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. :)

I quit.

Choose profile pic. Choose communities. Choose friends. Choose a false profile name. Choose to write a fucking big about-me, choose fans, testimonial writers and album pics and fancy youtube videos. Choose to scrap, reply at ease and read the scrap chain of 2 martians. Choose stalkers, choose to stalk and annoy the crap out of women with pics. Choose to read junk mail, forward them and save them. Choose to give all the information to Google Inc. Choose to annoy people with questions on profession and education and spam them. Choose "social life" being an ass hole you spawned to replace your loser self. Choose orkut. But why would I want to continue a thing like that? I chose not to choose orkut. I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got deadlines.

Courtesy: Renton - Trainspotting.

My Commitment

Not very long ago, I got this cute little digital pet. Its called Flappie and its real nice and all. Its just like any other pet. 3 vital things to remember - food, amusement and sleep, each at the right time. I thought well this is really nice, a virtually costless pet. All I gotta do is to feed it, make it laugh occasionally and put it to sleep before I go to sleep. But, thanks to my pathetic commitment I forgot to feed it yesterday night and even forgot to put it to sleep. The poor thing just died man!!! Oh crap! My pet died. Not that I am missing it or something - I can always click revive and get a new one. But it gave me a chill!

We are grads, we are lame......

A mail from our graduate events organizer: What the?@#$%@#!$#%

Speed Dating! Wednesday, April 25th at 8pm in the Coffee House at the Old Graduate College.
Are you single and interested in meeting other single grad students? If so, give speed dating a try! Sessions will be offered for opposite sex and same sex participants. If interested, contact Tara by Tuesday, April 24th. Please indicate your gender and your sexual preference. After all of the 'mini dates' have taken place, participants are welcomed to remain in the Coffee House for a casual social gathering to further get to know others. The decision to keep in touch with one another after the Speed Dating session will be left up to the individual participants.

What is Speed Dating?
Speed Dating is an exciting, quick, non-pressured way to meet singles. In one evening, you’ll meet a variety of people, in brief, individual one-on-one conversations.

How does Speed Dating work?
A group of singles gather together in a space filled with ‘tables for two’ and each table is numbered. You will have a set amount of time (3-5 minutes) depending on the number of participants. Participants are given suggested topics and questions to help break the ice. (Questions will be provided ahead of time and at the event). At the end of the set time, the session leader rings a bell or plays music between rounds to let you know to move onto the next date. This process will continue until everyone has met each other.

Why?

Windows: Games. Period.
Mac: Ease of installation. Look and feel. Customer service. Wide range application support.
Linux: Programming. Keyboard shortcuts. Free!

why now? why not when I was back home? :(

Deep Purple
Iron Maiden
Roger Waters
Aerosmith

Movie - Blood Diamond

Not for the faint hearted. Not for the girls who want diamonds for their rings. Not for the men who want to present diamonds to their loved ones. Not for the people in the diamond business. Not for the people who do not want to hate a diamond. How many people does that leave?
Watch it to see (feel rather) what goes behind the scene to get you those shiny conceited rocks. Not all of them are like that, but how many give a rat's shit to ask if they are buying a bloody one?
Watch it and you will goddamn make sure you'd confirm its not a bloody one that you are spending on! Leo rocks as usual. And of course, the sceneries are marvelous. Because TIA.
The movie reminds me of a song by the Eagles, The Last Resort. Its about the British (I guess) who colonized Africa to an extent.

She came from Providence,
the one in Rhode Island
Where the old world shadows hang
heavy in the air
She packed her hopes and dreams
like a refugee
Just as her father came across the sea
She heard about a place people were smilin'
They spoke about the red man's way,
and how they loved the land
And they came from everywhere
to the Great Divide
Seeking a place to stand
or a place to hide

Down in the crowded bars,
out for a good time,
Can't wait to tell you all,
what it's like up there
And they called it paradise
I don't know why
Somebody laid the mountains low
while the town got high

Then the chilly winds blew down
Across the desert
through the canyons of the coast, to
the Malibu
Where the pretty people play,
hungry for power
to light their neon way
and give them things to do

Some rich men came and raped the land,
Nobody caught 'em
Put up a bunch of ugly boxes, and Jesus,
people bought 'em
And they called it paradise
The place to be
They watched the hazy sun, sinking in the sea

You can leave it all behind
and sail to Lahaina
just like the missionaries did, so many years ago
They even brought a neon sign: "Jesus is coming"
Brought the white man's burden down
Brought the white man's reign

Who will provide the grand design?
What is yours and what is mine?
'Cause there is no more new frontier
We have got to make it here

We satisfy our endless needs and
justify our bloody deeds,
in the name of destiny and the name of God

And you can see them there,
On Sunday morning
They stand up and sing about
what it's like up there
They call it paradise
I don't know why
You call someplace paradise,
kiss it goodbye

This Valentine's Day

This Valentine's Day I thought of remembering all my lovers. I first fell in love in 2002 August. She is just amazing. She is dark as the night. A very fancy, rich girl. she costed me a lot of money. (!@#$%%!@#)? He he. I am talking about my computers. She stayed back home in hyd and I was at IITM. 17', 512 MB, 120 GB, 2 Ghz etc. But you know, how distance kills all the chemistry. She was never mine.
But then I got this new one in August 2003. She was snow white. She stuck with me for 3 years. Not a very fancy one but a simple and content one. 15', 256 MB, 40 GB, 2 Ghz etc. I miss her. I truly miss her.
Well, I was interning at IBM and they gave me this amazing hi maintenance one. Well, I was away from my snow white, wanted some company so I went out for 3 months with this aspiring super model. :). 17' Flat, 2 Gb, 80 Gb, 3.2 Ghz etc.
And now I come to princeton and they give me this amazing American chic. She is just amazing. I love spending time with her. 19' TFT, 2 GB, 300GB, 3 Ghz Core 2 Duo, NVDIA 7200 etc.
But where my heart truly lies these days is with this amazing super model. She is an art. A true super model. MacBook, 13.4' Wisescreen, 1 GB, 80GB, 2 Ghz Core 2 Duo etc. I just cant stay away from her even for a second!!!

Boston Illegal

I went to boston this weekend. It was just amazing. MIT was overwhelming as expected. But boston, and the partly frozen river is just too cool. I was staying with shyam at MIT. We went to the Stata Center (the weird CSAIL building) as well. The department is too big. Too too big!
There was this small pond somewhere in the middle of boston. It was frozen. It was kind of not adviced to walk/skate on it. But I had a long standing desire of walking on water. I broke all my norms in getting on to the frozen surface to walk on ice!!! It was kind of scary in the beginning but by the time I was in the middle I kind of figured it was too solid to pose any threat. So I just walked across the pond.
I even saw the movie Babel finally in boston. There was not story in the movie. It was like an information. If it gets the Oscars then I can definitely judge the level of other movies that are nominated.

All the hue and cry for nothing.....

Well, the grades for the first sem are coming out and I was really tensed up asusual. Well, I dint really believe anybody until today at Princeton when they told me that grad grades dont matter at all. I thought they would account to something, I mean cmon, something. Well, the pass mark is like an A grade for all the grad courses. I mean if u get a B then you gotta retake the course to get through your quals (thats a weird requirement, one of the many weird things at this place). So, my advisor says this "dont worry about grades, they are worth nothing coz the pass mark is A; its like A is Average, B is Bad and C is Catastrophe"!!! So I am not worried about grades anymore. Such a relief, after soooooooooooo long. I mean all that matters at IIT (acad life) is CG. All else is bullshit. And here the one thing that doesnt matter is CG. Totally a different ball game all together. Research is what matters. :)

A Rahman Lost

I saw the movie Guru a few days back. I was expecting the music to be in the lines of atleast Yuva, if not in the lines of Bombay, Roja, Dil se. I was thoroughly disappointed. Do you guys remember the introduction songs for the actresses in Roja and Bombay? Dil Hain Chota Sa and Kehna Hai Kya. Well, I expected the intro song of aish to be up there. The intro song for ash was not only diasppointing but also irritating. She just keeps humming Na Na Re through out the song which is just irritating to the core. Sometimes I just keep wondering what happened to the Rahman that made Anjali Anjali, Vinara Vinara, Ithiye Prema etc. Any clue where that genious has gone?

A Rockefeller Tale

I was at the Rockefeller center today. I skated on ice for the first time. I had some skating practice from school days. So it was not so tough to get the hang of it. But its nothing like the normal one. Its just amazing. So the plan was to ask some girl out on a date. I and my friend were thinking if we could find some poor skate novice chic, we would try to teach her skating. Then if she'd fall down, I would hold her and ask her out on a date and also tell her that if she says no then I would let go of her and she would fall down. But as expected the plan was an utterflop. Girls in the rink either already had a guy with them, or were extremely good skaters, or were too uncool to encourage any such outrageous prank. Most of the little kids were skating better than us. Real shame. I mean the only girls who werent good skaters were very young. Well, thats when it kind of struck me that this rink actually is a metaphor for the real life. Girls are either already taken or they are too out of league or they are too uncool to be in any kind of relationship, you know! And the only girls who are not taken and cool enough to be in a relationship are too young and immature. Well, I guess the likes of me are in a fix then. :(

and it finally snowed

I was liking the Global Warming initially. People kept scaring me that its gonna get cold and all. But it they started saying that it has been unusually warm this year until now. I was beginning to like the Global Warming in the U.S. But somewhere down, I was being bogged down by the possibility of it not snowing this time. I really wanted to what it feels like to be in snow. It snowed on 18th. It was just amazing. And it enhanced my first "todo" in life. I have to see all the continents and oceans atleast once in my lifetime. Preferably with my girl. :)

Movie - Kung Fu Hustle

This blog is the first of its kind. I will be writing about the movies that I see. I saw Kung Fu Hustle today. The movie is about this Chinese guy who has lost all hope in being good, coz life was just not fair to people in China at that time. Its almost like a hindi movie, but very well directed. The screen play was just amazing, as we would expect from an action movie from the Orient. Nevertheless, this is not a review.
A vast number of hindi movies have a childhood sentiment. It was touchy initially, may be the first childhood sentiment movie that I saw moved me during the reunion. But I am not sure if any of them moved me as much as this one did. The childhood incident of a little girl meeting this guy under very funny circumstances is normal, as in like any of the childhood bonding episodes must be. But the reunion, my gosh! I was shaken. The background score was just ultimate. The movie was not to be sentimental one, but after a long time I have felt that emotion during a movie. Last time was Finding Neverland. Thats an amazing story. It just killed me.

Big India and all that crap.....for Indians

Hey do you know the favorite color of Sunita? You dont? What the hell, you are a loser, Indian!!! In many occasions, these days, it so happens that when an Indian does something good for him/herself by a good career, its shown in the media as something great done by an Indian. For those who dont read anything other than comic strips, Sunita Williams is an American Indian Astronaut like the late Kalpana Chawla. Indians are doing well on many fronts and these achievements are being used in that "India Rising Hype". 70% people have no access to clean drinking water, literacy is just above 30% and so on. If you ask me, for the next 50 years India must just shut up and work hard towards these problems and not make any statements like "Saddam hanging is ridiculous" (coz people out there just dont care!!!). And then may be after those 50 years India can start dreaming about becoming a super power.

Happy Slip

This is a blog about a blog. Theres this girl Christine who blogs on YouTube. Nice ones aye! Initially I had to do a lot of thinking to get to whats the theme behind her blogging. Lately, I kinda have deciphered. Its about her Asian roots not being in harmony with her American outlook. This is a major issue these days. With so many immigrants coming in, it is really possible to be an Asian in all respects and not be a misfit. But there are some American born Asians who choose not to. A few of Christine's blogs are epitomes of issues of this class of people has with their parents. Heres the link....
Happy Slip

Lois Lane and Bruce Wayne!!!!

I have been watching a lot of cartoons lately. Superman - The Animated Series, Batman and The Justice League. I was shocked to know that Lois Lane falls in love with Bruce Wayne. I have not been able to come to peace with that fact yet. First of all, I was already very pissed with the movie Superman Returns. I mean the movie just killed the Lois and Clark chemistry by making them mom and dad (what the hell?). But this Lois Lane bitch completely bummed me out when she fell in love with Bruce. What kinda crap is that? Not that I am a feminist but you know what message this little incident gives out? It just says on a very high level that women just love powerful men. Atrocious! She likes Bruce Wayne (a super duper rich fuck) and Superman but she does not like a normal human hero Batman and a common man like Clark Kent! Huh!!! She turns down Bruce coz she comes to know he is Batman. Duh!!! I mean you dont want to give such examples to the kids right? Atleast I used to respect Lois coz she was a hard working woman with a nice attitude. This little incident, whoa, made me lose all respect for her........ :(

Why does bollywood like effeminate songs?

Ever heard the original Aadat and Woh Lamhe from Jal's album Aadat? They rock. But whats with the awful remakes in Kalyug and Zeher? They just killed the songs man, I am telling you. The remakes are lame and effeminate. The original ones had bass and all. You be the judge....
Original Atif Aslam
The link has the original songs. I am more than sure you have the lame versions!

Whats home for me???

I really used to think it was about Hyderabad and my little house there that made me so happy. On the flip side I thought it was the IIT campus that made me feel nostalgic. Well the recent trip to CA was like a visit to home. I only realized it then that it was not about the place, its about the people. Sister's place was a home away from home. And yeah, even at Princeton I am eternally nostalgic!!!