Good Times... so few and far between

A relaxing weekend just went by I am already missing it! The 7 hour drive to Hampi and back was fantastic and so was the place. The NH4 up to Chitradurga is just fantastic! If you are a person who enjoys driving and don't mind going on the fast lane, you can cover the 200 something kms in 2 hrs! Hampi is also a nice and quite place to visit. It feels good to be away from the daily rut!

A mention must be made about the non-tourist like attitude of majority of people in India(I know I am generalizing, but I am pretty sure I am addressing the majority here). The ruins of Hampi, which is beautiful by itself, is being ruined further by these ignorant people. It is littered with plastic bottles, ice-cream cups and human feces! Honestly, after having seen the tourist spots of the so called "culturally depraved westerners", I feel sorry for all these folks who visit India to experience the "rich culture and heritage" and are forced to pay money and watch how efficiently we are destroying our own cultural pillars(pun intended).

That being said, it was a memorable trip otherwise and we did laze around a lot, which is good. :-)

Though I was cut off from many of my online news gathering sources, the week still was eventful enough to fill up this blog with just the headlines. Mannina Mommaga finally pulled off a fast one on his dad, the original mannina maga. If on one hand he pushed his father further into the political abyss, on the other hand he helped end the Lotus's long wait to surface in the south. Mani Shanker Aiyer gets the boot for being too "left of center", whatever that means! He definitely pissed of Uncle Sam with his Iran stand and we know its taboo to do that in todays world. Baghdatis did his best to upset the "Rogs" juggernaut, but fell short. And, Finally a good cricket pitch was laid down at Karachi and from the proceedings of the first two days, maybe we(India) should not have cribbed so much about the pitches at Lahore and Faisalabad. :-)

BTW, how many of you noticed these ads on paper and radio city lately? I think the campaign managers have really blown this one in a big way as there is almost no hint of this being a out-n-out commerial and an ad-spoof. I am sure many a gonna be flat owner with a 30L loan and a 2007-2008 completion date would have visited the site to check for symptoms. ;-), no offense guys.

Thatz all for today folks... have a great week ahead!

Early Weekend

I am off for the week. Tomorrow morning I will be all the driving to Hampi, the ruins of the Vijayanagara Empire. It supposed to be a very nice place to visit during this time of the year. Its gonna be my first time with my car over a distance greater than 100kms. :-) Wish me luck y'all!

A dissapointing week in the world of sports, atleast till today. We had a stupid pitch again at Faislabad. Sania got knocked out of Aus Open, but luckily Sharapova, Hingis are still surviving. Also, thank god Serena is out! Now, if y'all are wondering my reasoning for the glee and sorrow for the mentioned ladies, lemme be honest, its got more to do than just their tennis skills. :-)) Also, missing the first lady of tennis.

In case you people find it diffcult to get up early or on time [since there is not gonna be my blog to wake up to. :-)], here is something that can be of help. Wonder if it actually work or short-circuit something in our brain! Talking of brain, wanna give this a try? If you have the guts you can post the results[The real ones] of the tests on this forum. :-)

Ok people, catch up with y'all on Monday!

Monday is a bad day

The monday blues are still sticking to me and I am only a few minutes away from end of day! Generally no work gets done on Monday for a variety of reasons.
1. Relatives who want to sightsee that spills over the weekend.
2. Gruhapraveshams you can't miss.
3. Work you can't do.
4. Interviews you don't want to take.
5. TV you don't want to see.
6. Blog you don't want to write.

I am just kidding with the last two. Four just doesn't have the weight of reasoning that six has. :-)

No good movies in town, other than Narnia, so this weekend was a no movie weekend. Thanks to NSD I have whole seasons of CSI to keep me company. I have seen some 6-7 episodes and I am surpised as to how each episode can really captivate you! Infact, I think I will watch an episode after I finish writing this blog!!

BTW, lot happening on the net this weekend. We had IE 7 being leaked, konica minolta is no longer playing the camera game, steve jobs just got a LOT richer and surprise suprise, intel loses more ground! Feels good to know that I bought the "better" PC. hehehe :-}

Nataka in Karnataka

I got the title idea from IBN, the new "in your face" news channel on the block. Dileep Sardesai heads this place and he has taken dramatisation of an issue to a whole new level! Anywayz, we have to digest what the media throws at us.

The whole political drama going on in Karnataka is so funny and sad at the same time. How can the all powerful Deve Gowda go from a person who could stop the Metro project, the International airport and what not be reduced to a man with the support of just 6 of his MLAs? His son claims he has 46 and Siddu already has 7. :-) I do think though that this is a well choreographed drama by Deve Gowda to get his son into power. He first knocked off Siddu, ensure that the next two seniors Prakash(deputy cm) and PGR Scindia stick with him, while Kumaraswamy goes on to be a CM! Lets see how this reel in real life unfold.

I was on the lookout for a few good laptop deals today and saw some real mid to high range ones at around 1000-to-1300 dollars, and then I saw this.


Can you believe that somebody would actually pay that kinda money for that comp(The very first one in the pic) ? :-))

More Net Finds:
1. "The Herald" seems to suggest that we work for only 11 mins at the office! Now, I didn't need them to tell me that I don't work! ;-)
2. Anybody on the lookout for ipods? Amazon has had a price drop on them. So if you have anyone traveling from the US, now would be good time to call on a favour.


p.s: BTW, drop some comments y'all. Lemme know what I am doing right and what I am doing not so right(wrong being such a negative word). :-)

Managing Time..

I am late on the blog! Guess what... you gonna hear a lot of this from me. "Was at office late, reached home late, got up late, rushed to office "on time". [p.s: My manager sees this blog too. :-)] But seriously... how does one be productive when he/she has "x" amount of things to do and "x" time. I was reading this yesterday and I noticed that I can't implement 60-70% of them! Do I still have hope to get organized? Maybe that should be my new year resolution, to get organized. I do believe though, that new year resolutions are usually ones that we mean to actually never implement, hence call them resolutions. Its an evergreen fad to break new year resolutions. :-)

Jumping topics, there was very good coverage for the toxic ship coming to India for getting itself "cleaned". I didn't give it anything more than a passing glance when I read it in the newspaper, but I did realize a little late that it irked me more than I knew. My friend "moots" or some people prefer to call her "Odel", pointed me to this, which shines more light on the situation and the silent crusade that was on all along.

And last... a little bit of a teaser of sorts. What are you actually "seeing"? Is it what you eyes sees or what your brain wants you to see? A very interesting article which should give neuro*.* people a very humbling effect on how much more is there to learn of the human brain and body.

The above is a contribution from "NSD". I am sure I can run this blog just with his daily contributions, but I will try my very best to break that comfort zone. :-)

Weekend Fun

Weekends these days are routine, but always has fun involved in good measure. My cousins usually come over and we end up doing something that is better than sitting at home and watching TV. This weekend we saw "Zinda", the new Sanjay Gupta movie. We went to the movie because of the very good review in Times Of India and the movie lived up to the billing. I think its a must-see if a bit of gross violence is OK. :-)

I was following the India vs Pak cricket match on the rather dead pitch at Lahore. I must say, we gave the Pakis a good smashing, but then, the pitch was real placid. We know the Pakis are afraid of our spin duo, but that does not mean they come up with a pitch that is a nightmare to bowl on for anybody! Sehwag batted real well, but then, did he really have to be so undiplomatic? ;-)

Some interesting net finds to end the day:
1. Google started google video a while back. They have currently opened viewing of the videos for only the US and hence we can't have the fun! Here is a way to break it. Check this out.
2. Sony Ericsson has come out at CES with their next Walkman phone, W810i. This is an improvement over the W800i with being Quad-Band and having EDGE Support. Also, they have tried to make the buttons "more" Walkman friendly. Here is a video from CES.

Thats it for today folks. As you can see, I was anxious to get my second post out of the way ASAP and I did so with a lot of fervour. Since I cannot do another "I'LL BE BACK", let me say... "Stay tuned, same place, any time in the future". :-)

Self-Talk: That was a desperately lame attempt at being funny with an ending punchline.

Finally... My BLOG!

A very warm welcome to all. Well... Since I am no famous person, the people seeing this blog are most definitely those whom I have hand-picked(begged) to view my blog. :-)

I have been delaying the whole blogging experience for soooo long for the simple reason that I wanted a theme for my blog. It took me long(too long actually) to figure out that I didnt have any particular passion on which I could write something every other day. So, I decided, true to my favourite sitcom hero, Seinfeld, My blog will be about "nothing" or as I would like it, to transform itself into a blog about "everything".

Ok.. My creativity is taking a dip right now... maybe because its past midnight and I have just finished 550 pages of Kane & Abel and I really should be getting to bed. So, good night for now and if there are more rants on this progressively imperfect world or on anything else that catches my fancy... I'LL BE BACK! :-D