SP Road

So we went to this shop to buy some computer supplies (nothing much...the usual quad core processor, 4 GB of RAM and a Terabyte hard disk) and we were recommended Bangalore Computers by him and that other guy, so we did walk in to the shop after sweating for a while in another bustling shop.

This guy wasn't just a shrewd Marwadi with a keen eye on konning people. He was an outright charmer. And to his eyes fell Griz...err Griz' phone. The E90 has a "figure" of 132 x 57 x 20 and is all of 210 gms. And the Marwadi is caressing it like he would caress...uh anyways, eventually he raises an eye and an eyebrow and asks Griz:
"Chenagidya phoneu?" (We both realize oh he knows Kannada too) followed by "Eshtu idakke?" and then a "Idralli emailu kaLsi togobahuda??" and then a "Nokia henge sir? Chenagide alva?" and of course the cliched "Yenu neevu software a? Software engineer a?" and ends it with a hearty chuckle and a "Yen sir hinge tegondi bittideeri...Fullu laptop e thoghond hangeh aithu bidi"

Being the owner of the shop leaves him with very little, but bossing over his subordinates and making/answering phone calls. But when there's a lull in both, the mind needs to be engaged and he spends time (I quote him) "taking something from the customer, some or the other gyaan"...Well now thats perfectly acceptable, as long as he's not GIVING the gyaan...For instance, when he tried to defend the unavailability of a particular model of DVD Writer by saying that "Nenne republic day sir...all shops close", he got chided rather unabashedly and patriotically by another customer, who with that mistake probably lost all chance at a discount n shit.
Mr Marwadi also, in the heat of passion, took out his Visiting Card and handing it to a customer, said "Nodi sir naaLe bandbidi namm Debit Card mele guarantee haaki barkodteevi , full Government seal ella haaki kodteevi"

Oh we came back and assembled a PC out of all the boxes btw! Here's my mobo connected to the monitor :D

Friends will be friends

Was reading Readers Digest today, and stumbled across this quote...

Friends are God's way of apologizing to us for our families -- Anonymous

Got me thinking...Dug up a few more...Enjoy!

The only way to have a friend is to be one. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
One who looks for a friend without faults will have none. -- Hasidic Saying
"Friendship is Love without his wings!" -- Lord Byron (1806) (hmmm?!)
"True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it be lost" -- Charles Caleb Colton (1825) (nodding our heads readin this one, are we?? :)
"There can be no Friendship where there is no Freedom." -- William Penn
"An honest answer is the sign of true friendship." -- Proverbs 24:26
"Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen." --Samuel Paterson (I like these comparative quotes! :D )
"I have lost friends, some by death, others through sheer inability to cross the street." -- Virginia Woolf (deep wolf)

Saved the best for the last:

In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.-Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) (STUNNING)

One of the surest evidences of friendship that one individual can display to another is telling him gently of a fault. If any other can excel it, it is listening to such a disclosure with gratitude, and amending the error.-- Edward Bulwer-Lytton (And saying "ok fuck off" doesn't count here I guess...)

A man of few words...

A man of few words is a a man of few words because :

1. He knows too little
2. He knows a lot
3. "Hello? Anybody out there?"

Nothing

Nothing good, nothing bad, nothing ventured
Nothing gained, nothing still-born or lost,
Nothing further than proof nothing wilder than youth
Nothing older than time, nothing sweeter than wine
Nothing physically, recklessly, hopelessly blind
Nothing I couldn't say
Nothing why 'cos today
(daridra)Nothing rhymed

Hunkal woods

Hunkal (Hun as in Hunt).

The place is actually in the middle of Thogari Hunkal estate, where coffee is the primary crop.

So one minute Griz, Ktk, Murali (2005 batch), Srini, Naren, VV, Sac (2004 batch) are travelling on a pretty smooth highway (The santro wallas will have their own account of the road i guess...i was "highly" comfortable in a Scorpio...more about this beast more), the next minute the weather has changed and its drizzling, and the next srini is compelling griz to switch on the wiper!

Outta nowhere jumps a board at us asking us to take a left into a rather nasty looking road. A few hundred meters into it, we know we're in a good place. Greenery and close cropped vegetation. Slippery and sloppy mud acting as a path to our destination. Various insects and birds, with humans here n there, collecting coffee seeds, tending to the estate. A marked departure from our routine lives.

This is



where we stayed


Where we ate



Where we sipped several cuppas of scintillating coffee, exemplified by the chilly sexy weather!



where we..err lost our mind a bit cos of all the glee!



where we let ourselves be soaked in the rain and gazed in awe!



Where we got bitten by leeches (in slightly questionable places too!)



Where we scared srini with live leeches :D



Where we fought the onslaught of the wind



Where we danced a bit



Where green is the norm!


We were told we would encounter a snake whose bite causes body parts to rot. Unfortunately, no such sightings/meetings. Hence no picture also.

One of the first places i truly felt like going back to. Hopefully I will!

Oh almost forgot...This was a farewell of sorts to one of my friends, a brave guy who's departing to the land Down Under this weekend. Cheerios Sac! Wishing you all the very best and thanking you for being the reason we thought out and made it for this trip!! :)

How (who?) you doin'?!?

Joey immortalized this.
Apparently sex isn't a big deal anymore!

B(rr)R Hills again

Bili Giri Rangana betta...

Had a hard time explaining the meaning of this explanation to Ron, an American colleague who accompanied us (me and a few colleagues of mine)...Turned out to be quite a reveler he did, out there in the woods, hanging onto the side of the jeep in the safari with one hand and a trademark, touristy point-n-shoot in the other, unable to get enough of eneething, be it the suddenly surprised herd of deer or the spicy Indian cuisine! Kudos to ur spirit Ron!


Sharath was my ride for the jaunt...During the trip, we happened to encounter a stretch of muddy roads, on which he tried to do this. He's this kind of a silent, non pompous kinda ass who thinks he can do anything and mostly get away with it...Well, he succeeded in drifting twice over the loose gravel and the 3rd or 4th time it got away from him...the dumbstruck passenger remembers just two moments of the near fatal final drift :

1. Thinking 'wow this is NOT the right speed for THIS curve...he's way too high'.
2. Thinking 'Yep we're gonna fall into that ditch there...yes...what shud i do? will the car be on its wheels or ulta? will it be my neck that gets broken or what?'

Eerily, the 2nd one didn't happen and the callous driver lives on to drift his ass again...Don't get me wrong, he's a good driver, who's "insane" about driving and knows and knows all the geeky stuff (specs of cars, watching shows/movies related to racing...the typical 'auto geek')...In fact, I also caught myself wanting in on the fun, exciting world of cars, something that I haven't been really attracted to or gotten "into"...wanting to be like him a bit more...

But after this incident, I'm glad I'm me...Cos if this is what its gonna do to u, then I ATLEAST don't wanna be him...Not saying that the world of cars and automobiles isn't for me, but I don't wanna be him or anything like him anymore...He IS human after all, broke down completely after the near fatal incident, in shock for a while...But still...

The other bad thing about this trip was my stupid infection...woke up with an itchy throat on the morning of our departure, which developed into a cold en route, and caused occasional spells of fever...

INSPITE of this mural the puttar had loads of fun...He was right in the middle of one of Nature's most resplendent exhibitions, and no ailment could keep him from savouring it down to the last dew drop!

B4 I 4get...For those of you who haven't been there, mark ur calendars for next March/April for THAT is peak BR Hills season...Since it is summer time, most animals will come "out" to get their share of water at some well known water sources, which ur safari jeep will jussssssst pass by!

we got there by lunch time, and after that we'd a coupla hours to kill before the jeep ride through the jungle...Spent that time on the hammock and inside the machaan talking to Ron about this n that...the others were spotting monkeys and taking photos etc. Had a nice time in the Machaan, getting to the vantage point some 20ft above the ground itself a challenge, cos a few rungs of the ladder were broken!

The safari was swalpa disappointin I guess, cos a few of the parties who'd been on the ride in the past few days, had spotted leopards and tigers n stuff....and we didn't! Tons of different types of Deer most inquisitive of them being The Barking Deer, (They get their name cos they actually emit a sound which is a mixture of a bray and a bark! This they do, when either they're faced with an adversary or while they're excreting cos they're afraid of the sound of their own excreta!) the Sambhar and the Spotted Deer...A herd of wild gaur (Indian Bison)...and a "cute" lil elephant and a huge mama elephant...The lil one wasn't pleased with our appearance...it kept trying to intimidate us by charging at us and stopping short of our jeep...

Some rare sightings which we ran across was a beautiful Serpent Eagle, a pair of Giant Squirrels (huge!) and a woodpecker which disappeared quickly...But the whole crowd had their eyes and ears wiiiiiide open during the whole time, and this was the highlight I guess...taking in the forest, being in the wild...awesome stuff !

We were supposed to play a game that night, but we ended up spending most of the night on NOT SO hilarious jokes and idle banter in general...coupla photo wizards (including the drifter!) made complicated arrangements to capture the night sky, and in general got busy with their cameras (hi fi lenses, tripods, and DSLRs! oooo mama)

For Ron n I, the night was about the fireflies though...You see, at B R Hills, the lights go off at 10.30 pm, and u are left with a starry starry night and the fireflies...Its only the human dread of the unknown that causes some to switch on their torches now n then, but they can be forgiven...While we were sitting atop the machaan, I'd told Ron how I'd realized the last time I'd been here, that one of the best ways to experience this place was to be a silent absorb/observ er...Jokingly he'd asked me 'So is that ur cue for me to shut up??'...Well, shut up we did for a while, as it hit us in waves: the beautifully lit sky, the crickets and mellifluous insects and birds, the fireflies arranging quite an ensemble!

The next morning, I was in a dilemma whether to attend round two of a jeep safari ride (the hope of catching sight of a leopard!!!) or to explore the jungles on foot...Turns out, the latter wasn't a popular option as I found only one other nature enthusiast awaiting the guide for a trek...Undeterred, we set out on foot, me, Pradeep and Guide...This is something I hadn't done the last time around, and boy am I glad I did it this time! Unless somebody gives it to u in writing that there're gonna be hordes of wild animals parading for u inthe morning, don't miss the morning trek!! We saw leopard paw marks, angry scratches, made only the previous night...We saw atleast 15 different types of birds, the providers of the background score for our 6 km journey...we saw an overturned, dead skeletal remains of a bison's head, which had been devoured by a tiger 3 months ago! The dental and respiratory structure of a bison is vividly imprinted in my mind beleev me!! What was mesmerizing was, I woke up with a rather congested nose and lungs, but the moment i started walking through the jungle all the mists cleared inside a me also! I just love that place!

Nothing much to report on the way back...rather tired because of the adventures and the cold n stuff, I came back home a relieved, yet enormously satiated fella!

Cheers
Cheers
Cheers
2 BR Hills!!!

Halcyon

Friday had quite a few things in store for me:

1. Mango Fest :
The only rule is : There're no rules!
3-4 varieties of mangoes
Two women cutting them
Several hoggers!

Go eat as much as u can!

And we ate...Boy a colleague of mine cleared the mangoes...twas fun! And sweet! :D

2. Alarms and Excursions by Dramanon

A collection of two little plays. By a bunch of really versatile and talented actors.
To experience good theatre, to soak it all in : the script, the skill, the talent, the ensemble everything...is an amazingly satisfying experience. And boy did Dramanon deliver!
A must watch if u can manage to get urself towards rangashankara

3. Federal victories

To be up against a man stronger and taller than yourself.
To be down 2 sets to 1, thrashed in both.
To be outplayed for most of the game, made to run around, made to submit to a clever combo of power and precision play.

And yet to stand up and win it in a 5 setter.

Yeah, yeah I can hear the anti-feds going "so what? never seen such a 5 setter before?"
Well, I'll say...Nope...Fedex has had very few 5 setters, and very few which he's one, coming back from the dead like that...And every 5 setter is a unique game , with its own marvellous points and participants. :)

And to top it all off, God chooses this very night to produce a stunning stellar display. A picturesque sky, a cool breeze and not too much traffic! What more can a rattled Bangalorean ask for :)

P.S : Well, the fight over the phone was un-necessary I guess...Learn from it Murals, learn...

Taken

Warning : Spoiler Alert

Stupid, unrealistic action movie.

Why? Stupid girl goes to Paris with her friend, only to get caught in an Albanian prostitution/drug ring. Turns out (lucky lucky her!) that her dad is an ex Government agent (u know these damn american agents...trained to either save or bring down the whole world by themselves).

Dad goes to Paris.
Dad enjoys a street cafe coffee here n there.
Dad kicks butt (Main point of the movie)
Dad saves daddy's lil girl.

But

A few points that grabbed my attention (and vote):

1. Liam Neeson ....57 yr old Liam Neeson...Moves like he's 30. Fights like Bond (better than some Bonds) and acts like a champion (what a mesmerising voice...).
2. Coupla scenes in the beginnin and the end. Both involve Liam. When he finds out his daughter is being kidnapped (she's on the phone, givin him live commentary of the act) and when he finally rescues her at the end. The director gives just a small pause at both moments for u to experience the gravity of the situation. Nice...
3. Maggie Grace, the daughter. Cute.

A splendid action movie, involving all the usual elements. Close combat. Aggressive escape manoeuvres. Some car scenes.

No comparisons here, but it is so easy for a movie like James Bond to make headlines and news and capture attention, but such good, fast action movies kinda go un-noticed. Got a 7.9 out of 10 on IMDB so am pretty pleased though.

Please?

If I have a son, can I name him Gilchrist??

retreat!

Karan says Sakleshpur!
Krishna says Lonavla chikki!
Wayanad is the Green Paradise in God's own Country (Kerala)

We could've equally ended up in any of those 3 places...

But thanks to a koLLeeg of mine, Kalpetta in Kerala got the kall! Ashwin as usual did his last minute disappearing trick, so it was upto Kris Griz and the manager (naane...) to rock the party rock the party (damn you madhu!!!)

Twas my dad's car which was chosen to be the divine carrier, "Better Homes" in Kalpetta the eventual destination and the lush green, scenic routes of bandipur forest en route to paradise!

Now this hit me during our stay in Kalpetta, but wonder what the motivation was for naming the place "Better Homes". I mean why not Best! Homes ?? And I realized that we had arrived at a land of humble people with modest ambitions...Not too high their goals, just neat, good ol' customer satisfaction...

OR

Maybe at some time there was a "Good Homes", and these guys thought "Good a?! Yenna dai?!!? #&%$@$%@*&$ Lets make ours BETTER homes!"


I seriously think its the latter, but still....

Day 1 was mostly travelling. Krishna jumping up and down, hoping to catch glimpses of slithering snakes and enormous elephants and terrific tigers. Yup he basically wanted all the dangerous creatures to assemble and do an ensemble! His infectious was enthusiasm, and the utter brilliance of the greenery around us certainly helped us, cos we totally lost track of time! Only when we hit Sulthan Bathery at around 3 pm did we realize that we were well past lunch time...

We had breakfast at Kamat Lokaruchi on Mysore road. Till then was singin, shoutin, talkin anythin! to keep our hungry selves awake and aware.

Note: When Griz is angry at a fellow vehicle driver on the road, or when he is asked to curse, he will pop his head out and shout out "NAMASKARA!?!?!" at the driver. How amicably rude...

4 pm at Kalpetta, and almost the whole day's gone. No sooner did we get into our 1st floor, 1.5 BHK "better" home, than it started raining! And boy did it rain! And it stopped.
And after it stopped kris n I went out for a walk in our chaddis, where we encountered a poisonous frog.



Sorry, wrong photo...Thats what Griz was doing while we strolled. Artwork courtesy me n kris :D
Here's the frog...


Banasura dam the next day wasn't great shakes.

Except for the photos. "Concept" photos were (are, actually) a running theme whenever a bunch of us get together with a camera. Standing and gazing at the camera, or saying hi or smiling...bore agoithu ri! Jana change keltaare :D

So the concept, of concept photos...For instance, Griz' favorite concept photo (u'll find a lot of 'em in his albums) is for the camera to capture our derrieres, while we're walkin away from the camera. Kris had some wacky! ones...Mine are usually context based and rather clever ( smirk)

Then came the highlight of the trip! Soochippara Falls!! Wiki's description of this natural wonder is short and effective:

"Soochipara Falls is a three-tiered waterfall located 20 km from Kalpetta in Wayanad district in Kerala, India. Its height is 200 metres (656 feet).[1]

This falls is around 22 km (14 mi) from Kalpetta. This is one among different other waterfalls present in Wayanad. But Soochipara falls stands apart. A must visit place if you are in Wayanad."

656 feetu.
200 metresu.
Below that naavu!!

There's something totally, unbelievably, titillatingly fantabulous about getting thwacked, slapped and totally abused by 200 metres of unrelenting,unabashed hydraulic force! Not to mention the soothingly chilling temparature of the water...Oh and also the super slippery rocks en route to the base of the waterfall. Yup, thats where we were, kris in his konservative kapde and other two shameless guys in their undies, totally lost in the sound of the water hitting the rocks...hard...really hard! A mind blowing experience!

So we're moving between borders and reach the karnataka border ( i forget the name of the town) and thats where the nightmare starts. A bigggg stretch of crappy roads, followed by a pathway of just stones, with just the jungle on either side of us. An occasional truck/tempo passing us by with a sym(ply)pathetic look on their faces, while we crawled at 10 Kmph in my poor santro for close to 1.5 hrs. This happened smack bang inthe middle of lunch hour and when Griz is hungry, Griz sings! Oh Kris n I were silent (which means mentally cursing our predicament, our luck and the road among other things) but Griz was singin like Johnny Cash ( :D ). Well it kept our spirits up in some way, and the sight of road with tar on it felt like manna from heaven (phrase, courtesy : Ktk).

5 pm found us rattling off items from the menu in the legendary Dasaprakash Hotel in Mysore. After some critical and severe hogging, we were back on the Bang Mys highway, tired but excited and (me) kinda sad that it was gettin over... (watte cliche! anteera?)

The
End.

What you are...

And when you wanted me I came to you
And when you wanted someone else I withdrew
And when you asked for light, I set myself on fire
If I go far away, you'll find another slave...

Age of In-no-sense

So Girish has these sudden urges...

Whoa that first sentence didn't come out right at all!

So Girish has sudden surges of interest in waking up early morning and playing/going for a jog or something, and just so that there's a motivational factor, he asked me to come along...

So he arrives a few minutes late (hah! :P ) as usual and we do the needful and exert ourselves in the sun, and are sitting down chatting like tired old men, when the youngudgee comes along...

youngudgee : "Hi do you have a coupla minutes?"

At this point, we've already noticed her moving about with pamphlets in her hand, with a spring in her step, being the usual teenager but with a social cause, talking to people...so we're mildly interested that a prettyish young girl is talking to us...

Us : "Yeah hi...go on" (don't imagine a chorus...the collective output was that..)

youngudgee : "This is about ...blah blah...art of living....blah blah...course...for "kids in the age group of 8-18"


Us : (Looks at each other with suppressed giggles) "So we look like we're between 8 and 18?!?"

youngudgee : (flustered) "Uh...(shit crap!) no.... maybe you can bring your kids or some other small children or kids........."

In a span of 10 seconds, our age meter fizzed between impishly young to responsibly parental...Right at the end I said, "Sure I'll bring my kids along" just as, you know, a joke...the stupid thing i do...

And she giggled and sweetly smiled and said "you don't look like you have kids you know?" and all the cover up for the double faux pas and ran away like a jinke mari na?

But in retrospect, that sentence seems a bit scary....

"I'll bring my kids along"
"I'll bring my kids along" (echo 1)
"I'll bring my kids along" (echo 2)
..........

Do I look like a dumb f**k?

Advertisements bring out the passionate side in me...

I can broadly classify ads that I see into three categories:

1. Indifferent/bored/would shoot the ad maker just for fun if he/she was in front of me
2. Excited and in awe of concept/production!
3. Seriously cheated/angry

We all know which category we're gunna talk about now...

Case 1: Compla(i)n

A pretty woman with a bunch of other 'moms' flit off to a research institute where a rather disposable (I'd use a shotgun for him...) quack explains the benefits of Complan on the tallness/height of "growing children"...He says that "a kid who drank complan grew taller by 6 cms whereas the kid who didn't grew taller only by 3 cms"

CMS !!!!!

Do I look like dumb.... instance no. 1

Case 2: Idea

Sachin sitting on a stool
Sachin holding a placard on his number
Sachin trying to act, going "fhlae bli da gloobin tchich phfhgtth call keejiye"
Sachin trying to sell us a brand AGAIN...and it probably working AGAIN

I got plenty irritated and called the bloody number...Forgot to add the '0' at the head first, so got scolded by sarcastically-fake-lady on the phone.

Second time added the '0'...

"pup"
"pup"
"pup"

Call gets cut...No "Hi!! Sachin is bizee right now adjusting and re-adjusting his cap on the fields of SA for his team, the Mumbai Indians...Please don't leave a msg and go do your job!" offered or anything!

WHAT an Idea Sirjee.....

P.S : For those who think I called the number to actually talk to Sachin aka a boyhood fantasy or something, please come and meet me in person...

Spot the bug! - Corrected

Oye me hearties!

Your dear friend, who churns out intriguing, comical and just embarrassingly absurd posts has done it again...

Find the bug in the code, written by murali, below...Note that it is a logical bug, and that the code compiles just fine...You can try compiling it once if ya wants...

Oh I've replaced the actual 'get_rtt' function to spare you homo sapiens the gory details...

The 'main' function is used to calculate the Round Trip Time (RTT) for a packet in TCP networks, and see how many times my calculation differs from my previous calculation.

This is all u guys need to know... But thats not the point...the bug is really funny :D

******************************************************************
#include stdio.h
#define alpha 0.15

int main()
{

long i =0,count=0;

double sample, estimate;

long timeout;
estimate = sample = 0.0;

for ( i = 0; i < 1,000,000 ; i++ )
{
sample = get_rtt();

estimate = sample * (alpha) + estimate * (1-alpha);

if ( sample > estimate ) count++;

timeout = 2 * estimate;
}

printf("The number of unnecessary re-transmissions is %d\n", count);
}

******************************************************************

My Birthday

This was me, a day before I was gonna turn 25...Things weren't looking too bright, I'm afraid...
I mean, who could see this and say "ah, what brilliance and insight of a 25 yr old now-jawaan...A spectacular artistic rendition of a giraffe, a police car and a flower oh so enchanting! Out of this world!!"

Well, the Sun did rise the next morning and i DID turn 25...Woke up earl early and went straight to play cricket! It has become something of a routine, to play cricket on weekends...Challenged software engineers waking up at that hour on a weekend is an achievement alright!

Came back home exhausted and got ma's blessings n wishes n gifts (dad had already wished me earl early :) Then went to God and said hi hello how you doing ok barla?

Then had a yummmmmmmmmmy meal consisting of:

1. Jamooooooooons :D
2. Bisi bele bath
3. Gasgase payasa (Sesame Kheer...beware of the intoxicating properties of this fella!)

No sooner did i gulp two glasses of item no. 3, than i was fast asleep...Woken up by annoying msgs and calls from Girz! He HAD to pick today to take me and drink a juice?! In that drowsy mood, I leave the house with him...He leaves his helmet and a cover in my room <----- NOTE! We go have a chattings and a juice respectively...Come back home, he asks me to get his stuff...And I enter my room to:

and a bunch of ppl yelling "SURPRRIIIIIIIISE!!!"

You can only guess how it went from there onwards...The candle laying, the cake cutting, the birthday bumps et cetera...Whats under wraps was Girz calling ahead, Ktk buying the cake, Srini getting me a gift (a "Dark Knight" DVD!! Woo I am kicked about it babe!), Naren Sac and Ash showing up right on time to be part of the fun, and all of them refusing to hide with Srini in the bathroom

Its an overwhelming feeling, knowing that the ppl u care about are in that room FOR you, with you, wanting to make you feel happy and enjoy themselves in this company... (I can vividly visualize Girz and Naren scolding me for blabbering and sentimentalling so I'll stop, what? :)


Now to the interesting, thought provoking side of the day...Two of my friends told me that I "have everything" and that there's no such thing that I "need or want", and it was hard to find a gift for me...I found that a rather amusing summary of my 25 year old reign as sole ruler of Muraliland...I mean, I have my "needs" (:D) right? Isn't there really anything "realistic"/"material" that I can be gifted, once a year? (without sounding egoistic)

And I sit now at the end of a rather satisfying day, drawing up the account books, cos no birthday (atleast of mine) goes by without some sort of retrospection...What DO I have?

A loving family
A great house in a fantastic locality
A job with not too many tensions (debatable :D)
A great bunch of friends

I guess the claims made by two of my cronies weren't horribly wrong after all...... :)

Cheers!

Listening to : One Small Love, by Thermal and a Quarter

*****
Update at 10.47 PM
*****

Manchester United just came back from the dead, trailing 1-2 to beat Aston Villa 3-2. The reason my fore finger on the left hand is currently slightly swollen is because the winner was scored late into extra time. And I hit whatever I could find in sight, in pure joy and celebration. If there could be a more stupendous and ecstatic way to end the day, please leave a comment.

P.S : Yes, I take my Football seriously.

Innovative Film City

Last Saturday Murali and family went to Innovative Film City.
Mastaagittu!

Even after leaving rather late (around 12 when we left), and reaching there by lunch time, we managed to see quite a bit of this partially complete mimic of Hyderabad's pride...Well, atleast its name sounds similar, but Innovative has quite a few unique things to boast...

The entrance and the gothic statues are pretty similar...A show of grandeur, elaborate and large statues and arches. And once we got past that, we realized that Saturday needn't be the best time to visit this place.

School Children!

They were at that right age where they will make noise just about for anything...And this, after knowing that they shouldnt! They're old enough to know that, but since there aren't any parents here, and the teachers have given up, they run riot!

Anyways, first stop was Louis Tussaud's Wax museum! (Isn't it supposed to be Madame?) Some awesome ones, some u'd wanna get away from, and some trivia! Good beginning and move on amigos...

Ripley's Believe it or not museum...The video below is nice! Go on, I'll wait till you're done...And sorry for making you tilt ur neck to the left...it seems my phone's camera has some weird disease (i read on the web that it is called horizontalasis or somethin like that...)





From the world's smallest things (books on rice, faces on mosquitoes etc etc) to ancient killing devices, to illusions like the one above, u've got it all...Definitely for the inquisitive ones, worth taking ur time on this one!

Lunch was not too eventful...Quite a lot of options when it comes to food, especially Non Veg food...

And post lunch was the highlight! Roller Skates!!!!
There's a rink right there and for a 100 bucks, u can skate (fall, in my case) as much as u want!
There's something about moving by means other than walking!

Happy, tired we went back home! And I headed off to St Joseph's College for Commerce, for my guru and idol Bruce Lee Mani's band Thermal and a Quarter were performing there, as part of the "Shut up and Vote!" Tour (yes! they're touring and everything :) )

Was an awesome Saturday all in all...Couldn't have asked for more!

P.S : Of course they rocked!

food from hell

Chained?

Are all events in this big, bad world chained, somehow? Indirectly? Remotely?
Or atleast, do some events have the ability to influence others? Like, the choices that you make take not only your life and the events in a day of your life in one, out of two, lanes, BUT it ALSO influences actions/events/happenings that you're very very remotely linked/associated to?

Wait lemme give you an example...

Recently, a friend of mine did something she has not done in her whole late teen/adult life...She asked me whether I'd wanna join her n her friends to watch a movie tonight...Me being a super crazy Manchester United fan turned down her offer, I'm sure much to her surprise and a little bit of chagrin, cos there was a big game on at the same time as the movie...Of course, the times overlapped in just the right way, so that I was very tempted to consider the generous offer and try to watch the movie as well as catch a bit of the match...

Which is what I probably should've done....

Cos as if to taunt me, the Man Utd players turned up for the big occasion with cold feet! One of the world's biggest soccer clubs, who I've watched tear clubs apart week in week out, grind out and sometimes conjure up magical results, collapsed under the sheer pressure of the stage! How they could perform so below their usual high standards is beyond me...

Until I started thinking a bit out of the box...What if, my choice had been different? What if I'd given up the match to watch the movie? What'd have happened then? I know you're shaking ur head with a smirk on ur face, which conveys the expression "oh come ON Murali...even for ur standards, u are stretching it a bit here", but stay with me for a moment....

We've all seen those interesting, intricate setups (notably a long car ad, i forget the manufacturer's name) : a ball falling on a stick, which taps a cardboard piece, which switches on a fan, which blows sand into....... What if the world is one such huuuuuuuuuge, complicated, mess of organized events? What if it is all pre-programmed? What if it isn't? If its not, then who makes the rules? Or are we all wildly spinning out of control, constantly and precisely, just enough to stay alive and stay sane?

Well, after this post no guarantees can be made about the "sane" part for me...


P.S : I'm pretty sure there're are quite a few loopholes in this theory... the "if it is so, then how do you explain...?"s ...You know where to click :)

Time of my life

Yes I had the time of my life, the last week...

To be more precise, (cos one of my friends smirked at and cajoled the notion of it having been labeled a 'South India Tour'...), I had a time of my life as I sailed thru the towns of Alleppey, Trivandrum, Nagercoil, Kanyakumari, Kovalam and Pondicherry!

The valiant (to MAKE plans, with hectic work schedules and lack of availability of a leave of absence, in this recession ridden time) team :

Narendra Kumaaar
Vinay V
Girish H V
Swami Perumalananda aka Srinivas (internal joke)
Meself!

Rather than make an effort to capture that very organized trip (train and hotel booking done pretty much in all destinations before we left), I'll go for the haphazard approach and try to put down those visions of paradise that I am left with now....

Alleppey

A small town famous for its backwaters, so thats where we went! This was kinda off season, so we were treated like royalty by cash hungry travel agents and massagers alike (Griz n I managed to squeeze in an Ayurvedic massage for ourselves in Alleppey...If you haven't tried it yet, u SHUD! )... While wiki'ing about it, i also read that this places is famous for its boat races, so if u wanna club that too and visit this place, i'd recommend it...it is a nice, small, laidback town with the tourism and fishing industry making the bulk of the revenue (i guess)

Beware! It can get pretty hot in select parts of Kerala...And alleppey is no exception...for the first two days, as we battled to transition from namma chinna dantha bengalooru to the humid n hot keralaesque weather, we realized what we'd signed up for...But all that sweat sure didn't dampen our spirits! (it may've dampened the hotel bed covers...we slept quite a bit on the trip :P )

And oh, the beach holds a special place in all our hearts, especially mine n naren's, cos this is where we literally kicked perumal's ass (birthday bumps!)...26 feetal, lethal and misplaced blows to srini's spine and derriere from our sandy legs! Oh thet was a good eh?! :D

KanyaKumari - The bummer

Everything was going like a hot, humid breeze until we landed at the southern most tip of India...Srini couldn't shake off his "feeling" of him being on the edge of the map, and he had a point....The railway tracks at Kanyakumari lead upto a wooden structure on which is painted 'STOP' !!

This is the famous place where Swami Vivekananda came and meditated, sometime in 1892...
In some sticky weather, we landed here and after finding a hotel room right next to the gorgeous, breathtaking vast expanse of oceans (yes plural!!), we slowly realized that this place was more of a religious place (and a honeymoon spot...boy i don't get tired of THAT phrase!)...On the whole, all of us (except VV) felt that we should split asap, so we ended up going to

Kovalam - South India of Goa

Yay Kovalam! We'd to get take a taxi to get from Kanyakumari to Kovalam, but it was so worth it! Once again the kind taxi driver cum hotel guide led us to a decent bachelor pad, a place where we could stretch out our legs after a day of exhausting fun, where we could dump our luggage and where we could watch tv while finishing bottles and bottles of .... water while playing uno!

We hit the beach the very evening we got there and this turned out to be better than alleppey! For starters, my the dial on my excitement meter rose super cos we played some awesome football in the sand there with an Englishman! There's something about roughing it out in a strange land, in strange sand and an English gaand, cos thats just what he was...The minute he asked us whether we wanted "uh gaime?" (a game), he started showin off his footballin skills...
He also showed himself to be a cheating loser in the middle of the game as he unfairly blocked me off when i was about to score! But the whole thing was soopar fun!!

And we also walked down shady alleys and dark roads to a restaurant called Lonely Planet...Expensive shit, but probably the only Veg restaurant in a place where lobsters, shrimps, crabs and whatnot sea creatures were on display on every seaside restaurant! No wonder its named "lonely planet"....

Pondicherry - The Cool City

You must hand it to this place...Even in the sweltering heat, it still manages to throw vibes of a serene, laidback place...Check into a beach side hotel, wake up late in the morning, hire a bicycle if u want, just roam around the city with no aim and still u'll run into a book store, a fancy coffee place or the din of the market...You'd probably wanna save the market for the evenings, cos u'll find ALL kindsa stuff here! (oh yeah!)...ooh ooh but when u'll go and wet ur feet in the beach then!? And u just can't ignore the Aurobindo ashram and Auroville right?
Shucks! a small town and so much to do...Even though my one day there consisted mainly of the discovery of a divine restaurant and quintals of sleeping, i severely liked the place! Mental note to revisit some day, with an agenda to do nothing again :D


How do I end this one?
By sharing something I learnt on this trip. This will sound a bit cliched or phony, but it pretty much applies to the trip as a whole...Amazing what all a cute, bald lil kid can say

"Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth.
That there is no spoon. Then you'll see, that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself."

It'd be a worthwhile thought experiment to replace "spoon" by "other's egos" :)