Its been an eventful week . Had fun on the first few days of the week thanks to a visit by some friends from Bangalore. Decided to back my car into a tree , the tree didn't move despite continued threats and ended up having to change the door of the boot.
Last evening, however was even more spectacular. My phone stopped working claiming that it had an inactive Sim . I tried a number of things like putting this in a cool Blackberry and in that I got an even more helpful error message which claimed my SIM card was rejected. A call to the customer care of one of India's biggest networks followed. For folks who don't know, I have a mobile connection with India's largest congestion free network and one that has had folks like Sachin Tendulkar and AR Rehman signed up as brand ambassadors. It resulted in egg on their faces with a claim that they deactivated my phone by mistake. I was surprised to say the least, having paid all my bills for the last 5 years since when I have this number but was prepared to forgive a technical glitch. After all its software, there are always bugs. There is also the possibility of a human error where someone could have gotten it wrong and gotten a typo.
Guess what happens this morning, A call from Airtel's customer care again checking for feedback happens while I am in the middle of a nice little session playing with trees and forests in gcc. The conversation goes:
CC> Sir did you have a problem with your phone ? Did you have a problem with outgoing calls or incoming calls ?
Me> Yes I had a problem , neither was working . The phone said something very helpful like SIM rejected or SIM Inactive.
CC> But sir its working now na ? I just got through to you .
Me> Thinking that he'd come 3rd in a quiz competition with just him in the fray - Yes but the problem was you deleted the line.
CC> All problems solved now ?
Me> But it took you 5 hours to connect it back.
CC> Have you paid your bills ?
Me> Yes, I have . the last one was paid yesterday.
CC> No problem sir, I will check and make sure your bills are reflected in the system.
Me> Fine please do that .
Narrators Interruption> In the middle of this the congestion free network decides to stop working and the call gets cut. So Me calls him back.
Me> We were talking
CC> No problem sir , I will get back to you.
Me> but have you realized the problem ?
CC> What is the problem ?
Me> Patiently explains again.
CC> You must not have paid the bills, thats why they disconnected.
Me> Go check it . I have paid it for the past 5 years regularly and the last one was also paid. Get off your high horse.
CC> What are you saying ? Am I speaking nonsense or are you ?
Me> You are speaking nonsense.
CC> Who's talking nonsense ?
Me> Dont' have time for this , bye.
Customer Disservice is what they seem to be about here and nothing much else.
Friday, May 04, 2007
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Across the pale parabola of joy ...
Achievement of the decade. Procuring a printed copy of Mike and Psmith, the "pre"quel to all the Psmith books by P G Wodehouse was the highlight of the day . I had read it off Project Gutenberg but the joy of having a printed copy is something else. This is the origin of sentences that have given absolute joy to readers over the years . Having tried to lay my hands on this book out of print unsuccessfully since class 9 when I first lay my hands on a work of art by Wodehouse, it was a significant achievement to obtain this at long long last...
To quote one of these as PB mentioned to me .
Mr. Downing was a bowler with a style of his own. He took two short steps, two long steps, gave a jump, took three more short steps and ended with a combination of a step and a jump, during which the ball emerged from behind his back and started on its slow career to the wicket. The whole business had the dignity of an old-fashioned minuet, subtly blended with the careless vigour of a cakewalk. The ball when delivered, was billed to break from leg, but the programme was subject to alterations.
To quote one of these as PB mentioned to me .
Mr. Downing was a bowler with a style of his own. He took two short steps, two long steps, gave a jump, took three more short steps and ended with a combination of a step and a jump, during which the ball emerged from behind his back and started on its slow career to the wicket. The whole business had the dignity of an old-fashioned minuet, subtly blended with the careless vigour of a cakewalk. The ball when delivered, was billed to break from leg, but the programme was subject to alterations.
Indian Summers...
Managed to get to Crossword in the middle of answering an SOS to my sis over what I would term an eventful weekend . It began with a game of cricket on Saturday what folks would call an intra company match to help unearth new talent in our organization to play cricket ... Yours truly was the first person to appear on the ground at 7:30 a.m. which left our captain K rather impressed considering the fact that he's usually had to give me some 30 wake up calls after reaching the ground on a couple of previous occassions.
Inspecting the pitch showed that it was a beauty with the length of the crease so much that some one would be hard pressed to bowl a no ball. I must say I came very close to overstepping but then pulled out of that delivery at the last moment. The moral of the story was that we lost thanks to a typical collapse after a fantastic start . 59 for none after 9 overs became 67 / 4 ... 2 spectacular catches by my particular nemesis P who usually plays a game with a hangover with either a build the previous night with some P0,P1 blocker critical bugs fixed or with sufficient quantities of suspicious liquid jostling in his innards. One of the catches was to get me out , still cannot believe that he managed to take a catch while falling backwards and still managed to pull that one out centimetres above the ground. What hurt me more was losing a bet to one of my friends who still thinks that I can't bat for nuts.
After this we had a few interesting innings from folks who tried running with Ph (Now I have P so I should refer to Ph as Ph. ) involving an interesting sequence where many a time one would find Ph at the same end as the other batsmen... Thanks to our democratic practices we allowed all our players to get a hit but this noble approach enabled us to score just 115 in the allotted 20 overs.
After a short break where we bemoaned global warming and how heated Pune was becoming before we started on the second innings. We had few brief hopes of winning but all that was dashed once the other batsmen batted through. If only we had held on to a couple of catches, 2 tough c&b's off my own bowling and a skier at long on , there was a chance that we might have done something different. However the dudes of the day were Pr and KP (not Kevin Pietersen but another guy who shares a similar outlook to batting) .. Pr was batting well in the 18th over and suddenly went for an ugly reverse hoick which resembled a cross between a pull and a slash .. I was umpiring then and as Pr walked off I couldn't resist questioning the reasoning behind the shot - (we were not too greatly placed ) to which he replied as an excuse that this was the last over. It turned out that he'd been done in by a smart piece of work by the keeper ( a smart alec) and KP who insisted this was the last over despite feeble hints from the square leg umpire. However this makes Pr the dude of the week and pushes him close to the hall of fame which KP currently occupies...
Inspecting the pitch showed that it was a beauty with the length of the crease so much that some one would be hard pressed to bowl a no ball. I must say I came very close to overstepping but then pulled out of that delivery at the last moment. The moral of the story was that we lost thanks to a typical collapse after a fantastic start . 59 for none after 9 overs became 67 / 4 ... 2 spectacular catches by my particular nemesis P who usually plays a game with a hangover with either a build the previous night with some P0,P1 blocker critical bugs fixed or with sufficient quantities of suspicious liquid jostling in his innards. One of the catches was to get me out , still cannot believe that he managed to take a catch while falling backwards and still managed to pull that one out centimetres above the ground. What hurt me more was losing a bet to one of my friends who still thinks that I can't bat for nuts.
After this we had a few interesting innings from folks who tried running with Ph (Now I have P so I should refer to Ph as Ph. ) involving an interesting sequence where many a time one would find Ph at the same end as the other batsmen... Thanks to our democratic practices we allowed all our players to get a hit but this noble approach enabled us to score just 115 in the allotted 20 overs.
After a short break where we bemoaned global warming and how heated Pune was becoming before we started on the second innings. We had few brief hopes of winning but all that was dashed once the other batsmen batted through. If only we had held on to a couple of catches, 2 tough c&b's off my own bowling and a skier at long on , there was a chance that we might have done something different. However the dudes of the day were Pr and KP (not Kevin Pietersen but another guy who shares a similar outlook to batting) .. Pr was batting well in the 18th over and suddenly went for an ugly reverse hoick which resembled a cross between a pull and a slash .. I was umpiring then and as Pr walked off I couldn't resist questioning the reasoning behind the shot - (we were not too greatly placed ) to which he replied as an excuse that this was the last over. It turned out that he'd been done in by a smart piece of work by the keeper ( a smart alec) and KP who insisted this was the last over despite feeble hints from the square leg umpire. However this makes Pr the dude of the week and pushes him close to the hall of fame which KP currently occupies...
Monday, April 09, 2007
Namesake
Gogol Ganguly - whats in a name you may ask , but if you have a name which goes Nikhil Gogol Ganguly I am sure you'd sit up and question the wisdom of your parents choices. Its from a superbly crafted movie called the Namesake which I managed to see with 3 Swedes and my niece M bringing to an end a mixed weekend . The movie is well made and the performances are really good - Tabu and Irfan Khan stand out and so does the kid who plays the role of Gogol in the movie . Almost everyone questions their name at some point of time and wonders if their parents could have done better - However you live with your name and its not too far before you make the same mistake.
Watching Australia play England before dozing off . I hope England does a Bangladesh today :)
Watching Australia play England before dozing off . I hope England does a Bangladesh today :)
South Africa do an India .
by losing to Bangladesh - So the win against India wasn't a fluke - the match wasn't fixed and all that to all those losers who went around burning the effigies . Greg Chappell's gone but Dravid stays on. Its been a while since I have been delighted by someone losing and I was backing Bangladesh all the way yesterday .
The last few days have seen a lot of noise and chirp about Indian cricket and the way its the system which sucks and our players who are treated as demi-gods when the team wins and then worse than dirt if they lose. Its possibly to do with our psyche and as my mom's grandmom would say with an old Tamil proverb "Veccha Kudumi Saracha Mottai" .which means that either we are all punks with waist long hair or with a completely shaven pate that resembles more the MCG with lights on... Some balance guys or we'll never achieve anything ...
The last few days have seen a lot of noise and chirp about Indian cricket and the way its the system which sucks and our players who are treated as demi-gods when the team wins and then worse than dirt if they lose. Its possibly to do with our psyche and as my mom's grandmom would say with an old Tamil proverb "Veccha Kudumi Saracha Mottai" .which means that either we are all punks with waist long hair or with a completely shaven pate that resembles more the MCG with lights on... Some balance guys or we'll never achieve anything ...
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
I went to the new Landmark store that's opened here in Pune to see if I could pick up a copy of Mike and Psmith that I had ordered a couple of months back . However discovering that it wasn't available promptly picked up Colin Forbes' 34th and last thriller. Colin Forbes is an author that I have read since class 9 and I usually manage to pick up one of his books either when I am travelling or haven't read anything interesting in a while.
The central character in all his novels is the head of the British Secret Service or the SIS as it is called Tweed. Tweed spends most of his time looking out for the Brits and saving the world and Britain from total destruction . His enemies in the time of the cold war were the Russians and the Eastern Europeans who morphed once into the Al Qaida . However his favourite enemies in recent times were huge conglomerations lead by rogue industrialists. There's a familiar pattern to Mr. Tweed's madness and there is a method too! Hence the weird title in the honor of Mr. Tweed .!
Rest in peace Mr. Forbes - I shall have to go searching for a new Tweed pretty soon !
The central character in all his novels is the head of the British Secret Service or the SIS as it is called Tweed. Tweed spends most of his time looking out for the Brits and saving the world and Britain from total destruction . His enemies in the time of the cold war were the Russians and the Eastern Europeans who morphed once into the Al Qaida . However his favourite enemies in recent times were huge conglomerations lead by rogue industrialists. There's a familiar pattern to Mr. Tweed's madness and there is a method too! Hence the weird title in the honor of Mr. Tweed .!
Rest in peace Mr. Forbes - I shall have to go searching for a new Tweed pretty soon !
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Marching towards a century
It was the ides of March when I started writing this particular post.I now see that the blog is approaching the century mark . 5 posts to go and I should be hitting a century here not to mention other places where I have hit centuries before . Certainly my high school maths teacher would be hopeful !
I had a brief and wacked out trip to the silicon valley for a bunch of meetings and conferences. Returning to India meant that I was jet-lagged on return rather than during the trip. The return journey got me back through a very fogged out Hong Kong and I spent the time curled in the large airport doing nothing much but hogging and reading.
Post that I managed to force myself to drive the 590 odd km between Pune and Hyderabad to meet an old friend A . Now A is an HR professional and for the first time in life I ended up in a room where a person from a non-HR background was in a minority. Must say that it was a unique experience and not hearing too much HResque was worth the time. I thought that it had become a part of their common speak , but then P , A's wife is another non-HR entity and that saved the day for me. Anyways I am raving and writing crap, so let me stop here for today.
I had a brief and wacked out trip to the silicon valley for a bunch of meetings and conferences. Returning to India meant that I was jet-lagged on return rather than during the trip. The return journey got me back through a very fogged out Hong Kong and I spent the time curled in the large airport doing nothing much but hogging and reading.
Post that I managed to force myself to drive the 590 odd km between Pune and Hyderabad to meet an old friend A . Now A is an HR professional and for the first time in life I ended up in a room where a person from a non-HR background was in a minority. Must say that it was a unique experience and not hearing too much HResque was worth the time. I thought that it had become a part of their common speak , but then P , A's wife is another non-HR entity and that saved the day for me. Anyways I am raving and writing crap, so let me stop here for today.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
The valley and eclipsecon.
In the valley - ostensibly the mecca for all software developers for some meetings I managed to find time to attend eclipsecon and listen to Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert . The stories he put together regarding why some of his cartoons never made it past editors also made for Dilbertish episodes. IMO there's Dilbertism in any and every organization that exists on Planet Earth and more so increasingly in India given our requirement that everyone becomes a manager . We all seem to contribute to a chain of actions that don't seem to result in anything useful but a set of meetings. As one of my former customers used to say about some of his other customers A & B. If A and B needed to do a project to tie shoe laces , they would need 467 meetings across a year with every tom dick and harry who thought himself or herself (now we have to be equal oppurtunity ! ) to be useful to the cause to talk about a plan, a contingency plan, risks , accuracy of estimates from engineering before 1 day of engineering could be done to tie their shoelaces !
Monday, February 26, 2007
Progress....
Blogging this technically after the weekend and feeling generally bored about Monday mornings . Spent the weekend catching up on some movies which was a good way of spending the whole of Saturday night. Watched Blood Diamond , Crash , Mistress of Spices, Walk the line , Dor and what not . After a long time stayed up till 7 in the morning. However the result of that activity is that I slept through the whole day getting up only for meals and more sleep . Listening to the music of Pachai Kili Muthucharam streaming over the internet on totem on ubuntu . Now thats really progress as far as Linux goes. It used to be a pain to get sound working - you needed to know myriads of options and what not to get it working - alsa - oss and some other black magic . Currently its just a simple install and everything works like magic. Now now like my uncle says that a computer is useless unless it makes food for him , I wouldn't be surprised that very soon we should have a linux powered robot which doubles up as a cook . The day such a product is made - I'll gift it to him.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Comfortably Numb"ed"....
The Sunday was spent in driving down to Bombay for the big Roger Waters - Dark Side of the Moon concert. Wow! it really was worth every picometre covered in the drive . The concert started bang on time and finished on time too. In the middle was all the fun - quadsonic sound, flying pigs, a number of taunts at the war(s) in Iraq and above all fantastic music. It was worth every single second spent there and every single drop of sweat spent in standing in a huge crowd which was bent on crushing every person standing ...
By the time he got to the Dark Side of the Moon the crowd was totally primed and roaring. Shine on you crazy diamond was received with absolute adulation and then once the band finished playing the Dark Side of the moon . they disappeared ...........only to make you feel cheated ... Then they reappeared to play the all time classics - Brick in the wall, Vera , Another Brick in the wall leaving the audience comfortably numbed...
By the time he got to the Dark Side of the Moon the crowd was totally primed and roaring. Shine on you crazy diamond was received with absolute adulation and then once the band finished playing the Dark Side of the moon . they disappeared ...........only to make you feel cheated ... Then they reappeared to play the all time classics - Brick in the wall, Vera , Another Brick in the wall leaving the audience comfortably numbed...
Sunday, February 11, 2007
The unexpected vacation draws to a close.
Hardly expected that I wouldn't be hacking into GCC despite sitting in the city of sweat (Madras) but then it turned out into an unexpected vacation . Here on a private visit for some functions in the family it turned out to be a lot of work in terms of running around , meeting relatives getting some decent photographs, visiting a village our so called ancestral village of Vengalathur . It was certainly a hectic trip. Today looks much better as I have to pay my yearly visit to Landmark and hopefully obtain a few books. Ah Monday Morning approaches and with it a flight at 5:30 in the morning back to what is home these days. Long week lined up but then ......
Monday, February 05, 2007
theppamcloseup
The actual theppam close up . This was shot from nearly 50 meters away with a whole bunch of folks standing between me and the theppam. Its the closest shot I could get to the theppam.
The theppams or the floats of Madras
Across the pale parabola of joy
The weekend has been spent in the city of sweat (Madras) and in the middle of all the rituals and festivities I found the time to go and see the Theppam (Float) festival on Saturday in Mylapore (Madras) .
This was organized for the first time in nearly 2 or 3 decades because of the simple reason that there was never enough water in the Mylapore tank for such events. Some stunning photos were as usual the order of the day - Links will be available tomorrow as I upload some of the pics - The advantage of carrying the D50 is that the policemen on duty here mistook me for a Press Photographer and allowed me full access. Some of the panoramic photos make for very nice viewing.
Other than today I need to get back to hacking GCC and finishing a patch that is long long and long overdue ! Its just not working and proves how much of a pain backporting patches can be .
The weekend has been spent in the city of sweat (Madras) and in the middle of all the rituals and festivities I found the time to go and see the Theppam (Float) festival on Saturday in Mylapore (Madras) .
This was organized for the first time in nearly 2 or 3 decades because of the simple reason that there was never enough water in the Mylapore tank for such events. Some stunning photos were as usual the order of the day - Links will be available tomorrow as I upload some of the pics - The advantage of carrying the D50 is that the policemen on duty here mistook me for a Press Photographer and allowed me full access. Some of the panoramic photos make for very nice viewing.
Other than today I need to get back to hacking GCC and finishing a patch that is long long and long overdue ! Its just not working and proves how much of a pain backporting patches can be .
Friday, February 02, 2007
Elections our experiment with Democracy !
Across the pale parabola of joy
Indeed our experiment with democracy leads to very interesting sights. This morning I was running to catch a train that would hopefully get me to Bombay in time when I ran into a huge traffic jam which enabled me to move nearly 400m in 45 min. Finally getting irritated I got out of the rick to walk the remaining 4 km. to the station lugging a suitcase and the customary uniform of the laptop, the nikon D50 and a smaller bag !
The reason for this was the result of the civic poll that was getting announced this morning near the Pune Municipal corporation . Our leaders were so busy getting elected that they forgot the very purpose for which they were getting elected - serve the people. They served the people well by indulging in squallid vote-grubbing exercises, providing free crap to people and forgetting to remember the fact that folks needed to travel. There was an ambulance stuck behind my rick and there was *nothing* that could be done to free it. There were half a dozen traffic cops who incidentally should get rid of their uniforms and go drown in the Mutha or the Mula which ever is dirtier (Mutha and Mula are the 2 rivers in the city of Pune which I inhabit) . The cops did nothing to free the roads of marauding crowds who had parked bikes and two wheelers on all the footpaths enabling the zillions of onlookers to spill on to the streets causing utter chaos, irritation and a n utter waste of time.
Its a miracle that the public didn't beat them up today. I was ready to jump into the melee if and when it started. What a waste of time , fuel and energy and irritation . Have a couple of interesting pictures which I'll put up once I have my set up going.
Indeed our experiment with democracy leads to very interesting sights. This morning I was running to catch a train that would hopefully get me to Bombay in time when I ran into a huge traffic jam which enabled me to move nearly 400m in 45 min. Finally getting irritated I got out of the rick to walk the remaining 4 km. to the station lugging a suitcase and the customary uniform of the laptop, the nikon D50 and a smaller bag !
The reason for this was the result of the civic poll that was getting announced this morning near the Pune Municipal corporation . Our leaders were so busy getting elected that they forgot the very purpose for which they were getting elected - serve the people. They served the people well by indulging in squallid vote-grubbing exercises, providing free crap to people and forgetting to remember the fact that folks needed to travel. There was an ambulance stuck behind my rick and there was *nothing* that could be done to free it. There were half a dozen traffic cops who incidentally should get rid of their uniforms and go drown in the Mutha or the Mula which ever is dirtier (Mutha and Mula are the 2 rivers in the city of Pune which I inhabit) . The cops did nothing to free the roads of marauding crowds who had parked bikes and two wheelers on all the footpaths enabling the zillions of onlookers to spill on to the streets causing utter chaos, irritation and a n utter waste of time.
Its a miracle that the public didn't beat them up today. I was ready to jump into the melee if and when it started. What a waste of time , fuel and energy and irritation . Have a couple of interesting pictures which I'll put up once I have my set up going.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Of weekends , south indian movies and games of basketball.
Across the pale parabola of joy
A movie (Guru), a game of basketball - sleep and good South Indian food is a valid weekend - Somehow have to drag myself out of bed in the morning tomorrow to either go down to Karla / Baja caves or drive down to Panhala to get some decent photographs. In any case I have a trip planned for next week down to Madras via Bombay which gives the chance to get more pictures. A highlight of the coming trip is a chance to visit the old village from where our ancestors are supposed to have migrated to the cities . Its a small village near Madras - maybe around 100 km. and can be visited in a day . Don't expect to be able to take too many photographs there but can atleast attempt.
A movie (Guru), a game of basketball - sleep and good South Indian food is a valid weekend - Somehow have to drag myself out of bed in the morning tomorrow to either go down to Karla / Baja caves or drive down to Panhala to get some decent photographs. In any case I have a trip planned for next week down to Madras via Bombay which gives the chance to get more pictures. A highlight of the coming trip is a chance to visit the old village from where our ancestors are supposed to have migrated to the cities . Its a small village near Madras - maybe around 100 km. and can be visited in a day . Don't expect to be able to take too many photographs there but can atleast attempt.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Noses to the grindstone
Across the pale parabola of joy: "BlogT"
Its been a crazy couple of days at work looking at various things as is usually my ambit :) . Finally finally fixed a major piece of work in GCC . Hopefully now we should have some more improvements in the code generated for a particular piece of GCC that I am hacking on . This coming weekend is a long weekend for all of us ! 26th of January beckons and is good to be off for the whole weekend. However getting even with work is also important considering the amount of backlog that has accumulated over time .
My li'l sister managed to achieve quite a few interesting things like becoming the 10800'th global risk practitioner to be certified by the GARP ( Global Association of Risk Practioners ) . Everyone but her was sure that she'd crack it and as is usually the case with the boss - such things happen .
Nose back to the grindstone eh !
Its been a crazy couple of days at work looking at various things as is usually my ambit :) . Finally finally fixed a major piece of work in GCC . Hopefully now we should have some more improvements in the code generated for a particular piece of GCC that I am hacking on . This coming weekend is a long weekend for all of us ! 26th of January beckons and is good to be off for the whole weekend. However getting even with work is also important considering the amount of backlog that has accumulated over time .
My li'l sister managed to achieve quite a few interesting things like becoming the 10800'th global risk practitioner to be certified by the GARP ( Global Association of Risk Practioners ) . Everyone but her was sure that she'd crack it and as is usually the case with the boss - such things happen .
Nose back to the grindstone eh !
Sunday, January 21, 2007
LLVM an interesting project.
Across the pale parabola of joy
Spent most of my Sunday looking at an open source project and reading up on inter-procedural analysis a bit closer . It's called LLVM and looks rather neat. It gained an ARM port from Apple which fuels my speculation that the iphone is going to have ARM in it and Apple is doing some serious optimization at an interprocedural level using LLVM. But again one never knows really !
I tried getting it to build but it looks as though there are some huge API changes which have broken things just when I decided to take on a weekend project ! Its interesting that one can now think of interprocedural optimizations ... I'd love to lay my hands on that at some point of time.
Spent most of my Sunday looking at an open source project and reading up on inter-procedural analysis a bit closer . It's called LLVM and looks rather neat. It gained an ARM port from Apple which fuels my speculation that the iphone is going to have ARM in it and Apple is doing some serious optimization at an interprocedural level using LLVM. But again one never knows really !
I tried getting it to build but it looks as though there are some huge API changes which have broken things just when I decided to take on a weekend project ! Its interesting that one can now think of interprocedural optimizations ... I'd love to lay my hands on that at some point of time.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Some cricket finally.
Across the pale parabola of joy At the place where I work we finally decided that we wanted to play a game of cricket and ended up challenging another company to a friendly game of tennis ball cricket ! Not too bad - we actually managed to get 3 games in the week among ourselves and had to get to a point of choosing a 11 which is a commendable achievement at the place where I work.
The day dawned rather decently and as usual I managed to get to office in time - I was the 5th guy or so in office so it wasn't too bad. We managed to reach the ground to find it totally occupied and jam packed . After a rather interesting wait we managed to throw out a couple of committed cricket teams out of the ground and started our game. Thankfully I didn't have to call the toss having lost all the tosses so far this week and left the responsiblity to A our esteemed captain fresh from a stint at the nets at the Oval. We won the toss and promptly chose the best thing to do on a typically dusty pitch - bat. We batted rather decently, gave a couple of chances and ended up with 112 / 3 in 16 overs - not bad considering our feeling that our batting wasn't up to the mark. We then managed to bowl the opposition out for around 80 runs in 15 overs with yours truly bowling what seems to be a very long 4 over spell on the trot which left me feeling as old as every minute of my existence on planet earth( nearly 14716800 at the end of the year! ). Parts of my body that I didn't know that existed are aching and its with that happy feeling that I am posting this and dozing off to sleep.
The day dawned rather decently and as usual I managed to get to office in time - I was the 5th guy or so in office so it wasn't too bad. We managed to reach the ground to find it totally occupied and jam packed . After a rather interesting wait we managed to throw out a couple of committed cricket teams out of the ground and started our game. Thankfully I didn't have to call the toss having lost all the tosses so far this week and left the responsiblity to A our esteemed captain fresh from a stint at the nets at the Oval. We won the toss and promptly chose the best thing to do on a typically dusty pitch - bat. We batted rather decently, gave a couple of chances and ended up with 112 / 3 in 16 overs - not bad considering our feeling that our batting wasn't up to the mark. We then managed to bowl the opposition out for around 80 runs in 15 overs with yours truly bowling what seems to be a very long 4 over spell on the trot which left me feeling as old as every minute of my existence on planet earth( nearly 14716800 at the end of the year! ). Parts of my body that I didn't know that existed are aching and its with that happy feeling that I am posting this and dozing off to sleep.
Monday, January 08, 2007
Wanderlust.
Across the pale parabola of joy
After 2 weekends sitting at home taking care of a chest congestion, it was time to break free and run off away to some place. Wandering took me on to the re-done Pune - Nasik road via Chakan. Its 4 lane until Rajguru-nagar after which it turns 2 lane - It reminded me of the Nagar - Shirdi road which is quite picturesque being in the middle of a canopy of trees. It was quite a drive, though only 128 km from Pune I did it one way in 4 hours thanks to a variety of breaks for some stunning photography . The other reason for such wanderlust is utilizing the 1GB SD card in my Nikon D50 DSLR and attempting some photographs.
Bhimashankar is about 128 km from Pune, take the Pune Nasik highway and turn off near Manchar village. You'll get to the Dimbe dam a large dam on the Bhima river from where its around 35 km. That stretch is among the worst in the whole travel otherwise its quite a beautiful drive along wheat fields, paddy fields and some brick kilns here and there. Since I spent more time in driving I ended up in Bhimashankar around 7:30 p.m.- there's a small temple for a jyotirlinga of Lord Shiva. This is supposed to be among 12 swayambhu Shiva temples in India. However because of its religious significance I didn't want to antagonize anyone by taking photographs of the temple by itself.
Left Bhimashankar around 8:20 p.m. and reached home by around 11 p.m. a drive of around 2:30 min. In the process of driving back I managed to make my car fly by going too far to the left trying to avoid a rampaging Indicab and ended up hitting a stone on the front left wheel ! There was a sound , a minute of flight and then an interesting landing. Its left my wheel in a bit of shambles.
The year seems to be the year of long weekends which will only serve to encourage me on more photographic expeditions around Western Maharashtra - some of the places that I want to visit include Raigad - the capital of Shivaji, Kolhapur to see anything of the wide Krishna river and the Panhala fort , Nasik to see Triambak and the origins of the Godavari . All this in the trusty new WagonR with or without company. !
After 2 weekends sitting at home taking care of a chest congestion, it was time to break free and run off away to some place. Wandering took me on to the re-done Pune - Nasik road via Chakan. Its 4 lane until Rajguru-nagar after which it turns 2 lane - It reminded me of the Nagar - Shirdi road which is quite picturesque being in the middle of a canopy of trees. It was quite a drive, though only 128 km from Pune I did it one way in 4 hours thanks to a variety of breaks for some stunning photography . The other reason for such wanderlust is utilizing the 1GB SD card in my Nikon D50 DSLR and attempting some photographs.
Bhimashankar is about 128 km from Pune, take the Pune Nasik highway and turn off near Manchar village. You'll get to the Dimbe dam a large dam on the Bhima river from where its around 35 km. That stretch is among the worst in the whole travel otherwise its quite a beautiful drive along wheat fields, paddy fields and some brick kilns here and there. Since I spent more time in driving I ended up in Bhimashankar around 7:30 p.m.- there's a small temple for a jyotirlinga of Lord Shiva. This is supposed to be among 12 swayambhu Shiva temples in India. However because of its religious significance I didn't want to antagonize anyone by taking photographs of the temple by itself.
Left Bhimashankar around 8:20 p.m. and reached home by around 11 p.m. a drive of around 2:30 min. In the process of driving back I managed to make my car fly by going too far to the left trying to avoid a rampaging Indicab and ended up hitting a stone on the front left wheel ! There was a sound , a minute of flight and then an interesting landing. Its left my wheel in a bit of shambles.
The year seems to be the year of long weekends which will only serve to encourage me on more photographic expeditions around Western Maharashtra - some of the places that I want to visit include Raigad - the capital of Shivaji, Kolhapur to see anything of the wide Krishna river and the Panhala fort , Nasik to see Triambak and the origins of the Godavari . All this in the trusty new WagonR with or without company. !
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