Trip To Goa..(Part 1)

The title would have given an indication where I was this long weekend. Me and family along with some of my friends from engineering college decided to go to Goa. So here goes the story, but before that; a quick cycling update;

22nd Jan; 10 kms to office; work at office; 10 kms back home

Total Distance Cycled So Far: 213 kms

Ok so back to the story. Got back home on the 22nd and decided to take a day off on Friday. Had a horrid time in office on thursday since we were discussing recession and it’s impact on business. It wasn’t convincing, but essentially we were told that we could not encash leaves (PL) for the year 2009 and that only 6 out of the 12 would be accrued. Here lies the problem for some of us who have served more than 6+ years at this company, we were already maxed out with the PL, which essentially meant that for the year 2009 (and who knows for how long) we could not accrue leaves and could not even encash leaves. Think abt. it, the more you have worked hard for the company and given the best years of your life, here’s the prized returns that you get. Mind you, it’s not that the company is suffering as such, on one side there are these “cost-cutting” measures being taken whereas on the other hand we continue to “hire”..and the term used is “selective hiring”, oh yes, that makes fair sense. In any case, so my mood wasn’t that great. One silver lining though, I would have to take all of my PL (12) for the year 2009 as leaves. So decided to skip office for the 23rd, that would mean a 4 day weekend and plan an outing with the family. So, on the 23rd while we were thinking about where to head, Yercaud was one, I just chatted up with my college buddy (Nitin) as to what their plans were for the long weekend. My college friends are all either in Pune or Mumbai area. They mentioned that they (4 families) were planning on taking a trip to either Kolhapur (about 3 hours drive from Pune on the now superfast 4 lane expressway (Mumbai – Bangalore NH4) or some winery in Nashik or Ranjangaon. One of my friends, Vikram preferred Koyna. They had already booked a mini-bus for their sojourn. Quite a bit of discussion happened, with folks asking me to drive up to Kohapur (550 kms from Bangalore). So I mentioned to them, instead of Kolhapur, why not Goa ?  You folks can drive down to Goa and I will drive upto Goa from Bangalore. It meant that the distance and the travel time had increased for all of us, but who could resist the temptation of Goa. Finally all agreed that it would be Goa. Sankya who had arranged for the mini-bus got down to making the needed permits to visit Goa/Karnataka. This is needed for a public transport bus. The plan was to start from Mumbai. Vikram & Nital would catchup with Sankya’s family and they will drive down to Thane to pick-up Mayur and family and Andu Chaudhari and then they would head to Pune to pickup Nitin and family; from there they would head to Kolhapur-Amboli-Sawantwadi-Goa. Plan was they would start at 7pm on Saturday, travel all-night and be at Goa on Sunday morning/afternoon. For us the plan was to start from Bangalore and be in Goa by that time frame.

We decided to have lunch at a new restaurant that has opened up right next to our home. It had a buffet system (Rs 275/- per head, unlimited food). There was one complimentary drink as well, Sawani had a Strawberry Soda and I decided to have a Carlsberg beer. Food was pretty good and we came back impressed.

Once back home, got down to planning. We decided that we would travel by car (there was no question of travelling otherwise), and then started thinking about the best time to leave and the path to take. There are 3 main ways one can reach Goa from Bangalore, one is via Bangalore-Tumkur-Shimoga-Karwar-Goa, (Bangalore-Tumkur is on the NH-4 from where you bypass onto State Highway (SH 708) towards Karwar via Shimoga. SH’s typically are 2 lane roads, making the drive a bit slower, typically shorter routes though. The other is via Tumkur-Rannebennur-Haveri-Sirsi-Karwar-Goa. There’s one more where you drive further from Haveri-Hubli-Belgaum-Amboli-Sawantwadi-Goa. I was familiar with the 2nd and 3rd route but was not familiar with the first. So we thought about a good time to leave, finally we decided we would leave at 3:00 am early morning on Sunday. Since it was early morning and dark, i decided to take a partially familiar route 2, wanted to drive through the night on the road I knew and then by daylight I could then take the unknown road (ie. Sirisi-Karwar-Goa). So we all (Sawani, Arjun and I) packed up and retired for the night early by around 9:30 pm with the alarm set for 2:15 am. I was too excited to sleep and kept on waking up every couple of hours. Finally at around 2ish in the night, I decided that’s enough and got up. I let Sawani and Arjun sleep for a while, while I finished making up the last minute packing, maps, torches etc. I woke up Arjun at about 2:30 am, and he was up on my first call, fresh as a daisy. Try the same on a school day with Arjun and it’s a totally different story. But that’s for another post. All of us got ready sharp at 3:00 am, and we were out on the road by 3:15 am. Traffic was light and we were able to reach NH4 (Bangalore-Mumbai) by about 4:00 am. From there on the journey was pretty uneventful, other than the general banter of the 3 of us. Sawani had packed nice breakfast for all of us, and so we could continue driving all throughout without taking any halts (other than loo breaks). We reached Haveri by 9:30 and then got off the NH4 and took the State Highway to Sirsi. The road wasn’t that great, and that slowed us down a bit and we reached Sirsi (distance of about 60kms) by 11:00 am. We continued on towards Karwar via Kumtha, the road was much better on this stretch, and we were able to reach Karwar by 12:00 in the afternoon. Karwar is on NH17 (Mumbai – Goa) National Highway. We were on NH17 and then headed towards Gokarna and reached Gokarna by 12:30. I decided it would be worthwhile to visit Gokarna Mahabaleshwar temple, since it was only 10km off the highway and I was pretty sure that we wouldn’t be able to make it on the drive back home. Sawani was preferring to head straight to Goa. But I persisted and took the detour and reached Gokarna by 1:00 pm. Gokarna is beautiful place (although crowded) with an excellent beach. The lanes are extremely narrow, and there is no clear indication of parking. We passed through so many narrow lanes (barely a car could pass through) and reached the beach for the parking. Guess what, the parking area had a huge pile of sand and I didn’t notice it, and my car got stuck in the sand. There we were at 1:15 pm, with the sun blazing down on us pretty bad, with our car stuck in sand. I tried my best at revving it out of the sand, but the more I tried, the more the wheel stuck. The engine started over-heating as well and we could see smoke bellowing out from the engine bay and the smell of heavy burnt rubber. I was tensed and a bit clueless. Sawani was fuming mad. We had a small fight (tempers flared really), We tried reaching out to the localites in Gokarna who had setup shops nearby to help us, but no one did. The entire localites seem to be so unhelpful, it was disappointing. Rickshaw, auto, taxi drivers everyone just looked the other way or enjoyed our predicament. Luckily I was able to catch hold of 3 very good samaritans (they were drivers from the other visitor vehicles parked by) who decided to help. I wasn’t able to get the car out, so asked one of the driver to take control of my car, and me and the other 2 pushed the car. Couple of failed attempts, but later we were through. I couldn’t thank the 3 enough, and they were really god’s own souls for they neither asked for money and were more than gracious that they could help. God bless them.

So on we went to the famous Gokarna Mahabaleshwar temple. It’s an extremely crowded place with devotees thronging the main shrine. The men have to remove their shirts and only then can they enter the shrine. We all met with a very nice young “guruji” who explained to us the history of the temple and asked us to perform a small pooja (abhishek). We were able to gain access to the main shrine (although extremely crowded) all of us were able to make it and perform the pooja at the shrine. At Gokarna Mahabaleshwar, the main deity “Shiva” is in the form of Jyotirling. It is only the second place in India, that has the Jyotirlinga. Also it’s the only place in India which has Shiva and Vishnu shrines at the same temple. Hence it’s very pious and we can do the full pradakshina at the temple. Other Shiva temples, you do only a half pradakshina. We were blessed. We came out of the temple, and walked towards the beach, where our car was parked, and guess what, some other cars were parked right in front of our car making our exit almost impossible. No drivers in sight to move their vehicle out, it felt terrible. Luckily enough, one of the car driver was sleeping and we were able to wake him up and asked him to move his car, which would give us a way to get out. Sawani got barefoot on the hot tarmac + sand and helped me guide the car out. Somehow we were able to scrape through,and Sawani was so fuming mad. The people in Gokarna have become extremely “majorde” (A marathi word for “I don’t care a damn”) due to the continous flow of tourists (foreigners in plenty) that provides them steady and healthy income. Sawani actually almost burnt the bottom of her feet, that’s how hot it was. Anyways we were in our car and on our way out, with the AC slowly but surely reducing the heat between our ears. We reached NH17 by around 2:30/3 pm and found a nice Kamat hotel on the highway. We were in regular touch with the folks driving down from Pune, and came to know that they also had their fare share of issues. It seems at the Karnataka checkpost they were not allowed to enter Karnataka, since they didn’t have a permit, so they had to travel back all the way, find alternate route (much slower) from Maharashtra directly into Goa, without getting into Karnataka. Finally they were able to make it to Sawantwadi and they had decided to stop for lunch there. So we also decided to stop and have lunch ourselves. At kamat’s the food was all vegetarian and Sawani ordered simple Idli-Sambar for herself and Arjun, while I ordered a rice plate. The food was excellent and hygienic. At the cash counter, I saw “pan” and we decided to have pan’s as well. To our surprise the pan tasted too good. Sawani actually ordered 4 more and we had them as we headed towards Goa. Goa was still about 150 kms and the road narrows considerably, so the going was much slower. We passed through beautiful small villages that adorned the road and finally were into Goa. The original plan was to stay at Sankya’s relatives in Ponda (pronounced Fonda). But it seems there was a change in plan, and Vikram asked us to drive all the way upto Panjim and then onto Miramar beach.He had a friend who had a bungalow just 5 mins walk from Miramar beach. So we had to drive further up for about 50 kms. Came to know that Sanket and family would head for their home in Ponda, and join us the next day. So we wouldn’t be meeting them till the next day. We headed towards Panjim and although tired (it was nearly 13+ hrs of driving for me) the sights and scenes of Goa filled us with amazement. The place is so laid back and the people seemed so nice. The traffic was well managed with not many people honking, it was pleasure.

On the way, I had this thought, what if I could setup a company (Internet based) in Goa. All one really needs to be online is internet which Goa has. But it comes with so many more advantages:- Beautiful weather, and beautiful city, nice network of roads, no taxes, less costs, the beach. Imagine informing clients to drop by your office, they ask where is it, and you say Goa and guess their reactions. Good for business, I definitely think so.

Anycase, we headed via Panjim towards Miramar beach and reached “Panchavati” the bungalow that Vikram had booked for us, exactly at 5:00 pm. Vikram guided me to the point, and we met the gang. It felt awesome…

GOA with FRIENDS…Coming soon in Part 2

Cheers,
YVR

Cycling Updates…

15th Jan: 10 km ride to the office; No gym; At office; 10 km ride back home

16th Jan: No gym; 9.5 km ride to the office and 9.5 kms back home

17th, 18th Jan: Saturday and Sunday, decided to rest and let my muscles recover. Went and cleaned up my cycle. WD-40 sprayed, grime removed from the chains, lubricated with oil. The oil that I have seems a bit thick, I need to look for really thin oil, but for some reason not able to get Singer oil anywhere nearby. Still on the lookout.

19th Jan: No gym; 9.5 km ride to the office and 9.5 kms back home

20th Jan: 10 km ride to the office; No gym; At office; 10 km ride back home

21st Jan: 10 km ride to the office; No gym; At office; 10 km ride back home

So overall it’s been pretty good. I have been able to build some strength in my legs and feel more and more comfortable.

Total Distance Covered on Cycle So Far: About 193 kms

Cheers,
YVR

Technorati Tags: Cycle,Bicycle,Exercise

Makar Sankranti

We all celebrated Makar Sankranti on the 14th of Jan. We had a holiday at work, so was able to spend some quality time with my family at home.  I have so many fond memories from my childhood about this festival. When I was a kid, staying in CBD Belapur, Navi Mumbai (New Bombay as it used to be called then), we had a kids gang of sorts, about 10-15 of us, used to play cricket-cricket, maybe sometimes other games like soccer, badminton but we were cricket lovers to the core. Anyways so back to Makar Sankranti, on this auspicious day we used to get up early, my mom would make special “Tilgul” sweets at home and we used to go distribute sweets door-to-door in our neighbourhood, alongwith “Tilgul” it is a Marathi tradition, to quote “Tilgul ghya god bola”, i.e. “Have Tilgul and talk sweet throughout the year”. We used to take blessings of all the elders and used to feast on the sweets. Oh..those were the days…

Coming back to the present, on the 14th, as usual was up by 6:00/6:30 am and we (Sawani and I) decided that we should make tilgul at home. Lazed around a bit, since it was a day off and then decided to go on my bicycle ride. 15 kms in 45 mins was what i was able to do. Got a hair cut and was back at home. Finished up reading up the news and then went on a calling spree. Called my folks back home in Pune and chatted with them, called up some of my buddies from college and wished each other. In the evening Sawani went and purchased all the items that were needed to make “Tilgul” and she & I finally got down to making “Tilgul”. Btw: when I say I it really means I interfere more than help most of the times, but this time I actually helped her “mould” the tilgul in “ladoos”. It was fun and they tasted just fabulous. Arjun also enjoyed a lot, although he was more interested in his cars and movies.

Overall it was a sweet day, with memories of the youth, delicious sweets to savour and hopes for a wonderfully sweet 2009.

Cheers,
YVR

Technorati Tags: Makar Sankranti,Festivals,Tilgul,yranade

3 days on a page

11 Jan

11th being a Sunday was spent lazing around. Had a late brunch and decided to cook some delicious mutton (goat) curry myself in the afternoon, which would be ready to be devoured at night. I had to return the CD’s borrowed yesterday… So hopped on my bicycle and went across to the nearest ATM to get some cash. for some reason the ATM’s near my home just wouldn’t accept my ICICI card and give me the cash that I needed. I tried at SBI and Andhra Bank ATM’s, finally returned back home, parked my bicycle and decided to go by car to the Citibank ATM. Although it’s not far about 2.5 kms one way from my home, I decided it’s better to go by car since I was not sure if my ATM card had issues and I might actually have to go to the ICICI ATM which incidentally was in a different place, and also it was afternoon and the sun was right at the top, shining bright. My card worked fine at the Citibank ATM and I was able to withdraw the needed cash.

Went across, returned the CDs and got “Oye Lucky Lucky Oye” and “Kidnap” to watch in the later part of the day, and got fresh 1kg of mutton from the nearby store. The mutton was fresh cut and soft. Marinated it for about 2 hrs with nice fresh seasoning and cooked some really delicious mutton curry by around 5pm. It was awesome, no…not bragging..but it actually turned out pretty well…I did go for my 15kms bicycle ride and it felt really good to be out in the evening on my bike..then settled in to watch Oye Lucky Lucky Oye and it turned out not as good as the hype. It was allright so also was Kidnap. So all in all it was pretty good day that was spent cooking, cycling and watching movies.

12 Jan

For some reason I am feeling quite bored to go to the gym. Not sure if it’s lack of drive or motivation, but for sure I have reached a gym plateau. Hopefully it will wear of, on the other hand my cycling escapades have increased tremendously. On Monday I didn’t do any form of exercise, but went across to my office with clothes for the rest of the week. Yup, I plan to carry my clothes for office from Tue-Fri on Monday in my car, and cycle to office Tue-Fri of the week. This way I will have a fresh set to wear at office and I won’t have to lug them along everyday on my backpack. It does become pretty tiring to carry additional weight particularly while coming back in the night. At office, my office was decorated by the admin staff, wishing me a belated happy birthday. Three of us at office share the same birthday and there was one more gentleman who had a birthday on the 12th. Typically we have a culture at our office, that the person celebrating his birthday, should share sweets with the entire staff. Believe me it was one sweet day at office. 5 of us actually bought sweets and distributed at office. There was awesome variety and all of us were heavily loaded with sugar and carbs. But it was pretty good day at work with everyone in jovial and spirited mood. Once again, although I bought sweets for the entire office, I forgot to carry some back home and again had to face the brunt of “you do this always” from Sawani and Arjun. Ha ha Ha…they understand, what a bullock I can be sometimes.

13 Jan

As per plan on the 13th went to office on my bicycle. It actually feels really good now. I have got the strength in my legs to stand up and push myself on the inclines and sometimes over the footpaths (pedestrian walkways), which btw are not existent in most places and if at all they exist are not well maintained, so you need quite a bit of brute force to jump up and down these. I cycle from Brookefields where I reside to Kodihalli (opp Leela Palace) on Airport road, a distance of about 9.5kms. This road is pretty busy particularly on work days and it’s kind of scary to get used to bicycling with all the bus, cars and motorbikes that share the road with me. But once you get the hang of it, I think it’s works fine. I need to get a helmet though…but i will wait for some more weeks to make sure I actually continue this activity. The most amazing thing is that I feel I am doing my bit towards the environment, and I end up saving Rs 100/- every day. Imagine if am able to do this every week, week after week, I would end up saving a ball-park Rs 36000/- annually. That would almost make up Arjun’s 1 year tuition fees. Yes, don’t be surprised by that number, my Arjun is still in Junior KG (Nursery LKG) but his fees are almost 40K/year. Education, well I think I finished my entire education in that 1 year fees. Oh well, that’s another interesting topic for a post in itself. So back to 13 Jan, the day was as regular and mundane as it could be at office. Things are going at a comfortable pace currently with the recent release out on the 9th. Me being a Technical Architect, have now to do start on the System Architecture of the Femto Controller that we plan to launch by the end of 1st Quarter 2009. Things are sure going to hot up in the next couple of weeks. Cycled back home and had a wonderful dinner cooked up by my wife (Leftover Mutton curry also tasted much better) and signed off for the day.

Cheers,
YVR

Reviving Network Steering

Have finally decided to revive my Network Steering blog at blogger. It’s where I will post all things technical…

Cheers,
YVR

34 and Counting

Well I turned 34 on the 10th of Jan and hopefully will continue counting. Things are pretty good right now. Had a nice little family party and outing on the 10th. Got up early around 6:30 am, received a SMS from my dad and mom, wishing me a very happy birthday. Called up my parents and took their greetings and best wishes. Both of them are doing allright in Pune, mom said they wanted to come down to Bangalore, but couldn’t make it since her eye allergy flared up again. Sawani and Arjun then announced that they had got a nice cake from Just Bake, it was a pleasant surprise, Choco-Walnut Cake, wow it looked gorgeous…Took quite a bit of calls from my friends and colleagues. Vikram, Nitya (His daughter Gargi and I share the same birthday) and Mayur called me. Prasad from work had sent out an SMS to me on the 10th Morning 12:00 am, and mentioned, that I was a good mentor and good leader. It felt pretty good reading that SMS and I called him up to convey my heart-felt thanks. Had quite a time reaching him (he must have had a late Friday night) and here I am trying to say thank-you at a relatively early 8:30 am on a Saturday morning ;) Well he sounded sleepy…but he was gracious and kind to take my call. Well later on thought about going out for my cycle run, but then decided to skip it, and cut the cake instead. So I cut the cake with Sawani and Arjun singing Happy Birthday…it was special and felt great…the cake tasted awesome…i’m not the one with a major sweet tooth, but this time actually gorged on the cake, it was that good.

Spent the rest of the morning lazing around, thinking what to do ? Should we cook (get some fresh mutton) or go out for Lunch ? Finally decided it’s better to bunk cooking all-together and decided to celebrate outside. We went out for lunch to Radha Hometel a nice little hotel that has come up about 2kms from our house in the Whitefield area. Had a lavish buffet spread that contained well rounded starters (soup, salad) Italian Pasta, Mutton Curry, Chicken and Chicken Biryani and an assortment of veg items (too many to be listed) and one truckload of pastries, sweets and ice cream. It was pretty nice and well worth the price. Had to down settle everything down with a nice cuppa coffee.

Later after lunch decided to visit the Sapphire Toy shop at Richmond road, next to Lifestyle. Arjun wanted to buy a particular toy from the movie “Cars” and was really excited at the prospect. It was a truck that houses the “Lightning McQueen”…i forget the name of the truck…This Sapphire toy shop is one big shop (not as big as Macey’s) but it’s pretty big dedicated shop for kids and I must say it stocked a huge amount of toys. Unfortunately that truck was out-of-stock and this got Arjun topsy turvy….we spent almost an hour searching for his truck still, finally Sawani and I were able to convince him to look for an alternative toy instead, and we settled on one of the transformers car (a car that turns into a robot…well that’s one parental activity really) and Arjun seemed satisfied with that one. He had an eye for a racer car from the movie “Speed Racer” but that one was really expensive and we were able to convince him. My Arjun is real sweet in that sense, very accommodating, you explain to him it costs a lot and he understands. My good boy, as I call him..:) Out of the shop we were in about 2 hrs and saw the Reliance Mart sale going on nearby in an adjacent building. Went in to check things out and lo and behold, really nice clothes were on offer at real bargain prices. Got nice fully cotton t-shirts and some jeans for myself and Sawani also got some nice cotton tees and pullovers. The quality is pretty good and I must say impressive.

Headed back to home and reached in the evening,  decided to rent out some videos on the way back and saw 2 movies in the evening “Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi” and “Sorry Bhai” …both were all-right. I liked Chitragandha Singh, she’s pretty smart and a good actress. In the night, ordered some pizza’s for us and were fully-loaded again. Went for a nice walk in the night and signed off for the night…satisfied…a day gone by…worth remembering…

Cheers,
YVR

2nd Week of 2009

Wow, time flies, I have been wanting to post on a daily basis, but for some reason, I just couldn't get the time to do it. So anyway, better late than never. Here's a snapshot of the week gone by, yes, I know it's still Friday morning, but hey guess what I am already in the weekend spirit ;)

So what happened...well for starters I have been pretty regular with my exercise routine. Here's what I did:-

Monday: 5th Jan: 1.5 hrs at the gym - 30 minutes run on the treadmill at 8.5kms/hr followed by stretching and ab exercises, followed by a 20 min stationary bicycle ride (covered about 9kms)

Tuesday: 6th Jan: Skipped the gym. Went for a 15km bicycle ride instead

Wednesday: 7th Jan: 1 hr at the gym - 30 mins run on the treadmill at 8.5 kms/hr followed by stretching and ab exercises. Had to finish off early due to some work to catch up on.

Thursday: 8th Jan: Skipped the gym. Cycled to office (9.5 kms from my home) instead in the morning and cycled back home in the evening. Yes and quite a bit of work through the day.

Friday: 9th Jan: Skipped the gym again. Again cycled to office. Presently at my desk writing this post.

So overall it's been pretty good on the workout front for me. On the office front it's been pretty hectic as well with the release lined up for today. Things are going all-right I must say, although we have some hiccups to care of. This customer is pretty inquisitive and does a very keen and in-depth analysis of our software upto and after the release. It's tiring and frustrating considering that we support multiple customers, but at the end of the day, this does help in improving the quality of our software as well.

Arjun's school began this week. Things seem to be going fine with him now, he has learnt mine and Sawani's mobile numbers and now he can make a phone call, so he's been calling me atleast 3-4 times a day.. and everytime i say to him that i am in a meeting, he's like..."arre yaar...tujhi meeting sarkhi sarkhi chalu aste"...He had a day off yesterday from school due to Moharram so he was busy troubling Sawani the whole day. Sawani and Arjun actually made home made chocolate yesterday all with cashews and almonds. It tasted really yummy. In the evenings Monday-Friday I have started (atleast try to whenever i reach home by that time) to catch up Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, a tv serial on Star Pravah. It's impressive and I have grown to like it quite a bit.

So overall a pretty good week gone by. Btw: i turn 34 tomorrow. Not sure what i would do, but would prefer a relaxed saturday (will try to do my 15km cycle loop) ..oh the midnight marathon in bangalore is also tomorrow. Hopefully by this year i will be at good fitness levels to start running the half-marathons atleast. This is one goal i have had for about 3 years now, but for some reason i just haven't been able to go beyond the 10kms run mark. I am hoping this mix of cycling and running will help me get there to achieve the 22km mark sometime this year.

 

Cheers,
YVR

First Weekend

Had an interesting weekend. We just literally lazed around in the house.  Me, Sawani and Arjun. We had a nice quite time together after a long time. Arjun has become one talkative jimbo...i call him "pakapakya" which in Marathi (that's my mother tongue) means talkative. Got a call from my dad on Saturday, thought that they (my mom and dad) must also be relaxing on the weekend, but lo and behold, I get a call from dad in the evening stating that they are in Dapoli. Now why that doesn't surprise me..well my parent's just love visiting places. In fact I feel they just can't sit in one place for long, their love for tourism is amazing. I wish I had that zeal, at that age, I just hope I can walk. Anyway's, dad and mom alongwith my dada Mama and dada mami went for a short trip to Dapoli (Mama had some agricultural conference..he's a very well know economist btw). They must be back in Pune now, I didn't get a chance to call them, they did mention that they would visit Vyagreshwar as well..(that's our kuldaivat...family deity) on the way back.

So what else did we do...well Arjun was busy with playing his 'cars' game, yes..the disney animation 'Cars' movie is now an interactive game for the kids. It's pretty interesting and there's some learning thrown in as well. Arjun does play the game pretty well now, btw: he's good at using my laptop as well...(oh btw: he'll be 5 in March) and can use the mouse effectively too.  Me and Sawani were just lounging, watching tv the whole day. Did get a couple of phone calls from my office, my team was working hard on the release for the 9th of Jan. Things look good as of now. We went for a nice walk in the evening, Arjun bicycling around in front of us as both me and Sawani went for about 5/6 rounds of our apt complex. It was pretty refreshing. Had a nice dinner (simple varan,tup mith, bhat) and signed off with a glass of mango milkshake.

Sunday was equally spent lazing around. I did spend some time (actually almost 2+ hrs) on trying to setup the Windows Live Writer to work with 2 blogger accounts. I migrated my networksteering website to blogger, and thought will start posting to it as well from Windows Live Writer, but for some reason it just doesn't seem to work. I still haven't figured out how I can post to that site, from here. Oh ..I really need to revive networksteering.  In all that exercise, the Live Writer actually screwed up the author of my earlier posts here. Don't know why it changed my user-name. There's something seriously wrong with blogger api and google needs to fix this soon. The error that i kept getting was something to do with cookie failures. Oh well...i need to spend some dedicated time to get that working. In the evening, again went out for a nice walk around our complex with Arjun on his bicycle. It's getting pretty cold out here in Bangalore these days. Had read about the trucker's strike due to the rise in diesel prices, so decided to fill up gas in my Suzuki Swift as well just to avoid petrol outages, long queues etc. Along the way decided to actually measure the loop (remember I mentioned I cycle a loop near my house on the weekends) and it turns out it's not 20-25 kms, but rather 15kms. So I stand corrected, I cycle about 15 kms in an hour on the weekends, mind you though the loop is not that easy, it has quite a bit of climbs and even in real cold weather, leaves me completely drenched in sweat.

So all in all a nice 1st weekend of the year...

Cheers,
YVR

Refreshed

On the 2nd, felt much better, refreshed and relaxed than on the 1st. Was a usual day to begin with, was at the office by about 10/10:30 in the morning and was pretty tied up with the release delivery items that were lined up. Had a very productive first half of the day, and the performance reports of our stack were pretty good considering that most of the system testing is now nearing completion.

Second half of the day went through most of my news feeds. Maybe I will write a post one day about all the blogs that I have subscribed too as well. Any case, Dan Caruso on his Bear On Business blog has a post titled Zayo and the Nameless Blog, where he talked about Brady Rafuse who was his colleague at Level 3 communications and Brady's (comparatively) recently setup named my blog. I went across to that blog and I must say it's a pretty good blog and I immediately felt the need to subscribe to it. One article that caught my attention on Brady's blog was "Budget In the Blink of an Eye" where he talks about his liking for books written by Malcolm Gladwell namely 'Outliers', 'The Tipping Point' and the extremely famous 'Blink'. I had heard of all these books but unfortunately never got a chance to read them. Now I think it's time to lay a hand on all three. Now that we are on books, last december i bought and read Lance Armstrongs 'It's Not About the Bike' and I must say it's pretty inspiring. In fact I was so motivated by that book, that I actually decided to take my fitness regimen to another level by adding up bicycle rides to my daily grime of gym work. I plan to bicycle about 20-25 kms/day over the weekends. I have a nice 20-25 kms loop that i can do near to my house. I actually got my bicycle 'Hercules 6 Speed MTB' all serviced again in the month of december and actually went out in the last 2 weeks of December on my cycling escapades. It felt awesome.  btw: currently I haven't been to the gym for the past 2 weeks...and haven't been on my cycle as well, due to the reunion party, christmas vacation and the new year binge. Oh well, i will definitely be getting back to my exercise routine from Monday onwards. Ok so coming back to books, I also have got Nandan Nilekani's 'Imagining India' that I still haven't started to read. I plan to devour that one soon. So now I have 4 books on my plate to read (not necessarily in order, i may actually read them in parallel)

1. Nandan Nilekani's : Imagining India
2. Malcolm Gladwell's: Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers

I need to see where to buy these books from here in Bangalore, most probably I would have to go to Sapna Bookstore in IndiraNagar or Crosswords.

In the evening headed back for home and reached a bit early 8:00 pm IST, since I had to attend a birthday party of my son Arjun's friend Rudraksh, in our apartment complex. It was a more of a family get-together rather than a full-blown party since most of his friends are out on vacation. His parents actually were telling him to postpone the party for the next weekend so he would have more of his friends who could attend, but you know how kids are these days. What they want they ought to get, so the party was held on the day of his birthday. As I said it was more of a dinner get-together with 4 families together. They being Oriya's the dinner was sourced from a local oriya restaurant nearby and I must say the chicken curry was delicious. The birthday cake had 'black spiderman' (Arjun's comment) and was sourced from Just Bake and it was delicious. Had an interesting time, we discussed quite a bit on varied topics. Couple of interesting topics:-

Honda Civic or the Toyota Corolla Altius which one ? This one came up since the hosts have actually booked a Toyota Corolla Altius which they are expecting to be delivered tomorrow. I actually like both the cars, but obviously haven't done an in-depth research on both the cars (don't need to really ;) but essentially am a Honda fan more than a Toyota fan (I had a Honda Civic when in the US from 1999-2002 so you may guess where I maybe more inclined to) but I must say the Toyota corolla altius does seem a neat package considering the features that are thrown in. I may actually spend time doing a comparison of these sometime. One more item on my plate.

Mobile Telephony in India and it's penetration into rural India ? This topic came about with another gentleman from our apartment complex (strangely enough never got to know his name) whom I met at the dinner. It was interesting discussion where we discussed the current pitfalls (low bandwidth, hey but there's 3G coming, but hey are there enough subscribers for these services) In India, I think most of the telecom subscribers use the basic services (ie voice and SMS). There really isn't a large penetration in VoiceSMS, GPRS, Internet etc, yes there is a growing demand for these services and they will eventually definitely start, but for that in my view they need to be made further affordable. With higher bandwidth becoming a possibility operators would need to focus on keeping the costs down as well for increased market penetration. We also discussed a bit about how Femto is set to hit big time in Europe, discussed if the Femto concept would work in a country like India. In my view, it's difficult since there are not that many broadband subscribers/users in India, so a Femto concept may not see great deal of success in India as in Europe where there is an already existing heavy base of broadband users.

Overall, it was an interesting day, a day that gave me some items to add to my wish-list for the year.

Cheers,
YVR

First Day of 2009

Had a pretty wretched first day, thanks to myself for it though; was totally flushed out due to the party on the 31st. Am still in recovery. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, that's Newton's 3rd law and reactions from my wife (Sawani) were exactly equal to my 31st night actions. So now onwards for the year 2009, I have decided to stay off of hard liquor. Probably may continue to have wine but that too only on some special occasions. This will help (hopefully) in meeting my other goal of loosing some weight. Not that I drink that much, but occasionally do go overboard. It's been nearly 5 years since i quit smoking (5 years on 27 March) so considering that experience behind me I think i can easily achieve this goal as well.

Well.. what else, did go to the office on the 1st since we have our product release for a major tier-1 customer lined up for the 9th of January. There are some issues that need urgent attention hence the entire team was in office and we did make significant progress. Hopefully that continues unabated through this year.

Felt a bit feverish in the later part of the day but had to be in office till about 8pm since there was a status call to attend with our director. Went home and had a pretty light dinner, played with my nearly 5 year old son Arjun for sometime and signed out for the night.

A New Beginning

It's the first day of the year 2009, and I have finally decided to start posting some content out here. Well to start out with, here's wishing a very happy and prosperous new year ahead. Are there any new year resolutions that I have made for myself ? The answer is no, not really, since frankly I don't have a clue what I specifically would like to focus on...yes there are items on my plate, but I wouldn't make them into new year resolutions and (in a way) pressurize myself. Yes, would like to focus on improving my fitness and reduce weight. I have been going to the gym for the past 6 months (off for about 2 months) and have been able to improve my stamina and general fitness, but still need to work on dropping the pounds. I plan to start using my bicycle a bit more often. In fact I plan to post most of my biking and running experiences out here as well going forward.

On the work front, would also like to focus on the telecommunications evolution and what lies in store in the upcoming year. Plan to read up on LTE, WiMAX, Femto and other evolving technologies and maybe blog about my daily experiences on my other technical blog. I am currently working as a Technical Architect at one of the technology companies in Bangalore.

So what did I do in the last couple of days of 2008. Well I spent quite a lot of time partying. We had our engineering college reunion setup for the 27th and 28th of december at our college in lonere, maharashtra, india. I graduated with a Bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering from Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Technolgical University Lonere in 1996 and it was great to meet all my friends after 12 long years. It was a heady feeling. I plan to post a separate post on the reunion some time later..

For the 31st evening, hooked up with one of my colleagues in office and other colleague who recently left my company and went on to join top Tier-1 organization in bangalore and had a family get-together. It was fun and we partied till late in the night/early morning. Actually am still reeling under the impact of it, as i write this post.

So all in all it was a pretty busy last 2 weeks, hope the new year has something interesting for all of us.

Cheers
YVR