Adventure of Sherlock Holmes

Placeholder post.
Will be written, once the complete series is read.

Destination UK - Part II

This is a photo Travelogue.(as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words)

Flick Slideshow
Creative Commons : Some rights reserved.



Hat Tip: If you are added as a friend in my flickr profile, you will see some bonus snaps..

Comments are welcome.

Njoy.

Air India - The worst flying experience of my life

By the grace of God and good wishes of my dear friends and family, I had completed my journey to London and back safely, despite otherwise intentions of our national carrier Air India.

It all started, on a bright and sunny day of 31st September. It was my first International flight and I have been in many domestic routes on Frills and No-Frills services (except Air Deccan).

First shock, an old lady at the check-in counter.
Second shock, flight delayed by an hour.
Third shock, pathetic in flight service.

However, the story doesn't end there. While returning, as wished by our dear office traveldesk, I was again booked on Air India. The flight was scheduled to depart at 2055. So being cautious, I reached the Zone F, terminal 3 of Heathrow by 1800. Now this means I was there well three hours before the departure.

Fourth Shock, A long serpentine Queue to get in to the Check In Queue.
Fifth Shock, The Queue for Queue took nearly two hours for me to clear up.
Sixth Shock, The Queue took nearly forty minutes for me to clear up.
Seventh Shock, There was a huge crowd waiting at the lounge to get into the plane. gosh.. it wasn't looking like an international airport, It was like a train station,
Eigth shock, no blame to Air India, the weather was turbulent so for sleep all I could had was two short naps.

My Dear Traveldesk, please never book me again on Air India..

N73 - My new companion

After a four year long courtship with my Samsung C 100 cellphone, I finally ditched it and bought myself a new Nokia N73.

I bought it from Carphone Warehouse in London. Beside the updated firmware, I also bought a 2GB miniSD card to store all those high-res 3.2 mp images and 128kbps audio mp3 files.

I have completed a successful transition from my old phone to new phone.. by manually transferring all the contacts and messages. yes, I said manually, because C100 only has Infrared connectivity which also doesn't seem to work..

Anyways, looking forward for another good long relationship.

Iceman is finally a champion

For last three years, I have been supporting Kimi Raikkonen for F1 drivers championship. And finally the moment has arrived. In a nail biting season finale at Interlagos (it is a beautiful circuit and is my 3rd favorite, Belgium and Suzuka being the first two), Kimi won the race and as Alonso failed to finish in top two and Hamilton in top six, Kimi won the championship by a huge margin of "one" championship point. Mclaren which was claiming of driver equality can now sheepishly boast of equal points of Alonso and Hamilton. Unfortunately, I couldn't watch this grandeur race as I was flying back to India.

Finally the time to celebrate.

P.S. We must not forget the contribution of local hero Felipe Massa who held onto second place which ensured a Ferrari one-two finish.

P.P.S. Watch out for Hamilton in the next season, he will surely continue his momentum.

Southall - Mini India

If you are in London and/or If you are an Indian, you must visit Southall once during your travel. It will help you get rid of any homesickness. The place is a hybrid of London and India. You will find BMWs, Mercs and Jaguars running on the road while there will be Gurudwaras, Temples and Mosques.. and it also has ICICI Bank and SBI Bank..

It is the only station I saw which doesn't have a ticket validating machine and surprisingly the station name is also inscribed in Gurumukhi on the platforms..

And it is the best place to have some decent Indian food if you can't have that bland English food every time. For my Jain friends, this place also has some purely veg restaurants which is a rarety in London.

Friends - Across the world

In my recent trip to London, I have realized one thing; You can't enjoy a new place alone. It is always great to have few good friends along with you. And I am blessed that Bhavin, Divyanka and Sagar too were there... All this translates into that my weekends were never boring..

If I relate it to few previous instances, when I can recollect my trips to Mumbai and Bangalore and would like to use this opportunity to thank them all for being what they are to me.

Post Ideas

London travelogue - Flickr PhotoBlog

Having friends across the world
Southall - Mini India
Kimi Raikkonen - The Champion
First Onsite Experience
Air India - How not to run an airline company
My New Phone - N73
Adventure of Sherlock Holmes

Destination UK - Part I

Dear diary
My First International Trip, my first Global Project.... Here I am sitting in London UK, writing the first part of the travelogue.

so I started on this voyage on the beautiful day of Sunday the 30th... september.. It was a morning Air India flight to London Heathrow... and luckily I got a window seat.. yippie..
hey.. no offence to anyone but Air India will be on the low ranks of beauty scale.. you know what I mean.. anyways, leave that aside..

So the flight got delayed by approximately 45 minutes and we took off at 10:45 AM.. I reached London by 03:00 PM local time. As I was travelling westward you need to adjust 04:30 hrs in total travel time. In the journey I flew over English Channel, and put my digicam to a good use. One more thing, I always use to fancy Sherlock Holmes so I bought the complete Sherlock Holmes series. I have already completed first two novels and I must say, this guy impresses.

so there I reached, in a new country at a new place for me... first thing i did was to find out from where can I get the taxi.. I found out the taxi stand and enjoyed a ride in the famous london cab. Read more about these at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackney_carriage. We lost our way and the cab driver didn't know the final destination so it took us a while to reach my booked apartment. finally i was there..

Next day morning..
To the office...

Reviews

Here are my ratings for some recent movies and some books I read

• iCon : Steve Jobs - 4/5 - A dramatic story of fall and rise of Steve Jobs. The story sometimes get lost in the plot
• Transformers: 3.5/5 - Cool Action/CGI sequences especially when cars transform into autobots. However the storyline has some loose connections.
• Apne: 3/5 - A nice touching family story. Good performance by Dharmendra. Sunny Deol was disappointing
• Chak De India - 4.5/5 - Finally a well made sports movie. Never in the movie you feel that Shahrukh Khan is overshadowing the story or the theme of the movie.
• The Negotiator - 3.5/5 - When I read any Frederick Forsyth novel, naturally I do a comparison with The Devil's Alternative. That's why this one loses out to TDA. Otherwise a good story but surely not the best work of FF.
• Heyy Baby - 1.5/5 - Cheap Vulgar jokes. underused Vidya Balan. and lacking any emotional connect.

Formula 1 : The Final Five Face off

The Formula 1 season has entered the final five races and it hasn't got any closer than this in recent past. There are top two teams and four key drivers swapping podium places in each race. Now it will all boil down to Ferrari's reliability and McLaren's speed. Lewis Hamilton is performing well and all set to win Drivers' Championship in his debut year provided he doesn't suffer any mechanical failures or punctures tyres.

Another pleasant surprise of the year was Massa. Initially dubbed as driver no. 2 for Ferrari, he is giving his teammate Kimi Raikkonen a run for his money. Both of them have a very positive competition going on between them unlike as what we saw between Alonso and Hamilton.

One more team to be watched is BMW who are constantly performing well all through the season. If they keep this up during the off season testing and development, they will be a serious title contender for next year's championship

So let's close this post on a positive note. Vijay Mallya has bought a 60% stake in Spykar. His company Kingfisher already has a sponsorship with Toyota. Both of these and a recent visit by Hermann Tilke are all good signs for some INDIAN hopes on F1 radar.

A Long Break

Last few days (or months) have been quite busy for me and didn't get any time to write any blog post for long time. There are already two pending travelogues and I need some time to fill those up.

In the mean time, Happy Independence Day, Happy Rakshabandhan, Happy Birthday to Prakhar...
enjoy

Travelogue: Bangalore, Kodai

For the last few months I was getting stuck in lots of work and all I needed was a short break. And my wish was granted.

I was assigned to attend a training on Microsoft SoftGrid at MTC Bangalore in first week of July. As luck may have it, Bahadur Gabra and Richa planned to come to Bangalore at the same time. Now, my friends Kunal and Manjari who always pounce upon this kind of opportunity, came up with a quick plan for a trip to Kodaikanal... and man what a plan it was.

Gabra, Richa and I reached Bangalore airport on Friday night. I was the first one to reach so I went to Manjari's guest house. Within one hour, Gabra and Richa also reached and we were all set to leave for Kodaikanal by 4 am in the morning.

We hired a Qualis and flagged off for our destination. Four hours later, half of us were half aslepp ;). Around 08:00 am in the morning, we had a pit stop at a ethnic Tamil midway and had a good share of Idli and Sambar. Next 6-7 hours were again part of a beautiful drive on the road to Kodai. And the last leg of the drive was an awesome uphill climb on a "In the cloud" green road.


We reached Kodai, found our Hotel and checked in. And we moved on for a trip to Kodai Lake. first we planned to have a boat ride but then changed our mind. We circled around the lake on foot, then had a horse ride and finally hired bicycles for a few rounds around the lake. Kunal and Richa took a tandem cycle which was kind of funny.

And by the time we finished cycling, it was almost dark. Time for some fuel for our body and we headed for some dinner. Again some south indian food. Anyways, I survived that dinner and we went for some more shopping. After the tiring day, I had a good night of sleep.

The sun rose again next day morning and we set out to visit some toursit spots there in Kodai. After finishing these stereotypical tourist chores, we headed back to Bangalore. Reached 03:00 am in the night and guess what? I had to go for a training next day morning at 09:00 am.. I somehow managed.

You know the best part... The best part of the travel was the drive in the hills while going from Kodai to Bangalore. It offers beautiful vistas and on some occasion you go through the clouds, which is an awesome experience in itself..

So next time you are headed southwards, do pay a visit to Kodai.. it is a heaven of an experience

Travelogue: Mumbai

So, this was supposed to be my first ever official trip. And I was the chosen one along with my colleague Saurabh Diwan who was sent to attend Microsoft Techmela from HCL Comnet. Right from my day one at HCL, I have been the face of technical community at HCL. So rightfully, I was commissioned to attend this great congregation of tech gurus and tech displays.

So I reached there one day before. HCL has booked a hotel for me in Santa Cruz which was very close to the airport. However the conference venue was Hotel Renaissance in Powai.

Day One, Yours truly managed to wake up on time and reach the venue. It was a picturesque hotel with a backdrop of Powai Lake. I, being shutter friendly and having recently bought my digicam, clicked a lot. The first day started with a Keynote, followed by technology specific tracks. I won't get into those details as they may bore you to Shut Down.

Time to head home and wander in the lively city of Mumbai. This was the first time I was in Mumbai so I haven't seen much of it. Tripat and Nidhi Jalan arranged to meet me at Bandra. After losing my way twice I managed to reach there. Also went to Bandra beach. And then a trip to roadside flee market, some nice spicy chaats and time to hit the hay.

Day Two: I was delivered to the venue on time by the auto. Able to finish the day being still alive with sore thumbs and fingers while playing Forza on kiosk Xbox.

After the day was over, the real challenge was to get to some tourist like place and see something. Saurabh came to rescue and suggested about Juhu Chaupati. Hired an auto and reached there just in time that it started raining heavily. Eight O' Clock in the evening, drizzling sky and a perfect ambiance for a nice walk at the beach.

Day Three: Time to bunk the second half of the sessions. ;) Rush to Church Gate, also invite some childhood buddies and walk down Nariman Point. What a perfect setting. Then go to Gateway of India, take some photos of Hotel Taj and have a walk at Colaba flee market. Another enjoyable day


Day Four and luckily a Sunday: reached Santa Cruz station, made way to Andheri. and finally to a multiplex to watch Jhoom Barabar Jhoom! yups, such a tragic end to such a beautiful story. The story of guy who went to Mumbai first time and enjoyed first three days and ended the journey by watching such a pathetic movie!!!

Hey, as Shahrukh Khan says in Om Shanti Om - "Picture Abhi Baaki Hai Mere Dost" . So that was not the ending. Had lunch at a food court. And then, time to meet Suhas at Joggers Park. I confess, I haven't seen the movie so I wasn't expecting much. But then, it started raining and our plans to have a jog at the park were short lived. However, we had a nice tea at Irani Restaurant near Mehboob Studio. Also did some impulse shopping at Fascination (The place to buy cheap smuggled stuff. Rating: 4/5.. I got compliments from everyone in the office)

Evening time and time to get back to Delhi. A one hour date with Tripat at Balaji Cafe at the airport. and I bid adieu to Mumbai.

Reservation, Caste System, Mob Mentality

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/000200706011501.htm

Times of India Editorial (Requires Indiatimes ID)

Gujjars have OBC. They want ST. Meenas are ST. They feel it will affect them negatively if Gujjars are also given ST. The state government made some high promises during election and not able to live up to them now. I don't understand the logic behind this whole reservation system. And let me be very clear, I am anti-reservation and feel that there should be meritocracy and no one should be preferred because he/she is from a specified caste but equally powerful as non-specified caste.

All modes transports to Jaipur are blocked. There were incidents of violence in Faridabad, Noida, Gurgaon. Even Delhi-Dehradun highway was blocked. Shoot at Sight ordered in Bharatpur and Dausa.

I don't where it is heading, and I think Vasundhara Raje is as clueless as I am.

May God bless all with enlightenment

Image copyright: Times of India/R K Lakshman

Help!! I am tagged

Shekhar , the citizen of joy, tagged me in his recent post, which was quite surprising. I have never been tagged before and this tag certainly got me thinking.

Read Shekhar's post for Step 1. I am starting with Step 2. And I am warning you, there will not be any step 3.

8 Random facts about me.

1. I was born on April 01, which means I share my birthday with Abraham Maslow
   
2. I was only 13 years old when I completed my secondary education
3. I got introduce to computers and technology during my XI th standard. It has become an integral part of my life after that.
4. I was aqua phobic until I jumped and rafted by the river Ganges
5. My dream job would be a test driver for F1. Kimi Raikkonen is my favorite driver.
   
6. My favorite computer game, you guessed it right, is Need for Speed. I also love to play other racing games like Midtown Madness, F1 2002 etc.
   
7. Kal Ho Naaa Ho is my favourite bollywood masala movie. Back To The Future trilogy is my favorite Hollywood trilogy.
   
8. I have a huge list of crushes ~blushing!

And.. I am breaking the law by not tagging anyone!

May 2007 : The busiest month for my blog

This month saw most activity on my blog. I have posted 13 new items till date and added visitors from all over the world, including Down Under.

I hope to keep up the enthusiasm and energy level.

The Google Story

I just finished reading this book. It provides good insight into how this phenomenon started, what was going in the background, how it made money and how it successfully handled an IPO on the wall street. It also describes some of the key philosophies at Google i.e. Don't be Evil.

It has a thriller like speed and a novel like detail.
All in all, a good read if you are smitten by the Google bug.

Kimi disappoints again

In the last weekend Monaco GP, Kimi screwed up his qualifying and started the race from P16...
8th row in a narrow street circuit in Monaco makes sure that it will not help much in your driver championship. After retiring in previous race at Spain, it was another disaster waiting to happen.

Due to one pit stop strategy, he was able to finish 8th and get one point. However the point difference has increased to fifteen, which is not a very comfortable position if you want to fight for driver championship.

And, Mclaren is showing salutable reliability and awesome speed. Lewis Hamilton has shown best rookie performance till date by finishing all five races on podium. One thing for sure, Ferrari is going to have tough time fighting it over with Mclaren. Kimi should ready himself for getting some firing from Jean Todt.

And, Mclaren has acknowledged that it asked both the drivers to contain themselves during final round of the race when they were in a comfortable lead and Hamilton was giving a good competition to team mate Alonso. There are some charges of Team orders. But in my opinion, these charges doesn't stand any ground, as team didn't order any specific driver to slow down or allowed a pass. It is just that it asked the drivers to be bit more cautious keeping in mind the nature of Monaco circuit which is prone to accidents.


Lets hope Canada brings better result for Kimi and Ferrari both. Amen

Bloglink: Wanderlust Gaurav Sharma

It is a bird? No... It is a plane? No... .It is Superman? No... It is Gaurav Sharma..

He is new to blogger, just started blogging... he thinks it is a fad and it looks cool,/geek/ nerdy to have a blog of yourself...he even believes it can get you laid...
Just do some ego massage for him by visiting:

http://wanderlust-gaurav.blogspot.com/

Enjoi.. if you can.

The week went by

The week, which is going on, is getting quite hectic for me.... So much to do, so less time.
Anyways, i sneaked some time from my schedule and I thought I should write something.

First, First Major phase of my System Centre Lifecyle Project is over now. We move to the Second Major Phase which is doubly complex and we are not very sure whether we will be able to deliver or not.

Second, I was preparing for my Windows Vista webinar. This is my first one, so I don't want to screw it up.

Not much to write about on the personal side..

And I am eagerly awaiting Monaco GP. I hope Kimi Raikkonen wins this time.

Main aur Mere One liners

• I don't want to be Kumar Gaurav, the one hit wonder
• Courtesies should be reciprocated
• Khaali Haath Ja rahe hain hum, Khaali Haath Aayenge
  
• There is an information overload, you need to filter
  
• To be a project manager, you need technical knowledge.. You need so that you can ask the right questions.
  

Note: these are thought on the spot and delivered to audience which was not very susceptible to these kind of remarks. However, I don't regret what I said.

Books I am reading

In the past few months I read

• Paulo Coelho - Eleven Minutes
• John Grisham - The Client
• Gregory David Roberts - Shantaram
• Thomas L. Friedman - The World is Flat

I am currently reading The Google Story by David A. Vise.
The next book on my shelf is The Argumentative Indian by Amartya Sen.

P.S. I don't think of myself competent enough to write book reviews :)

Spider racing in a Metro

Ok... the title of the post is bit confusing but it is intended so..

Lets start with Spider-man 3 . It is a long movie, dragging at a slow pace and with all those typical Bollywood style. It has many goofs... like when Marko Flint gets into that Physics Reactor, why everything converts to sillicon except the pendant which contains his daughter's photo? there are many other similar goofs all throughout the movie, which doesn't seem to end.
Rating: 2.5/5

Now quickly we move on to Ta Ra Rum Pum which was another disappointment despite being from Yash Raj banner. The movie has a very old time story feeling with new packaging where the protagonist is a racing driver. Otherwise, it has nothing much to offer.
Rating: 2/5

However, I was third time lucky. It was Life in a Metro, directed by Anurag Basu. Having a big list of characters and multiple intertwined stories running in parallel, it had a fresh feel. Neatly packaged, fast paced, away from fake drama and emotion, the movie registers itself with you especially with young urban crowd of india. The end was a bit of hastily scripted. The songs accelerates the story but the videos are irritating as you see the Metro Band performing in each of the song.
Rating:3.5/5

Continuous Improvement - Part II

Living upto myself, I couldn't control to make certain tweaks to the blog. One, I have removed del.icio.us links from the feed as it was flooding the blog feed. Second I have added another section on left sidebar which allows you to subscribe to the feed using email.

Bouquets and brickbats welcome.

Vista Zero Touch Webinar

Yours truly had worked on a project in partnership with Microsoft. It was a solution innovation project where our team developed a unique solution around enterprise wide Windows Vista deployment. The solution was also judged as the best solution by Microsoft. I have already given the solution presentation to 6 customers and hope to see good increase in top line.

Now, under the Microsoft Technology Community Program (TCP) , I am doing a webinar on the technology side. This will be my first webinar so will be for TCP. The webinar will be broadcasted on May 25, 2007 from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM IST. I am all prepared and I hope it goes well. I will publish the webinar invitation mailer once I receive the final version.


Update: Here is the mailer

_________________________________________________________

Live Meeting Details

Click Here to Join Live Meeting


Subject: Vista Zero Touch Deployment webinar
Meeting URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/microsoft/join
Meeting ID: GS7SM7
Meeting Key: zerotouch
Role: Attendee

This meeting will broadcast internet audio directly to your computer.

Please ensure that you have Windows Media Player 9 or higher installed.

Conference Call Details:

US Access: 001 203 480 8000

Pass code 6339416

India Access

New Delhi Access: (011) 4422-3031 / 2654-0731

Hyderabad Access: (040) 4422-3033 / 2348-8233

Chennai Access: (044) 2831-0734 / 4422-3034

Meeting ID: 4258 2790#

PIN Code: 1878892#

Online Features:

*0 - Operator Assistance

*6 - Self Mute / Unmute

At Gateway of North East

On 28th of April, I boarded early morning IndiGo flight from Delhi Airport which landed at Guwahati Airport at 08:30. And the first thing I noticed was the pleasant weather. This was a breath of fresh air for us Delhiites who suffer from aggressive mercury and rising pollution levels. There was greenery all around and last night rainfall was adding that extra chill in the air.

Now the purpose, I went there for a cousins marriage. The ceremony was grand as they had two Performance Evenings, one by professional artists (including Gaurav Sharma of Laughter Champion fame and Juhi Parmar of Kumkum) and second one by family members. And a big reception and dinner party the third day. The whole ceremony lasted whole three day which is kind of rare these days. I also put my camera's 10x zoom, 2 GB card and 6 megapixel resolution to good use ;)

And it seems that being an MBA and working as MT in a Top 5 Indian IT company also makes you most eligible bachelor as I gave introductions to 20+ uncles/aunts of mine, many of them I have never seen before.

Last day, I went to Kamakhya temple but somehow didn't like that place much. No offense.
I also roamed in Fancy Bazaar which is quite famous but was a disappointment for me.

One more thing, there is a railway line which goes across the city and there is only one flyover. At ll other level crossings, 50% of the time the traffic is closed to pass the trains. Other infrastructure is not upto the mark either. Being a state capital and The Gateway to North East, the city deserves bit more than that.

So after four days of welcome break from tiring work schedule, I returned on next Wednesday when for a change the weather at Delhi was also likable.

Kimi Raikkonen and reliability issues

Kimi Raikkonen and reliability seem to be synonyms. After an eventful courtship with Mclaren, where he had 30 retirements/DNF in last 5 Years (that is 6 per year... his record with Sauber was not great either, 7 retirements in a single year), he jumped ship and moved to Ferrari, which was known for its reliability.

At Ferrari, where he was replacing Michale Schumacher, the expectations were already very high. And till now, he is not able to match up. He has won the Australian GP, finished third in Malaysia and Bahrain... and living up to his old records, failed to finish in Spain.

I somehow fail to understand the reasons!! is it purely because he tries to get maximum out of the machinery and in the process forgets the limitation of machinery and blows it up??

Disclaimer: I am a diehard Kimi fanboy.

Lewis Hamilton - The new force to reckon

Lewis Hamilton is a formula 1 driver from McLaren Team and is a rookie in the sport. But considering his performance in first four races, Rookie title seems to be a misnomer for this guy. In his maiden F1 Championship, he is leading the driver table and poised to finish in top three this very first year. This is inspite of not winning a single race but finishing all four on podium.

Consistency surely takes you far...

Hibernating?

For past few weeks, I was not able to post on the blog... but it doesn't mean that I was hibernating. I was pretty much active and I could say that it was one of the most busiest month in my last year. There are lots of things happening at professional and personal life. I need time to jot them down.

Some Ideas:

• Lewis Hamilton
• Kimi Raikkonen
• Travelogue - Guwahati
• My offending one liners
• Camera
• Webinar
• Movie Review
  

I will be soon writing on these items. This is just a promotional post in the meantime :)

Shooting @ 10x

I have just bought a cool Nikon Coolpix S10 digicam.

And the two best things about the camera are a whopping 10x Optical zoom and a swivel lens. Alongwith it I am using a SanDisk 2GB SD card which can take 680+ shots at full resolution and minimum compression...
You can read the review of the camera at http://www.dpreview.com/news/0608/06082411nikons10.asp

Some observations till now:

• The Optical zoom is awesome and works like a breeze
• The swivel lens allows to take snaps from creative angles without you needing to bend
• It has an exhaustive list of scene modes
• You can't use optical zoom while capturing a video
• It has a Time lapse mode for movie which allows you to shot movie snippets at regular interval which can be used for making a Time Lapse Movie
• It has a sports composite mode which take 16 composite shots of a sport scene and make a 4x4 collage of that.
• The UI and controllers take some time to get used to
• There is some noise in night landscape images.
• While shooting at 10x, the hands should be extremely steady. Tripod recommended.

Burn Baby Burn

I have moved my blog's default feed to FeedBurner. It will help me in analyzing blog visits and subscription data. The new blog feed URI is:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Nerd-beta

The old feed URI is no longer available.

The one thing I like about feedburner is that it also integrates my del.icio.us bookmarks in my feeds. Which means, know you can also check which sites I am visiting and bookmarking.

In future, I will also integrate my flickr account so that the feed becomes a one-stop-shop for all the updates from me.

By the River Ganges, I jumped and rafted

After all those boring weekends, It was a good change.

After one week of planning, one day of cancellation and one hour replanning, we finally set off for Rishikesh on Friday Night. It was a tiring journey and we reached the destination saturday morning.

As the camps were not available at that moment, we started playing cricket. Mind you, I was playing cricket after light years and for the next two days I faced the repurcussions in form of a painful shoulder.

Next was a good bath at river Ganges. Earlier, I was aquaphobic, but after this bath, I was not... I still don't know how to swim, but atleast I am no longer scared of water.

Then a trip to Tehri dam. It was huge... and that is an understantement. Thanks to Prakhar, we got permission to visit the powerhouse tunnel and it was mind blowing.. Loved that trip.

And if you think that was enought for the day, the best is yet to follow..

When we came back to Rishikesh from Tehri, it was already 10 PM. Now it was time for some fun at river coast in a moon lit night. The feeling is too good to be described in a blog.

EOD

The next day morning, it was time to go to Neer Garh Water Fall. It was a half an hour trek from our camp and was fun. We had fun in the water for next 1 hour (at the place depicted in the third snap on the aforementioned website). Time to return back to camp and go for the climax... Rafting..

Initially, I was feeling a bit nervous about this whole rafting thing. As I don't know swimming, it adds to the pressure. But leaving my nervousness aside, I sat on raft and we started for the journey which I will never forget in the times to come.

We started slowly, but gained good pace during the course of rafting. We sailed through many rapids some of which has very weird names like Return to Sender, Tee Off, Roller Coaster, Double Trouble etc. That was adventorous..

Next was a jump in the river... As I told earlier, I don't feel very comfortable in water, but having a Life Jacket and five trustworthy friends by my side, I jumped.. and we floated for almost 4-5 kilometers in the river.. It was a wonderful feeling, floating in the water... heads up... watching the sky..... simply too good.

Time for a break, and some adventuruous friends of mine did some diving practice in the river... Back to the raft and another sailing session of 5-6 miles and we are at the end of our journey.

I will not forget those days.

What is Fun

Fun is:

• Dancing for more than 2 hours on the occasion of your friend's engagement.
• Exploiting(Efficiently utilising) the memory capacity of a digicam.
• Returning to your home from the venue as far as 50 km, by hitching a ride.
• Walking for 2 kms, as there are no rickshaws available, in your formal shoes, after dancing for more than 2 hours. And on top of that, it happened at 01:30 AM in the deadly night in The Crime Capital of India, Noida.
• Answering the natures call and giving some recycled water to thirsty plantation in Noida Sector 28. ;)

The Pursuit of HappyNess

Thomas Jefferson , the principal author of Declaration of Independence, was a great president of America. We know that. But why I am discussing it here at my blog. There is a reason. And the reason is HappyNess.

According to the declaration, we only have right to pursue happiness but not direct right to happiness. So the declaration gives us right to seek ways to find happiness around but it doesn't guarantee any happiness.

But why we don't have any rights to happiness? Because it is a subjective thing. What construes as happiness may be a torture for you. And if someone is as greedy (ambitious) as me, happiness becomes a mirage which we keep chasing but never achieve.

Idea Courtesy: The Pursuit of Happyness

And the Protagonist : Chris Gardner

P.S. I wonder, why am I using so many Wikipedia hyperlinks?

Pray for me brother

I saw this video by AR Rahman and couldn't resist singing it out loud.
Here it is for my future reference.

Lyrics:
Pray for me brother
Pray for me brother
Pray for me sister
Are you searchin’….
Pray for me brother
Lookin’ for the answers To all the questions In my life
Will I be alone Will you be there By my side
Is it something he said Is it something he did
I wonder why He is searchin’ For the answers
To stay alive
Could you ever listen Could you ever care
To speak your mind
Only for a minute For only one moment
In time
The joy is around us But show me the love
That we must find
Are you searchin’ For a reason to be kind, to be kind…
He said… Pray for me brother
Pray for me brother Pray for me sister
Pray for me brother Say
what you wanna say now
But keep your hearts open
Be what you wanna be now
Let’s heal the confusion
Pray for me brother

Don’t let me take When you don’t wanna give
Don’t be afraid Just let me live
Don’t let me take When you don’t wanna give
Don’t be afraid Say what you wanna say now
But keep your hearts open

Be what you wanna be now Let’s heal the confusion
Pray for me brother Pray for me brother
I’m ashamed ah, brother be dying of poverty
when he down on his knees its only then he prays
And it’s a shame ah, brother be dying of ignorance
cos the world is a trip and everybody’s a hypocrite
Need to stop ah , taking a look at the other
I’m not ashamed of poverty
need to be making his life better
So think about it, think about it once more
cos life is a blessing and it’s not justa show, ah
Round and round the world is spinning around

We need to be singing a prayer, we need to be singing it now
Round and round the world is turning around
We need to be singing a prayer, we need to be singing it now
Need to be feeling the power, need to be feeling the faith
We need to coming together just to win this race

Need to be feeling the power, need to be feeling the faith
We need to coming together just to win this race (twice)
Are you searching for a reason to be kind ?

Video Link

5 days to go

The 2007 Formula season is about to start. Australia will play the host for first GP.

However, the challenge for me right now is that on 17th March there is a cricket match of India (which is suppose to conclude by 03:30 AM IST next day morning) and on 18th March morning 08:30 AM IST the Australian GP will start. After analysing my sleeping habits for past 3 months, there is very slim chance that I will be able to manage with only 5 hours of sleep.

Windows Vista Ultimate Wallpapers

Long has provided link to two more vista wallpapers. The wallpapers are designed by Windows Vista Ultimate Team and has been published on there site.

Link

And I must add, the first one looks awesome with Windows Vista Aero.

Most of us are like rudderless boats rocking to the waves in the ocean of life..

I read this line on Shekhar's blog and you know, I couldn't agree more. Most of the times I think and I feel, what is our purpose? Why we are doing things which we are doing? What makes me to wake up every morning and makes me have a sound sleep every night?

And then I think, we are just one flower in 'The Garden'. Each one of us is a different kind of flower, each having a certain characteristics which set us apart. It won't affect much to The Garden if one of us fails to deliver up to the expectation. But if we succeed, it will bring more beauty to The Garden.

Continuous Improvement

I mentioned in an earlier post that I will be freezing the design for the moment. But knowing myself, I knew that I won't stick to this and will surely come up with something new for the blog.

This time, I have implemented a tag cloud. The source is phydeaux3 .
The design is still in alpha phase. ;)

Redesign

For past few days, I have tried various templates and layouts for my blog. I have also designed a logo which suites the overall theme.

Finally I have settled for a very minimalistic template with white background. The logo is also on a white background.

I will baseline it at this version and will not do many changes to the blog (design) in near future.

The New logo for my blog

This is the new logo I am planning to use for my blog.
The idea came from Flickr.
And I used a web based logo generator to get the effect.

Fish!

I have just started working on a new project within my organization.
The project is related to the Fish! Philosophy which started as an initiative at Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle.

The Fish! idea is all about having fun at work. It involves imbibing a fun culture in the workflow and processes so that employees enjoy their 40 hours which are spent in the otherwise boring work environment.

But it is different from Entertainment. Entertainment are temporary activities which are not done on day to day basis.

Lets see how much fun we can imbibe in our company culture :)

P.S. If have any cool/wild/whacky/weird ideas about fun@work......... pleeeeeeeeeease let us know, we are running out of ideas.

Some Kewl Quotes

• I came, I saw, I Blogged.
• The greatest virtue of a man is to accept his shortcomings.
• If life gives you lemon, sell lemonade.
• Life is a crazy ride and nothing is guaranteed.

The New Vista

Hamad Darwish (The guy behind some stunning Windows Vista wallpapers) has uploaded some hi-res shots of the work which he has done for Vista shoot. The shots are stunning and looks awesome on the desktop.

Hamad Darwish 's Website

Long Zheng interviews the guy

Restarting.....

Just when I was about to restart blogging, there was surge of events which happened to my professional life.. and I am back to work.. 12+ hrs a day..

I was pretty serious that I will blog sincerely this time...
Don't know whether I will be successful or not