The Double J Trip

This Diwali, we had an extended weekend, thanks to a Friday holiday. So a trip down the memory lane was planned, literally. We were going to visit the 'Sonar Kella' (fort made of gold) in Jaishalmer, made famous by Satyajit Ray's mystery-thriller of the same name.
We started off for Jodhpur via train on Thursday afternoon and reached Jodhpur at Friday dawn. The whole day was spent visiting the sights viz. Mandore Bag, Mehrangarh Fort, City Palace. One of our auto ride was a pure antique. It had stopped many a times during the trip, and during our final return it died altogether [:P]. To give a quantitative value, they charged us 300 bucks per auto. We had booked our train tickets for Jaishalmer for early next day. But it was canceled, and another ticket for that night was bought. Again, this night was spent in train. Meanwhile, I had a sort of food poisoning [:D].
We reached Jaishalmer early next day, and had booking at 'Golden Palace' (with swimming pool) [:P]. We were given two rooms for rest, and had a desert safari later that day (FYI we were a total of six in the group). Earlier we had booked a basic desert safari comprising of a drive to a point, then 2 hours camel ride, then night out at tent in Sam sand dune with function by locals. But this was scrapped, we booked the Mughal Desert Safari. We left the hotel and drove to some sight-seeing points near Jaishalmer (of little worth). Then we were left at the border of the desert, and had our 'Garib Lunch' (literal translation: poorman's lunch), consisting thick breads and mixed vegetables. Then started our 4 hours camel ride. After that, it was very difficult of us to walk upright. Our night was spent in a makeshift tent in the pitch black darkness (it was new moon). There was a show by the locals and we ended our day by playing '29' in the light of a lantern.
We woke up early next day, watched the sunrise, had a meager breakfast and started our return, again on camels. Again after about 3 hours ride, we were picked up by a car and went on some further sight-seeing. In my personal opinion (which no one can stop me from writing, as this is my blog; of course Google can block it), I didn't feel it was worth the hardship. I'd have favoured a nice comfortable night out at Sam sand dune, whose pictures were not quite bad themselves. The whole endeavour, from the dawn the previous day, to our leaving the hotel that afternoon, set us back 3.5 k bucks each. We took the train back and reached Delhi the next day at noon. Also before leaving, we had a brief trip to the famous 'Sonar Kella'.

Yesterday, I also attended my first North Indian marriage. It was of the sister of one of my colleagues. I was dumbstruck by the amount of snacks available there. Each and every kind of snacks and desserts were there for the taking, and different kinds of soft drinks. There was also a dance floor and a kiddy play-area. The 'baraat' came atabout 10.30 pm and we left at 10:45 [:D].

The reader may be thinking, why are there two posts on two consecutive days. This is because, I wanted to clear my backlogs before the big (for me at least) M-Day this Sunday. I am going to run the Airtel Delhi Half Marathon.

The DP Days (2009)

Our office had a shutdown from Saturday (26th Sep, Oshtomi) to Sunday (4th Oct). I had booked my train tickets for Friday (25th Sep, Shoptomi) evening, reaching Kolkata on Saturday late morning. Giving me roughly two and a half days for Durga Puja. But as the days progressed, I became restless and started to realize my mistake. As a result, I took 3 extra days' leave and started for Kolkata on Tuesday (22nd Sep, Choturthi) evening via flight [:p].
So, you can imagine how crazy I am for Kolkata Durga Puja. It was not so even a few years back. But after leaving Kolkata, it has grown on me. Their is a Bengali proverb: 'Dant thakte lokera danter mormo bojhe na' (Rough English translation: People do not realize the value of their teeth while they are still there).
So, there I was at Kolkata on Tuesday night, with the core of the Puja still two days (or you can say one and a half days) away. I had not made any plans with my friends for the Puja Pandal Hopping, as a result the whole of the next day was spent calling up friends in Kolkata bearing little fruit. One of my omni-present college mate came to my rescue, and it was decided our rendezvous will be Shoshti evening near our college.
SHOSHTHI (24th Sep)
Started off early, to negate the Puja traffic. While in the Metro, the feel of Puja began. The lashshomoyee lasses in their brand new garbs, the immovable crowd in the Metro coupe: all adding to the Puja atmosphere. While on my way, a call came from my old school friends. And that's how our group increased from a strength of 2 to 7 [:D]. That day, we covered the whole of South Kolkata and ended with dinner at Hatari. Also during our sojourn, it was decided that we will cover South-West Kolkata, the next day at dawn (Another proof of my Puja crazyness, I was prepared to wake up early).
SHOPTOMI (25th Sep)
As usual, we did not started at 4 o'clock in the morning as planned, rather at they picked me up at 5 o'clock. This trip was an unique one for me. This was the first time I was going Pandal hopping at that hour. In spite of the time of the day, there was moderate crowd at every famous Pandal we visited. This is the stamina of Kolkata-ns during the Pujas. The whole area was covered in two hours (which if we went in the afternoon would have taken a good 6 hours and at night about 10 hours). The rest of the day, I slept [:D].
OSHTOMI (26th Sep)
Now it was time for North Kolkata. I have going on this trip, with the same set of friends for the last 5 years. This day there were even more old school friends in the group. So, as the reader would already have assumed, this was great as well. Trudging through the entire North Calcutta, including parts of Eastern as well, cracking jokes, bantering each other: oh the fond memories!
NOBOMI N DOSHOMI (27th and 28th Sep)
I rested at home. The ordeal of the last 3 days was showing its result. After all, I am not as young as I once was.
Also, I hadn't mentioned about the urban bird-watching during these days. I hope that's implied [;)].

A Long Long Time...

Back after a very long time, and my life in this period was least bit uneventful. As the esteemed readers (the very few, if any, I get) already know of my prowess of memory (maybe not, which is to say my memory is very poor indeed), the events which I am going to depict will follow little to no chronology.

I lost my mobile phone, again. Not my N95-8 GB, God knows what would have happened if I lost that, this was the 3120 that I had got for losing my earlier 3120. This has served me well for three and a half years, and it looks like I have the loser's luck for it. Well, to cut a long story short, it dropped from my pants' pocket when I was boarding a cycle-rickshaw (damn my cargo pants and its large pockets). I went to the Airtel office the next day to get a duplicate sim only to be informed that since it was a Kolkata number, I have to apply at Kolkata. Immediately a call to my father, "Ja kore hok amar duplicate sim jogar koro (Get hold of my duplicate sim, by any means necessary)". So after some careful crafting by my father, he had it under his possession by the evening. I was also going to Kolkata for the 5 day forced vacation (at first I was a great fan of, but not so now; why you say? I'll tell that later) so it was just peachy for me. I got a 2700 Classic as a birthday gift from my mom (O, did I tell you that I synced the forced leave with that of my birthday? Clumsy me...).
So on to my birthday. On the eve, phoning this guy and that, I could only manage 6 guys to gather for the day. Also, in the morning, while calling to confirm, one guy declined and another one sent an SMS that he had got his class schedules jumbled up, so he'll not be attending. Just my luck. So there only left my three ever reliable school friends and one of my college-mate. While enjoying the scrumplicious starters of 'Flame N Grill' at South City Mall, one of the morning friends, he said that he had again jumbled up his schedules and he was now waiting at the Mall entrance. I immediately called him up, and the 6 of us had wonderful lunch. The starters just kept on coming (as we had taken the buffet, it was very unlucky for the restaurant owner :P). We just sat there for about 2 hours and gorged on whatever they had to offer. So much so, that they provided us with our bills even when 2 of us were finishing up. And thus went my birthday party [:D].
I returned to my daily grind at the office, when one fine Sunday morning (just woke up at 11 o'clock) I got a phone from my mom. Bleary-eyed I received the call and was instantly brought to the reality. My father was to be hospitalized. I was getting the news from my mom that he was suffering from fever for the last few days. But then it had become acute. I floated a mail to my office that I would not be coming for the next 2 days and booked a flight for that evening to Kolkata. I made another trip to there on the following weekend also, and now I am sitting upright on my home bed, writing this blog. In the last three weeks I have traveled 5 times from Delhi to Kolkata or vice versa. Indigo should really be giving me some frequent fliers' points.
My father is okay now and I am looking forward for the D-days starting from tomorrow (the unthinkable crowd, the unmatched lightings and pandals, the world-famous idols, the living idols in all their glorious tailleurs: just thinking about it gives me goosebumps).
Books: I have finally finished 'Map of Bones' by James Rollins. To tell you the truth, his writing didn't suite me (yes, I also have my own tailor-made writers :P). But since I had spent 300 bucks on that book, I was determined to finish it, though it took me about 2 months. There was much m-state metal mumbo jumbos, the seven wonders, Alexander, alchemists, Popes etc, all wrapped up in a race to the ultimate treasure (some lost historic relics or knowledge). It will get a blande 6.5 out of 10 from me. I will give this author one more try with another of book 'The Last Oracle' (in reality, I have bought this book also and do not want to see my hard earned money go to waste).

- Because I am

Again those banal things...

Well, just finished reading a blog post of one of my colleagues and it was good. I can never write emotional or philosophical things (no other word than 'things' came to mind), so I appreciate them very much. My blogging prowess is limited to only mundane and common place matters. Although I may to strive towards a more sonorous writing, I fear I will never be able to achieve this.

So anyone out there still bearing with this blog, here is another of my typical posts. This will be about the movies I saw over the last few weeks and they are not few in numbers.

The Hindi one first: New York. When I first saw its trailer, I thought that 'This movie should be interesting, none of the three leads can act'. But I was proven wrong, though Neil had the same expressions for all of his emotions, the rest two were good. Though the story had many discrepancies, I'll overlook it, being a hindi movie, and will give it a good 7/10.

Well this post has been in the making for about a month, so I'll just skim over the English ones.
Wolverine: 7/10, Good movie, Emotional touch, Very few mutants shown
17 Again: 8/10, A very good comedy, Actors were great
Hangover: 9/10, A must watch for everyone
Harry potter 6: 7/10, A well-made movie, I especially liked the part where Harry got veritaserum and was acting like a drunk

I have seen many more, but can't seem to remember them right now.
Signing out (Will experiment with other phrases until I get it right)

The future is here...

About the title: See the last line of my last post [:P]

Alright, now to recount my experiences. I had two trips during this period, both with totally different attributes: one near, one not-so-near; one memorable, another forgettable.
One Sunday, I had to go to Kashmere Gate to book our (me and my parent's) tckets in Jammu-Katra volvo. So, at the beginning of my excursion we (me, my roommate and a city-mate cum college senior) met at Karim's (@ Delhi-6). The food there is beyond any description. You have to taste it to understand it. All within budget (or we would literally have to wash the utensils there, cause we didn't find any ATMs before going there and they do not accept cards). Then onto Kashmere Gate ISBT. Then I had one my first experiences of my life. I boarded the Delhi Metro. We went from Kashmere Gate to Connaught Place. There we spent another few hours at Oxford Bookstore which ended with a play presented by children.
Then I had my most forgettable trip. I am so frustrated with this trip that I am only going to present this prosaically. We took bus from Kashmere Gate ISBT (in a VOLVO BUS)(if anybody's interested why I wrote volvo bus in capitals, leave a comment) to Katra. There we had to book the Yatra slip from an office right there at the bus stand. We booked a room in a hotel (Hotle Sahil) and started at 8 o'clock and after reaching Adhkwari (7 km uphill walk), we took ponies at my mom's insistence. From Adhkwari the path has bifurcated: old path and new path. Old path is a 6 km walk with more than half as steep uphill path, while new path is a 5km more or less flat road. Electric autos also ferry passengers in the day along the new path. The ponies took us to Sanjhichhat via the old path from where we had to again go by foot. As the rest of the path was quite flat, Mom had no problem. Reaching there, at about 3 o'clock in the morning, we found a big housing complex type structure. Prasad was bought there from a counter and Mom and Dad went inside to see the deity/cave. Also a word of caution, keep your yatra slip with you at all times, do not loose it and you have to check that at a counter in Bhavan so that you can gate your group number for darshan. And yes, you read it right, and I also wrote it right, I did not go for darshan, only my parents did. If I start to narrate my full experiences leading to that moment, it would take four or five of these web pages. So let it be. They entered the complex at about 4.30 am and came out at about 7am. This time we took ponies right from Bhavan, but I dislodged before reaching Adhkwari and continued on foot. We left the checkpoint at Ban-Ganga at about 10 o'clock. We returned Delhi by Shalimar Express.

Movies: As told earlier, I have seen 'Angels and Demons' and also 'Star Trek'. I would give AnD a so-so 6.5. It was only a sight-seeing trip of the Vatican. Also the movie made me uncertain if I had read the book properly at the end. While 'Star Trek' was great. We have breath-taking visual effect as well as the steady character development of the protagonists. Although the movie could have been a little bigger. This is evident in the very little screen-space offered to Eric Bana. I am in no way a trekkie, but I will certainly look forward to other installments in this series. I'll give it a well deserved 8.5.

And now to end this blog with a bang (at least to me): A preview review of Nokia N97.
I had applied online for the hands-on preview of N97 online, and to my surprise they contacted me and fixed a date for hands-on demo at my home. To start of, I was not impressed by this model. I had expected much from Nokia. So much so, that I had fixed my mind to buy this model. But not now.

I had about 1 hour between me and this beauty. Lookwise it is great, with full 3.5" touch screen and the QWERTY keyboard, it is still slimmer than my existing N95-8GB. The 5 MP camera with dual flash is great and the camera options very intuitive. Also I saw that this had an inbuilt photo editor. The widescreen (16:9) video recording in SWEEEET. And with 32 gigs of inbuilt memory (expandable another 16 GB via multimedia card) you'll never run out of space. And also there's the camera cover, which I dearly miss in my N95.

Now for the other end of the spectrum (YES, I only found these features an improvement over my N95). It does NOT have soft or multi (I don't quite know about the multi, there were no application to try it) touch. The touch is a bit clunky. It is not smooth. They provide a stylus with which you will have to do most of your work. They are mainly touting this phone for its widgets and customizable desktop. But to guys like us (who have to dish out ginormous wads of cash to our service provider for internet access) this is not of any value.
The speakers are bad, they are even worse than N95. I played the same song side-by-side in both the phones and N95 sounded much sweeter with distortions and breaks in N97.

So after my 1 hour rendezvous with this not-so-marvel of a gadget, I decided to postpone my buying until Nokia comes out with a better model. My advice would be not to buy this one. If you want touch and Nokia, go for 5800 which is much cheaper (This ones priced at an astronomical 36k INR).

(Just to remind myself, the next post will have Wolverine and 17 Again)

Still here...

This post is coming after a long hiatus. In this period there have been many events (which may be a cause), some of them I'm going to describe. So, I think this is going to be a long one.
First of all, some of my IPL predictions came true (like RCB and CSK going to the semis) and the other did not quite go as expected. This time my logics were all over the place, while the previous time almost all my predictions came true. Also, I liked the fakeiplplayer blog, but the last post really made me mad (so no direct link from my blog). He is a good writer but he didn't stick to his words and ended the season with a crappy silhoutted voice over. As I am throwing all caution to the winds, I will predict that England will win the current T20 WC. (Also, as per statistics, KKR should win the next IPL :P)
Trip: I also had gone to a one week trip to Kolkata (thanks to a 5 day mandatory leave at my workplace). The vacation was thoroughly enjoyed with friends and a solo movie viewing (Fast and furious). I'll come to the movies later.
My parents are coming next weekend and we have plan to visit Vaishnodevi then.

Books: I have read two books in this period, both by Eoin Colfer. The first was 'Half-Moon Investigations'. I would give it a good 8 out of 10. It is a great read for the kids. And other is also by the same author, 'The Supernaturalists', which was just as bad, deserving a 3.5 out of 10 from me. I think it was the first novel published by Eoin Colfer. You can tell that from the writing.

Movies: I will only rate 'Watchmen' (6 out of 10) and 'Fast and Furious' (8.5 out of 10) here. The only thing good about 'Watchmen' is Malin Ackerman, who is a treat to watch. The movie failed miserable conveying the gritty environment in the cold war era and portrayal of my favourite character 'Rorschach'. 'Fast and furious' was also completely different in this respect. It was full of fast paced action sequences and my favourite racing sequences. The race between the protagonists in the middle was, how do you say it... awesome.
And one hindi movie, '99' (4 out of 10). It had no story in it, it was just a boquet of PJ-s.

I think I will stop it here, because already 3 days have gone in its making, the latest news like Karim's, 'Angels and Demon' and 'Star Trek' will come in a post possibly not in a far future.

The I - Season discontd...

Both KKR and RCB are at the bottom of the table. So, no comments. :(
So before signing off another prediction: CSK in the finals.