place, then I must tell you are definitely missing something. This is one of the most beautiful beaches (that I have been to) and is so close to Singapore (just 4 hours by road) and is best suited for weekend getaways. The best part is inspite of its close vicinity to the lion city, it is not touristy as you would expect it to be. The neighboring Tioman islands gets the bulk of tourist crowd, leaving you with peace and unexploited territory to enjoy. Check my post on Pulau Besar for more details.

August 2009-Entau Rompin, Malaysia

Another 3 day weekend and we decided to head to Malaysia again. Having had a blast of a time at a Malaysian island in our previous weekend get-away, we decided to get a feel of the Malysian Jungle this time around. May be we were inspired by Sony India's "Is Jungle Se Mujhe Bachao", which was being hosted in some remote jungle in Malaysia. Well, this one is more for the adventurous pards among us and being one of the hold blooded among them, I was really looking forward to this trip. Did it leave up to my expectations? Well not really, may be I had high expectations, but hey I discovered that I am a good marksman. May be I can give Abhinav Bindra a run for his money. Now, only if he would shoot with a blow pipe, like I did!

Check my post for more details on Entau Rompin and this outing.

September 2009-India-Home

By this time I was missing my family and thanks to my friend for pointing out an ongoing promotion with Malaysian Airlines to Bombay or should I say Mumbai. I booked the flights and didn't tell my parents (infact none of my friends in India) about my visit. I was flying to Mumbai airport for the first time and I wasn't really impressed by the airport. Further the cab driver gave me a grand welcome to the city, flouting traffic rules by a handful in a ride that was no less than a roller coaster ride for me. All throughout the 45 min ride, I was constantly telling myself, "this is India, you were born and brought up here, no need to freak out in your own country!"

The best part of the trip was my grandma opening the door to me and finding just my suitcase at the doorstep (I was hiding at the sides to see her reaction). After a few seconds, I jumped right in front of her and her reaction was something I just cannot put into words! It took them (my family) a couple of minutes to sink-in that I was infact home and after a long time I had mom's food at home and it was just surreal!

October 2009-Japan

JAPAN- This is another country which I never fancied but am glad that I visited this land of Samurais. One of the most striking features of this nation is that its a land of striking contrasts: a place where hedonists and altruists practise their lifestyles in peaceful co-existence. Somewhere in the middle is the bulk of the population here, and more importantly, Japanese are one of the most courteous people you can ever meet. All throughout our trip, we heard so many "Arigatou Gozaimashita"s (Japanese for Thank you very much), that it became a part of our day-to-day vocabulary!

We started with Tokyo touring around Asakusa and Sensoji temple and then moved to Akihabara before proceeding to Shibuya and Roppongi. It was a great start to what panned out to be an amazing trip. I never really found the time to blog about this trip, but it will be coming soon (sooner than you might expect!).

November 2009- Genting Highlands

Photo Courtesy-Pong

After almost 2 years in Singapore, I finally found time and the right group of people to go to Genting Highlands- the gambling abode of Singapore-Malaysia. It's not all about gambling though, it has one of the better theme parks in this part of the world and the scenic beauty is breath-taking. Somewhere midway between the theme park/casino and the foothill is the beautiful Chin Swee Temple where we were put up. It's kinda ironic, how the sculptures in the temple go to great lengths picturing the after-life of gamblers among other sinners in hell; right at the foot of the most (in)famous gambling destination of Malysia-Singapore.

We had loads of fun here with one of our friends winning RM 1300 in the slot machine! Even I won like RM 150 in my very first attempt at slot machine but I didn't play much after that. On our way back to Singapore, we were almost fooled by a local transport company who sold us phony tickets for Kuala-Lumpur to Singapore but then we were too smart for that. We traced the person who sold us the ticket and just when voices were about to be raised, the Police chipped in and the transport company had to make alternate arrangements for us. In all it was a good trip where some of us made more money than they spent!

December 2009-North India

Given the amount of traveling I had done so far in 2009, I had to sign-off in style and what's better than hitting Incredible India for the year end vacation? Technically I was supposed to be a host but being from the South part of India, most of the places on our itinerary were new to me (except for Delhi and Agra). So yeah, I was super-excited about this trip for one I was finally getting to see Jaipur and Amritsar and two I was with friends from four other nationalities, who were eager to get a feel of some of the most popular tourist destinations of the world.

Photo courtesy-Saurabh

Any blog post on this trip is incomplete without reference to this LCD TV I bought for my folks back home. Why did I buy such a huge TV? Well, I wasn't expecting it to be this big to start with? I won it in a bidding event during year-end sale of one of the biggest electronics store in Singapore and the demo model didn't look as intimidating as this package is. It was one of the reasons, our trip got off to a delayed start as the customs officials blew the whole thing wider than 42" of LCD panel! More on that in another post.

Coming back to the trip, oh boy, we had a blast. We covered the Golden Triangle, having landed in Delhi, we proceeded straight to Jaipur, spend 2 days there and then hit the road to Agra. After Agra, our next destination was Amritsar and then we spend the new year's eve in New Delhi, before heading back to Singapore. Another blog post on this trip coming soon.

In all 2009 was a great year for me. I covered UNESCO world heritage sites across three nations- Vietnam (Halong Bay), Japan (Temples and Shrines of Nikko) and India (Taj Mahal, Humayun's Tomb, Red Fort, Qutub Minar)this year. I learned a lot about myself and also got to travel to some of the best destinations in this part of the world. I could have even made it to the Gold Coast on an all paid trip, courtesy Nokia who wanted me to be a part of the fifth and final episode of Nokia N900 Offline As it Happens Campaign. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to make it to the trip because of the time lag in obtaining an Australian visa for an Indian passport holder. The folks at Nokia were thinking am a Singaporean and hence didn't need a visa to enter Oz land! Anyway, let's now take a look at the video, of which I could have been a part of:

Why You Should Jailbreak Your iPhone/iPod Touch

2009-12-03T19:23:00.001+08:00

Following one of my most engaging blog posts so far, I am back as promised with a post on why one should jailbreak their iPhone/iPod Touch. Looks like I packed quite a punch in my previous post. A friend of mine, who is usually very critical of my views, jailbroke his iPhone the very day (after reading my post)my post went live. Apparently, some are still sceptical on jailbreaking, this post goes out for them. To put it in one simple line, I would like to quote Phat Trance of dailymobile.se who once tweeted "iPhone without jailbreak is just another brick...". I cannot put it any better than that. If you have been following smartphones, the chances are you heard of Motorola Droid, which was being promoted as the ultimate iDont phone taking a dig at iPhone. This YouTube clip of the ad should illustrate my point.

In response to this ad, the iPhone fanboy community came up with a parody video as a reply.

Well the fights between the haters and zealots are nothing new on the web and the more I talk about the more am dragged into one. I personally owe no allegiance to any brand as such. I make rational choices depending on my needs and affordability. I was dragged into this whole iHate Apple debate over my previous post, which rather projected me as an Apple hater, which am actually not. Coming back to my point, let me now summarise why one should jailbreak their iPhone/iPod Touch.

First and foremost jailbreaking is a completely reversible transformation. If at any instance of time you have to go back to Apple to service your iPhone/iPod touch, all you have to do is just restore your device to factory settings and your iPhone is back the way Apple wanted it to be. There goes your fear of voiding the warranty by jailbreaking. This is probably the biggest fear, iPhone users have and with that thrown of the window, let me come to the second biggest concern of jailbreak sceptics: virus attacks that have been plaguing jailbroken iPhones worldwide. There is a simple solution for that: just change the root password form the default "alpine" to something not very obvious to the hackers. I will talk more about this later in this post.

Now let me come to the main point of this post: why you should jailbreak iPhone/iPod touch

Open development

I have already talked how frustratingly annoying the app screening policies of Apple are. I don't know when will they realise their whole, "there is an app for that" campaign depends on giving the developers the freedom to play around with the device and OS. Some of the software restrictions just don't make sense like the absence of a mediaplayer capable of playing popular media formats like .avi, .divx etc. Even symbian phones that were launched in like 2007 and earlier have an app for that and iPhone can do much better with its superior processor and dedicated graphics. But for some reason Apple doesn't want to support DivX and that renders my entire video collection of over 100 GB worthless for my iPhone unless I take the pain to convert it into mp4 which is a big pain and I would rather watch the unconverted videos on my Nokia 5800, which I still carry around and yeah these days am totally digging the N900's out of box DivX compatibility, catching up on movies and sitcoms I always wanted to see but didn't have time for till now, during my daily transit time. How can jailbreak fix this jinx? Well, there is the mighty vlc4iPhone, not by VLC themselves which does a decent job but am still hoping VLC comes up with an official app for iPhone one day.

UI Customisation

iPhone has one of the best UIs for a smartphone, no doubts on that. But it kinda gets boring to stare at the same damn screen every time I swipe my finger to unlock my iPhone. Further with iPhone selling in bucketloads across the globe, you lose the sense of uniqueness that you would like to associate with your gadgets. Ofcourse you can deck up your iPhone with one of those millions of cases and other accessories available for iPhone. Further, if you have more cash to burn, you can get a really expensive makeover in the form of electro plating your iPhone with a fancy Nobel metal of your choice. But there is a much easier way to stand out of the crowd: installing themes and other UI customisation apps like widgets etc. Surprisingly Apple doesn't allow this. May be they think the whole themes eco-system is a very Windows experience and they want to keep their distance from it.

Multi-tasking

After playing around with the N900, which is like the multi-tasking GOD of smartphones, I realized how horribly wrong Apple has been by blocking this feature on their default iPhone OS. Thanks to backgrounder, a free multi-tasking app for jailbroken iPhones. However the mechanism of switching between different apps leaves much to be desired, especially with the iPhone OS packing in plenty of eye candy in it's UI. "So how?", would be a typical Singaporean reaction to this faux but fret not, the jailbreak community has an answer to this problem too. The only thing is that it will set you back by USD 4, a negligible amount considering the feature it adds to your iPhone. Take a look at this video below and you would know what am talking about.

I totally dig this feature on my iPhone. Like as am composing this post, I can jump to safari to get some links to support my arguments or just check on the score on the ongoing test match between India and Sri-lanka from the cricinfo app without having to quit the blogging app am using.

It's not entirely correct to say that Apple doesn't allow multi tasking on iPhones for you can always multitask the phone functions with the iPod running in the background. It's just that they don't want to give the freedom to user to decide what apps they want to multi task and as usual I hate to be tied down by some Apple official.

3G Restrictions

This one probably the carriers like AT&T requested Apple to impose on the iPhone. In case you don't know what an referring to, am talking about restrictions like download limit of 10 MB for apps/games over 3G. Another serious limitation is the blocking of VoIP calls over 3G. The official reason is that these tasks are data intensive and hence uneconomical for users. But what about users like me who are already shelling out a heavy monthly subscription charge for a high data usage plan? I feel cheated out of my money! If you are like me you would probably want to get this 3G unrestrictor from Cydia, an app store for the jailbroken iPhones. Again it's not a free app but it's always better than getting an extra broadband line for your laptop and a must have if you tether your iPhone.

And Tons of other awesome applications from Cydia and other sources. Infact I think "There is an App for that" is more apt for the Jailbroken community than the official iTunes App Store.

Now that I have drilled why to jailbreak, let me show you how to jailbreak your iPhone. It's a no-brainer actually, but let me save you a couple of clicks on the web and summarise the procedure for Jailbreaking.

Make a backup of your iPhone/iPod Touch (Just in case something goes wrong)
Head to blackra1n.com and select your OS (Windows or Mac) and download the tool. Its just 601 kb!
Connect your iPhone/iPod Touch to your desktop/laptop. Open blackrain.exe and click on "make it rain"
You don't have to do anything just stare at Geohot's image on your iPhone/iPod Touch, meaning your device is in recovery mode. The device will restart and thats it, your iPhone/iPod Touch is now jailbroken. Ain't that simple!
Wait, we are not done yet, after you restart, you should see the blackra1n icon on the springboard. Open it and install the application installer of your choice (Cydia is highly recommended). Don't install all the three application installers (Cydia, Rock and Snow) at once as there seem to be some problems with doing so.
Now you can go ahead and uninstall blackra1n.
Change the SSH password from default "alpine" to something you should be able to recall at the back of your mind. Ask me, "HOW?"
- Install the “Mobile Terminal” through Cydia (You will find it in Featured-->Utilities, Terminals and Daemons)
- Run Mobile Terminal and type “su root” (press “enter”)
- Enter the password, which is “alpine” as the default (hit “Enter”)
- Type “passwd” (press “enter”)
- Confirm password twice (to confirm with “enter”)
- Done
Start exploring Cydia to customize your iPhone, the way you want it to run and not how Apple wanted it to!

Isn't that sweet? The actual jailbreaking procedure from blackra1n took me like 2 min. Geohot, author/developer of blackra1n is a genius indeed. While he has clearly mentioned that he doesn't come up with jailbreak tools for monetary reasons, I still think he deserves a couple of dollars for making jailbreaking so easy, so do make it a point to donate a few dollars to this iPhone geek.

P.S- A lot of iPhone users jailbreak iPhone to be able to install paid applications for free by finding the cracked versions of the setup files on the web. I am personally against piracy and don't recommend this. After all the developers put time and effort in developing these apps/games and we gotta respect that. Piracy is no good either for the developers or for the users for the developers will stop coding if they don't see any monetary benefits reaching them from their apps. So don't promote piracy, be a responsible jailbroken iPhone/iPod Touch user.

Finally, I succumb to an Apple Product

2009-11-30T11:07:00.005+08:00

It's no secret that I have been a big hater of Apple, no not the fruit, I love the fruit infact, but it's the popular electronics manufacturer and service provider that I am talking about. Such has been my hatred that I have not only refrained from buying an Apple product but I have also debated at lengths with a friend of mine who is a big Apple fan. After abstaining from some of the best selling Apple products for over 8 years what made me finally take the plunge into one. Let's find out.

Before you judge me let me first tell you why I hate Apple in the first place. It's not that I don't like their products, I do like their products. Infact I think they come up with some of the best products every now and then, but always, I repeat always they leave out something very basic to that product, a feature which is pretty common among the competing devices from other manufacturers. Don't agree with me? Let me give you 2 examples with which one can easily identify: iPod and iPhone.

These two devices are just so popular that you would wonder what I am going to brag about here, but let me assure you that these devices are far from perfect. Let me start with iPod for starters. iPod has been such a market phenomenon that ask people what a portable music player(PMP) is and they would have no idea what you are talking about but ask them about iPod and you can see the sense of familiarity in their eyes. Many a times, even PMPs from other manufacturers are referred to as iPods which is rather unfortunate for the competing devices. It's pretty much the same case as with Xerox in photocopier industry. How many times have you spotted a Xerox board on a shop and saw a Canon photocopier at work inside? Innumerable times for me! Coming back to my point, ever wondered what's wrong with Apple's iPods? I can list several but let me first start with the hardware. It took Apple 8 long years to finally put a FM receiver on one of their iPods, not all mind it! All the while when competing PMPs have been offering FM built in out of box. My Apple fan friend would always tell me that one just needs to buy a FM enabled headset for that, but my concern has always been the absence of an out of box solution along with the lack of software for easy management of FM stations, that is assuming you get a FM enabled headset.

Let me now come to the software aspect of iPod: iTunes, this is one big stumbling block that has been preventing my migrations to the Apple domain. Being a windows user for over a decade now, I have always used the Windows media player for managing my music. What I love about it is that it auto searches and applies cover art to all my albums as long as I have the right meta data on all my media files. iTunes on the contrary has no such feature and being a non US resident you can't even use the iTunes store for auto finding your album arts. Now that's one big headache for me. I have like 20 GB of music in my library and manually finding the album art for each of them is something I don't have time for.

I ain't done with my rants about iPod yet but there is something which is common to both iPod and iPhone about which I will talk later. Let me spit some fire on iPhone now. The smartphone from Apple when it was launched in 2007 lacked 3G. That was like building a car without power windows those days. Alright may be I went a little overboard with the analogy but you get the point right? Okay, my apple fan friends would say talk about the present. I won't disappoint my friend, here face the fury of an Apple critic. First the Bluetooth on iPhone is as good as the appendix on my large intestine! Ok there is stereo bluetooth but tell me what percentage of iPhone users fancy a stereo Bluetooth headset? 10%? 15%? And yeah there are also a handful of apps/games that let you play around a little with bluetooth. But the interactions are mostly in between iPhones and that too only when each of the interacting iPhones have the same app/game.

Moving on, the app store has one of the most arbit acceptance policies. While apps like google voice get rejected, trash apps continue to flood the store. Am not sure the policy makers are themselves sure of the guidelines they have set. Apple has always maintained that they are against porn and yet soft porn apps like Asian Busty babes get approved. Approving porn apps is not a problem per se but hey you gotta stand by the policies you frame. The policies of the app screening committee are so absurd that some of the better known developers are either quitting the platform or adopting the increasingly popular jailbreak community.

One of my biggest complaints against Apple is that they always tie down their devices to their services. Wondering how? Let me illustrate: iTunes with ipods and iPhones! The album art faux I talked earlier is easily dwarfed by the much bigger limitation in iTunes sync: one device can be synched with only one iTunes. How frustrating is that! I juggle between three laptops/desktops on a typical day and I find it terribly frustrating not to be able to sync my iPhone with all my laptops/desktops. Well the restriction comes into picture only when you want to sync your iPhone applications, as long as you figure our how to manually manage your music on your iPod/iPhone, which I should say is not easy to find in iTunes when you connect your iPod/iPhone to iTunes.

Now let me come to one of the most frustrating policies of apple. They add software limitations which restrict the usage of their devices. Let me take the case of iPhone here. I have already talked about the Bluetooth limitations on iPhone, add to that list: absence of multi-tasking, lack of support for some of the most popular formats of media files etc. I dont understand the logic behind making such a powerful device and then limiting its usability with several software limitations. It's like selling a Bugatti Veyron with top speed locked at 80 km/hr!

You know what amuses me about Apple? Their tendency to block other manufacturers from using their services. We all know how they sued Psystar for selling Mac OS equipped desktops more popularly known as Hackintoshs. Another example is Palm's struggle with Apple over iTunes sync on Palm Pre. While they did win the legal battle with Psystar but the Pre sync saga continues to drag. With every iTunes update, apple kills the itunes sync with Pre and Palm prompltly follows with a quick firmware update that puts the sync back on. Why would Apple want to block other manufacturers from using their services is something that defies my logic. If anything it's a testimony to their software but Apple tends to think differently.

Now let me tell you, what made me go for the iPhone 3GS, yeah thats the device I fell for! It works like a charm, no second thoughts on that! After toying around with smartphones like Nokia 5800, Nokia N97, Nokia N900 (just over a couple of days as of now), HTC Dream, HTC Hero; I gotta say the 3GS is all about speed, as their punch line said when it was first announced in June. While the processor is blazingly fast, the UI of iPhone is one of the most intuitive for a smartphone. You may be wondering what about all that fire I just spit on iPhone and iPod? Well, I have found my way around it. For the iTunes faux, I came across this very intuitive and easy-to-use iPod/iPhone sync tool called CopyTransManager. It's everything I was looking for in a iPod/iPhone sync tool. Its portable, fast and makes a no-brainer of transferring songs to your iPod/iPhone from multiple desktop/laptops. What would you do if your Bugatti Veyron was locked at 80 km/hr? You would find a mechanic to break the speed lock for you, right? That's exactly what I did, I jailbroke my iPhone 3GS, thanks to Geohot's amazingly simple blackra!n. It took me like 2 min to jailbreak my iPhone 3GS. So now I have customized my iPhone the way I want it to run and not how Steve Jobs or some Apple executive wanted me to. To all those Apple guys, common guys just stick to making and selling your products, for you are good at it. Don't be too greedy and force the users to use your services, and yeah get over your absurd app approval policies.

Coming up next: Why you Should Jailbreak your iPhone/iPod Touch?

Stay tuned!

P.S- I could only fix the software glitches of the iPhone for some of the hardware flaws like lack of flash and FM receiver are just way beyond my capabilities to fix. I now miss my daily dose of local FM during my daily transit time :( but I make up for that by tweeting and facebooking and yeah this entire post was composed and published from my iPhone 3GS! :)

First Anniversary

2009-09-18T15:33:00.009+08:00

Yeah, its the first anniversary of my blog and you bet I am all excited about it. The day also marks another turning point in my life to which I was largely oblivious. Thanks to my friend for pointing it out. Let me take one task at a time and deal with my blog anniversary first.

Well, I started blogging mainly to overcome my boredom and more importantly to document the interesting turn of events my life was going through at that moment. I was a fresh graduate who had just started his first real job and I experience first hand what this comic strip below illustrates in real life, the difference being I am not in India!

Anyway coming back to my blog, it has been a wonderful experience putting words to my thoughts here. A lot of friends complimented me for my flair in writing which I must confess I was totally unaware of. Over the last year or so my blog has visitors from over 50 countries covering almost all the habitable continents (unless you consider Antarctica as habitable!); a majority of my readers being from Singapore, India and US where the bulk of my friends are located. Thanks for your support guys, if not for your feedback and comments, it wouldn't have been possible for me to sail so far.

As much as I would have loved all my posts to be hits among my readers, a couple of my posts drive in the bulk of the traffic to my blog. The number 1 being my blog post covering our weekend getaway in Pulau Besar, Malaysia. It must be the photos and the popularity of this small island, which drives traffic from countries as far as Russia, Libya and Peru to my blog. Hard to fathom isn't it?Moving on, the second favorite among the netizens is my entry on Kannada fonts in Nokia's Ovi suite, the popularity of which continues to baffle me for I never thought people were that crazy about having Kannada fonts on their phones. Next on the list is my entry covering my Jan 2009 visit home, which is now included in one of the testimonials in the official BIAL website. I was actually surprised when I learned about this for the webmaster of BIAL never contacted me or asked my permission before adding my post in their testimonials. (Am not complaining but just highlighting the fact that we Indians never give importance to proper citation or plagiarism for that matter).

Now let me cover a few entries which are my personal favorites: my post on my mis-adventures with pressure cooker, which I should dedicate to my undergraduate education in Chemical Engineering (just to let you know, the cooker to this day is functioning on that paper plug!). Next on my list is my entry on Jan 1 of this year, where I poured my heart out, recollecting the highs and lows of the year that was. Another favorite post of mine is the post on the INR 100,000 (USD 2,000) car Nano, a post my Dad complimented me on. I should thank my Dad for he was the one who always guided me in drafting an essay or a speech; something I indulged in a lot during my school days.

If you have been following my blog, you would have realised that my blog has evolved over the last year, starting from a standard blogger template, I have now moved on to a third party template, which I have personally customised to my likings.

While there have been some welcome changes, I haven't lost some of my traits, the most prominent being my procrastination tendency. My very first blog entry was all about how my laziness and procrastination has helped me in making me whatever I am today. If you happen to read that entry you would remember how I reached the airport in the last minute in December 2007. Guess what, I have bettered my record this very day! For a 6 o'clock flight, I reached the airport at 5:50, beat that!

Well now let me break the bubble and tell you what else this day signifies for me. I landed in Singapore this very day in 2007 at around 7 am and headed straight to NTU for I had an orientation to attend at 8 am (Arriving at the nth minute is nothing new for me!). I somehow made it to the orientation and to my horror found that the classes were scheduled that very afternoon. I was jet lagged and sleep deprived but had no choice. To make matters worse, there was this orientation dinner where in all alumni of my program were invited. I don't know how I made through the day, the only part I remember being me slipping out of the dinner silently. and crashing in my bed sans the pillow (Obviously, the dorm doesn't provide pillows and quilts). That was my first day in Singapore.

Looking back, I find it hard to believe that its been 2 years in Singapore for me. My first year here was a slog marathon with homeworks, classes and projects to attend to which left me with little to no time to explore around the tiny island nation. Not that I was always busy with my acads, I had to keep up with my addiction to sitcoms and movies as well, which proved to be quiet a herculean task in itself! After graduating in 2008, I had one resolve in my heart: to explore the island and catch on things I had missed during my student days. What followed was another marathon, this time exploring around the island (and some neighbouring ones too) and merry making on every weekend. The Lion city may be a tiny speck on the world map but it does have its share of attractions and am not merely referring to the tourist attractions. The museums here have an amazing collection of artifacts and I would say a must visit for anyone who has more time at hand when in Singapore.

In my two years in Singapore, if I have learned anything its professionalism. Singaporeans are a professional bunch and as a fresh graduate on the brink of my professional career, I gotta learn a lot here. One thing thats unique to Singapore is its exposure to International arena, which is rather a necessity for this island nation owing to its extremely small geographic area. Almost every other company here is working on International projects and as a professional, you get good exposure here, the kind of which is hard to come by in other countries.

Another thing I admire about Singapore is the communal harmony here. The city is home to one of the most diverse population that one can dream of in a city spanning just under 700 sq km and yet there are no communal disturbances. The law and order enforcement is spot on and one can always spot "Low crime doesn't mean no crime" hoardings everywhere. This is one city where anyone (girls, guys, kids) can go for a walk or jog irrespective of what time of the day or night it is without bothering about being mugged or other crimes. Though there are stray incidents once in a while, the city as a whole can be considered safe, very safe.

Before I sign off, Happy Birthday "my blog"

Force India

2009-08-31T22:15:00.010+08:00

Well, its kinda stale news by now but yeah I gotta blog about it. Last weekend was one of the most unforgettable weekends in Indian Sports. Gioncarlo Fischella finished on podium in Belgian Grand Prix after taking the pole in qualifiers.

Photo courtesy of F1Fanatic

Photo courtesy of Times

Having taken the pole in the qualifiers, Force India made no mistake leading right from lap one but a crash at Les Combes meant the safety car was out slowing down the top contenders. Thats when Kimi closed in on Fisi and eventually took the lead at Eau Rogue corner, courtesy the KERS technology (some fancy technology in which they are able to recover kinetic energy while braking, supercool right!!) of the Ferraris. Throughout the race Fisi tried as much as possible to close in on Kimi but just couldn't beat the KERS equipped Ferraris, damn it! Anyway a podium finish is always cool and I can see Mallya going gaga over the win. Seriously, I never thought Force India will ever make it to the podium and that too in its first season, thats like a toddler roller skating! Thats possible if the babies are on Evian!

NDP Weekend Getaway 09

2009-08-10T22:14:00.041+08:00

Am back to blogging after a long hiatus of more than a month and boy, am all charged up today. Just got back after a refreshing weekend in Endau Rompin, Johor in Malaysia and I couldn't have asked for more on a NDP weekend. What's NDP? If thats the question you are asking yourself, then my friend I guess you have never been to Singapore. Well, for the uninitiated, NDP stands for National Day Parade and falls on 9th August. What does it signify? Thats pretty obvious I guess: its the day Singapore was officially declared a city state nation in 1965, prior to which it used to be a part of Malaysia. Enough of history lessons now, lets deal with the matter at hand, my weekend getaway to a forest reserve in neighbouring Johor, Malaysia.

Day 1

A three day weekend should probably give a head ache to the immigration authorities at both Malysia and Singapore checkpoints. Restless Singaporeans and expats alike line in hordes to get across the border for breather of a weekend in Malaysia. From our previous experience during the Besar trip, but little did we know what waited us at the Immigration checkpoint. Since everyone had gathered at our apartment the previous night, starting early was not a problem and we started at 6:30 am sharp.

Now thats the customary group photo prior to every outing

We didn't have to wait long for our bus (service no-160) , which arrived in like 5 -1o min and in no time we reached the Singapore Immigration checkpoint. Having started early we weren't expecting serperntine queues at the checkpoint but the sight of queues was more a surprise than a disappointment (Thanks for having started early). Just when we thought we had beaten the queue, the kiosks at the checkpoint were in mood for some mischief as it refused to recognise passport of one of our group members, who was forced to lineup at the counter for manual immigration clearance. By this time the queues had stretched to insane lengths and our poor friend had to wait for around 40 mins to get the immigration clearance. That extra 40 min meant we were now stuck in the peak traffic hours and that too on a three day weekend meaning atleast 90 min for a 2 km drive across the border which translates into being late by atleast an hour for our arranged pickup in Malaysia.

So we reached Malaysia after a frustrating 2 km drive lasting around 80 minutes and wasted no time, rushing to the immigration checkpoint. Its all manual here but late as we were, the queues were not exactly encouraging. Surprisingly, we got the immigration clearance done in a matter of 20-30 min and we headed straight to the exit, without thinking much. Call it stupidity or whatever you may, we just couldn't find our way around to the city, where our friend was waiting for us. We had just reached Malaysia and we were totally lost and the responses we got from some of the drivers weren't encouraging either (One of them suggested, we take a bus headed to Singapore and then re-enter immigration check point). In the end common sense prevailed and we just made our way through a no-entry way and found the side-exit to the city. I don't know who designed the Malaysian checkpoint but whoever it was, I must say has a wicked sense of humour. The entrance to the city is via a bridge, entrance to which is hidden in a corner of the checkpoint exit. There are no visible signboards upon immigration clearance and to add to the confusion, the bridge heads in the opposite direction of the exit, making it look more like a passage for Singapore bound passengers, rather than passengers heading to the city. Anyway we figured it out but much to the frustration of our friend waiting for us, we were late by more than an hour or so. (It was around 10 30 when we reached Johor Bahru while we were expected at 9 am)

By this time, we were starving for most of us had not had breakfast but there was not much time. So we headed to the nearest Kaya Toast shop and packed coffee and toast to pacify our growling stomachs before heading to Kluang. The 110 km drive to Kluang took us around an hour or so, thanks to well maintained roads of Malysia. We were due at 11 am at the agreed pickup point in Kluang but we could only manage to reach there around 12 30 pm. The drive from Kluang to Peta was to be one of the roughest drives we have encountered to date in this part of Asia and two Mitsubishi Pajeros were entrusted with the task of ferrying us to the Reserve park. Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed the 60 km drive which lasted around 2 hours, with intermittent rains and wooden bridges along with potholes on the road preparing us for the Jungle experience ahead. Lets take a look at what the ride looked like:

To be honest, potholed roads are a common sight in India and the drive was no different to driving in India during rainy season. While my friends were complaining about the bumpy ride, I was more than happy to get a feel of it after a long time. However I was surprised to see wooden bridges along the streams here. For a country like Malaysia, where it pours like there is no tomorrow, for most part of the year, wooden bridges are something the authorities can do without. After around 2 hours or so, we reached Peta and didn't waste time heading straight to lunch at around 3 pm.

As much as we were glad to have reached our destination our growling stomachs needed some much needed attention

Which we fixed straightaway along with these kids

After lunch we checked into our chalets and showered and geared up for white water rafting. Unfortunately, I didn't take my camera expecting rough water and some serious water rafting experience but the water was rather calm and I realised that I could have carried my camera along. Anyways, one of my friends was brave or rather smart enough to have carried a camera. The 2 hour rafting experience was exciting and was a good indicator of what to expect for the next 2 days. Some pics from my friend's camera:

As we waited for our rafts

No rough water but it was still tough to steer the raft

Since the water is not rough enough, we decided to take a dip by ourself

Three Musketeers

All smiles after the rafting experience

By this time we were totally drained and couldn't think of anything better than curling in our beds and snoring after a sumptuous (okay, thats an exaggeration for a veggie like me forced to a diet of rice, eggs and some greens) dinner.

Lessons from Day 1: Expect the unexpected
Always pack some instant food

Day 2

After a rather exhausting day 1, I slept like a log and struggled to get out of the bed next morning. Surprisingly not everyone had a goodnight sleep. My brave friend (yeah, the one with the camera during rafting) from the previous day had a rendezvous with the so called "ghosts" that freaked him to an extent that he literally jumped out of his bed in shock and was almost speechless (read throat infection) all throughout the day. To make matters worse, he had a slight fever, damn so much for the ghosts and all the horror movies he is a big fan of! Anyway, he was still brave enough to join us to a 4 km trek to a waterfall, which was supposed to be the pièce de résistance of this outing.

Since it was a guided tour, we didn't encounter any disappointments, contrary to the treks during my undergrad days (We always ended up at the wrong gorge then!). However the humidity took its toll on me with me perspiring more than during a routine one hour workout in the gym. The refreshing dip in the lagoon made it worthwhile though.

We took a 20 min ferry to the starting point of trek

Thats like the most important bag for this trek. Any guesses on what it packs? (Lunch ofcourse)

This is what we ferried through

Soaking in the natural beauty of the surroundings

Tranquility

And then we saw land at last thats where we started our trek

Through thick and thin forests

crossing streams by foot at times

or over rope bridges

that looked like these

Amidst rules like these enforced

and then we reached our destination (In case you were wondering thats Malay for Waterfalls)

I wasn't expecting a Jog but this was rather disappointing

and just for comparison this is Jog falls which is like 200 km from my hometown and at 250 m is the highest waterfall of India

Anyways coming back to the present trip: another group shot

Unfortunately I don't have any snaps from the lagoon which was refreshing and couldn't have come at a better time (After a 4 km trek in humidity of around 80%). Most of us didn't want to come out of this natural pool but we didn't have a choice. By the time we got back to our chalets we were totally drained and a cool shower was all that we needed to put our tired bodies to sleep, that is after a sumptuous (which is rather a hyperbole here) dinner ofcourse.

Lessons from Day 2: Always carry a first aid cum medicine kit
Water botte is a must have on a trek

Day 3:

From our previous experiences we had decided that we should start from Malaysia atleast by late afternoon to avoid the traffic clutter of the weekends and for a three day weekend matters can only get worse. So we started like 10 am from Endau Rompin and as we waited for the Pajeros our tour guide, Dola (thats our tour guide, by the way) had a surprise for us: the tour of local tribal practises f0r animal traps and blow pipes.

This one is supposed to be for birds

For monkeys

For stray humans (Nah, for tigers and bears actually)

This one I nailed at take one! No kidding, ask my friends if you don't believe me

After playing around with blow pipe for around twenty minutes or so, it was time to say good bye to PETA and a weekend of jungle experience and veggie food comprising of arbit grass/creepers and tofu. The experience was memorable and thanks to my friends, I will take these memories with me for long. Our next destination is Incredible India in December! So keep checking this blog as I pen my (mis)-adventures along my journey called LIFE.

Lessons from Day 3: Always start early on a weekend when travelling on road from Johor Bahru to Singapore

Kannada in Nokia!

2009-07-07T12:31:00.006+08:00

Look what I just found as I was installing Ovi Suite, a PC suite for Nokia phones. Support for Kannada (my mother tongue)! Now this is the first time am seeing Kannada fonts on a software from a mainstream company. I was very much surprised and happy that Nokia, the world's largest handset manufacturer have identified Kannada as one of the major Indian languages.

Kannada was accorded classical status last year on the eve of Rajyotsava day (Novemeber 1), the day state of Karnataka was formed by uniting the Kannada speaking population of South India who were distributed in the then princely states of Mysore, Hyderabad and Bombay. In case you were wondering what all this fuss about classical language was all about, classical status to a language is accorded by Government of India for languages that meet certain criteria (what criteria is something I am trying to find, but there is not much data on this on the web. May be some Govt. body can come up with an explanation for this before some freak like me invokes RTI and decides to sue them). Anyway, the point is Kannada along with Telugu joined Tamil and Sanskrit in this elite list of languages.

Bangalore is known to be a cosmopolitan city where one can easily manage without uttering a word of Kannada. Infact I have friends who have lived in Bangalore for most part of their two decades of existence and to date cannot speak a complete sentence in Kannada. I am not judging anyone when I say this but I just want to illustrate the point that Karnataka is a cosmopolitan state and people here dont like to enforce the local language on others. Ofcourse there are stray incidents every now and then by some language fanatics but for most part Kannada fanaticism is non existent. To prove my point further let me reproduce this table from Wiki:

Language	Genetic affiliation	Speakers (as of 2001, in million)	Geographical distribution

Hindi	Indo-Aryan, various	422	the "Hindi belt", Northern India
Kannada	Dravidian, Southern	38	Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Goa (list)

Sanskrit	Indo-Aryan	0.05	Mattur

Tamil	Dravidian, Southern	61	Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Pondicherry, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Maharashtra (list)
Telugu	Dravidian, South-Central	74	Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Orissa (list)

You can see that with 38 million speakers (2001 figures), Kannada is only ahead of Sanskrit, going by its popularity with the masses. If even with these figures, Kannada can join the classical list, there is no reason for linguistic fanatics to promote their vehement agendas.

Now coming to the point of locals nelecting the regional language, its an interesting scenario indeed. While some of them may label them as ignorant and reluctant, I think its all a matter of convenience. Why talk about others, I am not very comfortable with Kannada myself for I cannot read and write it with the same fluency as English. My spoken Kannada is a vial different from the Kannada that is written in formal texts. Infact this is another factor in my state. The spoken language changes its styles and meanings almost every 30 or 50 km. I am from Dharwad and it has its own style with a mix of a few terms from Marathi, Hindi and English being used in the colloquial language. If one travels just 90 km towards the north, there is Belgaum, another major city of Karnataka and the Kannada here is strongly influenced by Marathi. Take for example, you go to a grocery shop and ask for a price of a kg of Oil, the vendor will respond "One Shambar rupay"! Now this is a mix of English for one, Marathi for Shambar (meaning Hundred) and rupay is almost used in every Indian language for Indian Rupee.

I did my undergrad in Suratkal near Mangalore, another city in Karnataka with a different style of Kannada altogether. Its a coastal city and it has its own dialect by the name of Tulu and Kannada here as such is heady mix of Tulu words. The most commonly heard phrase here is "Yenchina Saavu Maraaya" where yenchina is an export from tulu and the other two words are just local variants of the Kannada words. During my undergrad, I befriended students from across India and Karnataka as well. This is where I picked up on different styles of Kannada. There were a few guys from Gulbarga, who used exactly the opposite words for some verbs like "hogu" was for "come" and "Baa" was for "go" contrary to their usage in other styles of Kannada. I was confused at times when I heard this verbs from them and it took me a year to get a grasp of it. While I was very much aware of the Kannada spoken in Bangalore and Mysore for that is what we use in formal kannada text, I was intrigued by Kannada styles from these different places, all within Karnataka.

Having said so much about Kannada and Karnataka, its been almost two years for me in Singapore and I am yet to join the local Kannada Association, which goes by the name of Singara and has been pretty active for quiet sometime now.

FLUUUU!!!

2009-07-03T13:55:00.005+08:00

FLU is the word on every other person these days here. Singapore confirmed around 900 cases of H1N1 as of today and MOH has now moved on from "containment" to "mitigation", meaning temperature monitoring twice a day for me! The MOH alert level continues to be at yellow though and again I have no idea how MOH's alert system works. I had no clue the last time I blogged about it, almost a month ago and even to this day, I don't have as much as an iota of understanding of the rationale (if there is one!) behind the alert level indicators. This scenario points out two things: one being that MOH's logic beats that of normal individuals like you and me and two, I need to blog more often! I have as little as 4 blog posts for the month of June, thats way off my target.

Lets first talk about H1N1 as this has been one of the the most widely discussed topics worldwide today. My friend just got back from his hometown in Thailand and was forced to self quarantine himself for a day. This comes at the cost of his annual leave as he was overseas for personal reasons and not official visits. This may not come as a suprise to some of you as I have heard of guys being forced into self quarantine which roughly translates into work from home after returning from overseas trips. In Singapore, the flu has spread its foothold spreading from travellers to localites who have never stepped a foot outside Singapore since the outbreak of Swine Flu. Some of the National Service camps have also been identified as epi centers of outbreak. Singapore has been hosting the Asian Youth Games 09 (AYG) and H1N1 hasn't spared this sports extravaganza either. The Table Tennis team of Singapore was largely affected by this when one of their key players was suspected of harboring the flu. However, the player in question was declared to be fit and the team advanced to quarter finals as I blog this post. Another issues marring AYG, has been the "hijab" or headscarf. The sensitive issue has again raised its ugly head, with Kuwait's basketball team being forced to play without their skipper and pointguard, Rabab Abdullah for sporting a hijab, which is in violation of a certain "Section 4.4.2 of basketball world governing body Federation Internationale de Basketball's (Fiba) Official Basketball Rules prohibits headgear and hair accessories which prohibits headgear and hair accessories". What advantage the headgear or in this case the head scarf is to the athlete is something that defies me. Whats surprising is that officials permitted hijab wearing athletes (three in the team) from Bahrain in their matches against China and India, which they lost! The matches were rescheduled as the Bahrain team had previously forfeited their matches against China and India as their uniform comprising of trousers and hijab was in violation of Fiba norms.

Bahrain team in action against their Indian counterparts (Image Courtesy: Straits Times)

When Bahrain could get their matches rescheduled, why wasn't the Kuwait team given the similar chance? I cannot believe that such things can happen in an International event and that too in Singapore. I thought the city nation sets high standards and obviously I was wrong!

Enough of Singaporean news, the last week or so has been very dramatic in the Entertainment world. It may be rather too late to blog about it but better late than never: The King of Pop-Michael or should I say Maikeel Jackson passed away on 25th June 09, at the age of 50. If you don't know why I spelled his name as "Maikeel", MJ had converted to Islam early this year and had rechristened himself as "Maikeel". While I was not surprised to read about his conversion to Islam (Religon was a very small change for him, considering around 15 cosmetic surgeries he had going from black to white and rumored sex change procedures), I was totally shocked by the news of his sudden demise. I was actually looking forward to his comeback concert in London. I may not be as big a fan as to buy concert tickets and fly to London or on hearing his death, fly to US for his funeral, but the legend did influence me during my childhood days. As much as I was inspired by his moonwalks and gravity defying forward leans, I was intrigued by his weird lifestyle.

I always thought MJ was a man who didn't let nature or God decide what he was to be or meant to be. By fiddling around with every inch of his body, he was a cosmetic surgeon's best selling mascot and what's interesting is that many plastic surgeons advised him against some of the procedures but with a financial backing of his stature, all he had to do was to convince another surgeon with his monetary bargaining power. I will always remember him for defying the laws of nature and his works of charity. It turns out that he was a statics genius too! Take a look at the video below before I tell you why:

As mentioned earlier, I was a big fan of this step of his and only after his death, it came in the news, that it was all the handiwork of his special shoes, designed by the king of pop himself and he even holds a patent for them! Its an entire system actually that consists of a special shoe that has a hitch designed to attach to a projection in a stage. When the shoe engages with the component in the stage, the performer can lean forward beyond his or her center of gravity. So now you know the secret behind MJ's gravity defying forward leans.

Lets move on to Sports now: its been quiet a while since I blogged and as such there are plenty of things to cover. Cricket's got to be the first: Over in England, Pakistan took the T-20 crown, after beating Sri-Lanka in the finals. I am no big fan of Pakistan Cricket but they desperately needed to win this tournament after all the negative publicity their nation has been getting in the cricketing circles. I hope this win does some damage control to the sorry state of PCB in world cricket. In Wimbledon, the big "W"s (Williams sisters) clash in the finals in women's arena where as in men's its going to be Federer vs one of the Andys (Roddick or Murray) in the finals. In soccer, Man U's Christiano Ronaldo became the world's richest footballer with his transfer from Man U to Real Madrid in a mind blowing USD 130 million transfer!! Man U lost Argentine striker, Carlos Tevez too and now seem to be looking towards their former star Michael Owen to add some lost sting to their lineup.

Well, thats all for today, I will be updating here more often now.

By the way, I forgot to tell you guys, I got my hands on a review set of Nokia N97, thanks to my blogging commitments and WOM, Nokia. I will get to keep this handset for two weeks, during which am expected to submit a review. Its been only two days and am totally in love with it! Nokia, can I keep this handset for myself??

Mobile blog

2009-06-23T22:21:00.001+08:00

Finally, I found a widget for my phone that lets me blog right from my phone. Lets see if this will help me blog here more regularly. More about this application in my next post.

Finally I Get to Blog

2009-06-15T21:21:00.003+08:00

The last week has been really hectic for me, leaving me with little time for blogging. Its been so long that it almost feels like my first blog entry here! Hmm, may be I went a little overboard with that comparison but I really miss blogging here.

Last weekend I spent a little over 2 hours, giving my blog a new look. I think the result is impressive and some of my friends do agree with me on this. I had set everything and the blog was fully functional with all the widgets working but just when I was fine-tuning the twitter widget, it crashed and my subsequent attempts to get it working failed. Its been almost 9 days and I still haven't been able to figure out a way around it. I have got little time in the past week for my personal blog and whatever little time I had, was spent on getting the twitter widget working but the sparrow refuses to tweet on my blog!

Now just a round up of things happening around in the world for the last week or so. As expected, Roger Federer finally nailed the French Open aka Roland Garros, adding one title that has been missing from his tally over the last few years. Over at Lords, defending champions, India unceremoniously crashed out of T-20 world cup, ending the dream run, Dhoni had been enjoying over the last year or two. For the first time, Dhoni's decisions have been put under intense media scrutiny and so far he has done well in handling media. If only he and other Indian batsmen could handle the short ball from the English bowlers, India would still be defending its title over at England at this very moment. With India out of the competition, my favourites for the title are South Africa with their impressive lineup and performance of some of their key players in IPL 2009.

Now lets move to the next biggest crowd puller in India, POLITICS! The crisis at the second biggest party in Indian Politics, BJP is going from bad to worse with Yashwant Sinha, one of the most charismatic members of BJP resigning from all his party positions (national vice president, national executive member and observer for party affairs in Karnataka) but continues to be a member of BJP. BJP has been reeling under leadership woes ever since its humiliating loss at the just concluded Lok Sabha elections and with Sinha's resignation, it doesn't look like its getting any better with time.

Over in Mumbai, finally the standoff between multiplexes and distributors has concluded meaning Bollywood movies will now be released on the silver screen for crowds in India and overseas. Now thats good news for its been really long since I saw a Bollywood movie on the big screen (Ghajini was my last I guess). Another Bollywood news is that actor Shiney Ahuja has been taken under police custody following charges of assault and rape by his maid. Unconfirmed reports suggest that the actor has accepted to have committed the crime but there is no official statement from the Police yet.

Over the weekend I checked out a show of The Taking of Pelham 123, one of the best thrillers to be released in the recent times. The star cast consisting of double Oscar winner, Denzel Washington and John Travolta (another one of my favourites) was sufficient for me to drag my lazy bum to the theaters and boy, I didn't repent it even for a second. Thrillers are my favourites and throw in two of my favourite actors and I will remain glued to my seats no matter what! If you still haven't seen the movie, don't think twice, just head to the nearest cinema to catch this movie on the big screen.

One more thing, there is an Xbox at my place now (courtesy my apartment mate) and most of the spare time is spent gaming on this console. We are still getting into terms with it but the first impressions are nothing short of impressive. I figured out that I can now finally use the media center capabilities of my Vista as Xbox acts as a Media Center extender. That means, I can now wirelessly stream music, pictures and videos from my laptop straight to the TV in the living room. Now we need a bigger Full HD LCD TV or even better LED TV to max out the graphic capability of the console. So you know what to buy for our next birthdays!

MOH, What are You doing?

2009-06-05T14:42:00.009+08:00

Singapore just confirmed its 12th H1N1 case and am surprised that Ministry of Health (MOH) is still keeping the alert level at Yellow. It's difficult to predict MOH's alert system as it was Orange when the outbreak had just surfaced in Mexico and there were no confirmed cases in Singapore then. But now with 12 confirmed cases, the alert level continues to be lower at Yellow. Can anyone explain the whimsical logic behind MOH's alert system to me?

Not that I want the alert level to be raised to Orange for I know what a pain it is. Govt sector and even some private sector employees will be required to log their body temperatures twice (min and max is 5 times) daily. It doesn't end here, every visitor from a foreign country is looked down upon and treated like an infected chicken in a poultry farm. Even a normal sneeze and a dry cough (a kind of clearing my throat types) are strict no in public areas, unless you want to face the snaring glares from every other person your eyes meet. The funny thing about all this was the fact that the so-called plush "air-con" systems were now being accused of being a potential carrier of the strain as air-con systems circulate air in the whole buildings and most of the buildings here have central air-con system, meaning even a single person is capable of infecting the whole building.

As far as the present situation is concerned I feel the countries with higher hygienic awareness are the worst affected. For example, Japan is known to have the cleanest and the most hygiene conscious population in the world, which as of today has 410 confirmed cases of H1N1. Compare this to Thailand: 8 confirmed cases or why that far, back home in India: 3 confirmed cases. I don't know much about Thailand but India I know is not very high on hygiene scale but it can be seen that with a much larger geographical area (4500 times that of Singapore and 8.2 times that of Japan) and population (250 times that of Singapore and 9 times that of Japan), it has the least confirmed cases. Now that is one interesting observation which I think points to the immunity of population in less hygienic environments compared to the vulnerability of population in very clean and hygienic environment.

Other than the over-rated H1N1 spreading to few more countries, a lot of things have been happening around the world. The most noticeable being Barcelona beating Manchester United to take home the Champion's League title. I literally had to burn mid-night oil to catch this match live at 3 am in the morning (well not kerosene oil for a lamp but some fossil fuel for powering my laptop all night). Over at Roland Garros aka French Open, top seed "Rafaa" or "Nadaa" as he is popularly known these days crashed out in fourth round to Robin Soderling (his last name reminds me of my hometown where there is a considerable Veerashaiva crowd with various "ling"s in their names).. I was like, Rafaa lost to Soderwho?? Couldn't believe it with clay court being Nadal's forte and everyone talking about Rafael Nadal overtaking Bjorn Borg by winning five straight French Open titles.. But Rafaa was not so lucky, so as of now Bjorn Borg and Nada jointly hold the record for most consecutive French Open titles with four wins each.. Rafaa also lost one more record as he came close to winning all four grand slam titles in a year, a feat achieved only once in Tennis history almost 40 years ago (may be Rafaa's Dad and Mom played tennis then) by Rod Laver (again the name doesn't ring any bells, not that I expect it to).. All this while Roger Federer is going strong in French Open and lets see if he gets to lift the cup, having lost it to Nadal in last three French Open finals (2006-2007-2008). I sincerely hope that Federer gets his hands on this cup which has been eluding him all these years.

Over in England, India is defending its world T-20 title but didn't have one of the best starts to the tournament losing to the Kiwis in the warm up game. Gosh, India needs to do something about this Kiwi team in the T-20 format, for they have lost 3 straight T-20 matches to them in the last 3 months. However, when India lose in a warmup game, its only a sign of big wins in the coming matches as was seen during India's tour of Australia in 2003 (India hopelessly drew the warm up matches against Victoria and Queensland before coming back strongly to lead the test series 1-0 after two tests but had to settle for a lame series draw 1-1).

My theory did prove right with India trouncing arch rivals Pakistan(not rivals anymore, Pakistan cricket is not the force it used to be in the 90s) in the last warm-up tie by 9 wickets. It was sweet victory for India with two of its mainstay players: Zaheer and Sehwag skipping the game over injury concerns not bothering the team composition at all. Rohit Sharma has continued his dream run from IPL 2009, shining with the bat this time though (compared to his bowling heroics for Deccan Chargers in IPL 2009). Man, I love this new format of the game, its entertainment at its highest level. I still prefer Test matches though, but thats for the love of Cricket and not for entertainment.

Its June

2009-06-02T10:01:00.016+08:00

Its JUNE, yeah its that part of the year when a fresh class of graduated students step out from school in big-bad world of professionalism. There is more to it than just professionalism for gone are the days of carefree living and unkept grooming as you will be judged every minute in your new life as a working professional.

I still remember how easy life was a student this very month last year. After submitting our projects and completing the formality of project seminar, we straight away headed to Kuala Lumpur to break lose and have fun. I still remember none of us had a job (well almost) then but that didn't stop us from letting our hair down and party in gay abandon. Check out a few pics from our KL trip or should I say, Graduating class trip:

Hmm, Twin Towers!

Lifts can't get any bigger than this, now can they?

I would rather keep mum about this

Damn, the lift panel, 84 floors!

A peek inside the skybridge connecting the world's tallest twin towers

View of KL from skybrige, breathtaking!

Eye on KL

The Petronas Twins do lit up the night sky

Singapore! So near yet so far

Those were the days! Hmm, time to get back to real world now. I have been seriously busy with work over the last few weeks and haven't really had the time to update my blog. By the way, I am blogging for a few tech blogs, which take up my spare time and hence this blog has to suffer with infrequent posts. But I have promised myself to update this blog regularly as well. What can I say? Blogging here gives me a sense of relief, its my window to the world

Mas-Selamat captured

2009-05-16T16:48:00.005+08:00

I cant believe I forgot to mention this in my previous post. The man who managed to hood wink one of the best security systems in the world, yeah Mas Selamat Bin Kastari was captured in Malaysia last week. Apparently he swam his way through the border in what they call an improvised floating device. Now what do they mean by "improvised floating device"? I dont know! As far as I can see it, it can be anything from a surfer board to a stealth boat. If anybody has any clues on this, please drop a comment below.

IPL fever has been catching up on me big time as BRC have pulled off a stunner out of nowhere. I never thought they would make it to the semis, they did it and they did it in style. Thanks to Anil Kumble, the veteran has been outstanding with his performance and captaincy. Finally Mallya made a gem of a move by appointing Kumble as a captain ahead of Jacques Kallis the other contender for the post. Now lets see if they can make it through the semis and the trophy ofcourse. BRC has to thank KKR too for their upset wins in the last leg of the league matches. Finally Brendon McCullum clicked and so did the rest of his team for the last few matches. I couldnt believe myself that KKR chased down 179 set by Chennai the other night. This has to be the biggest upset of all times in IPL 2009.

Now this is one random post with topics ranging from Mas Selamat to IPL. I have been pretty busy with my work these days and catching IPL telecast in the night, so am not getting much time to blog but I will be back to regular blogging soon.

Back to Where I Belong

2009-05-08T10:16:00.012+08:00

So many things have been happening around me and I haven't really had the time to put words to my thoughts over the last week or so. Now that am blogging, I dont really know what to start with. Let me start with the first thing that comes to my mind.

Swine Flu or should I say H1N1 is all over the news over the last week or so. To start with I dont know how the flu got the name "swine flu" for this isn't a food borne disease in the first place and neither did the humans get it from pigs. Infact I read that the pigs got it from humans and thats why WHO decided to officially rename swine flu as H1N1, the latter coming from the straing of the virus responsible for the outbreak.

As if the present economic recession was not enough, H1N1 outbreak has been an extra baggage on econmies worldwide with travel restrictions and scrutiny being the order of the day. Take Singapore as an example, at a time when there are no reported confirmed cases of flu in the country or even Asia for that matter (when the protocol started), Ministry of Health started taking all sorts of preventive measures. Travel restrictions, body temperature monitoring greeting us everywhere we go in and around the campus. Its exam time here and students have to log their temperatures before entering the examination hall (body temperature should be the last thing on their minds when entering the exam hall). The worse hit are the visitors to our university. Every visitor has to reach the temperature monitoring station from a non-a/c path for temperature measurement. I pity the visitors for its not easy to make your way around the campus in our university and this added restriction will only add to their woes. University staff are not spared from temperature monitoring either with the protocol requiring each staff member to log their body temperatures twice per day. Blow me! Even the worst hit countries like US (well Mexico has taken some serious measures, being the epicenter of flu) have not resorted to such drastic measures. Some states in US have imposed travel restrictions but am not aware of any institution requiring its staff and students to log their body temperatures. Things got a little better starting from yesterday when the new circular from MOH scrapped daily temperature monitoring for university staff and students.

Lets talk about something else now. After much drama, Indian Premier League 2009 was shifted from India to South Africa at the last minute. The tournament has been a hit till now, thanks to Lalit Modi and CSA for marketing cricket at such a grandiose scale. The tournament began with a bang with Bangalore Royal Challengers beating the present championship holders Rajasthan Royals convincingly with two both Rahul Dravid and Anil Kumble shining with the bat and ball respectively. It looked like BRC had finally laid their IPL ghosts to rest but as the tournament progressed, BRC lost their track and were again placed at the bottom of the points tally. Just when everyone had written off BRC, they pulled off one of the biggest wins (victory margins wise) by thumping Mumbai Indians and Kings XI Punjab in simultaneous outings. Now it seemed like BRC were all geared up for the semi final slot but RR beat them in one of the must one sided contest this IPL, last night. RR had their revenge I guess. Now the tournament is wide open with just one win shuffling the standings at the points tally.

IPL is all about glamour and when there is glamour there is bound to be some gossip. A lot of gossip has been doing rounds this IPL season. A special mention of a blog by a certain blogger who goes by the name of fakeiplplayer. He claims to be one of the uncapped junior players on the benches of Kolkatta Knight Riders. The blog has immense entertainment value with some amazing gossip, ranging from discussions at the team meetings to night life in South Africa. He has come up with some amazing nicknames for everyone (players, owners, coaches, commentators) associated with IPL this season.

Nimbuzz

2009-05-07T01:13:00.009+08:00

I have just instatlled this amazing application on my cell called Nimbuzz. Its a VoIP/IM client with a ton of features. One of the coolest features of this application is this widget with which anyone can contact me anytime for FREE, thats right for free. You just have to click on the right buttons below to text/call me and if I am offline you can buzz me or leave a voice message. The buzz notifies me instantly, giving me the options of coming online instaneously if I have access to internet somewhere in the vicinity. The application works like a dream and I just cant have enough of it.

I am having a hard time, trying to customize the layout of this widget, to sync it with my sidebar. Untill I figure out the way around it, I am posting a somewhat incomplete looking widget on my sidebar (fully functional though)..

I would like to thank the developers of NIMBUZZ for coming up with such an awesome application. Just a request to the coders of Nimbuzz to provide some more customization options for the widgets. More on this application later!

2009-04-30T18:20:00.002+08:00

Download Nimbuzz Mobile

Opera mini rocks!

2009-04-30T14:37:00.002+08:00

Finally am able to blog from my mobile. Thanks to opera mini. This is my first blog entry from my mobile. Will update the blog soon reviewing the latest software on my gadget. Also check out my new signature.

Weekend Getaway-Pulau Besar

2009-04-19T19:20:00.073+08:00

As a fresh graduate just getting into terms with a life of a working professional with a routine 9 to 5 job and deadlines and meetings accounting for most of the week, I needed to take a break from the mundane proceedings.. And so did most of my friends and a three day weekend was what we were looking for, for our getaway vacation.. Singapore, being a tiny speck on a world map with just under 700 sq km of surface area becomes very boring after spending a year or so here as one would have explored most of what it has to offer in this time span.. So we decided to venture out of Singapore and Singapore's close proximity to Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia is a boon for planning your weekend getaways.. We started with Bintan as our destination about a month ago but we were already too late for all the resorts were already booked over the Easter weekend which we were planning for our getaway.. This is where I pitched in for I have been routing for Pulau Besar since last October but havent been able to mobilise my friends for the same till now.. Overnight Pulau Besar was on the top of our list and we started hunting for deals at the resorts that Pulau Besar has to offer..

A little background info on Besar: Pulau is malay for Island and Besar is malay for big.. The island is not that big actually with just 4 resorts making up for a rather uninhabited island.. Pulau besar is a poor cousin of the more famous and hence more crowded Tionman Islands.. I just wanted to go to this place when one of my SSP seniors showed me pics of his outing last year.. The water so blue and so clear, I was immediately enchanted by it and have been planning for it ever since.. The best part of Pulau Besar is its close proximity to Singapore, just a 3 hour drive including the immigration checks and the alike.. I will straight away get into my tour diary instead of boring you with trivial details..

Day 1:

At Bus stop near our apartment

We did start as early as 6:15 am on a Friday morning! We had decided to rely on public transport for our onward journey atleast as most of the private coaches were already booked.. We took bus no. 160 from Bukit Batok and as we had guessed the immigration check was the rate determining step of our onward journey.. The new Woodlands checkpoint was a welcome sight though with a lot more immigration check kiosks than our previous visit to Kuala lumpur.. After clearing the immigration, we decided to take bus no 170 as we wanted to go to Larkin terminal in Johor Bahru.. The serpentine queues at the checkpoint gave us sometime to bargain with the cab drivers on site to bargain for a drive to Mersing but unfortunately for us most of the cabs were already booked (atleast the ones who could speak English)..

We reached Larkin terminal at around 9 am and from here we had two options: (1) a direct bus to Mersing, the frequency of which was not that good (2) a bus to Kota Tingi and from here a bus/cab to Mersing.. We found that we had just missed the direct bus to Mersing and hence decided to take the bus to Kota Tingi.. Kota Tingi is an hours drive from Johor Bahru for which we paid RM 4.5 (including a tip of RM 10 for the driver).. Crossing the Singapore-Malaysia border makes one realise the stark difference between the two countries.. Malaysia is a welcome change from the concrete jungle of Singapore but one cannot help complaining about the lack of amenities and public safety in Malaysia.. Singapore has indeed set high standards and has kinda pampered us.. A year or so ago if I happen to land in Malaysia, I wouldnt be complaining as the sight is nothing new compared to India but a year and half in Singapore has changed my perspective.. Anyway coming back, the drive to Kota Tingi was as exciting as ever for the roads are broad and fast flowing traffic which is something India lacks.. One more thing I noted in Malaysia is that the milestones dont indicate the distance to the heart of the city or rather the bus terminals as in India but to the periphery of the city.. I was hooked on to the gps module of my cell and started waking up my snoring friends for I thought we had reached Kota Tingi when as a matter of fact we were still 5-6 km from the destination, much to the frustration of my friends..

It was like 10:15 am when we reached Kota Tingi and by this time, we were all hungry having had a very light breakfast in the morning when we started.. We found our way to one of the foodcourts there but had a hard time telling them that we were veggies and would like to have toast and egg for breakfast.. So we decided to go to a burger place called MARIE BROWN where I had to settle for a chicken burger minus the chicken patty.. So essentially I was having a chicken burger without chicken!!

We decided to rent a cab from Kota Tingi to Mersing as we are slightly off schedule with our extended late breakfast break.. It cost us RM 80 per cab for a 90 km drive, pretty reasonable compared to cab drives in Singapore where I shell out an equivalent amount just to get home from the airport (which is a mere 15 km drive).. We reached Mersing in less than an hour during which most of us managed to get some much needed sleep.. We reached Mersing around 11:15 am just in time to take the 11:30 am ferry to Pulau Besar.. This is what welcomed us at Mersing:

A special mention of side board here:

They definitely have a good sense of humour!

We had to wait for like 20 minutes till the speed boat from our resort arrived during which we soaked in the beauty of the surroundings and some last minute shopping..

Mersing Jetty

Once our speed boat arrived, we dumped our luggage onboard and geared up for the bumpy ride ahead.. The speed boat ride was the most exciting part of the trip with a ride so bumpy that we had a tough time moving around in the boat and most of the photos were courtesy anti shake modes of our cameras:

This was before the ride started

A small video clip taken during the ride:

After a hair raising ride of around 20 minutes, we reached Pulau Besar and this is what welcomed us:

I am at loss of words to describe the scenic beauty this island has to offer, so I will just let the pictures do the talking here:

A bridge to the horizon

Pristine Waters

Nirvana Beach Resort

A closer look at the cottages where we were put up for three days:

We were more than happy to grab the welcome drink and as we sipped on to the drink our luggage was being shifted to our cottages.. After checking in most of us took a refreshing shower and headed for lunch.. Our tour package didnt include this lunch and and hence we had the liberty of ordering an ala-carta meal albeit with limited options for a veggie like me though.. I settled for a vegetarian fried rice and Malaysian omelet with which I got an idea of what to expect for the next two days..

View from the restaurant

After lunch most of my friends opted to take a nap but I decided not to waste any time and straight away headed to the beach, accompanied by an equally enthu friend of mine.. We just floated around on a floater lazing around in the cool waters oblivious to the scorching heat of the afternoon sun.. We got bored after an hour or so by when the rest of our friends were up and raring to go for a game of beach volley ball:

The most beautiful beach volleyball court that I have seen so far

Did I make it? yeah I did..

I was on the winning side of this game!

After the game, we were so exhausted and hungry that we couldnt think of anything other than dinner.. Most of us headed for a quick shower before heading to dinner.. The dinner consisted mostly of beef and veggies (we had requested for 4 veggie meals), the chef oblivious to the fact that most of us in our group had reservations against beef.. The meal was delicious though and the fruits they offered us for dessert were cleared off the table in no time! After dinner we took a stroll along the beach accompanied by a guitar and a portable ipod dock.. A moonlit night, good music, friends and a lazy beach, what else do you need?

Day 2: This was the laziest morning of our tour as we had nothing planned up for the day.. Most of us were sleeping till like 9 am.. The early morning sun was playing its picturesque game at the shore though.. Some shots captured by my friend on this beautiful morning:

Early dawn

First rays of Sun

By 9:30 am most of us were ready and we had one of the best breakfasts in the recent times comprising of toast and eggs:

It was time for some water sports now.. I have a bad experience with water sports for when the last time I tried canoeing, I ended up circling around the banks heading nowhere and even ended up in water.. This is what happened at Shoreline park during my Stanford days:

We were stuck here for what seemed like an eternity

But I nailed it this time, not only did I saw above water, we covered quiet a distance canoeing around.. We moved around the coastal line checking out the other resorts on the island.. After an hour or so of canoeing we just played around on the beach:

Well begun is half done

We covered quiet a distance in an hour

Jumping around in water.. Try it!

Canoeing (and throwing sand at each other) left us totally exhausted and it was time for lunch in no time.. Fortunately we had some chicken, lamb and veggies on menu this time and we hogged like we had not seen food in the last 24 hours.. Following a sumptuous meal, we took a much needed nap back at our cottages.. It was a lazy evening again where in read a book for most part of it while the love birds of our group clicked like around 1.5 k pics posing around in amidst the scenic backgrounds.. A couple of those pics:

Some serious gardening (just for the photo)

Dont they look great?

By around 6:30 pm, we decided to go in for another tiring game of volleyball:

We finally got some sea food for dinner (not for me though), after like 30 hours of landing on an island! They said the sea food was yummy and so was my tofu.. We explored the island after our dinner stopping by other resorts:

D'Coconut Beach Resort

Beware of falling coconuts! Right across D'Coconut resort :-)

Mirage Beach Resort

Aseania Beach Resort

This was the only concrete structure, we came across on this island:

Day 3: This was no lazy Sunday morning as we were supposed to checkout by noon and I had a couple of things on my list yet to be done in Pulau Besar.. After breakfast, we went snorkeling around along the coast.. This was the first time for me and the experience was nothing short than amazing.. I wish I had a casing for my camera to capture what I saw here.. It was like floating around in an aquarium and was awesome fun indeed..

Just before we took the plunge

This is what Snorkeling is all about

After an hour or so of snorkeling, we had to rush back to take a shower and pack up as it was time to checkout from our resort.. These are the last few shots at the island before the bumpy ride ahead.. We were so lucky that it didnt raining for 2 days we had lined up our outdoors and just when it was time to leave Besar, it started raining..

Last shot at Pulau Besar

Bye-bye Pulau Besar

The smudge in the above two pics was due to a water droplet on my camera lens (This was when it just started raining)..

I guess the showers were restricted around the island as there was no sign of any precipitation when we reached Mersing.. We had arranged for a van to Singapore (thanks to our tour guide), for which we had to shell out RM 50/pax, not a bad deal considering the comfort and the transit time saved in the process..

At Woodlands Checkpoint

We were dropped right at our apartment by 3 pm.. We had lunch together at our place along with a game of Monopoly..

Last shot of our trip

Oh I almost forgot to mention the resort here.. We were put up in Nirvana Beach Resort in Pulau Besar.. Its a very laid back resort devoid of all the luxuries like wifi, phone, swimming pool etc but its an excellent place for a lazy weekend get away... Contact Vicky @+6019-7212979 or Anna @+60137671672 for booking the resort..

To all my friends: Thanks a ton guys; the weekend was awesome fun in your company!

Dancing lessons

2009-04-15T15:21:00.006+08:00

Have you ever wondered, what the term "shake your body" refers to? I am not sure of the exact meaning either but the dancer (Dhanush) in the video below seems to have taken the term "shake your body" far too seriously:

He is gone way too far, hasn't he? I think he has managed to rattle all 206 bones a human body boasts of... Some of my friends were so inspired by his moves that they wanted to prove that he can be mimicked... Now did they manage to do it? Check the video below and decide for yourself:

Whatever your decide but it was awesome fun seeing these guys live in action! I wonder why didnt we stumble upon this video earlier.. So the next time your party starts looking lame, just show this video to some enthu guys and am sure, you will remember the moves for a long time after that!!

A Wait so Long

2009-04-09T16:09:00.007+08:00

My last blog post was on India New Zealand test series and I didnt want to blog again about it but the series has been so dramatic that I have to blog about it again here.. India beat New Zealand in a test series, a feat they have achieved only twice in over 4 decades.. In this tour India won the one day series and test series and it could have been a clean sweep had they won the twenty-20 series in the tour opener as well but being deprived of some match practise prior to the tour certainly showed in the two successive T-20 losses.. Anyway we need not complain now that we have won in the two longer versions of the game which in my view is more important especially the Test Cricket is where your cricketing skills are really tested, in my view..

Prior to this test, a lot had been talked about the Wellington pitch where India have had a dismal record till now.. Many made it out to be the toughest outing of the tour for India but the way the test match unfolded, Indians made a mockery of the pitch being the most hostile for them.. Infact the hosts were made to eat the humble pie this time.. India took off from where they left in Napier test, batting fluently in the first session with Sehwag scoring at a brisk rate.. Sehwag again fell for his agressiveness but he had inflicted some damage during his short stint.. He was so audacious in his short stay (15.3 overs) that when he had scored 48 of the 73 runs on board.. Gambhir followed soon afterwards but Tendulkar and Dravid stabilised the innings.. Tendulkar again was at his best with his over the slip shots and punches down the pitch but fell to a one offside off and holding on to its line.. Laxman failed to make a mark this time around falling to the outside off line, edging to second slip.. Yuvraj followed pavilion soon, falling to some clever bowling from Ryder... When Dravid got out, Vettori would have thought he could wrap it up as in the first innings at Napier but this time the Indian tail stinged the Kiwis, scoring at a brisk rate and at stumps India were a respectable 375/9 with a half century to the credit of Turbunator..

Kiwis didnt waste much time on the morning of second day, wrapping up the last wicket conceeding only 4 runs to the over night score.. What seemed like a perfect start for the Kiwis, soon turned out to be a more than ideal platform for India's spearhead Zaheer Khan.. He totally had the kiwi batsmen on the mat finishing the day with figures of 5-65, ably supported by Turbunator who joined the party with 3 wickets and the other 2 pacers finishing with a wicket each.. There can be no better proof to prove that the Indian bowling has come off age with all the 4 strike bowlers taking wickets.. It was a perfect display by the Indian side where in they dominated each session, sans the dismissal of the ever agressive Sehwag in the final session.. India finished the day with a lead of 233 runs with 9 wickets and 3 more days of cricket left, the test was heading towards a result for sure or thats what we presumed at this stage..

Gambhir took off from where he left at Napier, playing another mammoth innings.. He has been phenomenol in all three versions of the game for over more than a year now and India now boast of one of the most explosive opening pair in the present day cricket.. Gambhir is now being referred to as the Second Wall with the original wall being somewhat unlucky in this series.. Dravid missed a century on more than one occasion in this series and this day was no special either.. He fell to a perfectly executed shot which ideally should have found it way to the boundary, instead it ended up in McCullum's hands who anticipated Dravid's paddle sweep just in time to collect it behind the steps or rather an yard away from the leg stump.. Full marks to McCullum for anticipating and collecting the ball in a little over 0.3 seconds after the ball rocketed off Dravid's bat.. Tendulkar returned to pavilion soon but VVS Laxman and Gambhir hit off another partnership, frustrating the Kiwis as they did in Napier.. It was India's day again but the Kiwis were happy to get rid of both Gambhir and Laxman in the last session.. India were leading by 531 runs with 5 wickets left at stumps on day 3..

Day 4 was the most important day of this test as the timing of declaration was very important for India.. With overcast conditions and a lead of 531 runs India could have declared just after the first session but Dhoni wanted to play it safe having sealed off the series with a 1-0 lead, he could afford to settle for a draw in Wellington... Dhoni is usually known to go for the kill but an overseas test series win was not to be risked for it has been eluding Indian cricket for far too long now.. India finally declared with a lead of 616 runs, giving themselves around a day and half to bowl Kiwis out, that is if the weather permitted them.. Zaheer and Harbhajan continued to torment the Kiwi batsmen in second innings as well with both of them taking 2 wickets each reducing the Kiwis to 167/4 at stumps on day 4.. Kiwis could boast of one good session towards the end of day 4 with Taylor reaching his half century and looking set for a century on the final day.. The other highlight of the day was Dravid holding on to his 183rd Test catch, setting a world record overtaking Mark Waugh for the most test catches..

Six wickets and overcast skies were standing between India and 2-0 series victory on the final day.. Wickets they could take but will the rain gods let them have the glory of 2-0 series win or force them to settle for a 1-0 series victory? Kiwis started the day with some gritty batting performance by Ross Taylor who went on to score the century he promised the previous evening.. Taylor was yorked by Turbanator just after he reached three figures but McCullum and Franklin looked rook solid during their 142 run partnership.. It looked like, the match was heading towards a tame draw but then there was Tendulkar, contributing with ball this time.. McCullum was done in by a leg break from Tendulkar, edging to Dravid at first slip.. McCullum was rather unfortunate for the hot spot (IR imaging) showed no edge in the TV replays later.. Just a few min after Vettori put on the batting gloves, Tendulkar struck again, foxing Franklin with an offbreak landing way outside off stump and turning in sharply, catching the batsmen on his wrong foot.. Harbhajan joined the party soon sending Southee back to the pavilion and the Kiwis were 7 wickets down in no time.. It would have been 8 wickets down had Ishant Sharma held on to a sitter when O'Brien slogged a Tendulkar delivery.. Had he held on to the catch, India may have gone to win the match, for O'Brien cut loose soon after and went on to score his personal best and the rain followed soon.. It looked like a light shower but just when the umpires were thinking of getting the covers off, it started to pour again, dashing Indian hopes of 2-0 series win.. It was a muted celebration for the players had been waiting in their dressing rooms for the skies to clear and hoping to rope in 2 wickets that were between them and victory.. Unfortunate it was but the series win was no less significant either.. After all India was winning a test series in New Zealand after 41 long years.. Coming to match souvenirs, Dravid was presented with the match ball for having set a new world record for test catches.. Earlier in the day, umpires were frisking Munaf Patel for the missing match ball..

Well played India!!

A Mammoth innings

2009-03-31T23:44:00.006+08:00

The last few days have been an exciting contest between the bat and ball at Napier in New-Zealand where India managed to pull off a draw when asked to follow on after a first innings collapse.. Little did Vettori know that he was repeating the Steve Waugh's blunder (Kolkatta test) by asking India to follow on.. Vettori was luckier that Waugh though for Waugh as India went on to win the Kolkatta test while this time around, we very happy to play for a draw..

This was mainly possible, thanks to some great batting performance by Gautam Gambhir who batted for 643 minutes over 7 gruelling sessions, facing 436 balls, scoring 137 runs of them.. The numbers especially the runs may not look very impressive especially for Gambhir who is known more for his aggressiveness and at times has thrown away his wicket after settling in but this innings marked the arrival of the new Gambhir.. A more mature one, who knows to pace his innings in a test match.. That he was ably supported by Dravid and Laxman over 2 days is a testimonial for the fantastic team effort this match has been.. Laxman did prove to be a man of his words by ensuring a draw which he had promised the previous day in a press conference...

To give you a brief hindsight of the match I am talking about, New Zealand batted for around 2 days setting a huge 1st innings score of 619/9 declared, thanks to Jesse Ryder's (who is becoming a thorn in the flesh for Indians) maiden double century and a stroke filled century by Brendon McCullum.. At the end of day 2, India were reeling at 79/3 following some atrocious shot selection at the top order.. Day 3 saw the collapse of the Indian middle order which was sans Dhoni (due to injury) and tail didnt sting this time around.. Ryder again inflicted some serious damage this time with his bowling though, getting rid of Dravid just when he and Laxman were laying the foundation for the Indian recovery.. After the fall of Dravid, the rest fell down just like a pack of cards as India lost their last 5 wickets, adding a meagre 35 runs to the scoreboard.. Vettori asked India to follow on and it looked like he had made the right call when Sehwag threw his wicket away for the second time in this test, in a bout of aggressiveness and the kiwis had managed to dominate the first 3 days of a 5 day test match.. They must have fancied their chances of levelling the series 1-1 as they walked back to their dressing room at the end of day 3.. Kiwis had come a long way after being thoroughly outplayed in the series opener at Hamilton..

Day 4 must be the most forgettable day in the Kiwi test cricket.. Gambhir and Dravid gave nothing away, blocking the ones on line, leaving the ones outside off (which were a lot this day) and sending the bad ones to the boundary.. Dravid going on to hit a six of a flighted delivery from Jeetan Patel, was the sight of the day.. Dravid has hit only 15 sixes in his Test career so far and just to give you a comparison Geoffrey Boycott hit only 8 sixes in his Test career... Just when Dravid looked set for a century, he fell to a dubious decision and he couldn't help venting out his frustration as he walked back to pavilion (something he doesnt normally do).. When Dravid gets out in a situation like this, its like opening the floodgates in a midst of a storm, especially after what happened in the first innings.. I remember the TV commentator remarking, "The Wall has been pulled down now.. He like an insurance and the insurance cover just got expired".. This time around Tendulkar assured that the hard work was not undone as he went on to score a fluent 64.. Day 5 saw Laxman, "walking the talk" as he remained unbeaten at 124 enjoying his stay at the pitch in company of Yuvraj Singh who got some match needed match practise by scoring a stroke filled 54 when the captains decided to call the off the game with 15 overs to spare..

India now figure twice in the top ten of highest scores after following on and we are the only ones to have won after being asked to follow on in the above top ten list..

I dont believe am 24

2009-03-26T21:58:00.005+08:00

I just celebrated my 24th birthday the other day and I just cannot believe that am a 24 year old now.. I mean there used to be a time when I thought at 24 I would be doing this and this and now am actually 24, I may not have achieved what I actually wanted to but what I have now is much better than what I had ever imagined like half a decade ago..

When I was in high school, I always thought I will be a software engineer one day and work for a MNC drawing a fat salary package (If you were in high school in the late 90s, IT was the most desired career choice in India) but things started to change when we were in plus 2 with the 9/11 and the resulting recession in the US IT industry leading to several job cuts and a number of Indian IT professionals returning home.. Overnight, IT lost the charm it enjoyed just a few days years ago and the toppers started preferring electronics over IT.. I was no topper and I just happen to take Chemical Engineer rather by my rank and not by choice.. Infact I had opted for Mining Engineer and happen to land in Chemical Engineering in the sliding proceedure after my first semester.. So there I was doing Chemical Engineering at one of the top Engineering schools in India and I had no idea what Chemical Engineering was all about.. Infact I had no idea there was a branch called Chemical Engineering till I read about it during my counselling.. Strange, isn't it? Looking back, I am glad that I studied Chemical Engineering for it is a branch of engineering which will expose you to a little bit of every branch of engineering out there.. Infact Chemical Engineering has more of Physics in it than Chemistry, I mean most of the core Chemical Engineering subjects build on the concepts of Physics we learned in plus 2.. Why am I blogging about Chemical Engineering in an entry marking my 24 years? Well, a large part of what I am today is due to my four years of education as a Chemical Engineer...

When I was studying my engineering, I never thought even in the wildest of my dreams that I would go abroad for a Masters degree forget about studying (one quarter) in Stanford University.. I can say that I have just been lucky for this was the only program I applied to and I happen to make it.. Looking back, how I landed in NITK is an interesting story itself.. I had made up my mind not to apply for AIEEE (entrance exam for NITs and other deemed universities) as I was confused between medical and engineering then.. My dad wanted me to go for medical but I was more inclined towards engineering for it was easier (in my view then) and faster to become an engineer than a doctor.. Anyway one afternoon, I was just chatting with my friends at the parking lot of our coaching classes (If you are in plus 2 in India, you are bound to be in one or the other coaching classes).. One of my friends pointed it to me that I should apply for AIEEE as the deadline had just been extended and the whole application proceedure could be done online.. It was the last day of the extension and I dont know why I just went home and applied online.. The exam was a horror story in itself for the math paper was all about 3D geometry and my state syllabus had prepared me only for 2d geometry.. I thought AIEEE was just a disaster and I never bothered checking the results when they were out.. I was surprised when I got a letter one day asking me to participate in the counselling process.. This was the first time NITs were being filled via AIEEE and they had a very interesting counselling process with online and onsite process involved.. With my lousy rank, I never thought I would end up in NITK, so I had hopes of getting into any NIT but not NITK.. When I saw NITK against my name on the allocation table I just couldnt believe it! I was due to attend the medical counselling the next day where I was more than happy to turn down the last MBBS merit seat..

So you see 24 years of my journey has been more than exciting to me.. It may not be nothing extra ordinary like that of Lewis Hamilton who won the Formula One Drivers championship last year at the age of 24 but its been one helluva journey so far and I believe the best part is yet to come!!

Earth Hour 2009

2009-03-23T20:14:00.007+08:00

Global warming! In the past few years this has been the most widely debated topics worldwide and yet there has hardly been any significant improvement in the worldwide scenario.. The top economies (read US) continue to cough up around 50% of the green house gas release while blaming the 50% of world population (read India and China) for not cutting down on their emissions.. Kyoto Protocol was a brilliant idea and it continues to be so on paper as long as US continues to turn a blind eye on it..

Forget about world politics, its time you and me did something about this and let the world leaders know that they may not cede to an International protocol but that wont stop us laymen from doing our bit to save the earth from the perils of global warming.. Join me and billions of others this Saturday (28th March 09) for the Earth Hour 09 by switching off your lights for one hour at 20:30 hrs your local time.. Check out the video below for last year's event:

Check out the bird eye view of Sydney in the night lit only by street lights..

This time around Earth Hour is bigger than ever with 538 cities across 75 countries committed for the event.. Singapore is also one of the participating cities and even you can join the list from wherever you are by just pledging your support here..

Prawn Rants

2009-03-18T22:32:00.005+08:00

There has been a huge outcry in Singapore media regarding overpriced prawns at Newton Circus Hawker center here.. The news is all over Singapore and I have been hearing (every fm station)/reading (every local newspaper/online forums) /seeing (every local news channel) about it the whole day..

Newton Circus is a very famous hawker center in Singapore, very popular with the tourists.. As you may know Singapore is a foodie's paradise as you get to taste almost every cuisine here and if you are a meat eater, you will just love the options you have here.. As with any port city, sea food is very popular here and Newton Circus is one of the most famous destinations for sea food here.. Anyway the incident that I am referring to happened sometime last Saturday evening (when I was happily enjoying Holi) when a group of six American tourists had to cough up around SGD 500 for eight tiger prawns and a couple of chicken dishes.. You can check out the details of this incident here.. SGD 500 for a table of 6 and that too in a hawker center!! I find it hard to believe.. An average meal in a hawker center will cost around SGD 10/head and considering they had sea food the maximum cap can be around SGD 30/head which is already too pricey for a hawker center but SGD 83/head is just way over the top.. Thats the kind of money you pay at a five star restaurant..

After going through the details of the incident I feel the tourists have to blame themselves here for they should have inquired about the price before ordering.. They even said that they didnt want to make an issue out of it and just paid the bill without getting a reasonable explanation from the waiter.. If you didnt bother then, why make a big issue out of it now by writing to local news papers? If you really wanted to make your point, learn something from this lady in Taiwan who didnt budge to the vendor's tantrums and cashed on a loophole in the promotional vouchers (She used 54 vouchers to buy bags/accessories worth USD 30,000 at a local Gucci outlet!).. I know both the cases are the extremities of vendor and consumer behaviour but hey, if you want to make your point, stand by it!

Moving on, it was just an awesome day of Test cricket in Hamilton, New Zealand today.. Dhoni raised many eye brows with his decision to field first on winning the toss on what looked a pretty good batting surface.. India's opening bowling pair of Zaheer Khan and Ishant Sharma well supported by third pacer Munaf Patel, left New Zealand reeling at 61/6 in the first session.. Just when everyone thought India had clawed in, Vettori and Ryder bailed the Kiwis out with a 186 run partnership and eventually succumbed at 279 with both Vettori and Ryder scoring centuries (Ryder's maiden century).. Indian batsmen just got 7 overs but Sehwag made sure that the Kiwis got a taste of what to expect from this swashbuckling batsmen in the next few days.. In all it was an amazing day of test cricket with the momentum swinging back and forth between the two teams setting up an exciting 4 days ahead..

btw Rahul Dravid equalled Mark Waugh's record of 181 test catches this day..

Holi 2009

2009-03-16T22:10:00.008+08:00

I have been craving for some Holi action for quite sometime now.. This was the second time in a row I was not in India for Holi and the pictures my friends kept uploading on facebook and orkut only made things worse for me.. Last year around this time I was busy with my exams and hence was not able to join the Holi celebrations here but this time I made it a point to source the tickets in advance and convincing a few friends to join me..

Rang De Holi 2009 was organised by Bhojpuri Society, Singapore at the Khalsa Association Singapore on 14th February 2009.. The venue was perfect for a holi celebration, the crowd was amazing and the DJ was churning out some amazing tracks to keep up with the mood of the crowd.. There was a considerable non desi crowd enjoying smearing colours at each other and dancing to bollywood numbers.. I was amazed by the high energy in the crowd especially the late twenties-early thirties crowd which made me feel like an oldie compared to them..

You see those empty sachets lying on the ground, they are a rare sight in Singapore.. Even during this event there were around 5-8 personnel binning these sachets.. The snap below must have been captured when one of the personnel had just completed his/her rounds here:

Have you ever heard of mud HOLI? Well I had not till last Saturday when I got to experience it first hand.. The picture below is self explanatory I believe:

It was cloudy throughout and we were hoping for some rain to wash off our colours and save some effort and water in our bathrooms but the rain gods had other plans (Yeah, go ahead and call me lazy)..

After disappointing us the whole evening, the rain gods unleashed the fury on Singapore next day when it poured like hell.. It would have physically hurt you if you had dared to venture outdoors devoid of any shelter..

Singlish and Chinese

2009-03-14T08:37:00.006+08:00

Singapore was under colonial rule for 100 odd years and if you think Singaporean speak English, you are wrong.. Singaporeans speak Singlish and its so not english.. Its like vernacular translation from Chinese to English with a pot pouri of Chinese (Mandarin, Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese), Malay and Tamil thrown in.. I remember the first time I landed in Singapore I had no idea what the cab driver was talking about when I told him my destination.. Singlish is so hilarious I used to roll out laughing just by their normal conversation.. Check out the video below and you will get a feel of it:

Another thing that strikes you in Singapore is the notion of Singaporeans that all Indians are Tamilians.. The moment you say you are an Indian, they assume you are a Tamilian and greet you in Tamil and I have been left perplexed by this.. So you see being a non Tamil/Chinese speaking individual in Singapore is quiet weird.. You are left out of the Chinese chit chat doing rounds and even the Indian chit chat as its mostly in Tamil.. So I decided to do something about it and one of my Chinese friends took the initiative to teach us some elementary Chinese over weekends.. Chinese is no doubt difficult for they dont have fixed alphabets like in English or other languages am used to (Hindi, Kannada etc)...I thought only Egyptians were used to Hieroglyphics.. So we just didnt bother worrying about reading/writing and used pin yin for our classes.. We learned the characters for numerals though.. Chinese is quiet fun actually and I can even rap a chinese song penned by myself.. Check out the video below for the chinese song we learned and performed at our graduation ball..

I will upload that rap song soon, so keep checking my blog..

Happy Times Over Weekend

2009-03-09T20:11:00.006+08:00

Not many times do you wake up on a Monday morning feeling great about the weekend and actually looking forward to the week ahead.. The last weekend was one of those rare occasions when I had more fun than I was expecting..

Lets start with the highlight of this weekend: one of my friends got a PhD admit from MIT and will be moving to Boston in a few months.. It only gets better from here, he is also getting engaged before moving over to Boston.. None of us were expecting any of this when we had planned to meet over lunch at a Thai restaurant.. After lunch we shopped for a while before heading to our place where we planned to project movies all evening.. A group of around 15 and some 150 movies to chose from lead to us not seeing a single movie completely.. We started with The Reader which was a bit too heavy for the group mood.. After an hour of catching glimpses of different movies we started with Tokyo Drift which is always entertaining irrespective of the crowd..
Lesson #1 from this weekend: Dont give too many options to chose from for a movie nightout

There is something about parties at my place and Pizza hut delivery.. For some strange reason the delivery guy never delivers it on time.. The delivery was delayed by 2 hours during the Thanksgiving party and by 45 min at another occasion... This time around he was again late by over 90 minutes and I decided to talk with the area manager this time around.. One of my friends took over me and made sure that we got the pizzas complimentary this time.. Fortunately I had opted for cash on delivery this time around..

Lesson #2: Always opt for COD esp on a Saturday night

After hogging our share of free pizzas we watched Harold and Kumar go to Whitecastle for the nth time but this time we decided to go and get some burgers at a 24hr McDonalds at around 1:00 am.. After getting back to the apartment I realised that I was due to play cricket next morning at 7 am and it was around 5 am when I went to bed.. Being an early morning person I got up at 8 am and joined for the game.. It was more than a year since I held a cricket bat and it felt good to be playing cricket after such a long time.. As I got back to my apartment after getting baked in hot sun for an hour or so, the third one day international between India and New Zealand had just started.. I was just in time for the Indian batting which was on absolute rampage this particular day and one couldnt help feeling sorry for the kiwi bowlers.. Sachin Tendulkar showed why he is still considered the master of the game with his innovative shot selection and had it not been for his stomach muscle pain, Saeed Anwar's record would have been history by now.. I havent seen a better performance from an Indian batting line up in the recent times.. In all renting the projector was enjoyable in more ways than one..

On my way to returning the projector I stopped by Popular Bookstore and grabbed a copy of The Reader which I should be finishing sometime soon..

Congratulations

2009-03-05T22:37:00.003+08:00

Wish you a very Happy Married Life guys

My friends Linh and Hang exchanged vows on 19th of February 2009 in Hanoi, Vietnam

March is Here

2009-03-04T15:53:00.010+08:00

Its that part of the year again which is dreaded by most of the students worldwide.. Yeah its the month of March heralding exam session in schools and universities worldwide alike.. I remember how as a kid, I used to look forward for this month not that I liked exams but because I was also born in this month and very rarely did I get to dress up on my b'day and distribute chocolates in my school, as either by this time our term would have ended or it would be in a middle of a exam and hence there was no festive spirit in school for me..

Anyway I am not a kid anymore and these days I look forward to summer for the return of my favorite sitcoms and movies.. This time around I am eagerly waiting for the release of sequel of one of my favourite action flicks: Fast and Furious... What do you look forward in an out and out entertaining movie? For me its Cars, bikes, gals and action in that sequence! This is one of the movie series which has never disappointed me in this aspect.. Catch the trailer below and you will agree with me that this a must watch... This movie is due to be released in exactly a month from now.. Till then enjoy the trailer...

I also like serious movies which drive home a message but these are the kind of movies you cannot sit and enjoy with your friends over a weekend as not many of them are patient to sit through the seemingly boring sessions at times.. So I prefer watching action flicks like the above and comedies with friends and save the serious movies for those lazy noons when I have nothing to do..

Looks like the economic slump is not sparing even the rich and famous of the famed Orange County, California.. I came across this interesting news article on web where the latest trend doing rounds in OC is hosting gold parties.. Its like a neighborhood tea party wherein the guests bring along "old unwanted jewelery" and sell it to agents who in turn sell it to refineries.. I remember of something similar happening back home in India where in shady salesperson duped innocent housewives by washing their jeweleries in aqua regia the only difference being its done in a legal and ethical way in US whereas in India they resort to unethical ways and dupe the innocent housewives...

Nothing Comes from Violence

2009-03-03T20:15:00.007+08:00

Is anyone listening to me? Violence is no solution to any problem.. Over the last two days I have been exposed to two tragic incidents one in my new alma meter and the other at Lahore.. I cannot stop myself from humming, "Nothing comes from violence, nothing ever could.." from Sting's 'Fragile'...

I always thought school violence was limited to American schools but I was proved wrong yesterday when a final year undergraduate student stabbed his project supervisor in the back and shoulder before cutting his wrists and jumping to death.. Apparently the student was an ASEAN scholar (which is one of the best scholarships one can get for undergraduate studies in Singapore).. I am sure whatever problem he was facing could have been sorted out over time... He was just a few months from graduation and there was no reason for him to take such a drastic step.. I am obviously unaware of the real problem he was facing but whatever it was, nothing justifies violence and suicide above that is the worst crime one can commit.. My heart pours out to his parents who had to fly down only to identify their son's cadaver in a morgue..

The other incident in Lahore wherein unidentified gunmen attacked a team bus ferrying members of Sri-Lankan cricket team will probably go into the pages of history as one of the darkest days of Pakistan cricket.. Considering the fact that Sri-Lanka was the only nation to have come forward to play cricket in Pakistan in the recent times is adding insult to injury on Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB).. I dont see any cricket happening in Pakistan for the next year or so and thats no good news for PCB as their team has been yearning for some matches having missed out on the most of the tournaments hosted in the country and the loss of revenue is gonna drain hurt Pakistan cricket deeply.. Australia are scheduled to play Pakistan in a neutral venue (UAE) and this will continue to be the main source of revenue for PCB atleast for a year or two.. Lets hope atleast now Pakistan's government what a grave mistake it has been doing by harbouring militant camps in its territory... There is bound to be increased diplomatic pressure on Pakistan in the wake of this recent attacks in Lahore followed by the recent attacks in Mumbai..

I dont see what these elements gain by violence in the long run.. I mean by carrying out such atrocious acts, these organisations are inviting wrath of governments worldwide.. International pressure will make it difficult for the governments harboring these terror outfits to evade from taking stringent actions against these elements..

V day and Dev D

2009-02-16T21:05:00.006+08:00

Believe me there is no better way(esp for single and ready to mingle types like me) to celebrate Valentine's day than catching up an evening show of Dev D.. I had read some great reviews of the movie and was looking forward to watching on the big screen.. Pitch in like minded friends and Dev D was more enjoyable than ever..

Movie options for the weekend were: Billu Barber, Luck by Chance and Dev D.. It took some lobbying to convince everyone to join for Dev D but in the end we decided to split up in batches and catch up the movies of our choice.. Some of them did manage to catch all the three movies over the weekend (I managed 2, rather reluctantly).. Coming back to Dev D, it was better than what I had expected.. Amazing acting, revolutionary dialogues for a bollywood movie and a fresh take at Devdas set in modern times with a happy ending was a welcome break from mundane bollywood movies.. Very few bollywood movie try to make a point and this did it in great style.. Hats off to the junior Deol for pulling off one of the best performances in today's cinema... I dont think Dev D will appeal to everyone as this one is more for the multiplex crowd and not the one for masses..

Billu Barber was also good, thanks to Irfan Khan and Lara Dutta.. I thought the role of Shahrukh Khan was too much of an exaggeration or may be I have had too much of Shahrukk Khan in the recent times to appreciate his acting skills.. Shahrukh Khan needs to be given some credit for this for he invited some 400 odd barbers and their families for the premier of this movie doing away with the usual celebrity crowd.. I must say its a smart marketing strategy for the movie..

On V day we happened to go to Arab street for dinner and I was totally bowled over by the ambience.. The restaurants are set in narrow lanes of Arab street where you find carpets and small tables by the roadside.. We had some great time sipping over varieties of tea; I would recommend mint tea though (coming from a non tea drinker like me should mean its really a good drink).. We had dinner at a Moroccan place (Deli Moroccan) where we could manage to find 2 veggie dishes-Couscous (basically upama/uppit seasoned with carrots, pumpkins and cabbage) and another dish consisting of chic peas (gosh how can I forget the name?).. The mint tea at Deli Moroccan is simply superb; they actually serve it in glasses with fresh mint leaves.. I was so impressed with this place that I had dinner again the next day in Deli Moroccan after seeing Billu Barber..

By the way Happy Valentines Day to everyone (Its rather too late, but hey better late than never)..

Time to flaunt my new gadget!

2009-02-13T23:09:00.008+08:00

Well this has been due since long and I can no longer stop myself from bragging about it on my blog.. By now its rather too late to announce, but I finally got my nokia 5800 on 18 jan 09 and am totally bowled over by it since then..

I have been fervently waiting for this phone ever since it was announced in October 08 and my patience was running thin with time (given the lapses in my stand by phone, the wait was seeming longer than usual).. 5800 is yet to be launched in Singapore erstwhile being launched in the neighborhood (Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines).. Its been available in the grey market here since late December but am not so comfortable with the idea of buying from grey market which promises no warranty and worse no authenticity.. 5800 being the first Nokia device sporting the all new s60 5th edition has been welcomed by geeks world over with much enthusiasm and positive reviews.. There are always those who think Iphone is a better phone but what they fail to understand they are in a totally different league all together.. 5800 costs only half the retail price of Iphone (grey market price, for you cannot buy it sans the data package) and the technology used are miles apart from each other.. However going by specs, 5800 is a clear winner with its 3 meg carl zeiss optics, A2D2 bluetooth, replaceable memory and battery, copy-paste options and far superior audio quality.. The only thing 5800 lacks is multitouch and there are applications in development even as I blog this entry which promise multitouch capabilities to 5800... I can go on and on as how its better than Iphone but I dont think its ever gonna convince apple fans (or should I say fanatics!)..

The other day I installed google maps on my phone and it works like a dream!! The only glitch being it needs an internet connection to operate unlike the Nokia maps applications which runs entirely on GPS.. I have read that Garmin also runs smoothly on 5800 without connecting to the internet but Garmin is yet to release a version for s60 5th edition... The backward compatibilty feature of s60 5th edition software has been widely exploited using a virtual keyboard but I dont like virtual keyboard.. So its just Nokia maps and google maps till then for me.. Wi-Fi works great on the new browser for 5800 with amazing browsing speeds.. The browser being flash enabled is an added bonus and youtube runs as smoothly as ever on this phone..

The music capabilities of this phone has been widely advertised in the media (phone being an Xpress Music series phone) and I have coupled this great music device with state of art Koss Porta Pro headphones rated among the top 5 headphones by CNET and the result is simply amazing.. Never have I been hooked to a music device like this so much that my friends have started taunting me for flaunting my gadgets too much! I am not complaining as long as they let me enjoy my music!

In all am very much happy with my phone and would recommend this to anyone who is looking for value for money and the latest in tech specs.. I took the pain of sourcing the phone from Malaysia with the help of a Malaysian friend and am glad that I bought this phone for the same phone is going to be launched in Singapore on 27th Feb along with "Comes With Music" (Yeah I always suspected this would happen for NOKIA SG was pushing the launch date in SG way too far) but I dont need that service as I know where to find my music (ofcourse DRM free)..

Home Sweet Home

2009-02-08T10:14:00.006+08:00

Here it comes, after more than a fortnight am back to blogging.. Its been such a long gap that I almost forgot the URL of my blog!! I finally made that trip back home after a gap of more than a year and it was an eventful one, with my schedule packed to such an extent that I hardly got any time to spend with my family.. Come to think of it, I was at home (in Dharwad) for less than 72 hours out of the 240 hours of my vacation (thats just 30%!!)..

This was the first time I was flying a budget airline and was expecting certain lapses in services but on a whole the service was pretty good especially considering the price tag.. I got a bolt in the jolt of sorts as I put on my seatbelts and the crew manager announced that the flight was headed to Chennai!.. Man, did I end up in the wrong flight was the obvious question in my mind and so was it for the other passengers in the flight.. In a shortwhile, amidst chaos and confusion in the flight, one of the crew members apologised for the gaffe and confirmed that the flight was infact headed to Bangalore.. What a relief, I didnt want to wake up in the morning only to realise that I have landed at the wrong airport!! This is what we get in budget airlines! No repents but, they took me home at less than 60% of the fare of other major airlines..

Finally I landed at the Bengaluru International Airport (you should have heard the flight announcement, "Bengalooru" sounded so hilarious delivered with an Australian accent).. The logic behind renaming the cities is something which I have failed to understand.. Eveytime a city is renamed, it drains a hell lot of money out of the state exchequer for every stationery and the public info system has to be updated to include the new spelling.. Doesnt make sense whatsoever to me.. Anyway, BIAL is a whole new story all by itself; the project was plagued by bureaucratic delays and strikes from the staff of HAL airport.. The fact that the airport is fully functional now is in itself a great achievement.. Guess what I saw first on landing at BIAL, huge hoardings of the infamous Satyam group and Maytas group!! They had a very catchy slogan, which I cannot recollect at this instant.. On a whole, BIAL is a huge improvement from the HAL airport, where you had to wait for ages to collect your check in luggage.. This time around I was out of the airport in less than 40 min and it was so chilly out there, another welcome change from the sultry climate of Singapore where the only winter is induced indoors from improperly designed central aircon systems..

I was more than pleased from the road connectivity as it took only 60 min for a 40 km drive.. Earlier it took around 150 min for a 15 km drive to the HAL airport.. Bangalore has improved by leaps and bounds from the last time around I was here.. Bangalore was welcoming me in a far better way than what I had anticipated.. I stayed mostly indoors for most part of the next day, exhausted from the overnight flight and preparing myself for the overnight train journey to my hometown.. There is something about my hometown, which just calms my nerves and nothing soothes me like that.. I was so glad to be back at home.. I started calling on my relatives right away and left to my mom's maternal place that very day..

As I got back from my mom's maternal place after 2 days, my friends had planned a weekend getaway to OM beach.. It had been quiet a long time since I had been to OM beach and was all excited about this.. I somehow managed to convince my folks to let me borrow our family car (on a condition that I wont drive.. My parents still treat me like a kid!) and the roadtrip that followed was one of the best ones I have had in a long time.. Road trips is something I miss being in Singapore.. Back in my PU days, we used to embark on bike trips every now and I would love to repeat that sometime.. OM beach, what should I say about it, it was just surreal.. As I lied down on the beach on a new moon night, I could see a billion stars.. I have never seen such a starlit sky ever in my life.. Cool breeze, beach side bed and a starlit sky, this is life!! I wish I could come here to sleep every day of my life..

The remainder of my days, I was busy visiting my friends and relatives in Hubli-Dharwad.. This means hogging to almost double my appetite at everyone's place.. Soon I realised that I should start saying I am full halfway of my appetite to avoid suffering from stomach upset.. At times I had to gulp soda before even starting meals, just to eat something and not disappoint the hosts.. Hogging and traveling was all I did during this vacation!

I reached Bangalore two days prior to my departure, to meet some NITK friends.. I came across an arbit wedding invitation card at my aunt's place, only to realise that the groom was my senior from NITK (Serendipity!).. I somehow sourced his number and we met him next day along with his fiance over lunch.. World is such a small place indeed, an accidental discovery led to a small NITK get-together of sorts.. It feels strange looking back at the golden days of NITK.. We have changed so much from the care free days of NITK and now we have to wait for weekends to even see our friends even when we are working in the same city and sometimes people in same company dont see each other in months.. Student life was heaven indeed!!

India has arrived on the world stage

2009-01-14T20:04:00.008+08:00

The last few months have been phenomenal to India.. As the world economy battles to survive one of the worst recessions in the modern times, India remains largely unaffected by the recession (well compared to US and China) to the extent that an Indian company, Infosys actually reported a profit of 9% in the last quarter of 2008 proves this beyod a point.. I havent heard of any fortune 500 company reporting profit in the recent times.. Anyway, thats not what am gonna blog here today, "Slumdog Millionaire" pulled off a "clean sweep" winning 4 golden globe (all 4 categories it was nominated for) and the fact that an Indian (A.R. Rahman) won the coveted price for the best music score is the icing on the cake...

Not very long ago, Aditya Adiga won The Booker prize for his debut novel, "The White Tiger" and am a big fan of this book (and even Slumdog).. Whats interesting is that both "The White Tiger" and "Slumdog Millionaire" dont advertise the brighter side of India (no Taj Mahal or glass paneled buildings of the metros) but instead they portrait the dark side of India: the streets, slums and the villages where exploitation of the poor is the rule of the day rather than the exception.. If you were thinking that this kind of negative portrayal is tarnishing the image of India, I beg to differ.. For gone are the days when you painted a rosy picture of ourselves to outsiders and continue to suffer in our wilderness.. The India of today has come off age, we accept that we have some flaws and even with all that we continue to rule the world.. The best testimony to this fact is the case of "The White Tiger" and "Slumdog Millionaire" winning one of the top awards in their respective fields.. We have shown the world that things may be bad back at home, but the struggle has made us only tougher and we are gonna come back strong each time we stumble on our way to the top (albiet in fiction)..

A.R.Rahman on his acceptance speech thanked his Slumdog team, his musicians in Chennai and Mumbai and as he put it "a billion people back in India" and is now pinning his hopes for the Oscar.. I was so glad to see an Indian sharing the dias with the top stars of Hollywood.. It was indeed a sight to see Hugh Larie (the star of US sitcom House M.D) make way for A.R.Rahman as Rahman was called on dias on winning the golden globe for best musical score... Bollywood has been shaking its legs among the stars of Hollywood for quiet sometime now.. With Warner Bros distributing the soon to be released "Chandni Chowk to China" which it brands as a typical "illogical Bollywood movie", we have got the biggest banner of Hollywood to brand our style of film making... We are not only winning the top awards we are also raking in the biggest money in the industry out there!!

All I can say is thank you "Slumdog Millionaire" and "The White Tiger" for bringing the darker side of India into limelight and congrats on winning the golden globe and the booker prize and most importantly thanks for entertaining us with ur amazing stories!! One last thing, a Happy Sankranti to everyone (I almost forgot about this)..

The Weekend that was...

2009-01-11T22:11:00.007+08:00

Well, now that the weekend is almost over (atleast for me), I am happy that it spanned out to be exactly the same way I had planned it.. I completed most of the tasks I had on my mental "to do" list since long.. Looking back, am glad that I finally got those things done given the procrastination nature of mine, its by no means a small achievement (did I just boast about myself??)..

My laptop had become so slow that it took like 2 minutes for it to boot and load all the programs.. Considering that I have a 2 ghz machine (dual core) with 2 gigs of RAM, this was dead slow.. Should I blame Vista for this? I dont think so, for I have been using Vista since more than a year now and contrary to the widespread belief, I like it.. There have been several improvements over XP, UI being the most prominent one.. I agree that it sucks a lot of memory but then whats the use of all that silicon on your motherboard, if you just use your machine for browsing, music and blogging? Coming to my problem, I reasoned that the problem should be with my unpartitioned 160 gigs of onboard memory... I haven't defragmented my hard disk ever and the clutter must have just sucked the air out of the breathing space of my OS (I must admit Vista has huge lungs).. So it was time for me to backup and format my hard disk.. I had a bad experience with recovery software, so I just used my external to backup my documents, music and picture and resorted to the tried and tested boot from vista dvd to reinstall a fresh copy on my machine... Now my machine is all rejuvenated and boots in like 30s.. This kept me busy for most part of the Saturday morning.. By noon, I was multitasking with installing the necessary software and completing "The White Tiger"... Looking back this Saturday morning was one of the most productive mornings for me in a long time..

One more thing I have been postponing is my visit to the gym.. I havent been gymming ever since I left school (its like more than 6 months now).. I kept inventing reason after reason, ranging from financial reasons (during my jobless days) to PR approval and now am going home in the middle of a month, so the discontinuity will do me no good.. Nevertheless, I had to start somewhere, so I decided that I will jog daily for an hour till I join a gym (sometime in February).. It feels great to stand under a shower after an exhausting run and I hope to stick to my routine for a while for I feel all charged up and fresh...

Saturday night and am at home! Nah, I went out to Bughis to get some souvenirs for my friends back home.. I came across this amazing T-shirt outlet on Bughis street with a great collection of T-shirts with wacky messages.. I was so impressed by their collection that myself and Dada bought around 11 T-shirts (all for our friends, we can buy for ourselves later)... Bughis street I will be back soon! T-shirt shopping followed by dinner at nydc and our Saturday night was almost over.. Time to catch the (almost)last train back home... As I went to bed that night, I was so glad that I had completed some long due tasks...

What do you do on a lazy Sunday morning? Well, for me it starts with reading articles from my two favourite columnists Shashi Tharoor and Jug Suraiya.. Both of them haven't been penning their usual columns since mid December (looks like their vacation isn't over yet) and my Sunday mornings seem incomplete without them.. I settle for a dose of news from the Satyam fiasco and cant help feeling sorry for the share holders and employees of Satyam.. What an irony that a company named Satyam (meaning truth) should be involved in what I would like to term as India's fraud of the century!! Raju has now joined the list of Harvard graduates who totally messed up the world economy..

Sunday evening was the best part of this weekend.. I catched up with two of my favourite movies on TV: "The Terminal" starring Tom Hanks and Catherina Zeta Jones and "Gadar-Ek Prem Gatha" starring Sunny Deol and Amisha Patel.. I have seen both of these movies before but I would love to see them again and again.. While Zeta Jones looks cuter than ever and Hanks pulls off another stunner of a performance in "The Terminal"; you cannot help cheering for Sunny Deol in Gadar, in what I must say is one of the most powerful performances I have seen in Indian cinema.. Sometimes I wonder how loud can this guy scream? Somebody should study his vocal chords for his/her PhD!

In all its been one of the best weekends I have had in quiet sometime now.. 2009, way to go!!

A Weekend of Solace

2009-01-09T21:48:00.008+08:00

I have been partying so hard for the last two months that I have almost forgotten what it feels like to be home on a friday night.. Its a great relief knowing I will be going to my own comfy bed on a friday night and wake up to a bright and cheerful Saturday morning at my own place..

Its been an eventful week for me.. I am all excited as I will be heading home (India) after more than a year (374 days to be more specific) in about ten days from now.. Work has been keeping me busy for most part of this week as I have to make up for my leave.. Even then I managed to read two great books this week.. The first one "The Kite Runner" by Khaleed Hosseini which btw was my secret santa gift was an amazing book.. I had never heard of this book or the author before, but it was a great read indeed.. The story follows a life of a person, who is full of guilt and keeps running from his mistakes only to realise that he was not the only one guilty.. The author paints such a contrasting picture of a beautiful Afghanistan of his childhood to the present war-torn battlefield of a country that your heart falls out for Afghanistan..

The second book I came across this week was "The White Tiger" by Aditya Adiga.. I only bought it yesterday and have already finished 80% of this novel.. Once you start reading this novel, I promise its next to impossible to put it down.. The author has a very unique sataric style that it stings you and entertains you at the same time.. Well technically I still havent finished the novel, but from the proceedings so far, its clear that Adiga has something big on his mind here... I would say this is one of the "must read" for the present day modern Indian..

Coming on to this weekend, I haven't made any big plans for this weekend as I have to catch up with several things I always wanted to do but never got the time to sit down and apply my mind to them.. I am a kind of person who likes to just sit down and read a book once in a while, the luxury of which has been eluding me since long.. The only time I read books is when I travel in bus/mrt these days.. So this weekend, I plan to sit down at home and read a book, see a movie and get some much needed sleep..

Partying can wait till next weekend!!

The Highs and Lows of 2008

2009-01-01T22:08:00.007+08:00

Yeah, its January 1st and I eventually succumb to my urge to blog about my (mis)-adventures in the last year (2008).. Looking back I cant help but say "Well, it was a terrific year" to myself.. I started from being a lazy student somehow managing to stay afloat academics wise (shouldn't surprise my family and friends).. As the mid year approached, I was about to graduate and I refused to amend my ways, oblivious to the big bad world out there... They say, "Learn from others' mistakes, for you dont have time to commit all those mistakes yourself and learn from them" but I am just 23 and have all the time in this world (or so I believed).. It took me "sometime" to realise that the old adage may be a cliche but holds good nevertheless.. Better late than never, I had learned my lesson and pulled up my socks and it was time for me to announce, "I am back in business guys!!"

The whole recruitment scenario is so different from that in India, where we are literally spoon fed by the placement departments in our Universities.. You dont even have to bother drafting your own resume and still you will be boasting of 2-3 offers mid way of your final semesters... Spoilt by such royal indulgences in my undergrad, I took my job hunt a bit lightly (a bit, who am I kidding? I took it very lightly).. The recruitment process in Singapore is still in its colonial phase (hyperbole!).. Come to think of it its not an over exaggeration, atleast when I was job hunting.. For some unknown reason, Singaporean companies are yet to come in terms with online recruitment.. Damn it man, how much does it take to set up a decent online recruitment portal which you actually bother to update and respond? MILLION DOLLAR QUESTION!! Job portals like monster, jobscentral and there are tons of others which are of little use for freshers like me.. Career links in company websites havent been updated since like old stone age (read 2005) plus scholarship bond restricting my job domain to only Singapore based companies.. I had a zillion questions in my mind then and till date havent found answers to most of them.. Those 2-3 months around the mid year I had hit a new nadir in my life.. Finally, I realised that its just not about how well you market yourself, but about how your skills match the requirements of the recruiter.. A lot of soft skills come into picture and apparently I must be blurting something around 5 words per second for my English was too fast to follow.. My English is not even close to what would qualify as "FLUENT" (for I cannot crack "The Hindu" crossword or even "Deccan Herald" cryptic crossword for that matter).. Nothing seemed to be working for me during those 2-3 months..

The silver lining at the end of the tunnel came in the form of an offer from my new almameter.. The pay was decent and the exposure to research promised some new avenues to my future endeavours.. I accepted the offer and started working almost immediately, but my "ghosts" continued to haunt me for a while.. Since the paperwork to inculcate a new staff takes like a month, I started work as part time (I thought paperwork in India was slow).. The Finance department is so slow with processing part time staff that my first salary continued to baffle me till like 2 months after I started working!! By this time I had gone almost broke and was totally relying on my friends for my day to day expenses.. Damn it, even after finding a job, I had to borrow money!! These 2-3 months were the most testing months of my life and even a cool cucumber like me had his share of frustration..

Once my appointment became official, salary transactions became so efficient and prompt that it made me rich overnight.. I had around sgd 5k in my account at one time but I owed a considerable part of it to my friends who had helped me out in my haunted times.. I went on a shopping spree sometime during Thanksgiving week buying camera, air tickets to home, Vietnam (for a friend's marriage), shoes, apparels; whatever I could lay my hands on I just bought it without giving it a second thought.. It felt good to indulge myself in shopping after such a frustrating period.. By December, I had settled down and was partying on weekends like there was no tomorrow.. I even took Salsa classes for ten weeks... I went to my first zook out in Sentosa and it felt damn good to shake your ass amidst bikini clad girls to trance music from one of the top ten DJs of the world.. It was a rain or shine event starting from 8 pm to 8 am and it was one of the first times I had stayed up all night for a party.. As I got back home at 9 am in the morning, totally exhausted from previous night, I couldnt believe my eyes reading the PR approval letter.. I had got my approval in exactly one month while it took around 3 months for most of my friends... A couple of my friends are still waiting for their approval even after 4 months.. Looks like times are changing and my time has finally arrived or so I believe!!

btw this new year eve was my first new year outside India and also the first as a working professional.. I am not a Mama's kid anymore to borrow money from pappa for his weekend getaway!!

and one last thing lads (reminds me of Saurav Ganguly), Wish you all a very HAPPY NEW YEAR 09!!