Glorious Ruins

Well, that's Hampi for you. Watching the sun set over these ruins is an overwhelming experience. The end of a rich and prosperous era retold day after day after day...

Din dhal jaaye haye

As the sun sets, its time to bid adieu to 2008 and welcome the year 2009. Hope the coming year is more peaceful, happier and fun!

Pic taken by Josh at BaaDa beach,Kumta.

The day that was

After a long long time, spent an entire day reading a book, from start to finish! :-)
Well, the power-cut from 10.00 to 3.00 in our locality made me do it. Nevertheless, felt really good to do nothing other than read a novel throughout the day. I even caught a quick siesta too! An idyllic Sunday well spent!

Sticky keys.. Sticky keys...

Oh no.. Its not a variation of Phoebe's Smelly Cat! It is the feature which comes to my rescue when I encounter weird behavior with Windows.
I know, i know.. I can already hear all you linux geeks sneering away to glory!

What is the weird behavior you ask? Well, sometimes when I have many Firefox tabs open (>15) for a long time (through multiple hibernations), the keyboard starts acting up. I click on some links, and instead of opening it in a new tab, it starts downloading them! Typing 'b' behaves like ctrl/alt+b.
Happens sometimes with Notepad too. ctrl+c, ctrl+v does not work.

I did discover an awesome solution though! Press the 'Shift' key more than 5 times and you get the Sticky-keys window like this:




Clicking 'Cancel' makes the keyboard normal again!!! :-D And it works every time!!!

My work makes me take loads of snapshots as it involves a 3rd party GUI. Guess it shows huh?!?!

Dekho baarish ho rahi hain...

its raining its raining its raining..

No I am not a fan of Anu Malik's singing. It's just how Bangalore is for the past 2-3 days. Feels awesome most of the times. The only problems being waking up early in the morning to catch the office cab and walking on what must have been a road, but is now a muddy pool.

It's like when we (office gang) visited Coorg/Jog falls sometime ago.(and that is in 2006/2007 :-( ) Cloudy, rainy, DREAMY...So many fond memories..so many lively conversations and fun-time. Sigh!!! It sure will be difficult to work today!

One pic from the Jog trip!

The festival of lights and colors

This was how Deepawali was this time too. Lots of people, fun, food (yeah, yeah! :-p), lights and colors. :-)

Visited the Innovative Film City near Bidadi. General timepass place, very expensive though. Liked the Ripley's Believe it or not Museum the best. Mirror Maze was fun too.

Tried my hands at Rangoli after a long long time too! :-)

After the evening prayers

The Rangoli ( a tad unsymmetrical) :-D

Weekend - The end or the start?

Got a forward in an official mailer list today.
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/91aug/rybczynski-p1.htm

This article is very old (August 91 - the page states), but is relevant even today!
It talks about work, leisure; how the week-end came to exist and how it evolved over time. Makes a very nice read, albeit lengthy.

Josh and I were talking on similar lines last weekend about this whole concept of doing 'something' (read going out, watching movies etc.) during weekends. I was for the cause , of course!

Gidda's artwork!

My nephew has a new-found interest. Doodling!
The end result is a set of lines on a paper or on hands (his or anybody else's around him) or walls even!! The mothers - his and mine, have a great time showing off his skillful art. ;-)

Yesterday, he laboriously removed the cap of each of the 10 odd sketch pens and started 'drawing' on a piece of paper. :-) The person in charge of replacing the caps was of course, your's truly!

This was when he was half-way through the drawing.


(The arc of a circle and a line at the right is his mother's contribution! :-D)

This was when he finally completed. Such brilliant color combination na?




p.s: 'gidda' is how he pronounces his name - skanda!

September of 2008..

..has been (or rather is) one of the strangest months at office.

No Bhuv, no Sudks, no San, all at once! :-(
Well, thankfully one of the above is not permanent.

More words added in the times-a-changing chapter of life perhaps?!?!

lesson 2 - City at Night

This was the title of the poem written by a 4th Standard kid, Ashutosh, on the back of a hand-made card. There were cardboard cutouts of flowers pasted on the card too. Very sweet! :-)

A group of volunteers from our office are helping the security and house-keeping staffs' kids, with their education and other needs. So far they have been provided with monthly rations (rice, dal, etc) and payment of their school fees. Monetary contributions from the employees have ensured this scheme to last for a year!

The kids had come to our office yesterday and the volunteers spent time with them, helping them make greeting cards and interacting/discussing with them about what they need and what we can do to help them. Couldn't attend the same, but I got one of those cards for contributing towards the cause! The card did brighten my Monday morning. :-) Will definitely try to volunteer actively in future activities.

The first page of the card. Will post clear snaps, if possible, later.


This poem was in the last page.

City At Night
-------------
When the night begins to fall
And the sky begins to glow
You look up and see the tall
City of light begin to grow --
In rows and little golden squares
The lights come out. First here, then there
Behind the windowpanes as though
A million billion bees had built
Their golden hives and honeycombs
Above you in the air.
-Mary Britton Miller