Curing Blue With Purple

A wicked world and a wearisome week invariably drive you to the haze. Instantly, the world inverts - a friendly fraternity and a healing aura all around. The Sultans of Rock soothe your ears and comfort your drudged mind. As spirits descend, spirits ascend. A thoroughly cured thyself are now ready for the world.

An ode to Purple Haze - our second home.

Being Normal

My sundry insight of the day:
It normal to be weird, but weird to be normal. Most of life’s effort goes in trying to be normal, which is weird.

When it rains, it pours!

Earlier, I had mentioned that leaving the premises of the great city we live in can be rewarding in many ways. So, we packed our bags and headed towards the land of rains – Malnad.

Not many things in this wide world can comprehensively pacify SC’s intergalactic musings, VH’s tantrums, SA’s never-ending stints of slumber, SM’s notes on Anthropology and world history and my ramblings on technology. All we could do was sit and watch the barrage from the skies. But enterprising as we always were, we decided to go footloose.

On one ordinary Sunday morning, there we were, far away from the world, dancing in the rain.

Behold!

Good is the experience of traveling in Singapore’s MRT. Even better is the experience of traveling on India’s Railbus.


The Railbus gives you a “view of things” like no other. Strongly recommended; irony unintended.

Gifted

God's greatest gift to me - I am ordinary. The rest of my life now beckons.

The City Beyond

Bangalore is a great city. You are always in a force field here, which pushes you to think how you could change the world, and that's good. And while you are at it, the heavens open in true appreciation.

If you are a Bangalorian, I think you should be proud.

A Celebration

The other weekend, was a special one to Bangalore and to some of us, who sacrificed the luxury of a Sunday and instead, run for a cause. The event was the Lipton India Marathon – celebration run; a modest distance of 7 seven kilometers. Seven may appear too small a number and many experts might round it off to zero. But hey, convert that to feet and multiply it by a load factor derived from the unforgiving Bangalore heat, and then divide that by your fitness index - you’ll know what I’m saying.

Well, yes I managed to complete the distance (else, I wouldn’t have blogged about it). Fifty minutes, heavy breathing, puffing and panting, sore everything, a barely visible finish line and then, I was proud. So was a surprised SA, so was SC, so were everyone.

I recollect the Servo ad where Kumble preaches – “You must break all barriers, you must push every limit”. I guess we all did just that. Sweat was sweet and tiredness enriching. The fruits of hard work were an enormous sense of accomplishment and fervor.

Now, how do I deal with the rest of my life?

Me in Singapore

Okay, it was a long time since I rambled here – had just another attack of lethargy. I cured it partially by traveling to Singapore. I was there to attend the Asia MVP Regional Summit 2005. A big thank you to MS for organizing the whole thing and for the sponsorships.

When you travel abroad for the first time, to a foreign city, you invariably end up comparing it with our very own Bangalore. I was no exception. I was tempted to put all those down into a neat, tabular report, but for the benefit of the low bandwidth subscribers of my arbitrary musings, I am refraining from that.

Here are few reflections from Singapore anyways: Singapore is a ‘fine’ city to say the least. You are fined for anything and everything, and in multiples of 500 Singapore dollars. ‘Trespassers will be shot dead’, said one of the boards. Otherwise, it’s a great city. Highly disciplined crowd, technology is all over, great zoo, fantastic bird park to mention a few. And yes – a mind-blowing Airport.

I did enjoy all the time I spent there, especially those walks at Marina Square, beside the bay, late in the night.

I’ll collect some more thoughts a little later.

Simplification

Making things complicated is simple, but simplifying them complicated.

As much as this holds for software design, it does for life too.

Here we go!

An otherwise dozy afternoon gets good, thanks to (free) tools like these. This is my first post done through W.Bloggar . All major blogging engines like Blogger, .Text etc are supported.

Njoi Maadi !

Success Explicated

Two fantastic quotes on 'Success' I thought were worth quoting here:

The sign on the door to success says, 'PUSH'.

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.


Source: Unknown

F1: New regulations on full 'Throttle'

Let me go back in time and regurgitate what I had to say about F1 about a year ago:

"99% of the people who are asked this question - What is Formula 1 all about?, would typically answer this way: A sport where cars go round and round the same track without any meaning or purpose. This, at the glance, may seem to be the way it is, but real F1 purists agree that sport is just a small part of F1. The real essence of F1 is all about the research, engineering and technology involved in getting those mean machines to the circuit. F1 is like a test bed for putting the components of a car through the most gruesome tests. F1 is the path through which the latest and the greatest components or features make it into normal road cars that you and me drive everyday."

Therefore, anybody who blindly asserted that F1 is just a mere sport would be subject to extreme flak from me for sure. But of late, strange things seem to be happening in the F1 scene, which has caught me wrong-footed. The recent domination by Ferrari perhaps has left FIA thinking about the seemingly ludicrous ways of equalizing competition. You can get all the gory details here.

Essentially, cars this year would be slower, a lot slower, thanks to the new aerodynamic regulations. Moreover, the new qualifying and race rules will leave the teams taking a conservative strategy. Of course, teams would find their own ways to claw back those last ounces of performance from the cars, but why have such constraining rules in the first place ? If cars get faster every year, so will there be advancements in safety features. In fact, F1 technicians would probate that an F1 car, in its all glory, would still be lot safer than a normal road car. So why not let raw performance drive the spirit of F1?

I think its high time for FIA to revisit what I think is the real philosophy of F1 (which is pushing all limits), rather than thinking of making this a fair sport. If you love F1 and are at unrest due to the new regulations of FIA, please do drop in your comments!

The Godforsaken

I am lost in no man's land with no soul around; I am a hapless castaway. This little world seems like an endless universe. Every moment, anxiety cuts open a deeper wound. Hope has estranged me for a while now.

As I look towards the heavens above in utter desperation, I hear a reassuring voice - "Net is up!". Everything reverts to normalcy instantly. I am home.

Love, or is it?

Valentine's day is here. Love is in the air, everywhere. Perfect.

Some Afterthoughts

Love seems to be like those vested stock options that go on a locking period for a year, and you exercise all those options on a single day - Valentine's Day. Love goes on a virtual hibernation for a year, but comes back to life with flying colors on Valentine's day.

Looking at how the expressions of love and feelings are manifested on this day, it appears as if Valentine's is a day of re-assurance more than anything else - "I 'still' love you" or "Nothing's gonna 'change' my love for you", and the like. Or perhaps, leave your valentine totally dumbstruck by proving that your love for that person is much more than the person ever dreamt of - buy a card, a teddy or a balloon whose size approximately equals the 'quantified' version of your love. Love seems to be commoditized, commercialized.

Now, some more tangential thoughts. Love is more than about balloons of white and red or those mammoth-sized cards. I understand that Valentine's day, perhaps, is a day of lovers, but
it could be one of love, the scope of which need not be limited to your heart plus that of a special person of yours. Love could be manifested as goodwill for humanity, or compassion for those who have craved for love for their entire lives. Valentine's day could be a day of total selflessness; a day where a smile on your face translates to thousand others.

Happy Valentine's day!

Enrapturing Music

An atemporal joy wraps you as you listen to it. You feel enslaved by a certain force that takes over you, a force that results in unexplainable bodily manifestations while your mind lies on a different plane altogether dumbfounded, awestruck, flabbergasted, call it what you may.

I just made a desperate, yet futile attempt to really explain the bliss of listening to Drupad, a form of Hindustani classical music. Self was blessed the other day at Dharwad, when I was privileged to listen to Gundecha brothers, live. It is really, really sad though, that this form of music is marching towards extinction. I suppose, this is too traditional an art form, that fails to pervade through the masses, perhaps in commercial ways like other forms of music.

Music, hit my senses again, this time at Bangalore when I attended a Shakti concert, live. This was the first time that I got to listen to Zakir Hussein and U.Srinivas, unrivalled maestros in their own right. I was truly amazed by improvisations that Zakir could do on a Tabla. Equally flummoxing was the way V. Selva Ganesh played the Kanjira, where he made it sound like a
Mrudangam, an African drum of sorts and more.

Probably, this is too obscure a media to express the genii of these artists, or I am just running short of expression here. Experience it yourself, and you would understand exactly what I mean.

Say hello to the Sangam Turtles!

From the left:

SC : Cooks Daal and Jeera Aloo like a dream. Lead Cook. More about SC here.
VH: Coffee specialist, Manager - Public Relations.
MG (Me) : The toaster guy, Lead - Breakfast Services.
SA : Sleeps. Cuts vegetables. Director - Inventory Management.
SM: Reads. Principal Consultant - Photography. Lead - Egg and Tea services

Additional Info & Context:
Sangam - The name of the house we live in!
Turtles - All of us hung out at Amma's, sporting turtle-necks brought by VH from Germany -:)

PS: Posted entry is v1.0 Beta. Post likely to accrue content over time.

'Hello World' of Dosa making

Cautiously dropped an unmeasured amount of batter on the non-stick pan. Apprehensively spread the same in a slow, slow, circular motion. A few spoonfuls of oil for taste. A few tense moments later, my first Dosa was ready.

It didn't stop there. A few minutes later, Souvik and myself confidently tried out a French Dosa (Dosa with half-boiled egg, name inspired from 'French Toast'). An egg was lost in the process and the yolk of the second egg almost slipped out of the pan. But that was OK. The end result was commendable though!

All dosa adventures for that day ended with our very own gastronomy maestro, Vasant preparing a delectable Om Dosa (Omlet Dosa). Fantabulous stuff as we celebrated Asha and Vasant's tenth wedding anniversary.



Have a look at my first dosa! (Note: Batter was prepared earlier by Asha)

A Dollar of a different kind

Donald Knuth, an A.M Turing awardee and one of the most respected computer scientists, recognized for his seminal work - The Art of Computer Programming, has a lighter side to his esteemed image. Don gives away as a reward, to those who find mistakes in his works, 256 pennies. While you are wondering what the significance of that odd looking number really is, the geeky souls would be happy to prompt that it makes a hexadecimal dollar!

Also, follow this link for more info.

Resolutions

Leave work on Friday in a total mess, make merry on the weekend and wait for Monday morning to make a new resolution that you would work more effectively that week & clear up all the mess that you piled the week before. I was just wondering whether this is any different from making a resolution on new year's day that you would do better in the year that has just turned up?

On second thoughts, maybe this ritualized resolution making isn't that demeaning after all. It is, at least, better than hoping (unless the resolution has the word 'hope'). What do you think ?


Disclaimer:
Highly subjective post!

Reflections from 2004

Every new year starts no differently. It starts with a mixed bag full of hope - a hope to forget the bad times of the past year in a hurry and for better times to come, a hope for continued success and contentment, a hope for profound sanity in the world, and a hope to hope no more.

2004 was a year that saw me travelling quite a bit to break the monotony of daily life; a year that saw me making first-time trips to Mangalore, Goa, Hampi, Chennai and Dharwad ; with more than beautiful memories to cherish, with unforgettable experiences to stay. It was a year that saw me tangled between needs and wants, aspirations and reality; a year that saw me shift jobs for the first time.

2004 saw me demanding more from myself and I am happy about it.