...shoOOonya...

When it comes to interesting people I have met in my travels, the list is long. The experiences are varied. Good as well as bad. In the past 7 years, I have travelled to Switzerland, Malaysia, Thailand, UAE and of course I have travelled a lot within India too.   Travelling across the globe raises some linguistic problems too and they make the encounter interesting. Let me take this incident from my first Switzerland travel in October 2005. I had gone there for just a week and I really wanted to see the sunrise over the Alps over the Geneva lake. So I woke up early in the morning and went to the lake. I clicked a few pictures but soon realized that I was clicking pictures of the beautiful sight in front of me and the most important thing was missing from the pics … ME !!! Since I was behind the camera, I couldn't be in front. I was neither carrying a tripod nor had I any idea of the timer settings. I had borrowed neighbour's camera for the trip. So here I was clicking one of th...

    One is often miffed at the lack of compatibility between products and accessories of different brands. So many times you would have seen people going around asking for a mobile charger of a particular brand for their own charger was elsewhere and their mobile had decided to run out of battery.   If you have been in those shoes (doing the running around); I am sure you would have thought why can't all these mobile manufacturers come to terms with a standard and use the same design ports for charging. That way there would be one universal charger and you won't have to worry about finding a matching pair when in emergency needs.   The same goes for laptops, digital cameras, tablets and various other electronic gadgets that are very much part of our daily lives AND which have a habit of running out of juice just about when we need it the most.   I wrote in the earlier post about my lost baggage and the blackberry tablet charger that was in the lost bag and how tha...

  I hear about the upgrade to the BB tablet OS and read up a bit about it. The preliminary articles seemed good and the expectation was high. So I actually upgraded the OS on the appointed day when it was available. BB OS was a disappointed till date (to me at least). The platform did not support the millions of Android apps and there was very limited number of apps available for BB OS and most of them were paid. Not that the price was high but simply going thro' the payment cycle is a pain. And why pay for something which is otherwise available for free on another platform. The new OS is expected to be able to support the android apps J I downloaded the OS on the day of its release (21 st Feb) and notices some tweaking in its interface. Seems OK SAD Addendum : One of my bags was misplaced during my Dubai-Mumbai trip and this one had my BB tablet charger L So if that bag is not found, then I gotta find a BB Playbook charger in the market. That affects my eBook readi...

Charles Dickens' 200th Anniversary Google doodle on Feb 7 th inspired me to read one of his works. Last I read a Charles Dickens work was during my school days over 2 decades ago.   So I have decided to read 'A Christmas Carol' and even watch its animated movie too.   This particular animated movie has been on my to-do since a very long time ... I had unfortunately missed the movie in the theatres !!  

  Last month I made a post to reset my regular reading counters on discovering more of Three Investigators, finishing Feluda series and adding the Famous Five to my reading list. Well … I am resetting it again. I have now with me a collection of 21 stories titled "The Best of Satyajit Ray" which I am adding to the regular monthly reads.   The last entry I made was  Series Completion Score: (as of 31 st Jan 2012) Three Investigators     28 out of 63 Sherlock Holmes         46 out of 60 Famous Five                02 out of 21 Total                           76 out of 144   Now, I am re-setting the counters to ….   Series Completion Score: Three Investigators     28 out of 63 Sherlock Holmes         46 out of 60 Famous Five                02 out of 21 Best of Satyajit Ray      00 out of 21 Total                           76 out of 165   So now I have about about 90 stories across the 4 series to read till the end of the year … ...

  Flight Delays, Bad Food, bad in-flight entertainment system … the experience only gets worse. Once again I had to travel Kingfisher. I was already expecting the not-so-good food and the same movies playing on the in-flight entertainment system. What I had not expected was the flight delay. I had received some emails from Kingfisher regarding their punctuality records etc recently and a delay was the last thing on my mind. Dubai – Mumbai is a less than 3 hour flight and my flight was delayed by 3 hours !! The 8.30 flight for which one needs to leave home at least by 6 … finally took off at 11.30 and that too with the screen at the boarding gate showing 23.30 'Estimated' and not 'scheduled' The crowd at the boarding gate was getting furious by the minute since there was no once from Kingfisher at the gate to answer the queries of the passengers. The airlines did not make any provision for food/water or basic courtesy of sending someone to inform the passe...

It was an absolutely awesome weekend in Mahabaleshwar !! An amazing wonderful fun filled rocking laughter-filled memorable unforgettable weekend in Mahabaleshwar with a bus load of cousins !!!! This is what I put as my FB message after coming back from my weekend trip to Mahabaleshwar with my cousins. We were 24 of us in a mini bus … 6 couples and the rest bachelor cousins, most of them teenagers, one being a kid and one being an infant J This motley group had loads and loads of fun together. Our previous 3 trips had been to Lonavla and this time we wanted something different. Mahabaleshwar was the next best thing we could think of after Lonavla considering various factors like number of days, budget, new-ness factor etc. I am putting up just few pics from the collection of atleast a 1000 pics clicked by various digi cams

  Through our normal daily routine busy lives; we hardly appreciate food. No, I am talking about appreciating the value of food. We very well do it. In fact the growling in our stomach almost forces us to d o it. I am talking about the 'appreciation' of the flavors, the fragrances, the texture, the taste, the effect of the food on your senses … qualitative appreciation of stuff we consume (solids as well as liquids) We rush through our lunches as a mere survival activity and a mere formality. We do it coz we have to do it and hardly b'coz we want to do it or we love to do it. We leisurely go through our dinners, slowly and deliberately … not really enjoying the food but eating morsels between the dialogues and ad breaks of the stupid daily soaps (TV variety) that we are often subjected to since the majority vote (read woman vote) of the house are in their favor. We eat absent mindedly staring at the idiot box rather than concentrating or enjoying the food except for ...

The first thought that came to my mind when I saw this pic was … If I was in a chauffeur driven car or a Public transport vehicle (bus or cab) in such a traffic …. WOW … … … I could finish off reading a whole novel in there  :)

Being a debut album by the author, my expectations were not high. The story developed slowly and there is a simple plot. What I liked about the book was the simple language, interesting choice of adjectives and the nice style of writing. I also liked the pretty interesting chapter names. The free flow manner of story-telling was a welcome change. Considering that I read this one immediately after Matthew Reilly's novel; a light read after a fast action paced one; it was indeed a welcome change. The different shades and peculiarities of the character of the protagonist is revealed over the entire course of the story and its easy to see that the protagonist is a very normal believable and next-door kind of character. You might even identify yourself with her or someone you know. The thoughts, aspirations, worries … all are something that you might have had / thought about. The entire story is in fact a sort of character development for the protagonist against a backdrop of a fai...

  Finally … I got my hands on the latest Matthew Reilly novel. Aptly titled 'Scarecrow and The Army of Thieves'; this is yet another Scarecrow / Schofield adventure. It turned out to be as expected … full of high octane over-the-top action with a whole lot of twists and turns in the plot. The setting is similar to Ice Station; a lone island in the Arctic region which becomes the centre of all the action (read destruction) Matthew Reilly packs the punch in every page of the novel with not a single page being turned without action. The entire novel (barring the first few and last few pages) is packed around a day of full-fledged world-saving action. Scarecrow and Mother have company of 2 other significant 'fighters' with better equipment; a couple of civilians who are protected by Scarecrow and who have a role to play in the entire adventure AND a surprisingly good companion in the form of a Robot who considers Scarecrow as his Buddy (of course, after being programme...

Once again I am embarking on the GM Diet journey of 7 days First time in 2009, then second time last year in 2011 … I made an attempt last month but could not complete it. My weight has jumped up by almost 8-10 kg in the last 4 months so some drastic weight control measures needed to be put into practice J hence the GM diet to bring a few kg down quickly and then probably some regulation on type of food intake (heavy cutting down on McD Burgers and Pizzas and sweets and ice creams and so on …) Well … Its Day 2 and things are fine. I am taking my usual exception of Tea (with milk and sugar). Hopefully this time around I am able to complete the diet … will know in a few days J

  Talking of newspapers … in the past few months, I have seen a lot of ads by both, Hindustan Times and DNA, claiming their phenomenal growth in Mumbai competing with Times of India and others. When I first saw these ads, I just smiled. But then over the last few months, they kind of got on my nerves. Do the guys at HT and DNA really think and believe in those ads? Do they really believe that they have such a huge and phenomenal 'readership'? Personally, I have no doubt about the number of newspapers they sell or deliver to households BUT I have a serious doubt on that being their 'readership' numbers? The thing is; both DNA and HT have a subscription based distribution as compared to the monthly billing for other newspapers. Also, the subscription pricing is pretty attractive … leading to a pricing of less than 50 paise per day for newspaper. Now compare that to Rs. 2 to 4 or even 5 per day cost for some other leading newspapers in the city. So PRICE is ...

  I began the year reading a Devdutt Pattanaik book and then continued with the usual Sherlock and 3I … and then continued picking up new authors and started reading the Famous Five series. The month saw me begin the year in Dubai, then travel to Mumbai and stay there for a week followed by a week-long visit to Gujarat-Rajasthan (temple visits) and finally coming to Dubai for a week and then back to Mumbai …. PHEW !! That being my first month of the year … does it anyway indicate how the rest of my year is going to be? I am scared already! Lot of travel would have meant a lot of reading but the first read was slow and I was hardly able to read anything during my 5 day trip to Rajasthan simply because the car would shake like crazy on the Rajasthan roads (AND my wife won't allow me to read while in her company) and the train journeys were mostly during the night … and the night was COLD ! My Pune trips give me little time for reading as I am spending the morning journey...

I travelled Kingfisher again :( I am travelling to Dubai on company sponsored tickets and so one of the cheaper & convenient ticket is issued. I had the alternative of Indian Airlines which has also given me bad experiences in the past so I chose Kingfisher instead. The in-flight entertainment was the SAME. No, I don't mean to say they haven't improved it over the past month, what I am saying is that it was the SAME. The same movies were playing that were playing two months ago during my Nov-Dec !!! Food was OK. Same as before. Needs improvement. The only good part of the journey was one particular Air Hostess / Cabin Crew member who had a most stunning beautiful smile AND she was very helpful too. Made the journey much better !  ---- During the return journey by Kingfisher ... I was surprised and then not so surprised to find the SAME movies / serial episodes playing on the in-flight entertainment system. Well, THANKS to THAT, i completed my 600-page Chris...