Photography - the old NEW hobby

Hi, all

Its been a long time since i had posted anything on this blog. Reasons are simple, i m too busy with my work, havent found time to travel or to take a few snaps. There are too many things happening over here, couldnt catch up with everything in these schedules. Well the good thing is that i managed to find a small trip to coimbatore (fotos below) and an across the border view of kerala for a couple of days and i have got a new prosumer camera (FujiFilm s5700) for myself and what next would you expect me to do all these times... its only been fotography.
Coimbatore Trip

More pics here

Photos near pallavaram hill

More Pics

and i seem to be learning a good amount of photography skills as well, look at my best photographs collection.

Art of Photography

Stavanger - Norway

Norway was my next travel destiny after Gwalior trip this April. I have been waiting for a long time to run-away from this tengshn-filled IT world. No trips in May, June and July meant that I have been waiting for something big to happen, never thought that I would end up travelling to the top end of the hemisphere.

This one was to a place called "Stavanger" in southern Norway, a small city with the Size of 1/17^th of Chennai and a population of 120 K. Stavanger houses the Global Headquarters of Corporater AS, where I am designated to work for a couple of weeks. Stavanger is a beautiful place to live in, its lush green everywhere cold air blowing all the times, the place is quite windy, but you can manage if you are not as thin as me.

When I first got the info that I will need to travel to Norway, I was kinda worried, I thought is this some sort of punishment for not doing the work right , I thought Norway is completely filled with ice and I will shiver to death if I had to go there. But only when i m there I came to know that Norway is not that bad (at least Stavanger is not that bad). I never got a chance to see the ice. It doesn't mean that it doesn't snow in Stavanger. It jus means that you are reading an august-posted-blog in December (wake up ☺ ). The good climate in Stavanger is because of the hot winds from the Atlantic Ocean. So if you end up in this beautiful place in the end of august you have 2 choices to call yourself, Lucky or Extremely Lucky.

Technology and Norway

Norway has a lack of human density, for a city which can be called as one by global standards (back in India, Stavanger will not even qualify for town-status) there are very few people to live in. If you walk on the road you won't see a human being for miles. And this is a country which tries to compensate its lack of human resources with technology. Almost every shop in Stavanger has a website (bolia.com, kvadrat, deal.no, datakjeden, it goes on…). Wherever we go you will end-up finding a wide amount of automation in systems that were otherwise considered to be manual. I suppose there are very few police (I am even afraid if there are any), becoz I have never seen a police guy during my whole trip, other than the guy who was diverting traffic towards airport on the last day. It seems that all traffic violations will be billed at you residential address. Hotel check-in and check-out is automated and you are debited on your credit-card (I don't know about others, but at smarthotel.no it is the case). It s really funny that you don't find these designations in Norway which we consider to be assumed as default in India, I have listed some of there

• Lift Operator
  
• Bus Conductor - (I am from Chennai, yes)
  
• A guy issuing tickets for parked vehicles
  
• Traffic Constables
  
• Room Boy
  
• Security (Other than the guys with big guns at NATO office)
  

Norway and India are at two different ends when it comes to population, one is suffering from decrease other by increase.

Prices and Lifestyle

"Norway is Expensive", there is nothing much you can do about it. So don't try be creative to find best deals. The best thing to do in Norway with prices is to forget about it , stop converting NOK2INR or stop going out. I did the first two and it did really worked out well.

Here is a small indicative of prices in Stavanger

• Coffee = 20 NOK (140 INR vs 5~10 INR)

• Coke(1/2 lt) = 32 NOK ( 224 INR vs 20 INR)
  

• Cigarattes = 80 NOK (560 INR vs 40 INR)

• Beer = 60 NOK (420INR vs 63 INR)

• Mentos = 15 NOK ( 105 INR vs 15 INR)

• Bus Ticket (Stavanger to Sandes in a Volvo) = 27 NOK (200 INR vs 20 INR in Chennai, 40 INR in Banagore)

The prices are relatively 10 times of what they cost in India, Its infact quite simple to manage, just assume you are spending Rupees instead of Kronas, 20 Rs for a coffee: ok, 27 rs for bus ticket : ok

About the people, Norwegians are shy and nationalistic. They are not open to talk to strangers, but they are helpful. If you ask them a route to some place, they wont say " I am shy i wont talk to you",instead they do help you :) . One strange think about Norwegians is their proud feeling about their country, they are always kind of asking you about Norway, well thats funny.

To be honest, the strangest thing about Norwegians is their insatiable appetite for acknowledgment:

“What do you think of Norway?”

“What do you think of Norway’s nature, athletes, politicians, musicians and (yes, I really heard
this one:) women?”

"why one earth someone expects me to comment about Norwegian politics in 3 days"

I’m not going to claim to be in possession of any facts or statistics, and perhaps the fact that I’m not a Norwegian and that I personally knew very little about Norway before travelling here, colors my impression. However, I do think the truth of the matter is that the vast majority of the Earth’s inhabitants do not like or dislike Norway. Quite frankly, it’s not that they don’t think much of Norway—it’s that they don’t think much about Norway.

And, to be honest, I’m envious by this kind of proud feeling among people.

Nature

Fjords

Fjords are crazy formations of sea that you will find only in Norway. Fjord looks like a river but it has the source at the other end. They are a formation of sea towards the land. The complete western coastline of Norway is covered by fjords and they are beautiful.

Pulpit Rock

Pulpit rock is the destination point for any traveller to Stavanger. its a view of a fjord from a cliff top 600 mts above the sea level and a near 8 km mountain climbing track.
Its sheer fun to be on top of cliff to view the fjord, with a fear of being blown away by air.

DalsNuten

Dalsnuten is near Sandes (* a twin town of Stavanger), its a small mountain( i am not used to the word "hill", otherwise i would have called it a hill). this is a place where my mountain climbing skills are put to test and certified a "fit". Its a easy climb, i was shivering in the beginning but i was able to catchup and do it with ease later on.

Cricket for Brazillians

We found friends with the two brazillian guys Christien and Roberto who had come into stavanger to wind-up a business deal with us. We were discussing about lifestyles in our countries, prices and a wide range of things. Finally we went to a restaurant to have pizza, and we were discussing about sports, thats when Roberto quoted about cricket saying

"Oh that strange game where you hit the ball with some kind of a stick instead of kicking it..." I just managed to imagine some batsman kicking the cricket ball to boundary... ha ha ha :). Then it was hard time for both of us (maddy and me) to explain the game with little references to baseball. I was really amazed when someone asked about cricket to me, in here its a part of your daily lifestyle that you can't imagine a person not knowing about cricket.

One more amazing fact about the people there is, many of them know about "Vishwanathan Anand" more than "Sachin Tendulkar", well that hurts me badly.

Beach

Our team mates had planned a team outing on a friday . This is the funniest one, from the morning everyone were talking about this team outing at the beach, I am from chennai, this is where marina beach and few other big beaches are located and I frequently travel to the arabian coastline too, So the moment someone says the word beach , the only thing that comes to my mind is open sea with atleast a 180 degree view of the horizon. But when we went 2 the team outing at stavanger i came to see the smallest beach i have ever seen in my life, i think it should be termed as backwater rather than a beach.


Way back home

Tor Inge, our CEO was grateful enough to pick us up from the hotel and drop us at the airport at 4:00AM in the morning, just when he has a flight to catch at 8:00AM in the morning. Well i got only one word to say "Great".

I was a nice morning flight from Stavanger to Frankfurt. Back at Frankfurt we had a nice time shopping with the euros left with us. The flight back from Frankfurt was really empty , there was so much space inside. Maddy told me that its quite rare to find flights being so empty. There was a nice looking air-hostess. You can find beautiful girls anywhere on earth but these airhostess are just awesome. They look soo confident but still listen soo patiently to whatever stupid things we say. They smile a lot. There was one beautiful indian-look-alike ,who came to me asking for drinks, i ordered a coffee. She gave me a make-yourself-coffee kit comprising of cream, coffee and sugar. Just when i thought of protesting over such unconventional way of serving coffee she smiled at me broadly and moved on to the next row. Again who wants to waste the short interaction time with a beautiful girl complaining ? Damn these airline guyz might have been recruiting psycology phds.

Landing back in india was really a happy moment, and i reached home by some 12:30 am

"Being Randomly Selected"

I was travelling across to Norway, this week, It was a business trip with my boss. This is my first trip abroad and I have this unique fear of airports and other places of heavy security. I got this unique ability to attract people (let people suspect me as someone). So the party begins right from Chennai Airport. I went into the Immigration Check point, the Immigration Officer 'randomly selected' me and started asking me all sorts of questions (studies, study details, school school details, company , purpose of visit, father's name , occupations, ... every unexpected detail .. )in a parallel corner, my boss cleared in with ease, no questions at all. Next we went had a break . and then we checked into the boarding zone, "Gate no:3 for Lufthansa" , Madhavan, had no problem in going in, but i was the one to get 'randomly selected', the immigration authorities went on to verify my identity, passport, visa, travel docs,etc. the tricky part here is when the asked about the purpose of visit. I said official work ,and they asked the invitation letter, who cares carrying an invitation letter from the same company. I am just travelling to meet my friends at the headquarters, i don't think i never needed an invitation letter, its not a "client visit" in Services terminology, where you need to get invited by some company and so on... i work for a firm and i just travel. but the airport authorities never seem to agree on that. we had discussions, he took all the id cards, business cards, visas (thank god he left my visa credit card with me.) with him to his supervisor, they were discussing about this... just imagine this happening right in from of the airplane doors on your first international visit. Then they came back to me saying, its okey this time but not anymore, next time onwards you should carry an invitation letter with you. All I can say was thank you. He also advised me that authorities do make 'random checks' so i should be careful and have proper documentation.

I boarded on to my Lufthansa, had a good flight across to Frankfurt. got down at Frankfurt. I was waiting for someone to do a 'random check' on me. no one did. then we went on to have some food. roamed round Frankfurt airport a lil bit. and did a lots of things... right when we were about to check in to the Stavenger flight. we had to send our hand-baggages thru the scanner. My laptop got randomly selected now. The security guy next to the scanner said to me "Krishna your laptop has been randomly selected for a security check" . He said that in a tone which sounded like " Krishna you have won a all expenses paid trip to Hawaii on a random lottery"

I went into a room in which the security guy did all chemical tests on my laptop. And i was declared okey and set free. (free to go to hawaii :-))

We had a long ride to the airplane, it was a regional plane, pretty small one. It was more than one hour air -ride to Stavenger. The view of Norwegian coastline from the air is awesome.
We landed in Stavenger, I was waiting form someone to do a random security check on me, but no one did.

I will post on the travel stories on stavenger soon... until then hang on :)

Mangalore…..

Mangalore is one nice place….. You know whenever I get bad week of work in Chennai; I jus take my train to Mangalore…. It was the same last week end… I was like workin all days and nights in and out…. And I desperately needed a good weekend…. Where I will forget the website…. Its Mangalore again.

This time it was not a lone travel. I had a company Mr Kannan. I had my train @ 5 in the evening, I thought of taking a leave … but our beloved boss Maddy was relieving on the same day… so I cancelled my leave to accommodate a lunch @ Manshuks’

(I am being vegeterianized … ppl around are tryin to find a goat in me… but I wont give up)

But I end up in troubles….. I was changing the content in some e-mailer till 4.30 … I got my train @ 5… I messed it up this time around too… I pinged davis , told him … “Central in 15 Mins… ?”. He said "yes... lets go..."…. And I jumped off… literally ran out of office… I found a empty purse when I reached central (again)…. The SBI ATM didn’t accept my credit and debit cards (again)… I will be running in some platform to catch hold of some coach (again)…. You know these things have happened so many times that I eventually got used to all of em…. Finally got some cash outta the Canara bank ATM and got into the train in the last minute.

At last made it…. Found that kannan anna was surprised to see me… he was very amazed, that I at least made it to there…. (The things that we came across in train were supposed to be published here… but due to strict restrictions of Google regarding NC-17 Rated content. I am not able to publish more on this). There was not much entertainment… there were some nice scenaries…. But

1. My N72 ran out-of battery


2. Anna K810i ran out of battery


3. The Digi cam ran out-of battery


4. The Back-up batteries in Digicam were also empty


5. I did buy a AA Alkaline batteries…. They too didn work in that digi-cam.


6. The only thing which had some amount of battery was anna’s T610 which had 20/30% power but it went off by the time it was morning.
   

So no pics on our way to mangalore. The only entertainment on the train was over in Calicut. We got cute 4 yr old kid and his dad boarding in salem. That kid was my company till mangalore… very naughty guy.

We reached managlore to find a fat guy (yes deepak has doubled in size). We went to room, took bath, anna met some of his friends.Friends -> Shopping, Did some nice amount of shopping. Did have a good time while shopping purses (J). Then went back to room. From Room to Beach, it’s a pleasure watching the sunset at the beach. It’s a real pleasure... we took some beautiful snaps… we had food somewhere and returned room. Indian/Bangladesh match was goin on…. We lost, I slept.

Nothing spl in Mangalore other than ice creams…. Had so many of these ice creams that I eventually got tired of eating ice-creams…. So –many … ppl here should be stupid….

Took the train back home exactly at the last minute… travel back was dull nothing spl…I was clicking snaps all the way…. So many of them, I had a target of clicking 500 snaps, but I could only make some 160 odd. Something special here... the train stopped at some unknown station in karnatake... i desperately needed some water/coke and some food. so i got down and ask ordered for the same.. this shoopkeeper guy was packing em up for me.. i was staring at a beautiful face stiitng out there... all of a sudden this girl comes up to me askin... will this train take me to mangalore.... (i was like... oh shit... if you told this earlier... i wouldn have left to managlore... ). i told her the way out.... by time the train had started... i forgot to notice the horn sound in the discussion... i quickly got my things and got the change...and had to catch the train on the run. but i had forgot the "Lays Pack" .... 15 Rs Loss.... forget it... while in train , I learnt the fact the late night temperatures in tamil nadu is lot-lot lower thane the temperatures in Kerala/Karnataka.

We reached Chennai in good time... I reached home, I had brought some macrons. They had an excellent response in my office. And work started as usual….. ha ha…

Risky Travel

Yup, its bangalore again.... I missed out to blog on pondy trip (31/dec), there wasn’t much action out there.... so its bangalore again on this edition of my travel blogs.....

Bangalore, Nice place, cool, serene, peaceful city… people live in fun and masti ….. This definition matches all except in case you are from Tamil Nadu or mistakenly speak Tamil… If you are a tamilian and you luv to speak tamil, bangalore becomes the most uninhabitable place to live in…. Especially when some cauvery issue breaks outta court.

I travelled this time exactly during the announcement of the cauvery river water case judgment… the result fortunately /unfortunately favored the tamilians, and I was traveling to bangalore from Chennai, friends and ppl at synap were telling me all sorts of stories about tamil people suffering in bangalore during the recent riots regarding the cauvery river case… But I was never really worried about all these…. You know when it comes to travel, I forget everything else…. I travel for the sake of traveling. I got my tickets online, but when I was trying to get a ticket back home, IRCTC website gave me a BULB (it usually happens). So I had to resort back to booking tickets in KSRTC. So this time I was sure that I will at least have a hassle free travel back home….. don’t be over excited, read on you will get to know the truth.

It was some lone Friday night (9th Feb), my train ticket was reserved for night 11:30 train starting from Chennai, which will drop me off in bangalore next day morning. I started outta office at some 10:30 with this guy called Davis (* a very good friend of mine at syanp, he is so good that he almost convinced me to cancel this trip) WE started off in his bike from office, on the way he started giving me all sorts of advices and nightmares of the situation of tamilians is in bangalore now… I was like saying this to myself “did I make a wrong choice???” … We landed at the station some 30 mins ahead of time …. Stupid thing again the ATM doesn’t work …. He started giving me weird advices that I never heard of before… He was saying words like…. “You are a great warrior Krishna … I have never seen sucha brave person like you !” ….. and I was like …”What? @#@#$” It was 11:29 at night and I was thinking… “Shall I cancel my trip now…. ?”Atleast I made up my mind Let whatever happen, I won’t give up…. And I BRAVELY said good bye to Davis….. I was feeling like a Boarding a Train to Islamabad during Kargil War …. :-)

I stepped into the train, took my berth, did speak a word with anyone, switched on my XpressMusic Player and slept, this guys reaches office and calls me up at 1 am asking “How come you are still alive….? I thought they would have bombed your train by now….?” …. I was saying... “Dai please da… don’t do this to me..“

Amidst all nightmares I managed to wake up alive in Bangalore station, Now I m all set to forget one language from my résumé…. Called up Deepak, spoke in hindi + english in a very low voice, hung up , just to notice that the guy sitting next to me was shouting at his son “Eadatha vittu navundhaey , konnu ea pottuduvaen” (I will kill you if you move)…. I felt like I did the dumbest thing on earth…. Ah I found this guy… Deepak traveled all the way from mangalore , he knows bangalore very well so he comfortable with the local transportation… I step out of the railway station and we head towards the tea-stall. All our communications are either in the dumbest version of hindi or fairly reasonable English. No tamil …. I felt like I landed in islamabad with some traditional Indian wear….

Now we headed to the rooms, the place was near somewhere…. I don’t know much about there… so leave it now… we managed to reach the hotel…. And atlast we found the place.. kannan anna was waiting for us. Rest, bath and sleep, food, coffee…

Were were all set to visit Infosys Bangalore., considered to be one of the world’s largest software campuses, Infy Bangalore is truly an exciting place. It was clicking all the way with our multi mega pixel mobile cameras… We did some shopping for eatables and were back on room. While coming back we took an auto, and I spoke with that auto guy in telugu…. That was really funny. Telegu is obviously my mother tongue, but you know first time in my life, I was like speaking my mother tongue for survival J. Next day we were at Indoor stadium for some event.

This is Sunday(11th Feb) night , I had my ticket booked for this night 11:20 Volvo bus from KSTRC, I was waiting till 10:40 ,, busses for 11:22, 11:30 etc have arrived but not mine… I was little worried, bcoz there was a local bandh here the next day for cauvery issue. Atlast the bus came… I boarded the bus.. and slept…

After a while…I hear some one shouting Koyembedu… I open my eyes…Its 5:20 AM My left leg is aching ,, probably I slept in some wrong posture…. I manage to snatch my bag and get down, I landed safe and fine in chennai…. I was so happy when I stepped down, I felt like I won a war against them…

The ground reality is that situation is not really that bad out there... But you need to be cautious at times. Jus keeping yourself updated of what’s going on will be enough. And regarding Tamil there are 100’s and 1000’s of them speaking Tamil with freedom out there… so don’t really need to panic …. But again be careful, speaking Tamil might end you up getting pissed off somewhere... But there is nt much to worry about… there aren’t much terrorists around.

Bangalore This Time

kempfort
Originally uploaded by iT KRiSHNA.

It has been long since i had posted any travel blogs. This one is for Bangalore TRIP, a relatively short one , and of course a miserable travel back. i don't know how, but i have developed this weird affinity towards, facing hard times while traveling home, all the fun and enjoyment i get i traveling and visiting places gets lost in the way back home( Its like i m not happy to find my way home. )

This was in mid-December, i was already in between a hectic schedule. I was busy in some personal activities, new-site went live, was busy fixing up some new scripts that i wrote a couple of weeks back, etc... it was all busy times.... i really needed a desperate break and arun calls up one fine day saying that , he has an interview at some company in bangalore (*for those who dont know about Bangalore, more than
50% of the world's blue chip companies run out of here...) and said like, he s moving alone and needed a company..... "why not, with pleasure....:-)" and here we go, i got the reason to slip outta chennai one more time....

I made it to the bus stand, very earlier than arun on that day, i was like waiting for this guy to come for close to an 30~40 mins.... i m very serious about timings.... i don't like waiting for others, i will only make others wait.... he he :-) , this guy made it very late.... we fortunately found some couple who were about to sell their tickets, got the tickets.... what next, board the bus.... it was close to 10:30 in the night... i thought we will reach comfortably by around 7/8...
ITs all old memories crepping in when the bus crossed Sastha Inst., " College life was fun na.... ? i miss it badly ..." it was around 11 odd then. I pulled on the bedsheet and went into sleep......................damn,... . that driver halts the bus in 4:30 in the morning, 4:30 AM ..... :0..... imagine, i have never seen such a time in my life for more than 4 months.... and you are in Bangalore during december, just imagine the amount of chillness we would have felt.... i was shivering like anything .. my jaws were making a new music every time i tried to speak... We had to goto a place near kemp-fort, it was don's brother's home... so we called up don's bro... he guided us to that place... we took an auto... we told the auto driver, not to go very fast as we were already shivering..... never in my life i have seen an auto driver flying through the city roads... he was cruising in 60's and 70's.... atlast he stopped near some kids shopping mall.... someone had opened a tea dhukaan outside... wow... tea... tea means fun.... and having a tea in that climate is like crazy. we went to that place... i slept for some time.. had some nice breakfast made by don's anna... arun in the meanwhile slipped for the interview.... i ran through the streets a couple of times but did nothing....

Arun came back from the interview.... we headed to the shopping mall... did some jaldi-jaldi shopping.... i wont forget what arun asked for in the shopping mall.... I was desperatley searching for some toys for a 1 year old kid.... while .. he was searching the same for a 25 yr old kid ( what he calls as 'boy' ?)... amazing.... the salesman was stumped when we asked we need a toy to play for a 25 yr old..... then arun says 'boy' .... (I will give you the choice to guess who that 25 yr old kid is...?) .... forget it ... kemp-kids reduced the thickness of my credit card by a few millimeters.....

Now its time to do some routine shopping.... we stepped out with don's bro and his friends.... JP, kathir, etc... we ran thru... all city malls.... BG road... city center/.....lots of other places.... and the gud thing is ... were never bought anything.... :-) thats the spirit of shopping....

wat else... lets find our way home..... sweet home..... but how is the question... this is severely unplanned travel... i didn book any tickets, neither did arun.... i had to be in office the next day... i din have a choice.... We went to bus-stand... trying to find some unknown travels... jus to get them saying "NO TICKETS"... we were feeling very hungry... so we thought of having some food... and continue the ticket searching.... food :-).... one bad thing about karnatake... food is always worser than your least expectations.... nothing changes here... we managed to have what others called as food... and continued our ticket searching...

We found some guy who was selling tickets for some unknown travels company... i bought the tickets.... and we ended up walking some 5 kms to get to the place where the buses stop for that "unknown travel company".,... arun is one guy , who worries about comfort, quality and brand... in my travel dictionary these words never exist.... "So no matter, what he says , or whatever i feel..... i was not gonna worry about it"... and that "Unknown-travels" guy.... takes so much time to bring out buses.... that u end up going pissed off by their service.... but theres'nt much of a choice either....

We ended up in chennai by some 5~6 am in the morning..... thats all for this edition of my travel blogs.... will catch u in some other place....

Thing You find only in Mangalore

Managalore Engleesh

The City Traffic Police is using Eggjelent engleesh par itz Safety Hoardings ... have a look at this

25 NayaPaisa

I didnt have an opportunity to use 25 Paise coin for the past couple of years.... i dont even remember the last time when any one use the denominations in 25 paise and 75 paise... Bu when i came to mangalore... i was astonished that people here still use 25 Ps and 75Ps as denominations... here are some the sample bus tickets ... (NOTE the values 325 and 375 denote the numbers in paise not in ruppees [esp for chennaitees]...)

Mangalore Nagaram....

Mangalore Nagaram....

I jus wanted to jump out of chennai for a weekend, thought of going to mangalore but tickets were not available,but i desperately needed a break out of this flyover-city, i had very few reasons to travel 1), to meet deppak 2),i want to travel because i love traveling, at last found a ticket through tatkal in some coach bound to mangalore which will drop me there at 5 am on sunday....

Sunday 4:45 AM

A Lightning of noise awakes me i turn down from my upper berth jus to see an empty seats, wow, i have reached mangalore, its shivering now, i rang up deepak he said he was on the way, i packed the stuff that i brought with me, came down, its stupid man, unbelievable i saw the railway clock , it ticks 4:45 ( the train is supposed to arrive at 5:15), for a second i got confused as if the train has stopped in some other station and it would leave to mangalore now, but i turned back to confirm that its mangalore only.... the recent hike to railways' guys is paying off in gold for us...

While getting down itself i get a message on my mobil saying that i have a meeting with my CEO scheduled on Tuesday 10:00 am, I have to be in chennai on monday morning at ANY COST... So my deadline was to take the 1:10 chn mail from here to chennai on monday morning .... so i have been allocated 30+ hours to enjoy ...

Deepaq came down to pick me up.... we headed to his place, a nicely furnished room, had chat about latest updates in both our lives, went for bath an then headed to beach (dont ask me the names), it was nice place, great beach guys i ll update fotos as soon as i get their soft copies, the beach was very close to the port , we saw a big ship crossing in front of us, dont know why I started to develop some kinda of HATRED towards SHIPS.... i saw a restaurant nearby the beach , i said we can have some dinner over said , deepak said we can have it near his office, i told we can have it here, bcoz i was very hungry, i didnt eat much during travel also... BIG MISTAKE i did, food was as horrible as ever... checkout deepaks's blog for a detailed description... We then headed to his office , INFOSYS Mangalore , It was cool man... great building, interiors, facilities.. the company was nice.... we took some snaps , he would need some for his orkut....

5 hours katham, 25 left

Then We did some shopping had some famous ice-cream, whose names i never knew, dont even know that anyone else back home will know... We headed to meet that FaztArithmetic Guy, i wanted the meeting to end in five minutes , it lasted for more that some 1 or 2 hours... man this guy ate a huge chunk of my time.... when we stepped off his office it was raining and raining cats, dogs, donkeys, and cows tooo... chalo... its has been long since i last got wet in chill rain, enjoy that one tooo... at last we found some auto to drop us in the bus stop that will take us to udippi,

One crazy thing about Mangalore... Auto-Rickshaws run on meters.. unbelievable stuff na... believe me or not this guy charged us with 18 Rs... i dont even remember last time i got a auto in chennai for less than 20 rs...

15:45 (Sat)
We took some odd bus to Udippi Which will leave us in udippi terminus, we had lunch before we took of for the bus, went to udippi beach ... (aval parandhu poonaley .... udippi beach povarey bus le oru ponnu... marakka ve mudiyaley)... went to the beach ... enjoyed the sunset in beach ... first time in my life i m having the sight of sunset at the beach .....(back in chennai-east coast its only sun rise by the beach) took some awesome snaps with the indian ocean....

19:45 (Sat)
We headed to manipal .... still dont know why we went there.... thought of finding some nice place to eat... but ended up finding that manipal is not tourist friendly place ( i mean in terms of navigation and pathfinding). We had to resort back to mangalore very quickly ... so that we can at least find some proper place to eat , its a 2 hours travel from here and the roads are the worst in the record.....

21:45 (Sat)
In the bus we found this tamil girl... aiiyo avaliyum marakka mudiaythu.... 2 hours non stop discussion.... about nothing but useless stuff... we get down and say ... bye bye
Back to mangy... now we had rush in to some hotel for FOOD... Food for survival... got one... and learnt a lesson... Kannidiga Biriyani's are the worst preparations of biriyani in the whole world... dont ever bother to try it... its that horrible....
Get back to sleep.... The next day i will have to find my way hometown....

09:00 (Sun)
We went to a place called sultan battery to take some nice snaps.... and headed to railway station.... Nothing spl on trains... Nothing Spl on train, except for the fact that i had to travel through kerala and lots of college girls are returning back to their hostels after their weekends.... Found a friend on the trains , he was a 70 year old , we discussed a lot about the young age comparing with what that guy used to do when he was of my age....

Back to chennai... Back to home... a Fast brush and a lightning quick bath... Meet the Web Master, Synaptris.com in the mirror... and get to back office... and life restarted as usual but on a different role....

The worst travel experiences of my life.....

hi guys,

Welcome to this blog post on one of the worst travel experiences of my life.... this for for my friends marriage., it was to happen on a place named KODAD in some remote location beyond Vijayawada, the marriage was on 18-aug so I took leave on Friday , it was schedule at night , I thought like I can have a comfortable travel by train and bus on the day and go to the marriage in sharp time, but life is not always easy... it sucks... I had my leave confirmation on Wednesday evening ... I thought of booking the tickets on Thursday morning... I went to online booking ... got the tickets paid the money through HDFC netbanking ... everything went fine till a JavaScript error popped up that had crippled my transaction in the middle .... money has already been debited from my account... but no tickets.... full tension... called up HDFC and irctc... they atlast agreed to restore the money.... I had to go to Southern Railways booking office directly to get the tickets.....

Anyway I got them after long tensions..... now I had to go to office...@ syanptris... huge chunks of work was waiting for me.... something has to go live by monday... but I wont be available through weekend.... chalo kaam karo... hardwork till 1am on Friday... now i get back to home.... next morning i have train... i reached home by around 3 and then ofcourse slept...

Subhae Subhae utthe hi time hogaya 7 odd my train is by 9 odd and travel from pallavaram to the central takes a luxurious 1 hour.... run boy run....

chalo paunch gaya station in cool time but no money... my purse is empty now.... the canara bank ATM in the Chennai central wont work.... i m helpless...

Suren Sir (one of the great faculty members of my college and a good friend of mine... now he is working in some MNC ) was on his way to the staion on the same train... after hearing that i had a sigh of relief.... now i thought like i have some company to suffer with.....

We boarded the train... shared the experiences... was a lot of fun.... atlast i have found someone with time to share whatever thats going on in y life after college....

We made it to vijaywada in good time.... 4:30 or 5 pm... it was evening.... Krishna river was flooding like crazy....  We stepped out off train to the road outside.... there we headed staraight to auto-rick stand... we asked if he can take us to the bus-terminus.... he refused... we stood like stumped.... ( where ever i have went... rick drivers will tell you like it will cost more or atleast will try to cheat you... but this is teh first time that i had to hear something like this... "AUTO RAADHU...." IN A HARSH TONE.... translates as "auto wont come" in telegu....) we found some auto atlast ... but that was damn cheap man.... he charged just a mere Rs. 5 per head for each of us the distance was close to 2~3 kms....

aha ha we reached... the terminus.... but hang on teh confusion begins here.... where is KODAD... i went to the enquiry asked for KODAD (spelled like K-O-DAD) .... she said like that there is no such place there.... then she revealed the correct pronouncation "Kodhadu" (spell like KO-DHA-DU... translates in telegu like some synonym for riverside ... i m not sure)..." goto platforms 25 and 26... u might find some buses there"

No busses here again... Some bus driver ws trying to persuade us to take his bus ( his bus will not take us to kodad but will take us to somewhere from where i cand find busses to kodad.... but that place will waste a lot of my time and money). We dont have time... its SIX already.... i thought like "Marketing ke Makrketing a.... dai ... adangunga da :)"

We got a bus but were unsure whether it will take us there or not.... got in and slept.... that bus driver was sleeping too... he almost went on to crash the bus on a steep curve..... anyway hum bachgayae .... we dont have a choice... "lets believe it takes to kodhadu".... finally we reached kodadhu... we were astonished to find that this place has cars, ATM's and an engineering college tooo (ha ha .... suren knows the joke behind it).... It was crazy man.... the Image we had for kodad was a very remote village with nothing but cows and farms... but it was far more advanced....

Some of my friend's (bride's) friend came to take through to the place where we are gonna stay.... it was a place (no comments about it...) ... deepak* reached there in the meanwhile.... nothing crazy... this guy never took a leave... cameback staright from office... anyways... no harsh feelings ...
{ * Deepak works in SCM for Infosys and is currently havin his training at hyderabad}

Awesome man... marraige was over by 1 am on sat.... wished her all the best and found our way back.... my eyes were burining ... i havent slept for more than 40 hours by then....

No the return saga beging.... Morning train is at 6 AM at Vijayawada..... Its 2.30 AM here in Kodad.... We have been waiting for aroun 1 hour... no bus has crossed us.. thought like we will be in trouble if we dont get a train....I have to reach chennai at the earliest.... bcoz i need to help a friend to make his national level event live at Chennai Trade center on Sunday....

Finally we got the bus.... made it 2 railway station... by 4 odd...

We didnt have tickets 2 chennai.... I thought like we can travel in PINAKINI Express... i is by all means on the most emptiest trains.... i have travelled in it... u can sleep and travel till chennai in the general ... its that empty.... so we took a General Ticket...

now our stomach's were in trouble... no PROPER food for more that 18 hours.... after a little search we found some place which can sell us food .... had some idli's.... he asked if we need "COOLING WATER" (office memories of awdesh asking for it.... ha ha)...

Got the train... and now i came to know about the  mistake i did.... it was the worst thing i had ever done to travel in General.... the compartment got stuffed with all kinds of nonsense.... fights, fun,chaos,,, everything that u could imagine..... i dont have any chioce.... i haev to travel by it.... If i had time i would have stepped out and took some other train.... it was that crazy....

Making it to chennai was like winning a nobel prize... ui stepped in to chennai... and started jumping in happiness....

Trip to KODAD may be one of the worst travel experiences in my life.... but it also made one of our friends happy by showing our presence at one of the gretest moments in her life.... Cheers for that....

 

Batchmate Leaves for Hyderabad

Hi guys,

jus came back after lettin off my bacth mate to leave for hyderabad

Morning Mistakes..

I made a damn mistake this morning… i had a plan of gettin the course completion certi and then head straight to anna-nagar, but i woke up late, it took me around 11 to start off, then went straight to arun’s room(stupid thing)… eventually i forgot joe was waitin for me…

Life hasnt changed much here…. its as usual, i shuld have been better in making a choice… and i never do that…

When i called up joe, he was firing on me from all ends…. poor guy didn hav lunch bcoz of me…. and ever1 know wat lunch means to joe…

Railway Station Allumbu

i made it to joe’s home in the same unconventional way, jus to see a hot face… waiting for someone to take him out… we went out , for a walk, then praveen came by…we called up don, man this guy is crazy…. took 1 hour to come… deepak had started off by then… we headed straight to station, met kanna anna, we stepped into platform(no-8), man this place was crazy…. full of final year students, for each one going to infy, there were 20 others to give him send—off, jus imagine… we slipped in jus to see joe already notching up “OOR-KASU” from deepak

OOR-KASU : oor – kasu is a convention by which a friend leaving to some place for a small trip or a tour should pay the non-travelling friend an unspecficed sum of money.

Myself , joe and pravin came to send off deepu, while DON came for something else…. we never knew dese, until he tried to get into the train to look at the seat… ada paavi don… anyways, angey pannu alumbukku, payan(don) paavam aludhuttan, enna panna radhu “final year enna appidithan”….

nares(it),pump and mundus were there, vigu,seenu n nares(medavakkam) came in the last mins , shetty also made it to the station atlast… puli(CS-Selva) came to bid-adieu to rati, was also there, we told

“babu ollu baga chooskooo”
[telegu trans for “boy,take care of ur health”],

and let deepu go…. for the next two months, we will be missing a face in annanagar…. [atelast chennai will be a better place now ], i came out with puli, dropped of pravin on the way at st.thomas mount (we travelled by train as puli was not feeling gud). i came off to alstohm….

puli will be goin back to station i think, coz he has to giv send off to srinath(INFY/Mysore leavin by 11:15 pm train) as well… i was heading to home…

Ta Ta Ecahai

If u have seen the Infy share prices in the past one week u will get to know the impact this guy can generate on any concern…. 26th June 2006 will be a memorable day in both of our lives, our life will be taking a steep turn from here…. i m gonna join work in chennai, he will do it in hyderabad…

Congrats n all d best batchmate,…. Infy-e-saachiputtu, sattu buttu ennu ooru thirumbu…