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 :)