Summer of 2009

The last couple of months have been hectic in some sense. Had been volunteering for a fitness program in the Centre of Physical Fitness and Sport Sciences in Hyderabad Central University for about 2 months. It was quite an experience in itself. Had to wake up at 4 in the morning and drive 10 miles to reach the university and it was really good to get a first hand experience of the kind of training that professional sportsmen under go.. Just the early morning ride is worth it. The scientific approach was much effective than pumping iron at the gym. Hope I'll continue this.

Attended a 7 day yoga program by Isha yoga center couple of days after the fitness program finished. Was worth the time and effort and would definitely recommend it to friends. Went to B'lore for the weekend of 05/30-31. Its more of a (bike) trip to Hogenakkal than to Bangalore. Hardly stayed for 5 hours in B'lore over the entire weekend. I was cruising at 120 km/hr without any helmet(the helmet was too small) and it was great to feel the wind blowing all over your face at such speed. This is my highest speed on bike(previous one was at 95 km/hr) and also my first bike ride in a hilly terrain. Friends at work say I am tanned to the maximum. Had loads of fun in the waterfall, driving consistently at 90+ km/hr, driving in the middle of the night with heavy downpour hitting on your face and blurring the vision in a region where elephants frequently cross. We went as a group of 18 ppl on 9 bikes. I never thought such a beautiful place existed in Tamil Nadu. Will post the pics as soon as I get hold of them.

The Chennai urge, resolutions & other musings

• In recent times, I have got this great urge to go to chennai to just idle my time there. After I joined the firm, I visited chennai either to attend friends' marriage or send-off/visit friends. And the schedules in most of these trips were tight and may be I missed the Chennai I am used to. Idling away time either chatting with someone on the phone in the middle of the day or listening to those FM channels or an evening spent in besant nagar beach doing nothing but to just stare at the sea and the horizon or to read a book in half a day to one day. Think a  weekend trip to chennai is long due now. 
• I'd love to start reading books again. The last one I read was "Almost  Single"  by Advaita Kala, about a month back. Turned out to be a bit girly book. Was good in general. Had read "Catcher in the Rye" before that. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Have been doing a lot of reading lately -  the article types mainly and I can say with good amount of certainity that almost all of them were in one way or the other related to finance industry. I never thought I would crib on this because wanting to know about the finance industry was the major reason for me to join this job. Also, I am pretty much sure that I would have got bored out within 6 months if I had joined in some other industry.  If you know some good books, do drop me a mail. 
• Not into running for the past two weeks. The runners' club has got a 24 km run tomorrow. Think am going to skip that. I should pretty soon get into the groove if I need to do get  anywhere near the 2 hours mark  in the Hyderabad half marathon coming up in August.
• The itch to buy a good mountain bike is increasing with every passing day. But I am not really sure whether a guy like me who wakes up at 9/10 in the morning and reaches to work at 11 is ever going to go in a bicycle. Still the temptation is irresistible.
• I had a look at the resolutions that I took at the start of the year to assess where I am at the end of Q1. On the half-marathon front, I think I am on schedule. Most marathons are scheduled in winter.  Dropped the CFA thing because of logistic problems. Though I am not blogging once in a week, I would like to believe I am more of a regular now than before. Planning to take the 4 -wheeler license sometime in july/august(Planning to enroll for training after may/june). And the *task* still awaits. And I am for sure to lay that to rest by the end of this year, either way.

That's it for now. BFN.

PS: Couple of good articles that I read can be found here and here.

And so goes life

Leisure

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

- W. H. Davies

Resolutions for 2009 and looking back at 2008

2008 was good in general. To me, it seems like 2008 ended before it really took off(and I don't like that). Looking forward to 2009 with lot of zeal and anticipation. Guess after almost 3-4 years, I am starting a year with some realistic resolutions. Hope I can keep up with them. Listing a few below.

• To run atleast 4 half-marathons this year. Starting off with Auroville Marathon in mid-Feb. Have Hyderabad HM at the end of the year. Planning for 2-3 from Bangalore Ultra, Rajasthan and Leh-Ladakh/Tibetan Plateau. Have been running for the past one year as part of Hyderabad runners' club and an HM has remained something that needs to ticked off for almost a year now.
• Writing CFA Level I in june. This is another thing that has been pending for about 2 years.
  
• Blog once a week. Well, this one seems easy. It did seem easy last time too :P. Have been meaning to write on a lot of things but nothing significant materialized except for a few mail drafts. Hope that's not the case going forward.
• Get 4 wheeler license in the first half of the year.
  
• Planning to take up a *task* that I have been trying since 2004. Was lacking in application each time. Think I deserve one final shot.
• Would be great if I go to work before 10 in the morning(fingers crossed on this one though).
  

Guess that's pretty much every thing I want to do in next 6-12 months.


Happy new year to all!!

Every possible mistake...

The Mokkai group's Official whatever..

The Official T-Shirt
Design 1

Front Side

Back..


Design 2

Front

Back..

Some pics...

PS: Bit busy to give a narrative :) Probably living in a place where most don't read tamil has its own advantages.

Indian Bureaucracy - What the???

A friend of mine from iitd had sent me a couple of HDDs of capacity 820 GB through a well reputed courier agency in the south some 2 weeks back. When I enquired a week back, came to know that it was seized by the Sales tax team as it didn't have a document saying it's for personal use and not for commercial purpose and I was supposed to pay some 5000 bugs as sales tax. Doing some search on the net found that all we needed was a sound proof to claim its genuinely for personal use and we got the proof ready in no time. The particular person in charge(Call him X or whatever) of the seize gave us all possible hints to bribe him some 2000 bugs and get it done. Not falling for that made me and my friend roam the city for 2 days in the hot sun and we got it done after a lot of paper work (really a lot by any standards!!) and it also meant that no productive work for 2 days. But the look on X's face when he issued the drives said it all and we felt relieved, just relieved. Probably its difficult to identify such people who corrupt the system and we weren't too happy to let him off.

"Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right." - Martin Luther King Jr.

PS: btw, my system's total HDD capacity is now 900 GB :) Don't ask what I am going to do with it.

Nainital

Had a great trip.
Night 0:
As usual, we started late and after a hectic 13 hour journey with some breath-taking views along, we reached Nainital at around noon the next day.
Day 1:


We headed for Snow View located atop the Sher-ka-danda Ridge by cable car.

Had a good view of snow bound Himalayas including Nanda Devi and Trisul and it really was wonderful to see snow covered mountain peaks while the temperature reaches as low as 3 degree Celsius.
The trip down was equally thrilling with cable car accelerating and us experiencing the force of gravity from altitudes of around 25oo m was thrilling. Had some fun there too.
Came to know of a small fall near by and on our way, encountered snow at lots of places. I really pity the driver who came with us and kudos to his patience for putting up with us that too after driving for more than 14 hours non-stop. On seeing snow, we changed our plans and started playing around.
At last, we headed for the falls and though we were traveling for the past 18 hours none of us were tired and we had a lots of fun in the falls. It was a too small a fall to take bath and hence we just played around and took some snaps.
We decided to call it a day and at around 7 pm reached our cottage and gave the driver the day off and we started roaming the city. One huge advantage for Nainital over other hill stations is that it is far less polluted and the large lake at the center of its town add to its charm by a huge extent.

Day 2 :
Well, we couldn't see all the things as we planned. We missed out on visiting Jim Corbett National Park as we ran out of petrol and found that the shops in the entire town are closed till noon because of Holi. We just had to wait for about 3 hours during which we saw a couple of kids playing around and were happy to join them.


Saw a steep hill near by and went for a trekking for around 2 hours and covered around 4-5 km distance and around 500-800 m altitude.

We then headed for someplace where there were geysers. Saw this fall and was stunned by its beauty. It was surrounded by mountains on all sides and the water was freezing and damn pure.Yeah, we changed our plans again and had a good bath there.

We then started our trip back with lots of good memoirs, great scenarios and large bouts of vomiting including yours truly.

On the whole the trip was awesome and we had lots of fun. Though nothing went as per plan and we did miss out on a lot of places. But that was how it was supposed to be, wasn't it?. It gave a much needed break for me. Its good to be back in the campus.

Nainital - Prelude

A couple of things are preventing me from starting my thesis till March 8th. Made a decision with other friends here to go to Nainital this weekend. We decided on it in a matter of few minutes and it really makes you feel comfortable when people don't ponder over things a lot and have fun. Will be celebrating Holi in Nanital then. Planning to spend the remaining 4 days by reading something about economics or derivatives. Well, I wanted to get a feel of them for more than a year now and somehow things didn't click. Will make up for it in the 4 days following the weekend. Life seems to get much complicated and much more challenging!! I am having fun.

Happy Holi!!

PS: Finished reading Spouse. A must read for everyone who wants to have a better spouse and be one. Started reading it more out of curiosity. The most important take away was "to get married for the right reasons" and I wonder how many people in India understand that.

Art

Today got a CVS update from Dr. MC which ended like this.

"Enjoy! This was the last bit of art that was left out from the simulator."

I think seeing your work as art is the pinnacle of dedication.I often hear techie guys (mostly software people) complain about their work and show off their irresistible need to go into the managerial line as they think techie work is boring and they don't want to get their hands dirty. What we need is, probably, a change in attitude to see our work as an art and not just another number crunching or coding job. Most people who lament were once passionate of the same "art". What has changed them? May be their job profile. May be their financial/family needs. But I seriously believe that we must see our profession as an art and get our masterpieces out of it.

Life @ IITK Part-II .. Burp

Today we threw a placement party (doesn't make sense, right? but that’s how we call it) to our juniors. Another CS batch at IITK getting 100% placed. The party was pure fun. It was a bit different for me. As I was contemplating about life (yes!! contemplating my dear reader and not sleeping as my friends say) and the tempting dinner (Yummy!! the paneer starter was really good), I never thought the vicious minds of my friends were working furiously. They came up with this. Me pitted against a junior who at least was considerate enough for the first few minutes(thanks mate, I owe you one) and then called his shots. Well, I’ll leave the rest to your imagination. Everyone needs a laugh at the end of the day.

Anyway, I too had my chance to support (and mock at) my poor Y5 friends. I am not alone. And Murali called me meantime and as usual we started discussing about things that are going to change the world and ended up doing a feasibility study of marrying a punju or gujju girl. The results are encouraging!!

Life @ IITK Part-I

sabu: you may be getting 2-3 months training in Goa. Now that’s something. Coffee on you (no pun intended).

punnu: yup. But I think 2 months is overdose... (gives me a pathetic look... I get it now and go into confession mode)

me: yeah, I know. (sob..sob..) The first week will be fun... second week I'll realize that I am single and by the end of the first month, I will be desperately single. (the toughest part is to survive the second month)

sabu: who asked you to be single?

me: as if I have options..

sabu: yeah, thats true... (yes, you guessed it right.. the same pathetic look)

punnu: Make yourself a bait.. (wink)

Now that’s what the screwed sex ratio in IITK does to you. I get back to my room and start contemplating. Here goes my mitigation plan. Probably what I can do is get a bunch of people who are single as my close buddies and try my best to keep them single during the entire stay(also its comes on top in terms of feasibility) . No, I am not jealous. It’s just to prevent those unholy thoughts that come along. So Dear God, please make a note of it and keep my close friends single. If you have a better idea, do drop them.