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!!%%