Earth Hour

28th March 8:30 to 9:30 PM was Earth Hour. wherever you were.

i sent 88 messages to people from my phone's "Contacts", which was a forward from this friend.

Some interesting feedback i received.

"going bak home by bus. i cant ask the bus driver to switch off the lights, before i know, my lights can be out!"
Reply: "try asking, u got nothing to lose anyway!"

"sorry, i am on my bike right now and switching off the head light can end somebody else's life or mine, or make me lose money, if a cop catches me"
Reply: "this year, battery operated devices are allowed :P"

"Maga, from morning i am working on it. Also ran a big segment on it... (he works for the news 9 channel as a producer).. yappa... in my dreams too, i am sure to listen to dis earth hour."

just then, my phone rang:
"hello, who is this?"
"hello, santosh?"
"ah... oh... no, wrong number!"
"so what? lights are out?"
pause.
"yeah, bye"

Hee hee.

Bakerism

heard people talking in a bakery early in the morning with a cup of tea and 'puffs' in their hands. pearls of bakerism.

"hennu honnu mannu, adaage barbeku, aagle sigodu. adir hinde naavu hogbardu guru, yavathu sigalla"

Hennu is woman.
Honnu is Gold.
Mannu is property(house or land, wen i thought deeper can also mean the 6X3 feet real estate everybody needs when they are dead; meaning, death should come to you and u shudnt go for it).

Legend----wait for it!

This happened to me today at lunch. (reminded of the Tinkle page "this happened to me". written by people about weird happenings in their life... )

i was having lunch alone in the cafeteria, sitting on a table that had three empty chairs around me. while i was at it, u know, 3 people came and sat around me. one of them knew me vaguely. he did _not_ know my name. he started talking to me...

He: "you are in JK's team right?"
Me: "No, Sunil's. Test Factory"
He: "were u in that team when we were in SS?"
Me: "No, back then i was in the QA org. with a wholesale re-orgs happening, we were moved all over the park"
He: "Hmmm, i remember seeing you there"
Me: " yeah, its been close to 4 years now"
Long Pause...

HisFriend: "hey, we can ask him abt that licensing problem"
Me: "what problem" (wearing the problem solver hat, sometimes i think i was born with it)
HisFriend: "have you worked on imaging solutions??"
Me: "yeah..." (in the head: hell, yeah!)
HisFriend: "we have this..." and he goes on with his problem...

after a series of problem definition, discussion getting into legal, ethical aspects and later into business and then technical views of the product, we arrive at a conclusion.

and then comes the bouncer of my life.

He: "Actually i wanted to discuss this with Girish from your team. i heard he is technically very good and knows about virtual machines and imaging solutions."

Me: "yeah, actually, thats me."
Long Pause...

Me: "I am Girish".

Legend...... wait for it.... dary!

PS: All characters in this work are fictitious except me. Any resemblence to any person living or dead is purely coincidental and should not be construed.

Gulaal

I treated myself for my birthday with this movie. Had to choose between Slumdog and Dev D.
Could NOT book a ticket for Dev D three times cos of a technical problem in PVR Cinemas website.

And i am very glad about that. also, this was one of the usual 'lone wolf watching movie' experiment. So, what was Gulaal like?

Brilliant and whacky!!!
'Real' entertainment, if u know what i mean.
Amazing story telling. Cheers to the Director.
Look out for the song lyrics and the dialogues.
Absolutely no un-necessary scenes or dialogues.
fast paced. keeps u on the edge.
very good natural acting by everybody.

go watch it! worth every rupee.

Stars: 4.5. Points deducted for sloppy editing in one or two places. could be the 'censor board'!

Overhauled!

it was just about a month when i wrote this. when i blogged, i thought the awesome record will be somehow jinxed. the clutch cable gave away on my way back home from office. took some serious skilled riding to get home with a broken clutch cable. (think abt it)

so, i gave THE bike for servicing and this is how it showed up after the servicing.




if u r thinking... well, it looks the same, then, well, yes, u r right :D.
BUT what u see is a 180 cc sticker on the bike. But if u ride it, u might feel a pulsating 200 cc engine's power!
How?
Apparently, there are "ports" in the engine that can be opened. think of it as clots in the brain. surgery was performed to "open" the ports, thereby increasing the total capacity. i had heard abt this concept before. but i thought it wudnt make much difference.

but boy does it make a difference!!! jinke mari thara oodathe nan gaadi!!! with the new air filter, sound also gudguding properly :D

West Coast Trip - Day 1,2

it all started as early as january. Grini suggested a trip to south India. V V, Naren and Ally confirm participation. the date was set to Feb 28th weekend, to co-incide with Grini's 26th Birthday. and the duration??? 8 full days! now, we all know abt my addiction to work/life in bangalore. hence i decided to cut short the trip by 3 days. 5 days is what i was looking at. booked the train ticket to get back home on 4th Mar from kanyakumari. it was gonna be my first all day train trip alone.

the countdown to the prep for the trip was ably supported by everybodys participation in mail chains. i was held up with a lot of work( i hate 16 hr days!!) and hence was silently reading/contemplating the suggestions put forth in the mails. we also banned laptops for the trip.

so, we meet up at 4:45/50 at the entrance of Raliway Station for wat was going to be the longest trip i have been with friends so far! (2006/7 Goa trip comes in at close second, although i rate it as the best quality wise(no offense meant to the partners in crime on this trip)) we walk our way to the train and find the first amusing thing written over our coach's entrance in small letters next to our names. "Neetu Baby".
one of us thought it was the name of a baby girl accompanied by her parent.
another one thought it was Neetu with a baby.
we all knew it was a girl!!!
turns out, she is a ~20 year old girl looking very reserved/scared/intrigued by our presence.
later, on the second day, we find out that alappuzah's police inspector is also a Mr. Baby (first name unknown) and the education minister of kerala is M.A Baby. watever!

the journey to alappuzah was mostly uneventful. we played UNO, had dinner, and slept. only to wake up at 12 to wish Grini. it was silent (people were asleep around) and bright!(with ally clicking away Grini when he turned 26!)

we woke up at 5 cos the scheduled arrival at alappuzah OR alleppey was 5:45(subject to change without prior notice). Grini was a little paranoid abt missing the station so we had alarms setup in almost all mobiles! even neetu baby setup an alarm! There were some awkward moments for Grini when someone dropped dupatta for him in phased a manner. he was obviously happy abt that!

we got out of the train at alleppey and asked for an auto to Royal Park. The auto driver said "RoyaL Bark? 50 rubees". we had no option but to go with it! the hotel was supposed to be 3 kms from the station. but it definitely turned out to be more. good that we dint try to walk to the hotel.

the impression i had of alleppey was that it was a small town with a few shops, one or two man roads and then the beach. alleppey is a pretty big town, with atleast two business class 3 star hotels (one with a roof top swimming pool, which we hadnt checked into).

it was hot, but not uncomfortable for me since i was used to the humidity/coastal area atmosphere. after breakfast, we went on a boat cruise on national waterway 3! i had no idea that a waterway existed! i had only thought of oceans and seas as connecting countries, but not towns within a state! the backwaters extend from kottayam to kochi thru alleppey and other coastal towns. we even saw boats run by the govt that had route numbers on them, connecting these towns! they had boat depots like we have bus depots... Police on boats manage law n order! :D imagine having a boat come up to ur house gates on private water paths!

lazy, sleepy, relaxing and occasionally grini getting excited abt birds n photography. That was 5 hours of that day! purely "intoxicating" numbness! had fish in a shady looking backwater side (not beach side) hotel. :) tastes goooood. the interesting menu is attached here. :) see something odd??

the numbness in the brain showed up on ally. he actually called a paddy field, a garden! gadde annodikke thota anda... on our way back to where we started off on the boat from, i lost a bet to naren. and we bought a football to play on the beach!

we hit the beach in the evening wen the sun was almost down. played a bit till it got dark. Grini got his 26 birthday bumps after suspiciously tracking the four of us coming at him. :)


















The next day, we did nothing active. got an awesome rejuvenating massage from manoj. he literally went everywhere and ensured all parts of the body got the "healing touch". :D

we packed and left to trivandrum early the next morning. Naren had to sit in the back seat of the tavera and he did NOT like it!

PS: this post was previously named :"East Coast Trip - Day 1,2" :P