| ||||||||
| Happy year gone by. Yep, it was. I have so much to write about, but have had so little time. I'd ended 2006 with a couple of photography experiments, and pushed those further in 2007. A lot of photos all year. Whether they're interesting or not, they're mine, and they're associated with memories that I have, and that's what I like about them. I started out the year with the geekiest birthday cake ever! Thanks guys. This even beat the magnetic strip card key cake my mum made when I turned 21. I then visited the Leela Barista for the first time in my life, and I'm so glad I did that. That place has been quite eventful for me. This was followed up the geeky bits with the first ever, and to date, only, BarCampCambridgeLayout, prompted by the Cauvery river verdict, and then the travelling and conferences started. The first trip was to Kerala for a friend's wedding. I flew down to Kozhikode from Mumbai, took the bus around the place to get to Irity. The wedding was in my friend's villate - in his house actually, and I had a chance to roam around the place while I was there. The area is very scenic. The next trip, later that month, was to Delhi, for LinuxAsia 2007. I spent just a day there, and spoke about ayttm, but also had a chance to meet Raju, Kishore, Gora and Karunakar. Back to Bangalore, and the next conference I ended up speaking at was the Web2.0 conference put up by the CSI. I spoke about Microformats. The muse and I also attended a classical music concert at the NCPA, which was very entertaining. In March, I headed out to California for a whole bunch of conferences. There was the front end summit and the and another internal conference, both at Yahoo! at the start of the month, and then the Open Source CMS conference, also at Yahoo!, towards the end of the month. Also visited Muir Woords, Alviso and the Rocicrucian while I was there. Topped off March with Startup School, which was very enlightening. April is best left never mentioned. Old friends know that it has, for a very long time, been the worst of months for me. As expected, I did nothing in April... well, almost. I tried to upgrade Gnome on FreeBSD 4. Oh, don't do that, or don't do that in April at least. Then I started feeling stressed. I was out of action in May for a while. Head spinning a lot. Doc said it's vertigo, and treated me for that. I also had to get my blood pressure down, but it didn't help. Anyway, cooked for myself after that, and got better eventually to continue running through the year. June brought the rains, and with it a whole bunch of monsoon sky shots. Isn't the Mumbai sky just amazing at that time of the year? A lot of the smog cleared up, and the most colourful sunsets around. And so, I headed back to Kerala. This time to Kochi. The mission - pick up my laptop. The outcome - another great Kerala experience. Went down to Fort Kochi twice using the local ferry, did a boat ride on the backwaters, walked through a little village, got drenched in the rain, and in short, had a lot of fun. Oh yeah, I also picked up my laptop. And that's not where it stops. In July, I flew to the US again, this time to Portland. Destination, the first Ubuntulive conference. It's a good thing it was the first, because there's no way I'd have gotten a talk in otherwise. Met a whole bunch of geeks there, and went through my first GPG key signing party. Flew down to California for a couple of days and had Brazilian food at a Cuban restaurant in Japantown in San Jose, before starting my long vacation. First on my list was Vancouver. I spent a day and a half there, travelling around the city, just doing the tourist thing. I have to figure out the bus system. Stop number two was Toronto. Family, friends, the Niagara Falls, and again, more touring. Then took Coach Canada off to Montreal. Unplanned, so only spent a day there. Met Sushil and his wife, and had a good time practising my French. I then headed down to Boston to meet ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} bluesmuse who'd just moved there. We made a trip to New York and New Jersey before doing the whole Boston thing... and there's a lot more to do.My route back was weird because I booked badly at the start, but the result was an overnight stay at Washington DC/Virginia, lost luggage, missing a couple of flights, and almost missing my flight back to Bangalore. Well, I made it back, so that's a good thing. Are we done yet? Not on your Nellie. Started September with a few trips to Mumbai, and then organised PubStandards Bangalore. Man, did that turn out well. I did get my bag back, so that was good, and then there was the planning for Yahoo! Bangalore Hackday, and then I flew off to Delhi again. This time it was for Freed.in - that cool conference put up by the ilug-delhi guys. The conference was followed by a trip to Manali... well, Naggar actually, but no one's complaining. It was awesome fun. Got back to Bangalore, and didn't even have time to go home. I headed straight to the Taj for Bangalore Hackday, and stayed there for a long long time. This was the beginning of something wonderful. I then made many trips to Mumbai, mainly to get my passport renewed, but in the bargain, made an impromptu visit to Vasai, and did another off route tour of Mumbai with my cousin, and then a visit to Karkala for another friend's wedding, then Managlore. Heck, I actually did 4 different cities in 3 days. Travel was put on hold for the end of the year, mainly because I didn't have a valid passport. I spoke at FOSS.IN/2007, but had to pull one of my talks because I was just too tied up with too many things. Almost missed most of the conference sitting in the hack centre, and I managed, after much battling with the website to get a date for my us visa. Speaking of battling with websites, I'm getting seriously annoyed with lazy webdevs who thing that "okay" is a superlative compliment. I finally closed the photography project I'd started in December '06, and released it to the world. My Mumbai in Black and White series is what I refer to. Closed the year with Christmas in Mumbai, and then the big move. On the 29th December 2007, I boarded a Lufthansa flight at Mumbai, destination San Francisco via Frankfurt, and I moved. I am now a resident of the state of California. On the way, I saw something interesting. I saw the sun rise twice on the same day. I also saw it set in the East. Here are the two sunrises. I couldn't get the sunset on camera unfortunately. The last few days of the year were spent in the Bay Area. bluesmuse met me at the airport, where I picked up a Red Chevy Cobalt. Since then we've done Sunnyvale, Napa Valley, Mountain View, Concord, and New Year's eve in San Francisco watching fireworks by the Bay Bridge.So, I'll now let the sun set on 2007 and say hello to 2008. We've already done San Francisco and San Jose this year, and there's a lot more in store. New Year's resolutions? None :) | ||||||||
comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment   |
bluesmoon's journalLog in Create a LiveJournal Account Learn more