Affection!

So I am driving down to office and a teenage girl is driving along-side on a two-wheeler with her granddad riding on the pillion. All of a sudden her hair gets loose and starts going helter-skelter in the wind. Like any respectable teenager she seems concerned because of the disarray in her appearance. Granddad to the rescue! With one hand he balances himself lest he falls down and the other hand lovingly forms a temporary hair band to keep it in place! Ah, so much affection.Pretty sweet, aint it :)

The Kid - Part II

Story continued...
===========
His perennially moist eyes would shine with the yearning that he felt to be a part of them. I would try to grab his attention with confectionary, but he wouldn't blink an eye. Every now and then, he would look up to his mother, who accompanied him without fail, and longingly point out a finger towards the kids. His mother would hold him close to her heart and soothe him.

I, on my own had tried to reason to the other kids about him. But they would not have anything to do with him. He scared them.

I didn't blame them. After all, who wouldn't be afraid of a mentally retarded 40 year old? Still, he was my favourite kid....

The Kid - Part 1

So I submitted this short story of mine to our company's internal newsletter last week. Had written it some 4-5 years ago when I still had some creative juices flowing within me. Am putting it up here for hopefully a bigger audience ;) Personally I think it is a pretty juvenile piece, but here goes..

The Kid - Part 1
=========
Another Sunday morning. But yet, unlike any other which had passed. This was a routine, which well was not a routine. How I loved to get up early morning and dress up for the occasion. Get into my morning gear and get ready to tread that path which I had beaten down no ends. How I loved to gaze at the Sun's rays dancing silkenly on the flowers adorning my path. How I loved to take in the only amount of fresh air that could be offered to me in these times. As you would have guessed by now, this was not just a walk in the park for an old guy like me. The walk would precipitate with a stop at the Children's Park. It was a joy to behold the sight of children playing to their hearts content. My old ears would strain to get a piece of their joyful banter. How I enjoyed their talk about their favourite heroes and idols. The way this messy world meant so little to them.

My eyes would then search around for my favourite kid. He would be there every time. Huddled up in a corner, he would longingly eye the other kids playing. He did not talk much. My attempts to become friendly with him were always greeted with a scared stare. All he wanted to do was to play with the other kids. He wanted to be one of them. He wanted to jostle and mingle with them. But the other kids wanted nothing whatsoever to do with him...

The Man From Earth!

What if you are older than history itself? What if you helped create and shape history? What if you needed someone to name a species something to identify yourself as belonging to that species? What if you are so old that you have outlived multiple generations and centuries? What if you had the opportunity to shape religion itself?

Scientifically, if someone's body is able to regenerate all the critical organs periodically, it should be possible to live long.

Would you want to be such a person? Will it be FUN to be such a person? Check out "The Man From Earth" to see for yourself.

Trainspottin!

I know people have hobbies. Some usual, some unusual. I watched the movie Trainspotting yesterday (directed by Danny Boyle of Slumdog fame) and out of habit (or hobby! :P) made my way to the wikipedia. So it seems that standing all through the day and looking at trains plying between stations is actually a hobby! Some have the hobby of travelling and visiting as many metro or rail systems as they can! And some including the famous Alfred Hitchcock have/had a hobby of collecting and memorizing railway timetables! Pretty interesting these railfans!

So what's your trainspottin? :)

I hope you dance!

What is with us human beings? Sometimes, the simplest of things done in a certain way touches our hearts, makes us emotional or hopeful or alive all of a sudden!

Take the case of this person Matt. What he did was travel to 42 or so countries over a period of 14 months, asking people to dance with him wherever he went. That people joined up to dance and that a close to 12 million or so people enjoyed watching this mass comic dancing ritual and felt glad out of it, is something that is difficult to explain. No? Check it out yourself :)

Slumdog Millionaire!!

Hmmm, I think, we Indians have made a lot of attempts via our movies to sell India to the West. But it's been with limited success. Films like Water, Earth and others tried to find a mainstream audience in the West, but what they must have found as takers must be Indians settled there or would be [pseudo] intellectuals watching with critical eyes.

From what I have heard about Slumdog Millionaire so far, it seems like the one movie which can actually appeal to mainstream global audiences. It has a 90% plus fresh rating on rotten tomatoes and comments on youtube and everywhere indicate the enormous impact this movie has had on global viewers.

It is directed by Danny Boyle of Trainspotting fame and stars Anil Kapoor, Irrfan amongst others. Its a story about an 18 years old slum-orphan who is about to win 20 million rupees on a "Kaun Banega Karodpati" style show and seems to interweave his love story alongside.

I can't wait to watch it myself. For starters, I like the name itself!!!

Tingya!

माझे आभाल

माझे आभाल तुला घे, तुझे आभाल मला
आथावाच्या पारुन्दिला बांधू एक झुला

माझा झुला...
माझा झुला, तुला घे, तुझा झुला मला
वार्यावर पसरला मखमली चा शाला

माझा शाला...
माझा शाला तुला घे, तुझा शाला मला
माझे आभाल तुला घे, तुझे आभाल तुला...

I had watched this movie "टिंग्या - Tingya (the small one)" a while back and was blown away by the performance of the little child actor. This movie had just this one song and it talked about sharing your dreams, your aspirations, your comforts with each other. Pretty interesting movie overall, recommended watching..

Paint the love!

My 9 year old nephew Yash was pretty happy with the gifts that I gifted to him for Diwali. New shoes, 2 Nintendo GameBoy games, new clothes etc. etc. And above all this, he is super excited with the arrival of Neil into our lives. The above image is what he came up with in 10 or so minutes using Windows PAINT on my laptop. He explained this image is about Pi and Neil playing in a playground. Nice ain't it :)

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Hippity Hop..

I have started liking listening to Hip-Hop nowadays. Usher, Missy Elliot, etal are pretty good talents to listen to. However what hurts my sensibilities is the amount of profanities some of the guys use :(

Here I am, swaying to the music, the tempo and the beats and then some singer starts mouthing the foulest of lyrics. Eff this-that, suck this-that, shove this-that, my big this-that, steam this-that. The list goes on and on. Some amounts might be ok on the ear, but there have been times I had to lower the volume just because of the jarring lyrics. 

I wish there was a cleaner hip-hop genre for sensibilities like mine. As an aside, I wonder if this intolerance is also because of age? :P

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Tidings!

Hmmm, last few days have been of a different kind. The build up was close to 9 plus months in the making. The anticipation, the constant discussions with Pi, the mental preparations have all culminated with the birth of my son Neil on the 10th of October.

People have been asking, what my reaction has been. The first reaction has been that of sheer relief, to see both Pi and Neil both coming through fine. And now slowly things are sinking in. Long gazes at the little one, marveling at his perfectly formed fingers, enjoying his first crying, you know the usual moments and emotions that every new parent goes through. Yes, the sleepless nights are thrown in too! And along with all this is a renewed sense of responsibility towards one more being on this earth..

Thanks to all friends and well-wishers who have congratulated and wished us all well through the past days. Responsibly yours :)

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Moment of Truth...

When I was growing up, I was stressed upon the virtues of telling the truth all the time. I was told, that telling the truth may have consequences afterall - but that it is the best thing to do.

As I started growing up and started understanding the ways of this wicked world a bit, I realized that hardly anybody tells the truth! You realize People lie to friends, to co-workers, to lovers, to bosses, to families. Ask yourself if you have never lied. If you ask me, I have lied whenever I felt the need for it (thankfully not very many occasions though) :P

One fine day, GOD came up to me and said - "I will gather all the people you have interacted with all your life - your family, friends, colleagues, everyone, and ask you questions pertaining to them, that you have to answer truthfully! If you answer all of them truthfully I will give you 10 crore rupees!!"

Isn't that a moral dilemma?? How enticing and tricky at the same time! If I stand up in front of everyone and tell the truth and nothing but the truth, I stand to gain enough money to retire for life immediately! On the other hand - having to answer truthfully might mean scandalizing your family, facing untoward consequences from friends, awkward relations with colleagues etc. etc. Its like standing up to possibly have your reputation tarnished forever having dug deep into your conscience to answer questions truthfully. I ask myself, does money make it worth loosing all of this?

God, I am still deciding whether to take up this offer. You tell me, are you ready for your Moment of Truth?

A children of Midnight..

First of all, let me tell you that am happy that "Sea of Poppies" has been nominated for this year's Bookers prize :). It really is splendid literature. I was/am bitten with the Booker's bug post that novel, and hence I decided to read "Midnight's Children" by Salman Rushdie. If you don't know this, this novel has been bestowed with the "Booker of Bookers" Prize - so I had/have high expectations.

I am 30% through and initially I found the language and the narration difficult to follow. The language and the continuity seemed unnatural to me and I was almost on the verge of abandoning reading it. But then the children of Midnight have been finally revealed and my interest has been sufficiently piqued. Hopefully when I am done with it, I might find resonance with those who voted it best of the best. So expect me to be a children of the midnight hour, pouring over printed words everyonce in a while... :)

Wish me happy watching!

So, like Pi is put up at her brother's place and after my daily dose of Big Boss, I still am not sleepy enough, to try and kill an extra couple of hours. Thanks to a generous office colleague, I have laid my hands on a couple hundred of good movies and every night, when am lounging all alone on the sofa with the lights turned out, am spoilt for choices.

For a while, comedy and animation was my choice (You rock my Kung Fuing Panda!). But the current genre thats literally keeping me awake is HORROR! Thankfully the last 3-4 movies have been top-notch. I started off with:

1408 starring John Cusack, which is about a man who specializes in rebuking paranormal phenomenons, checks into the fabled room 1408 in the Dolphin Hotel to confront genuine terror. Not bad I would say. Then,

Silent Hill starring Radha Mitchell, which is based on a best selling game of the same name by Konami. It is about a woman who goes to this creepy ash-raining town called as Silent Hill in search of her daughter's ailment. Pretty gripping scary stuff every once in a while too. But the one that rules the roost for me is:

The Descent which is about a bunch of women who go on an undiscovered cave exploration trip when things turn out horribly wrong! I am not lying, I genuinely felt their claustrophobia for a while, while watching the movie. As an honor to them, this will adorn my desktop for a while :)

Some gone, so many more to watch! I have decided that "The Mist" based on a book by Stephen King, might just be the next movie which gets the honor of keeping me awake till the wee hours of the night. So wish me spooky err... happy watching then!

Big BOOS!

Reality can be boring and ennui-inducing sometimes. So what is one to say about reality shows? Me (and thankfully my family) gave up watching soap operas a long time back. But just like trying to have dinner together with family, watching something together on the idiot box also makes up for some family bonding. Currently we are all watching "Big Boss, Season 2". First, the members chosen could not have been lamer. The first qualification for this show should be someone who is atleast an average speaker. There are some folks, who do not have anything to say at all for lengths of time! And then there are some who are at the other extremes (Sambhavna was histrionics personified on yesterday's (i.e. 15th Sept) show!).

But all in all, this is the best fare for me in recent times. There are some people like Rahul Mahajan the Man-Child, Raja of the filmy-rage, Payal the filmy-dame and Sambhavna of the histrionics - who keep up the interest quotient alive. Infact Raja is the surprising package of the lot. From a reticent, non-talkative first-weeker, he has turned into the mischief-maker-in-chief with full force! Most of the rest are as interesting as the storylines of saas-bahu serials. Until something else more interesting comes along, I will stick to this without a lot of boos..

I love weekday holidays!

Don't you just love it when you are wading through work during the week hoping for the weekend to arrive faster and suddenly you are gifted a holiday on a weekday? I love it too! But I typically end up at work on such (optional) weekday holidays, unless the holiday is part of a possible extended weekend. Today is one such day!

If you see me, am all happy and relaxed at work, typing away this post merrily. I have had a smooth ride to office. I was able to actually enjoy driving down to office! My left leg does not hurt today from the constant assault that it puts the car clutch to. My fingers are not too stiff, because of the manic tight grip I usually use it for on the driving wheel. My temper is not frayed, cause I don't have to mutter abuses under my breath, nor hear other drivers' impatient honking prodding me along the way.

Amongst other things, I could actually wander my eyes off the road and check in the city on the way. I could admire small things like watching an autorickshaw driver using yesterday's poodle of accumulated rainwater to scrub clean his conveyance. I could actually check out the roses that the road side vendors push into our faces everyday. On other days, I am all taut at my seat with the socket of my eyes glued in onto the front and rear view mirrors hoping fervently that my car gets away without a bruise or a scrap.

With almost half of the city's population not on the road, I wistfully wish if this was the situation everyday. Hmmm, till the next weekday holiday then! :)

KKK - good!

No sirree, I am not talking about the dreaded Klu Klux Klan or something. I am talking about the recently concluded "Khatron Ke Khiladi" - the desi version of "Fear Factor". I used to watch the original once in a while and people could hear me muttering "Apparently, fear is not a factor for you!" once in a while too :). This desi version was hosted by Akshay Kumar and I must say he did a decent job of it. A much better job than the usual Shahrukhs and the Salmans trying to occupy every pixel of screen space on the idiot box. That they have failed miserably at it is known to everyone.

Infact, even Pi has turned into an ardent fan of Akshay's after the show. What was good was his earthy humor. He doesn't try to be eloquent or swanky in his humor (I think Shahrukh tries this a lot!). He doesn't switch to English now and then in what is a hindi channel show afterall. His guttural laughter, his dialogue delivery and his comic timing is what forces one to laugh heartily once in a while! Maybe that is why he is the real king of the masses. Take a look at the reruns once in a while if you can..

Sea of Poppies

I don't buy books. And if I buy, they are invariably from the street side with a lotta haggling and all. But Pi had a gift voucher of Crossword bookstore, so we had to buy something.

I thank my stars that I bought "Sea of Poppies" by Amitav Ghosh. I am done with it and its turned out to be a great, great read. Amitav Ghosh took about 4 years to write this one and this is part of the Ibis Trilogy. Ibis is the ship in this trilogy around which a host of colorful characters revolve. Along with the rich plot, its also a telling account of how the British sucked the lifeblood out of many a Indians via the very profitable Opium trade in the early 1820s, before the 2 Opium wars with China.

Another very interesting thing, is the language used. Its a nice mixture of English and Hindusthani languages prevalent then. So I guess this Hinglish culture is nothing new :)

Recommended reading for one and all! I am already looking forward to the remaining of the 2 books, dont know when they will come out yet though considering that this one is just out this year.

Check out the website of this trilogy for more information about the characters and the fascinating language too! It's good to have a master Indian English storyteller like Amitav!

Traffic it!

So, I and Pi had a nice route to office. Her office was 2 stone throws away from mine and my road was such that I had to take that turn anyways! So I had gladly been her chauffeur ferrying her around for 3-4 months and it worked really well.

Alas, that was not meant to be. The world could not digest that this kind of traffical bliss be awarded to any city-lving soul. It turns out that Pi's office has shifted 4 kms away from mine and that too on the busy bund-garden, yerwada-bridge, airport-road areas :(.

For one who was used to no traffic jam, below 30 minutes commute times, I have not been taking it well. My arsenal of expletives has been renewed/replenished proportional to the number of traffic stops I have to make now. I am also trying to listen to "Lounge Music" to calm myself against this gross injustice too. So, yeah add my name to the list of harried, harassed, city commuters now. The fact that I had the urge to replace the "i" in the first word of the title above with a "u" should also say something about my sentiments right now.. Calm Nikhil... calm :)

Shining dark knight!

I am not prone to fanboyism. But I saw "The Dark Knight" over the weekend and it's a splendid piece of cinema. Heath Ledger is amazing as the Joker and I think Christian Bale holds up his own pretty well as the Batman himself.

What spiked up the fanboy within me was the batman's fabulous batpod! The way he vrooms around with his cape bellowing out in the wind is a cool sight to behold. So if you thought the batmobile was uber cool, the batpod is the coolest. Infact, Batman's relationship with this bike is described in the film as "He doesn't choose it, he requires it." The sequence in the middle during the car chase, when the Joker is out of his truck and Batman is on the Batpod coming towards him is worth watching many times over. Take a look at Batman's sleekest mean machine below!

A Day Well Begun!!

Yes sirree, the day has begun well for me. Personally, its a special day and it started off with a nice bouquet arriving at my home in the morning.
After that both Pi and myself got ready for the office. To-Fro to the office, we both listen to songs while driving around. It helps nowadays that we have 3 radio stations in Pune. If I dont like any, I switch to the CD player. I, thankfully, had slipped in an old CD into the player a while back. Oh my oh my, how it added to the well begunness for the day!

I don't know about others. But has it ever happened to you ever - you are doing your thing and some nice song that you liked earlier and had not heard in a while plays somewhere and it totally makes you happy. It happens to me every once in a while. Today I had not one but two songs making me happier.

The first one was "Inner Smile" by Texas and the second one was my all time favourite "Fast Car" by Tracy Chapman. How I love this "Fast Car" number and how out of the blue it made the start of my day a bit happier. Guess "Music is indeed my Aeroplane" on some days :)

Ass-U-Me?

So the saying goes - "Never ASSUME, it makes an ASS out of U (you) and ME". I used to bandy it around, because I used to think it was funny and I like to play around with words anyways...

But today, you, me and everybody got made out to be ASSes. My mom and bro were supposed to leave for Nagpur via the Pune-Nagpur Express train. I had gotten the tickets with great difficulty - having paid the extra TATKAL (immediate) charges and all for a confirmed seat for both of them.

Today before leaving for office, mom asks me about the timing of this train. Since I had handed over the ticket to her, I nonchalantly said 6 or 6:40 in the evening. Mom ASS-U-MEd that I was telling the right time. I ASS-U-MEd that mom will cross check and come to know that the time is ahead by one hour!

Cross-check she did, but when she read the station at 5:40 PM in the evening, comfortably ASS-U-MEing that the train is after an hour :P. If you haven't understood by now, she missed the train comfortably too :D.

Was just wondering after it all. It would have taken hardly a minute for either her or me to cross-check the exact timings and reach there comfortably on time. But both of us ASS-U-MEd things and now she has missed the bus - er train. More than the money, its the important things that wont get done because of she not reaching to Nagpur now. But I guess rightly served to me for being such an ASS :). Asininely yours...

Security Fail!

The new police commissioner of Pune has been advocating a ban on wrapping scarves while driving two-wheelers. He is also advocating the use of helmets while driving. There has been a huge hue and cry over the ban on the scarves, with a lot of public - especially girls coming out against it. They might have a point, but the reasons being touted to not to use helmets are laughable:

"Helmet makes my head heavy and hence I use a scarf"!
"Scarf provides the same amount of protection for my skin, so why a helmet"!
"Helmets do not look good while driving"!!

the list of nonsensical answers goes on and on. Tell that to the next accident victim who could have been saved by a robust helmet but wanted to use a good-looking, skin-saving scarf instead. Helmets are an absolute must and the ruling should be enforced I say. It is already enforced in places like Delhi and Mumbai, why not in Pune??

TGIF?

Its friday evening and I am twiddling my thumbs in office. Me and Pi were planning to leave early and we left early too to catch up a doctor's appointment for Pi. But we had to actually come back to our respective offices because she had to do some more work for the day! You should have seen the sullen look on Pi's face, just because she had to go back again to office to finish off the day :P

I also did the usual hee-hawing and complaining, but had no other alternative but to trudge back to my own office. Luckily, an office colleague has left her laptop running and unlocked :D , so am writing this blog from that very machine. (hope I don't get sued for invasion of privacy or breaking some office rules or something - I actually have sent a nice and polite email about the perils of keeping one's laptop unattended to the guilty party already :P)

Amongst other things, I did manage to upload my Portland trips pics. You can take a look at them here. Ok, so I continue twiddling my thumb furthermore. You readers have a good TGIF and a good weekend too!

Fancy a Free ....

So, last saturday it seems was International Free Hugs Day and on friday, the local newspaper had this article about this guy who was planning to give free hugs on Pune's main MG road in the evening on Saturday. Seems he is inspired by Juan Mann. I too watched his video on youtube and it made me emotional too. A simple gesture of a warm hug and it makes such a difference doesn't it?

Frankly, I was a bit sceptical as to the reception this IT professional will get in Pune. But I guess every one needs a hug!! The next day, the papers were full of pics showing him spreading the love around. I definitely think this free hugs concept augurs well for mankind!

Sigh... copycats

Yeah, nowadays Bollywood is synonymous with copycats. Last saturday evening, I was glancing at a movie airing on Zee English (or whatever is their movie channel) and 30 minutes into the movie, I sensed that it seemed similar to a Hindi blockbuster. Worse still, this blockbuster had won a spate of awards at the multitude of leading award ceremonies and all. The English movie is Eye of the Needle and the much feted inspired Bollywood movie is Fanaa. These directors, story writers have no conscience it seems.

In recent times, amidst all the stale stuff being dished out, the movie Aamir seemed to stand out. But some time back I was saddened to know that it is a complete copycat of a movie called as Cavite.

Was just wondering, if some of them feel any pangs when their inspired creations win awards and they get all the credits.

I guess, since even the name Bollywood is inspired from Hollywood, we really shouldn't blame them for not being so original after all. Sigh.. I say

Dubai Rocks!!

So on my way back from the US, I decided to do a stopover of around 3 days in Dubai. It came in free, you see, because my company was flying me to-fro on Emirates. Plus I have my cousin sister staying there with her family, so wanted to visit them too.

Had heard a lot about Dubai being visitor friendly and even though I was advised to take a visa from India itself, based on some suggestions by past visitors and my own laziness, I decided to do a visa on arrival. Oh how costly that turned out to be. Normal Visa charges in India would have been around 40 US $. But Emirates guys have some fine print that if one takes a visa on arrival from them in Dubai, that person has to necessarily buy hotel stay for the entire duration from them. I was like WTFFFF!!! Much to my angst and anger I had to shell out 400 US $, even though I was not going to stay in any hotel. So future travelers, beware!!

Thankfully, this turned out to be the only sore point of the trip. I was blown away by Dubai. This place rocks. Its like a globally cosmopolitan desert land, which has a thirst for concrete development like no other. I was told Dubai houses 25% of the world's largest cranes. Dubai just wants to be the best in everything that they construct. Add to that other very important freebies like Zero Tax and it makes it to rock harder. Though its an expensive place with rentals and real estate prices touching the roof. But an always eager rest of the world making a beeline, its sustaining the load. Was there for 2 days and checked out the different places. The Dubai Museum gave a fascinating glimpse of the Dubai of yesteryears and how under an ambitious, visionary, driven and very liberal ruler, it has transformed into this business hub in Asia.

Here are some pics of my tour. Check out the place at least once is my recommendation :)

Bon Voyage!

Well, my short stay in America is over. I will be leaving on Friday. Was pretty much an AMERICAN stay here. I ate a lot of American food - steaks, salads, omelettes, soups, glazed ribs and what not. The best place according to me was Benihana. I just loved the concept of someone cooking food on your table in front of you! I can already feel the combined effects of all this food on my belly.

I drank a lot of American beer - coors, ambiere, samuel adams and the likes. I did not like the coors light beer at all, it tastes yucky to me. I sampled a lot of american shots too this time around - yeager bombs, goldslager, pineapple upside-down and all. (No I am not a drunkard if you have started thinking so, I was just socializing you see :)) and even interacted with a lot of cool American colleagues from my office :).

Am planning on buying some stuff from here before I leave. I always get a beating back home because I don't take some stuff back. But you know, you pretty much get everything nowadays back in India at pretty much the same price. Some things on the list are - cheap external USB drive, toys for my nephew and my cousin sis' kids, some toiletries for the ladies back home, chocolates etc. Everyone has been paying for most of my meals and drinks here, so I have some dollars to spend on all of this :)

Will reach Dubai on Saturday where I will get a visa hopefully and check the place out. I hope the jetlag does not get to me while am in Dubai, otherwise I will be sleeping when the Sun is shining brightly down upon me :). Heading back to India on Monday. So more travel updates soon!

RailsConferencing

Have been updating my other blog since I am visiting RailsConf in Portland, Oregon. Am back to NJ today morning. Checkout the stuff that I did there during the conf. We also managed to get someone post a pic of our booth on Flickr :)

Driving around in the CITY!

Ya, the new car has kept me away for a while from blogging. Actually drove it to Mumbai and back on the very next day of getting the car and it was a great experience. The ride and the journey was comfortable for both me and family. I was a bit worried about finding directions, but that is quite a non-issue in Mumbai. People are always welcome to help you out. And not only do they help you out but they provide the shortest path directions too! Did a decent 400Kms plus total for the 3 days that we were in Mumbai. So a good trip overall :)

Eros - Part Deux

A while back, much to the consternation of some, I professed my love. But as always give something time and practicality takes over. I would have wanted to covet her, but pure number crunching and limited resources made me to pause and rethink. A big reason in the limited resources department (the biggest reason being money ofcourse :)) is the size of my garage. What a CRETIN I can be some times. When I had a wide variety of car parking sizes available to me, I ended up choosing the most cramped, most awkward spot that anyone would want :(. I can defend myself by saying that I did not own a car then and new zilch about the finer points..

Anyways, the sane, practical me has gone in for this beauty in Carbon Bronze Pearl color. Will get the car in about a week or so. And yeah, I had to sell off my old car to accommodate this one in too. Felt a tinge of sadness when I handed over the car keys of my old car yesterday to the new owner. So that means currently we are without four wheels and myself and Pi trundle about to office on a nice sporty two wheeler belonging to my sister in the meanwhile :).

UPDATE:
--------------
So my car has finally arrived. It was supposed to arrive yesterday (i.e. Thursday), but arrived today on Friday. The car dealer was kind enough however to provide a temporary car overnight :). Yet to get the number plates though! and without them I cannot take the car out of the city. Am planning to attend a wedding in Mumbai over the weekend (I should get the number plates max by Saturday morning).. See you around in the CITY then :)

Artiste!

Well, its been a while and yeah the analysis and the research is still ongoing. Am learning a new technology currently and believe you me, it can get a bit daunting. Understanding the jargon first is an uphill task because all forums, documentations liberally use it everywhere. But not to worry, I have gotten the hang of it a bit :)
One of the additional things that I ended up doing was participating in an impromptu drawing competition conducted at my workplace. The topic was "Colors of Life"! heavy, no? Expecting tech workers to rack their brains and come up with such deep conceptualizations is kind of expecting a lot :-P.
But rack our brains all of us did and gingerly used the pencils, crayons and sketch pens provided to us for the same. I couldn't help but comparing how fluidly my fingers flow on the keyboard and how ungainly I am at drawing and emoting pictorially. I guess had we been asked to use MS Paint or GIMP or some such stuff the output would have been remarkably slicker, but well everything can't be done on a laptop right :)
Anyways, since the standards were low, I and my partner actually ended up winning the runners-up award for our shoddy efforts! So lahdees and the genteelmen, without further ado I present before you our monumental masterpiece (roll the drums, raise the curtains...)



Ya, ya I can picture the grin on your face. But what the hell, it was fun :). Ok, this Artiste is signing off for now!
P.S. Let me know if anyone wants to shell out dollars for this masterpiece ;)

Analyze This!

I saw this movie over the weekend. Robert De Niro simply rocks in his mafia don roles! I just love him and his "You talkin' to me? huh" accent. Was just thinking - do we analyze other people all the time? Do we measure them up the moment we see them? Do they analyze you in turn? Why the hell do we analyze each other? Can't we just be? (don't you dare analyze my questions now :-P).

I also saw another movie over the weekend "U, Me aur Hum" and it deals with Alzheimer's Disease. One quote I saw from the movie was memorable. It said -

"We served him thrice and then he served himself"

Sums up the disease pretty well according to me.

Analytically in the ongoing week, it turns out that at work too, its my turn to analyze things. Am going over a report from a customer and am pretty much chewing my nails trying to analyze it properly. Its a decently big document and thankfully it contains enough information to cogently get something out of it. So I guess I will analyze this and catch up on "Analyze That" hopefully over the weekend :)

TechNik

So, this is my personal blog. I realized that I have a lot of non-personal things to say. So I have another blogging site where I am going to blog about technical stuff (ahem, ahem - before you scoff, please take a look, I am a bit technical sometimes :)). Check out my TechNik!

Eros

Hmmm, so I am going to say something here that will surprise many! Afterall, I am married (have been married for the last 3 plus years) and happily so. Then pray why, I want to say something which will come as a shock to the readers. Pray why, I want to lay my soul and heart bare in front of you all. Eros (err.. God) only knows...

Ok, so by now you are - depending on who you are, mildly, amusedly, alarmingly (this must be Pi) curious as to what I am talking about. Ok, lahdies and genteelmen, here is my confession....

I have fallen in LOVE again! It's just recently that I set my eyes on her and it was love at first sight. It was like Eros - the love god wanted me to gaze upon her and get eye-struck with her beauty. I don't know what is the corresponding term that guys can use - but suffice to say that whenever I see her it makes me go the male equivalent of "Going weak in the knees"..

And so you will think, who is she and whether I plan to tell all. Ofcourse I do, I am not ashamed to tell all what an amazing beauty she is and what I would not do to covet her. Here is my LOVE in all her glory ....

TelePhishy!

So, like I am working away at office and I get a call on my office number:

Caller: Is this Nikhil
Me: Yes this is he
Caller: Sir, I am calling from Amazon!
Me (a bit interestedly): Ok, and
Caller: Sir, you see we are having a convention in Bangalore coming Saturday
Me (interestedly): Ok, and
Caller: Sir, we would like to invite you to be a part of our elite discussion panel about Databases
Me (chest starting to puff up): Why me?
Caller: Sir, you have experience. Don't worry we will pay for your to-fro airfare
Me (reeking of interest): Oh, do you have a website with information about this
Caller: Sir, its happening in Leela. As you know its a 7 star hotel and rest assured we will make all arrangements. I have provided all information, we do not have a website though..
Me (sold on the proposal but suspicious about no online information, its Amazon - hellooo): Ok
Caller: Sir, if you can give me your personal emailid and personal cell number and also refer us to your friends....
Me (chest deflated): Sorry can't do.

There goes my interest poof in a cloud of smoke. If he is inviting me, why does he want me to refer my friends - I am the expert ain't I! Then stupid me realizes that this is tele phishing at its best. He needs mine and my friends information so that he can maybe headhunt me and them later. My office pals, Pavan and Atuld had similar phone calls - but am proud that mine was the grandest tale of them all :P

You know, for a while, I was already on the dais addressing an august assembly, giving fundaes about databases and whatever little I know about it - dream on.. :)

Under the OAK tree

So, last weekend, my cousin bro who is studying engineering at a college in Pune, took me to a counseling workshop by Dilip Oak. It was supposed to be a workshop on how to interpret the I 20 (it is a form received by hopeful US college admission seekers) and then how to fill up the relevant US visa forms. People (cousin included) had paid huge sums of money for this additional counseling. I was like WTF!!!! Is this the amount of spoon feeding people need nowadays? Aren't students intelligent enough to figure out how to fill up a form?

On retrospection, it seems people always try to be safe (I guess, I would too. I have been guilty of spending my mom's hard earned money on tuitions for my senior high school..). At the end of the day it is just some financial inconvenience, but I guess the peace of mind that one derives by settling for such counseling outweighs the inconvenience. One thing I am sure about though - Dilip Oak does not mind all of this and is surely laughing all the way to his bank with the enormous kitty :)

Am I Online!

So, some time back I wrote about Open Contributions. As a follow up, me and Ashish (my friend and office colleague who also happens to be the spokesperson for PostgreSQL in India) met up with folks from the media. We had a good session of Q & A, with us trying to put across the gist of what open source and contributing to it means. Check it out!

The article is pretty fine, but what got me a bit amused was the reference to me as "Nikhil S"! I am sure my visiting card mentions my full name (goes and affirmatively cross checks). But I figured that maybe, it has to do with my online presence. I tend to use "NikhilS" in a lot of my conversations on mailing lists and generally on emails too! Blame it on my tryst at this place quite a while back. But this reference surely means that I have an online presence (pretty small though) where people actually might know me as "Nikhil S"! I am not sure who amongst us is Jekyll and Hyde though. Keep guessing ;)

Rough Road !!

Is what certainly participants of the reality show MTV Roadies have to tread on! I have never watched the earlier series completely ever, but this time I have been following these bunch of people around their international sojourn with one eye open. It's an interesting show in many ways. For one, people get to bike around for fun doing odd stunts here and there.
But what is more interesting is to see this game bring out the beast from within you! I read Animal Farm some time back and the summary there was that "All animals are political by nature". The same applies to this show, and it brings out all the machiavellian instincts to the fore out of these participants. Guys and girls alike, scheme, plot, curse, form temporarily beneficial bonds only to regroup in distinctly different ways on the exit of one participant every week. I think its a remarkable display of the entire possible range of human behaviorism necessary for survival and to stay in the game till the end. Check it out whenever you can and marvel at us complex beings :)

Tarantino Valentino!

So, another Valentine's day is around the corner. Am sure, we will see the usual self-imposing moralists breaking some hard-working man's greeting cards store on the occasion. Am sure, the price of a rose will shoot up to justify your LOVE on that day. Am sure, couples will try to be as effusively mushy as possible on that day. Am sure, an inappropriate number of candles will be sacrificed at the altars of the 'them-lit' dinners on that day. Oh am sure, that all love related cliches will abound on that very day.

Its a bit ho-hum actually if you ask me. Pi too was not enthused by my suggestions of a working lunch or a definitely-crowded dinner routine. So for us, its going to be an evening show of "American Gangster" - the recent Denzel Washington starrer, supposedly an excellent telling of a true crime story!! Romantic - eh ;)

Open Contributions

One of the things that I wanted to do on joining my current place-of-work was to contribute in an open source manner. But whoever thinks contributing to open source is a piece of cake is mistaken! First of all, most open source projects are thoroughly professional nowadays. PostgreSQL is a prime example. It's not as easy as submitting any piece of code which compiles and works, to be pushed into the product. Infact, its an arduous journey where patience is a great virtue to possess. It starts off with one identifying what the project needs. Many projects have official TODO lists around which make the job easier. Then an important thing is to identify which is the piece of the pie that you can eat - meaning identifying the work item which you think you can contribute to as per your current capacity/knowledge of the code base. After that begins the journey of putting your case in the community mailing lists. The list does make it hard on you by trying to ask all kinds of difficult questions. Why should we do it, why and how you propose to do it, will you be able to do it. It's all in your face literally and can easily intimidate a person and to make him think twice about contributing. Patience again comes to your rescue. After the list agrees that something should be worked upon, then one starts coding and producing work-in-progress patches that should be periodically sent to the list just to let them know that you are not in deep slumber pondering over the work. Some good souls, even take it upon themselves to test your work out and provide constructive feedback. Some established souls, take a look at your work-in-progress and can immediately suggest further course of actions, feedback and the likes. Then comes the final day, after toiling around for quite a while, when you submit the final code and it gets committed!

How do I know this - you ask. Well, I too have been brave enough in the past to take on this path and have succeeded a wee bit in making humble contributions back to my current favourite open source project - PostgreSQL. Today PostgreSQL 8.3 was released and it was gratifying to see my name as one of the contributors to some new functionality added. Now that I have been through this before, its a bit easier and I will definitely be contributing to the future releases whenever I can.

CARnama!

So, I like big cars. I am an average Indian, but when it comes to cars, most Indians prefer small cars. Its a no-brainer then that Nano is an indigenous product and from the looks of it a nifty little one at that.

Lately, I have been harboring thoughts of upgrading my car. And when I say I harbor thoughts, I don't just keep the thought ship docked at the port, I actually venture out to deep waters. Whether the thought ship reaches its destination or not is another matter :)

I had zeroed out on a City ZX GXi model, but my amigos mentioned that for it's worth one does not even get safety features like ABS, Driver/Passenger side Airbags. I mean, WTF! for the price tag, I had thought these mid-sized cars should have everything thrown in, leather seats and stuff!

After some hours of internet research later, SX4 seems to be the only car which has everything thrown in (yeah, even an input socket in its music player, for your IPOD like gizmos).

Hmmm, sad part, I don't like the way it looks and reports say its difficult for 3 people to be comfy in the back seat. Looks like this thought ship might just get watered out soon :p

BARE facts!

So my 8 year old nephew is lucky enough that he gets to go visit his relatives in this famous beachy tropical island called as St. Maarten. The beaches and the blue waters will put our beloved Goa to shame anyday.
But what is luckier is that he checked out some Nude Beaches too while he was there!


So he comes back and proudly shows some of the pictures that he had clicked whilst on the premises. Apart from the sensationalism that we might usually associate with this, it was actually refreshing for me to hear him out talking about it normally. In our days, at his age, had I uttered something along these lines, a sound admonition would have been just around the corner, not to mention my lack of modesty and moral values :)

Whatever be the case, one thing remains constant: "Boys will be boyz" ;)!!

Now: Various Artists!

I have always wondered when people answer the question "So, what kind of music do you like?" with very specific answers. Answers like "strictly golden oldies songs for me please", "definitely, not the present day crap", "rock only rules" etc. etc.

When people ask me this (I don't get this asked too often, now that I am married for quite a while though :P), I am a bit confused. Now, don't think that I am a die-hard music enthusiast, who sleeps/eats/drinks/lives/[insert every other emphatic verb/adverb] music. I like my music in small doses when I like it.

It was just today morning that Pi put on this nice marathi CD, the song was "Kevha Tari Pahate" and it made me get out of my bed and listen attentively to the melodious tune. Or it can be "Fast Car - Tracy Chapman", this was the first English song that I liked. Or it could even be Usher, belting out "Yeah, Yeah" or "Let it Burn". It could even be Linkin Park, Jagjit Singh, Pearl Jam, KK, Khare-Kulkarni in any random order and varied doses for me.

Ok, so the point I am trying to make is why people want to straight-jacketise themselves and declare that they like a specific genre only? I don't know about others, but I kinda like my taste - spread over, diffused, noisy, melliflous, headachy :)

People care to enlighten me on why they prefer a specific kind of music? Till then I am cruising on my Fast Car singing -

"You got a fast car
But is it fast enough so you can fly away
You gotta make a decision
You leave tonight or live and die this way"

SUNny days for MySQL

Ok, so after a late night bachelor party - nah, they are not *so* interesting as the ones we see on 'em stupid movies, but it is a lot of male bonding (read card playing, liberal profanity usage, eating-drinking binges), I trudge late to office in an auto rickshaw. (My car was stranded in the office parking overnight, since I did not want to drink and drive). To add, my rear is not used to the spinal jolts one experiences in our famous Indian auto rickshaws - yeeooouch.

Anyways, the news of the day that awaited me was about Sun buying out MySQL for 1 Billion $$$$!! Thats a lot of monies for an open source company! For an analysis for what it means to us, take a look at my CEO's blog. Interesting news to get first thing in office.

Y2care38

Alright, so Y2K turned out to be a damp squib. But Y2K38 might not! But why wonder 30 years before. Who knows the entire world might be nuked by them and only Noah's Arc might be around.
The reason is that Saturday, January 19th marks the beginning of the 30 year countdown to the Y2K38 bug.

Will it turn out to be another ho-hum affair, that remains to be seen. Will I or you be there to judge it, that remains to be seen too :)

There is such a thing as free lunches afterall!

Seems there is! atleast if you are gainfully employed. My company just hired a new employee for our Pune office. He and I get to join our VP for lunch today! So thats one free lunch. Also we just shifted our office to new premises. As gratitude to the earlier premise people, who bore the brunt of our antics for more than an year, my company has invited them over for lunch on Thursday. Thats another free lunch!! So guess Milton Friedman who quoted "There's no such thing as a free lunch" ought to reconsider :)

Well, well

Yeah, yeah. You can say I am jumping on to the blogging bandwagon a bit late. But then I think I have an aversion to doing what everyone is doing anyways :P So here I am. Expect some bits from my mind now and then. See you ppl around!