Merry Xmas

Wishing you all a very merry Christmas...
Here is one from last year Christmas day...
Enjoy........

A New phase in Life

The same time last year was my first week in the US of A. I was immersed in thoughts of anxiety, curiosity, excitement and nervousness all running through my mind at the same time. I guess it was natural for me to feel all such things at the same time...
It has been over 6 months after returning to India. At the time when I returned back, there were a lot of questions being asked to me, but I wanted to settle back and live a normal Indian life again...
I had missed this place for 5 months and was sooo sooo anxious to get back to my normal life... I wanted to meet lot of people I hadn't seen for those 5 months...
But suddenly, I saw that lots of friends were very busy, some did not want to meet up anymore, some did not even think they knew me...
It was hard at times, but then there were lessons there...
It seems, 6 months is too long or too short at times and one whole year seems insignificant some times...
One year after I am having a lot of those thoughts and feeling in my mind, I am feeling the same anxiety, curiosity, excitement and nervousness again in my life as i sort of enter a new phase of my life. I finally decided to take a plunge into the holy institution called marriage with one Miss Prathibha...
Well as of now, i can only say this much...
Well if you are a strong believer in the idea of inauspicious time, then I can only say that for one month from now, I cannot get to know the person whom I will get married to... So until jan mid, I will chug along with life...

For one Mr Rajeev, here is the time you were waiting for... I think we need to speak to get your holiday plan to India finalized next year...

Thoughts, Tension and fun

In the last one week, I have had almost all sort of things happening in life.
There has been work pressure, lots of tension and also had some fun.
Being involved in some support work has kept the work pressure up a bit, this making me work a bit late in the past one week or so...
There has been a lot of other tension coming up in my life and that is what is making me think a lot. Amidst all this tension, whenever I listen to music on radio or sometimes from my mobile, I keep hearing a couple of songs being played.
This is somewhat bringing in lots of thoughts in mind which I can t ignore nor can I keep it out...
There are these 2 songs and specially some lyrics in these songs that I need to associate with my thoughts...
When ever where ever
we are meant to be together
Ill be there and youll be near...
This from the song of Shakira

Somewhere out there I know there is a someone
waiting just for me mahiya...
This song, I do not know the film this song is from....

Its killing me a lot....
Now for the fun part...
A friend of mine had come over to blore and we along with Katke had gone out for dinner along with some other friends....
Meeting a few ppl after a long time and that too on a cold night. It was good to be out of home at night for a reason other than work...
It was great fun.
After dinner, Katke took us to a pan shop who had shut shop, well almost. Katke had to knock on the shop door and ask the guy to make pans for us when he was almost packing. This was fun... the pan guy did not even keep the door open till he made pan for us as he didnt want more customers at that time...
Well it was great fun...

Shimoga and Jog Falls Trip details

It has taken some time to actually come up with this blog giving the details of my holiday. The reason being that the snaps took so long to develop.
I had been to Shimoga in train and stayed at a hotel very near to the station. Since we had planned for the trip to Jog falls the next day, we had a whole day to have a look at what Shimoga had to offer...
Well nothing spectacular, There were a few tourist attractions according to the hotel person and we hired a taxi and headed out...
We wanted to see places called Koodali, Mandagadde bird scantuary, Tunga or the Gajjanur Dam,Sakarebayalu elephant camp and Agumbe. We headed out to Koodali cos the other places were in one route and this one the opposite direction.
Koodali was some 10-15 Kms from Shimoga and once we were some 2 Kms from the city the adventure had already started. There was a protest by the villagers against the authorities for not constructing good roads. We had to waste a lot of time till the senior office arrived. It was just a matter of few mins then and we were back on our way...
Koodali in nothing but a Prayag of 2 rivers. It also has an ancient temple on the banks of the river. Nothing much to offer though.
Then we headed back towards the other tourist places...
The Tunga dam generated hydroelectric power and was a good view. Since it was a very hot day we did not spend a lot of time there...

The ancient temple at Koodali

The Tunga or Gajannur Dam

On our way we also stopped by a Shiva Temple (unplanned stop). It was a newly constructed statue. Then we went to the Mandagadde bird scantuary, well it is not worth calling a scantuary. It was very small having a hundred birds or so and nothing much. Good for the birds but not so exiting if you are a tourist. There was the sakarebayalu elephant camp which had no elephants at that time of the day as they had been taken into the forest for work...

The Shiva temple and an Egret in the bird scantuary

We headed straight for Agumbe then, which is supposed to be the Chirapunji of the South with very hig rainfall in the year.. There is a sunset point where we can see the sun setting at the arabian sea, even though Agumbe is very far off from the coast of arabian sea. Well we had no sunset sighting cos we had been during the end of rainy season while the clear sunset is visible from january thruough the summer season.

Once there we had enough time and had a few snacks when a guy there suggested we go to Shrigeri which was 25 Ks from there and then return to Shimoga by night, another unplanned visit and we had a great time there. The temple in itself is huge and very ancient, being one of the ashrams of Shankara Charya, it has a lot of history associated with it. The river by the Temple has some very huge fish and that is the biggest ones ive seen in my life and the best part is that they are at an arms length away from you.

Shringeri Temple

From Shringeri we headed back to Shimoga to have a good rest in the hotel, but the adventur was not over yet, we had to go through some very bad road with no lighting and with not many vehiles plying. The driver was very good to negotiate that kinda road and we reached the hotel safe and sound.

The next day we left for Jog falls early in the morning. The hotel guy told us to stop at Sagar and keep our luggage there. We had an onward journey to Gokarna that day so had to carry our luggage and leave for Gokarna that very day, so we stopped at Sagar, kept out luggage there and then proceeded to Jog Falls. This is the first time I was visitng Jog( as far as my memory knows) and was very exited. The jog in iteslf was huge. The water was ok and it was thundering down the 942 feet. We decided to walk down till the very bottom of the Jog falls and have a look at that tooo. Some very beautiful sights of the Jog falls, A monkey that stole our snacks and a hard time climbing back to the top. There are 1400 steps till the bottom of the Jog and along the way I was very saddened to see the garbage and the plastic disposed off by tourists and shopkeepers alike. It was a very sad view. There was an amazing wildlife in and around the Jog, some hundreds of varieties of butterflies, snails, birds dragon flies and monkeys. I even got to see and take snaps of the Langur. I took its snaps for the first time and they were really patient with me allowing me to withing 10 feet of them...

The Langurs and the Might of Jog - See the guy in the pic

My Parents and the Jog at the backdrop

You can actually cross over from one side of the outlet of water fall to the other. Thats the place where the song from Mungaru male was shot( that is what they told us).

The top view of Jog

After seeing the Jog, we had to go back to Sagar, and from the driver of the KSRTC bus we came to know that the bus to Gokarna actually has to pass the Jog falls and go ahead. He told that we could have actually got our luggage here and taken the bus from Jog itself. But bad luck, we went back to Sagar and were in the Nick of time to take the bus to gokarna(that is what they told us), but the bus was going to a place 10 Kms short of Gokarna and taking a deviation to Karwar. We then managed to reach a place called Kumta. On the way to Kumta bus stand, the bus driver and conductor of our bus stopped the Gokarna bus mid way on the road and enabled us to catch that one. We reached Gokarna at some 9 PM with a tiring day behind us and some adventure to go with that all....

We had a great day though... and the next day at gokarna awaited us...

Relaxed after my holiday

I have returned home after a week long holiday. I am sooo sooo relaxed now and have realized a few things this past week. The biggest realization being, I cant stand the heat. Second, Bangalore is truly a developed place and third, Bangalore is by no means a slow city.
I had been to a few places in Karnataka, also had been to my Bros college. He is in his final year, so had to visit his place once at least while he is studying. Had been to the Jog Falls, Amazing waterfall.
I will have to give you the detailed trip report a bit later, but for now, I want to just say that the heat in some of the North west parts of karnataka and the coastal areas are really unbearable. It is sooo hot and sultry there. I kept sweating and sweating. It was totally unbearable. The heat and also the humidity. I only wonder how my bro is coping for the last 3 years in such environment.
It is crazy. The good news of it all is that I have lost considerable weight during the trip. The bad news is that i have become dark now.
The other very striking thing I noticed is that In Karnataka, after Bangalore, to an extent Mysore, not much of the state is actually close to developed. I have heard Hubli also being a very much developing city, but seeing the condition of roads and the standard of the hotels and shops around some of the places, I was feeling like these places are easily 20 years behind Bangalore in development. At times, there were no roads on the supposed roads. We were driving on stones and dirt which was supposed to be a highway. The hotels and shopping places looked like mere buildings with some old fasioned shops and stores. Not many people go to malls i guess.
Also the pace of life is very slow, man who told that Bangalore life is slow. I was wondering how people in the country side would actually do time pass. People were walking around back from thier fields to thier homes, or were chatting at the village bania shop. They were walking at thier own pace and it all seemed like we were having enough time to do nothing in our lives.
But on the positive side, I am so happy to see so much greenary and Jungle around in Karnataka. Again giving me enough evidence that there is an amazing population of wildlife in this state and is in very good health. People living in harmony with the wildlife.
I came to a realization that me being born and brought up in Bangalore and in city life, it is very difficult for me to have a slow paced life. also that for such a life, I am missing all the beautiful things around in nature around us. So much have I got into this city mode and work and all that taking a week off and in the first couple of days of doing nothing and sitting at home made me get fever and sickness due to change in routine. I had to live on tablets and medicine for a couple of days so that my trip is not affected due to my illness. Well it went on well. Great.
I will be giving a detailed trip report over the weekend...

Sports, pain and thoughts

I do not know why, but I am not able to write quite often nowadays?????
Work is relaxed a bit but I am not able to spend much time on the net...
Well part of the reason being that I am playing Squash nowadays. Wow it has been over 5 years that I played any sport. Since the work is not so hectic in the last couple of weeks I am able to spend some time on court.
I am enjoying playing but It has come at a price.
I have spoilt my body so much that In a couple of days of playing, I twisted my knee and have overstreched over a period of 10 days.
The pain in my body is sooo much that It gets unbearable at times.So much so that I am limping for the last few days. I am hardly able to walk properly and The feeling of mistakes I did to let this happen keeps coming back to mind...
Today I had it and the pain was so bad that I got a good opportunity to bunk office.
Well I had to take it. Other than Squash I am enjoying some Photography as well.
I have taken some pretty decent snaps of some subjects for the first time. As I progress in learning new things in Photography and click more and more, it only amazes me that even a very minnute thing in this world is so beautiful and the variety of the wildlife around us it so huge, that I wonder how it would be in the Jungles... It is just a matter of noticing I guess...
Well I have got another opportunity to take a leave from office in 10 days time... I am going to love it and hopefully my leg will be completely alright and my camera is going to have a good workout...
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I do not know this Lizards name, but if you click for the actual size of the Image, you should surely see the claws that this Lizard has, very scary...

The butterfly was beautifully lit by the sunlight and this is my first shot of Ashy Prinia. It is a very small bird. Probably this small bird will fit in my palm.

This small bud is of a very beautiful flower. This bud might not be even a centimeter in size. and yes the black background is got while clicking the flower from my camera. The dragon fly is a Crimson marsh glider. The colors of this dragon fly amazes me.

Be sure to click on each of the image to get a better view....

After a long break....

I am back after a long break from blogging...
It wasnt intended though. Well i was so busy with work that there was nothing happening in life...
Ive had a great last few weekends though... have been able to finish up with some pending work. To reduce some weight and also to learn some more in photography...
With a simple routine of waking up early for a jog, going for work to sleeping a bit and yes no dieting, ive been able to reduce a bit of weight. This will continue for some time though, i just want to have a different look and feel about my body. I am feeling much healthy after all the hogging of cheezy food in the US. The only thing that ive missed till now is my own cooked food. Ive not give it much of a try after returning back though. I just hope i do not forget it...
I attended a photography session at office a few weeks back and it was great fun and just trying to explore a new dimension of my camera... Some very talented people in infy, it must be said...
Well i hope i can keep improving.
Today probably was my lucky day....
I had to give my bike for servicing after ages and had to return home without the bike. I noticed that i had no change for the bus charge and decided to take an auto back home... This will make me at least use the 100 Re notes that I had with me... The distance was not far though. I had to take an auto to the service center in the evening as well and to my surprise on both occasions, the auto drivers agreed to go to my destination and to do it on meter charge....
Well another surprise awaited me... Both the auto drivers took the exact amount and never demanded more... Well was i dreaming or what.... Or was I really in Bangalore????
Well Seems like I was really lucky today...
I hope I can keep having great things to share and do not have such long breaks in blogging...
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This one of an eagle i guess which flies around near my house. I was tryng hard to capture it while flying and glyding with its huge wings spread apart. Well after around at least 50 shots i got this one decent enough shot( Decent enough for me)... I just feel like flying carefree like this eagle

Trying a new career option

After living for five months without having anything to do with TV or the Indian saans bahu serials, i now have to watch a few when my mom watches them...
I still manage to keep my sense of guessing the next plot in the serial, so i thought lets give it a shot....
Well i have nothing to do so i am coming out with this...
Lets start with the intro plot... well im giving it away a bit... what else works on TV, a story of a guy and gal...
Well i leave the details to be handled at run time... but will try to explain the summary...
A guy meets a girl, may be at an airport or a party... I will leave that to the director...
They start meeting and talking to each other often...This goes on for quite some time... may be 3-4 years or so...
During all this time... the guy and gal are good friends.... but the usual conversation or communication that happens is to enquire about the daily routine that each one follows in their life...
like hows work... hows your day... how long have you worked for the day. how did you njoy the weekend... etc...
Probably the guy was more talkative... he spoke a lot....
Then there was a dilemma....
This is the time when the usual soaps manage to bring in all the suspense and the twists in the serial...
The guy keeps wondering that he is good friends with the girl, but does he even consider liking her????
They have been just enquiring and sharing their daily routines for so long... but he still doesn't feel that he likes her at all....Does enquiring about each others lives and giving updates mean liking each other???? definitely not....
In the mean time his parents have decided to get him married to some girl...
pause....
Now depending on the response to the story i would have 2 options:
bring in a triangle love story into the serial and make one of the 2 ladies the villan and then see how it goes... later we can add on depending on which actor is taking leave on the sets...
Second would be to marry the friend whom he knows for long and then bring in the saans bahu plot and carry on with the story.....
Well I have to continue to watch the TV for a few more weeks to add on to the story and see if I can drag the story a bit....
The way I have my talent intact of guessing the next dialogue in the serials that my mom watches, i definitely feel I can give this career option a try if the IT industry fails....
What say....
Chal hope you had fun reading this... or had some time pass...
Chao

End to an amazing experience...

I have just returned home after a five month trip outside the country. It was an amazing experience for a lot of reasons....
I had a chance to go out of home again, with the right frame of mind, this time to the US of A. Well I am writing it that way cos that is how people here perceive that country.
I had a feeling similar to the one I had on Oct 6th 2001 when I was sort of dropped off in a place called Chickmagalur. It was a new experience that was about to begin...
From the time I saw the snow covered landscape from the plane landing into Cincinnati, speaking to a dumb kinda taxi driver and checking into a hotel for my stay, I knew I was in for a great time...
I had a great time at the hotel with Hareesh, a great and funny guy who always was working hard. Learnt cooking in our very first cooking class, the hotel room kitchen. Saw a decent enough air force museum, visited the first Indian store called Bombay Grocers. Working at the client place was good.
I had the opportunity to visit my uncle on Xmas day and had a great time there. Visited the only temple in Cincinnati, visited the downtown of Cincinnati and tried ice skating (in fact any form of skating) for the first time in life...
Settled down into a flat by end of December and had to weather a lot of chill and cold. The lowest temp i had probably weathered earlier was around 0 C on Tiger Hill in Darjeeling. But this time I had to withstand up to -23 C. Snow all around was an amazing experience. -10 C to 0 C were the regular temperatures at our place. I never thought I would some day say that 0 C was a comfortable temperature to be in...
We were regular visitors to walmart and the Indian stores and got used to the kinda shopping that we had to do for daily necessities there...
Visited the Mammoth caves, saw a herd of American Bison, saw a couple of wild deer 10 feet away from me and they did not even care to notice the presence of humans so close to them.
In March I visited another relative in Edison, NJ and that was the great time I had. I visited some of the places that we had seen so far only in TV or movies and you had to be looking in awe at the view in front of you. I literally was getting thoughts and flashbacks in my mind and wondering if I really had visited such amazing places which I had never dreamt of visiting in my life...
I was happy to get my first ever car driving licence. I do not have one in India. It took a few days to get used to driving on the right side of the road. We had been to a place called smokey mountains, saw some amazing Harley Davidson's bikes... Drove at speeds I could not have imagined earlier. It was a trip to remember cos of the way we felt for the first time in the US for being a vegetarian. We were left tooo helpless and it was only cos of some help from a very nice waitress that we could sort of come away from the trip without starving to death.
I also got the opportunity to try out some cuisines from different countries...
We tried out a few Mexican restaurants... Chipotle was the best of them. Tried Thai and loved it there, but for the irritating waitress. Had a Lebanese and Greek food and also had a Chinese buffet. I would not even have a glance at them again in my life...
Apart from our own cooked food we had some amazing Indian food as well...
I am thankful to my colleagues to take me to Ammas Kitchen on my very first day to work for lunch. It truly is the best Indian food that you can get in Cincinnati. We tried Tandoor, Raja India, Taj Mahal, Kanak, Anand India, Aangan India, Brijmohan, Hi Bombay and a few more of the Indian hotels. The food was good in most. The Menus would be more or less similar in all hotels...
But you would surely have great experiences in each one of them... Like the very troublesome and irritating lady in Tandoor and a new part time waitress at Tandoor who did not know good English, who pronounced DJert for Desert, to the very shrewed Owner of Hi Bombay to the waitresses of Ammas Kitchen and Hi Bombay who were fond of one of our room mates....
We always liked to pull that guys leg for such incidents...
After this amazing experience, I have sort of lost a bit of respect for the consultants there in the US and some of the MS students there, but this is just my view. I also started to hate the ready to eat food that is available there. Was amazed at the items available in an Indian store in Edison. You get more Indian stuff under one roof than you would get at any place in India.
For all the fun I had for five months, I was very happy to start y first day with a lunch at Ammas Kitchen and end my journey with a lunch at Ammas Kitchen on my last day ( The same way Hareesh had his first and last lunch at Hi Bombay)...
I can go on and on on this but It is just like an illusion, I mean there can be no better place to live life happily and have a blast than here in India....

I just Love her...

The mourning Dove... This one hangs around in front of my apartment and I have a lovely time taking all the snaps of her on my weekends.
Have you clicked on the image to see the full size??? If not click on it...
This is just for you to get a better view of the beauty I am talking about...

Life's lessons

I was just going through Youtube and thought of watching the very old program that used to capture us when we were young... The Jungle Book.
I have watched around 20 odd episodes till now and have started to analyze what Mowgli is learning by living with animals...
Mowgli is being taught the laws of nature, the importance of following the rules, etc...
I then tried to dig deep into the the lessons that Mowgli is learning...
It is very interesting to note that the whole program talks about being friends and good to others, obeying the laws of nature and allowing it to take its own course...
These are all the lessons of life anyone of us would have learnt through some means or the other.
The lessons of life will be learnt by everyone and it will take its own course to pass your path. You just have to notice it and grasp it.
The Jungle book is not just a fun cartoon serial of a lost boy growing up in the jungle... It is something more... Just did deep and you too will understand it...

Searching...

The work for which I had come to the US seems to be almost done... I am going to be here for a few more weeks but the work for which i will be here is not yet defined.
I came with somethings unclear regarding the kinda work that will be done at onsite... will I be able to cope with such work pressures???
but then it seemed to go past without something coming into my notice...
Now with my work undefined, stay almost known, I am having this uncertainty in what to expect. I can look back and find a smooth road, but am searching for something that might be ahead but yet not in my view...

New Jersey Trip - Day 2

To continue with my New Jersey trip... On return from Liberty walk, we visited the India of Edison. Oak Tree Rd. This is a 4-5 mile streach of road that has only Indian stuff. Indian stores, Indian hotels etc. You have Indian fasion stores, the Indian paan shop, Indian hotels and ofcource only Indian people living near by that place. You will see a sort of compitition between the Punjabi store person and a Gujrati store person... who builds the bigger store might be the compition. Me and my uncle stopped by an Indian store and Its name was guess what??? 'Sabji Mandi'. This store had everything and much more than you might find in any Indian store back in India. from fruits, veggies, aatta, basmati rice, sona masouri rice, to dals to even our very own Indian broom. Idli stands, Mango cutting knives for making pickels, puja items etc...
You might even find the Hajmola stull or the Vicco toothpaste. I dint go and search for it though.
Probably all the Indians around Edison and neighboring cities in New Jersey might be shopping from that street. I truly felt that I was in India, well almost!!!!
The next day, we had plans to go to Philadelphia to pick up my uncles daughter who studies there. We started early reached the University of Pensilvaynia by 11 might be. The UPenn campus is not like a campus but almost like a small downtown area of Cincinnati. It's huge. We then went around for a quick tour of the University... The most striking thing about the University being its architecture. Beautiful I tell you...
The Amphitheatre of the University known for hosting many news shows etc...

It has one very huge Piano too...
Along the way we say some very old and beautiful buildings which were either the Administrative buildings or hostels for the people studying...

After watching Slumdog Millionaire movie now everybody knows who is on the 100 $ bill right. Well I got a chance to share some knowledge with him... He looked very impressed with the progress in IT you see...

Benjamin Franklin... He sits right in front of the Administrative building tooo.

We then headed towards the Philadelphia downtown and some historic places of US. The Liberty Bell is I believe of great singinificance for the people of US w.r.t. liberisation and right opposite that is the Constotution centre...

This is the view of the New Town Hall and the view of Philladelphia downtown...

The Liberty Bell...

The old Town Hall.

The National Constitution Centre

After a good time in Philli we head back to Edison and visited the Edison memorial. This is known to be the first Research and Development centre in the world. It is the place where Thomas Edison started his work of Inventing things and had made a sort of Reseach centre for himself... They still have preserved some of his original inventions of the 400 inventions patented.

One of the very first voice recording instruments invented by Edison.

He also invented many mediums of storing recorded sound like the cylinders... Here on display some of this instruments or music players of his time....

Thomas Edison also made his own set of Batteries, Electric fuses etc...

Thomas Edison as we all know is famous for his Invension of the bulb... Here are some of his early bulbs and his notes...

Below is the very bulb that Thomas Edison created after 192 attempts to make it work. He used a bamboo string as filament inside the bulb. When people mocked him for his 192 failures... he remarked saying that He has found 192 ways to make a bulb not work...


The left one is the replica of his street lamps of 1879 giving brightness to his snap of that time. I just liked the way the lamp had its reflection on Thomas Edison's Photo. It reflected his contribution...

This tower or lamp tower is built as the memorial for Thomas Edison. It has a 15 foot high lamp at the top which lights bright at night.

After visiting the Thomas Edison memorial, we visited the Roosavelt park and a shopping mall. We had a good time there. At the shopping mall we visited a book store. I saw something really great there. This book store had at many different places along the windows chairs put up, where people sit and read any book of thier choice. Be it either books related to their academics or some book from the store. People who did not find a chair were happy enough to sit on the floor of the store and read books. A very good thing to see. They find it very apt place to sit calmly and read.

I had a very tiring and enjoyable time that day and slept early. The next day woke up a bit late and left for Cincinnati.

On the whole I had a great trip. I saw so many places and the most important thing is I had a good time at my uncles home...