Captain's Log

I'm back, well, almost, but not quite.

2011-05-16T01:26:00.004+05:30

Feels like forever since i've been here. I see the follower's count hasn't increased. That is, perhaps, a little too much to expect when one isn't blogging. I have to see how to make this thing work on the phone so that i don't have to sit in front of the computer to do this. Or, so that i can write paragraph after paragraph every morning on the loo and post it at the end. I'm consider myself quite healthy not to finish an entire blog post in one sitting. Thank you.

One of the reasons why i haven't written about anything lately, is quite simply because there isn't anything to write about. Some other parts in life, like culinary skills, running, a small matter of my thesis and not to mention the new found interest in languages are happily munching away my time. My "writing time" as well has been taken over by the fountain-pen. The pen, indeed is mightier than the sword, or here, more aptly, the keyboard. Finding new pen friends, having a mom who loves to write and a new found interest in making people take up philately by sending them new stamps, also consume time, especially when people set themes for what stamps i have to send them. Gladly, but takes time, you see. But lately, a person totally unrelated to my blogging sphere asked me whether i still keep writing. It was also inspirational and a reason to start again. Thank you Thomas.

Lately, my life has gone towards drooling over academic titles like "Model Concepts for Non Isothermal Compositional Liqid-Gas Flow and Transport" By Holger class or "Multiphase Flow and Transport Processes in the Subsurface" By rainer helmig. Firstly, because of this, i don't have enough time to read other stuff, like a normal book written by a non-acadmeic author. Secondly, i cannot write about what i read here, because, (a). I will have to cite everything, an annoying activity I try to avoid doing because it might lead to someone revoking my degree ten years later because of improper citation. See, german politics for example. (b). I need LaTeX and i don't wanna do that here, too many equations.

I sometimes try to put out a post on my culinary achievements, later realizing that it would be a hundred times in the internet already (see my explanation about citations and relate to this).

So, for the next months, i will have limited access to normal literature, normal english literature, normal non-academic english literature and hence a reduced posting frequency related to it. It's sad, but somehow i wish to get through this phase with my interest to blog still intact at the other end. Your wishes and inspirational words are warmly welcome! Till my next post! Ta-ta!

Thoughts

2010-02-07T18:47:00.003+05:30

Here's the thing with weekends, they just end even before you get into a grove! And if you're in my phase of life, not to mention; part of the world, you'll spend it panicking about the week ahead, if you're good, or the entire month; and thats when you need professional help. Mind you, not worrying, under certain circumstances, will also be eligible to necessitate professional help, but in most cases a long whip will solve that trend.

The interesting part of the weekend is how you can come up with seemingly unrelated stuff and worry about it for hours together, losing sleep and sometimes forgetting to cook and eat until your thought process dulls down and you realize you require some fuel. That's when i usually have several bars of chocolates to choose from handy, to take a bite from each would mean you get half an hour before the mind and body goes on strike to cook yourself a warm meal (if you're not used to cold sandwiches that is; I'm not).

One of the thing i was wondering so much about the last weekend was, apart form my assignments and presentations which're coming up; and the exams too, was how civilizations seemingly managed to destroy themselves usually at the most advanced phase of their development . Like the Indus valley for example. They had water conduits and public baths and roads and everything. Some say the river dried up and so everyone died. But still, that was probably just one reason among many.

The fact that mesmerizes me is that, in ancient times, every civilization, without being in touch with each other, went through the same phases of development, in the same chronological order, this is somewhat beautiful and in a certain way mysterious and, for the lack of a better word, fishy even! I say that because, all civilizations were not exposed to the same set of resources. Each civilization had a different set, some had more ores, some had more rocks, and some had more trees, and some had more sand. But the people with ores did not come up entirely with metal underwear, people with rocks, didn't exactly make everything with rocks, people with sand didn't come up with glass (if you look at it, that was how metal was discovered, when they had a fire, the ore melted and they found molten metal, but the same analogy doesn't go with sand and glass). Each one searched out for something particular, found it somewhere far away and dragged it all the way back to do something that meant something great to them. That's just one incident. But if you look at the bigger picture, almost without knowledge of each other, all civilizations, went through the same phases, the discovery of clothing and shelter, the evolution of language and script, the concept of God or a supreme being, formation of society and the workings of that, the concept of after-life, of building structures which are of seemingly no other use than to please some supreme being that they allege exists.

It wasn't like they sent a pigeon saying "dude, we built a temple....... Losers!" and the other guys replied saying, "HAha, we built one too, and you know what, exactly on winter solstice, the sunlight comes straight into the inner temple, beat that, Suckers!". Think about it, doesn't seem right, does it?

Glimpses

2009-12-25T04:31:00.003+05:30

These are some snaps from the available resources i have in my reach!

#1: is the classroom

#2: left 1/3rd of my table.

Snow!

2009-12-12T21:34:00.004+05:30

Finally! My first experience of Snow! well, was nothing special or tears-bringing, but still it was a strange feeling to touch it, cause of the humidity, it is still rough and "sharpy" quite unlike the image it portrays. As things start to get drier, it should soften up! Anyway, my first pics.

Guessing Game!

2009-12-04T00:57:00.003+05:30

Some interesting stuff i got my hands on this morning, and really complex stuff i learnt about them in my engineering and also learning a great detail now. Lets start a guessing game, what is it, where exactly it is used. If you can mention it to an accuracy of 5 inches. you're good! :D

Random Pics

2009-11-22T00:16:00.002+05:30

Dhobi Central @ Stuttgart

This one is the dhobi ghat for coloured clothes :P

Glipses of Fall

More Gadgets

The Wohnheim

Race 2 Tee

2009-11-15T03:38:00.002+05:30

So, Boring Saturday afternoon in Stuttgart, with even the sun on holiday for all of central Europe, a promise of a beautiful weekend by the weather forecast was ruined by mother nature. I, for one missed my weekend run, and stayed home all day long. So, when i was getting bored in the evening, so was Subbu on the port of Goteborg, and we both had no clue what to do to drive away the boredom. The crazier of the two came up with a plan, a race, to make tea, yeah, however stupid sounds, it was actually what was agreed upon! a race to make tea.

The rules were:

on count of 5 we'd go to the kitchen put the kettle on, boil water and put the tea bag. But then it was agreed that since the tea bags are dipped for 2 mins constant by both of us, only the time taken to heat the water, put it in a mug and getting it back to the computer desk is what counts.

So, the race started on the count of 5. How much time we each took is immaterial, but then what's important is that he took about 20 seconds later to to finish it. you know why? duh! you'd be a total idiot if you hadn't guessed it out by now already! a total dork! I'm telling you, if it doesn't flash by the time you reach the end of this sentence, then you shouldn't be reading this, really, because then you'd be too stupid to own a computer! give it back!

oh well, I'll tell you anyway, let me ask, you, can you handle it? the truth? well, don't say i didn't warn you! the reason is so simple, i gave away the clues in the first paragraph of this blog! c'mon! nothing yet?

well anyway, this time for real! Stuttgart is at a elevation of 450M above sea level and Goteborg is a port! nothing yet? doh! well, water boils faster at higher elevations than at sea level! water boils in Goteborg at 99.997 degrees and at Stuttgart at 98.7 degrees. So, the time to bring 250ml of water through 2˚C took 20 seconds :D (Specific heat+latent heat)! C'mon, you didn't know that much? Get back to books! who ever bought you a computer! Dorks!

Kidding! Cheers!

--Gecko.

Differences

2009-10-09T00:41:00.004+05:30

Having students from different countries around can be really amusing sometimes. Today in the break (literally!) from the German class, there was a small group which was formed, in it there was a person from Palestine, one from Jordan, one from Bengal, one from Gujrat, and one from Maharashtra. Eventually, we were tired of speaking a foreign language all the time so the Palestine and the Jordanian started talking in Arabic. That was when i thought "those two are from two different countries, how can they speak the different languages!!"

But immediately i realized the various questions asked to me by other people. A few are

Brazil: how can two Indians not speak the same language

Turkey: Is it true that India has more than 200 Languages

Somebody i don't remember: How can all three of you be the same country and still talk in english all the time!

This is how the world is, we all have our own notions about the world, and distant parts of it which really come as a "culture shock" when we actually experience it. One guy though did really believe it till i pulled out one of my Indian currency notes and counted the languages for him.

Heh! And in Germany, it seems there're dialects which sound nothing like textbook German and this evening, luckily, when one of my neighbors had his friend, from just-out-of-Stuttgart, over for dinner, i had the privilege of listening to one, and compared to the "special German" (compare to 'news in special English' from VOA) we're used to at class, it sounded something like how Brad Pitt sounded in snatch, talking "English" to a slick looking, country-speaking, Jason Statham in "Snatch"!

And, @Adithya's comment about chucking the dictionary for one of my previous posts.

Learning German by chucking the dictionary is like trying to learn Sanskrit by listening to the Sanskrit news on TV every weekend, you'll miss the news, and will never learn the language too, apart from wasting time that is. Well, even if it's slow, when you learn, learn it technically!

Culture

2009-09-30T01:52:00.003+05:30

Well this might come as an old topic but then i felt the need to state it yet another time, as a few incidents, in which i was involved, reminded me of it once again this evening in the Masters' students meet arranged by the international students office in my college. It was supposed to be an evening where people would get to know others cultures, traditions, their views and opinions in a way which would benefit us all, but then as with most cases involving two, or rather, three very explosive factors, namely young age, freedom and to a certain extent, fundamentalism, of a sort which is not really dangerous (certainly not as dangerous as explained by the media) but all while equally annoying and insulting to the person at the opposite end.

The event began as usual, with a very warm welcome by a very polished German lady wishing us all a good time. And then we were all asked to help ourselves to some cookies and some juice and sit down in a circle, chairs already arranged. We then had to introduce ourselves and tell our names, the country we're from, what we're here to study in and what we expect from these two years in general.

So, People were like, all enthusiastic, with replies ranging from learning languages, to learning cultures, meeting new people, seeing new places, drinking lots of beer and, like i said, just having a good time. But then, the thugs probably forgot, you don't get to learn new cultures or you don't get to meet new people, learn their language or have a good time if you laugh on their face for the way they speak their language, make laugh at their beliefs, mock their population or the demographic distribution of their population in other parts of the world, and not of all things, their religion or their religious beliefs, and neither if you start comparing with your own.

The main activity of the evening was for people to group around according to the continents (almost) and then come up with a proverb that everybody, in that group, knows, write it down in the language in which originated, and explain the literal meaning and then the actual/contextual meaning of the proverb. That was when, the very same people who came up with some really beautiful proverbs and read it out with all vigor and enthusiasm to the audience were acting like jokers, laughing at the meanings of the other proverbs and making fun of the way its spoken, thankfully it didn't really run anyone in the wrong way (i think and i dearly hope, cause i don't wanna be punished for something I'm not responsible for), but then it got me thinking, fundamentalism is in each and everyone of us, it is not our duty to question whether its wrong or right, it's our responsibility that it doesn't come in the way of others or that we don't step on anyone's toes because of it. Cause yes, i too sometimes am angered that, people here expect me to know German from the day i landed here, immediately, *poof* and I'm German!, like that! and the anger is not cause they're don't speak English, but because they're not giving me time to learn german, We're all humans oder? But, i don't go around accusing Germans in front of other Germans, or keep reminding them of things they're trying to forget and, mind you, especially, for those of the things they're trying to forget that the present generation was never ever even remotely responsible for.

Accept it! you prove nothing by arguing, they're like that cause they're like that, they wouldn't be Chinese or Russian or German or Indian or Spanish if they weren't like that. Had they been anything else, they would just be "people from" China or Russia or Germany or India or Spain.

Rule number one, don't question "why" in a culture; that is that way cause it was in any other way, it wouldn't be "that" culture, now would it? Now don't try to act smart, i know what's on your mind, yes you can question some things, but if you don't know what to question and what not to, then learning other cultures is not your cup of tea, try table-tennis.

I hope those of you reading this would try not to piss someone from another region off. Learning is fun, don't spoil it. Cheers.

Gecko.

A flashback, sort of

2009-09-25T01:53:00.008+05:30

A few days ago, when i had nothing to do after my class, i decided to take a walk to the supermarket instead of a bus, do myself, my legs and my pocket a big favour! Save 4 euros and stuff, while i was walking one the small quiet roads, i came across, in a narrow road, parked silently at the side, one of the most iconic cars of the 2000's era in terms of competition. A car which came in and dessimated the competiton on all surfaces, tarmac, gravel, ice&snow, mud, mized, you name it, it's won on that. One of the rare pieces of engineering excellence which help shed off the image of the French as "tarmac-specialists" (drivers and cars).

What looks like this

take this mule, keep the Logo, the name of the car and donate the rest to a washing machine plant. now, build a tubular space frame chassis, fit magnesium alloy wheels, enough braking power for 5 average cars and dampers and springs capable of taking a 10G impact. add a transverse mounted 2 litre, turbo charged, intercooled, in-line 4 cylinder, water injected, 310bhp, Magnetti-Marelli controlled engine. Put in a fire spitting anti-lag system for the fun factor. Gel this machichery to a longitudinally mounted non synchonized six speed sequential shift gearbox through a high performance clutch. finally throw-in three high performance, electronically controlled, active differentials, cockpit contollable anti-rollbars, variable engine maps and such small fancy things and you get this!

which, by the way looks nothing like the original road-going car, except for the name and the logo of course. but, you get a car which can do 0-100kmph in 2.5 seconds on gravel! or take a jump at 170kmph (and "fly" for 55 meters), or hit 230kmph on snow with tungsten spikes in the tyres. It's a Citroen Xsara WRC. One of the many French cars to have dominated rallying (and specially tarmac events in the past).

This domination started as early as the Group-B era in the 1980's and the Renault Maxi Turbo, then the Peugeot 205 T 16, and later in specialised dakar cars, the Peugeot 405, the Pikes peak Peugeot and the Cirtoen ZX (that time both had pulled out of rallying and were looking into rallyraids). Then the 90's was a quiet time for the French, as most of the sweeping was done was Lancia (late '80s and early to mid '90s) which went on to become the most successful Company in WRC history and also Mitsubishi to a considerable extent (mid '90s to late '90s and years 2000 and 2001). Somewhere in the middle, Carlos Sainz (Toyota Celica, Corolla group-A cars, champion 1990, 1992), Didier Auriol (Toyota Corolla Group A , Champion 1994) and Colin McRae (Subaru Impreza Group A, Champion 1995) turned up and won everything they laid their hands on!

At the end of the 1990's Ford announced their new car to replace the Escort, which was the Ford Focus WRC and Peugeot announced their return to WRC in 1999, and made the debut with the Peugeot 206 WRC. Citroen did too, but with a modified two wheel drive Citroen Xsara Kit car. The xsara was immediately on the pace, Philippe Bugalski, who was somewhat of a mad man, capable of lightening speeds on tarmac but could not always keep his head together, he gave the Xsara Kit car (which was still a semi-official entry by Citroen) its first victories in 1999 in the Rally of Catalunya in Spain and the Tour de Corse in Corsica. The year 2000 had three Tarmac events, Spain, Italy and France. Bugalski (he's French) won again in Spain, and Gilles Panizzi won in France and Italy in a Peugeot 206 WRC.

Marcus Gronholm was crowned champion in 2000, him alongside with tarmac specialists like Didier Auriol & Gilles Panizzi who dominated tarmac events gave Peugeot a very high rate of success as soon as their debut. During those times Citroen, peugeot and many such teams employed surface-specialists (there were really few drivers who could win anywhere, any time, any condition, any car, Carlos, Tommi and Colin were almost the only ones).

2001 marked the announcement of the Citroen Xsara WRC, the official car prepared and entered by the Citroen factory team into selected events, and had it's first win in the Tour de Corse 2001, this time piloted by Jesus Puras. The other two Tarmac events, Sanremo of Italy went to Panizzi and Catalunya went to Dider Auriol.

2002 was the year of Peugeot, With them winning in most of the events, but, however, their luck on safari continued to be down, they haven't won in Kenya since 1978 and although a peugeot finished second, it's still just second. Citroen competed for the first time, officially in many rallies with tarmac specialist Philippe Bugalski, Gravel Specialist Thomas Radstrom, and the-then rising star Sebastien Loeb (he had his first ever WRC win in the Rally Germany that year)

2003 was Citroen's year, although petter won the championship, citroen made quantum leap in development and with Carlos and Colin joining, were easily crowned the Manufacturers Champions.

During the years 2004, 05, 06, 07 and 08 Sebastien Loeb was unbeatable, with only ford being able to take the chase to the line on some rallies, during this period, Sebastien has either made or broken most of the records in the WRC.

But as it is with any sport, there's always progress, and the Citroen Xsara WRC had to give way to the Citroen C4 WRC in 2007 which has proved to be just as successful (or maybe better?) as the Xsara, while Peugeot entered their 307 WRC replacing the 206 WRC in 2004 and pulled out at the end of 2005. Citroen pulled out the same year too but promised to come back in 2007 (with the new C4), in the meanwhile helped Sebastien who competed as a privateer (and was perhaps the most successful privateer world Champion, when he won it in 2006).

When i saw this car, a memory of an era, perhaps not as inspirational as the Golden era of world rallying, but tough nonetheless came back to me, an era which inspired me to follow rallying, to know more about the drivers, the cars, teams, the history of the sport, the skills involved, the techniques (and perhaps to implement a few in my everyday riding, for which i've been cruelly criticized either as being suicidal or as a show-off :| ). Just felt like writing it down, so that next time i see a Xsara/Focus/Impreza/206 /307 i can open this, read and feel good :) Cheers!

Und Part - 4

2009-09-14T22:18:00.002+05:30

Things are going smoothly, I'm getting used to the weather and all such

minor things which become a major problem if you try and fright it! so

I'm officially "with the flow" now. Things are quite 'European' with me

too. I spend like crazy and spend like crazy for food and travel! Bought

a lot of healthy stuff. Being a leaf-eater is kinda frowned upon here

(up yours! Europeans!). Finally cleaned my room on Saturday, don't even

try to imagine how much of my own stuff i had to sweep out, then moped

it with dettol and had it smelling like a hospital for a few hours. Now

things are getting back no normal! some dirt is unavoidable though.

Had bought some chocolates in the flea market (no, not second hand

chocolates, they sell them first hand at cheap price, 1 EUR for each bar

of Lindt & Sprungli). So I'd bought a bar each of milk+choco, 85% coca,

99% coca, pure milk and caramel and a bag of small dark chocolates. I

finished the milk+choco, and opened teh 99% coca and man was it

something! you can't eat more than 1 square at a time! it's the espresso

equivalent of chocolate! but anyway, I'm not giving it away or anything,

even if i have to eat it for two years!

Finally made my first few bowls of rice this week. Have to say, it's not

that easy as my folks had scared me back home, as long as you're hungry

enough to be prepared to eat anything which comes out of the vessel at

the end of half an hour of being on the stove, you'll be be the best

cook in the world! simple! But, that said, it wasn't awful either. I'm

surely short of all the spices, and having to cook anything i want in

just one vessel! but then, I've never been starved of food here. I have

been starved of time and so have had to make some compromises on my

afternoon lunch on most days! (BTW peaches taste yum, and i don't mean

the girls!)

The German class is going on quite ok too, German is a confusing

language, much like Sanskrit, they have a very strange similarity with

each other, in the terms of addressing people formally (with respect)

and informally, and singular, double and plural of nouns. and also the

way some pronouns are used when referring to some objects which are

classified as masculine (dog, book pencil, stool) or feminine (watch,

lamp, spectacles, plug-socket) (plug is masculine) (those two were the

only ones i could guess why!) and so depending on the gender of the

noun, the possessive pronouns (like mine, yours, his, hers, it's, ours,

theirs) and the articles (like a, an, and the) also change. This is

kinda difficult to catch and I'm guessing, comes only with practice and

experience. There's one more aspect which adds to the confusion. The

forms of the verbs, derived from the infinitives, are sometimes the

same, as the infinitive itself, depending on where it's used! in

English, at least that is easy cause the infinitive is "to live" and the

different forms will be "live" "lived" "is living" "was living" "has

lived" "had lived" "has been living" and "had been living" (present,

past, present continuous, past continuous, present perfect, past

perfect, present continuous progressive and past continuous progressive

respectively) (please correct me if I'm wrong) (if you thought the last

line was confusing, then German is not your cup of tea, try chamomile

:P) and then the corresponding infinitive in German is all confusing

(at least to me) cause just the present form of the infinitive "to live"

in German "Wohnen" becomes

I live "ich Wohne"

you live "du Wohnst"

You live (with respect) "Sie Wohnen"

He/she/it lives "er/sie/es wohnt"

we live "wir Whonen"

he lives (with respect) "ihr Wohnt"

they live "sie Wohnen"

(i think i got this right, but corrections always welcome, I'll have to

write a test in any case!)

Maybe i find it confusing because i try to correlate everything to

English and then learn German by English (that's cause i don't get a

Kannada-Deutsch/Deutsch-Kannada dictionary)! Some people say it's wrong,

but then, I'd like to invite them to learn Kannada or Sanskrit, and I'll

have their head on my wall the minute they open a

English-Sanskrit/Sanskrti-English Dictionary!

(Deutsch-Sanskrit/Sanskrit-Deutsch too).

I now feel like I'm in 6th and 7th Standard again and it's all coming

back to me, the exercises i used to solve in McMillan English -2 books!

the scoldings of Mrs. Sudha Rao and Mrs. Geeta Venkatesh and Mrs.

Lalitha Jagadish for using bad English is all coming back to me! Today,

if i know some English, then it's because of the foundations that

they've laid in me and my fellow classmates, of the 1996-97 batch!

But sadly, nobody has time here to teach us in such a systematic manner,

it's a crash course, and they're expected to drill and cram and we're

expected to get drilled and get stuffed with German down our throats, so

nobody uses a word of English, it's all taught purely in German, and

very soon you begin to recognize the phrases and words and will be able

to compose some broken German sentences yourself (with quite a lot of

help from the dictionary). So i guess things are not that bad. Later if

I'm interested, i can always read up on my own and learn more German.

Right now there's no problem as such, but a general discomfort, but,

also, some confidence seeing the smiles on the face of the Chinese and

the Middle-Easterners (the can't speak jack of english, forget German!)

I spend most of the morning doing homework (we're given a lot). And this

weekend i spent fiddling with the new blackberry that i bought, the

BlackBerry Bold 9000 (number attached to my signature), an awesome piece

of machine (sometimes requiring a battery-pull). It was a pretty lazy

weekend, compared to the week which vanished away so quickly! Monday is

here again, and my half-british/half-German teacher will be breathing

down my neck by noon tomorrow! Well, that's about it, expecting a huge

shipment of stuff from back home! i hope it all arrives in one piece and

hope I'll have enough space to keep all in my room! else I'll be in big

trouble (will have to stuff all the kitchen shelves with my stuff!).

Well, I'll get some more sleep and will see how the week goes! Till

then! Auf wiedersehen!

errrr..... part 3

2009-09-14T22:17:00.001+05:30

Things are looking good, finally woke up early, all on my own! guess

it's the jet-lag. Had some more formalities to do, bought a map of

Stuttgart. It's folded in a weird way and i had two people in the store

warn me about that. They're quite concerned.

Had been to the super market again! and this time took some time in the

fruits section and bought a load of fruits! something to get me going

for the next two weeks! Spending money like crazy here, guess it's that

or spending away my health! It started raining here and when it rains,

it's really cold! i mean, biting cold! doesn't seem to bother the

Europeans though, they walk around like everything is warm and sunny!

The trees here are weird, can't even recognize what kind of trees they

are! but they don't seem to flower and they don't seem to fruit! some

life they're living!

Ok, so, formalities, I'd been to the Rathaus which means "city hall" and

got a taste of German bureaucracy, they wouldn't accept my photo for the

visa extension as, it seemed, to them, that my face was two millimeters

two short according to their scale. And luckily, i had another photo in

my bag for ze Germans which they agreed to accept. They bureaucracy

doesn't stop there. The office times are weird, like one office works

from 9-12 on Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays, and from 3.30 to 6 on

Tuesdays and Thursdays and so on and so forth! I was like, can't we have

a fixed timing like everybody works everywhere from 9-5????? would be so

much easier to get things done!

The problems don't' stop there, I'd been to the post office to get some

stamps and i waited my turn at the counter and asker her politely if she

knew English, the old granny goes, blah blah blah blah Deutschland....

Blah blah blah blah DEUTSCH! I was like, "ok I'll ask at the next

counter, Danke". Anyway, i managed to buy what i wanted anyway, but

then, these people not always make it a pleasurable experience. Well,

it's nobody's fault. i guess.

we had a introductory lecture on Thursday regarding the German courses

which starts from Monday. Thankfully, there were English and German

Speakers on stage. We were explained about the courses and stuff like

that, I don't remember, it's been three years since i attended formal

college, i can't remember everything that's said! but i managed to write

everything down and am too lazy to look at it again too! Well, so far i

haven't missed anything, amen to that!

There was a big party at the IZ , the Internationales Zentrum or

International Center welcoming all the international students to

Universitat Stuttgart on Friday. There're parties arranged and city

tours, Excursions, Booze, some cinema, meetings at pubs, dancing etc

etc... The whole lot! There was complimentary lunch too this afternoon!

My first European meal, Kinda difficult, kinda scary, that I'll end up

eating something i shouldn't be! But it was fun nonetheless. There was

all sorts of greens and conveniently helped myself to a plate full of

raw veggies. Then there was a noodle packet and i had to get somebody to

the serving counter to ask the serving lady if it contained egg.

Unfortunately she said yes. But, there was some potatoes and some sort

of cheese or, later, as subbu told me, mayonnaise or something of that

sort which they announced was completely free of meat or fish or egg,

so i poured spoons full of it only to later find out that it was weird!

but then they said it's veggie and so, weird or not, i stuffed myself

with it, especially cause it was hot! I'd gone for a second helping too

for all the greens, and came back quite full actually! got to say hello

to a few new people. Then had been shopping with a guy from Malawi who

hadn't eaten in three days except for that lunch! Loaded my card with

pista, almond, cashews, raisins, some chocolate bread, apples, walnuts,

bought some rice as well. will see what to do with it maybe today or

tomorrow!

Today, Saturday, there's a flea market going on on campus where people

sell all sorts of stuff, weird and usual most of it is around 1Eur,

50Cent etc. Friends got some jackets for 4 Eur, i got a bowl to eat

breakfast with for 50Cent, 4 bars of Lindt & sprungli and one bag of

small chocolates, all for about 5 Euro! All dark! it's the chocolate

equivalent of Espresso! Got a lanyard to put my key in so that i don't

lose it! (losing a key == replacing mail box + replacing door lock set =

250Eur!, You DO NOT lose the key at any cost!) and that's about it! It's

been biting cold here from the morning, the temperature is just over 10

degrees! and it's been that way from the morning! if you go out without

a jacket, a good one for that matter, you're sure to come back all blue,

unless, if you're European! in which case you'd still roaming around

like you would on a beach! weird people i tell you! The doors are

freaking huge and freaking heavy! Probably built to their size and they

never, ever open easily, unless of course, again, you're European. It's

been 6 days since i had coffee! i really miss it! today or tomorrow, i

need to have coffee, even if it means i have to take a ticket and go all

the way to the city to find a cup! Coffee and water, the most important

things in life, these people don't use! There's soda everywhere! plain

water is unheard of! you'll just have to drink from the tap and hope

nobody is sleeping on their job at the treatment plant! (like homer

Simpson!)

Well, i guess that's it for now, it's the weekend, everything is closed!

yes everything on campus, the cafes, Mensa, bookstores, supermarket,

everything! it's deserted and there's nobody around! guess, I'll have to

make some plans for the evening, or make some tea (finally) and just

have a good nap.

Oh, and some updates, Finally got my visa extended, but there're still

some problems with registering with the university and stuff like that.

Will hopefully get settled on Monday or Tuesday. Further updates are

yet to come. Have fun and wish me luck for the weekend! Cheers!

First mails from Germany Part - 2

2009-09-14T22:16:00.000+05:30

Hi people,

My stint with the university is going on well. Had dinner (noodles) last

night and crashed around 2100hrs, Got up today only at 0830! Thankfully

my feet were no longer swollen. Had a lot of things to do in the

university, some registration with the stuttgart city council,

insurance, etc. Right opposite the stittgart city council is a huge

supermarket called Schwaben Gallery, Where you have some supermarkets

for food, clothing, fashion and then a place called Media Markt, where

they have everything electronic! Everything except the Grundig World

Band radio i was looking for. And one more thing! i wonder who got this

concept of importing things from abroad saying it's cheap. I certainly

didnt't find anything cheap here! the Sony 7600G World band radio which

i was following in india, it costs 199Eur here and it was around 7K in

india! Apple iPod touch is 219Eur, and 14K in india. A swiss army knife,

which i bought costs 63Eur here but back when i bought it, it was around

3K. Oh well, the stuff like bus ticket and stuff is explainable, a

4-stop bus ride costs 1Eur 95Cent for one direction. A map of stuttgart

costs 7Eur. A Veggie Delight Sub at Subway with 0.5Ltr coke and a cookie

costs 4Eur 99Cent. I'm like "just take it and go!" to the people at the

billing counter! One thing though, nobody ever complaing about change!

every place, every bus and every train station has change, in abundance!

And things are kinda over-organized, like say if a vending machine has

something for 50Cent, you can either put in 50Cent, or 20+20+10 or if

you put in 1Eur, it gives back the change! Crazy i tell you!

Everything is German, I get damn scared whenever someone asks me to sign

at the bottom of some printed paper, scared, that i'll end up signing

the ownership of my own life. But then the thought occurs to me, my life

is nothing important to them, why would they take the trouble of

printing a two sheet document just to own my life :P when they can do it

by flashing a knife!

Eating habits are still not optimal, Had Noodles last night, breakfast

cereal this morning, 0.5Kg of fresh grapes in the afternoon, Sub + Coke

+ cookie in the evening. Not sure what to do at night. But i bought some

bread, jam, some more breakfast cereal, soups, ketchup, milk, yoghurt,

buttermilk, sugar, salt...... everything pure veg and edible! yippie!

Got a sim card this evening, darn thing still ain't working! it seems

T-Mobile is experiencing some problems! if it doesn't work by tomorrow

then i guess i'll have to spend 4Eur to go back to the T-Mobile store

and get it sorted. Thinking of buying a better phone, a blackberry

perhaps, my eyes took a good glance at it and made my body fall in love

with it! so don't blame me! I know I know, i'm a student, blah blah! but

dast ist Zuper, Zehr Gut!"

By the way, i did the shopping and the sim card and the Subway stint all

alone, taking a bus to the city and carrying back around 10kg of stuff

back to my room! i lack a fridge here. The staying arrangements are

quite weird, There's like a flat.....err...... an huge room with a door,

and that huge space is divided into separate rooms, two separate

bathrooms and one kitchen. All this in the huge room i mentioned. The

kitchen has just one fridge, which is kinda crowded, gotta ask around

for prices of a small fridge!

Well, these few people taught me some stuff which i'd forgotten, like in

the supermarket, things at the eye level are always the highest prices,

things further down and further up will be much cheaper than things at

your eye level. But sometimes these people, i think, try to save too

much. Well, I'm not the "extreme saving" types, but i'm not a

spendthrift too, I guess people in the hostel are gonna faint if they

hear i ate at subway! Well, it made me happy! Felt like home! :)

It's 7 in the evening and the sun hasn't set, this can create some

problems in the future with my sleep cycle! My German dictionary is

finally coming to use! It's helpful till you memorize some translations

and some sentences like "where is the toilet" :| I kinda finished my

calling card quite soon, in one day :| 20 Eur in a day to call India!

This can't go on forever! but then, tomorrow is the day i'll be getting

my internet (hopefully) and so i guess i'll have to manage till then!

without cellphone and without internet, is like, too bad! That's all i

can say, cause i'm lost for words! The weather is very pleasant, it's a

warm 26 Deg Centigrade in the daytime! Clear but busy skies, cause of

the nearby frankfurt airport, the sky, when you look up, is at least

full of 2 or 3 planes. Sometimes the whole sky is cris-crossed with

streaks from airplanes, with as many as 15~20 streaks! people are so

happy with the weather that they come is all sorts of short clothes! the

only people wearing full clothing are the ones from the middle east,

Asia, Micronesia, Africa and India, Everybody else, take most of it off!

Met some classmates too, So far one guy from India, former techie - IBM,

2007 passout from chemical engineering, Arkapovo Goshal, one girl from

Greece her name is pronounced "Andro-mahi", gotta ask her to write it

down and paste it on her chest, Chemical engineering masters holder.

Another one from Philipines, Angeli, Civil Engineering. Two guys from

Africa, one from Ethiopia and one from Eritrea, I don't remember the

names, cause they needed another African to explain, in German, how to

write the name, to the insirance office girl! So i saw no point in

trying to remember it on the first day! There's William (i think) from

Brazil.

There're two seniors i know so far. Alexander Mack, Civil Engineering

Graduate, German National, a real fit guy and Ameen, Irrigation

Engineering Graduate, From Iran who knows everything about the Hostel

and the university, a pro-active guy, and quick witted, but quite

friendly, sometimes "bossy" and the "all knowing" type, but a real nice

person.

Bought plug converters (with grounding)! so finally my MacBook is safe!

There're a lot of things that happened yesterday and today! I forgot

what i have tomorrow! with all my mails in IMAP and no connection to the

internet, I'm kinda stuck without internet! well, that's cause the

college corresponds to me only via email. I'll have to search out my

fellow classmates and ask them what's up for tomorrow!

One more weird thing i notices is when i'd been to the insurance office,

i saw 4 book which showed you how to exercise various parts of your

body! they have that here cause if you don't do it and you end up

falling sick or injuring something, they have to pay for it! :)

Ah the first drops of rain in Germany! :) nice to see! Cheers!

-Gecko.

My first mails from Germany - part 1

2009-09-14T22:15:00.000+05:30

sitting in a boeing 747 i noticed one thing, it's something that they advertise, and it's something else on the inside, at least as economy class goes. First things firsts,

1. the remote at your side switches on the light of the person in the front seat.

2. in flight entertainment reboots without warning.

3. touch screen isn't so touchy.

4. it's more crammed than a night train to tirupathi!

5. you can stretch your legs, AT ALL!

6. Lean on the side wall and you hear a creak and then a "Thud" sound. You wouldn't wanna try that more than twice.

7. pillows suck, like just as much as everything inside the plane.

8. A luggage conveyor belt can cause more delay than you would've ever imagined.

9. Volvos have better cushions and rugs than this.

10. having said all that, the flight to mumbai was cool. A little turbulence at the end but then, mumbai is next to the sea, can expect that much convection at night. The snack was cool, err.... hot. Take off and landing was perfect, almost.

11. But, this, on the other hand is yet to fire up the engine after 1 hour and 40 minutes of delay!

12. Finally they decide two hours is enough to bake us all and start off.

13. The acceleration is outright brute compared to the tiny A320 which got me to bombay.

31Aug 2009

I landed! safe and sound. But thats not the fun part, it was the the part when i opened the window while everyone was alseep and the view i got! of snaking rivers, city lights, mountains, The sea. We were well above the weather, 35000 feet the onboard telemetry showed, and were cruising at 900kmph with the temperature outside at around -45 degrees centigrade. I could see that the few droplets of water on the window, which were present at the time i took off form bombay had now turned into beautiful ice crystals and soon started to bounce the sunlight like diamonds. As we entered Frankfurt, i could see the first skyscrapers appearing in view. a river "Main" (spelt 'my-ne') running in the middle of it. The 747 now started it's regular dance before landing banking continuously from left to right while decreasing altitude. finally it touched down, temp outside was 9 degrees centigrade, the snow crystals had melted and i too limbered up my joints to get out.

Customs procedures were cleared off quite easily. and i was on my way to the train station. A 3 stop ride, lasting no more than 10 minutes cost me 3Eur 50Cent. well, but it was fast though. Once at the Frankfurt Main station, i searched for something to eat. Picked up the worst posible sandwich for 3 eur 70 cent! i should've learnt my lesson then, but well, i was too hungry, i'll tell you what the lesson is in a while. I ended up wasting half the sandwich as i could not bite into the cold bread with my false teeth! Now it was time to freshen up! and take care of stuff. I went in search of the restroom. That's when i had to par 70Cent just to enter the rest room. Lesson: Stop multiplying numbers with 70! it doesn't mean the same anymore. Well, it's either that or peeing in your pants, you decide. I already did! Got some chocolates for the guy who's coming to pick me up. couldn't think of giving him anything else. No, i'm not gonna hit on him.

Sitting in the ICE (Inter City Express) to stuttgart, the weather outside and the scenery looks like i'm on the Chamundi hill road again! oh well, that's a relief.

Ppl here seem to mind their own business all the time, and if they ever happen to cross your path, they'll surely flash a warm smile, like they mean it! Passing thru some sub-urban independany houses no. They all look the same, like how I used to draw houses with triangular roofs, but with a DTH antenna on top of them all. They hang clothes out here as well. Speaking of which, they really are quite different when it comes to dressing, for many its almost like they just need a piece of cloth, for society-related reasons, not that they're trying to cover anything! and not that other take notice of it as well, well, most of the other would be in a similar state as well.

Seen some indians trying to dress like them casually. They really "TRY" to be casual in showing off skin, thus making it look vulgar!

There's a lot of graffiti culture going on, with some really beautiful pieces drawn on some walls. Saw a paaan-spit mark at a staircase Frankfurt Main. Guess they're here too! Their taste of coffee and my German is the same! Whatever you may decide. Ended up paying 1 EUR for a sugarless brown liquid, which tasted kinda ok. Guess it's my fault that i don't understand German and ended up guessing what it contains, milk/sugar, nothing! crap!

I smell like airplane fungus! No, really! I'm that bad, and i guess i baldy need a shower, hope they guy puts up with me or rather the manly odour! :| Similars repell see..! It's gonna be a tough job to get the luggage out of the train considering the train stops for only 3 mins at each station! Well.... even With all that complaining, i've made it this far. Will let you all know about more updates later! Till then!

P.S.: Yes! PDA is the big rage!

Cheers,

Gecko.

P.S: My address is :

Studentenwohnheim Straußäcker III

Allmandring 3 F 122

70569 Stuttgart

Germany

Some explanation. This is exactly how you write the address. But for your info:

1. Studentenwohnheim Straußäcker III is the name of the bigger unit which houses all the hostels.

2. Allmandring is the name of the hostel, there're two pfaffenwaldring and allmandring.

3. 3 F 122 is the room number - 3 F is the block. 122 is the door number.

4. 70569 is the pin code.

5. guess the rest is clear. :)

evolution

2009-08-07T00:29:00.002+05:30

I vaguely remember how computers came to be what they are today. In 1992, my uncle had a apple Macintosh, which came with around 30 floppy disks (in white boxes, mind you) and a room full of equipment, printer, etc etc... i don't remember exactly. He had to pay somebody to make it print a test page. Then computers weren't talked about much, then there was a point in time where they cost around 100000INR and you had to go into the computer room (compulsorily air conditioned) like how you go into a temple and the only game you could play on it (as far as i remember) was something like prince of persia.
Then came the pentium processors, mmx, 2, 3, 4... and people started developing better (?) operating systems for it. I still see a Pentium 433 in use today! that's the oldest i've ever seen, it was purchased at a time when rich kids used to flaunt a 256kb personal organizer.
Then Pentium 4 was a huge hit somewhere in the early 2000's and Aj's and subbu's was the state-of-the-art. two years later it was my turn and my Pentium 4 (bought at the same price as those two machines cost then) was said by the seller to be "future-proof" for two years to come. but then it was only one year after he said that and my friend patela bought a Pentium 4 which was better than mine. Then shazo had his share at the top, then pavan, then sidd, in the meanwhile subbu was flaunting a lappy, then shastry's turn with his heavyweight dell and wireless network at home, then patela bought a dell before he left to the us, then shazo bought the iMac! That was the purchase to end all purchases! then came nishanth's Toshiba down under and adi's dell, nothing! A HP and a Gateway in Mysore, naught! even subbu's upgraded dell latitude was no match for it perhaps. it was the ultimate, in every way! a freaking monster of a machine, with just two wires coming out of it at the back! Then, a year later, i get my chance again, with my macbook! an imac packed into a portable frame attached to a battery, with a smaller screen! it's the ultimate too! :P spec to spec it's better than his imac. but then, rate of utilization..... hmmmmm.... that's what is narrows down to. Well, my machines is just a week old (barely). I'd ask you to wait and see! :) till then!
P.S: this post isn't composed in any chronological order, not that precise one at that anyway. Just wanted to have a note for myself as to who bought what, roughly around what time. You may correct me if i'm wrong. but it's not that very important to me.

Food for thought

2009-07-14T14:46:00.004+05:30

I was at this lecture last week, at the Institute of Engineers, Mysore, it was called "our food", a talk which dealt with the concept of the Indian diet and just a curious-boy's look at why we, Indians eat what we eat, and how such a diet could've come to become out staple.

The talk dealt in quite some detail at how some less-than-apparent stuff, nutrients, if you can call that, have a major effect on how the body function at a genetic level. And how vegetables, fruits and plants containing these chemicals came to being used regularly, intentionally or purely coincidentally, as staple food apart from the regular body building, energy giving and protective food. And also to note, that, our forefathers, the ones who came up with the concept of such a diet, did it just cause eating such food was "good for health", and not specifically because food X is "anti cancer" or Y is "anti depressant" or Z is "anti oxidant" and so on. so, such an intricately marvellous diet, designed ages ago, is being destroyed now. And that's quite apparent! I myself am responsible for it too. but then that's where i wanna make an important point.

The point being, the talk i had been to, had an audience of pure oldies! none less than 60! except the speaker, some guys from the arranging committee, My friend and myself. That got me thinking. My observation showed that almost all of the oldies present there, every single retired person out of the 50 odd people present there, were almost beaming with good health! nobody looked to be suffering from anything more than just creeky joints and grey hair! hmmm..... had the talk, inevitably reached out to the wrong audience? i mean, they're not the people who should have been listening to that talk, they're already too healthy, and besides, even if they're not, pardon the expression, but all of them have no more than 20 more years to live, in which all that they'll probably do is buy every magazine and book they can afford out of their retirement money and read the hell outta them, and when they're done, they go and pray to God, meditate, sleep, Bliss! So, little use, having listened the lectures.

The ones who should've been listening, are people who're the present, who're the future of the world! they're the ones who're already suffering from problems, un-heard-of, as my granny's say , during their times. Look at most of the people in their mid 20's and you'll notice something similar in all, hair loss, premature aging signs, skin problems, obesity, restlessness, mood swings, tendency to turn various addictions, hair discoloration, harmone problems, tooth decays, eyesight problems. Well, you can say the oldies had it too, and that the people who did probably didn't make it this far! but then, I've heard the entire "grand father generation" exclaim in shock when they heard the news that someone died of a heart attack "at a young age of 55". I've heard people dying at 26! more than just one person, mind you! "they just drop dead" it was said in the newspaper. But then, the entire generation who probably needed the points said out in that talk, to be put to use in their everyday lives to ensure good health, were absent. It was a sad state of affairs, and i too didn't realise it till i saw the entire audience! heh! the wise oldies just extended their lives by ten more years listening to the talk! And we..... hmmm...... half of you will probably go grab a snack outside this evening, and that half might include me too! but this has surely made me think twice from now on! Cheers & live long!

Gecko

Extremes

2009-07-11T22:35:00.002+05:30

Came across two bad incidents this evening, around early evening, two girls in a santro, knocked down a bike ( definitely due to reckless driving, but surely unintentional). Those two girls, still being very young, panicked and sped away, but those bikers, a father and son, son being quite young himself (but surely getting his shouting genes from his father), chased down the car, stopped them and is showing his full rage, scolding in a really uncivilized manner, along with a gang of fully grown men, which probably reflected which part of the state he is from! some stuff i overheard:
1. Magalu vayassu aagide, swalpa maryaade bedva (he's the one scolding her like a animal, being clearly over 30 years older than those two, maryade bere keltane)
2. nange baayalli heli abhyasa illa, bayalli ondu hallu ildiro hange hod'dre gottagutte (what gottagutte? that he's a brute who's just had is BP unexpectedly shot up)
3. Hennu anta sumne bittidini (hmmm... those two are crying their hearts out saying sorry, accepting the blame and agreeing to bear any charges that may arise, they've faces the words of a whole gang of men, in yen sumne bidodu?)
I couldn't see them cry that much, frankly they were probably creating too big a scene, yes it was a big accident, but then, i felt it was an unnecessary to make them cry so much, just take their mobile number, car number, house address, and poof. Friend of mine dealt with such a thing recently, for no fault of his own, it went really smooth! no mess! heh! wonder if the guy felt better scolding them for an hour! without first aid!

Second, At chat street, another minor collision perhaps and people gathered, some braveheart was shouting at the top of her voice, gang gathers, someone says something (as usual, gangs are very interested in other people quarrels, i have a first hand experience too) and this woman (clearly not for karnataka) says, "get out" to somebody, and then to her friend, taking out her cellphone, "wait i know how to f**k his happiness!" in a menacing tone while dialing someone's number!

Heh! wonder what the world's coming to!

Gecko.

G8 thoughts.

2009-07-11T15:11:00.004+05:30

Despite the title, I happen to be the ignorant one when it comes to world or indian politics, with quite a few reason which i choose not to elaborate on. But i do happen to know that the G8 summit is happening somewhere in Italy. Don't ask me about the agenda or the proceedings. But it was strange to see a few photos of the summit in the newspapers an some captions given to it. Makes you wonder whether the photo was published just to catch the viewers attention or is it really a photos representative of the summit. The first photo i saw, is this:

A photo of a fine lady dressed in a black business suit, squatting in front of Mr. Obama and the other people standing looking of with a grin. The caption at the top said "Men will be Boys" and the caption at the bottom says "attraction or distraction?" Well, all said and done, if this photo was published in cosmopolitan or penthouse or vogue or any one of those glamour magazines, i would've been fine with it, infact enjoyed the humor, but this was in a freaking newspaper, makes you wonder to what lenghts they can go just to get the viewers attention or was is it something again the people standing there? I am sure the photographers were gifted with enough talent to get a photo more appropriately suited to the main focus of the G8.

The second photo which really made me decide to write this post.
The photo of a red-head's bottom poured elegantly into a wine reddish dress... oops, yeah, with leaders of two countries of the world looking at it! (sorry got distraced there myself, yeah yeah, i know, men! blah, blah). Captions: at the top - "Hunger's on G8 plate" and the bottom............. of the page sir, yes, eyes back on the text please...... "Watch out!"
But then, were such photos necessary? you may ask "well, they had to publish something, hadn't they?". Hmmmm... not very fancy if you ask me, two days in a row, well, either somebody at the news paper office is taking their job a little lightly these days or the world leaders are at the wrong summit! ;) You decide!

Gecko!

some poetry!

2009-07-10T14:33:00.002+05:30

Some stuff which i made up while roaming around at a girl's store (with one) recently

Why are there narrow passages at a womens' store?
Women don't come narrow anymore!

Hello and goodbye to all the feminists out there! Shalom! :P

-Gecko.

Videos!

2009-07-07T21:12:00.001+05:30

Some comedy, not to be taken seriously! :) have fun!

time management

2009-07-03T23:07:00.002+05:30

recently, i bought this book called "teach yourself time management" and frankly, since my purchase, i haven't made the time to read past page three or to remember what i read in the first two pages! the question that i ask myself every time is, why? why can other people make so much time to do innumerable stuff, watch movies, read books, go out with friends, work, sleep, explore new stuff, be creative, learn something new... the whole nine yards of what I'm trying to do. Well, is that a problem? am i trying too hard to be 'them'? or have i got sloppy? i find it impossible to find the patience to gather up a good playlist for the music player on my computer! i blame this usually on my vast music collection of supposedly unwanted stuff, but then haven't had time to clean that up too! same for my room, closet, bookshelf and bike!

I don't want this to sound like a letter to an agony aunt of some magazine, but then, i can't help if this is inevitably sounding this way. It's been months since I've read a book for a decent amount of time in a day. or listened to one whole song, or wrote about one of the hundreds of topics that come to my mind when, occasionally, my mind does start to warm up a little, on my blog. I had plans of buying a camera, a fancy SLR, i even retired my old film SLR for that purpose, saying it's too much recurring investment for the film, the development and printing charges and what not. When i had the interest, i didn't have the money, the status quo has been maintained, but my interest is fading, so is my money which was never enough anyway. Friends, all have some camera or the other, quite impressive stuff, now they have the equipment and are using the time and interest very well, learning new stuff with the cameras, taking good pictures. Bikes, i still have plans of that, big plans for my bikes, but probably I'll end up selling both my bikes, again to raise money for my studies. I had plans of a new bore kit for the old RX and stockpiling spare parts for my bikes before i leave so that i can get started once i come back, but then, thinking sensible, as attached i am to my bike, i think it's sensible not to keep them, cause i don't know where I'm gonna end up! and thinking lightly, as long as i have these, my folks are not gonna let me buy a new one! so, that one's gone too.

Hmmmmm..... now i think time is not my only problem, it's money too, money has always been though, heh! show me a person for whom it is not! if it's not trouble in one way (read scarcity) then it's a problem in another (read abundance). but mostly it's a problem which lies upstairs where all the cooking takes place. I find things interesting, i get started on it, but for most, i don't stick to it. I either give up half way cause of my laziness or my inability to balance my work, studies, personal life, hobbies and social life. so i end up compromising on something way too far than i ideally should and in the long run, that's gonna cause me problems, the problem may be that i might have to end up giving up on a hobby, but then that's also a problem cause I'm sure that it will not end with just one hobby, and something is gonna begin creeping into something else when it probably shouldn't, or rather, i probably shouldn't have let it creep into.

So, Time management? well, i don't know. I don't wanna put the blame to age, no matter how old i am, if I'm old enough as long as i am standing on my own feet and thinking with my own mind. i guess the blame's on me. I just wrote this out as i felt it would help me in some way if i speak things out to the world about what's on my head. It a pretty crowded place up there! i can't keep things in it forever! Something's got to give, and if i empty the part of my mind which tells me why a Yamaha RX which is ported at the roof of the ports is better than a RX which is ported at the bottom of the ports, then chances are that, most of you will not understand, and those who do understand, will probably won't have nothing more to say that "oh, ok". At least with this, i get some suggestions and possibly a solution to my problems, a part of the solution to my problems or a solution to a part of my problems.

Anyway, That's it for now, i have to manage my time to sleep! till next time! cheers!

Gourd

2009-06-30T22:46:00.004+05:30

The few weeks my uncle has been here, i've had some interesting conversations with him, one that i remember is, Over dinner we were having some bitter-gourd stuff, pickles, "gojju" etc, and uncle goes, "we really have to appreciate the person who first thought that something this bitter could be eaten and is ,in-fact, good for health, cause in any other country nobody will touch anything this bitter with a ten foot ruler!" And he's right, bitter-gourd has cancer fighting elements, it's something amazing how ppl here have already known about these things, maybe not as "anti-cancer" stuff, but just as food which is "good for health". some roots, some specific fruits "nallikai" or "maakli beru" or "shunti". Elders!

Sunfeast Open 10K 2009

2009-06-13T22:22:00.006+05:30

After much training and preparation in all ways for the big run, everything was set and the day was nearing. Training was a little on and off during the week leading up to the race all thanks to some work, among other things. But the hard work had been done in the weeks leading up to the race. The last week was always meant to relax and build up the carbs, recover, stretch, etc etc you know, the usual stuff those "athletes" do.
The running numbers were in our inboxe and four of us from Mysore had planned to go together on Saturday, collect the running numbers, roam around b'lore, eat-up, get full, hit the bed, get up the next day and run like there's no tomorrow.
We all left Mysore at the 11AM Tippu Express; we were all hyped up and surely in no mood to catch up on some sleep, except, that is for Ajay who fell asleep even before the train left the platform. The remaining three of us spent time standing in a group and talking to each other, since we weren't lucky enough to get seats together on the train. Having reached b'lore, on foot almost all the way on the train, we'd worked up a good appetite and headed to the nearest kamath cafe and had a good meal for lunch, met subbu and collected his confirmation to collect the runnign number on his behalf since he was busy with some work which had come up just that afternoon. Then it was time to head to Kanteerava Stadium, where we were to collect our running numbers, and i, the extra timing chip to help me record my official time. Everyone got the running, and i got the chip too, having met the girl who'd given me and subbu the chip last year too (she was all smiles when i recognised her, and asked whether she was at the chip counter last year too, with some leg-pulling from her friends sitting next to her thinking i couldn't understand kannada)
Then it was destination Bangalore Central for some window shopping, which later turned in to a financial black hole for me since i ended up buying a pair of jeans and two very-fine shirts! every time i do such a thing i remind myself to remind myself about destroying my credit cards, but! heh! anyway, by the time we came out, it was too late to have lunch together and still reach home without having to pay through the nose for the ride back! so we just decided to split right there and meet up tomorrow at the start line.
The dawned all bright and clear. Subbu had done the nice job of preparing some electrolytes for me too, which we almost lost at a turn at the Rajajinagar powerhouse when the bottles flew out of the auto in the turn! i had to run and get them back, they were on their way back to vijayanagar! heh!
On reaching kanteerava, we were separated immediately as i was the only one among my friends who had taken the timing chip and such people were to start from a different group. The start... well, there was no actual gun shot and such, ppl just started running as soon as the gates opened, and once they crossed the start line, the time would start for them, since they had the chip, it was ok to do that. once i realised that was the start, i too started overtaking people left right and centre. i wanted to be ahead of a few before i crossed the start line. By the time i headed out of the staidum gates, i was almost at full speed and already working up a mild sweat. The overtaking kept on happening all the way till i left kasturba road and took a left. from there the other people started to pick up the pace too and so i could make up much positions. From there, the run was really smooth, never did i stop for water, took my first snack at the 3rd km, a square of Cadbury's Bournville, and then realised what a big mistake that was! my throat dried up and lost my rhythm for a kilometer or so, that makes it 4km, yeah? OK so after than there was this downhill hairpin left to take from where you start the journey back to the finish line. the 5Th kilometer was all up hill , nearly! and the sixth and the seventh was good.... i passed the point where my knee gave up last time! By the time i was in the 8Th kilometer, i was inside cubbon park and the atmosphere was calm and tranquil which gave me more spirit to run better... i started to pick up speed in the 8Th, and by the time i reached the 9Th, i was in full gallop again with my mouth open and my strides at it's full length again, overtaking a lot of people on the way, definitely more than 10 or 15 and finished 123rd with a time of 49 mins and 12 seconds for 10Km. It was a lovely feeling to finish! but the sad thing was that i still had energy, to stand, smile, walk around, talk to people, i didn't want to, all that energy i could've used up to run faster and just collapse after the finish line! well, i guess it'll take more time before i can gauge myself so accurately, running, for me, isn't that much of a calculated science yet!
Cheers!

Successful Runs

2009-04-29T20:55:00.007+05:30

Had been to two successful run in the past month, both organized as a part of college fest of two different colleges. The first one in NIE college of engineering, was my first real big run this year after the highly unsuccessful (and quite painful) Times of India Bengaluru Midnight Marathon, a race which i'm still trying to forget! This, however was in the morning, and was supposedly 14km long, But as it measured out in Google Maps, it was around 13Km. The route is marked out in red below

The run was good till i reached ramakrishna nagar circle, from when it started going uphill, all the way till the water tank, downhill till Vijaya Bank, then up again till the lake, the up and down nature had taken away all the stamina i had, By the time i reached Hunsur Road, i was running slower than before and only a little faster than a walk. I was near to hitting "The Wall" on Kantaraj Urs road, but recovered after someone was kind enough to lend some glucose. Finished the whole thing in one hour and nine mins approx and in 35th place.

The second run in SJE college of engineering, was a different route, again using some parts from the route of the previous run.

This run was fine too, with very little problems, the usual one being lack on glucose half way through the run, so i had to struggle till my body could switch over to the slower burning fat. Then it was fine all the way. Did the whole thing in 47 mins approx, finishing 19th or so. Sadly, nobody kept time after the first 8 people reached the finish, so we were all left asking each other for timing and positions!
Anyway, nice preperation for the Sunfeast 10Km coming up at the end of May! Hope to keep it going and to get the timing better and better! the aim is to complete 10km in the early 40min zone. It still depends on how well i can practice this month. One month in counting! Till next time! Keep running! and, Peace!

Tadiyandamol on Wheels!

2009-04-23T22:59:00.030+05:30

In recent times, there has been too much of talk about a big biking expedition, to the Himalayas, and at times when craziness reaches the zenith, to Dakar! One such time, after having watched Dakar 2009, there was a talk about doing an off road trip, partly though, just to get used to the feeling of riding on loose surfaces, to get more confidence on the bike and on our own riding. Added to this, we'd never been out for a long time, blame the recession, I guess. So we were all looking for a simple solution, something where we can ride and camp at the same time. Then someone, I don't remember,could've been me too, came up with the idea of going to Tadiyandamol on bikes! Sounded interesting enough, all we had to do was solve some minor logistical problems and we were set. We got the tents hired and summoned Subbu from Bangalore the previous evening. After a few coffees, we went around shopping for food, survival food, Glucose, electrolytes, Jam, chocolates, Bread and the like. Batteries for the torches, a must as was the emergency medicines. Then came the main course!Chapathi and Curry! yeah, and you though we could just survive on bread?

What I'd actually done is, I'd made the dough, that's after fixing the Fiero's rear brakes in a formula-one-in-the-dark style operation with the help of Subbu, asked mom and sister to prepare chapathis enough for Subbu and I for two days, and had gone out shopping, then to collect a camera from a friend who was kind enough to lend it and not ask it back till today! When I came back, mom gave me a shocker that chapathis was done, but, (you thought that was the shocker?) the curry wasn't cause she was too tired and couldn't find time to prepare it, so she asked us to dice five onions and five tomatoes and keep then in the fridge and she would get up and prepare the curry the next morning just before we left. But, as usual, things got a little delayed and it was around 11 when I sat to chop the onions, recruiting Subbu for the job too since we we short of time. We both were slightly hampered by the faulty equipment at our disposal although my knife was much better than Subbu's. But the knife was the least of our problems, half way through the first onion, I found out it was not my cup of tea! I was crying like crazy and knew of nothing that could stop it! Then Subbu came up with the idea that chewing gum would help us stop crying, so he went, dug around for a while in his bag and came back empty handed and teary eyed as usual! Right then, the feeling was worse than when you got out of water with your eyes open in the most chlorinated water you've ever been in your life! and it was getting worse! I was worrying about dicing my own fingers and Subbu was worrying about the size of the pieces, not of my hand, but of the onions! I figured, since it's only we both who're going to eat it, we don't mind some unusually sized pieces of onions in our curry! so, I diced, blind, 3 or 4 onions, and Subbu did about 1 or 2 but with exceptional quality! I ended up with a headache and had to pop a pill to bring it down so I can get some sleep cause it was certain that I'd have less then five hours of sleep with a hard day ahead!

As the alarm rang, we both got up and got ready, correction, he got ready in time, I was still in a towel when all the guys arrived at my place! After having breakfast at Mylary Hotel and a little more time spent in fastening the tents and the sleeping mats to the bikes, we were off on a sunny Saturday morning. The first stretch of road, 30km or so till Hunsur was silky smooth with big open curves and perfectly laid and painted roads. It was a pleasure to ride, I was a little cautious as I had just replaced the gaskets on my bike and I thought I hadn't given enough time for seating the piston rings again. But all that thought disappeared as we left Hunsur towards Virajpet through the village and the forest roads, it was just going with the rhythm, as fast as our senses and reaction time would allow us to ride safely through the crests, blind turns and sweeping curves. We were all enjoying the roads, then we reached Virajpet, and had a cup of tea discussing the roads, weather and the bikes. From Virajpet, it was pure mountain roads for 23 kilometres till we were just a kilometre or two away from Kakkabe, this was when things stepped up a notch on the craziness scale, I went ahead, soon had my mirrors full of a flaming helmet and ears full of a two stroke hum at high speeds, Aj had caught up to me and we both were riding in tandem overtaking each other almost at alternate corners and were a little on the limit on the braking, at least me, sliding under braking just to give him a pass (and a good scare). As we arrived at the sign post which pointed the way to Tadiyandamol, we were a little clear of the other three, then they arrived one by one, Pradeep on the Fiero, then Kitt, then Subbu who was not really liking riding on those roads owing to grip problems and a recent dent in his confidence and a large one in his petrol tank, which he got fixed!

This was another stop, time for lunch, we had chapathis and shared curry among ourselves, filled our stomachs, packed our bags again and started, it was nearly 4km of hill-climb style roads ahead, and right from the star Pradeep went ahead, myself behind him, Ajay behind me, Kitt followed and a nervous Subbu brought up the rear of the pack. Pradeep was taking revenge for all the hills he couldn't climb easily on his bike when it had lost compression! Ooty Episode, Kanyakumari Episode and maybe a little in Kemmangundi. He was on a roll now, shooting up the hill, looking at him, I panicked and tried to keep up, upshifting and downshifting too many time on one stretch and over heating my newly assembled engine! Then we came to a place where there was no road and the only track up the hill went 35 degrees to horizontal! We managed to get that up with ease and stopped waiting for the others, Ajay arrived complaining of an overheated and repeatedly stalling engine and Subbu and Kitt had nothing to say, cause the next stretch of road was even steeper and even rougher than the ones we just came by! It had boulders all the way! Sub went first, and got stuck after a few feet, he had to be pushed out after overheating the engine an losing out on torque, I went second, I got stuck in the same hole Subbu had dug with his tyre! While I was struggling to get out of the ditch and smelling my engine catch fire in the process, Kitt comes and waltzes past me on his bike as if it was his driveway and I was just sitting on a bench! We were all surprised looking at it. It was a good show of bike control from the big man! Ajay made it through with a screaming engine almost on fire,Pradeep came at last and also managed to make it look easy.

We camped soon after and still had a lot of light of the day, so thought we'll go exploring on the bikes. We wanted to test how far it was possible for a bike to get on that mountain. Started our bikes and took off, bouncing from one boulder to another, skidding and sliding almost all the way as the roads got narrower and the drop on the right hand side got steeper, the weather was getting foggier and we were getting crazier. We'd scaled rocks of enough height to count as the median or footpath kerbing on regular surfaced roads. All this came to an end when I was trying to scale a big rock, I got the front over it, and just when the middle of the bike was about to pass over the bike, I heard a loud "tung" and a grinding and then the bike passed over the bike, I knew exactly what it was, I immediately switched off the bike, got down and waved the others down. The bike's frame had hit a rock pretty hard and had chipped the rock. Although a later inspection revealed that nothing serious had happened, it was a scary moment and was enough to make me lose all the rush and put on a worried look on my face!

The problem now, was this: The bike was stuck in a narrow 2 foot wide track and we were supposed to turn it around to head back. On the left was a steep hill face with mountain grass and on the right was a few bushes beyond with lay a drop of a few hundred feet. Everyone helped a hand in turning each bike around by lifting one of the wheels off the ground and getting it faced the right direction, mine was the last bike to be turned around while a herd of hyper active cows waited for the path to clear so that they could go back home before dark too. We then came back when it was still bright, relaxed for a while, talked to some locals who broke the news that we were the people who'd motored the farthest on that hill, that got a sense of achievement in all of us and we were are very happy! We slept in mild rain, two of us slept indoors cause of the rain, myself and sub slept in one tent,Pradeep slept in the other.

Next morning, surprisingly, we were up by six, Sub and I were up talking right from 0530 or so. Woke up, brushed, half a loaf of bread and jam for an early morning breakfast while Ajay and the others packed the same thing to eat on the summit along with loads and loads of water, some glucose and a few chocolates. As we started, we were shocked, we were finding it difficult to go through those roads on foot, we had no clue how we could make it through those roads on a bike the previous evening. As we went along we saw a tent city with ten tents put up in a group. then saw people who'd camped on the top of the hill descending down after having dirtied the summit. We reached the summit in a shorter duration of time compared to the last time we were here. one hour and twenty seven minutes or so the clock read. The guys had breakfast, Sub and I had chocolates, we took some photos of the scenery. And headed back, after the steep parts of the hill, I found it easier to run than to walk, so I started running,Subbu joined me, and soon we both were bullying our way through the oncoming traffic of people. Soon, we'd broken away, and soon enough, Ajay had caught up to us just as silently as he'd catch up with us on his bike when we breakaway! We were running as a group now, and made it to the camp in 55minutes! That was a superb time considering we'd gone up the hill just a couple of hours ago. We then had breakfast and since Subbu was in a hurry, we both started dismantling the tents, packing them up and fastening them up to the bikes while the others either took a nap or took a bath.

After having tea prepared freshly by the local person taking care of the land, we started off, I was the first one to go and was in a good mood to enjoy the roads, skidding into the hairpins and going up and down the gears as fast as you could read one-two-three-four-five. By the time I reached the bottom, the bus stand, Ajay and Pradeep came and informed that the entire mountain was smelling of my engine! But still I managed to enjoy the roads almost till Virajpet, but lost the guys ahead of me soon.. and was riding last but one with Subbu at the end. We met up at Virajpet for lunch at a hotel and left soon afterwards, our minds firmly on reaching Mysore, and Subbu's on reaching Mysore and leaving for Bangalore immediately since he had to make it to work the next morning. Mysore wasn't far away and Subbu had taken the lead right after Virajpet and the next I saw him was in Hunsur for tea and then after tea, next we saw him was at the entrance of Mysore, he was riding like man possessed, maintaining high speeds all the way through. Once into Mysore, it was tough task to convince Subbu to come to a hotel and have coffee before leaving, we did manage that however, it would've saved him fifteen minutes had he agreed right away. We returned the tents and went home very pleased with the trip, our own riding, the bikes and the whole experience in total, The tool kit I had packed never came to use thankfully, so did the emergency medicines. What was used well, was the jam, my mom's cooking which was finished at breakfast, the bread, chocolates, torches, tissues and the water we'd taken at Virajpet. The riding spirit is firmly on all of us now! more trips are going to be planned soon! probably repeat ones, but it'll be much enjoyed for sure! Till then! Cheers!

Race to the Clouds

2009-04-06T12:28:00.011+05:30

In recent times i had been leaning off my hobbies, haven't written letters in a while, haven't been out running or cycling or biking or trekking, nothing, i would've liked to blame it on the recession, but it's not really affecting me in a very major way, so, it had to be my laziness gene acting up again. The only thing i was doing in the past few weeks is traveling to b'lore and back.

I had been on one such trip to watch a so called "Race to the Clouds" taken from the much more famous and much more dangerous "Race to the Clouds" or better known as the "Pikes Peak International Hill Climb" (watch Video ). But the hill here was the Nandi Hill, it was bikes instead of cars and the course looked like this

Starting from the first right-handed hairpin on the extreme left of the picture, the bikes would take seven hairpins bends, two long straights and a few other small straights. This event was last run seven years ago and at that time the fastest time over the 1.8km uphill course was set on a 350cc Two Stroke, twin cylinder, twin carbureted, twin reed valved, six speed, 32bhp (in stock trim) Yamaha RD350, a cult bike even after being out of production for more than 20 years. This time around though there were many other bikes which could and did give the big RD a run for its money. All the nimble handling bikes, especially the out of production two strokes, like the ever performing and ever present, for any event, RX, one of the most versatile bike to hit the Indian roads, a two stroke which can give you 50km to a liter, or, if you want it to, can me made to reach speeds of 145kmph on gravel roads in competition mode. This, apparently was the weapon of choice for people who wanted to compete, mainly because it was easy to get hold of a bike and it was easy to find someone who can do an average job of modifying it and if they screw it up, it was easier to find spares for it. But there were other bikes ranging from the legends such as the RD from Yamaha, the Yezdi from Ideal Jawa in Mysore, the Shogun and Shaolin from Suzuki, the newer Fiero Apache from TVS-Suzuki, almost the entire stable from Royal Enfield which was kinda pointless for a hill climb, come on, a thumper participating in a hill climb? you gotta be kidding! The main attraction was, however, something entirely different and in a different league. When Subb and I went to park the bike next to a truck, an old man came chasing us off saying "The TVS bikes are gonna be parked here, search somewhere else to park". We didn't understand what he was talking, so we asked him, where are they gonna come from? He pointed to the truck in front which was sealed shut with cloth and rope. It was then we came to know that TVS Racing had entered their bikes into this race. We kinda hung around the TVS truck so as to catch a glimpse of the bikes, but kept our eyes on the so called, unofficial practice sessions going on just down the road with people riding putting everybody at risk, recklessly, at neck breaking speed. Some very well tuned machines we noticed were the RX 135 of T.K. Vishwanath, that's him with the blue shirt at the back door of the van.

a chambered RD350 which sounded awesome and went like a rocket with wheels on the straights!

A blue Suzuki Fiero, which was performing very well, but don't know what happened to it in the actual race.

After a huge delay of nearly two and a half hours clearing non-competitive traffic from the course and trying to get the pedestrians to stop at the side of the road, the race was ready for a start. In the meanwhile the competitors were getting themselves and the machines ready to race. Many were practicing recklessly on the roads with regular traffic moving in both directions, some were just catching up with old friends, fellow competitors, and the like. some were tweaking up the bike for one last time, probably trying to get the mixture right for the altitude while some others had damaged their bikes even before the even had started. Meanwhile the TVS guys decided to reveal their ammunition to the general public and unwrapped their trucks, in the back were tucked 5 supremely tuned, wonderfully minimal, intricately well thought and designed bikes. with the platforms taken from regular road going bikes of the past and present and along with them a full set of tools, spares, petrol, oil and mechanics. As they lowered it onto the side of the road, they started coming into full view, a stable of race prepared bikes, one each of Suzuki Shaolin, Suzuki Shogun, TVS victor, TVS Apache RTR 160. The two strokes were with chambers and imported Mikuni flatslide carburetors with power-jets, which i later discovered to be TM28SS. The Apachce had a solid aliminum chassis for most parts and a single shock absorber. All bikes sported aluminum wheels for weight reduction and a battery controlled and probably programmable ignition systems. Then they took out the 5Th bike, a suposedly custom built, motocross prototype bike, with aluminum swing arm, liquid cooled 125 cc engine, Ohlins dampers (the best in the world) and the works. They'd named it 125 RTR-X.

As the race started, the prototype racing machine was the first to take flight. Sub and I immediately found out how well designed that bike was, it entered the power band at a very high rev and its power was very peaky. The rider was shifting up the gears every two seconds and accelerating like crazy. obviously we couldn't see the bike for more than a few hundred meters, but could hear the bike almost all the way up the hill. Next up were some other two strokes, then there was the foreign class which saw the likes of the Honda CBR 600RR and the Suzuki GSX.
The race was decided into segments depending on the displacement of the bikes, and therefore each class had it's own winner and then there was an overall winner for the meet. The Yamaha R6 won the overall prize for the meet clocking 1min and 24 seconds. But the excitement was to see the tiny two strokes ridden by some of the best riders of the day give these huge, over engineered, multi cylindered, multi evolutional machines a good run for their money.
The difference in riding style was very boldly obvious, compared to the other guys who first downshifted, then braked then leaned into the corner, took the corner and accelerated, the Seasoned riders closed the throttle, braked, downshifted and started leaning into the corner all at the same time, and so were able to carry much more speed into the corner taking beautifully pre-decided lines through it. The factory backed bikes were easy to pick up while accelerating, but one bike, notable the RX of Vishwanath was what caught my mind, i noticed that his bikes didn't pick up well from a lower rev, well, i say that in comparison to other racing machines. He had an excellent and potentially deadly way of compensating for it. When he came to the second hairpin, he braked much earlier than the others, downshifted and opened the throttle even before he entered the corner, by the time he was at the exit of the corner, the bike was into the power band and picked up speed just as well as the factory bikes! If he was too early, the bike would've gone out of control in the middle of the corner, if he was late, he would be just as slow as any other ordinary bike. He did go on to clock an impressive time!
Then came a crowd of RX135! there were so many bike it was difficult to keep track! some were good, some were bad, some were ridden badly and almost most of them were smelling of burnt clutch! I shall leave the gearless scooter class thinking it was a mistake on the organisers for which they're regretting even as we speak.
Nearing the end of the meet came the big boys, the RD, kind of a bike of the past, but still competitive, but probably none of the RD350 was in it's full racing glory. But it did put on a good show, was visibly faster than most of the bikes of the day and was a sure-hit crowd-stealer! One of them, the one with the chambers even did a wheelie while accelerating.
There was the foreign open class still remaining while we decided to leave and reach home before it got too dark. It was a good day on the road, the sights, sounds and smell of bikes did give us a high, and my interest in bikes has been rekindled ever since that day, especially after i came to know that the person who won the event overall was a 40 year old man and not some college going adrenaline junkie as I expected! well, i guess you're never too old till you start thinking you are! I think he was wearing a tee shirt with "18 till I die" on it underneath the racing overalls! We reached home extremely happy and contented people! It had been a long time since I'd seen some good biking action. It felt liberating, I've been doing some alteration or other to my bikes since that day! Hope there are more of such events in the future! Till then, chao!

Clutch (updated, with pics too)

2009-03-28T22:36:00.008+05:30

The IC engine clutch, perhaps the most important piece of equipment on a bike, the part which makes the power produced by the engine usable at all speeds, partially, along with the gear box that is, is a simple yet sophisticated arrangement, the working of which if you think for too long will drive you crazy! it is to the most part inefficient, purely frictional, heat producing, energy consuming and not-fully-work-transferring set-up, but it works, as in the heat produced is acceptable and is used, with the engine oil, to heat up other things in the engine which do require heating, and the frictional slippage is negated by using many plates and tough springs.

All said and done, what it is, is this. It's a jigsaw of thin circular metallic discs, some toothed on the inside and some on the outside, sitting alternatively in purpose built slots on two different cylindrical drums, one driven by the engine and another driving the gears, bolted to a single shaft and rotating concentric to the shaft in its axis, held together with strong bolts to make sure relative motion when they're engaged is zero, at least that's the aim.
Here're are a few pics

1. This is how the whole arrangement looks like from the outside.

2. The tabs of the cork plates, slotted on the outer drum driven by the engine

3. The alignment arrow-mark to help reassembly

4. You're supposed to align the arrow mark to this punch mark.

5. Look how badly burnt the plates are, they're almost black, and tused to stink like crazy when i rode the bike hard, stench of burnt cork!

6. The friction plates, from the RX on the left and pulsar no the right. See the the arrangement of the tabs in the set at the left, and the marks on the plates for better bite. the pulsar's plates are bald! the pulsar 150 cc old (4 cork and 3 steel) clutch is the worst clutch I've ever ridden! and the Suzuki fiero's, the best!

7. The suzuki fiero's clutch during disassembly, it has a unique 'old school' way of fitting the clutch springs. This is one very effective piece of kit, the whole bike in fact!

8. The clutch bell (the outer slotted thingy) and clutch boss (the inner slotted thingy) of the suzuki fiero, after removing the plates.

And that aim was what was not being fulfilled in my bike, thanks to a crappy mechanic job which was done to it while it was with it's previous owner...
So I decided to put in a new clutch, finally got the heart to open the bike up to do some work, after growing into it for almost a full year , letting it gather dust without an oil change! :| Asking a word with my friend revealed that, apparently, the clutch costs 195 bucks a set! So I thought "why not" and went to the Yamaha Showroom and ordered a set, he said 53 a plate! now, I don't know whether I was ripped off or whether he got lucky or whether he god low grade stuff... but I was really shocked, and there was no turning back, I wanted a new clutch and I almost wanted it yesterday! so, "bill it" I said. along with some other necessary stuff. Came home, got into my mechanic clothes and drained the oil... my first surprise, the oil nut wouldn't come out easily! did someone jam the crank case??? well, with a little tug of war, I got it to separate from the engine... then my second surprise.... the oil is black, greenish and flowing like water! was it running on 2T oil?? or a synth blend?? this was preparing me to face some weird stuff inside. Then I unscrewed the screws of the clutch cover and open it up.. I see the case looked clean, but the big problem!!
what had happened is this. he'd gutted the baffles of the exhaust, increased the port heights which effectively increased the power band to much higher up in the rev range, therefore making it much violent in full throttle acceleration, so to counteract the clutch slip, he'd put in 6 friction and 6 drive plates making two metal plates rubbing each other, this extra plate had caused the clutch to open up unevenly in the clutch-boss and clutch basket thus increasing uneven wear on the clutch and increasing slippage.
The clutch change went well, the friction plates were burnt black and the metal plates were scored, so had to run to the showroom again and get new metal plates! each plates costs 81 bucks and I needed 5! Already 750 spent in a few hours and counting, cause I knew I would need engine oil later! After coming back home, I forgot how the clutch plates went back into the basket! In the Yamaha, the clutch plates are weird, there's a tab on each metal plate and I was confused whether all the tabs were supposed to be superimposed or should they be staggered. I tried to think up some logic to guess how they'd fit, but nothing worked. It then came to my mind that I have an old service manual of a Yamaha DT125 dirt bike. I opened it up and saw that it had the same clutch as my bike, so the tabs go staggered at approximately 60 degrees relative to each other. I put that back and sealed up the clutch basket.
While trying to put back the clutch cover, disaster struck, the kicker shaft, gear and return spring fell down from the crank case while I was struggling to fit the cover and I didn't know how it went back it. I tried a few alignments, but couldn't crank the engine at all! it was frozen solid. Went back and forth to the manual trying to search for the kicker assembly diagram, they'd given it, and explained it too.. but I had already panicked and so couldn't understand a word of it! called up a friend, wasn't of much help since he'd never worked on this bike. it took me more than 3 hours by the time I figured out how it fit! then whatever I had read earlier in the repair manual made perfect sense! so much for my state of mind! I went, got another can of oil and started her up... the clutch bites well now! hope it holds for long too! Anyway, I learnt something new! small mistakes matter a lot, and consume a lot of time if you're not familiar with doing stuff or don't have resources at hand! Till next time, happy biking!

P.S. The guy who told me it was 195 for a new clutch, well, he was right, it's Mr. RX by the way, and his bike has four cork plates compared to the six of mine! and plates were cheaper a year ago, so, clarification. Sorry Mr. RX :)

Spirit

2009-03-11T15:14:00.010+05:30

This weekend there's a run for peace with anti-terrorism being the main theme, It's a course covering 12km according to the papers. So this would be a good thing to start off with for the preparation to the Sunfeast 10K in may. I'd been to register for the event a few hours ago and a peculiar incident happened. As soon as I entered, I was rushed to a counter by a guy with curly hair (if I remember correctly) where two girls stood, both of them, in turns, were trying to talk me into participating in a slow-bike race which was either happening or going to happen later in the day. At first I asked whether it was bicycles, as I planned to go and get my bicycle from home (little did they know they were talking to a two-time slow-cycling podium finisher, mere mortals, ha ha). But they immediately revealed that it was motorbikes, with gear, without gear, anything goes they said, “just go and participate” was the word of motivation given by the tall girl who pointed out where the event would happen, inside the campus in the shade of the trees I assumed. As badly I didn't want to dampen their spirits and be snobbish, my heart also went out to my bike, the Yamaha, it wasn't in a good condition at all, it has a bad clutch slip, bad handling, a bad cooling problem, so much so that you could smell something burning when you parked the bike after a ride, probably more of that old clutch! Most of all it had no brakes, or very little of it to be precise. So I didn't wanna keep blipping away to glory in first gear while the bike would burn its insides out by the time I'm done with the race (and thus give me a 2000 Rupee repair bill, which I'll have to bear apart from fixing it myself!). So, what could I do, I had to tell them, the bad truth, well, I say bad cause, me being a big bike freak apparently, it's a insult to say your bike is not in a good condition, but I went ahead anyway and told them “my bike is not in a good condition, technically” in a sheepish voice and a smile to go with it to break any possibly perceived “attitude problem” and make them understand that I was avoiding it intentionally but sadly inevitably. Then the second girl standing a little further away from me behind a table and leaning into it who had the bluest crystal-like crisp eyes I've ever seen on a person came forward to stick her oar in the negotiation. Try to be a sport, as was the guy and the other girl, she said with a smile that it's a slow-bike race and slow-bike race doesn't demand the bike be in perfect condition, I guess that's what she thought. Well, I couldn't explain the technicalities of my ordeal, so I stood my ground, albeit with half a heart to go and enter the race, one eye on the lookout for the marathon stall and another eye firmly planted into this girls eyes!

Alas, finally, even when the girls had almost torn off the participation ticket from the book, I made some lame excuse, for which I certainly feel bad, that I'm hard-pressed for time, not that I wasn't but not so bad that I absolutely had to miss this event at all cost! They looked disappointed too, all three of them, and they pointed to the marathon stall with a cold glance. I could do nothing but smile and really appreciate the spirit something which I lacked today and I'm ashamed of it.

The marathon guys on the other hand, were more than happy to welcome me and since I already knew the route and other details, the transaction was very brief and quick. I would report at 6AM and get my number and a tee shirt. I said a big thank you and was on my way. Heh, I felt bad and my memories were going back to my college days where I was the silent rebel, almost an outcast. I used to wake up at 8:15 for the 8:30 college, leave home at 8:22, 8:23 would be too late, and would red-line my bike on the revs all the way to the college, many times with an 85 kg ballast in the back seat, managing to reach at 8:29. In college, I never talked much to anyone, kept all to myself and my mind, never participated in anything except being an audience at the rock show every year during the college fest, which I followed quite religiously.

But after I left college I changed my outlook towards the world, became more social, probably more approachable (as a close friend puts it). And learned never to say no to any invitation which came from the heart, in true spirit. Learned to be a sport. But I guess sometimes old things are hard to forget, cause while I was standing there, I was thinking “why don't they just let me go”!! I know why they didn't let me know! And it was a good thing!

Well, you three, the two girls and the guy, if you're reading this, just know that I wanted to, but couldn't. Will hopefully run into you on Saturday. Till then! Cheers!

India's Answer to Wall-E perhaps??

2009-03-05T01:28:00.001+05:30

I would call this one Lun-A :P

Random Pics

2009-02-25T22:58:00.005+05:30

1. Looking at the logo, you know what this watch is made for! :) being one of my first purchases, i love it so much that i hardly part with it!

2. A ladybug in me room aaar! bring the harpoons! ;)
3. another ladybug, this on was on top of Nandi hills

4. No points for guessing what this is!
5. Dew drops on a spider web! bet the spider would be cursing like crazy!

6. READ carefully! it's parallal, like parallax!

7. Good old BSNL, this one and the next pic are from the BSNL office which is in the RTTC building, Mysore. Wonder how much longer they're planning to keep a stockpile of old phones!
8. BSNL!!

9. A butterfly! this one was the size of my palm and relucatant to move even though i approached it to take a photo! a nice design!
10. It was almost like it was holding its wings out for the whole world to see and admire! like how you show off a new pair of shoes, or a haircut! dude, check out my new wings, aren't they something! :P

a wish!

2009-02-14T19:35:00.000+05:30

happy valentine's day! make love, not war... so f**k all sene & don't waste clothes! its better on a woman than on mutalik! ;) rock on! peace!!

p.s. i'm totally exhausted, coming back from a wonderful air show, standing in a bus, feet screaming, eyes burning, nostrils now turned to ores of silica.. blogging from my mobile to avoid falling asleep! more on that later! chao!

Spare a Thought

2009-01-27T23:06:00.009+05:30

The recent events in M'lore isn't really the most comforting news to anyone who has the habit of frequenting flashy restaurants with female company.
If you watched the video, you could see girls getting beaten up worse than how you'd dust your carpet against the wall on a Sunday morning. Not to be funny, but that the only other activity which comes close to the force with which these girls were hit before they could figure out where to run for cover. All because of the allegation that they were doing, may be, drugs/some dancing or drinking/ improperly dressed. All these are a possibility, people doing drugs are a lot closer to you than you would've previously imagined (for people who don't know), yes, there was some skin on show, a lot more fair skin than what the assaulter would've seen in real life all his life, but, blankets, cloaks compared to what those hooligans would probably see on the Internet every night while they jerk off. And yet, nobody is policing the Internet as aggressively as it is required today.
People taking drugs should be punished, yes, people smoking should be punished, yes too. people who drink too, i agree. As of now the police are cracking down on narcotics irrespective of gender, race and nationality, I'd stand up and clap for that. But, you don't see men slapped on the face, surrounded by a group of men and hit on the head with slippers or hurled across the street like a piece of wood if they're found smoking, drinking booze or visiting brothels, do you? No, you don't, then why this "special" treatment? Booo.... You don't have to be a feminist to figure out what happened recently wasn't merely barbaric, but totally uncivilized, heinous and fundamentalistic.
This wasn't the first of all crackdowns in the country, When i was in Chennai, there was a crackdown on a pub where a few school and college kids decided to try out a few drinks. The police raided the bar, took everyone they found (there were under-aged ones too) into custody, kept them overnight at the station, called their parents / took contact details the next morning and let them go after giving them a stern warning. Well, that was the police. The fact that a fundamentalist organization carried out this raid and not the body in-charge of law-keeping says a lot on how much control the police have over such issues of fundamentalism and extremism in the name of religion, moral values and anti-western movements.
In retrospect, a group of drunken men outraged the modesty of two women in Mumbai in full view of the public and the press, when the masses were questioned, it was largely put on the women, them being improperly dressed and wandering out at the wrong time of the night. A group of non-drunken men groped and molested college girls during the parade celebrating India's victory in the 20-Twenty world cup, the press even shamelessly took statements from one of the girls which described everything that they did to her, published them in the papers and in two days, the news just disappeared from the papers, but i see the news of Scarlet Keeling's murder in the papers even till today! Why double standards? Why don't they slap those men on their faces, beat them up with slippers for molesting? Are they afraid of something? Or do they think it's justified? Were the women "very inviting" and therefore, men being men, did it?
Whatever it is, it has happened, and I am at shame for it in front of people from other states i know. I'd surely be scared to go out with my friends, girls now. Who's to tell where they'll attack next and what guarantee do i have that I'll not be beaten up for having coffee on the 14Th of Feb with my friend (a guy) cause some deranged group of people might think I'm gay or (a girl) that I'm embracing western cultures and becoming westernized? Moral policing, the disadvantages with that according to me is that it's very perspective-based and there're no hard set rules which apply to all. I hope heads will roll over this issue and something will be done to the people responsible, be it politically or personally responsible, they should all be punished as the same.

Eclipse!

2009-01-26T22:47:00.003+05:30

It had been quite a while since the last eclipse had occurred, but even then, the hype was pretty low, no warnings, no live coverages, to exclusive shows on TV channels talking for hours repeating the same 10 second clip of a woman looking at the sun through tinted glasses and no "do's and dont's", no coverage of the of the special poojas for world peace, politicians success/others' failures, country's growth etc.
What did happen without even having been asked for is the shops shut right on time, in fact, some hotels didn't even open, hard luck for a guy trying to escape from the spring cleaning (in winter) going on at home by a very over enthusiastic mother to get a cup of coffee. Roads looked deserted, there were few cars, fewer bikes and even fewer policemen, everyone having been pulled up for the R-Day parade in various places. That left Mysore like how it was supposed to be all this while, peaceful and quiet! The day was nothing special really, just another day in the cosmic sense of it all! just the sun and the moon doing their job, the earth doing it's job, and incidentally, earth happens to find itself in the right spot at the right time, sometimes to watch Venus pass by, or as in this case to watch the moon do so. I sometimes wonder, if the sun and the moon had any voices (and some attitude) they'd watch us getting all excited and the physicists trying to set up instruments to take measurements to confirm the general theory of relativity (yet again, during totality) and they'd go "yeah, so???..... dude, you just got lucky this time, we do it all the time, just that you're not around to see it!" Just a bit of nonsense thrown in to keep things light! Well, at around three in the after noon, i got bored of playing Colin McRae and beating the living daylights out of my fellow competitors, so decided to go out and witness the event and may be even take some pictures. It was a nice sight, the pics came out well too. Have a look!

Among other things, I'd been to an ice cream parlour, Kind of a famous one in Mysore and notice around eight to ten, well, as my friend sub calls them "F.O.Bs" or Fresh Off the Bus people. They weren't fresh off the bus from any town. They were fresh off induction, you know, not just any induction, Infy Induction, the time when they make you sign books full of forms, policies, waivers etc... give you a debit card with no money in it and no name on it and a flashy tag to wear! yes, the flashy tag, ID card, the most annoying piece of attire, both inside campus (when i was employed) and outside, as it was the case this evening! I remember all the HR ppl (doing their job for once) shouting at the top of their voices, still in diplomatic language, to "remove the tag when you step out of the gates, do not display your tag outside the campus" and you can always hear them think "else you're asking to be robbed (and/or groped if you happen to be dressing up like the girls i saw)". But, they never listen and they'll never learn (they actually will, when they get into production and start hating their job at which time they'll be embarrassed to admit they work in infy), unless they're robbed once, and believe me that happens! So, if you're reading this and if you're from infy, don't, i repeat, do not wear your tag on the road, nobody's gonna respect you anything more cause of that piece of thread! in fact employees look down upon you as ignorant fools! Anyway, that's my bit of social service for you! rest is your luck!
That's about it from me for today! Goodnight!

A Case of Frozen Knees

2009-01-15T22:24:00.004+05:30

After many a days of practice and "psyching up" for a big run, the day was finally upon me, a clear and sunny day but chilly nonetheless. today myself and sub didn't plan on doing much. Just a stroll, eat well, sleep, have dinner and run was the plan on our minds, but turned out a little differently, I have to say. Firstly sub had to get his insurance renewed, so was off to somewhere near Mahaveer Jain college, while he was busy honking away at the chicks to make way for his one-shock machine, I was *cough* busy with other things. Once the insurance formalities were done, we were almost near his place when I, like a block head, came up with the idea of going to Gangarams. It was about turn and back to M.G road again, after doing two laps of M.G in search of parking, we finally set foot on the road and were on our way to Gangarams. I made him buy FEM (sorry sub) and I bought Bertrand Russell as usual and some book on time management, well, yes, I suck at it, thanks!
By the time we were done there and came back, it was post-lunchtime and pre-snack time at all the hotels, all except, of course, pizza hut and the good old Murali the waiter! But we didn't want to have something as heavy as a pizza, something which is good in calories, what else, pasta, garlic bread, green salad and ice tea. This is probably not the best combo of food 7 hours before a half marathon, but we couldn't improvise any further.
After that, we split wanting to catch some sleep, but both of us couldn't get any sleep, the nerves had stretched themselves tight by now! so I passed time tossing in bed till it was 1930hrs and arrived at sub's place while he was still having dinner.
There was a small discussion on what to wear and we finally agreed that we would wear something warm. But, I didn't want to run in pants, so, told him I'll change there into my shorts. When we arrived at the venue of the event, it was a medium sized part going on with bands, salsa, food and lights! I saw the Ethiopians warming up at the end of the field, and I thought I would need some warm up too (not to compete with them, mind you). I started running at a very slow pace and immediately felt the tightness in my left knee, it was then I realised that it was gonna be a long, long night!
Start time nearing, I was all set to run, when the clock hit zero, everyone started their own race, and I started mine, so extremely slow, sub was already way ahead of me, I was still cold and showing no signs of warming up. I couldn't possibly run any faster without pushing my knee over the limit, so relaxation and breathing was the key as I set my own pace, acknowledging the every enthusiastic people who were standing at the side of the road bearing the freeze just to cheer us on. At around 15 Minutes into my run, I was swamped by a group of girls each one smelling of a different perfume, perfume! in the middle on the night! the fragrance was the least of my worries! Because these were not the seasoned running girls, these were girls who belonged on the ramp, figures, you know, with the dimpled elbows, knees which've never had a scar in life and rounded calves. seeing them overtake me, caused a panic in my head. With all due respect to those girls, well done for their run, but I have been running for a year and a half now. completed 3 big runs and have been constantly practising for this, being overtaken was the last thing I expected from them. As I looked on while their silhouette kept getting smaller and smaller in the orange light, I began to calm myself down saying, "relax gk, they won't last long, they won't last long, you'll pass them all, they don't know they're going too fast, you've had more than enough training" but I was wrong, they did last long! very long! while I was nearly a kilometre before the U-turn in the course, I met sub, he was nearly two km ahead of me on the course, I asked him how long I had to run before I could turn, clearly he wasn't keeping track of distance cause all he did was shrug his shoulders and point in the direction I was running!
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the U turn came. and I was glad to make the turn, I had to go back to the start line and do this once more to finish the half marathon! surely, I could finish it walking at least. But there was something worse waiting for me. Just one hour into my run, my trot became a walk and I saw the first of the marathoners in full gallop as they zipped past me like someone was chasing them on a cho-cho match! I walked to the 10km walk and tried to run again, by then my thighs were too cold, I couldn't feel my hands and my knee was frozen solid refusing to let my leg bend! so I walked again, trying to explain to curious people why I still hadn't worked up a sweat, wasn't even panting for breath, but was already limping on the road. I made it two km and decided that I'd act wise and just call it quits, there was no point in continuing any more, I would have been risking my knee and my entire future athletic life if I had decided to continue. So I came to a stop, jumped the median and hopped on an ambulance to hitch a ride to the finish line. In the ambulance, I found one of the Ethiopians lying with cramps in both his legs, caused, he claimed, due to lack of practice owing to a sickness he'd suffered earlier.
Having reached the finish line in an ambulance, cold and broken-hearted, I went to collect my warmers and jacket, the Ethiopian was helped out of the ambulance, he was in a worse condition that I am, visibly in pain and unable to walk. I collected my clothes and was warming myself up, striking a conversation with some people nearby and waiting for sub to come. But there had been a little confusion regarding the meeting point, cause while I was sitting here waiting for him, sub had finished somewhat of a power nap on the median after finishing the race in a very decent 2hours and 56Minutes! After meeting up with him, we decided to have coffee in the nearby coffee day (we always seem to be lucky when it comes to coffee), there was a mad rush with people waiting in a queue for coffee and the ones who were lucky enough to get access to the restroom, coffee and a chair, in that order, were fast asleep in their seats! We managed to get some seats finish out coffee and were on our way back home riding in the shivering cold. we stopped on the way somewhere at a tea stall hoping to warm ourselves up with some tea. Sub here had a moment spilling the tea with a uncontrollable jerk due to the cold! The rest of the journey was pretty fine, we reached home by six and I was soon fast asleep with the thick blanket sub gave me. He on the other hand was in somewhat of a rush having completed his first half marathon and didn't sleep! so the rest of the day, he was understandably drowsy.
This was the way my first attempt at the half marathon had to end! Sad, but then, looking back at it, I consider myself to be lucky that I was able to get back to cycling the very next day. The next one is a 10k run in May. It's gonna be a different story then! Chao for now

The Big Run.

2009-01-06T19:49:00.008+05:30

This weekend's the TOI Bengaluru Midnight Marathon a much anticipated event since it's going to be my first half-marathon, considering I complete the whole thing in some decent time! In view of that I started preparing for it since the past week or so and my injured left leg hasn't made it optimal so far. I thought rationally and decided that since my left leg is going to get injured again in the marathon anyway, why should I strain it even more in training and risk the chance of completing the event? but, if I become a couch potato for a week it'll mean the end of this run! I won't make it past 5K for sure, so, I needed to keep the legs pumped up, at the same time, avoiding any further impact-related exercises which would harm my left knee any further. What's the only alternative? yup, cycling! The plan was to do around 25km a day in the morning cold. Things have gone slightly off track cause I've managed to cycle 10km one day, 16km the other and today I somehow managed a good 28km in the morning,Chamundi Hill to back. (heh, some consolation). It was difficult today, may be because of the dinner I had yesterday, only chapathi, no carbs etc. The plan is to eat as much carbs as possible this week, but it's only easier said than done when you get bored easily with more than two servings of rice, potatoes are bad for our stomach, high-energy chocolates are expensive and late to kick in and there're no banana shops in the morning when you forget to keep a stock of it at home.
28 minutes was the time it read on my watch, 4 minutes slower than my best time, but a very effective one as I concentrated on using all the muscles in my legs and backside, equally in both the legs, which ended up giving me a backache when I was almost at the summit.
Things are going fine, my impact-free exercise routine seems to be working, my knee is recovering, I'm burning off whatever little fat-pockets I had remaining and my muscles are getting used to being used for hours at a stretch without complaining. Fluids levels are on the level most of the times unlike Nov/Dec 2007 when I used to dehydrate every alternate day and had to top up salts externally to stop myself from going dizzy and disoriented while walking, heart-rate is in the late 40's early 50's beats per minute, so physiologically I'm prepared, mentally I can force myself to be prepared, physically, hmm , not so sure about my left knee to be frank, still a little worried about that. The race is going to be in the middle of the night, and at that time, the only logical way would be forward whether you are able to run or not. It's not like the earlier races I've run, where people could just skip the median, catch an auto and go back to the parking lot in the stadium. This is going to be in the middle of the night, thinking about it, it'll be 1 in the morning, 1 AM when runners are going to start giving up, probably 10k into their runs, due to multiple factors, the darkness, not being able to see the road that far ahead causes an anxiety which can sap you off energy, improper dinner/dinner time, the cold which might cause cramps, the time of the day and how it affects the body in the form of fatigue and sleep etc. Many factors totally.
The cold is now one of my biggest worries. I've observed that I always take time to warm up. It would not be a good idea to turn up to the even in those skimpy running shorts and tee shirt. I'll have to wear something very warm till the time I go join the group to take the start, but then how long will that take? where will I keep the warmers? how long should I warm up? I'm sure it's going to be at least 12 degrees on that night, probably even lesser. may be it wasn't a good idea for the organization to hold a midnight race in the dead of winter.
But then, all these are just thoughts, once I put on my shoes, I'm sure many of those thoughts are going to disappear, leaving very few things to worry about, probably only the cold. being stranded in the middle, probably will never happen, but even if it happens, I'm counting on the race volunteers to help me out with it. Hmm , so a few more days of exercise left. Planning to stop with Friday morning's workout and then keep stretching, warmed up all of Friday and Saturday, eating good food, having a good sleep and using my legs as little as possible.
Interesting indeed, have to wait and see how this one turns out! One thing is for sure though, I will be a little more fitter than at least a few people in the group, so if I'm having these worries, they should be having nightmares about it. So, if they're fine, it's either ignorance or confidence, either way, it helps not to worry about such things, yes? Wish me luck!

p.s. if anything goes wrong, Shazo will be on standby I hope. Stay awake Shazo!

The last meeting of 2008, zara hatke!

2009-01-03T22:09:00.004+05:30

I couldn't have put it better than Shazo did! :) Just read and enjoy!

My First Long By Shazo!

P.S. Congrats Shazo!

Happy New year!

2008-12-31T17:00:00.003+05:30

Hello Folks,
It was great having your company this year, I say that with reference to the company i have found both online and off. I look forward to your company, support, help and motivation (whichever applicable to the situation, with many thanks to the ones you have already offered this year long, now that i remember in retrospect!) in the coming year and the experiences, memories and challenges that might be awaiting me/us in the new year which is about to dawn on us all! Hope you all have a good time!

A few things I'd like to shout out to a few people:
Mr Unicorn -->Things were as turbulent to you as it was for me, let's hope the grass is green on the other side :P
Shazo --> I don't think you'd wanna realx ever! :-/ how about a change in your biological time zone for the next year? ;)
Sidd--> Good luck for the "year of the exams"
Mr Rx --> relax, certifications come and go, Jan 1st 2009 comes only once!
Kitt & abhi --> nothing in particular, happy new year anyway! :P

Congrats to all the people who got married/engaged and Hurray to the ones who're not when '09 enters!

All the best of the guys who're flying abroad for studies in early '09

For those who whine about their job every weekend (there're literally millions of them, but only hundreds i know), here, you get one more year to do so! ;)

Clarification: The wishes were in no particular order, so no importance should be given to the order of the list!

And for all my blog followers/readers/commenters, keep blogging, hope to hear more from you people in the new year!

Happy New Year to all of you!

That's All Folks!

Marooned

2008-12-29T14:53:00.004+05:30

This weekend was a strange one. With all my friends on their bike in far away Gokarna, the route I've missed twice due to various reasons, I was left almost all alone to spend away the time this weekend. Thursday somehow went well, with Christmas spirit taking over me and a friend, while I got a new pair of Nike running shoes, he got me a pretty huge plum cake & pastries at Loyal World.
Friday, I badly wanted to try out my new running shoes in the morning, but sadly, due to my sleep cycle being a displaced by three hours, mornings for me usually happens as 9AM! So, had to push the plan to evening. I spent all day doing nothing that could be termed important and was waiting for 5:30 to try out my new running shoes. On to Kukkarahalli lake and I immediately found out two things, one, that me left knee still hurts as if I was injured the day before and two, my threshold for pain is not high as I want it to be. I thought it would be a tough job for me on the 10Th of Jan. So, I went ahead anyway trying to complete the course on the injured knee. A sad, and excruciatingly painful, 25 minutes later I finished, almost visibly in pain and very angry! I knew for sure I wasn't gonna be running on Saturday! so had to think about something else to do! When I went home that evening, I got my hands full with a sudden shock! The internet wasn't working! Any sort of fiddling would not bring the ADSL light on my modem back on! I spent the next few hours restarting the modem and staring at the LED trying to will it on and was having anxiety attacks in the process! Quite surprised as to what went wrong, I went to sleep after playing Colin McRae rally for a while.
Saturday was upon me, I had the job of getting my internet fixed. I was at the doorstep of BSNL even before they had a chance to sweep it. They directed me to a room to lodge my complaint. The room was full of WLL devices, new modems and old modems with only on person sitting and working on a computer! So that had to be the broadband service room! I told him what was wrong; he booked a complaint and told me they'd act soon! I wasn't sure how soon, but they seemed concerned enough. In the meanwhile, while I was there, I thought I might as well ask them about the WiFi card for my modem which I would be in need of if I buy a WiFi enabled device. The guy told me that the contract with Huawei, the manufacturer of the modem I have, and BSNL has ended, and therefore there's no stock of the card! I'd heard this story before, so I thought I'll just drag it a bit and went to the box of old modems and asked if I could have a look at it. He said I could. I just picked up a modem which I had and told him I wanted a card for that. He looked around a few times, then came to me and asked me whether I know how to configure it, on hearing a yes, he fished out another old modem from the box. pulled out its WiFi card, and gave it to me, Free of Charge! And said "take it and go"!! I said my share of thanks and left happy knowing I have a card which would otherwise cost me Rs.1000, all because someone was in a good mood that day! The BSNL person attending to complaints then came home and did some tests on my number and announced that it was a line fault since the line had some water inside it, there was some voltage showing up in the tests and therefore the ADSL light wasn't up. He then said that the whole line has to be replaced and since he was not the person with that responsibility, it will have to wait till Monday! I spent the remainder of the day, checking mail on my mobile phone, not because I'm addicted to it, but because of other commitments. And there's no bigger flush for your pocket than checking two mail accounts on GPRS and sometimes replying to them! On Saturday evening it was agreed that my friend and I would go cycling to the Chamundi hill as usual.
Sunday morning, an extremely chilly, icy morning with pockets of fog in many places. My friend and I went up the hill in a leisurely pace, 44 minutes is the time we took to complete it, just under double the time I have taken on my best attempt. We talked for a while, watched a couple of foreigners get robbed off their packet of chips by monkeys. They're evolving, they know how to tear open a packet of lays without spilling it on the ground!

Once I came home and slept, I woke up only at 4 after being knocked out cold for more than three hours all thanks to the previous night when I spent gaming and slept at 2! Sunday evening, I loafed about a bit, talked to the returning heroes from Gokarna and went home.
This morning, Monday, the BSNL guys came home at 11 and started digging all over the place searching for some cable that they'd laid long long ago! after many unsuccessful test pits, they found the cable and started tracing it to the junction which they had to search out too. To avoid all this, the person came up with a bright idea to run the tests again from the local switch box for out area. Then it was diagnosed as a CPE (customer premises equipment) fault and not the line fault as it was informed to me on Saturday! Soon there were a swarm of BSNL guys in my home trying to find out what the problem was, then suddenly to our shock! the ADSL lit up as if nothing happened! everything was pinging! no packet loses, full speed, no trace of the chaos which had struck on Friday night! So, they all had a small laugh and left scratching their heads leaving only the poor guy who dug up half the front yard searching for a cable to clean up his mess! he did that and gave me a number to contact for further complaints regarding broadband and he left too! I was quite relieved that it was all over, because a few more hours without internet and I would've been forced to buy a Plug and Play modem! Phew! what a weekend!

Last Minute Troubles

2008-12-24T23:20:00.002+05:30

Tomorrow, the 25Th of December 2008, five friends of mine are going on a trip to Gokarna and back, covering many places in between. This is the second time that i am gonna miss riding my bike on that route. The reason why i didn't go this time, is an entirely different philosophical discussion which i shall skip for obvious reasons.
Me and my friend (Mr. RX, if you remember him from my earlier posts), were having our regular brew of strong coffee at our regular hang out hotel. After that I asked him whether he needs some tools, puncture repair kit, spare tube, air pump etc, which have come to great use on earlier trips, just to help the guys if they happen to run into trouble along the way. He had told me that since none of them know how to remove a wheel, any tools that i give would be only extra weight on their backs to carry. So that idea was scratched off the book. Having wished him a happy and safe journey, we left for our homes.
Then at 9:30 at night, i get a call from him saying that his bike has a flat tyre and there're no mechanics around to fix it! People who know me well know that I'm always all excited to do such things, and I'd rather do such things myself than let somebody hammer at my bike mercilessly. I packed up my tools and left for his place. On reaching, it was quite obvious that he had a flat tyre, and there was a nail stuck in it. What was not obvious is that the nail was 2 inches long. And the troubles were just beginning. I found out that the spare tyre i had taken had no pin in it. And i couldn't remove the pin from the punctured tyre to put it on to this one. This happened to be a blessing in disguise as it saved him the trouble of changing tubes again in Hassan tomorrow morning, cause i knew there was no way that the tube i had could withstand those distances on the patch it already had on it. This info we found out from the puncture guy who had to be woken up from sleep to fix the wheel we'd taken to him. He told, the punctured tube was useless and the tube I'd taken to him, the one which was already patched, was of little use too and confirmed my fears that if put, it would give up in under 100km! He goes in and brings a brand new locally-made tube, it's not good, but is surely better than the one i held in my hand. Finally we got it fitted on the tyre and took the wheel home and fitted it back the bike under the light of mobile phones and streetlights! the whole thing took a little more than 1 hour to complete! kinda unfortunate just before a big trip, but better now than in the middle of nowhere! Once again the bike burst into life and the test ride was two-big-thumbs-up! I wish them a happy journey and will be looking forward to meeting them on Sunday evening when they return!

Kaboom!

2008-12-23T21:51:00.005+05:30

This morning, a friend had brought over his laptop for some major upgrades. While I was trying to configure the network on the dreaded Vista Home Ultimate, My comp went *poof*!!!!!!!!! It had done that before a few times, but it always started up after fiddling with the wires a little, but this time, nothing! no life!
I thought: "oh man, now Windows affects hardware too",
I felt there was too much load on it so, I disconnected the CD-ROM IDE & the floppy controllers and also the spare fan and then tried, nothing! then I switched off the UPS and switched it on, just in case it might help, the UPS went "ktttrrrrrkkk" and never came back again! hmmm... this was getting serious! One of the good friends trying to help me out, suggested that I should try plugging it in directly to the power outlet. I thought that was sensible, since there was no way my ups would turn on now, I might as well see if my comp is fried or not. I plugged it into the wall outlet and turned it on and it went KABOOM!!! sparks from the motherboard and the house MCB tripped! and that, ladies and gentlemen, was the time dear GK broke out a rare sweat, hurriedly grabbing the torch I searched for blown transistors on the board, nothing was seen thankfully. Without wasting much time, I disconnected all the cables from the back and took it to the repair shop ( I was afraid to explore further after I saw sparks). There he said it was a SMPS problem, he got a brand new 450w SMPS out of the box and fitted it in the cabinet, switched it on, and voilà! worked like a charm! My CPU is filled out with stuff the details of which I will not bore you with here right now!
Then it was time for the UPS, gave it to repair and was asked to come in the evening when I was told that the fuses and the MOSFETs (whose function in a UPS I don't quite understand) were fried! He asked me what all I connect to the UPS, I said, 1 CPU, 2 monitors and one modem. he asks which monitors, I said one 22" LCD and another 14" CRT, and he stared at me as though he would've assaulted me any minute for abusing a product of a company he works for by overloading it with appliances! asks me to either use a higher capacity UPS or stop using the LCD monitor! O_O Since I didn't know I had made such a big mistake in the eyes of the APC community, I kept quiet, took delivery of the UPS and went back home. Connected them all back together and my computer works like a charm again! Considering that I bought this baby in the June of 2004, she's still holding up to my demands pretty well! Anyway, this just saved me from a potential pocket-burning purchase of 30K for a motherboard, processor, ram and graphics card replacement which I should've gone through if my motherboard was fried! It was all over in 750 bucks! A close call! But saved because of my lucky stars!

The Diary Dilemma!

2008-12-16T23:49:00.008+05:30

This evening when I had been to Sapna Book Store, I saw the most comprehensive collection of diaries for the coming year that I have ever seen in my ten years that I've been visiting Sapna. Each year, the diaries get more exquisite and complex adding more features and better paper. To top it all, enter a company called Nightingale, probably the finest paper in India that I have ever seen, and even in their range, there are only a few papers which take my M-nibbed Parker which I've been using for nearly 11 years now! Consequently, people say it writes like a sketch-pen! but glide it does! it's the smoothing thing I've ever written with, so smooth that it almost goes out of control while writing! I know what you're thinking, no you may not write with it when you meet me and yes I'll stop bragging about my fountain pen! It was because of this fountain pen that I started getting addicted to Nightingale.
I'll tell you why I brought this topic about my Parker. Well, I have a habit of writing (do I have to add the word literally at the end of that sentence? :P) yes, writing with a pen! Well, all you "Abhimani DevruagLu" out there, as NataSarvabhouma "Annavru" Dr. Rajkumar used to say, happened to catch me in a story telling mood, now face it! I'll have to tell you why I started writing! ok here goes,
When we shifted to Mysore from B'lore for second PU, I was nearly into clinical depression for a few months! I'd never seen a college where people studied in lunch breaks, refused to share notes and wrote in the same page in three different colours! The roads were too empty and I'd never seen a traffic signal for miles on end! so I thought I'll get back to reality and contact my friends in B'lore to ask what's happening there! What better way than to call up huh? yeah, go ok GK call and talk, you too are human, I thought. What I heard from them wasn't good, it seemed Forum was all the buzz there. I'd shifted in April, and to my luck, on July 3rd 2002 radio city FM 91, B'lore's first FM radio station started! "Man full English, Early morning metallica, Saturdays are club nights with Suresh Venkat and DJ Ivan, The late show with Priya Ganapathy, Rebel Yell with Jonzie and Santosh Gnaynakan a.k.a saggy" is what my friends told me over the phone, even letting me listen to a song! After a month, dad almost burst a vein seeing the telephone bill. He said, the next time I got him such a bill, the telephone goes and I along with it! So, I had to resort to more primitive methods to keep in touch and keep listening.
Those were the days of quality, a plain black-and-white cellphone would cost you 6K and you could hammer a coffin with it, not like the cheap mobiles of today which stop working once you drop it! So, I could never afford a mobile too. So, struck a deal with my dad to supply me with 25 inland letters every month and I'd stay away from the phone. I'd never seen a quicker response from him, for the letters were on my desk the same evening by the time I came back from college! Letter problem solved. Now listening.
During those days of 2002, there would be a power cut every evening and during that time I'd write letters to all my friends, listening to a new-found interest of mine, Shortwave Radio first on my Panasonic System and later on my old Sony IFC-22, I'd usually listen to the BBC world service, which I do even today. So, while I was listening, an idea struck me, "why not make the biggest possible antenna and put it on the terrace, Shortwaves require no orientation, so it'll work" , so I went around stealing all the stray telephone wires, skinning them for hours and then joining them to make one hell of an antenna, probably a hundred or more feet long, which went out of my window to the terrace, I had to instruct people at home not to touch the wire or the system while it was raining, I didn't want to get myself or them zapped with a billion volts of lightning. Work it did! For the next three years, I got near crystal clear reception of Radio City which ended only when other newer radio stations started polluting the signal and also cause of increased use of cellphone and cellphone towers everywhere!
Anyway, letter writing, right, stick to the point GK. I used to write letters, with my fountain pen, till it started blotting on the letters, that's when I switched over to pencils for letters. From then on, I've been writing letters, when I was not able to write letters, I would write a diary and those two hobbies have stayed with me till today, albeit a little dormant. So, the habit of buying diaries every year. As the years passed, the stuff I write in them has diminished to only a shadow of what it used to be when I had all the time for it. Buy the buying hasn't stopped.
But recently there was a revolution of thought process in my head (I like coining such terms, it makes me feel intelligent :P) and I suddenly had a rush of ideas and thoughts which were extremely volatile but seemed immensely profound and eternally useful because of which I felt I should always have a book & a pen with me so that I can write them down and use it later. So, when I got some money, I went and got a compact Nightingale Jute bound diary. But then the actual dilemma started, the diary was too small and I wasn't able to write more than four lines in a day's space, but, if I had bought a bigger one, it wouldn't have been portable enough. So eventually only half the diary got filled and the other half of all the "revolutionary thoughts" vanished into thin air!
And this evening in Sapna, I committed the same mistake again, I bought an identical sized Rayon bound compact diary, But then this year, I'm staying pretty much glued to my seat at home scratching my head. So this bright red thing should be pretty much right in front of my eyes all the time. So, look out world! I'm armed with my "thoughts & ideas" (sounds similar to "ideas and opinions" eh? ) and it's all going to come down in ink on my brand new diary from the 1St of Jan '09! hurray for that!
So, will I get the mood to write again, Peace!
Cheers!

Midnight Marathon? Anyone? Anyone?

2008-12-13T16:56:00.004+05:30

When i casually browsed this page (http://toimidnightmarathon.in/) i was happy to see the dates re announced. The marathon which was supposed to happen tonight, has been pushed forward to the 10th of January. The move was made because of safety reasons! It was a blessing for me indeed, giving me more time to prepare, nearly a month. Before i start preparing, i first have to get over the injury to my left knee so that i don't have to face the trauma like the Sunfeast Open 10K back in April!
Tomorrow I am supposed to cycle to Chamundi Hill, but now looking at this announcement, i am deciding whether i should run on cycle! Here's the deal which is actually troubling me, if i start running now with this irritating iliotibial band, I'm more prone to injury, if i cycle till i recover, i'll be too late to train for the whole distance that i wanna run. as of now 10K is almost certain, but adding 11 more Km to it is gonna be tricky!
Hmmm, Any suggestions? My legs can store energy till about 7-8 km, then on i'll have to be eating something which is gonna be absorbed real fast or i'll risk hitting the wall and in my case, there's no wall for me to hit! my body has no fat to burn! i'll just have to collapse on the road and be wheeled back to base! That's one thing i really, really wanna avoid! So, how do i go about it! If only i had started earlier! but no! my lazy butt would refuse to leave the bed at 6 in the morning! face it GK!!
Well, as i said before, any pointers on how to train? or would you say just run and take care of the consequences later? :-/ sounds scary, but many ppl actually do that! I'll have to think this one out!

OpenSUSE 11.1

2008-12-13T15:21:00.002+05:30

Get the button, spread the word! Go ahead, click it, it won't eat you up! :P

Running - An Update!

2008-12-08T14:51:00.003+05:30

Nearly 30 hours after my running stint to chamundi hill, 12 of which were spent in a coma-like sleep, my body still feels like it has been run over by a Dakar-prepared Kamaz at full speed! Whats even stranger is that parts of my body are aching today which were not yesterday! I mean my back.
But then, things are really on the bright side, the pains in my leg have reduced and I'm able to jump into my jeans albeit a little slower than usual, faster than yesterday nonetheless. most of last night was spent in learning how to flip myself from one side to the other in a way which inflicts the minimum possible pain, this, all you logical thinkers might derive requires the maximum possible effort! it wasn't easy falling asleep and it still isn't anywhere close to easy trying to walk fast! I'm having to calculate each step i take, thinking whether it's necessary or not, taking steps are a premium now a days! so are climbing stairs, especially when you keep forgetting which leg you should bend at the knee and which one you need to keep straight as you descent, a slip up in that could have to screaming for dear life! But then, things are moving in the way of progress, and lots of it! So, hopefully I'll be back to form by tomorrow morning for my usual cycling. Till then! chao!

Lament!

2008-12-08T11:08:00.002+05:30

Friend has a problem with Honda, They're hellbent on screwing up his bike at the least chance they get to lay their hands on it. He tried to avoid those clumsy mechanics as much as possible, but without proper tools to do the job on your own, sometimes you have to take it to those retards who fit things backwards, literally! This has left him very agitated, so much so that he has written to HMSI about the whole incident and a lot other which he has personally experienced with his stint at showrooms before he took the leap of faith to decide he'll repair everything on his own. Let me see what explanation HMSI gives.
There is this another friend of mine who has had a problem too many with this brand new Nokia, apparently, that particular model in nokia looks to be designed to be used in clean-rooms. They can't make it moisture resistant even to the smallest extent, what's worse is that they've probably made is extremely sensitive to such things to which you'd normally expect a resistance from! Spent time, effort and money trying to get it fixed only so that it can blow up again!
A third person, also my friend, has been changing hard disks every month for the past three or four months. The reason, bad sectors, increasing with every new HDD gives as a replacement under the warranty.
I have been a victim of such things too, my Motorola's touch screen gave up just under a year after i purchased it. Luckily i claimed the warranty with only a day or two remaining before it lapsed which saved me around a thousand INR. But, I wouldn't be spared just yet, the side lock switch of my phone broke, to my misfortune it happened when the phone was locked leaving me no choice but to get it fixed and lighten myself off 350 INR in one hour!
Why has manufacturing quality taken such serious and downward turns? isn't there any way to keep up volume and quality with increasing demand? Are new work forces being recruited only to meet quantity requirements of productions? Or is this some sort of a return-business policy to make sure that you will need a new bike/HDD/phone after X number of years, a trick to keep the money circulating and ensure a market for the new produce?
Sometimes i remember this good article by the late great Bertrand Russell. It's called "how to be a man of genius". I don't know whether I've written something about that in my previous posts, but i feel it's appropriate to mention something i understood from the article, with great difficulty because of the superior English and my inferior intellect/comprehension/both.
It basically goes like this. If you happen to be a doctor, will you just think about saving lives? or will you think that by saving all the lives you possibly can because of the advancement in medical science, you'll be placing more demands on the planet's resources, it's food supply, housing, basic necessities of civilized life? Russell says, the latter is the Genius.
Putting that into my perspective on the talk about the manufacturing of faulty equipment these days, should we be expecting things to last forever once bought? or should we also be considering the point-of-view that if things lasted forever once bought, most of the jobs in the manufacturing sector would be lost, ppl are gonna be homeless and poverty will soon take over many societies? What is the price you're willing to pay to keep the world go round? A new set of oil seals? UI interface? HDD? Touchscreen module? Do you think as paying customers you're entitled to have products of the utmost quality which under near-ideal circumstances would last an extraordinarily long time if not forever. Is a "design-period" important? is the question it all narrows down to!
Is the manufacturing sector capitalizing on the purchasing power of the general public these days or are they really doing this cause making things eternal would be an overkill, of ppl would just get "bored" of it? or is it cause it's a loss to them? If its a combination of all the above reasons, then, is the combination convincing enough for them to take a decision to reduce the quality to such low standards as is being seen these days? I still don't know which view i would support, guess that makes me a non-genius! But I'd like to examine the whole scenario more closely before calling a shot on this one!

Back to running again!

2008-12-07T23:22:00.009+05:30

Today was a special day. A usual, sometimes my weirdness knows no bounds! Because, today saw another one of my display of sporadic running. The last time i ran any distance more than 3km was for the Sunfeast Open 10K in B'lore, heh! i don't even remember the date that happened! Must be in April i guess. anyway, ppl who know me on a daily basis know what happened after that, Ilio-tibial band syndrome and the subsequent stoppage of running for more than 4 months during which all i did was jump rope and cycle once in a while. Later i took up cycling somewhat seriously, especially after i met a cyclist on my way to the chamundi hill once while i was cycling and agreed to train with him for a few days, after that, my friends and i have been regular to the hill every Sunday. A good way to begin a Sunday, getting tired early in the morning so that you can laze around for the rest of the day. This started in October, this is December and there's a new event, in running, not cycling mind you, called midnight run. I was looking forward to this, hoping it would happen in April or may like it happened the previous year, but this had to be announced in December for reasons unknown. So, again my interest turns towards running and i decided to go for the biggie, a half marathon, 21km of pure pain and running action. But to have a hope of completing it alive and not in an ambulance half-dead or in a mortuary van completely, you need training, and lots of it, somewhere to the tune of 25 km at a stretch at least once in two weeks.
Luckily the marathon got postponed indefinitely, so i thought i might as well start preparing. Sunday, today, i ran, 8km uphill to chamundi, although the experience was really eye opening, refreshing, painful and liberating at the same time, it was done quite slowly, my body had switched into life-saving mode without me knowing. my strides were short, slow and to a rhythm, my breathing still not at it's max and heart-rate somewhere around 120-130s approx when i can actually do 155-160 at my max (that's the most I've recorded), i was able to talk to my friends who were nice enough to video the whole ordeal, i was able to give chocolates which i had bought to top myself up with calories on top of the biscuits, jam and a glass of glucose i had in the morning. When i finished, some 50 mins later at the top i was still smiling and talkign to friends i bumped into at the top.
Having cooled down and returned home, i now notice that i cannot life my left leg, it hurts! excruciating pain in the muscle/ligament connecting my leg to the rest of my body! so much to that i cannot lift my leg to get into my jeans, making getting dressed a half-hour ordeal and getting on the bike, a 10 minute exercise in tolerating pain!
I know what you're thinking "why?" you would ask, why did i push myself to do all this when i could just sit at home and sleep all day? well, i could tell you, but, i wouldn't be doing justice to the way i feel, the sense of accomplishment that i get when i complete, by putting it into words! you have to try it out for yourself!
So, that was 8, kind of half way, considering the uphill run makes me feel like its 12. so, another 9km remaining for me to endure, without damage cause i surely don't wanna putting on my jeans for half an hour for a week every time i run for 10km! Some training in the blocks, damage limitation mode is on. Tomorrow, well, i still can't walk, so running is pretty much suicidal for three more days, ruled out!
Hmmm.... lemme see. Nah! i need sleep for now, i'll look into the training plan tomorrow. It's not that i can move around tomorrow anyway! goodnight!

recommend!

2008-12-07T23:04:00.003+05:30

recommendation letters, as the name would suggest, are the letters which a person would give you in support of.... well, what ever it is that you're going to start doing, kind of a public announcement: "yes i know this guy, and these are the things he has done which has impressed me, and these are the other things he's capable of doing" and such sort. Sadly enough, ppl who are supposed to issue these letters will not be able to compose a proper passage. This adds to the complication that the end users of these so called recommendation letters are looking precisely for ppl with valid qualification and position who can vouch for your/my abilities and talents. So, comes the ironic point, you type out a letter all by yourself, take it to them, if you have struck the right chord and have to really gone beyond yourself in praising, you get it signed, sealed and stamped. else, minor changes and you get it signed, sealed and stamped nonetheless. So, to a great extent it'll be what you want your prospective reader to read about you and what you wish to hide from him, like the fact that you really didn't know calculus will your second year of engineering, or you thought that college sucked, teachers were partial and and you were always irregular and definitely not punctual when you chose to be regular due to attendance reasons! strange! i suppose that all these things should not matter, the teachers are nice enough to sign all the rubbish that i write about myself. And kudos to them!

Change! :)

2008-11-12T23:05:00.004+05:30

After a long wait, my study table arrives! so, was a little busy rearranging/altering/disposing things in my room and making space to fit this in! found a snug place by the window (the set of windows which don't receive direct sunlight unfortunately). This should work for now, seating position is all fine and the table surface looks well-finished. Cheers! oh, and while i was at it, i cleaned up the shelf too! check it out! :P

Kanyakumari

2008-11-03T23:20:00.016+05:30

This one has been in the plan for a long time, the very much awaited trip to the southern tip of India and back. The original plan seemed simple and awesome, but, it was far from it,still awesome nonetheless! the route was revised and revised some more, optimized, and finally finalized a few weeks before the actual trip.

There had been problems right from the beginning with a few people dropping out for various reason and people who were the integral part of the trip begin held up till mid afternoon on the day of departure! but somehow we all managed to leave Mysore on the evening of the 2nd of October, with the destination of Calicut in mind. Although 215km away and the clock already showing 4:30pm (approx) we were not worried, cause there was no other alternative, we had to do it that day, or the trip wouldn't happen. Maintaining an high average speed, we managed to cross Gundelpet quite early and were heading under the forest cover for a while before we emerged out on the other side and inside Kerala's territory. The exit from the forest was something i can't forget, we could see the tree cover ending and the twilight visible the the other side like the light at the end of the tunnel, once we shot thru the forest, we were almost there, another hundred km perhaps we thought. By then we reached a mountain with a snaking road down it, clearly lit up and visible from the top. This would be one major step down in our journey towards sea-level. looking at the lights, i was pretty excited to make that particular descent, my first mountain after Kemmangundi. So we were all at good speed when i found out that the lights i saw from the top were actually lights from the cars and trucks which were stuck in the traffic jam all along that snaking stretch of tarmac! It was, i assumed later, caused due to some trucks which were not able to negotiate one of the many hairpins on that road. Getting thru the jam was kinda difficult, more so with the people who were furious at the bikers, probably because they're not as free as the bikes. But apart form that, the incident hardly got a mention for the rest of the trip and we made is safely to Calicut where an acquaintance of a friend had arranged the rooms, some decent food and fruits. The journey felt good, day one was complete

Day 2: The plan was to clock another 200+ km all the way from Calicut to Alleppy along the west coast (but not within sight of the sea). We left calicut in the morning, our departure times aren't really the best in the world, cause you see, more the number of people in the group, more the constraints. So by the time everybody takes a bath and gets ready, it'll be 8 and 9 by the time we leave a place.

So, that said, we left calicut to get the first taste of what authentic kerala roads (and traffic) was like and it didn't take long for us grow sick of it! cause the roads were narrower that what's in front of my home and the traffic on those roads was relentless, heavy, fast and many times reckless! soon we were in Gurvayur and the road situation was at its worst here, with the so called NH-7 going between two house compounds!
There's a tradition at the Gurvayur temple, that you'll not be allowed inside if you're not wearing a dhoti and shalya, unless of course you're a girl. Thankfully people in the group were aware of the rule and had instructed all of us to pack a dothi and shalya. Changing into that and throwing all our luggage in a cloak room, we went and were blessed with the darshana of Gurvayur Shri Krishna. by the time we came out were all exhausted and were searching for something cool to drink, when i remembered the iced-tea joint to which I'd sneaked and bought myself a cup when everyone was ahead of me going to the cloak room. i pointed this out to the guys and as luck would have it, he had already served the last cup. Here, the guys decided to buy some sweets for all folks back home and office, sweets smelling of coconut oil that is! so, i stepped out of the buying spree. All shopping done for now, we went and parked ourselves in one of the many hotels labelled "Brahmin's" (may be this one didn't have that prefix, don't remember) and had a nice lunch (or as nice as it can get away from your home town/city/state)
On the bike again, next stop was Alleppy, since the schedule was pretty tight, we hadn't planned on visiting the small places around the towns and on the way. The vote to stop on a few beautiful bridges with stunning sceneries itself was a hard one to come by! but we managed that much, at least, after a hot exchange of words at an intermediate rest stop. This whole stopping-on-nice-bridges agreement was half hearted for a few people. One person was more worried about the difficulties of riding at night that he just shot through all the bridges, along with his mute and involuntary pillion, without looking left or right. Among the people who remained as a pack, we had a little dilemma, we had stopped at a bridge ( you can see this in the photos) and we noticed that we would witness our first sunset on that bridge so yanked out our cameras and were waiting. But a couple of others, spearheaded by one person, wanted to see the sunset from a nearby beach. But, this is still a little debated, but, but we thought that there was no way we could've made it to the beach in time for the sunset, so we got a good glimpse of the sun nestling behind the trees and rushed to make it to the beach anyway to see whether we got lucky or not. But, as suspected, we were late, there was only twilight, and in the commotion, we lost one more guy who'd gone astray from the pack (the first guy and his pillion were lost to us by miles already, no sunset too for those two). With just three bikes and five people now, we carried on to a place where we could find a phone or a signal. that we did, first up was the guy who got lost a few minutes ago, he was still around, apparently he'd gone a little further down the beach. There was no problem finding him. By this time it was already late and we decided to stop in Ernakulam, everybody agreeing that the ride to Alleppy wasn't safe at night, and the risk wasn't worth it. So we called the first two guys to tell them to stop riding and find a place in Ernakulam. But it had so happened that those two motor heads had made it to Alleppy and were searching a place to camp at night, 45km away from the rest of us! So, this was a hiccup! but we never gave even a thought to the idea of riding to Alleppy at that time, Ernakulam it had to be. Rode the rest of the distance slowly, found a place, ate and crashed to take care of other things later.

Day3: Was an early start, 5 'o clock my wristwatch showed when i turned on the lights, plan was to leave by six, but the usual long-bather took his time and it was well past 6:15Am when we left. This time i was the first one to disappear on the cold heavily humid foggy morning on the highway, i connected with my bike quite well and pulled clean from the pack and caught those two sleepers in Alleppy by surprise! Finally, after the reunion and exchanging a few jokes about everyone's riding, we went to the place where those two had pitched camp the previous night. It was a nice place, very European, with small rooms, fine wooden doors which open, first the top half, and then the bottom, a large bed on a big wooden cot, sofas on the outside. real classy. but we had no time to admire that, or the old Grundig Radio i found gathering dust under the aquarium. That was because we had all of Kerala's backwater to see and savor. But honestly, i wasn't really that impressed with the boat ride, i mean, it's good, yes, no doubt, but it's relaxing, kind of the stuff which puts you at peace with nature, so, what I'm saying is, it's not something that you watch just for two hours and get back into riding gear and blast off. So, was kinda disappointed. The day was promising though, our first sight of the beach was coming up, in Varkala. It was evening by the time we made it there, the sea was rough, it was nearing sunset and i saw girls begin slam-dunked on the beach by the strong waves all over the place! That made me decide not to get into the water, so i volunteered for the photo-clicking and luggage watching part! The photos came out well (as you Will see). After varkala, there was nothing but the flat out stretch to Trivandrum and the night halt. Things were low on the feel-good factor by now, people were exhausted, bikes were being stretched, so were our backs and, most important of all, the time schedule! After a good sleep in Trivandrum, the journey began again, to Kovalam and the most pleasant beach I've ever seen, the water, a pale blue sheet covering the brown fine sad which stretched for miles on both ends. The water, comfortably warm and only waist deep for a long way into the Arabian sea from the shore, the waves, powerful, sometimes mischievous but never that dangerous to warrant extreme caution. you could afford to let your self be carried away, both literally and otherwise and be assured that the sea is gonna bring you back home, if not in this wave then most certainly in the next. It's a refreshing sight, the salty water in your mouth will take away all sleep, all tiredness and all worries. it was mesmerising, to the extent of forgetting our already lagging schedule. With a heavy heart we were forced to come back on shore and dry ourselves but not before we got a good share of fun.

Back on the bikes again Kanyakumari was the stop, the tip of mail-land India, the culminating point of three huge water bodies, The Arabian sea, The Indian ocean and the Bay of Bengal, two huge mountain ranges, the Eastern Ghtas and the Western. The seas, water nonetheless but each with its own unique color, a shade of it, seeing which people recognize these great masses of water spreading tranquil and quiet as far as your eyes can see or your heads can turn. Barring a puncture right in front of a puncture-mending shop, the ride was lovely. The sense of anticipation was all too much in the group, we could sense the sea approaching, but hiding from sight, playing with our minds, making us wait more. Although the mountains had signaled that we were almost there, it would be a while before the sea finally showed herself to us, and show herself she did, in all her glory. The highway ended at a wall, beyond which was water, water everywhere. There were smiles, hugs and handshakes everywhere. Fists punching the air, sense of accomplishment, awe, contentment, respect for the sea, the bikes and each other. We'd waited a long time to see this, even though we arrived nearly 6 hours behind plan, there were no complaints. Yet, there was a sense of hurry, fueled by the news that the Vivekananda rock and the Kanyakumari temple would close by evening. We had to hurry, skipping our lunch for later, to catch the ferry to get to The Rock. It was a great sight, with thousands of windmills lining the ocean on your left, to the larger than life statue of St. Thiruvallavar on your right, to the small houses behind you shadowed by the huge mountains behind them to the big rock stuck out of place in the middle of the sea with a temple on it in front of you. Vivid is the word i would use. Photos, talk, rest, and a ferry later it was time for lunch/evening snack, whichever is the term but the quantity which went in wasn't about to change at all! if anything it would get bigger. stuffing ourselves with food, we hurried to the sunset spot to witness the sun signing out for the day, as though snuggling into a bathtub that is the Arabian, quenching himself off from his exhaustion of shining relentlessly, it seemed only on the eight of us, throughout the day, after all, he's the one who's truly "too hot to handle". The sight which followed was something to behold! barring a few retards who never stop talking (not in our group mind you), almost everybody was forced into a silence watching the sun as he went down. A day well ended, a night that was very, very Young for us though.
There was a crisis meeting in the parking lot, how far do we ride that night? was the question on eveybody's mind. There were talks of Madurai in one night. An interim decision was taken and Madurai was the name on everybody's lips. I too agreed, i remember saying "come on, tonight, we'll sleep only after bowing down to Madurai Meenakshi" to one of my friends. I had two cups of coffee to peel my eyes wide open, other had one, started our bikes and blasted off kanyakumari, streaking past the windmills, which we realized then that they were mounted on land, towards Madurai. But, as fate would have it, we hit problems, a bike making noises it shouldn't was the last thing we needed at that time of the night. There were anxious moments and phone calls to the mechanic, a green was given to ride on, cautiously. We hit a town not very far, i suggested that we get the bike fixed so we can carry on at full speed. But, that's when we realised the full extent of the problem at hand. The bike was all out of engine-oil, the leaky old cylinder had burnt all but around 100 ml of the 1.1L of it! In the words of the mechanic "a few more km and it would've locked itself solid"!! He put new engine oil and assured it would run, it did actually. After a while from that place, we hit our second problem. Hands were frantically waved for us to stop by the bikes in front, a crisis meet again, the problem: sleep! We were all finding it difficult to concentrate with our exhaustion and sleep. In the end, disappointment, Madurai would have to be the next day. We pitched camp in Tirunelveli out of force. By this time it was certain that we would not come back to mysore on the day we'd planned. That made people with a problem of leaves even more worried. Next morning, as it was on all morning, it was a average start, we had only one more place to stop our bikes and see. All other places from then would only be enjoyed in one eye at 70kmph!

The temple at Madurai was stunning, larger than life, magnificent. It was a shame that we weren't able to explore all corners of it before it closed down for the evening rituals. but we did manage to see the two most important People after whom the temple is named "Meenakshi Sundareshwarar" Sundareshwarar meaning "the beautiful Lord Shiva" and Meenakshi "Godess Parvathi". We had arrived at Madurai at 4 in the evening. It was 6 by the time we came out of the temple, with still a fair distance to make up, we wasted no time roaming around the city. Back on the saddle after reviewing the map which told us Dindigul was the next major town, we headed towards it, numb, cold and mechanical. Partly because of our schedule and partly because the scenery was really bald around that area, there was nothing to see and it would be so for most of the next day too. We stayed at a place 1km out of Dindigul. Next day, it was the big day, having to cover 350km no matter what. I was a little nervous that i would fall asleep somewhere in the middle since i wasn't much of a fan of highway riding! We left early, with a flat-out blast to Dharapuram with myself and the fiero (the bike which nearly broke down the previous day) leading the way. Had good breakfast, as it has been the case on all the days, we were blessed with excellent food, and left for Gopichettipalyam, form there to Satyamangala. A good lunch and we were off to Dimbam forest, at the other side of which, sitting high and pretty, overlooking Satyamangala from a great height, was Karnataka, the place we call our home! The ride thru Dimbam forests was one to enjoy, it was all to obvious that after enjoying the road so much (even falling asleep on the silky smooth black tarmac in that hot sun) we were bound to have a turn, it did come however, but not before we enjoyed the infamous hairpins winding it's way up the hill, the air getting lighter and cooler with every passing hairpin, me having to hold my nose and blow to equalize the pressure in my ears in every other bend. Before we could get used to the brake-downshift-honk-bend routine we topped out the summit and started the descent, a couple of reckless people took lead here descending the hill at breakneck speed much to the horror of their poor pillions! And then there came the stretch of road with the biggest potholes we'd ever seen all week! Quite understandably, since we were used to high speed all the way we never saw the first big hole coming! By the time I arrived, the rest of the gang had stopped on a bad stretch of road, one by one, each one stopping to see how badly the next one would plummet into the ditch! Sadists! That particular stretch was the worst all trip and we all ended up with back pains. We stopped every few kilometers, even with our homes just 60km away, nobody could stand those roads anymore! It was an excruciatingly lengthy and uncomfortable journey back to the city now filled up with lights and tourists from all over the world who'd come to witness the Dasara festivities in Mysore. Another cup of tea later, we were all ready to take the final few photos of what was a remarkable trip, sometimes rough and challenging, mentally and otherwise, but always exciting and refreshing. The talk that evening was all about the beautiful sights we'd witnessed, the people, the roads, the near misses etc, etc... Those memories are etched permanent in all of us! Can't wait for the next big one!

back from a break, and already broken!

2008-10-24T00:04:00.005+05:30

The recent past hasn't been the kindest to me in any sense of the word. Things are moving fast and happening slowly. Every Monday morning, i wake up and think there're five good days till the weekend arrives, but before i can blink twice and remember all my passwords, Friday will be breathing down my neck in full fury, and I'm left with a pretty short list when my mind asks me what i have done in the past four days, so much so that the panic, guilt and frustration of not accomplishing enough in four days become a cause of wasting much of the fifth day and looking forward to the sixth as if not doing stuff on Saturdays is acceptable and sometimes inevitable. And i end up taking refuge in the fact that people only relax on weekends, which only helps my mind in part, but not entirely as you would imagine.
There're many reasons why that's happening, which, after some thought, i don't see what help it'll do to me (or you) in posting them here apart from wasting more of mine (and perhaps yours) already free-flowing time. Suddenly i have started to suck in time management, in optimizing my schedule, I've become lazy and irritable. So much so in fact that i am really in a dilemma whether to type further here, or go and study, or work. Another problem, which is what is really pulling me apart, is that, i feel i should be working when I'm studying and the other way round, and ultimately end up not concentrating on either as much as i am supposed to or expected to.
As though having a splitting dilemma isn't enough, it is topped off by an endless list of hobbies which have gathered in my basket of hobbies without me putting any effort into developing them in the past two years. Agreed, that hobbies really take your mind off all the worries, and all the stuff that's said to depressed and lonely kids, but at the end of the day, too much of anything can eat into your time, so will little of too many things.
So, what would you do, dearest people, if each one of you were in my shoes? how would you distribute your time, between an array of stuff, academics, work, hobbies, personal life, social life and family? or which one would you sacrifice if you think that would help, and why? what makes the things being sacrificed expendable? why would you prefer that, over other things in the list, to drop?
I recently had been on a biking expedition to various places in south India, covering around 1400km in six days (if you want to see the photos, ask me :P). That was when, after a real long time, i enjoyed myself, nothing but the open road, a backpack, three tee shirts, tools, a pack of fellow nomads and mother nature. It's was a trip to reconnect yourself back to nature and the travelling lifestyle, to remind you that life is not made up of just computer tables, laptops, shares and bank accounts. That was something i look forward to again next year if people are game enough for it.
But, sadly, after i came back, things again became mundane, monotonous, clinical and depressing. My fellow nomads were left working over-time for the days there were on leave. i was left assessing the damage done to my studies and work, and again cribbing about not doing enough each week. Once in a while though, things look like they're getting back the way you wanted it, but then, very soon, chaos theory will again rule. But, this has to change, or else nothing will come off it except more chaos! Have to whet my mind again with an oil-stone, just that i am neither finding the right stone which does the job in one go, nor holding on to any stone i find for long enough to do a good job.
Well, that was that, this week is already at an end, it's Friday morning already, and Saturday will be upon me soon, and I'll be left with pretty much the same list i had last week, minus a few entries, have to rub out all the dates and rewrite the deadlines again! and this time, hopefully, stick to it! you'll know in the next post! till then, chao!

Tink

2008-08-06T22:02:00.000+05:30

Have been receiving many compliments about my bike lately. Contrary to what people had assumed before, my bike looks like it's fighting off the “gonner” image. People use to take a ride and say “sell it, it's a gonner”. I don't wanna be exceptionally cruel in accusing those nice people of false accusations, cause many times even I felt it was a gonner! But I knew it was fixable. If you ask me today, I can still tell you a list of parts on my bike that need fixing, but that's how some bikes are, they're like a thoroughbreds, you need to keep brushing it up often, feeding some of the best food available,looking into every detail each time before you take a ride. Even with all that, it ages, it's built to age, it's natural. Selling won't solve the problem, it'll only transfer the problem, and get you a new set.

So I decided not to part with my bike. Decision one. Decision two, I decided that I would fix it myself. Some say this was a bad move, but I disagree, since it's given me more confidence in pushing a bike which is, well, “far more blunt than cutting edge”. And to ride, that's what matters the most confidence, if you have it, you can thread a needle between trees at 100kmph, if you lack it, you can end up in one, or worse, several trees! The make or age of the bike doesn't decide that, how comfortable you are on it decides it. I've had my experiences, believe me and so have you, I can see it on your faces.

Thinking this I went ahead to repair my bike. And it has turned the bike around a complete 180 from where it was heading. No more gallows/curtains/casket/pushing-up-daisies for my bike, it works like a charm, that, I say assuming you don't mind being chivalrous to it. Recently, I was rewarded with a sweet sound from my bike that had disappeared from it for more than three years. It's been two weeks since I returned from chikmaglur. A few days ago, after I came home and parked the bike, I thought I heard something, so I decided to stay and listen, for a second, it was all silent, for another second, it was deafening silence again, I had almost given it up, dismissing it as my hallucination from petrol fumes. But then, it did happen, “tink” I heard, my face lit up! Then the pattern was clear “tink........tink........tink.......tink”!! the catalytic converter was working again. Not a big deal for all you guys may be, but for me it is. It had stopped working after my engine blew-up years ago. But my repairs in february and hence the nice seal of the engine and the recent trip to ooty and chikmaglur had probably generated enough heat to blast away all the coating which was poisoning the palladium hot-tube meshes. Now they were free to expand under heat, and now when you park the bike after some hard riding, they take their own time to contract and cool down, “tinking” away for minutes.

This is what the story of most bikes would be, if you took the effort to dig it up, they'll work, but they can't fix themselves right? You fix it such that things work in the way they were intended to work and you can really enjoy the personality of a bike which new bikes lack. Try it out sometime, you'll fall in love with it! Chao!

Destination Kemmangundi!

2008-07-27T23:57:00.007+05:30

When I originally started to write this blog, I wanted to name it as “Honey I fried the valves” :) but looking back over the past weekend, I thought it was too negative a title to choose and that I wouldn't be doing any justice to how I felt if I named it that way.

The Western Ghats is beautiful, refreshing but also dangerous, merciless and not for the faint hearted. To tackle it, you need, commitment, stamina, speed and a healthy doze of bravery. It drives home a sense of challenge into you. This, with all its beauty in full bloom in the rains, was our destination. Over three days of biking in this region would be enough to change your priorities in life from coding/development/testing to biking :) OK bad joke. Moving on.

The plan was simple, visit the highest peak in Karnataka (we've already taken care of the second highest, remember) and get back in three days. The catch, mother nature, again. The concern, rains, and that word is an understatement to what actually happens there. A downpour can turn small puddles into lakes, and roads into a skating rink! After my earlier heartbreak, I wouldn't be intimidated by anything mother nature was planning to throw at me. So, I decided that caution was the better part of valor, and waterproofed and double waterproofed all my stuff that would be needed, bought a very expensive raincoat and packed lots and lots of warm clothes. Then came the important stuff, which we wouldn't realise till the final day, the tools. It took me nearly an hour to load the heavy tool-kit onto my bag without taking too much space or tearing any stitches. But it had be on the outside though, so extra caution was needed to make sure somebody else doesn't pick it up on the road! All set then, a photo of my packed bag and take off.

The day finally arrived, the time of departure (estimated) – 0800hrs, the time of departure (actual) – 1000hrs. Our first hiccup, one person arrived late cause of constraints at workplace. Which left the other three of us waiting, clicking away at our bikes. Once he arrived, we wasted no time in greetings. We were off, four bikes from Mysore. A nice variety, old and new. This time, an addition, a car with five ppl was accompanying us. More things meant more things which could go wrong, but thankfully we would have none of it that weekend, it all went with ease after some teething problems. A fuel leak in the car put them and a bike nearly two hours behind us, but at the end of the day we were all together.

So, after the first 20km it was only three bikes from Mysore, two from b'lore. They had more than an hours riding advantage on us although being farther away from the meeting point agreed upon before. We were on a mission not to keep the guys from b'lore waiting at Hassan, so it was nearly constant all the way, keeping those average speeds nice and high, stopping only for compulsory breaks. In a flash we were in Chennarayapattana, just a hop away from our meeting point, we just took a left and again it was flat-chat to Hassan. We made it! And right about time. Those guys were here too, they had taken things easily on the road though. We all met up for lunch, greetings! After lunch, our serious trip began, Halebidu, 30km of undulating, twisting and turning country tarmac awaited, a feast for all the riders. Blast-off. As we tore though the roads, our first chance to stretch our legs on some long (non-boring) stretches arrived and we relished. Then, silently something was creeping up my tail, a Unicorn! You'd think it's easier to notice that big machine coming, but think again! He just sailed past us, 'nice' I thought, ppl are enjoying then, 'let's give him a run for it' :) fair enough, yeah? So it was downshift and advance, and in three heartbeats I was behind it, and then another thing crawling on my back, this time it's not silent, it's a humming bird! RX-135! With pillion, he took the cue and slotted behind me, on a straight I was planning on passing the unicorn, but he would have second thoughts on every bend, as soon as I was almost next to him, he would open throttles and close the door in braking. But there were a few time when I did manage to pass him only to have him get back at me on the very next straight. Before we could play more, Halebidu arrived, and we all parked up, me smiling inside my helmet. Then the Mr unicorn look at me and says 'let's not ride like this again' a few words and laughs were exchanged and we went on.

There was nothing in halebidu with was 'out of this world' but still it looked good, the sculptures, architecture, the layout, the styles and many other aspects were very eye catching. But sadly we were already lagging behind schedule. So we were off, on our next destination, Hornadu. We were already a little too late to reach Horanadu on time, so we had to ride at night. We stopped at a major turn to unite with the other bike and the car which had closed the gap to us while we were gaping at Halebidu. While we were talking, we heard the sound, it was the fiero, grand entry I should say! (the guys will know why). A little while later, we were finally a group.

The first major mountain road awaited us and to our luck it started raining too. One guy left first and then me, and behind me the rest started, we were all in mirror distance for a while, then suddenly, nobody was in sight, myself and the guy in front stopped and waited for a while. Then a canter came and told me that a bike had had a minor fall, everybody was alright, and they were on their way. We quickly double back to check what's happening, I passed the unicorn, he just waved and went, then the fiero stopped. He told me that the unicorn had a fall, skidded off the road and rolled in the mud and grass, there wasn't a scratch on him and the bike was fine too, (may be he was serious when he said 'let's not ride like this again'??). Despite the moral blow, the incident hardly got a mention in the group. A quick inspection of the man and machine revealed no damage, and we went on, considering how kind our luck had been. Then we stopped around 62km from Hornadu for our customary tea. Enjoying the tea, weather and scenery, we just summarised the day as “good” and were on our way, one more tea and a few more kilometers of riding in darkness got us to horanadu at 2130 hrs, nine hour day at the office wouldn't be bad in most cases, but a nine hour day on the road left us craving for dinner and sleep. We found the nearest lodge and put up camp there. Getting the bikes into comfortable resting places, we went and had dinner at the Temple and went back to our room, then it was time for damage assessment, our clothes were soaked, so were our shoes and socks, luckily, my backpack was still dry. Our shoulders ached, so did our backs, and we just longed for sleep.

The next morning, the early risers took charge and got us on a roll, we had tea, cleaned ourselves up, and went to the Temple. After praying for our immediate journey along with the prayers for our journey in life, we went to inspect the bikes. I, personally, handled my bike with the utmost care, checking the spark-plug, and making sure every bolt and nut was in place and looked normal, I gently took it off the stands and pushed it to a clear place, started up and left it to warm at idle. The other guys did pretty much the same. Once everything was nice and hot, it was departure time and a much tougher day awaited us, but we were aware of it yet, the first stretch gave us a taste of things to come. The ride from Hornadu to kuduremukha was stunning, we all rode our hearts our, well, almost all of us, cause I saw the unicorn was visibly nervous, probably shaken from the previous day's fall, and making very horrible lines at very low speeds through the forest. Frankly, I felt bad to let him go and to carry on at my own speed through the stretch. I've been in his situation before and I knew how it felt.you'll be faced with conflicting thoughts and opinions, is the grip enough? will it lock up if I shift and brake? Is the curve too sharp? should I keep the lines tight? Should I put second, or should I put first? It's hell I tell you. I don't know whether all these thoughts went thru his head, but I still kept him in my mirrors anyway. While we were enjoying our won ride, we forgot about the other two bikes!! Not necessarily disastrous but still a waste of time, finally we met up in kuduremukha. And told them what all they missed... the roads, curves, scenery and the like.

From kuduremukha, we went to lakhya dam and then the next stop was sringeri... a beautiful scenic place, an old temple, one of the four mutts of Sri Sri Adi Shankaracharya, a place which abounds in historical value. We reached, but sadly not before the Temples closed in the afternoon. They would only open next in the evening, and sadly we didn't have time to wait till then, we were already delayed. Well, we never came into this trip hoping to prove we could keep planned times, everything was flexible, but, we had come to enjoy nature and temples, although not bad in any sense of the word, were not nature. We could always come back to the temple any time of the year and see God, but we came here to enjoy the mountain ranges, the wind in our face, the rain on our hands, the sound of the wind rushing past our ears, the sight of so much green you'd forget the names of all other colours if you'd stared long enough and the smell of the earth wetted by the constant drizzle. Frankly, temples had to wait. Next stop, chikmaglur for dinner.

There was nothing special (if you can call it that) along the way back to chikmaglur. Well, I say nothing special, but it's just an expression. The whole route is so unique and magnificent you'd not know which moment, which turn, which stretch of road to choose and label it “special” compared to others. So, the word special doesn't really do justice to the sights and sounds of that special region of karnataka.

We arrived at chikmaglur, I envy that place from the day I stepped into it! It's a town nestling at the foot of the highest hill range in karnataka. And we boast about Chamundi, no offence meant. Well, we we having dinner at a hotel at about 2000hrs when one person gave an idea as to why wouldn't we consider staying in the lodge where we were having dinner instead of riding out the 60 odd km to kemmangundi. I too felt that idea was good, so did a lot of people, but, a few were having none of our suggestions and were all set to go, so we too had to get going. So we all agreed that we all would follow the car in the darkness. In retrospect, that particular veto was one of the best things that happened to us in the trip. More about that later. We got going and it was then that I noticed a strange thing about myself that I hadn't noticed ever before, in fact, I never though that could happen to me or to anybody else. I was falling asleep on the bike!! My speed, controlled by the riders behind me and the car in front of me was too slow, I didn't have anything to do! I was drowsing with a stomach full of dinner and two days' riding under my belt. I was trying everything to stay awake, including singing to myself, blinking rapidly, rushing towards the car and slowing down till I made the end of the pack. Nothing seemed to work, I thought 'this is it, I'm gonna crash into a bush and sleep there without knowing I've broken many of my bones'. Then a few rough stretches started and I began to wake up, and on the last stretch, I was fully awake and was fed up of going behind the car, myself and a few more riders broke up and went at our own comfortable speed, engines revving freely finally and now fully alert, I was greeted by the cool air of the mountains and the jolts from the road were now in full swing. It was sort of like reaching a climax, one big water-splash later we were there, summit of the hill. Kemmangundi. Covered in pitch darkness and biting cold. We had a little commotion as to where we would ultimately sleep, cause as it turned out, there was more than one guest house. But we finally found our room and one by one the guys started to fall. Myself and few others were awake till 2:30 in the morning keeping each others company. Then we too couldn't hold back our sleep. We all slept.

The next morning, the early rises had already taken charge and also had gone for a morning walk out in the cold. Phew, so much for that! We all woke up leisurely. While we were having tea, we hear that there's a flat tyre in our group! That's bad news! Something had to be done. On inspection, it was obvious that it wasn't a slow puncture, cause we pull a one-inch nail clean out of the tyre! Then we decided to patch up the tyre ourselves, so we removed the wheel, the tyre and the tube, took out the patch and saw, no gum! The patch simply doesn't stick! Talk about waste of money! We tried everything, including heating and hammering! But no, it refused to stay on the tyre. So, we took the wheel and the tube and went down 13km to the nearest puncture shop and got it mended. It was there that we found out that we should have had a tube of solution to make the patch stick! Bloopers! We got the wheel back and fitted it back on the bike, smooth as a baby's bottom! No glitches. On the way down we stopped at a junction and had a small chat, whether we would descend down the same road we came up or would we take the other, shorter but rougher road down, just for the heck of it. We don't know till today as to why we took that road, but that proved to be the best stretch of road, in terms of scenery, we had had all the trip! Almost always, the western ghats was in sight constantly on your right, we felt one with nature, there were all sorts of plans in the group, including extending our stay by one more day to making this a honeymoon spot in the future! Many, many photo session passes, and nobody seemed to bother that we were getting late. The sight was that good. From there it was just 7km to the highest place in karnataka, Mullayangiri in the Bababudangiri hill range. There was no way we would miss that, and every inch of those road was word the effort compared to what we were treated to at the top of the hill! A sight to behold, something I experienced for the first time in my life, on one side you have the entire hill range in front of you and on the other side of the hill, you have flat lands which has patches of cities, truly amazing sight!

After this, It was all downhill, literally, we descended to reach chikmaglur, where we had something like lunch-cum-evening snack-cum-dinner at a hotel. From there, the guys from b'lore were kinda in a hurry to leave quoting the extra 40km they'd to travel (in heavy traffic too). They left, and so did we, it was almost six by the time we left. The threat of rain was looming large over us, but we were prepared anyway! So never stopped, it was literally flat-chat and full blast all the way to mysore, with very high average speeds (around 50kmph), high, I mean, considering it was dark, raining and we had stopped four times on the way, once in hassan for tea, again in K.R. Nagar for tea, and twice in between for compulsory stops. So probably, for an hour, we were just “sitting ducks”, which, if correct, pushes up the average speed to sixty kmph! We were in Mysore precisely at 2200hrs! That was a relief to us! Home sweet home at last, although a part of all of us was pulling us back to the western ghats!

This was a triumph of man over nature. Three days of biking in one of the most dramatic and testing landscapes in India, the Western Ghats. According to my opinion, one of the most scenic places in the entire country, forget Kerala! If you want greenery, well..... yes go to Kerala, cause I don't want that place to become popular, it's nice when it's isolated. I like is to be un-hyped and less frequently visited by people. Cause tourists always ruin the place, to what extent? Depends on how many tourists you're talking about, ten ppl won't hurt at all :) anyway, pics will be up and running soon. I really wanna to there again, plans anyone? Anyone?

Websites worth having a look at

2008-06-07T00:18:00.005+05:30

These aren't really organized in any manner. I've just put it in text in the order I could recollect them. Go through this post till the last link to make sure you didn't miss out on anything just cause you left when you came across something you didn't like in between.

http://www.hesperian.org/
This is an organization which is aimed at as they say "publisher of books and educational materials that help people take the lead in their own health care and organize to improve health conditions in their communities."

http://storyofstuff.com/
A Twenty minute video of one of the most important stuff affecting the environment. A really classy website which does not use so much of the technical jargon that is used by the very overly hyped climate activist Al Gore's 'An inconvenient truth'. Which sorta brings me to the next website I want you to read.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5236482.stm
This is an article called 'Climate Porn'. As the name says it gives the impact the present media is creating on the common man by using catastrophic words to describe pollution and it's effects on the planet and thus making the common man feel that he has nothing in his hands when it comes to the topic of saving the environment by his individual efforts. There is a podcast of the same topic, people with iTunes can download it for free and listen to it.

http://www.sat.dundee.ac.uk/
The Dundee Satellite Receiving Station, register here for free to have a look at geostationary images of the earth taken through a satellite, available in three different modes, Visible, Infrared and Water Vapour

http://www.dansmc.com/mc_repaircourse.htm
A motorcycle repair course to learn to repair your motorbike from scratch. This guy has some knowledge and is really useful to learn and "think" about improving motorcycles, not just repairing them. I'm pointing to this particular page as there are a few things which're not needed on this site so I'm just feeding you people just the stuff which is useful

people.morrisville.edu/~crovelp/Carburetor%20Theory.ppt
Another one from the technical series on bikes. Goes into details of the carburetor, if you can understand this, you can stop going to the local mechanic to get a tune for your bike every month.

http://www.motorcyclecarbs.com/carbs101.pdf
There has been a recent revelation in all of us about the role played by the carburetor in improving the performance of a motorcycle. The argument, analysis and the following research gave out these important articles as a result. There is a small confusion in this particular article though, it says that the mixture screw has an effect right from zero throttle to full wide-open throttle. Left to your discretion.

http://www.rallycars.com/Cars/Cars_Background1.html
The history of perhaps one of the oldest and purest forms of motor sport. Rallying. This site gives you a consolidated history of the cars, the sport, the names and the technology of the machines. It makes a nice read for any hardcore rally fan and sometimes is truly inspirational.

http://dpreview.com/
If you're planning to buy a camera and don't know which one is good? or how to even decide which one is good, then this is the place, it is the ultimate in technical info about cameras and recently lenses. Everything from sample images to comparison charts, graphs, exploded views and in-depth reviews, you can find it here.

http://web.canon.jp/imaging/enjoydslr/index.html
Got an SLR which your uncle was using? Bought a camera with a lot of bells and whistles but still using it in auto mode? then this site will help you understand the basics of manual photography, may it be film or digital, automatic or manual, the tips offered here will come in handy and result in near perfect images.

http://www.dailyblogtips.com/the-pros-and-cons-of-working-from-home-on-the-internet/
A nice blog to explain how some people, including me, feel about working from home and whether it is the next thing to do in all companies to decongest traffic and make it easier for people to maximize productivity.

Fire in B'lore! (Run, Run, Run......?)

2008-05-21T21:10:00.014+05:30

A recent visit to the ortho for a knee pain made me forcibly give up running for a while till things got better. I was aching to run every evening, and sometimes when I did disobey the doc, I was aching, literally, to get back home, the pain was becoming unbearable, more so was the disappointment of not being able to compete in a much awaited international-standard running event which was due in a couple of weeks. The frustration increased by the fact that I had already registered for it quite well in advance!

The diagnosis was a strained knee, which sucked by the way, cause nothing was wrong with my knee except the look of it (full of scars from my childhood unlike the kids of today). The actual problem was (and still is), however, the iliotibial band which was hugging my knee a little too tightly on my right leg so it had a habit of rolling and rubbing on the side of my knee and getting irritated as a result (silly muscle).

Three days before the event, I had decided that I would run even if it means I would have to get my knee operated once I come back, if something had to give up, would've had to be my knee! Not me! I was searching some last minute tips to find comfort and ease the pain by some exercise and voila, I found it, it is called an “Iliotibial band stretch”. Thanks heavens I thought, and right from Thursday evening, I was stretching it every hour for it to loosen up by 0900hrs Sunday, when the clock would start.

Friday, and there was not much improvement although things got a little better in the pain section, but still I couldn't have completed 10km in the condition I was on Friday. I had gone sloppy, I was sweating as soon as I hit 2km on my daily runs and gasping through my mouth. I'd hoping my muscles remembered something come Sunday and slept in that thought.

Saturday, I had to travel to B'lore to collect my running number. The bus journey didn't help much, after sitting in a position for nearly 2.5 hrs, I was not able to descend the steps of the bus to get out, knee had frozen up again! Hmmm... time to start stretching I thought to myself and carried on.

Trying a weird dance step from one of the classical Indian dances in the middle of the sidewalk dressed in jeans and a sports jacket isn't the best of feelings in the world, but that was exactly how my exercise looked. Also, I did put my friend in a lot of embarrassment too cause of my weird poses while we had gone for our numbers. My apologies!

Kanteerava Stadium, myself and my friend were suddenly overwhelmed by the scale on which the event was conducted. There were people everywhere, and stalls, and people, and sponsors and more people, well... you get the idea. There was also a full scale model of a Formula-1 car, it's team owned by a local booze baron who was also sponsoring the event and as I later found out, the water too. And right next to the car were a few people.... ahem ahem... we named then “chaddi chicks” (You'd know what I'm talking about if you're an Indian, and you'd get the humor more if you're a local Kannadiga). Those “chaddi chicks” took a part of my attention off my pain (yes, I'm not hiding). Finishing up all the checking out to our heart's content, we then started checking our numbers. Which we found without hassle and also the timing chip used to record our times.

It was now time for a meeting with old friend. Sitting in Pizza Hut, we ate to the brim of our stomach and filled the small gaps with ice-tea. Heading back home, we were treated with nice evening coffee, something that always brings cheer! After discussing small things about bikes and tuning, it was time to head back home and a good night's sleep for we had to get up early the next morning to load up on high energy stuff for the race. I drank a liter of electral the night before and had a pack of biscuits & a banana apart from my regular meal.

Sunday morning, the alarm went off at 5:45am, the day had dawned, the feeling was larger than life, the butterflies all too busy in my stomach. I had to load up, another half liter of electral, half liter of water, a pack of biscuits, a banana and some more biscuits made my power breakfast, made me wish I could fit bigger jets to my stomach and not worry a thing after that. I had to time it well, eating too early would make me hungry at the start line, eating too late would make the food stay in my stomach which effectively made it useless. I started stretching heavily and went on stretching all the way to the stadium psyching myself up to forget the pain that I knew I would experience soon, how soon was the main question on my mind. One km? Or may be two or three? Who knows, may be ten too, yes? Optimism.

After cheering for a photo finish in the women's 10K run (which ended up in a dead-heat by the way) it was time for us to start. We took our places in the upper quarter of the crowd, hoping to avoid the blunder that took us by surprise the last time we were on that same stretch of road six months ago. It didn't help much though, but didn't hinder our run as much as last time too thankfully. The problem is this, some idiots who would know nothing about running long distances would line up at the front and start the race like it was a 100m sprint, they might make it up to the 1km mark or 2km if they're lucky, during that time the real long runners would get swamped by all these block-heads and would have their race compromised. But we got luck, and it was also the last time before the finish I saw my friend, that was when I uttered a few curses at those sprinters as I overtook him around half a kilometer from the start. The first kilometer went well, the knee was working smoothly and I was in good spirits overtaking people left, right and center. At the one km mark came the drinks booth, I took a bottle and tried a sip, no, it wouldn't go in, I lost my breathing rhythm for a while and ended up spitting it out (in running you're allowed to do that) and since it was too hot out there anyway (0900 hrs remember? Summer time) I thought I'd pour it down my shirt. The second kilometer went well too and I was picking up speed, by the third kilometer I had settled into a rhythm, running my own race, following and being within striking distance of a girl who was ahead of me since the beginning (white shorts and white top), a few foreigners had already turned red and seemingly weren't able to decide which speed they should maintain out there, so were overtaking me and falling back many times. By now the whole group had flattened out into more or less a straight line of runners with around a fifty to seventy people in front of me. Coming to the third km I entered Cubbon road, I even had time to wave at the people in the water booth when they applauded me for catching a bottle which I asked them to throw at me. When I could find time, I had a look at my stopwatch, 20 minutes it read. I thought to myself that I should've done around 5 km by that time. Just then I reached Ulsoor lake, Gangadhar Chetty road, where my problems started, I noticed that my right shoe lace had come undone, I thought of continuing as it was but the shoe was getting looser and looser with ever step, so I had to stop just before the entrance of Dickinson road to tie it up again. Then on Dickinson road went on without a glitch, then I turned left to Kamraj Road and an incline was in front of me, gentle enough to go unnoticed during regular times, but steep enough when you've been through five and a half of the fastest kilometers on foot. Then my worst fear came to life, towards the end of Kamaraj Road, barely 200m from the turn and the sanctuary of the plain roads of Cubbon road, my legs felt ten times their usual weight, my nostrils suddenly felt blocked up with cork, I opened my mouth and started gasping. But, by that time my legs had given up the fight, I was stranded and my knee had a pain tearing through the side of it. I stood by a pole, stretched myself in an attempt to get going again and started running, but no, my knee had other plans, it was taking none of my grit or my “mind over body” crap. I was forced to walk for a while and then start running, the pain was unbearable, from then on, I forgot my timing, the distance I've covered, where I was right then, or how far I was from the finish. I remember only bits and pieces of what happened after that, I remember running somewhere near Chinnaswamy stadium passing a person who'd passed out on the sidewalk, remember walking in front of Vidhana Soudha, on turning left and entering Cubbon park, I saw an ambulance probably carrying the person back to base. I remember seeing people cheering other people and then thinking to myself “why aren't they asking me to run?”, then I saw a water booth again, he said “two more km, come on, just two more” then I pick up my spirits and my failing knee and started hopping at first and then running again, trying to forget the pain, by now my knee, I knew was totally finished. My shoes were hurting me as they'd got wet over all the water I'd poured over myself in the last seven km. I reached the next kilometer marker and stopped, started walking again. The moment I came out of Cubbon park was the moment I knew that I was gonna finish the race. Even if my heart had stopped just after exiting Cubbon park and back on to Kasturba Road, it would still have been beating fast enough to take me to the finish line. From my earlier runs I knew my heart would've been doing around 150 beats a minute. I ran the last 800m and entered the stadium and stopped just meters from the finish line, but thankfully somebody from behind tapped me on my shoulder and urged me to go on, fellow runner. I pick up again and reached the finish. On reaching, I somehow remembered to stop my stopwatch. I didn't feel anything, I couldn't move, I limped to the water booth and bathed again. I stood in one place for a long time, staring blankly at one place, seeing people arrive and finish their own race and being happy about it. I thought to myself that I was good enough to beat a few at least. On better days, I could've beaten a few more, had my knee held out the whole distance. It was my first, 54 minutes and 33 seconds my watch read, I still haven't reset my stopwatch. A personal achievement. The consequences are either ways, more confidence, increased pain, greater happiness, higher ambition. Although I'm still not able to walk properly today, four days after the event. My knee can't keep me home for long, and I will put on my shoes soon and start again. It's only a matter on when. Till then, Chao.

Cheers,

Gecko.

ooooooooooooooooty!!

2008-04-24T22:59:00.004+05:30

This post was supposed to have been for the trek to Kumara Parvatha mountain in Chikmaglur district, but as it turned out, a person could not make it due to a badly scraped knee from a fall. The search then began for a new destination for out packed bags and determined minds. The destination was chosen, Udhagamandalam better know to the outside world as Ooty, a nice little hill station nestling in one of the peaks of the Nilgiri hills. Well known for it's weather, scenic beauty not to mention of course the tea and most famous of all, Nilgiri Trees and Eucalyptus oil from which the hill range gets its name.

Late on the previous night, we all sat together to discuss what we would be covering in Ooty. But as we all would find out later we would've been better off if we had just gone home and slept earlier cause the planning was of little help although others may disagree on this. The main reason was the ride, it was the only reason why I agreed. I wasn't really interested in seeing Ooty, sure we've all seen Ooty before and as it is in all the cases regarding major tourist spots in India, it surely will not be any better than how it was when I saw it in 1995, right? Right! But, had I seen it on a bike? With the wind in my face, sand in my eyes and dirt in my nostrils? Had I seen in while I was sweating like hell, dehydrated, hungry and exhausted? Had I seen it rushing past me at 80kmph and at 35 degrees off vertical? Had I seen it with aching shoulders, a numb crotch and a back breaking backpack? The prospect was mouth watering enough for me to count myself in.

There were four bikes and six people in all this time, myself on my Pulsar 150, two others on two latest spec Pulsar 150 bikes and one more person, still a little visibly shaky from his previous illness, on a Suzuki Fiero. The two remaining people rode pillion on our bikes, sometime changing bikes now and then.

Off we went, late as usual, since some of us never had the concept of time firm in our heads. The first stop was, like always, breakfast, that was done in about half an hour. Then it was a short hop to Gundelpet, 30km away, where we stopped for the customary tea. It was the first time I had taken my bike out for a long ride in a long time and it felt fun, although my bike was noting compared to the silent killers which frequently overtook me on the highway. The most impressive was the Fiero, the ease with which it could pull away from you, something to marvel about. After tea, we set out with Bandipur forest on our minds. Immediately the roads turned nasty for about 10km potholes, sometimes no roads, plain dirt, it was the stuff of my dreams, on the foot-pegs, third gear, narrow strip off the road's shoulder, no brakes, leaving everybody behind I pulled away enjoying each pothole avoided and swallowing each pothole I hit since the bike swallowed half of it and I felt very little of a bang. Then we reached the forests of Bandipur, famous for it's elephants and tiger reserves. Hoping not to find any on the way, we made our journey through roads winding through the forest, the greenery, the lush sight and near empty sound, disturbed only by our bikes beating in harmony. Then came a section of twisty road, three of four hairpins. We all zipped past, then I notice someone taking snaps

me: dude you missed me in the snap.

Mr. Newest pulsar & pillion: can't help

Mr. Newer Pulsar: don't worry, there are 36 more to come!

Did Somebody say 36?? hmmm... so frankly that was the point when I really stopped caring what Ooty would hold in store for us. I'm gonna go through 36 hairpins.. in one day.. twice over.. did I care about anything else? Nay!

So by this time we found ourselves talking in front of the big board saying territory of Tamil Naadu.

Enter.

Police:stop stop, license

Us: here

Police: Pollution certificate

Us: what?

Police: you don't have pollution certificate?

Mr. Newer Pulsar: what is that??

Police: park it in the side and come to the office.

Miss Mammoth: you see you have to pay a fine of 300 per bike for not having a certificate which would've cost you only 30 to obtain.

Mr. Newer Pulsar: but all these bikes are new.

Miss Mammoth: oh, then you don't need, you can carry on.

Us: (exit, stage left)

It was handy having a Tamil speaker around, if it doesn't get you killed in Gundelpet, it'll surely help you 50km later! He'd saved us at least a thousand bucks, a thousand bucks, better part of which we would voluntarily lose in a stupid concept anyway.

A short hop from the check post and we found the place, Masinagudi was it's name, a small village like place bang in the middle of the forest and at the foot of the mountain we'd come to go up through to reach our destination. Throwing all our luggage in a room barely enough to fit a couple, we started our bikes again, next stop, Ooty.

We all made our way cautiously through the flats leading up to the mountain, then we saw the actual road, an incline I'd not seen that often in my life. Passing it brought us face to face with the dream, my obsession “Hairpin 36/36” it said.

“here goes”

Changing into second, I opened her up, sat her at the edge of her limit, 5500 rpm in second for minutes on end. I was a nice feeling to feel her purr under my seat. I hadn't even passed a few hairpins and someone waved me down

Mr. RX (hadn't brought it here though): Fiero is not pulling, I'll hop on to your bike.

And he waved the Fiero forward. The two Pulsars followed. I again started on with my journey, my bike was pulling.. just pulling, of course wasn't pulling well. I passed the Fiero

“It's the altitude” I shouted at him.

“it'll make the engines suffocate” I shouted again

he faintly acknowledged, his mind more on the condition of his bike. The other two bikes complained of the same problem, lack of power. I just dismissed it as a problem every engine faces on this terrain, 2000m above MSL. I continued, trailing the Fiero. By the time we reached the 3/4^th mark, I could smell something peculiar and familiar. It was oil, not just oil, burnt oil, the Fiero's engine had given up going up. Having had enough of the demand and starved out of oxygen and petrol, the engine had let go in the mildest of fashions. We reached Ooty a short while later. Just in time for the engines to catch their breath back and also just in time since we all were hungry. Thankfully we were lucky enough to be gifted a packed lunch. Now the search for the place began. We decided Dodabetta was the place. It was a nice view it seems. Back on the saddle again, we rode through the twisting roads, past the estates of tea, past the cars that made up most of the traffic, the people, the tiled roof that made up all the houses. 2200M above MSL was the last board I noticed.

Doddabetta was a very average spot, the beauty of it spoiled by the increasing number of tourists in the summer I'm sure. There was nothing to see there which we hadn't seen in Tadiyandamol a hundred times better. But the weather there was something which could never go unnoticed, the air felt, thin as satin as a crisp as a wafer, you actually made no effort to draw a lung full of it and you were aware of that. It cooled and soothed its way into you and just as easily came out making way for another lung full of air. We searched a spot on the lawn to park ourselves for lunch. We ate, and ate well knowing that the bikes were cooling down and resting as we recharged ourselves too. Then we decided that we would visit Lamb's Rock view point, again, supposedly a short ride from there. But on our way to Lamb's Rock we were stuck at a dead end, there was no road

One of us: which way to lambs rock?

Somebody there: straight ahead

me: you gotta be kidding me, we aren't even going up hill and we'll reach a view point? Through this mess?

Yes, apparently. We did find a route, it was a tiled road! Probably made intentionally to lose the bikes and cars which would dare to venture out on those roads, may be we were meant to walk, I thought, just then I found a bus full of people heading back, no comments.

The view from Lamb's Rock wasn't all that great, they say you can see a woman lying down in those rock formations in the mountains yonder. Coming down, we had a place which sold tea, how convenient.

Tea Please.

Did somebody order for hot water? Guys?

Well, when you have to pay for it, you might as well stomach it!

Coming back from lamb's rock, we were exhausted, and our only thought was the room! A small stop for essentials and we were off to descend the hill!

“Steep descent, Descend only in second gear” read a big yellow board. Few corners later, I heard something in the back of my head, frrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr fut fut fut..... came the Fiero throttle down and picking up speed, all the while popping and banging from the exhaust... did I say a blown engine at the start?? very well!

“descend in third” I shouted.

A nod, and then nothing!

I might've done better not having said that, we're weren't going to descend in third and we knew it!

“is he for real: I thought, “lets find out”.

First.. second.. third.. fourth and fifth.. the gears went by as quickly as I could say it and I was behind him. Before I could blink, I was hard on the anchors, fourth.. third.. second.. both of our rear tires locking up as we shifted up for the hairpin, the next thirty or so hairpins were a blur of staccato gearshifts and throttle. Sometimes I was ahead, many times he. As we descended the hill the cool caress of the hill had changed into a intensely warm hug but we had hardly noticed. Immersed in the descent, we came to a stop at a hairpin, may be the penultimate one, I don't remember cause I never notices, visibly sweating and immensely happy from the ride. What made us so happy was the fact that it wasn't planned, we were just caught up in the moment and the bikes understood our moods and cooperated, they behaved like a charm. We both silently smiled in our helmets for the amount of fun that descent had given us and waited for the others to catch up.

We then went slowly to our rooms and waited for something called the “night safari” nay it's nothing like the one they show on animal planet, it was just a plain old ride along the same old road, in the dark in a jeep. A total waste of time and money and most of all of sleep. Arguing with the people who'd slyly escaped sitting at the back of the jeep proved no fun either, neither did the diesel fumes which were suffocating me to the point of throwing up on Mr. Fiero's pants! Remember the Pollution Certificate Money we'd escaped earlier?? we'll not anymore, I Paid to get myself polluted by diesel.

We came back, seeing only an elephant, parked our bikes in a house next to the lodge and slept happily.

“Buzz Buzz” 5:30 AM

Mr. Fiero: Set it to 6:30AM

Me: (did it in my sleep)

“Buzz Buzz” 6:30 AM

we all woke up and I along with Mr. Newest Pulsar went to check out the bikes as others were busy waking up Mr. Newer Pulsar and already there were pessimistic thoughts about heading back to Mysore if it got late waking up here. Chuck that. Coming back to the bikes, I noticed there was cold piston slap in the newest Pulsar which disappeared once the engine heated, the newer Pulsar had lost all of it's oil and the Fiero had blown some oil off too. I topped up all and started and warmed up my bike and also the Fiero. Then I noticed, no petrol!

As I pulled up inside the petrol bunk, I saw a sight to behold, nearly 30 Royal Enfield Bullets all for Goa ridden by foreigners had pulled up and were filling up for their ride out of the forest. I pulled up along side an oldie.

Silence, more silence, suddenly

Foreigner: Hello

Me: Hello, where're you from?

Foreigner: I'm from England... Pulsar eh? What make is it? Chinese?

Me: It's Bajaj.... err... Indian

Foreigner: Indian? What is it? A 1..2..5..??

Me: No, it's a one-fifty. How long are you here for?

Foreigner: Fifteen days!

That was the eye opener for me! They were covering Karnataka for fifteen days on a bullet, that old timer had brought along his wife who rode pillion on the bullet. He said he was retired and had a house and a caravan in the UK which he's given to his daughter and he lived in england cause he liked French lunch and didn't like the UK! Foreigners!!

Continuing on the route from the previous day, we went up the hill, first to a presently waterless waterfall called Kalatty, and then for a useless breakfast which we could've done without. Next was the Ooty lake, an artificial lake built ages ago, now filled with green water, newly weds and a hell of a lot of boats in the water. After getting exhausted pedaling the boats, we went for a leisurely stroll and a short nap in Ooty's famous botanical garden. Our second day was mainly empty and had nothing interesting to see, the ride was the most anticipated part of the day to be honest. We then had a splendid lunch at a hotel which we found out from a few of the locals. Being starved of breakfast, and even worse, being fed up of bad breakfast, we relished the nice lunch, eating till the brim of our stomachs without giving a thought that we'd have to carry our stomachs on our bikes down thirty six hairpin bends a few minutes later. Never mind, I was done through sambar and going to rasam by the time I thought that. We all packed out bags, strapped them on tight to our backs, zipped up our jackets and then

Mr. RX: if you are thinking of racing again, I'll hop on to the newest Pulsar.

Me: well, I don't know, I'll have to ask him (looking at Mr. Fiero)

Mr. Fiero: (smiles)

Mr. RX went and sat behind Mr. Newer Pulsar. And then it was again a blur of staccato gearshifts and throttle, all the way down, well, almost, cause we got stuck in traffic and the Fiero passed me and I came to a halt with my feet on the ground cause the train of cars which he'd just passed and which I was just trailing had come to a standstill. It took me another four hairpins and a lot more speed to catch him, and he was waiting for me to catch up. In a flash we were down, and racing towards our room, on the way we stopped for tender coconut to top up our fluid levels.

“how much time” he asked

taking a glance at my stopwatch “22” I said.

“hmmm... we could've been faster if we weren't stuck in traffic”

we'd broken the previous day's record, but we weren't any more happier than yesterday, the first time always means something very special. Almost immediately the other two Pulsars arrived, apparently they were on a roll as well! I wonder how they managed with people sitting behind! Waving them off we went slowly to the lodge and settled on the floor of our room for a nap as the people “freshened up” and did half an hour of the task! It was again packing bags and strapping them even more tightly for the ride back to Mysore. This time Mr. RX rode the Fiero and Mr. Fiero rode behind on my bike. The flats were the territory of the new Pulsars. Both of them looked in their element as they zipped past silently past me, I was the last of the train, waking up the wildlife from their afternoon nap as I went along. There was a strange sight, a bunch of monkeys had lined the side of the road along with a bunch of elephants and deer as though they we're bidding farewell to us! Once into Karnataka and past our regular tea at Gundelpet, Mr. RX, riding solo proved “only a Fiero can catch a Fiero” as he disappeared into the darkness in front of me, as I tried to catch up, all I could see for a while was his tail lamp, after a few kilometers, he was gone, the new Pulsars disappeared behind me in the darkness as they'd slowed their pace. We all met up in Nanajangud again, and had coffee, from then on, it was my turn to lead, riding solo all the way to Mysore. On the way, I had recalled the events of the two days, and remembered that few days before the trip, I had asked “what's there to see in Ooty, I've seen all of it”

I wasn't very interested in seeing Ooty, dismissing it as being too boring, I still hold that view even today, but getting there is all the fun! Should try it again, I'd surely recommend it to anybody willing to try it out! Two days, excellently spent! Two spirited thumbs up!

Cheers

Gecko.

Something technical this time perhaps Mr. Bond??

2008-04-01T00:26:00.002+05:30

Recently, I have been having too many thought and discussions about bikes, the reason being the passion and determination of two maniacs and also part of my own drive, which was increased out of logic and also out of my cancelled trip to the western coast. The two maniacs I am talking about are my good friends and along with me, share a long standing passion with bikes, two-strokers to be precise. Those two now have the bike of their dreams and although those two machines now put together produce the same horsepower as one of them used to produce when it was brand new, they still ride it as it is an engineering masterpiece. I think they're right, they are engineering masterpieces according to me, the only problem I've seen with those bikes is running out of petrol! Where as, I've seen some strange things happening to the current generation mass produced Indian motorcycle, strange noises, unexplainable lack of performance, extreme temperature sensitivity and most of all “sudden death” which has left a few unfortunate souls in the middle of the highway scratching their heads thinking why the bike won't start! Although I too have been the victim, in recent times, to very mild glitches and gremlins, I've spent enough time and effort to see that the bikes keeps its head together always, literally!

It is in connection to the last sentence of the previous paragraph that I am writing today, about a very special part of the bike, something which is rapidly being outdated and replaced by newer technologies, but still remains to be the personal favorite to true bikers. The Carburetor.

Think of the carburetor as a burette (I make this comparison cause it's easier to attach to the word 'burette' which rhymes a little to the word 'carburetor') in a titration. The aim of the burette is to see that you have a measure of the amount of liquid (in this case petrol) you're giving in order to complete the reaction in the flask (in this case the engine) to the maximum. Yes, I know, I suck at comparison sometimes so lets get down to business.

The carburetor or the 'carb' for short is a device which gives the charge to the engine..... the charge here being a mixture of petrol and air. The aim is to provide the right amount of fuel to the amount of air being demanded by the engine or to put it shortly, the 'quality' of mixture. But the engine is never being run at the same speed, so as speed increases, the amount of charge demanded also increases, so the 'quantity' of charge needed should also be managed by a carb.... hmmm... tough job you may say. But there are ways in which it can be achieved! The carburetor has varying demands, from a minimal mixture at idling speed to a lean mixture at slow speeds, normal at regular, rich during acceleration and a slightly lean again during cruising. There are ways of doing that, beautiful ways.

The carb is designed with a converging-diverging section also called a 'venturi'. The narrowest point of the venturi is the metering point of the engine's demand. The quantity of fuel is controlled by a throttle at the engine-side of the carb.

Now, for the quality, there are multiple circuits of fuel which are cast into the main body of the carb during the time of it's manufacturing, these circuits are in turn metered by jets which are always immersed into a pool of petrol in a 'float chamber'. The petrol is then drawn up from one or many of these jets based of the engine speed and the pressure at the throat of the venturi and many other factors. But, what goes through where and when?? that's the big question, right?

When the bike is idling, there need not be much of a rich mixture, to control this there is an orifice which is partially closed by the pointed tip of a screw called the idle mixture screw. This takes fuel from the slow jet and controls the quality of the charge right from idle to nearly about half throttle under hard acceleration, then the size of the opening and the slow jet and also the drop in pressure occurring at the throat makes the idle jet partially useless at moderate throttle and completely useless at moderately-high throttle. So there was a second jet introduced, this is called the emulsion jet in some places or the needle jet at some places, there are reasons for both names, cause both hold true. The emulsion jet cause the fuel is partially converted into an emulsion by bypassing the air into the emulsion jet before the fuel is completely atomised in the main venturi. The emulsion jet sits right under the throat of the venturi and feeds fuel based on the.................. aha, this is where I have to confuse you a little further cause there are two main variations in the design of the carb. One is the simple slide carburetor which has a tapered needle (called jet-needle) sitting right inside the emulsion jet (called the needle-jet). The needle is connected to a barrel which keeps blocking the venturi thus limiting air flow into the engine and therefore the pressure at the throat. This barrel also acts as the throttle, the minute the throttle is twisted, the barrel moves out of the way allowing more air into the engine and reducing the pressure at the throat and also simultaneously removing the needle out of the emulsion tube and uncovering the Small holes drilled all along the sides of the tube. Thus the emulsion tube will be producing more emulsion and spewing out more mixture to be atomised, thereby feeding the engine with more fuel. The second type is called the constant depression or variable venturi or constant vaccum type, in this the barrel and the needle is placed under a spring loaded vacuum piston governed by the amount of air which is being drawn into the entrance of the carburetor. The difference in pressure makes the vacuum piston move up thus removing the needle out of the needle-jet. The throttle is a different part in this type of carb, and is placed at the engine end of the carb.

This mechanism gives enough fuel from nearly quarter to three-fourths throttle. The final part of the punch is provided with some thing called the main jet, which is screwed on to the emulsion jet and is completely immersed in fuel in the float chamber. When the demand of fuel is more, even the emulsion jet can't meet the quality standards, at that time, the pressure of air rushing directly draws fuel into the emulsion tube from the bottom of it through the main jet and feeds it into the venturi. At this point, all other circuits inside the carburetor would've stopped providing fuel to the engine and the main jet will be the sole supplier of fuel.

There are however a few other mentionable circuits in a carburetor, but these are of special design and almost never available in the commercially produced, factory fitted carbs of today with a few exceptions of the past. One of them is called the top end enrichment jet, or so I call it. It's job is to enrich the fuel mixture far beyond what the main jet can. It sits in the air filter end of the venturi and at full throttle, provides a spray of fuel, again controlled by pressure difference, to cool the engine and also to give it that extra punch. Till today, I have only read about this type of carb. The second modification is called the coasting enrichment circuit, this circuit kicks in and starts leaking fuel into the engine as soon as the throttle is closed. Activated by the manifold vacuum, the circuit starts giving out small quantities of fuel into the engine and therefore keeps the valves from burning out and also help the engine and the bike coast under closed throttle. But the huge quantity of air being taken in during coasting coupled with the small amount of fuel being delivered makes it a non-ideal mixture and therefore it does not ignite in the engine but passes into the exhaust manifold thus cooling the engine. But occasionally, the mixture does ignite, and when it does the heat of the exhaust gases passes into the exhaust manifold and ignites the unburnt charge which is present there , thereby causing the characteristic 'pop' of one famous and extraordinarily brilliant bike of the late 90's and the early 2000's.

This was what I learnt during the last one month, when I had set about to tune my carb for my trip. Now looking for something else to learn about. I wonder what is it going to be next!! Till then, cheers!

My recent heartbreak

2008-03-27T22:06:00.001+05:30

The recent developments in my life have not been the least comforting, to be blunt. I was taught a quick lesson - who's boss - when a long anticipated trip was cancelled just because mother nature acted cranky. It was a trip which was planned almost to perfection for more than two months, involving seven people out of which no two persons could ever meet face to face except for the weekends, it was an expedition which involved finding the comfortable spot on the calendar to accommodate four days of travel without the office guys having to blow their fuses over us. The mouth-watering prospect of riding a bike for more than a thousand kilometers over four days along mid-interior and coastal Karnataka was a little too must to resist for me, I was one immediately into planning and also started simultaneously preparing my bike and myself to make it through the ride in the best condition. The bike was given a complete overhaul, serviced and tuned to perfection, it was tuned so nicely that I could predict when the exhaust would “pop” as soon as I closed the throttle. I left no stone unturned in my bike, taking care everything is working a hundred percent, suspension, brakes, engine, clutch, you know the whole works. I was prepared with a rucksack, cameras, batteries, tools, a spare tube, food, electrolytes and medicines. But luck wasn't on my side that week, the weather suddenly turned bad with just two days to launch, and it left everybody biting their nails thinking whether the weather will hold up or be against us, and with less than twelve hours to go before start, there was one of the heaviest downpours of the week, knocking out electricity and flooding half the block. It was then that I realised that, at least, my plans were in serious danger and as I expected, I was given a red signal from my parents saying it was too dangerous to ride in the rain and that I should stop with my plans of going. I hesitantly agreed to them. But little did I know that the others would go ahead and do the trip anyway! It was painfully depressing to know that I'll be home while the others would be seeing the beauty of Karnataka, their feet being dampened by the rain although not their spirits. I had to console myself with the fact that I would live on to do the trip some other day when there is all sunshine and clear skies, but that weekend would have to be one for the movies, books, TV and sleep. Not that I wasn't used to that routine before, but that's the point, I didn't want to get used to just books, movies and sleep. But well, it's done, they're back, they enjoyed it. At least they did, although I backed out, I was happy that they went, and was even happier to know that they could do everything we had planned to and not get marooned or disheartened, albeit a little on the wetter side of things. This is life! Never plan, cause mother nature sees everything, and sometimes, she'd rather you stayed home and watched TV, or like in my case, be a sport and start planning again trying to beat her. :)

Cheers

Gecko

I'm back!

2008-03-01T00:09:00.005+05:30

I know what you're thinking, no I'm not back from the dead, although I was quite close to it quite a few times in the recent past for, let's say, few unworthy reasons in the long run. Now that I have seemingly escaped death, I thought I'll celebrate by announcing it to the world.

Coming to serious matters in the last few months, which were many, a lot to be frank, lots of ups and downs, new revelations, new look at old concepts, joy, sorrow, frustration... you name it, I've probably seen it. You can call it a sort of solitary confinement, self imposed, no doubt, by myself, kind of a social, mental and physical isolation the likes of which I had not experienced before with very few outlets to keep my sanity intact once in a long while. Those which did come as a life saver were on quite a big scale!

It all began when I managed to free myself from the clutches of my employer in what was the culmination of six months of planning with a month of panicking in between. This was done on the pretence of higher studies, but frankly I wanted to take a break from everything and just..... well, you know, learn. Now, don't ask me what, cause whatever it is, true knowledge is never a bore. I wanted to take a few classes of the finishing school of life, and after much thought, came to an opinion that being self-taught was the best way to go about it. More about that later, cause I in this learning spree I also learnt that people don't dig philosophy that much, especially when I happen to lecture about it.

Back to my talk about studies then, I had already dedicated this year completely for learning and had also named it “year of exams”, you'll probably catch up with the idea about that later on. Well then, the first exam was coming, it was a matter of three months before I'd have had to face it. This was the toughest phase, erasing one and one half years worth of knowledge that I had gained about my job and the various things about the industry to go with it. Sometimes the process of unlearning was excruciatingly slow and sometimes painful to hang on, but I had to sit with my books and just settle them in, just like how you'd wear-in a new jeans till you make them feel it's your own body you're carrying around. The stuff I'd have to learn couldn't have got much more contrasting to what I was working with.

I'll spare you the agony of going thru what I've studied in detail, just keep in mind it was a lot. Since I'd have to be very systematic to cover fours years worth of stuff in three months and bring my mastery to bear in three hours in the exam, I'd designed myself a little plan of sorts, not for studying, but for everyday life in general (remember I was in finishing school, they don't teach you jack if they see you disorganised). So, sadly, even though I was at home and, at least on paper, free, I was bound by time and was also constantly finding myself cornered by it! Day began with a quick flex of joints so they don't disappear due to lack of use, bath and breakfast followed immediately, drop mom to work, come back and in front of books till lunch time, lunch for half an hour, then back to books till 5:30, a quick run around a calm lake during sunset can do wonders to your brain which would by now be gathering moss! Back home and relax have a chat with people, yes sir, one full hour of civilisation before getting back to books again, dinner, books and sleep at last!

If you're one of those souls who sees this as no big deal and that you've done more than this, please click on the big “X” mark on the top right of your screen, you might've landed here by mistake, cause I don't seem to know anybody like that! Thank you.

Well then, after the new year set in, things began a little more hectic, I stopped being on the Internet and music and movies were meant only as a measure when the tendency was suicidal! Then the frustration began, mainly cause of the logical dead ends I was arriving at while studying some new things. Sometimes I felt some things could never be learnt without a teacher, some were pointless, some were too advanced, some too complicated, I was like “he'd have to be crazy to expect me to remember this formula”. Things were very irritating back then, things went on very slowly, sometimes grinding to a dead halt when I'd expected it to move the fastest. Frustration too became non-linearly increasing as it is the case with all negative feelings. As I became increasingly restless, I began to wake up with a heavy headache in the morning, my running began to intensify as I found that was the only way I could vent out what was bottled up in me, as that continued, I grew fitter by the week, but I also grew thinner with those passing weeks. Since I was quite happy with my fitness I really didn't mind growing thin, but recently, people started to pity me, so I think it's time to add a few kilos just to keep them prying eyes happy.

I can concentrate on that now cause I'm done with the exams, and it went to my satisfaction at least. Although I still feel I wouldn't fare well on the absolute scale, given my preparation time, I was quite relieved that I still had it in me. I am still on my quest to learn, which'll probably end soon whether or not I clear my exam. If I do, I'll stop learning few things and studying other. If I don't I'll have to get back to earning my own bread, so I'll have to stop learning and start implementing. Either way, you'll know about it. Cheers.

Gecko.

On the consequences of marriage

2007-12-04T00:25:00.000+05:30

I’ve been thinking about this for quite a while now, and I could no longer hold the thought in my head or I’d risk its mutation and ultimately I’d be seen as, well…. You don’t want to know.
The crazy time of life has begun for a lot of people, it couldn’t me more so if you are 23 and Indian, it doesn’t matter much if you’re from north or south or if you’re male or female, although females face a greater risk from this phenomenon I’m talking about. This is a strange thing (at least for me) called marriage!! This phenomenon strikes you as a wake up call to remind you, question you, warn you and just simply announce that the phase of stagnation has arrived, look at what you have done so far, whatever you have done so far is enough, well, even though it’s not enough, I’m barging in! Don’t be startled, I’ve personified marriage in a person and am mentioning the conversation between myself and it (hypothetical). I must admit that I, frankly, think the people (of my age, even girls) have gone mad over it. And I fail to understand why, may be they fail to understand what I’m thinking about it. But, just over the past two months, most of my friends have either spoken, thought, contemplated or are fascinated by marriage, and another set have been engaged to get, in the process of getting engaged to get or have already been in, marriage! There you see, for them, no matter how you see it, it always comes back to that single word.
Quite recently, I had told people close to me that I considered 26 to be the age, NO! not for marriage, hold your horses, I see 26 as a benchmark, that once crossed, you can close your eyes and ride a bike in confidence that you’ll live up to at least seventy, your second benchmark. So, as I see it, living up till a healthy seventy gives you good time to do something to be at least of a miniscule importance to humanity, or at worst, to the people around you at least. This age, I fixed based on a lot of observation and some quiet collection of statistics from the events I could see, hear, read and observe, sometimes painfully in my own circle of friends. There have been people who’ve changed far beyond recognition, who’s had their whole school of thought reversed, who’ve come up to be extremely good in things, and some who’ve begun substance addiction too, some who’ve gone into their cocoons and some who’ve just come out of their cocoons. There are some who’ve had life changing experiences, life ending experiences (almost). Accidents, major injury, both physical and mental, and sadly in a few cases, succumbing to those injuries and yours truly has experienced many of these things himself in the course of his life and his struggle to survive. And more recently, there has been this thing called marriage added to the list.
I’ve had many views about whether marriage is essential and if it is, what’s the age at which you have to get married. Well starting from many age groups, people have their own views, based on their own experiences. If you take my granny for example, she already had a kid or two at my age, if you ask a middle aged person, they say they want to get rid of the responsibility of their daughter before their health fails them or people will question their capacity or the girl’s health or ability (or sometimes character, sorry, had to mention that). Granny says, the girl is old enough to have a family of her own and it’s about time to learn responsibilities that she’s supposed to marriage. Granny can say that because the girls of her age never glimpsed the sight of adolescence and its many wonders. As soon as their child bearing years set in, they became an overhead to the family. The financial positions of olden day families never allowed them to keep girls (whom they’d have to give away anyway, as they saw it) for a long time. So they were sent off to have families of their own and from then followed a trend to this day of giving away girls, in marriage, at a relatively young age. But lately, the youth enjoy adolescence for the longest time compared to the past; they’ll have the time, money, energy and resources to do anything they feel like, explore things, explore what they’re good at and just, you know, discovering “self”. Buckling on the pressure that the human hormones (and sometimes, only pheromones) create, they also do the inevitable, fall in love, or as they put it, hopelessly, madly and deeply in love, they do it cause right about now, the opposite sex (whichever you may belong to) will start looking, sounding and feeling at its best. True that the females of our species have a clock ticking which will stop at about two decades from now (roughly), if they happen to be of my age, but no need to sound any alarms yet, another decade from now, at the worst, doesn’t hurt at all. But also I guess the views of the parents have also changed. Anyway, all that is immaterial for my course of argument as to why I think this is too early an age to enter “holy matrimony”. I kind of stumbled upon this thought just casually one day, I don’t even remember why and what I was doing at that time. I suppose it’ll be called outrageous, rubbish or weird by many, but I kind of wondered, I am still a kid, I don’t know about the other, this is one time where it’s safer to speak for myself than be eternally hated by the world and having to face their wrath all the time. As I was saying, I am still a kid, I still don’t know myself, my own abilities and I am convinced with decent amount of evidence that what I have seen so far isn’t all that I am. See, according to me, every time I master a new skill, as simple as it may be, it will be coded in my genes. I guess you people know where I am heading now, yes, when I still don’t know what I am truly capable of doing, I don’t know what I’ll be passing on to an offspring of mine in terms of genetic material. There are some things that I, inevitably, have to pass on. But the rest, like learning ability, my I.Q., skills, my personality, the whole deal. You know, and to add to it, you’ll dilute it with the genes of the spouse, may be reinforce some good qualities too, but the flaws show up just as easily as the brilliance during childhood, and it’s more easy to mask the brilliance with them. Of course, there’s always the option of having a kid later and so on and so forth, but I’m not here to advocate family planning :). But I say, once you enter marriage, it’s a struggle to keep it alive, because if you don’t, then you might as well have remained single, and when you start that struggle, you’ll realize that you’ll involuntarily have to dedicate time and effort, which in effect, basically dampens whatever you’re trying to achieve.
Well, having made this controversial claim, it’s always time for the standard disclaimer that I don’t mean to profess my thought on anyone, but rather to cause a tingle in the minds of the people who already have this thought, for people who are already married and reading this, just dismiss it, with a laugh, as the confessions of a maniac, for the rest, well, comments welcome :)
Cheers.

Ground effect

2007-11-30T19:44:00.000+05:30

I had been running around the lake this evening, finally trying my legs at getting back to running form after a break due to a shin injury, the place where I run is the very scenic and much polluted Kukkarahalli Lake. Although most of the disposal from the university finally finds its way to the lake, it still manages to house a lot of fishes, snakes and also the odd croc to catch you off guard and give you something to run about. But during some times of the year, it also becomes a home to some of the birds migrating for the winter and that, takes the beauty of the lake to a whole new level, especially during sunset.
It was once such lovely sunset this evening, the sun returning home from his duties on this side of the planet, when a familiar sight struck a huge bell in me and made me marvel at nature and its intricate designs. There was a bird (I beg pardon from all the ornithologists and ornithology enthusiasts who might possible read this) which looked like a swan, with a wingspan of nearly five feet by the look of it. Having mastered the dynamics of flight during its infancy, it was out to optimize on its skills, you know, cost-benefit, maximum gains for minimum loss of energy. It had a trick up its sleeve, it is called ground effect, it was something the soviets tried and succeeded in, although they built only a prototype before the project was scrapped due to lack of funding, they did however show the world how to utilize a major aerodynamic effect.
The bird, with its huge wingspan, flying just above the water surface, on the buffer of air underneath its body, between the water and itself, which its aerodynamic shape created and was skating on top of the water, inches above it, and what more, it was flying, I mean to say flapping its wings (as opposed to gliding, in which you don’t flap your wings) and the wing tips never even touched the water, they were cushioned, quite wonderfully on the layer of air just above the water, and it was a majestic sight, the proximity, the speed, the agility, one wrong move and you’ll have the worst accident of your flock, but the bird was making light work of it and indeed putting on a show.
Within seconds the bird disappeared and great speed, and I was on my way back again regretting that I never seem to have my camera with me when for such great moments!