bItS aNd pIeCeS oF mE

2011-08-06T19:40:00.003+05:30

Just back from a mega grocery purchase. Had the first experience of lugging two fully loaded shopping carts at a time :-S

somehow, every time I see the crowd of humanity sweeping through the supermarket, picking vegetables etc, I get reminded of ancient humans foraging for food in the forest. I guess a supermarket is essentially the same space where people hunt and gather, but in a slightly more benign way.

2011-07-11T19:53:00.003+05:30

Baby#1 attacked my netbook today. After beating the living daylights out of it, he made a good effort to dig out the keys one by one. This had a side effect of triggering his first google search.

2011-07-04T22:04:00.005+05:30

Its month 6 now, and baby#1 has started displaying complex emotions:

Phase 1: Baby is sleepy OR Baby is hungry. (simple!)
Phase 2: Baby is happy/sleepy OR Baby is hungry
Phase 3: Baby is happy/sleepy OR Baby is hungry/sad
Phase 4: Baby is happy/sleepy OR Baby is hungry/sad/bored
Phase 5: Baby is happy/sleepy(not very often) OR Baby is hungry/sad/bored/fussy (most of the time)
Phase 6: Baby is happy/sleepy (1%) OR Baby is hungry/sad/bored/fussy/ANGRY!! (99%)

A sure way to trigger anger is to give him something, and then take it away from him :)
The rest of the states do not seem externally controllable :(

2011-07-03T20:25:00.000+05:30

Had been to the induction programme of my part time Master's course. It was one of the nice hotels in the city. The interiors and the atrium made me a bit giddy (they were that good!).

Arrived at the conference hall to find 400+ people. I never expected this many people at Bangalore would sacrifice a year's worth of weekends for a Master's degree. :-)
Soon, a long session of bla-bla on ensued.. Most of which were the nitty-gritties of rules and regulations. Hope the lectures that I have to sit through are more interesting. Anyway, looking forward to next Sunday.

An outing to the mall with everyone pretty much wrapped up the weekend.

2011-02-28T21:19:00.002+05:30

Gmail Bug Deletes E-Mails for 150,000 Users
PCWorld Feb 28, 2011 7:25 AM. The cloud has failed roughly 150,000 Gmail users, whose e-mails have been deleted and accounts disabled by a mysterious glitch.

Im spared!

2011-02-18T07:52:00.002+05:30

the scale of the world still boggles my head.

2010-07-08T00:33:00.002+05:30

this place is swamped in football fever. germany is playing spain at the world cup semifinals.. and despite being ignorant all but the most basic rules of football, i am tempted to watch. so here i am, on the sofa with mrs.wife who seems to be more educated on the rules than me. noone seems to be scoring, and its starting to get a bit tiring following the ball left and right.

2010-07-04T10:10:00.002+05:30

stayed up really late today... mrs.wife was also awake. we crept out to the balcony around 2.30AM to see Jupiter as a bright spot on the eastern horizon. set up the telescope and fiddled with the controls for a few minutes and got our first glimpse of the gas giant. it showed up as a pale brown disc on the viewfinder, perhaps a third of a centimeter across. Surrounded by a set of bright spots, its satellites. Looked up their names on Stellarium.

We could see a faint line through it, which is presumably its north Equitorial ring. I read recently the the south equitorial ring had mysteriously disappeared in a course of a few months this year, (see link) leaving its great red spot in a background of light brown. however, our telescope was too small to see the spot.

Took a short break when the planet decided to hide behind a tree. We just sat there, leaning on each others back and looking at the sky. Its really quiet at 3AM. I think it is the quietest part of the 24 hours.

2010-04-19T17:28:00.006+05:30

finally it arrived on Saturday morning.. after 2 months of waiting.

i could hardly hide my excitement as i scribbled my initials on the DHL guy's PDA. I lugged the big brown box all the way up to the apartment to find an equally excited mrs.wife. we had quite an unboxing ceremony complete with photos of each step. the next couple of hours were spent trying to figure out how to put all the 20 or so pieces together. Managed to piece it together at last:

waited until it got dark (it was not getting dark fast enough... the sun sets now at 8.30pm).. and lugged it out to the balcony.. the first obvious target was the moon... after a couple of minutes, worked out all the knobs and rings to make it point at the moon...

the first look at the moon through a telescope is always unforgettable. it was spectacular... the thin crescent was riddled with holes which somehow looked quite different from all the pictures i have seen. its like looking at a 3-d picture.. any slight movement of the telescope would make us lose the picture, and then it was hard work to find the moon again.

there is a small scope fixed on the top of the telescope called a 'finding scope'. its job obviously is to help align the telescope right at the object before looking through the eyepiece. and underestimating its use, we dint align it with the telescope earlier. that left us fumbling in the dark, frustrated trying to find the moon through the telescope.. a moon which was so obviously hanging in plain sight above the western horizon. 2 hours of struggle and wiggling and rotating the knobs, and we could catch the moon just twice.

on Sunday i aligned the finder scope by choosing a distant apartment as the target. (a leaf on a plant in one of the apartment balconies).. Sunday evening was much better, the moon was now much more easily "findable".. a quick change to higher magnification eyepieces showed a heavily cratered moonscape. we just couldn't have enough of it and took turns peering through the eyepiece.

we had our laptop with 'stellarium' running in it which let us easily identify most of the brighter objects.. it was just a case of matching the patterns on the screen with the sky.

Venus looked very bright, and through the telescope, we saw it as a bright spot with a plumy kind of tail.. that was the atmospheric distortion at work since it was so low in the horizon. i couldn't see the crescent though mrs.wife got a glimpse.

mars was faint red, directly overhead... after about 10 minutes of hunting, we found it... it looked like a fiery dot flying through the sky... some atmospheric effect was distorting the point of light to a smudge. since we were looking at a very small part of the sky, we had to make constant corrections to compensate for the rotation of the earth... every 20 seconds or so we had to twist the knobs a bit to keep mars in the viewfinder.

we were a bit disappointed with mars since we couldnt see any details on it.. i later read that mars was now on the other side of the sun, pretty far away... have to wait another 6 months before it gets close enough to see its surface features and polar ice caps.

at the highest magnification (750x), even a slight touch on the telescope mount to turn the tracking knobs was enough to shake the view through the eyepiece violently, so after every twist, we had to take our hands off and wait for the picture to stabilize... it was especially difficult to focus since a light touch on the focusing knob would cause the planet to go out of view..

then we tried our luck with Saturn, which was a bit towards the eastern horizon. i started with the lowest magnification 50x... i dint have much hope since it was much fainter than mars or Venus. then all of a sudden, it came to view, and it is a moment i will never forget... a small circle of light with a small short line through it... almost like the Greek symbol Φ (phi)... and there it was, sailing slowly across the viewfinder. Saturn, with its famous rings!

switched to the 4mm eyepiece and i could see a tiny dot alongside it (which was probably one of its moons titan)... we both were literally fighting for our turns to look :-)

at 1.30 am, with a back sore from stooping over the viewfinder, decided to call it quits for the day and hit the sack. phew! that was the second night of sky-watching.

new beginning

2010-04-16T22:40:00.006+05:30

my phone beeps... and beeps... mrs.wife is still deep in sleep... groggily i fumble around with one hand to snooze the alarm... then i realize it is not an alarm but a call. it was my sister. i got up, a little concerned since she was still in hospital, and it was not normal for her to call at this time. quickly fired up the laptop and called her back.

it was a crisis, but luckily nothing serious. my sister and bro-in-law were going nuts trying to finalize a name for the newly arrived baby. they had to give a name for the birth certificate form before they leave the hospital.

we had sent them a shortlist some days back, but they were still not able to decide. with 30 minutes before my morning bus to office, i start searching for a few more choices.

our favorite from previous searches was 'rizwan' which means 'guardian of the gates of heaven', but my sister was still skeptical about it... opened a few more windows and dug up around a dozen more names... called up bro-in-law and spelled him all the names, with their meanings... one of which was 'tanveer'

and that's the name they finally decided to give him....

2010-04-14T00:09:00.003+05:30

feels like an incredibly long amount of time since i blogged... sometimes i feel like writing, but i stop short...

feels like life is rushing through a routine... the same bus back to and from office everyday... a call each to both our homes, and movies or documentaries in the evening... and its already time to sleep... only to wake up and rush to office.

2010-04-14T00:01:00.003+05:30

why do people strive so.....? forsaking all comfort of routine, they struggle, suffer and push, drag and pull themselves towards that distant goal... and once they reach it, a temporary feeling of relief, the pride of achievement... which evaporates faster than dew on a sunny morning.

achievement turns history.... slowly sinking down to the dark depths of memory.... only to be replaced with a new goal... shining so far away... with the long winding steps leading to it.. and then its all over again.

2010-03-21T17:09:00.003+05:30

life is chugging along smoothly.. sometimes slow, but most times at breakneck speed...

monday gives way to midweek, and suddenly its friday evening... before i know it, the sinking feeling on sunday night and monday morning blues...

over and over again.

watching a lot of documentaries these days.. saw Carl sagan's Cosmos, now watching BBC connections - which was aired before i was born.

2010-02-14T00:45:00.004+05:30

2 e-paintings from mrs.wife....

btw, she hasnt got wind of my blog... yet..

Things to do to convert an Indian Driving license to a German one

2010-02-12T18:44:00.005+05:30

If your stay is shorter than 6 months, no probs dudes and dudettes, the Indian license is still valid. If you are staying longer, converting your license to a German one would be nice.

Indian license holders do not have to take a mandatory driving course, but have to appear for the theory and the practical tests to get their license converted.

Step1: Get a translation (Führerschein-Übersetzung) of your driving license. There are numerous places where you can get this done. A search on the net will help. I did mine from the local ADAC office. They will send the translation to your address in about a week. Approx cost around EUR 50.

Step2: Get an eyetest (Sehtest) done. You can do this at any major optical shop. Usually no appointment is required. People with spectacles can take the test wearing it. Cost approx EUR 6.

Step3: Attend a first aid course. The place to do it is the local Red Cross (Rote Kreuz) office. Their website will have details, normally, you need to register in advance. Cost approx EUR 20.

Step2: Go to a driving school. This is mandatory since you have to take the test in a driving school car (equipped with dual controls). If you can drive, you can tell them that you want to take the test directly without going through all the lessons. They will give you an application form with the school stamp on it. Fix up a couple of introductory lessons. They would need it since they have to be sure you can drive before they let you appear for the test. Note: The whole course is a bit expensive!
Approx cost 35 EUR for a lesson of 45 minutes.

Step4: Go to the Driving license office (Führerscheinstelle) usually at the town hall (Rathaus), give them the filled up form, photos, Driving license translation, First aid course certificate. They will give you details on how to pay the fee. (usually a bank transfer). Approx cost 45 EUR.

Step5: Wait

Step 6: After a week, you will get a letter from the Rathaus asking you to take the theory and the practical test. The tests are conducted by the certification agency TÜV (Technischer Überwachungsverein) which roughly translates to Technical Inspection Association. Call them up (the nearest office) and fix an appointment for the theory test. Approx cost 20 EUR.

Step7: The theory test has lots of complicated, tricky and confusing questions. Hence preparing for it well is strongly advised. If you are learning the theory yourself, you could purchase a CD with course material and simulated tests. There is a pool of around 2000 questions, hence some 10-15 hours of preparation would be good. You can pay the fee at the TUV office just before the test.

Step8: Fix a practical test. The school will do this once they are convinced about your driving abilities. Sometimes, they try to scare you into taking more lessons, so watch out... :-). A much cheaper way to prepare once you are confident with the basic rules here is to ask a friend or a colleague who has a car to help you. But make sure your Indian license is still valid!

Step9: Take the test. Usually, it contains city, countryside driving, parking (reverse), and emergency braking. After the test, the evaluator will give you a certificate that you have passed the test. This certificate does not allow you to drive around yet.

Step10: Go back to the Rathaus driving license office with all the papers and certificates and your Indian driving license. They will exchange it for you. If your license is still valid, you have to wait until the validity expires before you can exchange it.

Now comes the sad part. You have to give back your Indian license to the Rathaus before you get a German one. When you are leaving germany, you can exchange it back. They will keep the german license for a max of 5 years. So make sure you go back to germany before the hard earned license is thrown into the shredder :-)

2010-02-12T18:33:00.004+05:30

yipeee.... just passed the german driving test.

dint have to drive on the countryside or on the highways for the test.. because of the weather, just a 30 minute circuit around the city..

The roads were snow filled and slippery... somehow managed not to give the evaluator a heart attack :-)

2010-01-27T15:12:00.001+05:30

Checked the temperature indicator while I was stepping out of home today morning and saw a relatively nice -1.3deg.

Came out to realize I had made a mistake, the bank clock on my way to the bus stop read -13deg :-(

Now it’s a sunny -6 outside. I am so sure I will be skipping my walk after lunch today.

2009-11-12T01:50:00.004+05:30

its that time of the year... when things become colorful again.. and then slowly fades to shades of gray.

took a long walk to wartberg.. the vineyards were harvested already and the leaves were slowly turning red and yellow.. was a bit cold, but dint rain.

visited the restaurant on top and had kaffee und kuchen (coffee and cake). It was already dark by the time we got back at 5.

2009-11-01T01:33:00.000+05:30

saw wall-e for the third time today.

2009-09-21T10:57:00.001+05:30

first trip with mrs wife.
2 days, 670km, and lots of rains.. :-)

silence

2009-06-25T00:26:00.006+05:30

Its 30 minutes after midnight. I like the silence late nights. Occasionally broken by dogs barking in the distance, or a vehicle passing by somewhere.

I can hear my hard disk gently clicking, my own breathing, and the soft mechanical sound of my keyboard. Once in a while, the CPU cooling fan runs with a whirring sound for a few seconds which sounds like small sighs coming out of my laptop.

The LED pixels on the screen glow bright and colorful, and the blinking cursor gets chased across the screen by my keystrokes.

2009-06-21T22:00:00.004+05:30

picked up one of last year's half completed doodle and finished it...

finished?... i think for a painting, especially an e-painting, there is nothing quite like 'finished'. one can pick up a more or less completed painting and then paint over it, change it in infinite ways to give another completely unique surface of color.

dint quite know what to call this one... it was supposed to mean something like 'beings' made up of light. watching over people.. everyone.

2009-06-21T18:04:00.007+05:30

At last found time to do version 2... made the clouds a bit more menacing.... but still lots of work needs to be done... :-(

i think i can relate a bit to this incident because i have been caught in heavy turbulance over the seas once.... 2 years back... off from mumbai, on my way to paris.... it is scary to feel the plane pushed one way and then another by the wind... with creaking noises made when the wings flex because of the turbulence... and hearing the engine sound rising to a roar, and then suddenly fall to a whine as the pilots try to maintain airspeed and keep the plane in control... and worst of all, knowing is that there is no land beneath, only dark, murky waters kilometers deep....

i put on a song on my ipod real loud (still remember, it was hoobastank-the reason), grabbed my chair armrests with my arms crossed, closed my eyes and sat with a racing heart for the next one hour, after which luckily, things cleared up... :-)

2009-06-10T22:27:00.003+05:30

flight 447 - draft 1
tribute to all the 228 souls lost in the atlantic..

2009-03-27T16:58:00.000+05:30

out for lunch.. cruised slowly on the bike.. it feels nice outside. its comfortably warm, i can feel the warm air flowing past me.. sunlight streaming in through the branches, flowers gently float down from the trees, half-empty roads, and people walking lazily... restaurant was crowded as usual, but there was a holiday laziness to it.

2009-03-21T12:54:00.002+05:30

just finished seeing 'Valkyrie'. one of the most thrilling thrillers i have ever seen. :) next up in line is the french 'AMELIE'..

dint have breakfast yet. feeling a bit hollow in the stomach. time to go out for some chowchow.

2009-03-20T19:41:00.000+05:30

Its Friday evening again.

Today was a bit tiring, had to participate in a brainstorming session and give a presentation, followed by back to back meetings.. Even though its tiring, its better than being tied to a desk.

Friday evenings have a strange tingling sensation associated with them.. An anticipation of the 2 days of break from routine, anticipation of adventure, parties, getaways, long drives, idling at home, afternoon naps…. Decided to leave early today, and halfway home realized that I dint take the house keys with me today… Called up a few friends to find all of them were either occupied, or far away…. Came back to office. Have to wait till my bro-in-law (a.k.a Bil) comes back home after a couple of hours. Planning to spend the next few hours reading news.

2009-03-19T11:15:00.002+05:30

Just glanced at my watch to find it was 11:11AM… just like yesterday.. and the day before. I can hear keyboards clicking, paper being shuffled and the hiss of the air flowing in through the AC ducts..

posted by mail at 11:15AM

2009-03-16T22:36:00.001+05:30

went out to get dinner. i parked near the restaurant while waiting for the chapatis..

it was drizzling.. inside the car was a sense of quiet, calmness. just the tic-tac-tic of water drops on the roof... some muffled sounds from the road... droplets cling to the window panes causing the lights outside appear sort of smudged... around me in the car were numerous little white lights on the dashboard and on the door. they seem like stars in a night sky.. and i glanced at the empty seat next to me...

2009-03-08T12:10:00.005+05:30

lazing around in trivandrum...

its exceedingly hot here. In a desperate attempt to keep my operating temperature within acceptable limits, i am trying out dumping buckets of water (with ice cubes in it) over my head, multiple times a day.

Im starting back today instead of tomorrow. Dont want to be caught up in the chaos generated by 'attukkal pongala'...

a drive to remember...

2009-02-24T20:49:00.020+05:30

my longest drive ever. clocked some 900 km over 2 days.

sneaked out of office immediately after the department all-hands-meet at 3. was still feeling a bit giddy after the KM presentation that i had to give.

dumped our bags into the trunk, topped up the tank, checked air pressure, bought a torch (for potential flat tires) and some stuff to eat, and we were off!

phase 1: bangalore->mysore

took the new NICE road out of bangalore to mysore road. as usual, the drive through mysore road was smooth... we cruised at a constant 90kmph... were thrown from our seats a few times (as usual) because of the stupid speedbreakers. stopped at kamath lokaruchi for a snack, which turned out to be so heavy that it became dinner.

phase2: mysore->madikeri

the road till hunsur was great, new and smooth.... with new road markings and bright reflectors whizzing by... most of the time i felt like i was driving in some track in my favourite game need for speed. however, since the road was unfamiliar i kept below 100 and tried to maintain a constant speed...

we stopped in the middle of nowhere and had coffee... away from the city lights, the skies looked spectacular with so many stars.

phase 3: madikeri->mangalore

downhill all the way, from around 1000m to sea level.. down from the deccan plateau... initially the roads were winding and i had to concentrate to avoid the trucks that were crawling uphill... then it was through plantations and mostly deserted towns... this was the part of the trip that we seriously felt we were going off-course. We kept checking the GPS just to be sure..

the roads into mangalore were horrible. looks like someone had dug up the road deliberately to make it un-traversable. reached our hotel at 3AM. slept like a log till morning.

day 2: joined our other colleagues who reached mangalore by van. went manipal, udupi, and then to a forest in udupi district.

an hours worth of walking and clambering through the woods led us to this spectacle.

The sight was worth all the effort spent, and thanks to the hot and steamy weather, everyone jumped right into the water.

day 3: one of my friends felt like having "mangalore bun" for breakfast... it looks like noone eats out in mangalore on a sunday morning... ater half an hour, we were still driving round and round in search of a restaurant. finally found a nice old one called 'dasprakash'.

attended the marriage, which was nice. they had a saxophone 'kacheri' which sounded great. i was a bit disappointed that no one thanked the musicians after the finished their job.

we must have looked a bit odd driving into a marriage with a car dirty enough to have been through a rally. the only part of the car that was remotely clean was the part of windshield which the wiper could reach.

we had big bowls of icecream at "pabbas" before starting our journey back at 2pm.

like the onward trip, i decided to drive back all the way by myself to complete the 'feat' :-)... we stopped a little bit before we entered madikeri town... sitting on a parapet, watching the sun turn into hues of orange and red and the watching the hills turn into shadows. while sipping coffee.. i feels nice to wander like this... at our own pace.

took a long break at mysore for dinner. the last 120 kms or so were tiring. i felt as if the car was just 'flowing' through the road. finally reached bangalore after midnight. dropped off all the other guys and reached home by 2am.

i dont remember whether i hit the pillow first and then fell asleep or if it was the other way round.. :-p

2009-02-03T01:27:00.003+05:30

my father sent me his fz-18 for my birthday. he says he is too busy to take photos anymore. Im planning to keep it only till i get my sigma 17-70 repaired somehow. And then i'll return it.

The sigma lens had worked great.. i used it for around 3 years extensively.. now some part which controls the aperture has blown. and noone knows where to get a spare. not even their regional service center..

got my hands on the panasonic fz18 yesterday.. its a bit like my first camera, the fz10.

took a few test shots around my sister's house. here are a couple of them... above is my trusty ol' communications cum navigation cum entertainment device... on the right is a lazy Sunday evening sunset, reflected off a windowpane.

Im trying out indenting pictures left and right for the first time. looks cool, especially the text squeezing around the pictures.

got to sleep now..

2009-01-25T18:32:00.004+05:30

happy birthday...

2009-01-25T11:49:00.000+05:30

the new discovery channel ad...
one of my favs

Spoken
Astronaut 1: It never gets old, huh?
Astronaut 2: Nope. It kinda makes you want to…
Astronaut 1: Break into song?
Astronaut 2: Yup

Sung
I love the mountains, I love the clear blue skies
I love big bridges, I love when great whites fly
I love the whole world, and all its sights and sounds
Boom-de-ah-dah, Boom-de-ah-dah, Boom-de-ah-dah, Boom-de-ah-dah

I love the oceans, I love real dirty things
I love to go fast, I love egyptian kings
I love the whole world, and all its craziness
Boom-de-ah-dah, Boom-de-ah-dah, Boom-de-ah-dah, Boom-de-ah-dah

I love tornadoes, I love arach-a-nids
I love hot magma, I love the giant squids
I love the whole world, its such a brilliant place
Boom-de-ah-dah, Boom-de-ah-dah, Boom-de-ah-dah, Boom-de-ah-dah
Boom-de-ah-dah, Boom-de-ah-dah, Boom-de-ah-dah, Boom-de-ah-dah, Boom-de-ah-da, Boom-de-ah-dah

2009-01-24T23:05:00.006+05:30

... and it sparks, fizzles, struggles, grows.. bright, warm, crackling.. and it consumes... and what is left is a frame.. what is left is cleansed.

all attempts to draw a face in the painting ended up with it looking like an alien was peeking through the fire... so decided to stick to the flames alone..

todays jog has left lots of parts aching.. hitting the rug early today.

2009-01-24T02:23:00.001+05:30

off to sleep.

2009-01-24T01:43:00.012+05:30

sometimes mundane things look photographable..

here is my wireless router and modem... the duo who make up my indispensable link to the world.. once in a while they fight and stop talking. and then i have to reconfigure them to 'like' each other. :-)

arent they a cute pair?

at night, you can only see their green and red LED lamps blinking furiously in a row.. makes one almost think they are dancing to some imperceptible tune...

at the top left corner is part of my lonely sock which never seems to find its pair.

here is one more photo from the archives...
saw this at a supermarket in stockholm sometime last april...

coffee specially made for people who blah blah a lot. :-)

2009-01-18T00:15:00.006+05:30

after a long time, decided to give the drawing pad some work...
here is an attempt to capture yesterday night's dream....

silence... alone... sunny... blue sky.. warmth.. rush... brown...soaring... wind on my face... excited... a bit scared... watching the world in a passive kind of way... i forgot most of it though... or atleast i think so..

2009-01-12T21:16:00.006+05:30

mr bean on tv..

mr bean is celebrating his birthday at a restaurant.. alone. he just writes a b'day card for himself... places it on the table, and after a pause, picks it up.. tears open the envelope, takes out the card, and looks genuinely surprised and happy.. :-(

2009-01-10T21:51:00.003+05:30

petrol woes..

employees of 2 huge petroleum companies go on strike and the whole nation held at ransom... we are so used to 'living' in our cities that we never think what would happen if something so taken for granted as petrol suddenly becomes scarce.. everything just stops. kids cant travel to school, people cant go to work, restaurants, supermarkets run out of stock, ambulances stop working... it will be a very different life..

i think the government did good by just forcing the employees to start working with a threat of arrest.... i wonder if the striking workers realize the importance of their role or the damage they had/could have caused...

heard today morning that the strike has been called off.. so we set out in search of the precious hydrocarbon... the traffic was thin.. very unusual for a saturday morning. the first three petrol pumps were either closed or had a long line of worried people and cars in queue.. finally managed to find one which had a shorter queue... topped up the tank to full.... with the truckers strike still going on, you can never be sure.. felt a bit guilty to buy a tankful of petrol when people were running around to find a little bit..

it has been a long time since my car has seen a full tank of fuel... the last few months has been spent exploring how far down the fuel indicator needle can go... :-)

but as of now, the yellow babe is happy.

2009-01-01T23:52:00.005+05:30

took a day off from work today... dint want to sit in my cubicle and work all day at the beginning of the year.. went for a drive in the afternoon with the regular group.. drove along the ring road to the go-karting place... but had to turn around since the track was closed for renovation..

the traffic was pretty thin since many offices and schools were closed. i dint want to reach home fast, and it felt so nice to drive today.. so cruised gently in fourth gear... the sun was streaming down in a nice kind of way and getting into my eyes... a few minutes, and a turn later, the sky started to get on an orange glow... stopped the car and took a few snaps while my friends waited for me in the cafe coffee day nearby. it was a bit tricky since i had to stand on the divider with high speed traffic on both sides.

new year sun: 01 Jan 2009

its a strange coincidence, when i saw this scene through my viewfinder, i remembered the the orange sky and the sun which i had written about in my previous post... or is it deja-vu again?

2 more...

2008-12-19T01:02:00.010+05:30

had been to my sister's house for dinner today. she got me coffee in this cup..

(photo taken earlier)

we used to have a similar cup at our house long ago.. when i was small and in school...

Theres something strange about this cup... everytime i see it, or rather the picture on it, i get deja vu..

i faintly remember myself strolling along some kind of park facing the canal.... looking at the buildings and the tower.. it was evening... with an yellow-golden sky... it was warm, probably summer... i remember the park benches and people watching the sun go down behind the buildings... i remember a breeze and a strange comfortable kind of feeling which i cant describe...

2008-12-14T16:39:00.002+05:30

today's major activity...

2008-12-13T16:55:00.005+05:30

played cricket (or rather tried to) for our office sports day.. the last time i touched a cricket bat was the same sports day last year!!... :-)

Got out after scoring one run. definitely an improvement over last year :-(

had a nice nap in the afternoon... the sun woke me up.

...so decided to take a photo of the heavenly light shining down on me. :-)

2008-12-10T13:25:00.002+05:30

In office... dint go for lunch today... Still feeling full after the four yummy aloo parathas that I had for breakfast... 1:15pm is the time when most of the floor gets empty for lunch break.. It gets really quiet to the extent that I can hear the steady hiss of air flowing in through the AC ducts overhead.

Starting with the appraisal process today.. I have to rate all the members in my team.. Its pretty hard to do it without getting biased with my perception, but has to be done. With the current economic situation and job security, noone would want to be rated low.

2008-12-08T17:12:00.001+05:30

no.. its not a distant planet!!..

this is how it looks like through the keyhole at the front door. taken with my mobile cam.

2008-12-07T08:47:00.000+05:30

bird poop..

yesterday, for the second consecutive day, i got hit with bird poop... :-(
its amazing how the birds can aim so well at a fast moving bike!

or considering the population density in bangalore, it might be difficult for birds not to hit anyone.. :-)

2008-12-06T22:43:00.009+05:30

saw an interesting documentary about honeybees on NatGeo...

the bees are supposed to come out of their hive for the first time when they have 2 weeks left to live... in these 2 weeks, they have to 'learn' everything about the world outside, and collect honey effectively for their colony..

the bee's brains grows (!!!) during this time (additional brain cells) to let them cope with the all the processing power it needs to 'learn' the outside world.. they start sampling flowers in random.. as soon as it scores a hit, (finds nectar), their brains store the position of the sun, along with the scent of the flower. (different flowers provide nectar at different times of the day). this combination of sun-time and scent helps them to score 'nectar hits' in the remaining part of the 14 days.

bzzzzz....bzzz... bzzz.

The bee community is structured, with different 'roles' that a bee goes through.. the 'foraging' or 'gathering food' part is the last of these 'roles' that an average bee takes up... its quite amazing... and of course, they have some kind of 'language' to communicate location of food to other bees... and i thought only humans talk.. :-(

I wonder how the researchers figured it all out.. :-)

btw, got stung by a couple of bees recently... three to be precise.. not a very nice experience..

did some reading on swarms and swarm intelligence on wikipedia... I had read Michael chrichton's 'prey' a couple of years back... which deals with a scary scenario in which a nanobot swarm goes bersek.

2008-12-06T09:46:00.003+05:30

reminds me of......

...me.

2008-11-30T23:16:00.003+05:30

today morning, i managed to finish something that i had been putting off since the last six months. sat for seven hours straight and sorted and archived all the 7000+ photos that were accumulated in my hard disk. i guess sitting alone at home motivates people to do something productive..

got sick of eating alone. got myself some cake and amul milk for dinner.

2008-11-29T18:22:00.004+05:30

the tropical storm 'nisha' which was active over the last few days has cleared.. and the sun is out for the first time since what it feels like a week of gloomy cold weather...

my roommate has gone home.. so its home alone again...
woke up late at 11 and went out for brunch..

the sky looks very blue today... deep blue with nice looking gradients.. looks like how you see the sky when looking through sunglasses. not even a hint of cloud anywhere.

had an afternoon nap, and saw 'the whole nine yards' in the laptop.. part 2 is pending for today evening.

started off to office in the evening to clear up some pending work... the sun was shining in an odd sort of way today... its difficult to describe.. the usually dusty smoky air is strangely clear.

2008-11-25T00:30:00.000+05:30

Two oddly similar things...

1. Timing diagrams in digital electronics..

shows which bits to be set or reset, when to do it, and for how long... all with respect to a 'clock' signal..

2. 'written' music..

shows which note to play (which key to press on the piano) when to press, and for how long... with respect to the 'rhythm'...

2008-11-24T23:03:00.006+05:30

todays experiment in office.
topic: how to open a soft drink bottle with a very uncooperative cap..

2008-11-23T20:33:00.012+05:30

Skanthagiri - night trek..

first camping trip...

skantha giri is a hill around 60km north of Bangalore..

started from home in the afternoon, drove to chikbalapur and then to papagni mutt, which is the start point for treks... our group started climbing by around 9.30pm with a guide...

climbed up mostly by stepping from one rock to another... our guide was climbing at a steady pace.. i think he climbs the hill every day... we were not used to climbs and were huffing and puffing in no time...

at some parts, the climb was a bit steep.. after every 20 minutes or so we would be gasping for breath... took some 4 to 5 breaks on the way up.... lying on our back on the rocks and waiting for our breath to get back to normal... watching the inky black sky... we expected the moon to light our way, but it was overcast, and more or less pitch dark.

the climb was a bit creepy in some parts, especially the parts where there were lots of shrubs... weird shadows thrown by our torches...

at some point, almost near the top, we stopped for a short break... we could see the glow from the lights in the nearby town... and the dark outline of the hill nearby... it was quiet except for the sound of the wind... it felt eerie and beautiful at the same time..

reached the top by midnight... it was drizzling slightly and was a bit windy...
managed to set up the tent and secure it to the ground... was a bit tricky because of the wind... we dint want the tent to fly away... was drizzling all through the night... luckily the tent was a good one and kept us dry..

Here is the climb profile captured by my watch.

wikipedia says its 1750m high... but i measured just 1475m..

poked my head out of the tent in the morning to be greeted with rain and gloomy weather.. we should have really listened to the weather forecast... the sun was blocked by all the bad weather... so no spectacular sunrise and no 'above the clouds' photos this time... :-(

cold, gloomy and windy...

windswept...

came back down by morning.. maybe we ll get lucky next time..

had breakfast near chikbalapur and drove non stop all the way to bangalore... made a big circle of bangalore to return the tent.. driving 15 km in the city was frustrating. was noon by the time we reached home...

2008-08-08T22:46:00.001+05:30

:-(

2008-08-08T22:26:00.003+05:30

yayyy.. im famous!!

:-(

2008-07-27T20:48:00.004+05:30

today morning i turned on my laptop to find.. the blue screen of death!!!!
tried a reboot, and the laptop got stuck at the BIOS screen.... :-(.... a quick diagnosis indicated my hard disk had failed.

was gloomy throughout lunch since i had lots of my precious photos from venice and stockholm in it... without a backup :-(

after lunch, opened the laptop up (with a kitchen knife!) 3 hours of toil, taking out and putting in screws, and countless reboots later, isolated the problem to the IDE interface of the DVD drive... everything started working again after i disabled the Drive in my BIOS.

ran to get my backup disk and made a copy of all my photos before something else decides to quit for the day..

moral of the story: make backups, backups and more backups..

2008-07-22T21:54:00.000+05:30

bangalore.. late evening. roads filled with traffic..

audis and fords cram shoulder to shoulder with tatas and bajajs in the crowded street.. jostling for space with bright yellow autorikshaws..

two wheelers squeeze in to occupy all the available spaces... traffic moves unsteadily, slowly, like a river of metal ...

horns... loud and soft... some shrill, some musical.. it never stops...

smoke... is everywhere... envelopes everything.... rising into the gray black sky... i can smell it. i can feel it flowing past my face..

illumnated by the bright city lights, the smoke takes on a strange glow which shrouds the city. the traffic, the roads, the buildings and the people... everything looks a bit unreal and movie-like in this glow.

i see hundreds of tired faces trying desperately to push through all this suffering and reach home....

2008-06-16T00:57:00.008+05:30

dug out some of the older photos from a couple of weeks ago...

my headphone jack had broken and had got stuck inside the headphone socket of my laptop..as a result, my laptop ended up mute.. no sound, no music... i dint want to take a risk with german computer repair shops, so decided to open it up myself...

btw, this is the wi-fi transreciever :-p

finally, after pulling out everything 'removable', managed to push the intruder out....

one of the messy things about opening up equipment is the multitude of screws you have to put back in. that too in the correct order...

always when i finally put everything back together, i end up with a few extra screws.. :-(

i tried opening the laptop up again and assembled everything back... This time, I ended up with a lesser number of leftover screws...

That was a good sign, so i decided to stop my adventures for the day..... :-)

2008-06-11T23:46:00.003+05:30

today i am moving out of my studio apartment. my rental contract expires today.. i ll stay in a hotel for the rest of my stay.

i lived here for 2 months and 4 days.
this is the most peaceful place i have ever stayed. i will miss it.

here is a photo of the apartment i took a few days back...

2008-06-08T03:22:00.003+05:30

up the hill again...
possibly the hundredth time....

its hazy today..
and my camera is set at a noisy ISO 1600 (which i dint know yet)

here is the stettenfels again...

vineyards and part of ilsfeld...

came up here in the false hope of seeing a sunset. and the sun disappeared behind layers of cloud...

2008-05-31T03:52:00.006+05:30

of the few things which remains of me after i die will be this blog... i wonder if anyone will see my blog after im dead.... but at least it will be on the net...

and then i realize that the blog is not really "on the net"... it just resides as some bits in a database in hard disks somewhere in a Google facility... when someone knows the link, and tries to access the page, the blogger servers assemble and 'recreate' the page for viewing... otherwise the page doesnt have an existance "on the net"..

maybe some stranger will stumble upon it someday.. and find some slices from the life of another stranger...

i hope it remains "on the net"... but since everything that has a beginning has an end, one day, somewhere in the distant future, google will go bankrupt (?) or will close down blogger.. but i dont think i would be around to see it.

2008-05-31T03:38:00.001+05:30

this one is called "the tree of hope".

dont ask me how I got that name. I have absolutely no idea. :-)

2008-05-30T05:00:00.001+05:30

I cant sleep..
I tried seeing a movie, tried making some paintings on my comp, tried writing.. its past midnight and I cant get sleep.

Dint want to be sleepy in office tomorrow.

Saw a movie called “tears of the sun”… around the time the movie ended, I realized that I had seen it before.. And no, I dont think im having déjà vu.

In between, went down to the basement to take my clothes out of the washing machine and found that someone had switched off(!!!) the washing machine.. this is weird. Restarted it again and came back up..

Here is today's picture:

dont know why i really painted this.. perhaps im missing home.. it looks a bit kiddish..

this one makes me remember of the times in my school days when i lay on my back on the terrace of my house, watching the stars.. and silhouettes of coconut trees...

in summer, when the reservoirs of the power plants dry up, there used to be planned power cuts for half an hour everyday... and for that 30 minutes, all the city lights nearby go off, and if you watch the sky, you could see stars..... hundreds of them, and satellites.... and planes with their flickering strobe lights, and all sorts of activity up in the sky..... :-)

its a weird feeling just lying there, looking at the flickering stars... the light from stars that started from the star billions of years ago. i used to feel so small..

im terribly bad at painting the moon.. i hope i get better at it some day.

Im going lie down, close my eyes, and count sheep till I fall asleep.

2008-05-29T02:45:00.001+05:30

2008-05-27T10:36:00.001+05:30

came out of my apartment today evening to find the sky in a spectacular medley of colors... ran back inside, attached the new lens, and climbed up to the third floor and started clicking... here is a pic i took, the castle is "burg stettenfels"

2008-05-26T12:11:00.001+05:30

Im running out of places to visit which are near!!
this is a crisis. and its steadily getting worse these months... i end up going to the same places again and again..

after an hour or so of frantic searching on the net, narrowed down on two places.. Tubingen (with an umlaut) and Esslingen.. both small old towns near Stuttgart...

the car GPS told us Tubingen was nearer.. so decided to go there…
the weather went from clear to cloudy to drizzling on our way there.. should have seen the forecast before starting off..

the neckar river flows through tubingen. one of the first sights was the narrow river, lush with greenery on both sides.. and gondolas (???) on the water.. im not sure if they are called gondolas... but it definitely dint look like they were from these parts… must be a tourist trap.. :-)

we walked through a weird looking pedestrian tunnel into the old town.. there were people pasting black paper over the lamps inside.. which was equally weird...

the old city here is unique.. the houses look a hundred of years old three and four storeys high.. and the frame seems to be built of - just wood!..

the strange thing was that the houses were sort of leaning on each other.. most of the houses dint have a vertical wall. Instead, they were leaning outward in a funny kind of way.. crossed quaint looking alleys into the center..

the rathaus looks a bit like the one in heilbronn, but is covered with some kind of decorative material..

there were people sitting around in the outdoor restaurants in the square… other than that it was calm and peaceful.. no tourists… I guess it’s the wrong kind of weather for tourists.

Had some bread and apfelstrudel to recharge my batteries.. then headed up the hill to the castle. (yeah, this one also has a castle on top of a hill like any other german town)...

Near the castle were "castle archers", practicing.... and a stern warning at the entrance to their yard said "eintreten verboten!!!".

I dint want to be shot down from the wall by some trigger-happy archer.. so made my way to the castle itself..

The castle courtyard is just like any other castle courtyard.. I think I should stop visiting castles… there were some doves flying around.. so had some fun chasing them with my new telephoto lens..

It started drizzling and I dint want water drops to go into my dear camera... So that was the end of shooting for the day.

But I couldn’t help taking some photos of some colorful things on the way..

On the way back, stopped in Stuttgart for dinner.. had a proper (Indian) dinner after a long time… a welcome respite from bread and chocolate cream and corn flakes..

Took a walk around schlossplatz. This was the first time I was here at night.. There were a band playing there called "the crazy crocodiles".. making lots of noise..

And here is the fountain in scholssplatz…. It came out ok considering it’s a handheld shot…

2008-05-24T16:02:00.000+05:30

i want to keep writing something here. but most of the time i cant.. i just visit the blog and close it without making a post..

i think ive caught some form of writers block.. :-(

and i found a cool addon for my blog... from google translate.. so this blog can be translated to lots of other languages..

it doesnt work so well because the tool gets confused when it sees "ive" instead of "i have" and "im" instead of "i am".. and im too lazy to change all my old posts... :-)

2008-05-22T23:54:00.007+05:30

weekend again...

my friend pulled me to see shinsheim museum.. since i dint have anything better to do, decided to go along... even though i had already been here last year..

saw all the nice old cars and airplanes again...

this one would have been nice to ride..

climbed into each one of the planes... somehow when I visit the same place again i can slow down and relax.... and not hurry to see everything....

i like the airplanes of the forties and fifties.. they have some charm to it that modern aircraft do not have...

went to the 3d IMAX theater and saw a movie about the international space station..

i never thought so much footage about the space programme was shot in 3d with 2 cameras... some scenes really made me feel like i was in space. i wonder if some of the 3d footage was somehow 'generated' from regular video...

went to heidelberg in the evening.. searching for a parking space was an adventure in itself.

since this was a much visited place, decided to walk to a place i havent gone yet.. a short but steep climb took us to 'philisophers weg' or 'philosophers street'.. the view of the town was great, but my camera ran out of power soon after i took these shots..

I think the image stabilizer in the new lens eats a lot of power...

2008-05-20T09:43:00.000+05:30

this one is called "anger" :-p
anger at not being able to paint anything properly... :-(

2008-05-19T06:40:00.000+05:30

the next house, through the window blinds...
looks a bit abstract.. :-)

2008-05-19T02:11:00.004+05:30

more test photos from the new lens....

view from my apartment towards Ilsfeld...

burg stettenfels again...

different views of abstatt...

2008-05-18T02:01:00.002+05:30

weekend again...
going to heilbronn... to buy a new lens!!!!!
:-)

i have been doing some research on the canon 55-250 IS. not too costly, and will give me the zoom range i need. and the image stablization is a bonus.

and here i am, zooommmmm.....ing on the bundestrasse...

that was a (little too) high speed turn...

untergruppenbach.. and burg stettenfels above it... shot is tilted as we were braking... but i liked it anyway.. looks a bit dynamic..

traffic lights - both yellow and red???
i got a new camera bag with the lens as my current one dint have space for the additional lens.. im accumulating stuff!!!.. which is not so good... :-(

and here is one of the first test shots with the new lens!!!

2008-05-12T03:21:00.000+05:30

it was a long 'walk in the (national) park'.
legs aching like crazy now...
got to sleep..

here is a photo (stitched from 3 photos) of a part of the trail...

2008-05-09T14:48:00.000+05:30

again, another late night painting. its called "fields in the moonlight.."
as is obvious from the picture, i was not in a happy mood when i drew this one.

and one more which i made a few days back... if you look very closely, very very closely..... i think it looks a bit like sunset.. :-)

2008-05-02T02:24:00.006+05:30

weekend again.
decided to walk up the hill right next to heilbronn... its called wartberg..

i have been here before... but i dont have anything better to do today....

charted out the easiest way to climb up and marked it on the GPS map in my phone...
i like maps :-) and i find navigating interesting.

way up the hill.... a colorful sign announces the cables that run underneath...

a few views from the top.....

there are some woods on top... as is regular with all the weinberge 'wine hills' in this area....

into the forest?

tractor tracks!!
i feel like taking photos of all silly things!

word of wisdom:
there will be a house/castle/fort on top of every hill in germany, having a long history, (which is usually displayed there) and it would have been invariably converted into a restaurant...

this one is no exception.. there is a tower behind this restaurant with a nice view of the area...

i found this sign on the top... i think this one means "all what one oversees is fruitful"

passed this nice avenue on the way back....

this one means "you have too much money!!!"
not always true.

almost empty streets.. and its just 7pm!

here is a sign i found drawn right in front of the local MacDonald's
rhymes with their catchphrase "im just lovin it!"
most probably the handiwork of a die hard burger king fan... :-p

2008-05-01T02:26:00.001+05:30

dinner!

exquisite delicacy made with eggs and... hmm..... er..... pretty much whatever i could get hold of... :-(

... which included a bit of tomato and some chilli i think.. or was it pepper??
when in dire situations, survive with what you have got! :-)

2008-04-22T02:36:00.000+05:30

not feeling sleepy today..... am up late nite with my pc..

i recently rediscovered painting - on the pc. :-) its interesting... its easy... and relaxing.. and there is no paint to clean up after you are done :-)...

and this is todays work...

2008-04-13T20:26:00.002+05:30

April 13, 2008

Quiet Sunday… I had woken up late today. Stepped out of bed only by 11. My calf muscles were aching in a nice sort of way after the long walks yesterday.

I open the window… I can see a few houses and the vineyard-covered hills behind them… Its quiet… except the sweet chirping of birds announcing start of spring... I couldn’t spot even one of them, though… I often suspect that the sounds come from some hidden speakers kept everywhere.... I could hear the faint voices of children in some distant playground… white clouds sail over the hills gently… in the distance, beside a field, an old couple are having a walk with their dog…. I cant express quite how peaceful it is… I wonder if the residents here realize how lucky they are to be born here.

I had specifically asked for this apartment… I am not sure if I will get another chance to stay in an apartment in the German countryside..

The first thing that I noticed once I was in the apartment and closed the door was the silence... The only sound that I could normally hear were my own heartbeat, the sound of my breathing, and the high pitched tone of blood rushing through the arteries in my ear…

going out for a walk now..
today evening i m going to sort out all the photos taken during the last 6 months.. i have put it off for too long..

2008-04-13T20:18:00.000+05:30

my second work of art(?)
the colors are much subdued now.. and as usual, i have no idea what the picture means..

2008-04-06T23:42:00.000+05:30

here is my first e-painting..

if you ask me what it means... ???... hmmmm... nothing in particular i guess... just random blotches of color. a picture of bacteria or fungi perhaps?? :-) or maybe it means something. probably its modern art.... :-p

2008-04-04T01:04:00.000+05:30

my stomach is making strange growling noises at regular intervals... every 10 seconds or so... i double checked that the sounds are not coming from my laptop speakers.. :-(
i think its time to gulp down more peach-banana juice and some more corn flakes.

im slowly getting tired of corn flakes. had it for dinner yesterday and breakfast today.. the maggi noodles my friend cooked in the evening was a welcome change...

2008-01-28T23:09:00.000+05:30

life looks grey.

2008-01-20T09:55:00.000+05:30

i do not want to blog... and yet i want to blog..
i can see that i cant remember most of my life in detail. its all looks a bit abstract. other than the days about which ive written about. the missing months between my posts are sort of fuzzy and vague.

edited the dept outing video till late night yesterday.. found out the hard way that it takes more than triple the time to edit and render a 10 minute video clip... and the whole footage is 3 hours long! :-p

today is a sunday morning... woke up early (which i havent done for so many sundays). cleaned up the house (which also i havent done for so many sundays).. left my clothes in the washing machine.. and listening to the 1979 song 'moonraker'.. it has a strange type of old charm to it. bitter sweet, like my other fav songs.

contemplating about going to office.. have a presentation to prepare and send before tomorrow afternoon. :-( anyway its better than sitting here alone at home all day and going nuts.

10.59am. im hungry. hunger feels like a void in my stomach.. got to go out and eat something..

2008-01-01T11:08:00.000+05:30

an empty road vanishing into the mist ahead...
a motorbike steady at 80kmph..
the cold morning wind on my face..
just the sound of air and the engine.

start of new year 2008.

2007-11-14T22:58:00.000+05:30

its great weather in Bangalore since the rains stopped a week ago.. its cool, and its sunny with deep blue cloudless skies. There is that perfect mixture of smoke and dust in the air :-) which makes it really nice to be here at this time of the year. This is the first time im in Bangalore for winter.

And in the evening, the colors in the sky range from bright red to deep blue.. with little wisps of cloud dotting the sky in various hues of red. the color gradients at around sunset are nothing short of spectacular. i have to document it before it passes and it starts to rain again.

2007-07-28T22:00:00.000+05:30

after twenty five years of existence, today i found the meaning of my name.
my name means - 'born of mind'

its amazing that i dint bother to find it all these years. i suddenly realized it when a friend asked me what my name meant. So I did some googling and found it.

so am i named after something created by the mind? a figment of imagination. a thought.
hmm. weird.

2007-07-28T15:32:00.000+05:30

Its a beautiful friday evening..
Got out of office early.. since my body was paining in different parts after my latest adventure at the gym, decided to take a break today. reached home, fired up my laptop, along with all the paraphernalia associated with it, and settled down in the midst of it all.. After a while, housemate number 1 returned from office, got dressed up, all funky, doused himself in perfume, and set off in the direction of purple haze (a pub near).. i keep remembering the propagation of species theory when i see this guy getting ready for an evening out.... Housemate number 2 is in a rock show, after an unsuccessful attempt to drag me along.. I have no idea what happened to housemate number 3.

I called up mom and dad. even though they live in the same house, i have to call them up seperately.. then called my sis. my average call lasts 3 minutes. a couple of minutes more if there is something important.

went out around 10, walked along the residential mains and crosses around here.. sometimes, i feel completely isolated and cutoff from the rest of civilization. like being on an island.. its peaceful.. and a bit lonely... i was whistling to myself... hands in pockets.. strolling.... looking at the sky... (and the occasional airplane)

got a packet of chocolate cream biscuits and a canned milk drink... got back home and finished off my friday night feast while watching to a national geographic documentary on heavy lift helicopters.. i think in another life, i was/will be a pilot.

its 11:55PM and ticking.. noones home... im again at my laptop listening to my music collection. I recently found that i have not even heard all the songs i have.. the latest one i dug up is 'ave maria'. the song (or prayer to be exact) is around a thousand years old... the version i have was sung by the vienna boys choir.. the lyrics are in an old form of german. i tried to read the lyrics on the net. its difficult to understand.. but it is peaceful.. the lyrics and the translation can be found here.

Its around 1PM.... people started arriving after their friday night 'adventures'... my housemate brought some of his colleagues along... we all sat around the tv and started chatting. we put the tv in low volume since a neighbor complained against us some days back for late night noise creation in the neighborhood..

so here i was, sitting with a group of people, three of them total strangers... (a body builder, and two musicians... :-p ).... the discussion started with pop, rock music, briefly passed through the life histories of some unfortunate (and messed up) rock stars, through gothic rock, mozart, his compositions, and went on (believe it or not) to newton and then Einsteins theory of relativity... and ended in the latest first person shooter computer games on the market... i was listening, observing, and from time to time, nudging them along with some inputs.. finally we decided to break for the night when people literally started falling down asleep.

its 3:01AM now and ticking. everyone else is asleep. and i am typing away.. into blogger... im listening to Mozart's Requem... the music that he composed on his deathbed. you can feel what the composer felt like.

eyelids getting heavy. i should sleep now.

2007-07-14T16:46:00.000+05:30

last week, my department head gave me some advice..
she told me: 'dont back off from getting into a fight just because you want to be a nice guy.'

yesterday, i got into a fight (debate) during my vehicle dynamics class.
The topic under discussion was rollover, for tall vehicles like SUVs..
Everyone in the class (including the teacher) was very sure that the center of gravity of a car moves around during acceleration, braking and turning. And according to them, when it is a sharp turn, the CG point comes out of the car ,and the car rolls over!!

This goes against what everyone learns in basic school physics. That center of mass (or center of gravity assuming a uniform gravitational field) of a body depends on only the mass distribution of the body. And since the mass distribution of the car doesnt change when turning (ignoring up/down the movement of the wheels due to suspension) there is no way you can bring the center of gravity of a car out other than dismantle the car to pieces and spread the pieces far and wide.. (the center of gravity of the whole system of bodies can be made to come out of the chassis). Even if you consider the things which move around (tires, part of the suspension, and the passengers, the combined mass barely exceeds some 20% of the whole weight of the car.. Its effect should be minor and not so drastic.

Me and my colleague were on one side, and the whole class, including the lecturer on the other!
i dont know why i did it, but i was debating against an entire class for the first time in my life..
i clung on to my point and dint back off.

i was explaining, drawing free body diagrams on the board, and proving what the others were saying does not fit in the basic laws of physics. let alone rigid body dynamics..

i looked up my old textbook (on the net) before entering the debate to reconfirm my explanation, but my opponents couldn't even step back and re-think about the flaw in their argument.

one guy even said since F=M x a, mass and acceleration are inversely proportional, and so when acceleration changes, mass changes!!! :-O

and going by their arguments, you can literally beat the center of gravity out of a body. :-)) haha.. i can think of people hitting a cricket ball and out pops the center of gravity.. funny indeed..

oh if newton would see these experienced engineers saying things i heard, he would surely faint.

Today when we were at the college for the simulation lab, the other lecturers were equally skeptical of my explanation. It was amazing that mechanical engineering lecturers dint even know the basic difference between mass and weight. I pity the students studying there.
We had to go to a professor to find a conclusion to the question that a school kid (who knows physics) could easily figure out.

it feels good to fight and win.

2007-06-24T20:07:00.001+05:30

I had a chance to speak with a colleague, who just returned from Japan after a long five-year stay. And when we talked about the Japanese people, he told me with a sigh – “yes, they live in their own strange world”. I have been thinking, and I see that all of us live in our strange own world. We see a small part of the world during our lifetime, we interact with a minuscule percentage of people of the whole population of earth, and we draw our own conclusions based on what we perceive about these people and places. Most of us are not even willing to consider the fact that these conclusions that are painstakingly created over a lifetime might be far from the truth.

And if you see the whole picture, the earth is infinitesimally small.
And speaking of small things, i still remember the day, as a child, i read about atoms and molecules from a big fat book, that 99.99% of an volume occupied by an atom is just plain empty space. I remember seeing the chair in front of me and suddenly realizing it as 99.99% empty space.

Even weirder was realizing i (my body) was 99.99% empty space. Have you ever thought that the atoms and molecules that comprise our body is the same atoms and molecules found on earth? It sounds pretty simple, but the fact is that we are "part" of the earth, and not something separate from it. say like a rock or a river. The only difference being the collection of molecules are capable of self organization and that we can walk around while a rock stays put.

Im going crazy sitting idle at home.

2007-06-19T00:10:00.000+05:30

Last Thursday, I returned home sort of gloomy. For no apparent reason at all… My housemate, who returned some time later, told me that he was also feeling down for some strange reason he dint know…

Hmm… think there was something wrong with the vibes around our house ;-)

Anyway, we decided to go and have a nice big icecream to cheer us up…

Two of my housemates make it a point to go to the church every Thursday night… So I decided to go along with them…

We bought candles outside the church and went in… there were lots of people standing on one side of the walkway inside holding candles… we lighted our candles from the people who were inside…

I prayed for my mom, sis and dad, and a few close friends… then got sort of stuck… I dint know what to pray about… I stood there holding the burning candles in my hand, blankly watching people who enter, and people who were touching the foot of a statue near the altar... it was kind of strange… having nothing to pray about… or dint I remember what all I have to pray about? It was not like this before.. I had something or the other to pray about...

I have a job in the company I wanted to be in. I am in the team I wanted to be in… I am getting paid enough to live comfortably… I don’t feel like wanting more money… I don’t want a promotion… I am happy with the worldly stuff I have… and feeling sort of comfortable…
I was thinking about all these and some more weird things all the way back to the ice cream shop near our house… Ate a big one with lots of chocolate and nuts in it... :-)

2007-06-18T08:06:00.000+05:30

half written.

Came home by bus. I chose to come by a non-AC airbus again. I don’t like air-conditioned (read airtight) buses. With unopenable and heavily curtained windows, and with a stuffy feeling inside, traveling in one resembles a ride on a horizontal elevator.

I strongly suspect that they re-circulate cold air instead of taking fresh air continuously from the outside to increase mileage.

Somehow I like the bumpy ride in a regular bus, with the windows open. I like the cold air on my face when I sleep… The road just out of Bangalore (After all the traffic jams) all the way for the first hundred or so kilometers is a toll road and is surprisingly good… it has two fenced-off lanes, with plants planted in the middle. Vehicles whiz through at above 100kmph through the perfectly finished road with no intersections or sharp turns… It runs through a forest, and some stretches remind me of the Autobahn. Since there are no streetlights here, only the reflective markings on the road is visible when it is dark, and at high speeds, the drivers view sort of resembles a video game…with bright white and yellow streaks flashing by.

I close my eyes and try to visualize how the wheel speed and lateral and longitudinal acceleration signals of the bus would look like. (hehe) I know im crazy. But I find this way helpful to go to sleep.

When I woke up in the morning, I could see bright greenery on both sides… somewhere in Alappuzha... It was raining and I could smell the dampness in the air. I think it is something about the diffused sunlight on overcast days that makes the greenery appear greener than usual.

2007-06-12T23:21:00.000+05:30

James Horner-A Beautiful Mind-Piano Instrumental.mp3
5 minutes song looping on for 2 hours now..
if i listen with my eyes closed, i can almost see a steady stream of notes..

I like staring at the voiceprint generated by winamp while listening to music.

(a voiceprint is a three dimensional frequency-versus-time-versus-intensity graph in which the third intensity axis is represented by the strength of the plot color.. )

This is how a voiceprint looks like.. the vertical axis is frequency, the horizontal axis is time, and how bright the lines are indicate how strong the sound was at that frequency at that point of time. The wavy lines are indicative of voice or a stringed instrument like violin.

I get irritated by Indian film songs (with lyrics) which to me sounds like a conspiracy to subconsciously drum the propagation of species theory to millions of gullible minds. I am forced to hear them under certain circumstances, like when im traveling home by bus and they put film songs blaring so loud that they drown the noise of the engine. It is horrible. I keep asking them to turn down the volume... but the volume keeps creeping back up. I go crazy if i listen to the the lyrics.. Somehow, i find it quite disturbing.... woo a member of the other gender with sugary words, mate, and have offspring, seems to be the message conveyed again and again in different forms..

I have no idea how/why people enjoy it. Thats why i prefer instrumentals, and songs in languages which i do not understand well... :-p

i often wonder how aliens would interpret music, if they ever come visiting. How can they distinguish between music and random sounds? even if they do an analysis in the frequency domain, the notes in songs without beats/drums will still appear unconnected and random.

What makes it sound good? Is it just the reaction of our minds to different frequencies, intensities, and timbre?..... which reach the brain as signals through some nerve from the ear? It sounds too far fetched to work.. Is music just an interpretation? something virtual? does music exist outside the human mind?

my meditation teacher once told me that everything we see, hear, smell and touch are just thoughts passing through our mind.. it makes sense for me..... (that opens up a Pandora's box of issues, maybe i ll blog about it later)...... So is music just a thought? created in the mind as a response to some fluctuating microvolts in the bundle of neurons coming from my ear?

If music is just a thought, that might explain why different people might interpret it to different depths... and that would also explain why some pieces of music sound heavenly for me and sleepy for others...

i wish i could blog how some kinds of music feels like... but i cant..

2007-06-02T00:06:00.000+05:30

“Long you live and high you fly
And smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry
And all you touch and all you see
Is all your life will ever be.”

- Pink Floyd, Breathe

2007-05-28T22:30:00.001+05:30

just back after dinner... had been to the restaurant nearby. it was almost closing time, and the staff looked like they had been through a battle. i feel sorry for the poor people. they looked tired, sad. i really hope they are not hungry too.

and we sit in these same restaurants, and keep on complaining about our jobs, and our life!

2007-05-22T20:19:00.000+05:30

started from office early, and Went to get some stuff from big bazaar.. thats the place where the common man shops.. Anytime you visit, its sure to be crowded... After picking up my stuff, i had to survive a long queue... If you are planning to buy something from the supermarkets in Bangalore, you have to bring along loads of patience. along with some reading material. I could feel my blood pressure going up through the roof as i waited. and waited. and waited.

They had some book on sale near the checkout counter. it was called "it happened in India" and it was the story of how some guy built up this chain of supermarkets. Well, if they make people wait like this, he wont be selling a book on success stories for long.

As i came out and went to the baggage collection point, i saw the guy manning the counter groping a bag kept on the shelf. Well, a nice place to leave bags indeed! Leave a sheep with a wolf. Hope my software design specs and books on vehicle dynamics dint interest this guy..

Traffic jams everywhere on my way back.. ofcourse, thats good news for us pedestrians ;-) We can cross the road whenever and wherever we like.. squeezing between autos and cars...

The roar of a thousand (hehe... actually a few hundred) internal combustion engines and blaring horns makes me feel like the city is screaming out loud with despair for some unknown reason... Smoke rises as if the road is on fire... and through it all, countless people with tired faces drag themselves through one more day in their life.

had dosa and tea from a fast food place on the way.. the guy standing next to me was discussing some project schedule on phone while having his tea... most likely a project manager.. ;-) the guy standing opposite to him was arguing in hindi with someone over some stock market stuff... it was kind of funny, because initially i thought they were talking to each other.

dosa was not enough to calm my hunger. i got a pack of chocolates and munched it on my way back. chocolate always cheers me up. especially at the end of a long, tense, tiring day.

2 side streets away, near my house, all is calm. There is no indication of the pandemonium going on in the main road so near... a guy was walking his dog, and kids were playing on the street. I could hear the steady drone of an atr-72 climbing slowly into the evening sky.. and im home.

2007-05-19T14:12:00.000+05:30

Im back again. Let me see how well i can reconstruct my past 3 months.

2007-03-09T12:25:00.000+05:30

yesterday night i got a new canon S3IS for my cousin. I couldnt wait till morning to try it out. After 2 months wiith my canon which has a 70mm (3x) zoom lens, handling a prosumer 12x cam felt like driving a sports car.

In the morning, i tested it so much that I missed my morning bus to office... the next one was after an hour. So decided to go to the city and try it out some more..

roamed around the neckar and took some pics...

there are tree lined roads like these in heilbronn which go on for some kilometres.. all the way out of heilbronn..

one more near that place...

thats the kilians kirche, in silhouette...

unlike other churches, kilians kirche doesnt have a cross on top. Instead, there is a knight looking towards the city of speyer...

went around clicking and missed the next bus too :-(

2007-03-03T23:45:00.000+05:30

its raining...
and im at home looking out through my window..

2007-02-06T13:27:00.000+05:30

mumbai airport

the same feeling like going to land on top of some residential colony... a slightly bumpy touchdown and deceleration and the loud boom as the engine thrust is reversed.

as soon as the hatch opened, a swarm of mosquitoes flew in and sorrounded me. I am glad to notice that my mosquito swatting abilities have not tarnished after months of disuse.

survived crowds and queues to find my next plane. After sitting impatiently for half and hour in the plane, found out that some of the passengers had decided to disappear, and so the plane had to wait since they had already issued boarding passes. And so I spent my next two hours in the airplane, on the ground, swatting mosquitoes and listening to my ipod in the wee hours of the morning.

during the flight to bangalore, i was flanked by two people who obviously have not brushed their teeth or bathed for days. and due to some strange reason they had to keep talking to each other. I held my breath and waited for the lights of bangalore :-(