Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Mazes, Traffic Jams and Obstacle courses

Travelling or driving in Bangalore is an amazingly arduous task. Wild horses cannot even drag me to stay in Bangalore. The fact that almost every road in central Bangalore is one way and there is absolutely no way you can make any geographic sense about where you want to go . I had to drive a couple of times across Bangalore and needless to say this was a very different experience. You can't make a mistake in terms of direction and not spend another 20 minutes rectifying it because everything is one way and there are no u-turns available . The circle is possibly a favourite of the road planners in Bangalore - since you keep going around in circles thanks to the one-way's as well as in various junctions . Also the typical rule of thumb according to my friends is 7 minutes per km, so if you need to travel 13-14 km its atleast an hour and a half . The most funny sight though on my trip was this flyover from "Double Road" to Richmond Road which has a signal on top - So you climb up the flyover and drive "American style" (of driving on the right side of the road) for around 500 m and then stop on the top of the flyover to get back into Indian style of driving. For the unimaginative imagine this to be a large X with traffic moving diagonally. Woe betide any learner stuck on the incline in first gear and my sympathies for the car stuck behind.

Driving in each of India's cities is a different art - Bombay is fast , has wide roads , better planned , well co-ordinated and generally very disciplined. Delhi is chaotic but the wide roads are a life saver inspite of indisciplined drivers. Hyderabad is the epitome of lawlessness on the road. People go on the wrong side as though its a right of way. Pune is chaotic too but Hyderabad is possibly the worst traffic I have seen since there is absolutely no logic to driving there as well as wide roads and folks having the most powerful vehicles :) . Bangalore is slow , crawly , confusing and is basically a collection of vehicles that like to imitate the snail. Madras is ok , better disciplined than either of Bangalore or Hyderabad with decent enough roads. However at the end of the day if you can drive here you can drive any obstacle course or navigate through any city in the world with far better co-ordination thanks to manual transmissions in most Indian cars.

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Bengaloooruu ... Hello World.

In Bangalore this weekend on a whirlwind vacation of sorts. Its good to be in the garden city of Bangalore and as I blog this after a redeye flight to Bangalore, 2 cups of authentic tamilian filter coffee, 1 plate of ven pongal and a trip on the streets one does start feeling the effect of lack of sleep for a week . It has spectacular effects on my eyes, they start turnign totally red, irritated, and then it moves into what I call the migraine zone where every part of your head starts aching with pulsating and shooting pains . Wow ! sounds interesting doesn't it ? Anyways migraine shygraine aside- it looks as though there are a whole bunch of family and friends waiting to be met in Bangalore - a 14 year old nephew and a 4 year old cousin being the more interesting of the lot .

Looking forward for a tyrst with the infamous Bangalore traffic. Morning wasn't too bad but then no one wakes up in this city till 11 , do they ?

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Ottawa Sunrise finally

Finally sunrise in Ottawa. A collage of shots from the hotel window showing sunrise on a day that I woke up at 4:30 a.m. and had nothing much to do.. 3 cheers for my D50 and amazing skyline shots ...
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Saturday, August 18, 2007

Of television serials and a lazy weekend.

Its been an interesting week . One of my friends P became a father on Thursday and it was an unexpected sight to see him holding the baby when we entered the hospital room to greet the new dad . So now 3 cheers to the big daddy. Ofcourse this leads to a new domain of jokes about the new dad (oops should we say kid) on the block which I'll save for another time.

Spent Friday sick in bed with a sinus attack but later in the evening felt better to run through all the episodes of Heroes to How I met your Mother. One's a sitcom while the other is a supernatural thriller.

Ofcourse being a pretty big fan of sitcoms I managed to finish both seasons of How I met your mother in a couple of marathon sessions neither of which can be said is very good to my health . But as cliches go .. .what the hell, you only live once. I somehow relate to Ted in How I met your mother - too much planning and not doing can never do you any good in any relationship . If there's something to be said or done one's possibly better off saying it or doing it as soon as one gets the thought. Sometimes its good to be impulsive or you just miss the bus or the moment as the case might be. The gang in How I met your mother consists of Robin Sparkles Shebarski, Marshall Eriksen, Lily Aldrin, Ted Mosby and ofcourse the irrepressible Barney "suit up" Stinson. Interesting combinaton of characters and they do make quite a good combination. I can't wait for the 3rd season to get under way. I believe we should be able to see it on Star World in India. Atleast that's what Wikipedia suggests...

Ok thats that .. Nice internet break and now its time for 2 and a half men.,

Thursday, August 16, 2007

chak de india.

Its been 1 hour and 42 minutes into the 61st year of our Independence and I just got back from watching the new SRK movie Chak De India. While watching it at ESquare in the 1030 p.m. show last night there was an event that quite astounded me. In the movie a small clip of our national anthem was played and everyone in that particular hall stood for the duration of the clip. Bowled me over totally. Maybe it was to do with the Independence Day spirit and all the media hype but whatever it was due to that one moment made me think about the probability of a hall full of people actually standing up for a clip of the national anthem out of a population of a billion.

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Of an English Summer...

What an interesting English summer it has been so far. The Indian cricket team pulled off a series win after 21 long years with a bunch of players some of whom would never travel again to play in England. It was very interesting that the man of the match, a certain Mr. Kumble known more for (the absence of huge) leg spin in his bowling, ( but the presence of the top spin and a veritable googly) to receive the award for his batting (the only century by an Indian in the series in the presence of the demi-gods of Indian cricket) .

Its been raining here continuously for the past few weeks and we are quite fortunate to see the sun on a couple of days. Tomorrow is our veritable independence day and yours truly is celebrating in office today listening to patriotic songs and mulling over wearing a dhoti in office. Ofcourse the problem is that wearing a dhoti in office means the risk of indecent exposure (albeit inadvertently) and the fact that the air conditioning would make me feel very cold in my legs. Being from a tropical place which has only 3 seasons (hot hotter and hottest)such impulsive acts are not so good for an old man like me.

Friday, August 03, 2007

Of Time management and what not.

After the trip last week to Canada, the body clock is still misbehaving and pushed me into a wake-up at 9:30 a.m. and sleep at 3:00 a.m. routine which ends up with me reaching office either having over slept or under slept or at an hour later than what I usually try and maintain (well ,at times :)) .

Time management and splitting time between office work and personal projects is an interesting piece but something one has managed to do well over time . Personal projects on some new topic provides one with an escape mechanism from the drudgery of work or a way of getting out of a problem that one can get stuck on for a long long time . Fixing bugs is also a good way of spending free time and ends up giving the author an extra fillip towards spending some more time in sorting out other bugs of his creation :) .


This is a random posting and do ignore it ....