Pradeep has captured a fantastic snap of a lightning bolt on his Sony Cybershot W120 (after 10 minutes of waiting) from his apartment in Singapore.

Jobless people are  !!!

It’s a saturday evening in this part of the world.  The winter is about to end.  Days are pretty long (sunset starts only by 7 or 7 30), and there is this day light savings thing too. I am just back after a game of  tennis with friends.  It’s been a long time since I wrote on this space.  I had been active elsewhere.   Here are a

Few movies that I watched :

Schindlers List, Letters from Iwo Jima, The Thin Red Line, Sergeant York, Apocalypse Now, In Bruges, No Country for Old Men, Forrest Gump, The Deer Hunter, Saving Private Ryan, Slumdog Millionaire, Primal Fear, Enemy at the Gates, Behind Enemy Lines, Safar E Ghadehar, Che, Sholay, Fire, Earth, Water, Illusionist, Mall Cop, Seven Pounds, Shawshank Redemption, The Usual Suspects, The SAW Series, Final Destination Series, Pink Panther Series, The Bourne Series, Memento,Valkyrie, Parineeta, Parzania, Pyaasa, Ramchand Pakistani, Khuda Ke Liye, The Wednesday, Mathrubhoomi, Dho Bhiga Zameen and Santhosh Sivan’s Before the Rains and Tahaan.

Few books and articles that I’ve been reading:

Century of the City (Rockefeller Foundation), Super Crunchers (Ian Ayres) & yeah – my subscriptions on the google reader. Archive of my shared articles can be found here.

Few things that I ve been doing regularly:

Learning spanish & preparation for one of the ‘wants to’ in the About page.

Few places I visited:

Las Vegas in Nevada, Grand Canyon in Arizona &  Lava Springs in Idaho. And yeah, I had a 22 mile cycle ride to the  Utah State Capitol in Salt Lake City.

Few restaurants that I tried:

Thai: (Sawadee, Thai Siam),  Nepali: (Himalayan Kitchen), Indian:  (Ganesh), Pakistani: (Qaderi, Curry in a Hurry), Mexican: (Taco Bell)

Few things that I bought:

A bicycle, a creative zen media player, a Canon powershot 110 IS, a 400 GB external portable HDD & a USB hub.

And I’ve been learning a very important skill to master – cooking.   These days, I can make dal, sambar and a few curries fairly well.  Good enough to survive here.

I found a big bunch of tintin comics on the internet. Reading them after a long long time. One of the few comics which I loved reading when in school. Just finished Tintin in the land of the soviets.   He, Captain Haddock and Snowy are off to India now.

Here are a few snaps clicked on a G Phone during a drive to my apartment from office.  This place is fully surrounded by mountains and extremely cold at times :

& finally, here are a few snaps near my apartment:

I just read isro’s press release.  It’s extremely exciting to know that Chandrayaan has successfully been placed on lunar orbit.  This is a landmark in the history of Indian space exploration. Kudos to everyone involved in this.

I was there at Shaastra 2007 when a few scientists directly involved in the Lunar Mission briefed about it’s objectives and roadmap. The way ISRO has collaborated with other countries and executed this project shows India’s increasing role in world space exploration.  Way to go !!

It has been a week since I arrived @ Salt Lake City, Utah on a work assignment.  It was on very short notice.  I could not even call up a few good friends to tell.  The last week’s schedule was pretty tight and I did not have enough time to blog.

Today was relatively free.  Sakthi and I drived to the Alpine Loop in the afternoon.

Sawasdee readers!  Stay tuned.

It has been over a month since Mom and Dad came to Chennai.  We’ve rented an apartment near Guindy.  Life’s pretty different these days.  Believe me or not,  I wake up at 6 in the morning and get ready to work.  I get my hot cup of tea in the morning.  I run a 100 metre dash to catch my office bus just in time.  Luckily, this bus isnt crowded and I always manage to get a window sided seat.  For someone who hates the smell of a bus and has to spend over an hour in it continuously, that is a good deal.  I settle down with a book and switch on the FM radio.  I am thankful that these radio stations exist.  Though it is mostly senseless rambling,  I cant imagine a return journey in my office bus without them.  I come back home usually after 8.  My usual dinner of chappathis with dal would be ready.  Television fills the final couple hours of my day. 

Hmm.. It is half past midnight already.  Time to sleep.  We’ve planned for an early morning visit to a nearby temple.  Logging off for now..

I’ve  been out of the world of internet for quite a while now.  The last blog post which I wrote was 4.5 months back.  The number of times I checked my emails during these months is a single digit number.  Reason has always been inaccessibility to the internet.  I had been almost unconnected and unreachable to most friends.  I ve been moving around in this metro without a phone for the last two months.  I’ve been advised, cursed and even threatened to buy one.   I did not budge.  :)  Not until last week. I was dragged to the nearest mobile store by the ’group of 3′ and asked to choose one.  I bought a Nokia 3110 ( before losing the right to choose).  

I am blogging from my sister’s laptop and will have access to the internet for the next two days.  Hopefully I ll write more during this weekend.

Saturday – IPL:

I had been to the Rajasthan Royals Vs Chennai Super Kings match @ the Chepauk stadium this saturday. Friend Nandha called me up promptly when he got an extra ticket. The last time when I had been to a stadium to watch a cricket match was the 3rd and 4th day of an India-Australia Test match in October 2004. It ended in a draw because of rain on the final day. Though not a great follower of the IPL matches, getting a taste of live T20 cricket on a saturday without spending a rupee was not something to let go. We entered the stadium an hour before the match. It started with a couple of songs by Shankar Mahadevan. Sivamani set the crowd dancing to his drum beats. Baring the sun was the toughest part. The cheerleaders (especially that of the Jaipur team) added color. We found a place close enough to keep an eye on them.  As the Rajasthan Royals were tearing apart the Chennai Team’s bowing, a section of the crowd started throwing bottles and paper balls at the Jaipur Cheerleaders.  Crazy people. The cheerleaders stopped dancing from then on except for rare hip shakes to Sivamani’s beats. Sigh! Overall, it was an electrifying atmosphere. More than 400 runs in less than 3 hours. The crowd was crazy to dance, sing and shout for every single ball. I enjoyed every moment of it except the ones when

• The guy in front started smoking.
• The 15 rupees 7′UP that we bought from the stadium counter tasted like plain soda . Infact it was.

Sunday – Mamallapuram:

Here are a few snaps from the trip with my sister, cousins and aunt to Mahabalipuram.

After reading this bit of news, I was reminded of a poll that Ajay created long ago. Here is the poll question – “How safe is your drinking water? How much importance do you give to find out purity of water that you consume daily?

Here are the poll results:

Among the 175 netizens who voted,
39.43 % believe that any packed water is mineral water and safe to drink
21.14 % prefer water from purifiers or boiled water.
17.14 % seem to suspect duplicacy though they trust brand names
11.42 % have other work to do

This poll was by no means a perfect attempt to guage public opinion on this issue. 175 is too small a number to reflect the whole of Chennai. But even then, this statistic does have some meaning. It reflects the importance level that we attach to quality of water. As the news article suggests, number of people affected by water borne diseases in the city is high and increasing. Avoid drinking water from roadside hotels and shops. Even from the vendors on the beach. Do not assume that the water is clean. Watch out for fake brands. Dont forget that the unknown ‘XYZ’ water bottle that you buy in a hurry at a railway station / bus stand might well take you to the hospital. I would suggest to use boiled water always.