IItf – 2009

IItf stands for India International trade fair. It is a big event that happens at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi once every year. It is a short lived event where entrepreneurs from different parts of the country come and setup stalls to exhibit their products. Pavilions are setup and each state depending on their size and ability are assigned different pavilions, for ex: while states like Gujarat, Karnataka and Tamilnadu had their own pavilions, Uttaranchal, Goa and Lakshadweep shared a common pavilion.

The trade show attracts lots of attention in Delhi. Schools organize field trips to the event and people in general throng to the event. To give an account for the popularity of the event, government of India has arranged park and ride stops for the event, the ticket for the event had a word of caution “In the view of security of the people, Pragati maidan will only allow first 1 lakh people to enter”.

Most states had setup their pavilion to depict something about the state (ex: Assam had Kaziranga National Park as the external theme and Karnataka had Belur temple as the external theme). There was no standard way in which the inside of the pavilions were organized, while some states had some tourism info and the attractions of the state and information on developments made in the last few years, others only had stalls and stores and everything inside the pavilion was for sale. The north eastern states had show cased their bamboo artwork and some of them were really intricate and I could see that lots of attention had been paid to the detail of the work. Most of the stalls were handloom based while very few showcased machine made and some even showcased imported things.

The best of the ones I visited were Kerala, Karnataka, West Bengal and Himachal Pradesh where they had a blend of handloom and tourism and a focus on small business. In Kerala pavilion when I saw the different kinds of halwa (a kerala traditional sweet) I remembered my dear friend Mr. Iyer. The Karnataka pavilion which along with other things showcased KSIC Mysore silk had exhibited couple of sarees that were 50 odd years old and still looked brilliant and bright. The most disappointing pavilion was Gujarat, which didn’t show case anything handloom but only boasted their prowess in technology and service.

The food was setup in a separate pavilion where all different states had their own food stalls; the biggest rush was for Punjabi, Karnataka and Andhra food. I was interested in trying something from Orissa but had to settle for Mysore masala dosa. The others with me tried some kerala food.

On the whole the event was well organized with maps located all over the place and information booths at the different gates. Needless to say security was really tight with armed police patrolling the place.

The only sore eye came in the form of transportation, when we had to get back home and no auto-rickshaws were available. It was truly a struggle even though we had a prepaid receipt for the same. Fighting to get the rickshaw made me realize that people in India are fighters and we have to fight every moment.

The trade show for me showed the potential for manufacturing and market for Indian made goods. There were goods for all price ranges starting from few tens of rupees to few tens of thousands of rupees and there were customers for all the ranges.

BA and Heathrow terminal 5

This was the first time in the past 10 years that I have traveled through London and through British Airways. I am quite impressed by the service of British Airways and even more impressed by London Heathrow airport.

While all other airlines just give a blanket and headphone, BA gave a bunch more goodies. To start with they gave a night cap and a small toothbrush with one time use paste. They also gave a pair of socks, which I didn’t use at all. The staff of BA was pretty friendly; liquor pretty much flowed in BA. During every meal they offered “white or red wine” if you say no to either of them then the list would continue to beer, whiskey and so on. They were pretty generous in serving the same. For once the airline served real milk with coffee and not the creamer; they were not too generous with sugar though. The food in general was good and appeared rightly rationed because by the time they served the next meal my stomach was ready to receive the same.

Now the Heathrow airport, first of all, the terminal was massive. It appeared the new Bangalore international airport is partly inspired by the Heathrow airport. There were some unique things that I observed in the airport, here are some

• There was a pen shop in the airport and the minimum cost of a pen I saw was 9 pounds (or ~ $18), I chatted up with the shop person and she mentioned the pens are unique as in some are made with silver, gold and platinum and so on. She said she had a pen that would cost around 1000 pounds. I didn’t dare to ask her to show me.
• Unlike US where there are water fountains at the intersection of men and women restrooms, Heathrow had only 2 at terminal 5A one on each end of the terminal.
• Unlike US restrooms where they make it optional to use heated air to dry hands, Heathrow makes it the only option to dry hands.
• The Duty Free shop is the biggest I have seen. Needless to say they had an exquisite collection of liquor and chocolates and everything was extremely expensive.
• There were more people at the airport to help passengers than in US and the people were truly helping the passengers.
• I was quite amazed at their security system too; the bins to put our stuff were loaded on rollers. We had to pick up from the bottom set of rollers and place it on top set of rollers and dump our stuff in. After the security, we pick up our stuff and the bins go down to the bottom rollers back to the beginning.
• The people at the security were very helpful for I noticed that in one of the cases they themselves put the liquid container that one of the passengers carrying into a ziploc bag themselves.

This one almost looked legit

The following I got in an email and for a few seconds I thought this was legit.

They have the names of the person sending right and they are asking for specific amount of money.

The subject of the email was "Shocking News". If nothing this is the best hack/spam email I have received.

====================================================================
I am in a hurry writing this e-mail to you, I had travelled to UK for an urgent seminar and unfortunately for me i was robbed and all my money was stolen at the hotel where I lodged. I am so confused right now, I dont know what to do or where to go. I didn't bring my phones here and the hotel telephone lines were disconnected during the robbery incident. So I have access to only emails. Please i need you to send me £960 today so I can return home.

Please have the money sent immediately through Western union money transfer to my name and on this address right below.

Name:XXX YYY
Address: 110 Palace Road, Tulse Hill
City: London
Post code: E8 4HR
Country: United Kingdom
Mtcn Number:

As soon as I get home I would refund it immediately. Please I need you to get back to me so I can let you know how to send the money to me.

I'm looking forward to hearing from you with the payment details now.
Thank you.
XXX YYY

====================================================================

A tribute to the Big White

The Big white was our white Gold fish with a red hat. It passed away a couple of weeks ago.

I still remember the day when we went to PetsMart to get you. You were living in a school with tens of others like you and some how we just couldn't take our eyes off you and at the spur of the moment decided to get you. You were so swift that the mart guy commented "that's way too fast for a gold fish". You had some abnormality on your skin and we were worried you may fight with other fish in the tank but we were wrong you were very gentle and very playful. You wanted to boss around the big red and I would say you succeeded most of the times.

It was amazing to see you feed, you smelled food quicker than rest of the fish in the tank and you always made noises when it was time to get fed. After the food at the top was over, you went to the bottom in search of food and it almost looked like you threw up gravel instead of food searching.

You were the one who had some unusual but very cute behavior, you took the window in the broken pot and made it your resting place. I remember after every water change the window opening used to shift a bit and you used to struggle to fit in and I used to come and adjust the pot by a few mm so that you could fit yourself in. We used to wonder what would you do when you grew bigger and you sure out grew the hole and when you no longer fitted in you moved on to the mouth of the pot.

I remember you would start dancing at the very sign of either of us, specially if it were feeding time.

Rarely there was anybody who didn't comment on your red hat, which almost looked like a crown.

You were the crown jewel of our tank and alas you are no longer there but your memory shall remain. You were a very healthy and great fish.

You stayed with us for close to 2 years and you passed away without any suffering, I still can't figure out what went wrong. All I can console my self is your journey on this planet was over. May your soul rest in peace.

100% Compostable Plastic Cups

We went to the new Indian restaurant Tarka in Austin today for a farewell party and I was surprised to see these cups. I asked my friend with an i-phone to take a pic of the same.

The cups felt completly like plastic. The sad part they were only giving to people asking drinks to go.

I did some research and turns out it is sold by company called EcoProducts. They have a whole range of products.

Way to go Tarka, your food was good, your service was awesome but I appreciate you more for caring about the environment.

R.R. does not mean Ranch Road

The US Ashram of Art of Living is located in an isolated but very serene location. It is located so isolated that no cell phone reception is available there. The address is supposedly 7802 Ranch Road 1051 Uvalde, TX 78802 USA. But we are citizens of the 21st century and would like it all abbreviated, so we used to specify 7802 R.R.1051 Uvalde, TX 78802 USA.

I couldn't get Google maps to find me the Ashram location and neither did Yahoo maps but Yahoo suggested an alternate address called 7802 FM 1051 Uvalde, TX 78802 USA (which it said was in its database) . I decided to give that a shot and to my surprise the location was in and around the Ashram. When I tried the same address on Google maps, not surprisingly the result was same as yahoo.

There were 2 questions, how come Google can't find the location and why is yahoo looking for FM 1051 instead of RR 1051. A friend of mine went to the extent saying that Google maps aren't always accurate and it has been wrong some times. But my experience and tens of others suggested that Google maps can't be wrong (not in US).

After some research I found Google and yahoo both give the right place if we type in Ranch Road instead of R.R. Turns out abbreviation R.R. stands for Rural Road and not Ranch Road.

Now the question of why FM, Shankara facility which shares space at the ashram has registered its address as 7802 FM 1051 Uvalde, TX 78801 USA and some how have mapped GPS location to some place near the Ashram and hence both yahoo and Google were working for FM 1051 and taking some where near the vicinity of the Ashram.

So, the official address for the ashram is 7802 Ranch Road 1051 Uvalde, TX 78802 USA, don't try to abbreviate any thing for it might take you to a wrong location.

I just re-checked again, Google still has problem with zip code of 78802 and would only work for 78801 but yahoo works with either of the zip codes. So, if you want to use Google or Yahoo for directions leave out the zip code.

A note to Self

A note to self, because as always unless documented the lessons will be forgotten with time.

Last weekend I was part of a team of people volunteering at the Art of Living US ashram. We were helping with the transportation of people and luggage for the navaratri course. Our team lead had made bookings for the vans/cars and all we had to do was pick passengers up and drop them off at the Ashram.

There are certain things I felt that we could have handled better or lessons learned.

• We need more support from local people of Texas (Austin, Dallas, San Antonio and Houston)
• People are more comfortable driving mini vans than 15 seat vans, and from my experience minivans can hold more luggage for their size
  When there are N people coming from out of town, be prepared to provide transportation to all the N people and their 2 luggage (1 check in and 1 carry on)
• Even if we need to book an extra van/car, to be picked up the same day please use websites like orbitz instead of calling individual rental agencies
• Ask people to assemble at 1 spot for ex: Terminal 1 Baggage claim number 2. (SA airport has a link between the 2 terminals)
  People who are driving the vans, instead of circling terminals, park the vans/cars in short term parking and take the N number of people you think you can transport with you.
• One more note for people driving, make sure you submit the tax exempt form before picking the van/car
• Co-ordinate with people who will be driving by themselves to the course and see if you can arrange rides for the people who need ride
  It is always a good idea for the coordinator to be at the airport
• Email people who need rides and ask them for their cell phone numbers (not their office and not their land line numbers)

VW

Long time ago when I was looking to buy a new car, I was looking at VW Passat (my present car), Honda Accord and Nissan Maxima. In the end I bought VW in spite all the bad comments most of my friends (Indian) gave. 7 and half years later, no regrets, it is for sure one of the most wonderful cars I have driven. It is very reliable and drives really well; in short I love my blue Passat.

Most of my Indian friends were opposing my choice because they were stuck in the concept that VW’s are not reliable and the maintenance is very expensive, when I pushed for specifics all I got was “7 or 8 years later you need t o change timing belt and that it is expensive”.

The reason for this blog is to quote my experience of the VW and counter some of the concepts my friends had (or still have).

After 7 and half years of owning the car, I can say it is very reliable. I won’t think twice before making a long drive in the VW. It has a more rigorous maintenance schedule and the service cost is usually 20 to 30% higher than Japanese makes. The biggest problem I have faced are the CV boots which keeps ripping off every couple of years and cost $300 to replace each time. The car needs a bit higher end tires, which reduces road noise and gives good road grip but doesn’t last longer than 3-4 years. The expense of maintenance is not the timing belt replacement but fixing the leaks and replacing the gaskets (rubber parts). The other ware and tare are the brakes which are made of a softer material and they give the comfort but again don’t last too long. One big problem of either VW or BMW or Audi is the limited number of dealers in Austin. Even sad is that the in town VW dealer is so pathetic that I drive 25-30miles to a dealer out of town. I am sure I wouldn’t have had this problem if I had gone with Honda, Toyota or Nissan.

To conclude cost of maintaining a VW is 20 to 30% more expensive than a Camry or Accord and at least in my case it is as reliable as either of them

In the end I love my car and would keep it for a while to come.

Srishti-The creation

Austin was entertained by the group Srishti-The creation on Sunday afternoon. It was a combination of classical and contemporary dance program organized by our own Asha of Austin. The dance was performed by six artists, each of them performed so well it was impossible to pick your favorite. Their facial expressions, the music, the colorful dress they wore, the dance and the co-ordination between the artists when all of them were on the stage was a true treat to all the senses. For a $15 ticket they entertained us way more than my wildest imagination. The second half of the show where they performed the Krishna-Bhaktimala, I can't put words to do justice to their performance. We all were (most of us) entertained for over 2 hours. It was truly a delightful, vibrant and great performance.

The dance was great but the attendance to the show was dismal, for over 250 odd tickets sold there were less than 50 people including kids, for the vibrant Indian community we boast of in Austin, it was truly a shame on Austin. We Austinites claim to be living in live music capital of the world and we can't make 2hrs of time to visit on a Sunday afternoon to attend a live dance show.

 

First of all don't we have faith in the US consulate that they would give visa to deserving artists and only great ones can tour the country?. For sake of argument, let’s say we don't believe, next in line are our friends in Asha, don't we have faith in them. Haven't we witnessed their earlier programs and enjoyed them.

 

Coming to the people who would say we bought tickets for charity, you donate money for charity and you buy tickets because you want to attend the event, you want to honor the artist. Yesterday the artists gave beyond their 100% and we in the audience should have done at the least 50% effort and showed up to the event. If it were on a weekday or the traffic in the city sucked then it would have been acceptable, but folks we live in Austin and on a Sunday afternoon around 3:30PM possibility of a traffic problem is highly unlikely.

Last but the craziest excuse will be, "it was first week of NFL", folks the DVR’s and TiVo's aren't just for soaps they can record these also.

The icing on the cake was when some one supposedly mentioned "you could have gotten better artists", again I am lost for words to reply to that person.

In the end, it was a memorable evening spent and truly a shame on Austin Indian community for not showing up in numbers to encourage the artists. If Rajima were there she would have said "this is true poverty".

SLR Buy update

After 6 to 7 months of waiting and deciding and all such, I finally bought Canon Rebel Xsi from Amazon.com. It arrived on saturday evening and there was no time this week end to play with it. I have managed to check that it works, will post some images soon.

10 things I loved about Rajima

I mentioned about Rajima in my previous blog entry but realized one blog entry is not sufficient for a great person like her. So, here is another one dedicated to her.

• She was always on time, even for the satsang she was on time. Senior/traveling teachers coming to satsang on time is pretty much unheard of. Also, she spent the whole time from beginning to end in the satsang and participated every moment.
• She was very graceful; she was literally oozing with grace
• She paid attention to the whole class, even the last benchers
• She was strict with her rules and showed no mercy and no excuses. Even the assisting Austin teachers were not spared
• She followed the rules she put in place for the course. When she asked us to cook and bring food the course, she herself had done the same
• Her simplicity
• She was natural and in "SELF" all the time. Her energy levels were always high
• She spent a lot of time talking about prevention of animal cruelty, all other part-1 courses I have attended there used to be restriction on non vegetarian food only during the course but Rajima spent lot of time on why we should avoid animal products (not only for food).
• She never in the course mentioned about her guru but referred only to her master. On the last day of the course she mentioned presence that of a "satguru" is one of the essential things for higher "prana" or life force in life
• She is the first Art of Living teacher (atleast from what I have seen) who expressed concern about environemt and is doing a lot of efforts to save the same. I remember the email going around talking about making the course eco-friendly, I was skeptical, but she proved me wrong.
  

The 10 things aren’t in any order, just a list.
In the end it was wonderful spending time with her.

Eco Friendly Art of Living Part-1 course

Yesterday in Austin we concluded the most eco-friendly Art of Living course in my remembrance. The course was a fairly big one with 70 odd people. For those who do not know, the course spans over 6 days and on the weekends lunch will be provided. If it were any other time we would have bought Styrofoam plates, cups and plastic spoons and forks and served food with that. But this time around it was different, thanks to the wonderful teacher Rajalakshmi Ratan aka Rajima, the participants were forced to bring their own re-usable plates, spoons and forks. When she announced this in the class, I thought the idea was ridiculous and it is not going to work. There will be long queues to the restroom to wash plates and all sorts of logistics were running in my head. But much to my surprise it worked like a charm and it was wonderful to see that we didn't have trash bags filled with styrofoam plates and plastic spoons. We repeated this act for both days of the weekend. All in all, in my estimate we prevented couple of hundred plates and spoons from entering the landfill. I agree that she is the most wonderful and eco-friendly Art of Living teacher I have met in my life.

The teacher quoted that whenever she is invited to a party or to somebody's house, she refuses to eat in the disposable plates and insist on being served in reusable plates. If the host refuses to comply with the request she would refuse to eat.

Hats off to you Rajima, you were wonderful and we all eagerly await your come back to Austin.

HillCroft Avenue, Houston

The place in Houston where almost anything and everything Indian can be found is HillCroft Avenue. It is a collection of four to five big strip malls filled with Indian stores. There were plenty of grocery stores, Jewelry stores, clothes stores, restaurants, electronic stores and we managed to spot one bakery too. Here are some of my impressions of the place

• The stores are organized in strip malls and hence no parking problems.
• The grocery stores were pretty much identical to each other and there wasn't anything unique about them
• The Bakery seemed well organized, they had some good pastries. But unlike India they were selling both vegetarian and non vegetarian
• We visited a couple of Indian Electronic stores and it was amazing to see how in one of the Indian store the guy was pushing the product he was selling on us and not listening to what we wanted. We visited another store, I have to say this store owner was a decent guy and didn't try too much to push things down our throats.
• We encountered a clear example of some things never change when we visited a grocery store asking for leads on Indian electric stores. The grocery store owner said with a straight face that the brand “PREETHI” is not available in Houston at all and the only brands available are the ones he was selling.
• The clothe stores were doing business half Indian style and half western style. Western style because they had lot of the clothes displayed and ready to be picked up. Indian style because they had the expensive dresses folded up neatly and a sales girl was displaying those one by one to the prospective customers.
• The jewelry stores looked completely Indian, once inside it was tough to make out whether we were in Houston or India.
• There was only one south Indian restaurant and most rest were all Indian buffet
• We found a place to get Indian Mixers/Wet Grinders repaired.

All in all an interesting place, will probably go some time in the future to try out some of the restaurants there, one in particular I am interested is the India-Chinese restaurant which had a buffet for lunch.

My 2 cents to save the planet

Most of us use liquid soap in the washroom to wash hands and throw away the bottle once we think the soap is over. But last week when my wife poured water to the bottle closed the lid and shook it vigorously, I was amazed with the amount of soap still left in the bottle that I was about to throw away. Yes the soap was very watery but trust me there was enough soap in a small amount of soap water to clean my hands perfectly. From the little experiment we did last week, the extra water+soap mixture has lasted more than a week in our washroom.

So, next time when you think the liquid soap in the washroom is over, think again,

Friendly Canadian freeways

Driving along freeways in Canada I noticed these "NEW" signs on speed limit changes near road construction areas. Either the Canadians are really fast in building the roads or they are really gentle and want to be nice to their people. Eitherways I loved these signs.

Mysore Anand in Austin

Austin Kannadigas were completely blown away by standup comedian Mysore Anand. He gave a 2hr program last Sunday in Austin. He danced, he sang, he performed mimicry and he performed his trademark cricket commentary. We were greatly amused when he performed his own version of evolution of dance. Most of us were pleasantly surprised when he sang a song. I don't have a background in music so can't comment on the raaga and all but all I want to say is it sounded really pleasant. All in all it was wonderful and one of the best shows for kannadigas in Austin this year. At the end of the program none of us wanted to leave and we had to be kicked out by the organizers.

The program was organized by Austin Kannada Sangha, kudos to them for organizing such a beautiful event. I only wished there were more people in the audience.

Niagara - water everywhere

As noted in my previous blog entry we made a trip to Niagara Falls. Here is a travel log of the same.

We flew into Toronto, Canada; the flight was cheaper to Toronto than any place near Niagara Falls inside US. After some delay in the flight at Dallas and some confusion regarding location of rental car office we reached our hotel at 11:30PM on Saturday night.

 

On Sunday we had our breakfast at A&W burger place and that gave the first taste of Canadian way, unlike US the fountain drink and coffee were not unlimited but were rationed. There was a 13% sales tax and the food in general was expensive.

 

After breakfast we started driving to Niagara Falls, thanks to our GPS we took the toll road even though there was no need for it, the weather was pretty damp and it was drizzling. I was hoping the weather would clear away and there will be sunshine but no such luck.

 

Once we reached near the Niagara parkway I was amazed by the number of people, I have never seen so many people at one place barring Time Square NY. There were all kinds of people from all over the world. As it was drizzling one of the first things we did was to buy an umbrella and then we started walking to the falls. The view of the falls was quite amazing, the gorge wasn't too tall but the amount of water flowing was phenomenal The drizzle and the water sprinkling from the falls made our Canon camera malfunction a bit but it got better over time.

 

We first took “Maid of the Mist” tour, we all got dressed in blue rain coats and we climbed into a big ship. The ship took us near the American falls first and then headed towards the horse shoe falls. When we got near the falls the water was no longer a mist but pouring on us from all over the place and needless to say we could have been completely drenched, thanks to the blue uniform just our shoes and trousers were drenched. We couldn't keep our eyes open for more than a few seconds because of splashing water. The sound of the millions of gallons of water falling down 150ft or so is amazing. The experience was wonderful and worth every single penny we paid for it. We were hungry by the end of the trip and ate some crappy food at the restaurant near maid of the mist tour.

 

Next we went to the "Journey Behind the Falls” tour", this tour actually takes us 120ft below and gives us the opportunity to see the falls from the bottom. They have built a tunnel that is 650ft long and has 3 different look outs. The very first look out was the best which let us go outside to open air and watch the falls and we could see the falls from the bottom looking up. The other two are just name sake and not any view there. Again the experience was wonderful, I think we spent nearly half an hour to 45 minutes watching the falls from the bottom and still didn't want to leave the place. I came across some interesting facts while walking through the tunnel, supposedly the water flowing through the horse shoe area every minute is enough to fill a million bath tubs or so. The rate of erosion of the horse shoe was 10ft/year till beginning of 20th century and now due to engineering it has reduced to 1ft for every 10 years.

 

We were wet and soggy by the end of the trip and hence we decided to head back to the hotel and come back in the evening to watch the Niagara illuminated and weather permitted watch the fireworks.

 

We started from the hotel in the night after having dinner at place called Mucho Burrito (excellent Quesadilla), it rained, sorry it poured but we are optimists we drove with the hope that the rain will go away but it pretty much poured till we reached the falls. We lost our way and instead of searching our way looking for the falls we went to Skylon Towers (took us 775ft above the falls). The view of the illuminated Niagara Falls from the top was really gorgeous and to our pleasant surprise at sharp 10:00PM they started the fireworks. The fireworks were a coordinated effort between the Canadian side and American side. It was a short five minute one but was really great.

 

All in all day one was a great success.

Recession Birthdays

There used to be a time in Austin when we used to buy multiple cakes for a single birthday. You guessed it right; one was for smashing on the face, messing up the kitchen floor and the other one for "celebrating" the birthday. But now times are hard and days are tough so we celebrate multiple birthdays on the same day.

Here's what happened, yesterday was the birthday of dear S Mathur and we gathered at Mt. Bonnell to celebrate the same. We were merrily celebrating his b-day and suddenly I realized I had become the center of attention and we celebrated my birthday along, which is not due for a few more days. Since we had extended till my birthday we extended a bit further and celebrated Priya's mom's birthday also, which I believe is some time in July.

In short we celebrated 3 birthdays at the cost of one, isn't that the true example of cost cutting and tough times.

Here are some pics for you to enjoy.

Decorated Mathur

me cutting the cake

Priya's mom enjoying her time

No posts in a while

I haven't posted any blogs in a while, If I think what happened, I can come up with a few possible reasons

• there isn't much intersting things hsppening around me that I would like to comment on
• I have stopped thinking
• I am watching too much TV and becoming dumb every day.
• Texas heat

If you ask my wife she will go with reason of TV but me, I will go with no thinking or less thinking.Well, Me and S are visiting Niagara Falls this weekend, I think I will get motivated after the trip and come back to blogging.

Marley and Me - Movie for all dog lovers

One true movie for all dog/cat/animal lovers. The movie tracks the life of a very very hyper active Labrador. The owners adopt him because the husband wants to distract wife's attention from having kids. The dog was sold to them as a clearance puppy and since the owners didn't have time nor the patience to train him when he was a puppy, he grows into an almost unruly dog. He pretty much chews upon anything and everything. He gets kicked out of obedience school. Everybody in the movie but the owners think he is pure evil. As people who are watching the movie, we can see that his intentions are pure and he loves his family very dearly. He is one true companion.

The movie very well documents the frustration of the owners with the dog. The scene of Marley sitting quietly near Jenny when she loses her first baby is heart wrenching, it appears as though only he knew how to handle the situation. Also, the scene towards the end when Marley, just back from the hospital walks up to the front of the yard waiting for kids to arrive is another great one.

The movie ended with a beautiful quote

"A dog has no use for fancy cars, big homes, or designer clothes. A water log stick will do just fine. A dog doesn't care if you are rich or poor, clever or dull, smart or dumb. Give him your heart and he'll give you his. How many people can you say that about? How many people can make you feel rare and pure and special? How many people can make you feel extraordinary?"

It is based on a true story and someday I will read the original book.

Me and S saw this movie last Sunday and by the end of the movie I was almost in tears and S was crying away.

Aa Dinagalu

I have seen quite a few gangster movies both in Kannada and in Hindi but none of them are as real as the movie Aa Dinagalu. The movie is based on the book Dadagiriya Dinagalu. The story is the rivalry between two gangs with a love story in the middle. Here is the detailed Wikipedia article on the same. The salient features I liked about the movie are

• The movie had only 2 songs and both are good
• No effort to fit extra songs or shooting at some exotic locales outside India
• The movie was tightly scripted and the story develops really fast
• The people in the movie were real, they do get hurt and the hero of the movie wasn't portrayed as superhuman
• There is no glorified violence
• The fight scenes were shot more naturally
• The vulnerability of the gangsters and their superstitious behaviors were shown really well

On the whole the movie is well done and the story is novel. I really liked it. I recommend the movie.

Day 3 and 4

Day-3 started with a beautiful sunrise behind the mountains, the presence of a few clouds at sunrise added color to the sunrise. Followed the usual drill and had a heavy breakfast. Also, we packed our lunch today as we wanted to do the SOUTH RIM.

We reached the hiking place at 9:50AM and after re-shuffling the bags headed towards the trail head. Surprisingly there was no map available for south rim. MK took a photograph of the displayed trail map and R remembered the trail names and junctions.

So began the biggest hike any of us had done. The initial gain in elevation was pretty steep and we got split into two groups, me with MK and S enjoying the scenic beauty and the huge rocky mountains and the rest ahead. After around 3 miles the elevation gain stopped and the land became flat for some time (around a mile). The last 2 miles was another elevation gain and we almost stopped to have lunch when some one walking back suggested us to hike up 15 more mins and we will be at our destination.

We packed our bags and hiked to the end. Enjoyed the spectacular view of the chisos basin and the chihuahua desert from an elevation of 7500ft. Devoured the sandwiches, the fruits and some trail mix. After resting half an hr or so we all got some energy back and started the descent trail.

Instead of going back the way we came, we went around the mountain on a different trail. The return trip seemed more brutal but more scenic and beautiful at the same time. Lot of us had some or the other forms of leg injuries and the water reserves were going low too. After hiking around 3 or so miles we started to spot the place where we parked our car, but disappeared after a few minutes. Some of us started walking in different styles to avoid pain. At the end of grueling 3 and half hours the hike ended and we were all happy to see our car.

We again ate at the same restaurant inside the park and headed towards the cottage. On the way back we saw one of the most beautiful sunsets. Even though we were tired, we played UNO for some time and celebrated Dr. R's birthday and dozed off.

Day 4 - also started with a beautiful sunrise but not as spectacular as day before and finishing up all the remaining breakfast items we had left. Started packing up and make a quick stop into the park to check out the Rio Grande village and hot water springs, turns out the spring water was barely warm let alone hot. And finally we headed back to Austin,on the way we had lunch at the same pizza place where we had dinner previously. Ms. S ate almost all the Jalapenos in the pizza and we returned to Austin at 8:30PM.

Day 2

Day 2 After breakfast began our trip towards Big Bend national park itself, it was an hr long drive to the entrance of the park and after paying the entry fee another 45mins drive to the center of the park. We stopped at the visitor center at the center of the park (called panther junction) and consulted the ranger who said "We don't want to for our opinion on you so we have survey published in the news paper which can help you decide what to do".

We thanked the ranger headed to the Ross-Maxwell scenic drive. The winding drive ended at Santa Elena Canyon. The canyon was gorgeous and as Dr. R observed lots of the rocks and stones are so precariously placed that a small jolt can get them rolling down. There wasn't much water in the Rio grande river. We walked up the trail till we hit the narrowest part of the canyon and headed back.

Meanwhile it was time for lunch for some of us and way beyond lunch time for others. After a short and quick debate we stopped at Canyon overlook and created an assembly line to make sandwiches. One slice of bread had green chutney other had red chutney (thanks to A and R), some cucumbers, tomatoes, spring veggie mix, cheese and sprouts were stuffed to make the sandwich. Some ate 1 some ate 2 and we topped it all off with some good bananas and some not so sweet oranges.

After food we traced our way back towards panther junction while stopping along the way for another small canyon, bunch of amazing rock formations and a rock formation called mule ears. Since we were running low on gas we decided to head to Terlingua to get gas (nearest gas station as per the GPS) and check in to the cottage which were to host us for next 2 nights.

Terlingua/Ghost town true to its name looked like a ghost town. The population in the town was very less and I doubt if the town has a high school. It is right next to the park hence it shares the desert vegetation. The entry to our cottage was through an unpaved road. But the accommodation was really nice. It had a full fledged kitchen and place enough to accommodate 4 people in each room. We tried inquiring about vegetarian food and the locals looked at us as though we were from Mars :). Our initial google search for restaurants in Terlingua had resulted in a Thai place which was no where to be found in reality, I think it is the bad economy.

After grumbling some time about dinner we decided to head back to the park. There was still some time for sunset so we decided to hike up the Lost mine trail, We stopped half way the trail and enjoyed some breath taking views and decided to head back to window view for sunset. We spotted a few mule deer on the way. MK had to switch his lenses to capture the Deer properly. The evening light on the adjacent mountains made them really colorful. It made us realize the power of twilight in bringing out the natural colors. After hiking down we drove to the window view to watch the sunset which we hoped would be really spectacular but it wasn't as we expected it to be. We didn't want to take chance at Terlingua looking for a place to eat and hence we devoured at the restaurant inside the park.

Trip to Big Bend National Park Day-1

Couple of weekends ago, me and a few friends made a trip to Big Bend National park. It is the only national park in Texas (for the size of Texas I think it should host a few more parks:)). All thanks to MK and his the persistence, the trip finally happened. Initially we thought we will have seven or eight people but we ended up with six people, enough to fit into a minivan.

Day 1 we started at ~3:30PM, almost per the plan. The drive was nice, coasting at 80+ miles/hr along the straight roads of west Texas. We made a stop at Fort Stockton for food at the Pizza Hut and continued our drive to Marathon,TX for the night stay. The place in Marathon called Adobe Rose Inn was a bed and breakfast place, It was a struggle to find that place even with the GPS. We had booked what was called the Garden Suite with 2 adjoining rooms. One room with a local fire place was taken up by girls and guys took the room with bunk bed. The place had an artistic touch to it, it had paintings and carvings from lot of places around the world (Africa, South America, India, Nepal) and a collection of wide variety of books arranged artistically all over the suite. Since we had reached the place at ~11:20PM we just crashed for the night. The breakfast next day was provided by the Inn and it was also nice.

Attack on Srilankan Cricketers

Yesterday there was an attack on Srilankan cricketers in Pakistan. Supposedly gunmen opened fire and injured bunch of Lankan cricketers. Yeah it is bad and shouldn't have happened. But for people like me who rely on internet news channels, here is what we were greeted with on some of the leading Indian news papers.

It seemed more like a test of intelligence than plain news, I was supposed to deduce that there was an attack on Lankan players and it happened in Pakistan. Instead of brain teasing I took the easy way out and looked up on BBC for a news that made some sense.

I miss the plain old NEWS paper where the headlines don't change every minute or every second but will remain same (pretty much for ever).

Christian the lion

One of my all time favorite videos, this video made internet circles a few months ago. For the cynics it is a true story.

This version has more detail but doesn't give the story properly.

Tree Planting at Patterson Park

Last Saturday, me and a couple of friends volunteered to plant trees at Patterson Park in Austin. The event was organized by a local non profit organization called Tree Folks. The organization does tree planting around Austin and works in association with city of Austin parks and recreation department. We went there to volunteer as part of the Art of Living Austin's community service imitative.

The holes to plant trees had been pre dug using one of the city's big machines. All we had to do was shovel out the mud from the pit, put the tree into the pit and pack soil around the roots. And once tree is planted rake some mulch around the tree. We planted all kinds of trees but I only remember a couple of names like bald cypress, desert willow and live oak. I was fortunate to meet a lady who serves on City of Austin’s forestry board, through her and the rest of the tree folk volunteers; I learnt a few interesting things about trees and planting them.

1. The depth of the pit should not be more than the height of the pot
2. The pit diameter can be 2 to 3 times wider than pot diameter
3. Never make the edges or bottom of the pit too smooth.
4. Never put mulch so that it covers the shoot (leave at least a few inches between mulch and shoot), for it might kill the tree.
5. Pack the mud around the tree as much as possible and never leave air gap in the mud as the roots stop growing once they encounter an air pocket.
6. Bermuda grass is an exotic invasive species and a non native while buffalo grass is native (the lady mentioned a few more but I don't remember).
7. A freshly planted tree needs around 1 inch of water per week for 2 years for it to settle down. After 2 years it will grow/survive on its own.
8. Desert willow as the name suggests needs lot less water to grow than weeping willow.

Some one mentioned an old Chinese proverb,” The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, but the second best time is now".

It was an interesting chilly day with temperature in range of 45F-55F and I was dressed in a t-shirt and shorts and needless to say I was chilled out (literally). On the whole we had fun. I will try post some pictures when I get them from our volunteer lead.

Cactus bloom in our patio

Technically it is still not a complete bloom but it is on the way.

Some useful tools for windows users

At work my environment is mostly windows and I have found some of these tools to make my life a bit easier.

Textpad

It is probably one of the best text editors built, it is agile and very responsive. It almost has all functions of linux editors like gedit or nedit amd it is more versatile and powerful than wordpad I rarely use notepad or wordpad anymore and Textpad is my default text editor.

Hypersnap

For all those who use screen captures for their power points and don't want to use "Print Scrn", here is your answer Hypersnap. You can capture an area of screen, an active window and even edit the captured image. Again,for single use not all that expensive

ExamDiff

A worthwhile tool that does what tkdiff does in linux. Its a free tool and it works great.

WinBatch

This is more like perl and does almost everything perl does but easy to learn and use. It runs slower than perl. I found it very useful to create multiple directories or parsing data from multiple files. I bet it can do way more but that is all I have used it for. The license if a bit more expensive than most others I have listed but I have found it is worth the price.

Barber shops in US (yes, they do exist)

For most of us who have lived in US for long enough time, we are used to super cuts and sport clips and great clips and so on for hair cuts and if you are picky like me once in a while you end up with an unsatisfactory haircut. All this was true till I discovered an independently owned barber shop last month.

It was suggested by a friend of mine and I went there with lots of hesitation. The shop is located in a rundown part of the town and was called Oak Hill Barber Shop, The name Barber shop instead of cuts or clippers got me thinking, Being in US for as long as I have been, I am more used to people calling themselves stylists and the places they work as either clippers or cuts and last I heard of a barber shop was when I was in India.

Inside the shop also, the ambience was more retro and not like the usual chain stylist stores. The chairs seemed to be more than 20 years old but I admit they were really comfortable and very well maintained. Instead of a receptionist and bunch of stylists, there was only 1 person. Turns out she was the owner of the shop and she was the one who was going to cut my hair. She claimed she had more than 20 years experience cutting hair and I have to admit I got one of the best haircuts in a long time.

The cost was similar to that of the chain stores (that was surprising); she doesn't take credit cards though but only cash or check. Needless to say I will go back to her for my future needs. Last but not the least I have the pleasure of supporting a locally owned business.

A beautiful sun rise

I captured these from our apartment patio using the Canon A610, used the manual mode to control the shutter speed.

Curious behavior of our gold fish

We have a fish tank with 3 gold fish and one of them, the white one always goes and rests inside the decorative pot. The curious part is, it has just the head barely sneaking outside the pot.

Super Bowl

Last Sunday was the 43rd Super Bowl and it was historic in lot of aspects.

One aspect that interested me was that Steelers created history by winning their 6th title. Arizona Cardinals haven't won the championship in the last 51 years and they also would have created history if they had won. A friend of mine told me that there is a baseball team called Chicago Cubs who haven't won a championship in the last 100 years.

I think if IPL continues, we Indians can also some day say things like Royal challengers never won a championship or Rajasthan Royals won one too many times.

SLR Buy

A month or so ago a I borrowed my friend’s digital SLR to play with, I was completely blown away by its performance. It made me realize what I am missing in terms of digital photography equipment and I decided to buy one for myself.

Unlike the last few times when I have purchased things almost spontaneously I decided to do some research this time (hint: I am married now)

Needless to say the two leading companies for digital SLR are Canon and Nikon and since I am a complete novice I decided to focus only on budget DSLRs. I went through the usual set of comparisons of mega pixels, CCD size, year of make, speed, with or without image stabilization, N focus points or N+1 focus points and so on and so forth. The comparison reminded me of a song from Hindi movie Rangeela ("Complan bole mein meeta hoon, Horlicks bole mein acha hoon :)), Anyways, I had to make a decision before I go mad, so I almost narrowed down to Nikon D60. But after going through some more reviews decided on Canon Rebexl XS and again decided to notch the budget up by couple hundred $'s and decided on a Canon rebel Xsi.

So far so good, now that I have decided on a camera, I decided to wait to see how my company's outlook will look like by the end of January. Needless to say it wasn't rosy and my employer asked us to take a 10% pay cut (well I am glad it is only 10% and not 100%). On top of this my car decided to go through a routine maintenance and my dentist decided to fill a couple of teeth.

My earlier deadline of January end is way past over, I have decided to postpone it by another month or so and tthink again. Of course the guidance from our new president isn't helping much either :).

Ram Setu

I think this issue is too old for any interest, just my 2 cents. The chief minister of Tamil Nadu and Government of India are bent upon destroying the age old Ram Setu as it helps in economic progress. Agreed, nothing wrong with that, but if Rama is considered god by many people in India and we celebrate atleast 1 or 2 festivals each year to celebrate the triumph of good over evil (Rama killing Ravana) across the whole of India, wouldn't Ram Setu become a national symbol worth preserving.

To draw a parallel, in USA alcohol is not sold on Sunday’s till 12:00PM. This is done to honor people who go to church. There is no science involved to suggest no alcohol till 12:00PM on Sunday’s but it is honoring something that most people in this country at one point believed in. I am sure this is an economic hit for many but is pretty strictly implemented.

Scientifically speaking may be Ram Setu was never built by Rama and it is a natural formation or for that matter Rama never existed. But what matters is it is imbibed in our culture and it is part of our identity.

Science alone should not rule our lives but we need a combination of science, faith and belief.

Ends of the Spectrum

Isn't the world amazing, on one side is the Austin puppy which was abandoned in a dumpster and on the other side is the Florida dog which died only to be cloned back.

Amazon Market Place

Couple of months ago I was going through my old books and realized I am not using them and haven't touched them in years and can either donate them or sell them to some place like half price books. The half price books rules were so weird and they offered me really meager amount and I ended up bringing all the books home.

I started looking at alternatives where I can make some reasonable money. The first thing that came to mind was eBay but after having heard from a friend on how he was not able to sell his stuff on eBay I stopped thinking about eBay.Then there is half.com but the prices quoted are so ridiculous I gave up on that.

The other alternative that I found was Amazon market place, the catch though was I can only sell items that Amazon.com itself sells, if they don't sell then I cannot list the item independently. All I had to do was create a seller account and link a bank account for future money transfer (whenever I make a sale). We can name our price but shipping is fixed by amazon.com (unlike ebay where item costs $2 and shipping $20). The commission is also a bit higher than eBay.

Initially I listed a few books and CDs online and to my luck I sold around 5 items in 1 month (beginners luck) and made way more money than I would have if I had gone to half price books or similar. Encouraged by the initial success I went through the whole apartment and listed all possible things that I don't need or use. Yeah the sales became slower after initial gain but it is not completly dead.

Somethings I don't think I could have sold for a decent price anywhere else I sold them here, for ex: I had a circular polarizing filter that I had bought for my old Olympus C2100 and rarely used (bought in 2001) and I managed to sell it a few weeks ago. Another example is that of a DDR266 memory stick, I listed it on eBay and no bids but managed to get a decent price on Amazon.

Things are not all that rosy either, the shipping cost is fixed and many a times the cost of shipping is higher than actual amount I have collected from buyer. As said before their commision is higher, for the books they charge by the weight. Lastly there is the competition, some item I may have listed for $10 and there will be some one else who would list for $3. I truly recommend Amazon market place for people who want to get rid of items that they no longer use like books, CDs, cameras, lenses and so on and so forth.

Cooking Arugula

Other day me and my wife were roaming around farmers market (it is a weekly market where farmers from local area sell there produce) and thought we should try to cook up some other greens other than spinach (aka palak). We saw a store selling some greens without a name, we figured we should be adventurous and picked up a bunch, my wife couldn't resist the temptation and asked the seller lady what is it called and the lady gave a stare as though we were ignorant or novice and said it was "Arugula".

A day later our adventurous spirit died and we were back to our safe zone and wondering what should we do with so much Arugula. We called my brother, I consider him a goat who at some point would have tried all possible greens and veggies. He said "yeah it is very healthy and like all healthy stuff it is not great tasting. You can try adding some extra masala and dal and give it a shot" and added "It tastes so weird that even insects wont eat it". I guess that was enough to scare me and I almost made up my mind to throw it away. The conservationist in my wife woke up and insisted that we should cook a sambar with it and if it turns out bad we shall look for alternatives later.

So began the process, I started cutting the greens and could smell a strong pungent odor. I started sauteing and the odor almost filled the entire apartment (nope it didn't trigger any fire alarm) and interestingly the odor kept reducing and after long enough time the odor pretty much died away.

I was still scared when it came time to eat, needless to say I prayed to all Indian and other gods. As it turns out the bitter/pungent taste of Arugula was lost in our cooking process and it tasted pretty delicious. Only snag was that it seemed a bit under cooked. I guess it needed more cooking time than spinach.

At the end of this experiment we decided to add Arugula to our cooking list and probably in the future combine spinach and Arugula and give that a shot or get more adventurous and try some other greens/veggies.