Whiteout - Ken Follet

Another master piece by Ken Follet. I think he is my another favourite author. This book is full of adventure, series of unexpected things, enough to keep you hooked and turning pages. A total no-nonsense book.
Must read.
Other similar fiction by Ken Follet - Third Twin

cool new remix album

ok, it may not be really new, but i heard it for the first time. Kajra Nite by Sonu Nigam, lots of cool remixes. My favourites -
Kajra Mohabbat Wala
Hoton pe Aisi Baat

though Pal Pal Dil Ke Paas is totally messed up!!

Check it out at
http://www.raaga.com/channels/hindi/movie/V000548.html

and let me know if u get hold of it.

Winter Has Arrived in Redmond

So, winter finally arrived in Redmond with all its troubles. Today morning when I got up, the grass was all white, road was slippery and there was a thick layer of ice on my car. It took 15 min, lot of pain in fingers and the ice scratcher to get rid of it all. 10 min drive and 15 min of ice scraping!! And this is going to being a every day routine for next 3 months. Time to take out all those sweaters, coats, gloves, caps etc. etc. and layer up. Its also time to move back to California. Oh sunny San Diego !! Even windy San Francisco does not look that bad now.

Birthday Surprise

Telescope..........
This birthday was indeed a BIG surprise. I got a telescope!! A 6inch Orion XT6 beauty :) Spent one whole day assembling it, reading manuals and stuff. It reminds me so much of those wonderful nights star gazing in BITS. That telescope was of course 4 times size of this one. But excitement is still the same. And the way Urvashi and I used to bike back at full speed at 11:00 hoping the MB gates would still be open when we reach. But now I can look past that curfew :). Its a totally different story that we get 9 months of rain and extra looooooooong day light in dry season, still I am all over again excited about looking at rings of Saturn, craters of moon and galaxies.

Other highlight of the day was the mazing Chocolate cake with Chocolate icing and chocolate chips! yummiest!! Thanks to all the friends. And I ended the day with dinner at Thai Tom, which was ok, I think I am getting over its greatness now. Ethiopian next time.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Saw the movie on Friday in the theatre outside office, thinking that will see it again on a bigger screen. But the movie was somewhat of a disappointment for someone who as read, reread and heard the book. It not only deviated from the content of the book but also tried to introduce un-Hogwardly elements to make it, I donno what, more masala movie. Most disgusting was the "Rock'n'Roll" at the ball!! I could not believe it, Rock'n'Roll in Hogwards!! And the 10 minute long overly dramatized scene with the Dragon egg task, what was all that about. And they totally messed up the World Cup scene, Harry watching that man create the dark mark!! I do not remember that happen. The movie was running like a express train, fast fast and faster, but that I can understand given that the book was long and had too much content.

But of course, if you have not read the book, it would probably be enjoyable.

Harry Potter once again

there are some books and movies you cannot get enough of. So it was time for Harry Potter and Goblet of Fire once again, the movie this time. It released yesterday midnight, and I so much wanted to be there first day first show. But alas.... responsibilities of life do not allow me to be out untill 4 on a weeknight. So not first show, but I will sure be there first day. IMO, this book was a lot more action filled as the kids are growing now. Will see.....

State of Fear - Michael Chrichton

After a long time I read a book which presents concepts, ideas, which can actually be discussed and I am dying to discuss it!!
Spent the whole weekend reading "State of Fear" by Michael Chrichton, whole day, nothing else. Its quite a interesting book, it started with about being some environmental issues, and huge scale conspiracies and now is drifting towards influence of media on public opinions and stuff, and ended with random ideas by author about how we should 'manage' nature. Of course I have huge problems with the 'manage' concept.
The theme of this book is global warming and other effects of industrialization on global climate. Its a typical thriller by author, measuring up to Jurassic Park. There is also a element of suspense, very well written. Story line is great and proceeds at the exact pace to keep you involved in the book.

The author mentions really interesting facts about effect of media on people in developed worlds. He introduced PLM syndrome (or something) - Politics, Legal and Media. He said that these three things combined create a State of Fear in which most people of developed countries live. The media can create a picture of catastrophe from any smallest of events, and it paints such scary pictures, urging people to be prepared, to be careful, to be scared!! He also mentions the role of legal and politics in continuing that state. I totally agree with that, I can clearly see the difference while watching local news, every news story is amazing, everything is something to be scared of, something to be prepared for. Its these type of stories that keep people's attention and keeps the media profiting.

Towards the end he also throws in lots interesting ideas about what we should do for environment, the ideas I do not agree with. He does not seem to believe in conservation of nature, but in managing the nature. He says that natural balance is all non-sense, and you cannot just leave nature alone and let it recover from any damage that we have done. Though in the beginning he also presented examples on how human beings end up destroying nature by trying to manage it. But later he proposes to create a 'test environemnt', where we can experiment and learn what is the best way to manage nature, something that I totally do not understand.

Its a must must read.

quoting Michael Chrichton cont...

well, I thought that I would get the time to share what Michael Chrichton had to day in the book, but nope, I had to return the book and anyway I don't know if copying anything from the book would be copyright violation. I guess its not, but in this country, you can never be sure !@!

So anyway, I will just write the book summary at http://bookreviewsbyus.blogspot.com

One concept that he talked about, which I found so true was PLM syndrome (or something) - Politics, Legal and Media. He said that these three things combined create a State of Fear in which most people of developed countries live. The media can create a picture of catastropy from any smallest of events, and it paints such scary pictures, urging people to be prepared, to be careful, to be scared!! He also mentions the role of legal and politics in continuing that state, which I have sort of forgotten already.
And he also presents some interesting ideas about what we should do for environment, the ideas I do not agree with. He does not seem to believe in conservation of nature, but in managing the nature, though in the same book earlier he has presented lot of arguments about how we cannot manage nature, as we cannot fully understand it. But later he proposes to create a 'test environemnt', where we can experiment and learn what is the best way to manage nature!! Talk about million year plan :o

More later ........

quoting Michael Chrichton

This is one of the best and IMO most accurate paragraph I found in his book State of Fear. Unfortunately as the book is not online, I will have to type the whole thing out.....
coming up......

aaiye, aapka intzaar tha!!

That is how you can greet people on yahoo! messenger now and in a sexy voice and look too.
During our saturday monopoly session I discovered that Yahoo! has come up with a bunch of funny audibles in Hindi. The standard messenger audibles have some of them, when you go to more audibles - international - India, ( or something like that). To get all of them, you have to install the messenger from www.yahoo.co.in, its a pain with yahoo trying to change all your settings, but its definately worth the trouble.

Year 2084

A friend sent me this sometime back

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2005/10/10/opinion/1010opart.html

pretty impressive, humm!!

Monopoly

Yesterday was another night of monopoly.

b'day surprises

So how do u surprise a person on her/his b'day when the person knows what is the usual thing you do and you are intent on doing the usual thing. In our case, b'day cake at mid-night and dinner party next day. And what is this thing about cutting cake at mid-night!! Not everyone is born at mid-night, and cutting cake at 12 is same as cutting it at any other time. If you want to cut it at exact time a person become 1 year older (or should we say more experienced as we no more want to get older), should we not be cutting the cake at exact time the person was born?
And now the surprises, well, lets say efforts to give surprises... Are they worth all the effort of hush-hush, breaking into homes etc. etc. So yesterday we almost decided not to even attempt any surprises, as Ravi puts it -
"<"ravi">"
In order to uncomplicate the ubiquitous philosophical uncertainties that a birthday boy/girl goes thru about old age, married/unmarried life, prospective career moves, bosses and advisors and team leads, allgorhythms, saturday nite dandiya, nirvana, the universe and everything...it was en masse believed that one less uncertainty (read surprise) in life would be healthy! Opponents to the above-mentioned theory please stand up!
"<"/ravi">"

PS: I donno how to escape html tags

Angels and Deamons - Dan Brown

Another of the typical Dan Brown novels. A thrilling adventure in middle of unknown facts about christanity. The story line is good, there is not a mystery per say as Da Vinci Code, but unknown adventures in each page. It starts somewhat slow as usual, when the professor is explaining same things again and again about the long lost cult Illuminati. But it gets faster once we have past the beginning and things start moving at great speed. Its hard to put down the book when we reach the core of the plot. I spent the whole sunday just sitting and reading, convincing myself that I am too sick to do anything else. The real thrilling story actually ends 100 pages before end of the book. The last 100 pages were a great disappointment to me, its just a endless drag of same statements repeated infinite number of times, some small things happening in vatican after everything is over. Though author has not failed to hide still more surprises in those pages, but the content around those small surprises gets too boring. I would say a must read, but if you are short of time, you will not miss by skipping though the last 100 pages.

Horrors of Diet Coke

Today I was in my office, happily drinking away cold diet coke after lunch, keeping the sleep away and concentrating hard on work. It was at that moment that it struck me that diet coke is a artificial thing. Its artificially made, artificially sweetened and then filled with CO2!! So, I went to the net to find out what's up. And there it was the truth about diet coke and most of the artificially sweetened products - Aspartame. Yup, that's your culprit. Its the sweetner of diet coke and it works my stimulating your brain to think that what you are drinking is sweet!! Can you believe it, stimuating the brain directly!! Its like taking drugs, its not sweet, you just 'think' that its sweet. No wonder it makes you feel good about everything else too. Talk about artificial life. So that's the end of diet coke for me.

All BITS photos are up now

(and they are on yahoo ;))
BITS2005
BITS Library

And here is another blog which has more photos from BITS.
http://www.bitstrip2005.blogspot.com/

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul - Douglas Adams

Just finished another book by Douglas Adams, something about Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. Its hard to remember the title itself. And as expected the book is as absurd as HHGG, but atleast in the first reading it does not seem to contain the humour that HHGG had. Its more full of absurdity. Dirk, the detective character has wierd habits like not opening his fridge ever!! Its something to do with different Gods and what they do. I did not get the story line at all. Guess will need to read it a second time to understand anything. Skipped the last few pages, it was just too much nonsense.

BBQ at Golden Garden

As summer is drawing to an end we seem to be trying to make the best of it. Yesterday we had another BBQ at Golden Garden Park. This one sponsored by STP cyclists. Had lot of fun. Food was usual BBQ burgers, chips, coke. Then we started playing ultimate frisbee, but the game was interrupted by a injury. After that we just hung out and then started the bon fire. It was nice sitting by the fire. After making an attempt at trying to play the story building game, we settled on Dumb Shreds. I had ofcourse played it after a long long time, I guess after school. And it was fun. Our team of Sree, Ravi, Vaibhav, myself and well, I forgot the name, totally dominated the other team. We came up with movies like 'Bhuvansham'.... or I think that was the name. Though I very much got stuck at 'Hedalgo', not being able to think of 'hide'. But anyway that's game, the experts guessed it anyway.

more dancing

I cannot believe this. This week after all is turning out to be real fun. Yesterday we again went out dancing, me, Vani and Sree and then Ravi, nema and their friends joined us later. It was lot of fun. A band from India MedivalPundits was playing. It was mostly mix of bhangda with techno. Feet just could not stop dancing on the beats. Hope we can find more fridays and saturdays to do the same.

Dancing after loooooooong time

Yesterday, thanks to Ravi's b'day, we went dancing at Pioneer Square. I realized that its the first time I had gone dancing in this year!!! It was wonderful. We first went to Phoenix. It has a really big dance floor. So that was nice. Although some people had apprehensions that their music is not that good, but I liked it. Then we headed to The Last Supper. It looked like a more fancy club, but dance floor was small. Music was initially good, fast and loud. But after sometime I got somewhat bored, there was not much variation in the beats and you just end up repeating the same set of steps. It was a perfect start of the weekend.

Hindi Keyboard!!!

Type in Hindi Devanagri Unicode Keyboard

Found this great Hindi keyboard. And what's better is that you can change your name in gmail to appear in Hindi!!

Gmail instructions:
go to Settings and look for the 'Display Name'. There will be couple of options, business name etc. Use nick name. Then write your name in the keyboard above, copy it from there and paste in the nick name. That's it.

first long weekend in seattle

well, this is the first long weekend that we are staying at home, and not going anywhere. There is ofcourse a lot of pending work at catch up both in office and at home too, which is enough to occupy whole week, still 3 days of finishing pending home work!! That's definately not something like us. Maybe we will end up going and camping at Mt Rainier. (which i refer to as camping in the backyard)

Spoken like a True BITSian...

what is better way to connect to other BITSians than by their blog. Here is one that Rahul found.
http://camelinthedesert.blogspot.com/
I still haven't read it, but looks interesting.

where is indian film music going

For quite some time I have been listening to the latest hindi film songs from raaga.com . There are some nice songs, hit numbers by Sunidhi Chauhan, Soni Nigam and all the new music directors. But usually after listening for an hour or so, it just felt like its getting so noisy and I needed to stop them. Today I started with old golds from 80s and late 70s. There is a unmistakable difference. The older songs are so soft and melodious. Even the voices of singers (mostly Lata Mangeshkar and Kishor Kumar) are so pleasant. I have already listening for more than 2 hrs and its still nice, quiet and happy mood here. This definately brings up the questions where is our film music going. With songs like 'Just Chill!!', are we blindly running after the american pop music (which BTW is horrible), why are we loosing our melodious roots and trying to adopt somthing that does not at all fit in society. Is this the end of evergreen, melodious, soothing songs in Indian cinema?

--
tuls

world's most densely populated countries

according to http://www.aneki.com/densely.html, world's most densely populated country is Monaco? Anyone ever heard of it? incidently its the world's second smallest country with area if 1.95 sq. km. Then come Singapore, which is understandable.
India does not show up in the top 10 at all, which was a little surprise to me. Maybe we are headed there, but not quite there yet.

It also gives me another thought, if we take world as a whole, the population density is < 50 per sq km. Wouldn't it be great if we just forget all boundries and evenly redistribute world's population. I guess it would be really hard for people who get assigned to Siberia say, but we can rule those places out. And we can also rotate people so that everyone can get a feel of what it looks like to live in certain parts of the world.

PS: more research tells me that wikipedia has better data http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_density
I should get back to work now.

why are we here?

well, sometimes when I am stuck at work, doing things that I do not want to do, and wishing all the time that I was somewhere else, doing something else, having a lot more fun. Its at those times I wonder (though I know I should be concentrating on finishing that unpleasant business rather than wondering) why are we here, on this earth? Are we here to devote ourselves to whatever profession we are in, and think about other stuff only in the little time after work. Or are we here to enjoy ourselves, have fun, do things we love, live by the saying that life is short, enjoy it while u can? Of course in the second case there is the question about where are we going to get the money for doing all those stuff.
There are always these people talking about striking a balance between work and personal life and blah blah. But has anyone every really struck that 'balance'. Is it possible to have a balanced life when everything needs to be done NOW. And if you spend your life trying to strike the balance would you not end up in a situation where you neither worked well not enjoyed well?
Then there are always these people whole 'enjoy' their profession and cannot think of doing anything else. How many of those people are there and how many of them are just deceiving themselves, making themselves believe that they do not want to do anything else?
To these questions you would often hear answers like 'prioritize', 'do time management', but if you try to do that stuff, are you simply not adding more stuff to the things that you want to do and creating even a bigger problem?

PS: I am in the camp that thinks that we should prioritize :)

flood of old memories

Thanks to Sanjukta again, my mailbox every morning is full of e-mails from old school friends. She created a google group and its been totally successful. I hope we keep the enthu.
Till now only my BITS friends (particularty Prajakta only) used to say that I have changed a lot from my 1st year at BITS, but now even Sanjukta who has just talked to me on net claims that I have changed a really lot and more 'interesting' to talk with :). I totally agree with the last part. And here is another memory of me from Nidhi - "I cant get over ur thin hair choti the front flicks and ur ever eager self to complete all the homework and answer all the Qs shot at us by our dear teachers!!! ;-)".
well, Harry Potter fans, does that ring any bells :)
I would not at all mind to have been like that in school. But yes now things are different. The 'choti' is gone, flicks is still there, but going soon. A pair of spects got added to my face right after school, but I got rid of them now. Homeworks and teachers are no more there and I am no more eager to complete any office assignments. They take their own sweet time.

why do we blog

It was another of the wonderful dinner parties that Srijan place. It started with something new, Chaat. After a long long time I had chaat and it was great. For dinner we had hyderabadi biryani, kofte, daal and something non-veg. It was quite a gathering. Among all the jokes, leg pulling, one questions that came was 'Why do we Blog?' Do people just have lot of time and get bored, so start scribbling here. Or in today's world where communication is ever progressing and its claimed that you can remain 'always connected' with friends and family, we still need something like a public webpage to express our ideas? Or is it that people just do not want to talk to other people and write everything they want to say here for anyone who cares to read it :) Although I have been blogging for quite sometime, but I do not have answer to this question.

Harry Potter series - audio books

There is only one word that I can saw in the review of Harry Potter series. They are simply great, and if you have not read it, then you are missing something great.
The audio books are great if you want to re-read the books.

harry potter audio books

I am reading, correction .. listening to all the Harry Potter all over again. The audio books are great, reader is just amazing at making things interesting by giving sound effects. Although I did not very much like Harry and Hermionie's voices, but overall effect is good. Now that I have read the 6th book and its almost clear what 7th book is going to be about (not ruling out surprises though), I can events in all the books in a new light. The books are totally sequential, and it appears that J. K. Roling really thought about the whole story before starting to write. I can clearly see how there are hints about events in book 6 right in book 4!!

The Tristan Betrayal - Robert Ludlum

The main plot of this book takes place in Moscow during Stalin's rule. The times are when Hitler is advancing in Europe with full force.
One of the best plotted spy ring novels. There are surprises at every corner. Its the story of a genius spy, bound to keep your attention till the very last. I do not want to say anything more about the book as it might give away the small surprises hidden in every page.
A must read.

Murder at Nob Hill

The title of this book attracted me because it was related to San Francisco, lately I have been feeling that I miss living in that windy foggy city. Anyway, so I started listening to this book thinking that if nothing else, it will be like remembering San Francisco again. But I was totally surprised by the story, what a great mystery it turned out to be. Its one great adventurous book, and the reader has done a great job of immitating various characters. The book is fast moving, events after events happening, and its hard to put down after you have overcome the first few pages. Its just in the beginning that it goes on and on about problem a women lawyer faces in getting herself taken seriously in a man's worked of 1800. But once you are past that, it becomes quite interesting. A enjoyable investment of time according to me.

Networking again

I have recently been taken to networking with my old old school friends again, thanks to another old old school friend Sanjukta. Its just overwhelming to find that those people you know as teenagers in school are not all grown up, working at different places, pursuing all sorts of careers. Its just great.

audio books

Audio books are my new found love. They are just a great way of reading (listening) a book which u know u are never going to read on paper as its boring and 1000 pages thick. And its great way to spend time in the gym, it gives a whole new motivation to get on the treadmill. I always find listening to same old songs so boring. And they are great for bed time listening when everyone is fighting over turing light on and off. Good to pass time in moving vehicals without straining eyes. I am sure ears are not really bothered by the motion. So in all, its a great way to know the exact contents of a book :)

I am still alive

yes, I am still alive, just not putting anything on the blog. Things have not being going exactly great lately, and I hate to put bad things in the blog because they are best forgotten, hence no posting for a long time. Well things are still the same though, but I wanted to share some newly found interesting things. Like yesterday I discovered that cars (atleast corolla) have a small little thing on the doors called child lock which do not allow doors to be opened from inside. Recently when we got our car back from the mechanic, for some reason that child lock was turned on on one for the doors. (Now I wonder what the car was doing at mechanics with child lock on) anyway, so that was on and the door would not open. I spent 2 days worrying about it (the whole weekend), cursing the mechanic to do such a bad job as to fix the trunk and break the door, and then drove 10 miles just to discover that all that we had to do was pull that little thing up and release the lock. What a badly designed car!!

what can be more like monsoon back home

Heavy rain in heavy wind followed by a power failure, what can be more monsoon like, only the temperatures are a bit lower, and its not easy to just go out and get wet in the rain, and yes, ofcourse noone but me seems to be excited about the rain. Still I can feel that same excitement that you get from rains in July, same happiness in the air. It just washed away all the blues I was feeling since yesterday!!

Its monsoon time

yes, its monsoon time here in Seattle. Its been raining heavily for few days now, and not just Seattle style, but real heavy rain which can drench you in minutes. There are heavy clouds, poor visibility etc. etc. With temperatures being not that low now, its a definate reminder of monsoons :)

My BITS visit 2005

I recently made a visit to BITS campus, one of the advantages of being from near Pilani. I was definitely expecting lot of changes to the campus from the reports going around on different BITS mailing lists, but still the extent of change surprised me. The most visible being conversion of all the guys bhavans into something resembling very close to jails. The corridors in front of the rooms have been closed with impenetrable jalis. Apart from any inconvenience to the guys, it has also made giving gate calls somewhat harder, now you cannot just shout and catch someone from the front wing to run your errand. I did not get a chance to find out what new mechanism the girls have deviced. And as most of know by now, the other major change in the face of hostels is that Mal has been made a girls bhavan now, enclosed in MB like boundry and with its own mess. But I am sure what most people did not hear is that girls from Mal claim that food in their mess is very very good, much better than food at MB. I did not get any chance to verify that statement, but I got that statement from a lot of Malites voluntarily. More news from MB is that MBans has retired and someone else is the warden now, I forgot to get her name. A new guest waiting room has appeared near MB gate, but I guess its not open for the guys waiting for their gate calls to be answered.

Here are some of the selected photos
library
campus-and-insti
bhawans

and here are all of them
(and they are on yahoo ;))
BITS2005
BITS Library

As we are hearing everywhere, there are a lot of new structures coming up on campus. Akshay has been converted into a US style department store, where you can get all the stuff from spices, aata, daal, oil to shampoo, creams, dustbins and even rajai, gadda! Bye bye Nootan. And everything there is cheaper than the regular rates. I did all my US shopping from there this time too. If you get a chance, drop by our apartment and taste some daal from Pilani.

Oasis 2004

http://www.bits-pilani.ac.in:12346/bitsaa/menu_frames/index.htm

there is a oasis 2004 video up there. though its not the video of the
actual oasis fest as I thought, still its quite nostalgic. shows all
the departments at work before oasis and some glimpses of fashp. the
theme was Expressions Unleashed I think.

--
tuls

what an exciting day

It was the height of excitement when I heard from a school friend
Sanjukta. We were in school together and then lost contact for almost
7 years. Today she discovered me on orkut and we synced up on yahoo.
its really really a small world now!
long live orkut!
long live yahoo!! (I mean untill google come up with something even better ;)).

The day started great too when I got my UCSD degree, all safe and
addressed to the correct place and person.
--
tuls

new addition to our home

We have a new teddy bear added to our home, its big life sized and white. According to Rahul, it looks so real that he is scared to touch it, so you can imagine its so great. He was anyway thrilled to get it, me too especially since it came for free, well, almost, its one of the long stories on how :) Will have a picture here as soon as its all washed and dressed and ready for display.

driving to work!

finally I am driving to work, all by myself, parking in the office garage, its just great!! I am still slow, not all that confident to leave my hand off the wheel for even a sec to adjust the sun shade, but still its working.

Driver's License

So, I finally got my Washington State Driver's license, scoring 94 of
100 :). The test was sort of easy, just drove for 2 min, park here,
park there, join trafic, pretty simple basic things. No parking on the
steep hills that rahul made me do, and which made me cry, and not
right hand parking too.

Rainy days are back

After a long dry sunny winter, rainy days seem to be back in seattle.
Its been cloudy since last weekend, and has been drizzling seattle
style for more than 4 days now. I am as usual feeling great about the
weather, yes great and not gloomy. It reminds me so much of the
monsoon. Its just a little colder, although sitting inside warm house,
warm car and then warm office, I do not think that its at all fair to
complain a bit about cold.

Multiple Choices

This book is very different from any book I have read so far. This one
is about real life, about a mother with a teenager daughter (american
of course). Not that I had anything to gain from this book, but it was
an interestingly different reading after all those fantacy, adventure
books which tell stories which happen in some far far away world. Its
the story of a very average american family, no millionairs making
everday trips to london and paris. A nice no brainer bed time read.

A rainy weekend in seattle

Finally when I was beginning to believe that I am doomed to live in a
rain less land, we landed on a rainy weekend in seattle. This was
definately the worst weekend for it to come though. All our hike and
outing plans for the weekend were washed away. Though seattle rain is
definately not the thing that can stop us from having a nice long hike
in the Rainier.

sambhar dosa

What does a person who loves south indian food do living in a area with just one south indian restaurant? Cook. That's what we did this weekend. Not to mention that the food lover and cook were two different people. Rahul as usual was behind the effort and experiment of cooking and I just gave the idea. It took us about 2 and 1/2 hour to get everything done, but in the end the dosas were great, crisp, aalu sabji was amazing (ob my contribution to the cooking) and sambhar was a great daal but not so much of sambhar. It was a great dinner in the end and I was just a little sad why we did not think of this at lunch, we could have had another meal of it at the dinner. But alas, weekend is over and so are the oppertunities of 2&1/2 hr of cooking.

Are You Afraid of the Dark - Sidney Sheldon

I am confused about how to write a review for this book. I found it a interesting reading in general. The end is pretty much expected. It will fit very well into a hindi movie story. The way all the dramatic things happen, a lot, really lot is left to chance in the story line. There are lot of places where you wonder, why would someone do that (if not just to move the story forward). Like why would someone keep their passport in the safety vault of a bank? Overall, its time worth spending for casual bed time reading, but do not make it your priority. Do not skip any pages when reading, there is not too much of fillers in this book.

another SP2 horror story

what can turn a die-hard windows fan against windows? Windows XP SP2.
I was so happy with my machine, with my windows XP, untill one fatal day I installed SP2. After that machine has just been a pain to use. Everytime I switch on the machine, there are a hundred popups about things been not updated, virus hoaxes, no wireless, and what not, and it takes like 20 min, to get rid of all those bubbles and start doing some actual work. Is there any way I can tell this super intelligent SP2 that my machine is offline, and been like that for 6 months and I know things are not up to date and my wireless is not connected.
As if this was not enough. We tried to get cable internet at home, (to update all those things and get rid of the stupid warnings), and guess what, SP2's security would not let us get it online. 3 days of hour long phone calls with internet support also could not help it. Then as last resort, I connected my other machine which does not have SP2 on it, and boom, everything is up with no effort! So much so for a secure system.

Those long b-byes

Have you ever talked, rather chatted on yahoo messenger, with people
who have really really long bye messages. Its funny, its nice too, but
it really annoys me when I end the conversion with, hey, i got to get
back to work, I am running late, etc. etc., and they are all genuine.
You say that and say bye. They also say bye and you are happy, and you
close the window. Then the window pops up with a 'take care'. Nice :),
you say 'you too' and close the window. But its back, 'see you later'.
Oh, how nice, I do want to see you, but laaaaater. You again say 'you
too', uff, its over. Close the window. There again it pops up, now
what!! Just a 'ok, bye', although the bye happened like an hour ago.
Sometimes people are just too nice, but would it not be nicer if they
just complied all these nice bye messages in one. 'Bye, take care and
see you later, ok bye'. End of Conversation!!%%

Digital Fortress - Dan Brown

While I was waiting for DaVinci Code, I came upon this book, actually
suring my short stay at mountain view. Overall its a interesting book,
nothing misleading about the book, its got something to do with
digital security world. There is no mystery to solve here as such, but
its interesting, a book full of plots, pland and surprises, which is
exactly what makes book interesting according to me. Writing is good,
and tastefully different from most of the other popular books. There
are ofcourse weak points, like story unnecessarily stretched at
places, where you just feel like shouting, enough!!! Cannot compare it
with the more popular DaVinci Code as I have not read that.

Finally some drizzle

After more than 2 weeks of unusual weather, we finally got to see some
drizzling in redmond. Its strange how everything is so ulta-pulta this
year, with tonnes of snow in kashmir, plenty rain in the deserts of
california and unlimited sunshine in Seattle. The weather people are
calling it La Nina, the female version of el nino :)

map my India

Does the world already know about this wonderful site which actaully attempted to create a map of roads in India? And it did a pretty good job of it, I can actually locate Pilani and even Chirawa on this map!!
www.mapmyindia.com

neembura neembura neembura.......

i cannot write enough about the uses of neembu (lime / lemon, donno which one, but the smaller one, u get it in green color usually and its harder than yellow one). we all are aware of shikanji, neembu sharbat, lemon soda and blah blah. And daal is always great with some neembu in it, especially the yellow one.
But for long time I have been using neembu raas to clear my face. Apart from getting rid of the pimples, it also makes the skin softer and glowy. Just a little on face every morning and you are good to go. (Ofcourse you have to wash the face after that). No need for any expensive chemicals, and worrying about after effects. And while I am at it, I also drink a glass of warm neembu pani in the morning. Just lemon juice and warm water, (beware NOT cold water), no sugar. And its very good for stomach.
Lately. not wanting to throw away the remining neembu chilka (cover), I just apply it in my hair before washing hair, and amazing!! it works as a great conditioner, again cutting down on more chemicals.
Isn't it just great, can anything as simple as neembu be more useful :)

Google search works!!

Now I am convinced that google search works ##!!$$. If you look for me that is Tulika Agrawal, on google, all the results on top of the page are actaully things related to me, and as expected, my webpage shows up as the top result.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Tulika+Agrawal&btnG=Google+Search
Yahoo is somewhat more confused and only the first result is actually related to me :(
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=Tulika+Agrawal&sm=Yahoo%21+Search&fr=FP-tab-web-t&toggle=1

PS: I am not a addicted ego surfer, someone today pointed that out to me, and then I did some more research.

surviving a code review

All of us programmers dred the code review time, looking at each line and wondering what those experts out there are going to find wrong with it and how much of their code is going to survive in a recognizable form. Someone somewhere posted this link to an interesting article about how to survive a code review. Some of us learn these things the hard way after 10s of bleeding red reviews, for others, do read this one.
http://www.jsquared.co.uk/jennyl/verity.htm

sunny days in seattle

Whenever I hear people talking about Seattle, especially in california, its all about rain, gloomy cloudy days, no sun shine and blah blah. I have been here a week now and for last 6 days its just been sunny and clear blue skies. In fact the first time I had to use sunscreen in US is here in Seattle. I was here for the summer and it was hot, so hot that I was sweating and I needed to use talcum powder. I was here in December, it was cold, very cold, it rained, but then there were also sunny days. Infact I have never seen more than 3 continuous cloudy days here. Is it just me! Do I just carry sunshine along? Or is it just a habit of exajuration that people have. (Ofcourse I believe in the former).

checkout my new google search

Checkout my new addition to the blog (in case you are too busy reading this, its on the right side of this text), google search and ads. Let me know how it looks!!

morning drive

Today I finally got a chance to take the car for a morning drive, ofcourse with Rahul. It was nice driving in the morning, little traffic, growing by the minute. Sun was playing little tricks, but it was subdued for most of the time. Today I could do left and right lane changes respectably. Few more days of practice and I'll be zipping through these roads in my Acura RSX.

good quote

"The biggest mistake you can make in life is to think that you work for someone else" - Bob Nelson.
Found this while net surfing today. Interesting quote, I am not sure if this is the biggest mistake that you can make 'in life', but unarguably the biggest you can make in your professional life.

Friday, February 11th 2005

Today I shipped the rest of my boxes to their final destination in Redmond. You never realize how much junk you gather while living, and how hard it is to throw it all away untill you have to move, that too without a car and pay for your move out of your pocket. After a lot of no no, yes yes, throw this, keep this, I finally managed to pack and ship my laundry basket and pillows too, along with all the shoes, shampoos and what not. In all this moving nightmare, one thing that I have learned is to throw, throw and throw ASAP anything that you think that you may not need, rather than keep anything that you think you may need. Anyway, now its just 2 suitcases and 3 bags that need to get on plane with me.

Saturday, February 12th 2005

Today I finally moved to Redmond, with half of my luggage, the other half is still on its way. After such a long time of living like nomad, moving every 6 months, I cannot believe that I am going to be here for long time. I am literally afraid to unpack, scared that I might have to start repacking all this before I even had time to breath. I hope for some time we could just go on pretending that everything is unpacked and we are living like normal, except that to find a sweater to wear, I have to look through 3 suitcases and some boxes. This came as a surprise as usually I love the unpacking part of moving, as that is when you get to arrange everything the way you want to in that enormous space. Oh, I am all excited about unpacking now, can't wait to put back all my clothes and shoes in display again.

Monday, February 14th 2005

This apart from being the vals day, is also the first day I joined at the Kirkland office. I was thrilled to see my own office, with 4 walls that go all the way to the ceiling. But this thrill is short lived as I will be sharing this space with some another person. But still own office with 4 walls is definately a luxury in our world :). Next thing I discover is that I am the only female engineer in the office!! At lunch table I was just waiting and waiting to see a colourful face of anothe female, but there was none except for the admins and facilities people. It will take some time getting used to that I guess. Food was not bad, simple sandwich and no other choice to confuse you. And as usual, I could not follow any of the general talks happening at the table :).

driver's license

Today I finally entered the DMV to start the process of getting my driver's license. And it was just a great start, the start that any newb at driving can dream of. The lady at counter saw my california state ID and assumed that its my driver's license from california. She was all set to give me a Washington driver's license before I told her that its a state ID. That honesty costed a lot of lost peace of mind in preparing for behind the wheel test and of course some $s for the test and for classes. But I passed the written test with flying colours, scoring 95% and then got my learner's license too :).

long long time

Its been such a long long time that I have been here, and so many things have happened in this while that I cannot put them all in one place. So for some time I am going to travel back in time and write all that has been missing from here.

vela days

I am jobless, homeless person now and its a bliss. There is no tension of going back to any work, no deadlines hanging over head, I can spend the whole day just sitting in my favourite chair and reading Harry Potter (in Spanish these days).