The Echoes

Shout AAA.....EEE.....OOO and the cliff shouts back. We unpacked our gear after a 2 hour drive to the quarry. The ridge where we camped was 30 feet wide. To one side was this steep mountain. On the other side was a steep valley. The pond in the valley was green and was barricaded from people. It was a quarry and some things needed to be barricaded from people. I knew I was going to have a great day. I was very excited. It was the first time I went for outdoor climbing. Till now I have been climbing the artificial, soft, color coded and rope laid walls at the gym. I was very nervous too. The cliffs are too high and unlike the gym the walls, they are all dirty, sharp and hard. The more experienced people in the group said they would lead (the act of laying rope and securing it tight at the height till which you want others to climb to). Then people have to top rope (involves removing the safety draws laid in the path the the lead takes). Top roping, is what I thought, I can do. I did too. On the scale of difficulties, a 5.5 is the easiest and 5.11s and 5.12s are the toughest. I can do 5.8s and may be a 5.9 with a lot of effort.



Protein bars, bananas, gatorade, sandwiches, and water. It was like a fitness camp. :)). Only much more exciting. After a long long time I found an outdoor activity that I have started to really really like. I have been running lately and I had been running 4 mile tracks, twice a week. But somehow I still wanted some kind of exercise for the upper body. Climbing is awesome. I have been climbing since 2 months now at the gym. This long weekend, the climbing group decided to go outdoors and I went for outdoor rock climbing for the first time. I am totally enamored with climbing now. I just cant wait till the next time I would go outdoors. Rock climbing rocks!

She makes me feel proto nostalgic.

I don't mind being labeled retro. Neither do I care if they call me senti nor I care a naught if they tag me weird. I am crazy about Noor Jehan. Mind blowing ghazals. She makes me feel I were born 50 years back and may be even had a chance of meeting with her face to face. I think I have a crush on her, when she was young. Errrr, grammatical error, or new emotion? 

BTW, this new emotion proto nostalgia was discovered by T-Rex in the dinosaur comics. Too much!

My new found love.

Mariz-E-Mohabbat Unhi Ka Fasana
Sunatha Raha Dam Nikalte Nikalte
Abhi Khaake Thokar Sambhal Ne Na Paye
Ke Phir Khaayi Thokar Sambhalthe Sambhalthe

I have started listening to ghazals (a new genre for me), as always, because of Hanger's influence. Intense voices, profound lyrics, smooth psychedelic instruments and runic compositions. I am always thrilled to discover new artists and genres. But this one has been a revelation. Don't believe me? Check my last.fm profile. So far, there hasn't been a disappointment. Jagjit Singh, Ghulam Ali, Munni Begum, Noor Jahan and Mehdi Hassan. The best part is that they neither disturb you while you are working like most of the new rock related genres do and nor do they let you doze off, while working late in the night. Here are a few recommendations, to start with. So that you will have the right perspective. Also, check out the total senti video. Good direction. It doesn't look lame.



1. Ghulam Ali:

• Hungama Hai Kyon Barpa
• Mariz-E-Mohabbat
• Yeh Kisne Kehdiya Aakhir
• Nigah-E-Mast-E Saqi Ka Salaam Aaya
• Hum Ko Kiske Gham Ne Maara

2. Jagjit Singh:

• Jhuki Jhuki Si Nazar
• Hosh Walon Ko
• Chaak Jigar Ke See Lethe Hai
• Honton Se Choolo Tum
• Koi Fariyaad
• Tum Paas Aarahain Ho
• Jab Saamne Tum

3. Noor Jehan:

• Jo Na Mil Sake
• Sur Sangeet Ki Jogan
• Aashiyane Ki Baat

Mein Gott

'Will you keep crying like a baby always then dattebayo?', says Naruto, Uzumaki. I have tried n philosophies from books and religions. None really worked the way people had told me. I never got any answers from then. Strangely enough, this anime that I am addicted to these days, with its n philosophies has given me a lot of answers. Naruto's philosophy towards life, has helped me handle things much better. :). No, I mean it. Really.
Actually, these philosophies, not all of them, are trite. But, still the way Naruto puts them with emotion and all really gets me going. :)
And btw, Mein Gott is German for My God. :p

Vegitarian food options on and near Nassau, Princeton University

It took me a lot of time to sample places and come up with this list. I had a lot of bad lunches and some surprisingly good ones in making this list. I am sure there are things that I still haven't tried. But, with this list you should get a good perspective. I have rated these things so that you can know what I found the best. I also have given the google maps links to each of the places. :)

1. Tiger Noodles:

• Vegetarian Fried Rice w/wo egg. (5)
• Vegetarian Chow Fen. (3)
• Vegetarian Rice Noodles. (3)
• Vegetarian Lo Mein. (3.5)
• Vegetarian Home Style Noodles. (4)
• Broccoli in garlic sauce. (3.5)
• Egg plant and tofu in garlic sauce. (4)

2. Olive May:

• Soup (Lentil, Potato Leek,Vegetable)/Salad Bar. (5)
  
• Vegetarian sushi. (4.5)
• Frozen food stuff (Indian/Thai). (3.5)

3. George's:

• Egg plant parmigiana. (4)
• Omelette Hogie. (3.5)

4. Old World Pizza:

• Tomato/Onion/Capsicum Pizza. (4)
• Cheeze Pizza. (3.5)
• Spinach Pizza. (3.5)

5. Hoagie haven:

• Egg plant parmigiana. (4)
• Omelette hogie. (3.5)

6. Kalluri Corner:

• Lunch Buffet. (3.5)
• Dinner Buffet. (4)
• Ambassador Idly. (4)

7. Kaliente:

• Veggie Burrito. (3)

8. Ivy Garden:

• General Tso's Tofu. (5)
• Egg drop soup. (5)
• Scallion fried rice. (5)

9. Panera:

• Mediterrainean sandwich. (3.5)
• Veggie sandwich. (3)
• Juices/shakes. (5)
• Pan fried pizza. (5)
• Muffins. (5)

10. Mehek:

• Take out. (4.5)
• Lunch Buffet. (4)
• Paneer Tikka Dry. (4.5)

11. Olives:

• Veggie Burger. (4)
• Falafel in a pita. (5)
• Babaganoush in a pita. (4.5)
• Greek pasta salad. (4.5)

12. Subway:

• Veggie patty. (3.5)
• Veggie sandwich. (2.5)
  

Total total crap.........

Kareena in Hyderabad

Man this is not fair at all. Not fair at all. :((
She never came to hyd when I was in India. :((
Mummeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. :((

Amarok vs iTunes

I have used a lot of music players. Amarok, iTunes, XMMS, and Media Player to name a few. But I am still looking for that one perfect player. None of these players give me what I want in entirety from a single player. Its been a long time since I have used XMMS or Media Player, so I will restrict this blog to iTunes and Amarok. People who have used either of the players without using the other the one are often deemed in to thinking that their player is the ideal one. Well, I have used both of them and I beg to differ. Both of them are far from being a great player. Here are my views on various aspects in these players.


1. Editing Tags: Its a pain in the ass in iTunes. One doesnt have an album level handle. For example, if u want to change the name of an album, there is no easy way of doing it, one has to edit each song in the album individually. Amarok on the other hand has album level handles.
2. Album Artwork: Its a piece of a cake on iTunes. On Amarok, if amazon has the artwork then fine, otherwise one has to save the pic then go select it by path. There is no copy paste kind of thing with respect to the image URL itself, unlike iTunes.
3. Playlist Features: While the Music library view in iTunes makes it easy to make new fields by searching with respect to any tag, in Amarok one has to configure the collection view before such a thing. Also iTunes playlists lack features like queuing a track to play next. This is very very useful feature.
4. Last.fm: Amarok's support for Last.fm is truly lovable. Everything is provided inside the player window itself. For iTunes, one has to externally install a program and use the last.fm features through iTunes. But one thing that is better on iTunes is that I can love and ban the songs from my own library as well, unlike Amarok where I am allowed to love and ban songs of only the tag radios.


5. Store: iTunes store rocks. Magnatune of Amarok on the other hand is naive and does not have any main stream artists. I dont know whats the point in having such a store is.
6. Videos: Although with an mplayer plugin and some tweaking I can add videos to my Amarok playlists, it is still nontrivial. With a descent container format like .mov iTunes blends in properly with Quicktime for movies and makes life wonderful with respect to videos.
7. Devices: Device support features are truly debatable. Although both the players support iPod I cant sync them wherever I want. Amarok crashes on the normal iPod software and iTunes fails to detect any format other than the default apple firmware. This is a pain. I sync with iTunes.
8. Ratings and Statistics: Rating systems are good on both the players. Although the statistics are better on Amarok. They give a list of favourite artists, genres, singers, albums etc. There is no equivalent thing for iTunes in built.
9. Shortkeys: It is completely non trivial to setup shortkeys the way we want in a Mac. iTunes does not come with global shortkeys. Which is very painful. But the front row thing with the remote is just too cool. Amarok being a part of KDE makes life easy with respect to shortkeys. I can set whatever keys that I want.
10. Looks: iTunes cover flow looks cool, but Amarok lets you put what ever theme one wants and make it as u want.
11. Info: iTunes has no mechanism for getting album/artist/song info. Amarok has a context tab which gets info about the artist, album and song from wiki. There is also a facility to get and put lyrics centrally for all the amarok users. This totally kicks ass.
12. Indian Music: More often than not, Indian music is from the movies where the music director is different from the singer, song writers. This makes it immensely difficult as the there is no multiple artist support on either of the players. (Alka Yagnik is treated differently from Alka Yagnik + Sonu Nigam). And it makes the things even worse when u have to ignore AR Rahman altogether and make the artists as the singers or either way. I need something where a song can have multiple artists. Something where a single album can have songs from different artists and not call it a compilation.

Lake Sonoma

I had recently gone to CA for a conference. I had stayed with my sister. And like always she pampered me with all the food stuff that I like. She even took me to some awesome places for site seeing. I had gone to this place called Lake Sonoma. As you can see the lake is located in a valley high above the sea level. The place was gushing with wind. Believe me, even very strong people found it difficult to stand still some times. The lake was so awesome that I totally gaveup. The steep slope that I am standing on, in the pic, gave an god level view of the whole lake. The blueish green water with all the dense forests around stood as an example to the fact that man hasnt raped all of the earth yet, afterall. But, as you can see in the second pic there was some minimal molestation by man afterall. There is a bridge that takes you across the lake to a mountain (not so steep) which was convenient enough to build a launching pad for small boats.
Going at 50 mph on the bridge gave me a high. It was just too cool. Such things have to experienced by everyone. This again fortified the long standing desire in me of visiting all the wonders at least once (preferably with a girl). The real nice thing about the place was that there was a nice old tower on top of one of the mountains from where u can see all of the lake. I am actually standing at the leg of the tower in the first pic. The second pic is from the top of the tower.
The other end of the bridge which leads to the launch pad for the boats took us directly to the water. This definitely was the best part of the whole trip. It was just ultimate. There was this small island kind of thing. You can actually see this island in the second pic (one small chunk near the main land, just right of the bridge). There was a path to it which was just knee deep across. I walked over to it to see how the bridge looked form there. The lake looked even better from the island. Boats all around me were speeding away and there were people on water scooters here and there. I envied their cool machines. Sis contemplated a lot before she decided it was worth getting wet to get across the water and reach the island. She loved it afterall. Anybody will like it. The place was just too good.
And yeah, I dont keep my albums public. Leave a comment and I will send the pics link. :)