I am outta here

Yup Yup Yup.. The day has finally come(fingers crossed). In true "Dil Chahtha Hai" style, three friends are on their way to Goa. This has been under planning for all of 4 yrs and more and come tomorrow morning, we will be cruising towards Goa "Swift"ly. Its 600+ kms and will take a while getting there. Plan to halt somewhere close to Karwar, maybe at the Om beach at Gokarna and take off the next day to Goa. Should be back in Bangalore by Sunday evening/night. Will be taking the camera along, so can promise lotsa photos.

Have fun y'all. :-), I sure will!! :-))

Spontaneously Funny

This may not sound relevant to many and is politically vulgar in nature, you are all warned. :-)

How many of you know K.Karunakaran? This chap is a octogenarian who still haggles in daily politics in Kerala to get his son to the chief ministers post. You can say he is Keralas answer to Deve Gowda, but giving credit where its due, "Leader" as he is fondly called has been playing the political corridors lot longer than Mannina Maga. This experience shows, as Deve Gowda had to go through an elaborate staged drama to get his son to power, while "Leader" shamelessly challenges the political leadership of Kerala to get his way. In the quest for more bargaining power he recently floated his own party with as cliched a name as it can be "Democratic Indira Congress(Karunakaran)". This sounded nothing more, or less, till "The Week", quite unintentionally put a new spin to it by making it an acronym, which then makes it, DIC(K) !! :-))

"Leader", what a fantastic choice for a party name!! Suits your politically ideology and your sons brainpower to the 'T'  :-))))

Obsessions

A weird topic, but worth pondering about none the less. I have been seeing people getting obsessed about things that interest them more often these days. The new age and times I suppose.  This obsession is often either self-driven or circumstantial as in, sometimes this obsession is to distract them from other more addictive or painful thoughts and I think this escapism works quite well for them. For e.g. the trend of gyming or fitness is growing so much that almost *everyone* is into it. Its a nice obsession as its healthy and a healthy body houses a healthy mind. I wouldn't mind joining the bandwagon and In fact, I have been challenging myself off late to find the time and energy to make gyming a part of my daily time table. Thanks to work and also more easily distracting alternatives I have stayed away much to the disappointment of my loved ones. I now wait for my gym friendly e2c earphones to be used with my T10 to make gyming a more compelling alternative. :-)


To prove that I take the deals I shell out every now and then here, I have bought this. Its currently awaiting delivery and should be in my hands in less than a month. :-)) Next is the e2c and this. Yes, I love gadgets and find this as the ONLY reason to warrant a trip to fatherland every year or so.

When will Bangalore become this gadget friendly to shop?? sigh... but things are on a move (at least in the media) here, like, The budget is out and more flyovers are promised. Almost every article I read about this  ridiculed this news for loftiness. To be frank, even the optimist inside me cannot see so many projects taking off in Bangalore and running to completion, I believe our skyline will remain unaltered for most parts. :-)

I will be taking a break during the later part of coming week...more on this later. Sounds very news channel like, don't I ? But, unlike news channels I am not going to prompt you towards a commercial, rather just maintaining the suspense to heighten the excitement [ that I definitely am experiencing :-) ]

Its late... I am off...ZZZZZZ

Deals...

I had a couple of friends asking me for some good deals and here are some worth the penny. Gentle Reminder, I believe in shopping exclusively from Uncle Sams garage sale. :-)

Looking for a camera?

Looking for a laptop?

Looking for headphones?

Looking for earphones?


Personally, I need the earphones very badly, headphones would be good and the lappy would be great. Don't really want a digicam, but then..... ;-)

Fruitful Weekend

This weekend was determined to be a hectic one with me visiting friends and chauffering my better half and cricket viewing to top it off. Fortunately or unfortunately I ended up doing only one of the above mentioned activities and that was cricket viewing. Nothing special in the match worth mentioning so lemme jump to the reason for the fruitful weekend.

I am going Linux at home!! Some of you must be wondering why this is a big deal as many of you must be working on linux at office or may have it installed at home. What makes it special is I managed to get my MSI motherboard(for Athlon 64) work with linux! This is special coz of two reasons.
1. I didn't think I will get it to work, and now that its working, makes me feel very very happy.
2. There are many on the net who were/are struggling to get this particular motherboard to love Linux.

I have been thinking of getting on with linux at home for a while, but have always pushed it away. Finally, I drew inspiration from zerophobe who is hell bent on single handedly making Linux "THE" desktop OS of the world. This bug caught on to NSD also fast enough, but then, NSD doesn't need much coaxing to try out something new. So, here I am... kubuntu'ed and loving it!

My next step is to get all the utils required to make kubuntu my defacto desktop and make me forget XP. I will still very much be with XP at office, but home, I think I gotta go the geeky way. :-))

The Long Wait...

Hey Ppl... I AM BACK! :-)) Feels real good to be back to the regular routine of 10-12hrs of work, 6 hrs of play and 6 hrs of sleep. Last few days have been very hectic at office and to add to the whole chagrin of work kicking me in the face was my net connection giving trouble big time at home. I am not sure how many of you missed me and my blog, but I sure as hell missed blogging! Seriously, its a very new experience. Now, I have major commitment problems, as in, I find it very difficult to stay committed and focused on any activity(other than regular work) and here I was, missing penning these few lines to a very small group of ppl who have spared their precious minutes to read this. Now... this is my chance to say THANK YOU to one and all who have made the time to read.

Okie then... now that we have got past that emotive impulse, time for the regulars that make it every week.
1. We kicked QA's butt in cricket
2. India kicked butt in cricket (this time the pommies got it)
3. HDK has more promises for us.
4. Damn... I ran out of regulars! Oh well, it does hurt to repeat, We kicked QA's butt. :-)

We at office went out for a party this Wednesday and what a party it was! We had loads of fun in a little over 7 hrs. I photos can never do justice to give the true spirit and fun but can sure be indicative. Those who want to see it, ask me and it shall be provided. :-). This reminds me, there were quite a few cameras in action on Wednesday and was wondering if NSD(who bought himself a camera recently would feel like clicking his with kaisek around). Why isn't samsung doing so well in the digicam market? They seem to be innovating everywhere else. For e.g:

A WiMAX phone?




A 10 Megapixel phone?




A 8GB memory/HDD phone?





Anywayz..More blogging coming your way at better frequency. So, until then, something to keep you pondering, fresh from the grapevine "Narayan Murthy is the leading contender for the post of The President of India". I will take a rain cheque on whoever grossly disagrees and wants to place a bet. ;-)


p.s: Names used above (NSD, Kaisek etc) are all alter egos of my colleagues and not my creative juices flowing overtime.

Time... SIGH

I have been away from the blog for a good week now. I have been extremely busy at office and net connectivity issues from home. There is so much happening in the world and yet can't find the time to pen them. :-(

Anywayz... hoping for better days... SIGH!

Devil Drivers

Today was a horrific day on the road. These call centre drivers seem to have their brain(thatz a big assumption) screwed backwards! They drive so rashly and have absolutely no road sense or common sense. I had one idiot almost bang into me while he was trying to get his sumo pass me from the left. I was pissed and tried to call the number that they had written on the back of the vehicle which says "Please call this number if this vehicle is driven rashly or breaks traffic rules". This is the second time that I have called such a number and no one picking the call! Why they do even have this on the back of the car if they don't really care?? Why can't the companies that use these vehicles take it on themselves to ensure that whoever is working for them is not being a menace on the road? The big question here being why and where are the social responsibilities of corporate India!

What is the point of Bangalore Metro or Flyovers or underpasses with such maniacs on the road?

Sun or Rain ?

Bangalore has been seeing some wacky weather over the last couple of days. It is almost like its not able to make up its mind. It rained Friday night and again tonight. All this after summer has officially started! This is one of the things I love about Bangalore, its weather is so unpredictable. Generally I love summer too, but this time around the first week or two of summer has made me think of a more disturbing thing. Bangalore traffic and roads were very bad for much of last year and now I do feel that the roads have got better. But the disturbing thing I noticed is the road rage in summer. Its like a physical increase in temperature has resulted in people losing their cool. Not a very welcome sign since summer is very much here to stay.

I am seeing the ZEE Cine Awards as I write this and just realized that I have completely let go off English Music. Usually I would listen to MTV or Channel V and get my dose of English music and this was in the late nineties and maybe early this decade. But nowadays, these channels are filled with only desi music and even worse, their remixes. Now, don't get me wrong, I love our desi stuff, but it gets quite monotonous. The only channel which carries some good angrezi music is VH1 and my cable guy ensures that it gets tuned to the very end of the U band, which means, its grainy as hell! Anywayz, I will get in touch with a couple of guys at office who somehow manage to keep themselves abreast of Firangi Music, even if its restricted to a particular creed of Rock Music. :-)

Movie Review - Taxi No: 9211

Just watched Taxi No: 9211 at Inox and came in to office to act busy. I am actually surprised I finished the work I came in to complete. :-) Hey, stranger things have happened. :-))

Back to the movie... One liner on this movie would be, "Watch It!". A simple movie with a small plot, but good screenplay. I don't necessarily think its great direction(some newbie is the director), but the fact that I wasn't bored over a period of 2+ hours counts for a lot. There are no stellar performances and there is no great action. The comedy is subtle to quietly hilarious and is quite different from the usual Malayalam to Hindi morphed Priyadarshan flicks, who has taken over the not so proud mantle from David Dhawan. Nana Patekar can actually do more than just shout and act crazy, and in this case, for the second time in a row(bluffmaster being the first), he proves he does possess comic timing. Sameera does the "buxom lass on the side" role neatly and there is not much of a support cast to talk off. I keep John Abraham to the end, coz, this movie will do him more good than the others associated with this film. From being a wooden faced, Greek bodied male bimbo to an actor who can create hit movies... the transformation is quite astonishing.

The music of Vishal-Shekar is fantabulous. These guys are truly the group leaders of the "new-age" music directors of bollywood! Another fantastic score with 3-4 hummable songs. With AR Rahman spending almost all his time admiring the beauty of River Thames and the rest of the gang spending more time with "Indian Idol" and "Sa Ra Ga Ma", there is a space created for new talent and these guys have truly welcomed it. Just loved it!

This was my first movie at Inox and just like the Forum Gold Class experience, another wonderful time though not in the same league as the Gold Class. The upscale indian movie goer is being treated to this new barrage of multiplexes with costly tickets, costly snacks and clean toilets. At the end of the day, I think it is worth it!

Again, Taxi No: 9211 ... "Watch it!"

New Thingy...

How do yall remember that you gotta go visit my blog? No wise cracks now .... ;-).  I can do this reminding bit for a while, as in, remind every other day that I do have a blog, but then, I would lose steam too. One way is via RSS readers who can use http://cyberkraze.blogspot.com/atom.xml. But then, what if you are not RSS savvy yet? I am sure if you have gotten to my site, you definitely would know how to operate an email account. Now, what you see on the right is a new section added called "Get Fed", where you can just enter your email address and you will(should) get an email everytime I update the blog. What say? Wanna give it a shot?

Backlog

My net at home has been down for a couple of days and office has been quite hectic. During this quite time the only thing that happened interesting was the budget. PC has walked the line again... hell he didnt have to draw a new line as the booming India Inc took care of itself and all he had to do with hold the steering wheel tight and we would sail through. This budget does exactly that, that is, keep the steering tight. We (layman) have hardly anything to rejoice, and the sops and taxes are all indirect. I for one am more than happy to see the "well to do" being made to pay more tax. Who can afford it should definitely pay it. The budget also had some goodies for Bangalore. Hopefully this will get implemented and not stop at the political coffers.

Speaking of Bangalore, we have (after a very long time), an important person visiting India and not visiting Bangalore. Worse still, he is visiting Hyderabad! Well, I blame the politicians of Karnataka more than anything else as the reason for the degrading value of Brand Bangalore. Now, we can argue that "it is after all Dubya", but still, these things matter. Its almost like we have our top managers from US visiting our office premises every other quarter. Do these visits help ground reality, I don't think so. Yet, these visits are made and the token talks help maintain managerial visibility. I think the same would apply to Dubya and his visits. This not withstanding, whats with US Presidents and Hyderabad? Remember Clinton too took a Hyderabadi Sojourn! Here is NY Times trying to find a reason.

How many of you have started using flickr? I am yet to start using it full fledged yet and should start soon, riya is taking forever! Anybody have any other suggestions on good photo upload sites?

p.s: Zerophobe, this should interest you. :-)