| Here's the new US travel map:
visited 10 states (20%)
Create your own visited map of The United States.
It's strange that I live on the west coast, but I've travelled more on the east.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) bluesmuse and I visited Jackson, New Hampshire over the weekend. It's a beautiful place with mountains, rivers, lakes and waterfalls all over the place. We'd have liked to do a lot more, but there was a thunderstorm all of Sunday, which made hiking a little dangerous.
I'd booked a car at AVIS - a sub-compact to be picked up at Boston airport. They had only one sub-compact left when I showed up. This one: Yeah, it was fun driving it around the mountains.
Anyway, I reached Toronto at around 15:15 yesterday, and took public transport to get to the office in downtown Toronto. Right on the harbourfront. I don't have my own pictures up yet, but it's the building right in front in this pic.
I'm off to Ottawa this afternoon, and will be speaking at Linux Symposium on Friday and Saturday.
Oh, and I hate how twitterfox keeps grabbing focus away from my browser and never returns it. | comments: Leave a comment   |
| My talk submission for Velocity 2008 was rejected. Looks like I might have some time to travel at towards the end of June.
If you're in the area at the time, you should totally go and watch Stoyan talk. | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| I moved to the US on the 29th December, and hadn't done much travelling since then. There were a few trips to San Francisco and San Jose, but they qualify as local now. Napa Valley was the only far off place that I'd been to. Most of my time was spent searching for houses and getting settled in. Jan passed, and it was only in Feb that I moved into my own place. I had nothing though, and my shipment from India wasn't due to arrive until late Feb, which meant that I had to stay put until then.
In the mean time, I had to give up the rental car, which also cut off all my local travel options. I was basically stuck in Sunnyvale with no option to get out.
My stuff finally arrived on the 23rd, and I had the house completely set up on the 24th. I could finally look at leaving town.
On the 29th, I packed my brand new backpack and headed off to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina for a couple of days. Good fun, and I shall write about it soon. I then flew to New York and got onto a flight to Mumbai. Spent a couple of days in Mumbai and then yesterday I flew to Delhi where code_martial and nadircruise met me at the airport and we drove to Chandigarh for bhavanar's wedding. Had a look around Chandigarh today and now I'm back in Mumbai. More about that later.
Will be heading to Bangalore tomorrow for a bunch of work, and then I'll be back on my way to SFO via Newark on Wednesday.
It's been short, but good. | | comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment |
| 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 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 |
| Too lazy to write a lot right now, so will see how this comes out.
I've been travelling a lot, but apart from one liners from the various cities that I've been in, I haven't posted much. I'll try and write a bit more here.
After the Cochin trip in June, I stayed put for a couple of weeks, and then flew to Mumbai on July 17th. Year number four with my sweetheart, and the last in this country. We couldn't be apart for that. Dinner was had, at a pretty restaurant near the sea in Bandra, but the company was prettier :)
Alas, couldn't stay there forever. Had to fly to Portland for the first ever Ubuntulive conference. Don't think I could have gotten a talk in if it wasn't the first time. I also met some really cool geeks there, including one from Pidgin, whose predecessor I've had some history with.
I also got into a dinner sponsored by Zend and MySQL for OSCON delegates, where I got a free mysql_proxy T-shirt, spoke German and French with a bunch of Ubuntu devels, and met Guido van Rossum. He thought he'd seen me before, but I think he was pulling my leg, since everyone else around claimed to have met him before. Once that was done, I headed off to Meet 'n Geek at the convention centre, where I met Larry Wall. Cool eh?
Headed off for San Francisco after that. As usual, I was selected for secondary security screening. Met Martin Poon at the airport. He'd done the bazaar workshop that I attended. His flight was delayed, and I soon realised that mine was too... but guess what? Free wifi at PDX.
Got in to SF too late to go to work, so just got to the hotel and called nvivek.
Had a bunch of work till early August, and then flew off to Vancouver. Man Canadian Immigration is the best evah. The guy told me it was about time I visited Canada.
A day and a half vancouvering (yes, I just verbed a place), and it was off to Toronto for me. Spent a couple of days there, met with old friends and family. Visited the Toronto office and met new friends there, and then I was off to Montreal (write up sitting on my laptop). Met ravi in the train, and my old classmate Sushil. Spent just one day there, but it was like being in France again. Back to Toronto, and readyied for the big trip.
Flew from Toronto to Boston to meet my baby. A lot was planned. Helping her set up house, and a trip to New York, among them.
We headed off to New York by the Fung Wah chinatown bus. $15 per head each way. Tickets good for any trip that day. Only problem is the terrible traffic getting out of Boston.
Had a nice time in New York, but could have been better with some more planning. Missed the Empire State Building because there was a really long line, but maybe next time. All the same, it's the company that matters isn't it? Thanks to my friend Rakesh Malpani for putting us up in his house in NJ while we were in NY.
Boston was cloudy for the most part, but we got to see a bit. The park was nice, as were the shows at Copley Square. The library was brilliant, but I wish we could have done the duck tours as well. The museum of science was bloody expensive, but MIT museum wasn't. The trip was topped off with a lovely evening lying in the park watching Happy Feet at the Hatch memorial shell, and a quiet dinner on Chales Street. I'll be back babe, to do it all and more again with you.
Left Boston for San Jose via DC, or at least that was the plan, but we all know how that turned out.
I was pretty annoyed when I got back to Bangalore, so headed out to Bombay for some family time. It had the desired effect, and I was back in Bangalore cheerful as ever, albeit with a very thin wardrobe.
My bag arrived in its own time, pushing my clothes washing cycle back to a little more than a week instead of every two days.
This was mid September, and was celebrated with another trip to Bombay, mainly because I knew I wouldn't be able to get back there until late October.
Back from bombay, I got ready for the trip to Delhi for Freed.in. The conference was great. Hospitality even better, and it was good to meet old friends.
Freed.in done, we all jumped onto a bus and headed off to Naggar and Manali. Yeah. Touched the Himalayas for the first time at Rohtang pass. One more of life's TODO items checked off. Got altitude sickness and motion sickness as well, or maybe it was just sinusitis. Don't know, don't care. I can was there.
Back from Manali to Delhi, 30 minutes of sleep and onto a flight for Bangalore. No time to go home, headed straight to the Taj for open hackday, and man was it great. Got another 30 minutes of sleep there over the two days, finished if off head banging to Thermal and a Quarter, who were missing the Quarter. They played well, and there wasn't a person present who didn't enjoy the show.
Head banging done, the purpose of my long hair was fulfilled, so I chopped it off Monday morning, and headed to Yahoo! Showcase. Didn't have much to do there except give away free tickets to the PID show. No, you can't watch it.
Christian Heilmann, who was here from London for Hackday stayed on through till Wednesday to do some training, and was he good. Not just the training, but the chats outside and just his pride in his work. I just hope some of it rubs on to our developers here.
Christian left last night, and with that, my days of sleeping are back... for a while. Sis will be here with Erika. Days gonna get noisy again, and it'll be good :)
'Night all. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| I'd visited Cochin a couple of weeks ago. My laptop was waiting for me there after making a lovely semi-world tour (it flew from Hong Kong to Canada then the US, then Singapore and finally ended up in Cochin). While I was there, I looked around the place, and I took pictures...
 | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| Sitting in teemus's house while Bangalore shut down, I finally wrote about my one day in Hong Kong. It's on my travel blog.
If this persists, I might finally write about California and London, and possibly do my Kerala writeup too.
Go check it out. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| My entire set of Rajasthani photos has finally been uploaded to Flickr. These pics were taken when most of KBCS-ETU visited Rajasthan for Pankaj's wedding in 2003. Jacob, Mehta, Joju and I stayed back to tour the state.
| | comments: 13 comments or Leave a comment |
| Been eating out a lot of late, and in different cities too.
Two meals in the air last Thursday, and a semi meal of chocolate brownies at Barista on MG Road. Saturday was at Pune, and ate at Café Coffee Day on FC Road. Sunday dinner was at Horn Ok Please on FC Road. Highly recommend this place.
We had hara bhaji pakodas and baby corn tandoori as starters. Main course was Makai mirch masala and a mushroom dish who's name I cannot remember. Rotis - 2 garlic naans for me. Others had tandoori naan, kulcha and laccha paratha.
Wednesday night was wada sambar at some place in Kharghar, and last night was at Lemon Grass in Bandra (Burmese Khowsuey and Mongolian Stir Fry with Schezwan sauce).
I wonder where I'll be eating tonight... hmm, well actually I already know. Will tell you when I'm done ;)
update: Plan was to eat at Bade Miya, but I was too tired to drive all the way there, so ended up having sizzler's at Gondola's in Bandra. | | comments: 11 comments or Leave a comment |
| 2003 was a good year. I haven't had a journal the entire year to check back on, but I do remember most of it. Let's see.
In Jan, I joined the ayttm team. The project had started on Dec 21st, and we used to be on savannah. Later moved to sourceforge as savannah wasn't as reliable.
I did four out station trips in 2003, six if you count December 2002 when I went to Goa and Mangalore.
February '03.
Was judge for the software design competition at Symbiosis' Gnunify. Benoy George won.
Visited Rajasthan for Pankaj's wedding, and then toured around. Was nice. Spent a week there. (Read all about it on the February page).
Soon after, Fred Noronha interviewed Colin and myself for ayttm, and the story was published all over the place, including the Hindustan Times and Express Computer
In May, I visited Talegaon and Belgaum for Tanmay's wedding. That was another fun filled trip. May 12th, I started with Alliance Française. Finished Level 1 in July, and Level 2 in December, and made a heck of a lot of new friends in the process.
I also started my journal in July, thanks to jace.
In August, I was invited for the 25th anniversary of Malhar. They interviewed several past OCs, and me (I was never OC), and made a video of it, and gave each of us a CD. Pretty cool.
Somewhere down the line we got webcam support into libyahoo2, and in December, got ayttm to do webcam sending. Coooool.
Vasistha - my project at NCST - became mature enough to release to the public, and we put up a demo on the NCST site.
NCST (now CDAC Mumbai) had taken on the role of pushing Opensource development, and my boss, sasi, asked me to take care of this area, given my existing experience in the field, and knowledge of licences and existing products. That was cool.
December saw me visiting Bangalore after a long time. Met up with many lj friends... hmm, maybe joining linux-bangalore and lj was just a ruse to ensure that I had friends when I'd reached bangalore :P
Got back, and got myself a new old Maruti Esteem ('95 model), and I like it so far.
Finally, the international herald tribune interviewed me for work on ayttm. A nice end to a good year.
Let's hope 2004 is as good. | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| Breakfast at the Guest House was at 8am, and none of the phone booths in Goa open before 7, so I tried to get some sleep. Slept for about 15 minutes and then went in for my shower. About 7:15 I thought I'd find an STD booth, and call home to tell them that I'd arrived. The STD booth is a short while away from the Guest House, so before leaving, I called some friends, who live in Goa.
As it turns out, the 3rd of December is a state wide holiday in Goa... it's the feast of St. Francis Xavier. The university was closed, as were most offices. My friends Vinitta and Valerie were both home when I called, but Val was on her way to work. Vinitta wasn't working, and came to pick me up at about 8:30. I called home before that, and got back for breakfast of medu wada, filled with coconut, and sambar :)
Vinitta and I went back to her place to say hi to everyone, and then off to pick up Charlene, and then headed down to Bogmalo beach. Stopped at Neville's place on the way, and had soup and bread sticks.
The beach was so amazing. It's really long, and there were about 15 people there in all. The water was blue. The sky was blue. The sand was yellow-white. I still wish I'd carried my swim suit. Had to go and leave it in my bag!
We had lunch at a small beach side restaurant. It wasn't expensive, but they had no bread! The family that runs the place managed to get some sliced bread for us. Lunch was king fish, and prawns. We sat around there for a long while, solving the crossword in the newspaper, and just chatting. Took a few pictures too, but they're with Vinitta.
Took the bus back to Panjim. We had to pass Dabolim airport on the way. There's also a few bridges across the Zuari river. At one point of time we were on the bridge, there was a train on the parallel bridge, a few boats below, and a plane overhead. Cool.
Had a great day, and got back to the university guest house at around 7pm. There isn't much transport after 7, but Vinitta dropped me back to Bambolim on her bike. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| As part of our teaching work at NCST, we are required to evaluate student projects for the modules that we teach. This year I was sent off to Goa University to evaluate the students at VIT Goa. The evaluations were to be held on the 4th, so I decided to get there by the 3rd.
My choice of transport was the Volvo bus from Paulo Travels. It came highly recommended, and the timing was ideal. The bus left Bandra at 7 pm, which means I could get a full day's work done on Monday the 2nd, and have enough time to drop home before getting to the bus stand.
On an average, a bus ride from Mumbai to Goa takes around 16 hours. The train takes less time, but the station is far off from the University... really far off.
The bus ride was uneventful... to begin with. They played some music through till we reached Vashi - where the last of the passengers boarded. Then the night's movie started. They started to show `Bend it like Beckham', but stopped it about a minute into the move and switched to `Aamdani Atthanni Kharchaa Rupaiya'. If you haven't seen the movie... hey, lucky you!
The bus stopped at about 10pm for a half hour dinner break. I didn't have anything heavy as I was travelling. Tried to sleep after that, but the confounded movie was too loud. The disk started skipping around 11:30, so they shut it off. What a relief!
The ride was okay after that, but I couldn't get much sleep. Kept drifting in and out of a semi dormant state, and decided to give up. Spent the rest of the night watching the stars. The sky was completely clear, and there was no moon out. The Ghats at night are ideal for
star gazing. It was absolutely brilliant.
I tried calculating the time by which constellation had reached its zenith. It was fun as I had to do a few back-of-the-envelope calculations in my head, and trying to remember which constellation was associated with each month of the year.
We stopped for Diesel at 2:30, and about 4am, we crossed Samantwadi and entered Pernem. This was completely unexpected. If we were entering Goa at 4am, I'd be in Panjim before sunrise. Not a nice time to be out without transport.
We finally got to Panjim at 6am, and I had no idea what to do. Dr. Kamat had told me to take a Rickshaw from the bus stand to the University and that I should pay about Rs.60. The Rickshaw driver quoted 80 saying that it was still night rates. With night temperatures fairly low, and having had no sleep, I decided to take it. We got to the University Guest House at 6:30am, and I checked in without any trouble. My name was already in the reservation book. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Hey chappies, how are you'll doing? I'm doing jolly good out here. Arrived in the UK on Tuesday the 5th of September, but didn't do too much during the first few days. Spent a few days visiting family, so I won't bore you with that. Let's jump straight to my trips around the place.
The first Saturday, I had to go visit my mum's friend in the South West. I'm staying in Luton (North of London). Had to change trains five or six times to get there because there was a dead body on the tracks.
The stations here all have very good directions and signboards everywhere. Each platform serves only particular destinations, and these are well marked on the foot over bridge as well as at the ticket booking office. On the platform there are television screens that tell you when the next train is due, and if it is late, what time it will actually arrive. This is updated every minute. It also has all the stations that the train will stop at.
There are multiple train operators in the UK, and all of them run through London. Try and imagine how they coordinate with each other. One can buy a single ticket for all these operators as well as most of the buses that run through London. There are travel zones within which each ticket is valid.
On Monday, I visited London - alone. Took the train to King's Cross, and then switched to the Victoria Line subway to Baker Street.
The first and most obvious visit on Baker Street was to 221b - the home of Mr. Holmes. There's the Sherlock Holmes museum there and it's filled with stuff from Doyle's books. There's even letters to Holmes from people all over the world. There's a guy dressed as Holmes standing outside the station handing out business cards, and there's also a statue of Holmes there. Admission for adults is £6.50, but if you're a student, carry your ID card - you get discounts on everything in the US and the UK.
After Holmes, there's Madame Tussaud's. The planetarium and Wax museum are attached from the inside. The line for the Wax museum is huge, but there is no line for the planetarium. You can buy a combined ticket for £2.50 less. You can also get coupons from the train station where you buy your travel card and get further discounts of up to £2.00.
The planetarium show is pretty cool, but could have been better. After that, the wax museum is really cool. The whole place is amazing. One can spend quite some time there.
One can also get the London City Bus Tour from Baker Street. It costs £12.50, but the Thames catamaran cruise can be added on for £2.50. The tour is great and there's running commentary for the entire route. The cruise also has a good commentary, and shows you many sites that you can only see from the river. The Thames is pronounce Tems by the way, the 'T' is pronounced like the hard 'T' in Hindi.
I stayed late in London that night. At about 8:00 pm, I went down to the Tower. It closes at 5:00 pm, but I just walked around the outside. Walked across the Tower Bridge. It is probably the only bridge in the world that is a suspension and a draw bridge.
Walked along the other side of the Thames to the London Bridge. The New London Bridge is a short distance from the original one built by the Romans. At that time, it was the only connection between the two banks of the river - apart from boat that is.
On Tuesday, I left for Nottingham. One of my friends is studying there. I spent the whole of Tuesday there. At night, she took me to a French restaurant called Café Rouge. The weirdest thing was that I was an indian boy eating in a french restaurant in the UK, wearing a Pennsylvania T-Shirt. We tried to go to a club after that - there were five of us by now, but they were all closed. One thing about this country - everything closes early. When shops say that they are open late, they mean 9 pm. English restaurants are open till 9 or 9:30, while others (French, Thai, Chinese etc) are open till 11:30 pm.
Spent the rest of the night working in the computer lab at the University of Nottingham. Took the 10:35 bus in the morning back to Luton, which was supposed to get back by 12:35. Unforunately though, there are huge protests over the rise in petrol prices and the M1 was blocked, so we had to take the A5. Finally got into Luton at 2 pm.
Today (Friday) went with my aunt to watch Buddy (The Buddy Holly Story) at the Strand. It's a play by the way for those of you who didn't know. We had seats almost at the front, so could see every note being played. It's an amazing play and if any of you have the chance, go and see it. Goes on for about two and a half hours and every moment is great. There are also a few other plays showing right now, including the ever running Phantom of the Opera, The booked a year in advance Lion King, Mama Mia, Whisper in the Wind and many more.
All in all, this is an amazing place to visit, but only if you have a lot of cash on you. Everything is really expensive here. The pound's about 54 Rupees right now, and most stuff is around 10 Pound.
That's all for my report from the UK, ciao all. | | comments: Leave a comment |
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