HMT's

Who can forget the importance of a towel after reading Hitch hikers guide to the galaxy. A true galactic traveler has to carry a towel which is very important for his survival. A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have... You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta…wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat…wrap it around your head to ward off noxious fumes. Any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

As you can see, people of Karanataka especially in Mandya belt are true inter galactic travelers. They invariably carry their towel over their shoulders. Recently I had been to a nearby village and was curious to see so many intergalactic travelers around. They are fondly referred to as Hegal mele towel alias HMT's (Babel fish translation : Towel on shoulders). This HMT's might be something very similar to the mice in disguise who were actually using humans as laboratory creatures. Who knows ? ;)

Being perfectionist is sin

I feel my best character is my worst enemy. I somehow do not have the ability to tolerate imperfections. As a result I do not study if I feel that I'm unable to complete 100% of the syllabus,Replace my wrist watch glass if there is minor scratch and so on. Thou I'm not perfect, my pursuit to perfection has really driven me crazy. At the end of the day nothing gets done. Sometimes I'm stressed to a point wherein I can barely function. Hence from today onwards I've decided to tolerate 10 - 15% of imperfection in things that I come across. This reminds me of deliberate mistakes that were allowed to be purposefully made on temple carvings, worrying to get 100% of the things right is not worth the effort.

Phantom calls

I had heard about them but had never experienced it until recently.Phantom calls are so frequent that I have to touch my pockets to confirm or deny the ringing. Eventually I end up digging for my cellphone that isn't ringing. It's gotten to the point where I won't even have my cell phone with me but I feel the vibrations. As I understand this is mainly because, we will be more alert to sensations that represent a cellphone vibration and it leads you to over-incorporate non-vibratory sensations and attribute them to the idea that you're receiving a phone call. Hence my phantom calls are more frequent when I'm riding. This thing is very annoying, I'm planning to switch off the vibrating mode and will try to relay on the ring tone alone. In turn I'll be saving on battery life as well. On the second thought I may end up draining battery as I've to solely rely on my listening ability which is almost impossible in Bangalore. Hence the caller keeps trying until I lift my mobile.

Any way, in case if I don't answer your call you know I'll be busy experimenting. But don't worry I'll get back to you sooner or later.

Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon)

I would rather change the title to "A week with Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon)". Downloaded a copy recently and must say it was primarily meant to replace my Opensuse 10.2. After installation I'm strongly thinking about formatting my Windows partition to make some space for linux & have a single operating system. Usually linux installation was a nightmare to novice like me, but things have changed and Ubuntu 7.10 was easiest among the lot. Following are the list of things that I liked the most.

1. Easy Installation
2. Add and remove programs application
3. Easy configuration of network
4. Easy to install proprietary codecs
5. Pidgin internet messenger
6. Compiz fusion (Neither vista nor leopard can match it)
7. Most important of all, its free

The list goes on and on. Till now, I do not have any excuse to at least log into windows for a while either to burn a DVD or watch a divx movie that I used to do with Opensuse frequently

What really prompted me to post this article was the ubuntu ideology - "A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed." - Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Such a nice philosophy, yet so difficult to follow.

A small observation

There are so many clues that blogs can give about their owners happiness quotient. One such effective detection methods is described here as an example. By experience I feel, a person who frequently blogs is happy and content with his life and is doing new things every day and has lots of time to spare usually students fall into this category. If the frequency reduces to one blog post per week that means he might either be travelling or he is enjoying his work and his profession. If he blogs rarely, he is stuck with a high paying MNC job which he dislikes. He will be the most unhappiest person on this planet. And yes, if a person gets an out of the country on-site assignment he promptly stops blogging and plaster his Orkut album with his travel pics. This is small observation and would love inputs based on your experiences.

Feeling relaxed

Dressing up properly makes a huge difference on how your day goes by. The type of work that I do requires me to wear formals most of the time (not that I follow that strictly). I wonder, have business executives ever considered that perhaps if people were told they could dress comfortably and more casually, rather than the tight, stifling white shirt, slacks, and jacket, productivity in the office might actually, I don't know, INCREASE? I'd certainly feel a lot cooler and more relaxed if I could do that.

However despite all this constraints today I'm wearing a short sleeved cotton shirt which is not tucked and my favorite 4 year old Levies jeans torn in all wrong places. The attire is so comfortable that I feel like I'm on an holiday and day was very productive. It is almost 4 in the evening and I'm not tired at all.

While you are at it, here is a neat illustration to dress up the Mac way. Simple yet geeky, casual and relaxed. Apple surely knows how to make things distinctive and unique, may it be with gadgets or an Ad or the way you dress. And ah yes if you are planning to gift me with any of those, my birthday is right down the corner in January. And I do accept gifts in advance. I wonder how to dress up the Linux way.

A week in pondicherry

Last weekend marked my most memorable visit to pondicherry. If you are expecting a post about my Rendezvous with French woman, you would be disappointed. Its about a spicy night with bed bugs. Yup as I had not booked bus tickets in advance I had to settle for ride in Semi Deluxe bus of Pondicherry transport corporation. My hands are swollen with bites. I had assumed bed bugs are rare and are in verge of extinction. But they are very much alive and were crawling all over the seats. If I post an image of my swollen hand, it'll will gross you out and can be used as a good prop for an horror movie. So please think twice before you alight a Pondicherry Govt Bus. Well while coming back I had booked tickets in KSRTC Volvo and must say KSRTC rocks.

Apart from my routine official work I used to take an evening stroll at the beach along Gorbert avenue and while coming back to my room I used to take different route across French colony and was enjoying the place while walking back. The French colony is in contrast with rest of pondicherry, very neat with nice buildings along the roads. The most striking part was the simplicity in architecture yet very attractive. As I say often, simple things in life are very beautiful.

And did I say, I can speak French fairly well but that doesn't help me at all because the only thing I can say in it is, "Qu'a fait l'u dit?" (What did you say?) which just makes the other person repeat whatever he/she had said before. And yes can someone help me out with " Can I ask you out on a date this weekend ". Now if you're talking about French, that is a funny language. From what I came to know, it is common knowledge that the French attach a lot of importance to matters of sex and this is best reflected in the fact that in their language, every object has a gender. I wanted to find out how they had gone about the gender allocation. Then I assume my computer is female as it takes in things(Information) and my cell phone charger to be male for obvious reasons that need not be explained. While you think about it, bye and have a nice day.

Turahalli

At first, I didn't want to write this. But unfortunately for you, I changed my mind and now, here you are, stuck with poor old me. Ok, let's get started, shall we? Perhaps you are familiar with the phrase, liking a place and enjoying a place. Liking a place is natural thing that happens when we visit a place which is relatively good to our experiences. But enjoying a place is something which is rarely experienced by lucky few.

Thou the concept enjoyment is relative, here is my idea about enjoying a place. This does not mean that the place has to be really good with the best sylvan setting you can imagine of.

You act like a kid who has got his first bicycle. Your friends don't mind and they join you. You feel like climbing a tree and your friends join you. You want to laugh loudly and you literally roll on the floor laughing. You feel like jumping, your friends throw you in the air and catch you. U do not mind a friendly quarrel jumping on each other, not caring about people around you. U pose for the camera with the weirdest possible face you can think of and enjoy every bit of it All in all you are yourself enjoying every bit of what you are. No false traits to impress others. Well this is how it was when I visited Turahalli few weeks back. Turahalli is an isolated hillock area located south of Bangalore, off Kanakapura road. This place is a unique assemblage of rocks and dry deciduous forest with lot of eucalyptus trees and other wild shrubs and trees. Also there is a nice little forest attached to it and is an ideal weekend gateway

Lemme brief some important facts about Turahalli.

1.It is a very nice place for birding in Bangalore (8KM from Banashankari temple). Great Horned Owl is frequently spotted in this area. It also serves an ideal place for star gazers if they plan to spend the night. 2.Initially u need to climb a small hill and descend to the forest and again climb a hill to reach one more temple. There are altogether two temples. Climb is very easy and any one can climb it. 3. There are various boulders spread across the hill and a very nice place to try basics of rock climbing 4. The forest amidst is an ideal place to pitch a tent and spend a night there. 5. There is nice kiln beside turahalli and upon request you can earn a nice little trip around the kiln. A very good place to try profile photography and at the same time a interesting tour to most of us as Bangloreans rarely get to see bricks being baked.

Here is a neat little map to get to turahalli. Alternately the best thing is to reach Utarahalli bus stop and ask direction from localities. As there is plenty of information about the place I’ve not included any description about it here. I’ve left the details for you to go out and explore the hills and forest. Go with an open mind and have fun.

Co-incidence

Co-incidence often happens. People may call it strange phenomena or conspiracy theory, but when they happen to you it is still pretty mind-boggling. Today a friend of mine called me up from France and told me about a little country called Andorra that he had visited yesterday. He told me, that the country was a tax heaven, i.e. U don't have to pay any taxes on any items purchased there. After that I switch on my computer and open Google reader and bingo, there is an unread article about Andorra posted by someone else. Strange, very strange.

Do you have similar strange co-incidences to share. Than lets start a tagging game after it.

1. Each player starts with 2 random co-incidences they have come across.

2. People who are tagged, write a blog post about their own 2 random co-incidences, and post these rules.

3. At the end of your post you need to tag your friends. Don’t forget to leave them a comment and tell them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

And yes, my second random co-incidence is, I and my sister share the same birthday. She is 3 years younger to me.

How to stop littering

Is there any innovative method other than this? I wonder when people will learn. Wish BCC wont get an idea from this ;) Found this message on a telephone junction box in Jayanagar 8th Block.

Personal peace time

'm on my way to mysore. Posting through gprs. Once in a while its good to travel alone for short distances. You get personal peace time. Its drizzling out. And plenty of time at hand.

How Complex are you ?

Recently came across few people who had severe specialness complex. No doubt, they are hard working and doing good but does that that make them so special to consider themselves higher mortals. But their own specialness will blunt their conventional intelligence when it comes to many types of decisions. They do not enjoy simple things in life as it is not their cup of tea and it does not add any credentials to their specialness. They fail to watch a movie as its a huge hit because every other person who is not so special are watching it. As a result they tend to watch documentaries which they themselves don't like. Lets assume that a group X feels that they are extra special and has to troubleshoot a problem, their approach will be "How should group X solve it ?" as opposed to " Whats the best solution?". Finally they will become who are popularly known as self centered egoist ass holes. Is this specialness complex constrained to humans, or do animals tend to have similar type of complex. Is this a natural behavior according to Darwinians theory evolution. Please enlighten me.

Kalavarahalli Betta, Skandagiri

Ever since I started receiving forwards about a hill 70km from Bangalore, I knew I had to go there. The mail had this amazing snaps. It was picturesque with cushion of clouds all over the hill. And yes I had been to skandagiri popularly known as kalvarhalli betta. Its near Nandi hills and a popular weekend gateway for many people across Bangalore. If you are expecting a view with clouds, I suggest you to visit Skandagiri in January.

The trek uphill is easy and is meant to be done during nights. The starting point is from a path behind an Ashram " papagni Mutt " . It wont be difficult to find the path as localities can help you locate the trek route. However my trek was not done during the night and to compensate the night trek experience we did not take the usual route. The route we took was more steep and we had to make our way to reach the peak. For adventurous lot I suggest you to look for a Peepal tree (Ficus religiosa) "Arali katte" towards left side of the road while coming from nandhi hills to papagni Mutt. That will be your checkpoint zero and park your bikes there. Then you need to find the way uphill. Do not take this path if you are planning trek at night.

Kalvarahalli betta is hilly with shrubs like trees across the hill. We had plans to have lunch on the peak and had packed " Boil & Eat" MTR rice dishes. The journey uphill was tiring. As we had plans to cook atop I suggested every one to collect dried twigs on the way. Later we had to throw our wood stock as we assumed there would be plenty of them on the hill. And yes we were right, there was plenty of it. We were stopping occasionally to catch our breath and enjoy the views. Gentle breeze and the sound of wind gushing across was a delight to listen.

Finally we were on top of the hill. It was windy and cooking was way to difficult. Somehow we managed to build a steady fire and off we went to boil the water. Finally we had our lunch. Temple atop is in ruins and smelly. There is also a rain water pond nearby. Very tricky to find as its hidden out of view. I dunno whether its potable, but there were fishes and i assume it's not that bad either.

It was about time and we had to return. The return journey was easy as we took the easy down hill route. We were silent while coming back and were recapitulating the the fun we had on the hilltop. Also met a lone trekker separated from his group, he was relived to see us as he had lost his way and was searching for the way back. All in all it was a good experience

Route:Bangalore - Hebbal Flyover - Devanahalli - Chikkaballapur - Skandagiri. Take a left turn inside the city, follow the narrow road to reach Papagni Matt which is at the foot of Skandagiri.

Chandan’s redesigned adda

I have finally redesigned my Blog layout and migrated to new bolgger. The major problem with redesigning is, the new design has to be better then the previous design. Lot of space was wasted in old design and I had to fix that. Also included few new and removed few unwanted stuff. You will, obviously see incremental little changes on the template as time passes, mostly in color and some layouts and things.

But the real change will be, hopefully, in my posting frequency. Honestly I don’t write half the time half as much as I should like and I like less than half my posts half as much as I should like to.

I really like to have lots of text on my blog. The problem is, in order to have lots of text; you need to be really witty. And right now I just don’t feel too witty. So I’m going to put lots of pictures on here, which makes things easier for me. It’s also good for people with extremely short attention spans.

TMNT

It so happens that you watch a movie on HBO and felt U should have had watched them on big screen. When you start watching them on big screen they are nothing but crap. I had plans of enjoying a "proper" movie after the disappointment of spider man 3 and I suppose I did. I watched TMNT. Being a CGI lover TMNT was a dose of caffeine at the right time. With some crisp and funny one liners to cool graphics, its simply amazing. As always, the good movies I have watched are on small screen. You ought to watch it in a theater to enjoy the hyper-kinetic camera work and the rather unusual scene setups. Man, I love being a turtle!

The Big Race

15 Days to complete, Rs 1000/- to spend, 10 destinations to cover. It'd one heck of a race to remember. What say you ? Savvy ???? I'd love to be in it, Due to professional constraints I'm unable to participate. But I may volunteer. Details are here for those who wish to participate or to volunteer.Have fun.

Updates so far

It has been a long hiatus. As I summarize the events, the things that I remember most prominently are:

Met few interesting people. Learnt new things. Made new friends. Am finding difficulty to spare more time for my friends & family. Needs a bit of planning. All in all it's fun to be with them.

A series of missteps has brought me to the brink of (academic/professional) extinction. I'm working on damage control. It is time I did something before it is too late.

This is the third time in past two months I'm getting a severe throat ache with a slaking rage . I blame this on my life style. No more junk food. There has to be a better way to increase weight.

Had been to pondicherry on an official visit. Loved the place. But was unable to visit any of the beaches due to lack of time. A casual visit to minchinbale dam near mysore road. And a rock climbing session at Savandurga (Asia's tallest monolithic rock). I'm planning visit Savandurga again, but during the night.

Completely switched to linux with ocassional visit to windows while I feel like playing games. Open Suse 10.2 rocks and is a visual delight when compiz is running. It makes vista aero look silly.

Nvidia Geforce FX 6200 128MB. For 1600 bucks it was the best bargain. I can play COD 2 with full resolution and effects. Ripping DVD's are faster and smoother.

Played few levels of God of War 2 on TG's play station. The game is real fun with some cutting edge graphics. Gamers suggest to beg, borrow or steal a console to play the game. It is long time since a game like this has been released. Unfortunately PC version is not released. It does not not matter if u have a graphic card or not as long as game developers feel that PC versions are unnecessary. Its unfair.

I have no idea how, why or when this change happened, but I’m pleased it did. Between the time I write a particular to-do item and am sticking unto it. It feels good when things get done. Thanks Mr.Murphy for not dropping in often

Back again

Apologies are due for the break in blogging. I’ve always wondered if work could keep one too busy to spend an hour or two a week on blogging, and I know now. It can. Believe me, I didn’t really mean to take a break. And thanks to those who asked. It felt good.