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.