In Search. Of the Eternal. And the Absolute.

Sunday, February 20, 2005

Late posting... pictures from Sep '04

These are the pics I took during my trip to Kerala, though the route itself was quite convoluted...

Mumbai - Coimbatore by flight
Coimbatore - Madurai by train (metre gauge!)
Madurai - Rameshwaram - Madurai by bus
Madurai - Palakkad by bus
Palakkad - Thrissur - Kodungallur - Guruvayoor - Thrissur - Palakkad by bus
Palakkad - Shoranur by cab
Shoranur - Mumbai by train (Konkan Railway)

A brief pictorial can be seen here. For those who have seen this album before, I have 'unshared' the pics of family members in the album.

Thursday, February 17, 2005

Update on the March 4th Trip

My cohort and partner in crime mailed me today with a most exciting plan.. and I quote his email...
".....
The tour plan is:
Sat - Day 1: Lotsa temples & hiking in forest
Sun - Day 2: Beaches & lagoons
Mon - Day 3: A day in the village of Paresh... lunch in Paresh's house, idle around in plantations
Tue - Day 4: Early morning Shivaratri pooja, catch bus back to home
..."

Will be leaving on March 5th by a State Transport bus at 0030 hours. Should be at Guhagar by morning 7/8 am. Will be a hectic ride, but very much worth it....

Sunday, February 13, 2005

The Week of Learning

Another really hectic week behind me, only a harbinger of things to come. The coming months are going to be really high on the 'Hecticity Index'.

The week begain with shifting offices, a painful task even though we shifted to another area on the same floor. Still, the same teething problems, new issues stuff that needed to be taken care of and basically affected the regular course of work.

New recruitments are happening across the board, so the induction of the newbiestook up some time. More will join in the coming weeks... more time off for such affairs. The direct result is that the amount of time I put in my mainstream work gets diluted.. resulting in more late nights. Lessons learnt.

Some unexpected happenings with respect to a close colleague/friend have greatly dissappointed me. Never expected something of the sort to happen... the warning signs had been blinking all the while, maybe it was just a question of when. Still, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth especially when it's happening right in front of my eyes. Corrective action required. Wilco. Lessons learnt.

I reaaaally stretched myself in the gym yesterday. I only have these rock legends to blame. They were playing such amazing music on the walkman that I ended up pushing myself to keep pace with the tempo. Lessons learnt again.

I also read Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist. Sorely dissappointing. Coelho is a good writer and he may have a great audience, however I wouldn't count myself in it by the farthest stretch of my imagination. Lessons learnt again.

Guruji is playing in Mumbai on the 5th of March. I am trying to make it, though I am not too sure. Coming from someone who has all the albums of Mark Knopfler post-Dire Straits, that may sound surprising. Just that the date clashes with my purported plan of leaving for Velneshwar. A 4 day trip has been planned with Arya and Vishal. I am really looking forward to that one.

And oh, IRCTC is one of the BEST travel booking websites around. This effort of the Indian Railways never ceases to amaze me. I booked tickets for Kollur (for my parents) on Friday evening at 2030 hrs and the tickets were delivered (from Delhi!) the following day by 1300 hrs. Talk about consistency and sheer convenience! I have been using this site for the past 2 years and never has it let me down. This site packs in quite a punch, it lets you choose from a plethora of payment gateways and payment options, there is something for everyone. It lets me maintain passenger lists and multiple travel lists... groups and the best part is... it's improving day by day. Laudable. Lessons learnt yet again.

Okay, enough lessons for now. Lemme catch some lunch. I am famished.

And then I will continue reading the book.

Sunday, February 06, 2005

Vocal Double Whammy

I spent the whole of last week listening to none else but Frank Sinatra. Then, on Friday, I considerably augmented my already ample Pandit Jasraj collection, freaking out on that right now.

Deady combination, I must say.

Thursday, February 03, 2005

Gmail Invites

I have spent over 100 Gmail invites thus far. I guess that made Gmail really happy with me.

So it has 'rewarded' me with a bunch of 50 more invites to dole out.

I have already given out 1 of them. So that leaves me with 49.

And while I was typing this, a coupla colleagues got interested and now I have over 100 invites to give.

*Update* it's 150 now.

If you haven't got a Gmail invite yet, or you know someone who doesn't have a Gmail invite yet or you wanna redistribute the invites, then this is for you.

I am adopting Garrett Murray's concept and extending it to the Oxfam for Tsunami Relief. So you all you need to do is go here, make a token donation and forward the confirmation mail that you get from Oxfam to ihaveonegb@gmail.com. I will send you the gmail invite immediately.

You could also choose your own organization for donation from Google's list. The same rules apply.

I will be updating the list of invites and the amount donated till date over here.

And if anyone of you wants to donate more invites to the cause, feel free to mail me. It will also help a lot if you link back to this post/spread the word. Do your bit, eh?

Adios!