I started Tennis and was going great… i was slowly getting into a new shape (from being round) and then thunder struck… quite literally. An unusually long monsoon in Bangalore wrecked my fitness plans. I am a person who hates to work out in a gym. I prefer to be outside, enjoying it while sweating it out. Anyway, the rains coupled with a project deadline has brought me back to my original shape. I feel sluggish and bloated So i decided to do something about it.

I used to run in the mornings and loved it until i started tennis. I decided to take it up again and am following the Couch to 5K running schedule on CoolRunning.com adapted by Robert Ullrey as a podcast for iPod

I have started week 1 today and I feel so great that I am writing about it here. Let’s see how far I can go? No, I dont doubt my resolve, but if the rains recede and tennis can start, i would prefer that though or probably both if i can and if i have time

I am a big fan of Karaoke. I have been having a lot of trouble getting karaoke tracks to sing along with. I used to do it with KaraFun (which BTW is an awesome karaoke player) and some .kar files I found on various sites, but it rarely had my favorites in there.

Jo, one of my friends and one of my favorite karaoke singers gave me a tip that’s proven to be an oasis in a desert. A video on youTube on how to create your own karaoke tracks. This should make life so much simpler. Thanks Jo and for you all… Enjoy!

+ = ???

Dont get me wrong. I love Mumbai. Though I am not a mumbaikar or a maharashtrian (I belong to a land called the Mallu-land, whose people are there everywhere), but Mumbai has created quite an awesome array of personalities. But the recent run of events bemuse me and even make me a bit sad.

A certain “Mumbai Indian” has been in the news for all the !@#$% reasons that the name of the IPL team from the city strikes me as very oxymoronic. His antics has tainted the name of the most vibrant city so much so that I dread going to mumbai next month, even though I am not a “north-indian”.

As if our country didn’t have enough troubles, here’s someone trying to divide people by geography and the team from his city is claiming to represent the nation (at least in name). What should I say

I have known several Bengalis since college and I have to say that they (well most, exceptions are always there) have either an impeccable sense of humor or are greatly talented. Sarcasm kind of comes very natural to them (check out The Great Bong).

Well anyway, here’s some brilliant examples of the Bong snub on the Kolkata Knight Riders website

Saw this pic at my Spanish Institute on Sunday. Thought about it the whole day… The feeling sunk in even more when Joy called me saying that an idea that we had long back has been converted in an exact fashion into a website

This sunday, I was at the Jyoti Nivas College in Koramangala, Bangalore for an exam of a correspondence course that I am pursuing. For those who are unaware… Jyoti Nivas is a girls only college and quite a famous one at that in Bangalore.

So here is the deal. I went in to write the exam. I am writing it and suddenly I need to go to the restroom
BOOM! A thought strikes me. Since its a girl’s college, I am sure they have no “MEN” “WOMEN” restrooms. So what do I do?

• Do I walk into what is available and risk embarrassment at the expense of my relif (from the problem at hand) ?
• Do I try to hold it off until I am out?

This was quite puzzling for me that I spent a whole 15 minutes in between the exam deliberating what to do. By the time THE URGE had subsided, so had the time to write the exam. I still wonder, why has’nt anyone thought of this?

Got this as a forward… thought its worth posting this
Over the weekend, I filled up my car’s fuel tank, and I thought fuel has become really expensive after the recent price hike.

But then I compared it with other common liquids and did some quick calculations, and I felt a little better.

To know why, see the results below - you’ll be surprised at how outrageous some other prices are !

Diesel (regular) in Mumbai : Rs.36.08 per litre

Petrol (speed) in Mumbai : Rs.52 per litre a

Coca Cola 330 ml can : Rs.20 = Rs.61 per litre

Dettol antiseptic 100 ml Rs.20 = Rs.200 per litre

Radiator coolant 500 ml Rs.160 = Rs.320 per litre

Pantene conditioner 400 ml Rs.165 = Rs.413 per litre

Medicinal mouthwash like Listerine 100 ml Rs.45 = Rs. 450 per litre

Red Bull 150 ml can : Rs.75 = Rs.500 per litre

Corex cough syrup 100 ml Rs.57 = Rs. 570 per litre

Evian water 500 ml Rs. 330 = Rs. 660 per litre

Rs. 500 for a litre of WATER???!!! And the buyers don’t even know the source (Evian spelled backwards is naive.)

Kores whiteout 15 ml Rs. 15 = Rs. 1000 per litre

Cup of coffee at Barista 150 ml Rs. 40 = Rs. 267 per litre

Old Spice after shave lotion 100 ml Rs. 175 = Rs. 1750 per litre

Pure almond oil 25 ml Rs. 68 = Rs. 2720 per litre

And this is the REAL KICKER…

HP deskjet colour ink cartridge 21 ml Rs.1900 = Rs. 90476 per litre!!!

Now you know why computer printers are so cheap? So they have you hooked for the ink!

So, the next time you’re at the pump, don’t curse our honorable Petroleum minister - just be glad your car doesn’t run on cough syrup, after shave, coffee, or God forbid, printer ink !

I am at my home town in Trivandrum now, having a good time with my parents & grandma after so long. A break from the fast paced RIA world to stop me from burning out Yesterday, my cousin came to visit us from a small village near Kottayam in Kerala. Though he is computer literate like most young indians, he still looks at a computer as a necessary evil, nothing more. As he came in, I was listening to music on my laptop and doing some work.

I offered him to play with my T61 and showed him some stuff on my system. He observed with a clam but nervous demeanor and I felt like he wanted me to stop. I offered him my laptop to play with and left him with the PC and went out of the room to get a drink.

I come back and I see that the PC was shut down, and he was happily playing with my mobile. A moderate Sony K750I at that. He wanted me to show him how to take pics, listen to music and even browse internet. He advised me to go for one with 3G support. He was immersed in it, long into the eveining until… He saw my iPod. He was instantly drawn to the iPod and handled it with poise as if he was born to play with it. He wanted to chat up on the new ipod Touch and its features.

I was left wondering. What is the device of the Gen NXT. A PC is defenitely not going to be on the top of the list for sure. A mobile? An ipod/iphone like devices? The best answer i could come up was that the Gen NXT devices will be all personal and compact. One that allows people to engage with it all the time uninterruptedly and not just in the confines of the office or home.

Product companies should take notice of this (I think they already are). Times of thrusting things down people’s throats is over. The current generation wants things on-demand, lightning fast, to work across devices and to be engaged in it always…

Yesterday, I completed my first level basic certificate course from Instituto Hispania. Though it did eat into all my weekends for the past 3 months, it has been a long time since I had so much fun. We started off with about 10 people in the class and then people kept coming and dropping out. Finally me, Mythilli, Ramya, Joshua and Mehdia were the ones to write the finals. I guess a couple more of our friends will write the exam soon.

As i said, I haven’t had so much fun in a long time… from Sabita’s wise cracks to Mythilli’s scholarly demure, from Joshua’s “bananadose” to Mehdia’s cheerfulness, from Anil’s determination to Prashant’s spanish. It really was an awesome time…

What was most enjoyable of course was Pari’s teaching. I was pleasantly surprised how well an Iranian can teach Spanish Pari was most tolerent of our antics in class and happily gelled into our group. She was more a friend than a teacher. She would plead us to do our work and pretend to be angry when we did not do our homework… Pari, it was awsome studying under you.

And yesterday, after the exam, we all headed to Casa Picola for our “Graduation Lunch”. I hope to see all of them in the Intermediate level, except for Ramya, to whom I wish all the best in her new life at IIMA. It was amazing meeting an MIT senior at a place as unlikely as this

At Casa Picola for the Graduation Lunch

A journey ended and another begins… Now onward to the Intermediate level. Hope it will be as fun as the basic course was…

¿Cómo se me?

Bien, pero un poco nervioso porque a los exámenes…

How am I?

Good, but a bit nervous because of the exam…

The exam fever from the college days was back as I was preparing for my Spanish Level 1 Mid-Term today.

For a person like me, who can manage english grammar pretty well but doesnt know what those rules are called, stuff like “Adjetivos demostrativos“, “Pronombres“, “Objetos directos e indirectos” more so in a new language was a daunting task.

Pari (our sweet spanish teacher or Nuestro dulce maestra español) kept telling us we would do well and we were wishing that we had the confidence that she was showing in us.

Anyway, the exam is done and I would say it went quite well. I mixed up between Cual & Cuanto in my oral exam but I would say I did ok, considering that I was bedridden for most of last week with a bronchial infection.