Wiki- different from blog??

Found a good wiki -
http://www.pbwiki.com/?ref=Tour7

easy password protection, upload file / photos, easy to edit.

Saturn in our backyard ...

.... ok, in the telescope in our balcony.
After months of clouds, it was finally clear sky today. We had kept the telescope outside to get it cool down and were thinking about going out to see Saturn, actually thinking about not going because it was so cold. Then I went out, thinking that the direction is right, Saturn should be in the direction of our balcony and there were a couple of bright things showing. So then as the telescope was anyway outside, I just pointed it to the most Saturn-like thing and that was it!! And we could clearly see the rings from 10mm lense, though not the colours. And there were 2 bright things near it, donno if any of them was its moon. Need more studying to figure out.

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.

Library

Yes, we have a big new great fancy impressive library on campus now. Its designed like a big pink jaipur palace, huge.


dear refli and stairs in front, do I have to say more about it, we all have our memories associated. closed now for some fancy structure 


ah, the new library, wait, is that pink, what happened to the yellow paint!! 


BITS Library entrance, phew are we still on campus 


This is where current BITSians study 


pillars pillars, more pillars, what happend to the nice cozy refli 


library stairs 

The campus and Insti

Lets start with the AC lecture/compree rooms everyone has been talking about. They are indeed great, high tech stuff, AC, projector, mic, lot like the lecture rooms in univs in US. No more sweating during comprees because of heat (but i guess students still sweat in comprees).


The AC lecture rooms everyone has been talking about 

Most of the insti is still the same though, I could still see myself walking in those coridors, sitting in the lawns, IC and everything is still there. Though these are a few additions like the fancy BOSM grounds gate.


BOSM grounds, fancy gate now behind ANC 

The D-lawns in front of FDIII are still there. Channel V and (probably nescafe) used to play music there during OASIS, and the nescafe stall, maggie at midnight! Those were fun times.


front of FDIII, this is where lot of oasis music used to happen, nescafe stands 

Sky was also the same, though empty. Not a single group having lachcha. Even pappu was not that busy. Just a couple of senti-semites (girls), hanging around in back sky, looking very bored, and they said that they were very bored. senti-sem is boring!!


sky, the sun clock, and pond behind that 


sky 

The SBBJ has a ATM on campus, plastic money has arrived.


We have a ATM on campus 

so have cell-phones...


Cell phones have arrived, lost also and treat assured 

The OASIS 2004 structure, great as ever, this time it was soemthing like a monstor, I could not find what the theme was.


OASIS 2004 structure, don't know what the theme was 

There were a lot more bike stands near IPC, and some wierd hurdles on the way.


do we have hurdle race in front of IPC, had no idea what these strcutures were for 

the bhawans

This is how the bhawans look now. Guys bhawans all enclosed with jalis, RP made into MB2, I think its still called RP though. It hosts the 5th yearites still, but only girls, and it has its own mess. I talked to some of them and they all said that food is just awesome the new mess. I could not find out where the 5th year guys have been dumped.


jailed gandhi 

Ah, our old wing has a new TV and a big equipment, which I first thought was a water cooler, but is related to the BITS connect thing.


new TV, this was our 3rd year wing 

Cycle stands in MB are still the same but there are a whole lot more cycles. The number of cycles in guys bhawans has also increased considerably. Well, I guess there is no more walking with your girl, holding her bike :). The insti seemed to be a big mess of cycles everywhere.


cycle stand in MB, and we can almost see the gatekeeping leaving after announcing a gate call 


attending the gate calls, MB gate 


RP, gates closed now, this 5th yearite terror bhawan for freshers is converted to girls hostel now, though still for 5th yearites 

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).

Kane and Abel - Jeffery Archer

I read this book long back, but my last book reminded me about this one and so the review. This is definately one of the most interesting book that I have read, I would say Archer's best. Story line is great, exciting, very interesting and its again full of surprises. Not too long and I practically read each word with interest.

A must read I would say.

Sons of Fortune - Jeffery Archer

One more of Archer's high profile life stories. The story line is strong and interesting. There are surprises in every corner, typical Archer style. Its a story of twin brothers and has everything in it from making of successful people, to banking, politics, drama, emotion. I won't say that its another Kane and Abel but somwhere not far behind from it.

Weak point: The story seems to be reeeeeeeeeally stretched in the middle, you can skip lot of pages without loosing track of what is happening. That accounts for the 500+ pages. At some point you feel like enough!!, and want to discard it as a boring book, but things get really exciting towards the end and if you have the book in hand, I would say do not give up, read it till the end, very last page.

long time

oh, its been ages since i have been here, and these ages were all a happening period, crazy times. so many things have happened that i might run out of time and space writing about them. In short, I am back to house hunting, this time in mountain view. Finally looking for some Indian company, good Indian food and less boring weekends. And as the time to leave San Francisco is coming closer, I am just loving it more and more here. downtown, high rise buildings, where u literally need to bend over backwards to spot sky, view of ocean from anywhere. oh, its just lovely here. I think everyone should live in San Francisco city atleast once in their lifetime. I still do not know what I am moving away from here!!

Spaces on directory names

ok, its been long long time since I have put anything here. Days were too full of activities to even write them. But today I discovered my Rule #1 when working on windows.
"Never Use Spaces in Directory Names"
which also translates to, do not use My Documents. This can cause you untold grief. These are one of those error that you do not even think of looking at.
More wisdom later........

baingan bharta and paneer tikka

Today's lunch was at Pakwan, my most recent discovery of restaurants near office. As most places in downtown, its a small place, but the food was good. A taste of paneer tikka and then baingan bharta with real soft naan. Good start of the day!

account of Kalsubai terk

I wrote this account to post to one of the office fitness groups. Untill I find a better place to put it, I am posting it here too.
Trek to Mt. Kalsubai
kalsubai photos
This is one of the best treks I have been to. Kalsubai is the highest peak in Sahyadri mountain range in south-west part of India, about 165km from Bombay. The mountain stands tall at 5400ft. and on the top you are greeted with a small temple. (Most of the hill tops in Sahyadris, as elsewhere in India, are topped with either a temple of ruins of some fort) We did this trek in the July 2002, yes, in the middle of monsoon season in India. According to me, this is the best time to trek in Sahyadris as its neither very hot, nor cold and you have a good chance to get drenched in the monsoon rain, the greenery in the mountains is at its peak at this time. We started the trek from a small village called ‘Bari’. As most treks in Sahyadris, the path is not maintained and its easy to get lost in the forest. So we took a guide with us, a small boy, I think some 12 years old from the village. He was happy to accompany us all the way to the top. We started on the muddy path on this nice and cloudy day. Soon the first obstacle was a small stream of water, to be crossed on foot, the water was little above ankles and it was easy to cross. Then came the rain, making the path even more muddy. Along with the rain started flowing numerous waterfalls in the hills. Its hard to describe the beauty of the scenery around, you will have to look at the pictures, which I do not think can do much justice with the actual beauty. So, anyway on we went on, getting wet in the rain, crossing muddy streams. The next big obstacles are 3 big ladders. We had to be extremely careful while climbing these ladders as they are very old, and are based on hill sides over deep trenches. We crossed the ladders one at a time, rain and high winds were making everything even more difficult. Once atop all the ladders, we reached the top of the hill. It took us little over 3 hrs to reach the top. It was raining very hard by this time, and since we were on top of the hill, there was absolutely no protection from the wind. The rain was so hard that all you could see was a sheet of water coming down from heaven. The temperature had also dropped considerably at this height. At a point, some of us had to actually hold hands to prevent from being blown over. The big problem we faced now was how to eat our sandwiched without getting them soaked. Then we took turns to sit in the temple which was so small that only one person could enter it at a time. Although we had planned to spend longer time on the top, but rain and biting chill wind was making it hard to stay on top, so we started our descend after just half an hour on the top. The journey downwards was even more difficult as the path was slippery. Thankfully by the time we were down the 3 ladders, the rain had stopped somewhat and we could fasten the descend. We reached a small path of flat ground and took our time gazing at the natural beauty spread around us. All we wanted to do at this time was trap this beauty in our eyes, capture as much of it in our cameras as we could. After another food break at this point, we moved on, happy, singing songs. But what we did not anticipate was that our small stream that we crossed in the beginning of the trek had swollen into a small rivulet. The water was upto my waist by this time and the flow little harder. I had real hard time crossing this stream, with every step I felt that I am going to get washed with the stream. We all took another small break after crossing the river, and then headed back to the Bari village, where our bus was waiting to take us back to the concrete jungle of Pune city, away from this beautiful land.

Taken

The last weekend was a 'Taken' weekend. After all my plans of visiting the Golden Gate again where washed in the clouds, I headed to the library in search for something interesting. One thing that always came into my view, howmuch ever I tried to ignore it, was a (actually more than 1) DVD of Taken. I always wondered why do they have so many DVD of the same movie and noone every seems to take them. Anyway, to avoid seeing them again and spending time wondering why so many, I took one. Saturday was spent, first planning a perfect time to watch the movie and then finally watching it. Well it was a Spielberg movie, so after watching it once, it looked like either the movie was grossly incomplete or I did not understand anything. SO, anyway as I refuse to accept the second explaination, I headed to the library again on Sunday. That told me why I always see so many of those DVD, they are all different parts, its more like a teleseries from SciFi channel. So I got 2 more parts, spending another 6 hours on that on Sunday. As you can see, I was hooked, or more precise taken. There is still more to see, as I do not think that its complete yet, I guess there are more parts than just 3.

For the review, after spending 9 hrs on the weekend watching the DVDs, I do not have to state that I just loved it. The plot is good, the mystery well maintained, and you would not want to miss even a single word of the movie. It spans over 4 generations, starting in the 60s. The story is also spread over all of US and ofcourse of big span of characters. After sometime, I stopped reading the place and time that appeared in the bottom of the screen as the scenes change as they stopped making sense. Great story, movie well made, no unnecessary fancy stuff, no star wars, but a very believable story. (Except for that fact that like everyone else, the aliens (the real aliens from a different plant) ignored rest of the world and showed up only all over US.

Virus in my hotmail

Yesterday (when I was probably out jogging), something entered my hotmail account and sent mail to I guess some or maybe all the people in my address book. The subject of the mail is "please do this" and it asks you to click on the link in the mail and that will get me and the recepient both a t-shirt. Well, ofcourse there is no t-shirt to get. I apologize (though its clearly not my fault at all) if you got that mail and wasted time in going to that link. Just a note of caution for future, I do not send such e-mails, and if I ever send, I do not send them without a personal note from which you can be sure that I have sent it myself.
nyways, this whole spamming thing atleast helped me get in touch with a couple of old friends who I had not mailed for long as they had also not mailed me for long which in-turn they probably did not do as I had not mailed them for long. (Did that just sound like something from HHGG??)

Job hunting days

My job hunting days are back. Its so hard to find that one perfect job, especially when u do not know what perfect is. Guess everything just gets boring after sometime. Maybe software itself is boring. Sometimes I wonder if I should have done something else, like being reporter, singer, dancer, voyager, pilot, or something more exciting than just sitting at the same computer everyday and blogging.

Italian movie weekend

Last weekend was Italian movie weekend, I watched 2 of them, "Life is Beautiful' and "The last kiss". Life is beautiful is pretty famous I guess, though I did not find too much great in it, except the story may have been heart touching if I was not concentrating so hard on trying to understand what people are speaking without reading the sub-titles. And guess what, I did understand parts of it, it was great. Italian is very similar to Spanish, most words are similar, conjugations are little different. Infact in the beginning of the movie when I did not know that its in Italian, I was wondering if I have forgotten my Spanish and cannot understand or it is Italian. Anyways, it was nice, maybe learning Italian would not be too much effort then.

What am I blogging

Well, today is the blogging day. I just wrote the reviews to two of my favourite book series at our site http://bookreviewsbyus.blogspot.com/ and now I am writing here. No, I am not jobless, umm, actually I am, but I have work. It was just that today I was doing some ego surfing earlier in the day, (for those who do not know, I was searching for Tulika Agrawal on google) and I found out that my blog does not even show up anywhere. So much for a great search engine. You will find all sorts of things I posted on mailing lists, even years ago, but not my blog. If you have any suggestion on how can I make google show my blog under my name, please leave a comment.

Harry Potter Series - J. K. Rowling

Today is the review day, since I just wrote review to HHGG, its also time to write long pending review to one of our (yes, rahul and I) all time favourite books. These are few books in which you get so much involved that its hard to put it down without reading untill the last page. Some people would say that these are for kids (also from the fact that in the library you get them in the Teen section), but those 'adults' are just denying themselves the pleasure of a ride into the fascinating world of Witches and Wizards. (!poor muggles!), rest you can find after reading the books.

A MUST MUST read.

The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

Today I was going through this site and realized that I still have not written the review to one of the most interesting books I have ever read, The HitchHiker's Guide!! Not that its been very long since I have read the books, but I have been its fan since I first read the first few pages of the first book in the series, and that was back in India, in late 2001, when the book used to be available free to read online. I never found the online edition again. But thanks to the public library, I can read all the five books once again. For those of you who have not heard about the books, let me tell you that HHGG is of course sci-fi, one of the most creative sci-fi, it is so creative that it actaully sits at the border of being creative and being insane, bizarre. While reading the book, if at any point you start feeling that you have understood what's happening, my advice would be - read again, u probably misread something. If still you think that you understood the book, you are a creative genius.

Literally speaking, Douglas Adams is a great satirist (did i get that right?). You will see him mocking everything from current face of Sci-Fi to different cultures on earth. But everything is said in such a funny way that you cannot help laughing out loud even in a crowded bus. (ya that's where i did most of my reading)

A MUST read.

Vitamin C

My recent project is to research vitamin C. It seems to be the culprit behind my never ending cold (though it does not look like, suddenly after moving to SFO I got vitamin C deficiency!!). Anyway I am hoping that its this, rather than allergy as most people think that it is. What can I possibly have allergy from, SFO air?? Pollution, yah right, after spending years in Delhi and Pune, I get allergy from pollution in San Francisco. Maybe its fog, that is something new, except these days its exceptionally clear in san francisco. so....

August 24, 2004

Another boring day in office gone. I cannot imagine how people spend years here like this, maybe they work. Only bright thing in the day was visit to the farmer's market at fisherman's wharf. Its quite a place and the best part is that you can try out so many things, like different cheese, peaches and almost everything. First time I know that there are different types of cheese and they taste different and they are all very expensive. I tried some different type of hummas also today, they are the closest thing to chutney I can think of.

August 12, 2004

This is another of those saturdays I am spending on office by choice, doing nothing. Though I am not sure why. In the morning I was sitting in my rajai, all nice and cozy, not a thing to do in the world and reading Hitch Hiker's Guide and also contemplating if I should go back to sleep. What a dream weekend, then suddenly it struck me, why not go to office and them gym which is near my office. And here I am, after 1 hr of smelly bus journey, sitting in office, reading my 100 useless mails at orkut, yeah they still do not have a select all and delete button, someone knock some sense in those people.

Only Love - Erich Segal

Finally there is a story which is not nostalgic, not overly modern and futuristic. This book resembels a regular hindi movie story, love, passion, betrayal etc. etc. Its a nice bed time reading. Nothing thrilling or chilling about the book, no surprises, you can almost guess the story. But what makes this book good is the author, the way he presents such a normal story that it looks interesting and refreshing. According to me (like most other Erich Segal books) this is a worth reading.

Timeline - Michael Crichton

One of the classical sci-fi books about time travel (ooops, there is nothing like 'timetravel'). It does not take a IQ of 100 to guess that this book talks about people going back in time, visiting history. You will learn a lot (a lot, more than you would care to) about history of france, england, while you can also revise your fundas of quantum computing, relativity and some other modern things. Its a typical thriller, no mystery, but people fighting againt a deadline. Worth a look I would say. If history bores you, then it would be enough to just read first few chapters, before people actually go back and last few chapters.

August 4th, 2004

Its already August, and there are still 5 more moths I need to spend here, and then guess back on the roads. San Francisco is showing its true colours, its been drizzling, drizzling, foggy, cloud rain, cloudy and all that for more than a week now. Only on sunday did we get a little darshan of sun. I wonder how its going to be in winter. How can people spend their lifes in such climate, this is what I call gloomy (believe me, I do not think that Seattle is at all gloomy), when its cloudy, drizzly and extremely windy all the time, and on top of that the city is so crowded, that u have to literally look straight up to see any sky.

The Best Laid Plans - Sidney Sheldon

This book is somewhat a disappointment. I would have expected something more subtle and intelligent from Sidney Sheldon. I just kept waiting for that one moment in the book when u go, "wow! that's brilliant", especially since the title of the book itself talks about best laid plan. There does not seem to be any plan in the book and even after finishing the book, I could not decide who the main character in the book is. There are surprises, but they surprise you in a stupid way, its just too obvious. I would say if you want exciting, suspense novel, then do not waste your time on this one.

The Long Road Home - Danielle Steel

This is definately not a happy book to read, full of tragedies which even sound real. Makes you think a lot of things about life (atleast made me think). Made me somewhat gloomy too. Like most of her novels, this is also well written, no fancy stuff, its easy to get involve in the book. Still I would not say that its the kind of book you cannot put down before finishing.

Sewing machine and cold weekend

This weekend was I guess more full of activities then any I had spent in SF. I got the cold at the right moment, eod Friday, so Saturday I was down with that cold and remained in my rajai almost whole day, convincing myself that this is the best thing for me, and reading book. It was nice in a way. Sunday was little better, so I dared to go all the way to library and got a bunch of books. Came home and my land lady was struggling with her sewing machine. She asked me, do you know anything about sewing machines. Well, do I know anything, not really except seeing my mom making dresses for me every summer. But anyway, I wanted to help her, we looked at her machine, and I ended up spending 4 hours cleaning, trying to make it work, recleaning and retrying. We used all funds of mechanics to understand why it was not working. And what do I say, these complicated machinery of present day!! All we had to do was press a button, and boom! there you go :D

Foundation's Edge - Isaac Asimov

This is the 4th book in foundation series. This book is filled with even more bizzare concepts than the first three, and there are few things which are just beyond understanding or explaination. If you try to understand the book and why some things happen they way they do, you have to really stretch your imagination to the point where it can break and everything look like a hallucination. For the prople who loved the first three foundations books, I would say that if you have not read this one, you are surely missing something. If you want to start the foundation series with this book, then I would say, give it a second thought. Whatever the author says, according to me, to fully appreciate the book, you need the background. (unless ofcourse you have a out of the world imagination :))

Friday 23/7/04

End of another week in San Francisco. Nothing exciting happening this weekend, planning to sit in the public library and look at some spanish stuff. Recently I have been planning to get something new done with my hair, maybe a new style. That might also materialize this weekend, although according to me, summer is not at all the right time to change your hairstyle as you cannot hide behind a scarf. Still I think I'll give it a shot, at present there does not seem to be anything to loose ;)

The Foundation Triology - Isaac Asimov

This series of three books consists of Foundation, Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation. I am writing the review for all the three together as its hard to see these books separately. The official claim (which is I guess true) is that each book is complete in itself and you do not have to read the earlier ones to understand the later ones. But for me, I would say that it was hard to be satisfied with reading just one. I actually started the series with Foundation and Empire, but halfway through the book, I realized that I want to read the first book first. So I went to Foundation and then read all the three in order. These are one of the best Sci-fi books I have read. The books are written well, author gives you enough time to grasp all the concepts of space settlements, millions of world, gazillions of people, space travel, hyper-jump and what not. Though I was surprised by the absense of robots in these books, but maybe that was because I had been reading only the robot books of Asimov earlier. I would say that this is a must read for anyone interested in spreading humanity on other planets.

Mt Hood camping trip

I have written a account of our camping trip to Mt. Hood, columbia river gorge in Oregon this long weekend (july 4, 2004) at http://rahulandtulika.blogspot.com/
I still have to figurout how to upload the photos.

Tell Me Your Dreams - Sidney Sheldon

Just finished this one. An interesting reading, plot not very original, but there are definately surprises in the book. The main character suffers from multiple personality disorder, you can guess that after reading first few pages, though the author wanted it to come as a surprise at the end of first part. There is little dramatization which feels very unreal. In all a nice reading.

Long time, something new

ok, its been looong time since I posted anything, so many things are happening, that its hard to keep up. Went camping over the long weekend, it was usual fun, no surprises this time ;). Anyway, today's posting is about the new blogger that I have created where I (and hopefully Rahul also) are going to post our opinion about the books that we read. here is the URL, would be interesting!!
http://bookreviewsbyus.blogspot.com/
comments are ob welcome :)

Prelude to Foundation - Isaac Asimov

Completed this book few days back and to be frank, it was a disappointment. I have read the first three books in the series, Foundation, Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation. I loved all the three books, but after them, Prelude to Foundation appeared pretty boring. The book seems to spend pages on small unnecessary details. As we say 'kheencha hua hai'. The end was indeed a happy surprise (especially for those who also like Asimov's robot novels), but for length of the book, there was not much matter.