Manjunath's thoughts

Iphone Home button

2012-01-25T12:36:00.001-06:00

Iphone users can tell you how important the home button on the phone is. Time and again it goes out of calibration (it did it twice for me in last year and half). In my case It got so bad that some times I had to click multiple times before the click got recognized and the ,more frustrating the behavior was random for it sometimes would treat multiple clicks as multiple clicks itself. I would have taken it to the Apple’s Genius bar but the phone was out of warranty.

While looking for solution on the web, I came across a simple one. The solution was to turn off the phone and stick a vacuum cleaner or an air blower to the place where stick the charger. Since I had nothing to lose, I decided to give it a shot. Instead of air blower, I used the vacuum cleaner and vola it fixed the problem.

I have repeated this step twice so far and have gotten good results both times, so give it a shot before tearing apart the phone or driving up to the genius bar.

ps: There is one more software solution, I came across. I haven’t tried to see if this works, but you could try.

Kids and hi-tech gadgets

2012-01-19T14:55:00.001-06:00

We usually let our daughter play around with some of the hi-tech gadgets at home (TV, computer, Iphone, Ipod and so on) but do it under fairly close supervision. The reason is 2 fold, on 1 hand if she can break the system then it is not worth to be around her and on the other if at all there are a few things she manages to change and make it unusable there is always Dr. Google to help us bring things back to shape.

Surprisingly, there is a 3rd reason too. Thanks to her and her out of the box thinking, I have learnt a new thing or 2. For ex: I was not aware that my Samsung TV had something called “Store Demo” mode which can be turned on by clicking a few buttons in the front of the TV. In this mode the TV over rides any display settings you have and shows pictures in high brightness with 100% contrast, of course can’t watch for too long in that mode and since I am not that as savvy with the buttons as her I had to use the graphical UI to debug the problem. On the other occasion after she had played around with my computer keyboard, all it was doing was to print special characters and upper case letters only, this time around the fix was to ask Dr. Google and solution was to hold both “shift” keys simultaneously for a few seconds. My favorite is when she showed us that Windows 7 allows for screen to be oriented in 4 different ways (landscape, portrait, straight and reverse) and that the DELL laptops have a keyboard shortcut to achieve the same (CTRL+ALT+ Arrow key).

The one equipment/gadget I am scared to let her play around is the IPhone, for its easy to use interface is so easy that she has accidentally deleted couple of pics and videos recorded on the phone. Of course that hasn’t stopped me from letting her play with it, I am more careful with her around. There is another side effect of letting her play with the Iphone, she thinks any screen of that size (like the camera) is touch sensitive and she can can go to the next pic or video by just moving her fingers across the screen.

I don’t know how long we can let her play for she is getting bigger and stronger and now getting in the mode of learning to throw things.

Sri Sri Yoga with the best

2011-12-20T17:22:00.001-06:00

Every course I have attended with the Art of Living foundation so far, started with a disclaimer “all sessions are mandatory, miss one and you are out”. But here was one course that was a complete exception to the policy. This course had the policy, ”if you feel motivated and would like to come, please do. Else, not a problem (we already got your money :))”. At the same time here was the course that I was so motivated to attend and I wouldn’t mind waking up at 5:00AM on a Saturday just to be on time and not miss a single moment. Wondering what I am blabbering about, it was the Sri Sri Yoga with Dr. Sriram Sarvotham.

If you can, imagine a perfect blend of a yoga practitioner, an Engineer and a gifted teacher with an amazing sense of humor then you will probably get somewhere close to Sriram. A yoga practitioner who can bend and twist his body as though bones only exist for mere mortals, a genius who recites the yoga sutras of Patanjali and offers commentary on the same, a teacher who leads by example and can make you do asanas for nearly 2 hours and in the end you would wonder was it really that long?. I can keep talking about him but can’t do justice. I think Sriram should be called (Dr.)^2 Sriram Sarvotham, one for his PhD in electrical engineering and other for yoga studies.

Now to the course itself, I was apprehensive when I found it was a “yoga” course and split over 2 weekends. The impulsive reaction and the follow up action so far had been to avoid the same. This time around I acted differently and I am happy I did the same. The course was a complete package and had everything for all the layers of existence (want to know more, do a YESPLUS or an Art of Living course). The postures were not new but what was new was the sequence and what kept it fresh was the teacher. The discourses were very original and I was blown away by the way (Dr.)^2 was putting the knowledge across to us.

By the end of the course, I now have a clear understanding of the Gunas(Rajas, Tamas and Satva) and the Doshas(Vata, Pitta and Kapha). I now know a few more pranayamas I have also become very aware of the importance of rest period after an intense yoga session. I loved the way Sriram led the yoga sessions and how he would indicate that some poses as pre-requisite poses for the next level tough poses. The answers to the questions would come out spontaneously and the knowledge flowed effortlessly. On the last day, most of us had sore muscles but all of us had soaring spirits.

Here is a piece of free advice, next time when Sriram is in town and teaching the Sri Sri yoga course, don’t think twice, free up your weekends and just jump in.

On a lighter note, wonder when will the name of the course will change to “Art of Yoga”, hmm . . . we will wait and watch.

ps: if you thought yoga does not build body/muscle strength, next time when you are around babies/kids observe them carefully.

The secret ingredient is salt

2011-12-18T20:45:00.001-06:00

Sandhya does not believe in getting ghee from the Indian store but prefers to get butter from the local grocery store and make ghee out of it. She has been doing for a while now and is an expert in the same.

Couple of days back I decided to giver her a break and embarked on a project to make ghee out of butter. I thought, I have seen her do it and it is just a matter of patience and no magic involved.

Thus after nearly 2 or so hours of waiting to generate ghee from butter, I figured I have accomplished the task and asked sandhya to help me filter the ghee to a different container. For those novices (like me), butter after being heated on a low flame for so long should leave out a solid substance which needs to filtered out to get ghee. In my case all I had was a colloid and no solid. So, when filtered I had the ghee and the colloidal substance together.

I kept scratching my head wondering what must have gone wrong, in my mind I blamed every possible thing. Meanwhile, I noticed that Sandhya’s face was beaming end to end and I figured I must have missed something very elementary. She said add a few grains of salt and a bit of turmeric and re heat the ghee + colloid for a few minutes.

Once I did that, bingo! the colloidal substance became solid like and was easy to be filtered out. I had finally made ghee from butter.

In this case, one can argue that salt being the catalyst is not completely proven, but my gut feeling is that it is the salt and not turmeric.

Culture or plain economics?

2011-10-23T01:19:00.001-05:00

The other day when I went to my barber for a haircut, I was surprised to see a little girl sitting with her mom and enjoying a donut. Knowing that my barber gives haircut only for men and does not do women’s hair let alone kids, I figured the kid must have accompanied her had. In a few minutes my suspicion was proven right.

I thought this could only happen in this country and this would be a cultural blasphemy if happened in India. I began to wonder if the culture is the byproduct of plain economics. Here is how I justify my argument.

The barber shop I go to is a 800sqft facility, she has done a wonderful job of decorating the place and keeping it simple yet elegant and the some of the furniture though old is pretty comfortable and nice. In short apart from the barber chairs and the tools, there is hardly anything around to make it a barber shop. Compare this to a 100 to 150sqft single room with a few barber chairs on one side and a sitting bench on the other side. The shop walls are usually decorated by huge cut outs of the barber’s favorite movie stars. Some places in India where the real estate is expensive, the barbers don’t believe in renting a place but do their job on the side walks.

Thinking rationally, I wouldn’t taking my daughter with me to the barber shop and let her play around while I get my haircut. But I wouldn’t do it in the near future, for one my daughter is too young.

This small thing makes me wonder how many such “cultural/traditional” reasons exist which can use a re evaluation under changed circumstances/conditions?

iOS 5 and lateral thinking

2011-10-18T17:49:00.001-05:00

In general with Apple and its iOS everything is always perfect and over time I have come to expect the simplicity and perfection from them. Any small deviation from this is completely unheard of and my lateral thinking mind does not come into play when working with Apple devices. Last week I had to do a tiny bit of it with my Iphone4.

When Apple rolled out the iOS 5, I was eager to get the new OS and adopted it pretty quickly. The updating even though it was a 2 step process (update ITunes, reboot and update the OS) was pretty clean. After the OS was updated, I saw a notification in the App Store that the the Flickr app I have installed needs updating. I clicked on the update and nothing seemed to happen. I kept pressing it to update and it refused to do anything. For a moment I started to wonder if the screen has lost its touch sensitivity (thankfully no).

I went a bit lateral in my thinking and deleted the Flickr app and asked it to be freshly installed, this time around, it refused to install. It said the terms and conditions have changed and I need to accept them before I continue the installation, I clicked on OK but instead of taking me to terms and conditions it kept taking me back to App Store. I repeated the process multiple times but to no resolution.

Since I can’t let go of the Flickr app, I took the additional step of connecting the phone to the computer and getting the Flickr app through ITunes. This time around it popped the updated terms and conditions and once I agreed it installed the app.

Now for some good and bad about the iOS5, I like the new OS but I have noticed some issues with the same.

The news stand app seems like a joke for the only news paper that qualifies for this is NY Times (rest are all some form of magazines).
I have turned off Face Time and used to work beautifully in OS 4 but in OS 5 it appears as though turning on or off of Face Time doesn’t make any difference.
The Reminders feature is a nice one to have but it is unlike the APPLE I was used to, just takes too many steps to setup a reminder.
The are a few cool things in iOS5, one them is the iMessage ( a blessing for people like me who refuse to sign up for the text message plan).
Another big improvement I noticed is in the camera utility (more post processing capabilities).
Because of the added features, the settings app has become bit more elongated and complicated. I liked the iOS4 in this aspect.
Haven’t used the icloud service, hence no comments.

A year with Iphone

2011-10-09T18:35:00.001-05:00

About a year ago when I decided to upgrade to a smart phone, I wanted to get a cool Android phone. But thanks to AT&T the only good smart phone they had in their line up at that time was the Iphone4.

After a year of usage, I am pretty impressed with the Iphone4 and now I am almost a fan of Apple and iOS.

My usage model of the phone is pretty limited, I use it mostly like a phone to make and receive phone calls. There are only couple of smart features on the phone that I use very regularly, One is the calendar and the other is the Notes. I do check my Gmail once in a while on the phone but rarely reply to emails from the phone. Once in a while I use the GPS. To give an example of how less I use the phone for the web related things, I have never exceeded the 100MB data plan that AT&T offers.

Initially when I got it, it felt a bit big in my hand but over time I got used to it. The phone is snappy and the touch screen is really touch sensitive. The glass front and back of the phone are magnets for finger prints, I suggest getting a protective coating done (most malls have one or two shops to do this). The GPS is fast loading (even without the cell signal). The notes are easy to type into and the calendar feature is easy to work with. Of the limited apps I have installed (Flickr, Google, Google places and so on) most everything load real fast.

The 720p resolution video camera is really good and I have managed to capture some of the once in a life time moments of my daughter with this. That said, I am not really impressed by the still picture performance of the camera. The images look great on the phone but once loaded on to big screen it appears a grainy. I wonder if it has to do with the HDR function of the iOS.

The other feature I really cherish in this phone is the Ipod feature. I use it so much that I have rarely turned on the radio in the car. The sound quality from the phone is not the best but good enough for my purposes.

One thing I do not like is the fact that Apple does not provide an easy way to turn on the flash led to be used as a flash light. I had to download an app for that, even though the app itself is free, it keep loading ads.

The battery life is pretty good, without loading a single YouTube video I manage to get 4 to 5 days of battery life but watching videos from the web really drain out the battery. I do keep the wi-fi on all the time, but the GPS function I have enabled only on for a few applications.

I noticed a few things that Apple has done to optimize battery life. The first and very obvious one for me was that the mail checking frequency set to default once a day (I have changed it to manual). The other thing is, the phone doesn’t keep searching for wi-fi round the clock but only looks for it only once when it wakes up from sleep and doesn’t bother after that. I am sure the GPS is kept off unless an application demands it. I am not sure if the phone goes into different states of sleep to save power, for sometimes I need to press the top button and not the bottom home button to wake up the phone.

I paid $199 to get this phone and surprisingly Apple has reduced the price to $99. At that price I think it is definitely worth considering. Now looking forward to iOS 5.

Steroid based treatments

2011-10-09T00:55:00.001-05:00

Most every time I have visited a doctor in the USA, may be for a poison ivy rash or cedar pollen allergy or any form of cold/cough/etc, apart from the antibiotics (which I have been very rarely prescribed), the doctor has prescribed some form of steroid based treatment. It could be in the form of inhalers or tablets or cream, most every time it is steroid based. With almost 100% accuracy the treatments have worked and I have felt better each time.

In the Initial days I used to be worried of these steroid based treatments, for my experience has always been with traditional medicine. But over the years I have come to understand that the medicine rarely cures (unless we are talking about cancer) but we are cured by the body’s innate ability to heal itself. Which we in the spiritual domain call the life force or Prana.

So, instead of taking the traditional medicines which mask the symptoms and hope that the body will feel better soon, isn’t it better to take the steroid based treatments and help the body accelerate the process of healing?

Dean TV, don’t bother to call them

2011-08-29T16:59:00.001-05:00

For the last couple of weeks our Samsung LCD TV was exhibiting strobe light flickering pattern. I tried some googling for the solution but was unsuccessful. Since the TV is over a year old and Samsung website does not believe in taking complaints online, I thought of trying some local repair shop.

I called this company Dean TV and they were pretty responsive and scheduled an appointment for the same day (Sunday), I was pretty impressed then. When they came in, I was expecting 1 but 3 showed up. The lead guy saw the problem and immediately concluded they cannot fix it but have to haul it to the shop for they need to run some diagnostics on the same and it could take a couple of hours. Thanks to Sandhya’s instincts, we decided against and told them we will call back. To earn his wage, the lead guy decided to open the TV at home and checked a couple of voltages on the power board and concluded that the problem is either in the panel (costs $900+) or in the main board ($375+) and they need to take it to the shop to figure this. We paid them their consulting fee and bid them good bye.

I still had to get the TV fixed and hence called Samsung. To my surprise the call went through in no time and the person on the other side took down the complaint and said somebody will call me in a day or so. They called the very next day and gave an appointment for the same day and the technician came over right at the beginning of the scheduled time (1.5hr slot and not 3 or 4hr). Unlike the other guys, this guy was only 1. He said the problem is the bad power supply board (which the other guys had certified as good) and he replaced the same. The problem is gone for now and TV is back in shape.

On the whole it would have cost me $250 for the repair but I spent an additional $50 in the process.But I learnt a few things, it is good to call the official guys first before making an attempt to call the local repair shops and It is good to call in the repair instead of trying to submit ticket online. If the number of people showing up to repair a TV is more than 1 then know that they do not know what they are doing :). Reviews on Yelp alone are not enough to call a repair shop good.

I wonder

2011-08-19T12:56:00.001-05:00

Since the blog name is Manjunath’s thoughts, I think it is high time I publish a few things of thought. So, here is an effort to add some more randomness (chaos) to the blog.

I wonder how long does it take for a set of good guidelines either laid out in some obscure book or taught by a great personality will take the form of a meaningful practice?
I wonder how long does it take for a set of meaningful practices to take the form of a belief?
I wonder how long does it take for a set of beliefs to take the form of a religion?
I wonder at what point does the religion becomes an inheritance rather than a choice?
I wonder how long does it take for this religion to gather enough mass and strength that people start influencing/coercing others to convert?
I wonder how long does it take for the religion to divide on itself?
I wonder how long does it take for a meaningful practice to become a blind ritual/faith?
I wonder how long does it take for this religion to take a violent form, either in the name of defending itself or attacking others?
I wonder if there is an order to all these, like first teaching, then comes practice, then comes belief, then comes blind faith and then takes the form of religion or do these things move around?
I wonder at what point does the religion starts to instill fear in its members (either to grow or just to sustain)?
I wonder if the conversion to a religion starts first or division of a religion starts first?
I wonder if the answer to all the above is “it depends”, it depends on the time and space and the mind state of the people starting the movement and the mental and politico-fiscal state of people following.

Anna Hazare and anti graft

2011-08-17T12:23:00.001-05:00

Make no mistake, I am all in favor of a stringent anti-graft (Local) bill and I agree with Anna Hazare that we need an independent investigating agency to investigate the charges of corruption. But I am also not really in favor of including the Prime Minister and the Supreme Court justice under the bill for I believe we need some one to look over this so called independent body, we can’t keep increasing the size of the government creating agency upon agency to monitor each other.

That said, I am proud that India has maintained a democracy for the last 64 years and whether we use it or not, once every 5 years or sometimes earlier we have the right to change our representatives. By the principles of democracy these elected representatives should be formulating laws and constitution and that’s the ideal case. But in the case of Anti graft bill, it is to an extent stupid to expect that our elected representatives will come to an agreement and pass a tough law to prosecute themselves. It is like the hindi saying “AA bail mujhe maar” (loosely translated, come on bull I am here please hit me). So, to work for this bill within the democratic frame work is difficult possible if not impossible.

The other option is to move towards referendum, gather enough grass root support and compel the government/elected body to act the right way. But the question is who is supposed to lead this effort and who is supposed to formulate this bill. Isn’t taking this approach undermining the democracy in itself?

I have the highest respect to faith in Anna Hazare, Arvind Kejriwal and Sri Sri Ravishankar. I don’t know anything about Shanti Bhushan or Prashant Bhushan, I don’t like Ramdev (luckily he is not around this time). For a country of billion people, can/will the above mentioned three do justice? or is the agitation showing the negative side of democracy?

Bollywood movie piracy?

2011-08-10T10:50:00.001-05:00

There is an Indian store in my neighborhood which is fairly famous and sells good quality stuff. They also sell DVDs of newly released Hindi movies. Mind you they have the DVDs within a few days of the movie release (not DVD but movie). The DVDs are not really actual official DVD of the movie but the quality is highly sufficient enough to watch the movie.

These DVDs are what we in India used to call camera prints, till day my understanding of camera print is that some person smuggles a video camera to a movie theater and records the movie. In the olden days these prints were so bad in quality that the audio would be out of sync with the video and if you are lucky you could see a few audience moving in and out of the theater along with the movie and if you are unlucky you would just see the audience itself and not the movie at all. Those days in India was the era of VHS and depending on which video store you visit you would get different quality of the movie. Fast forward to present, The DVDs are almost passable for a near official DVD release(barring the colors being off), you only see the movie and nothing else. The audio is well in sync with the video.

I am now wondering if there is a centralized underground company that uses some high tech equipments to record these DVDs. Here is my reasoning, the Indian store charges $3/dvd and he does not rent DVD but sells it to you. If the movie happens to be a decent hit like Ghajini or 3 Idiots, he would sell close to a thousand or more of each before the official movie DVD releases. To generate such an income, I am sure he has to pay dearly to get these quality DVDs.

On one side, if you are ok with watching a decent quality cinema print on your Hi-Def TV then you get the instant gratification of watching the movie that you missed watching in theater. On the other hand, I feel sorry for the Bollywood movie makers for their loss of income due to this.

I think the reason for existence of these things arise from the fact that we would compromise with the quality for almost instant gratification (almost because one has to go to the store to pick up the DVD).

No offence to the people selling the DVDs or to people buying them for I myself have gotten them some times but just thought it is a good idea to bring to attention the scale of this.

Can a credit card be used in a store without the card being present?

2011-07-20T15:54:00.001-05:00

A few months ago, my credit card company called and told me that there has been an unauthorized transaction on my card and cancelled the present card and sent me a new one with a new number. What they caught was a transaction of $0.75 and what was lurking beneath was a transaction for $93 which had happened at a Kroger grocery store in Michigan. Once I noticed it, I reported the same and the company took care of this problem and refunded me the money.

I wouldn’t have been writing this post if it were just that. Below is a pic of the transaction record as shown on my card statement.

If you observe closely, the transaction hasn’t happened online but at a specific grocery store and the person has also taken cash from the card. My cards are never lost and on the day of this transaction, I was in Austin getting a car wash. I have never visited Michigan.

Question is, how did this person manage to use the card in a store without the card being present?, I myself do not know the pin number to draw money on the card, how did this guy figure it out. I have been looking to see if one can just use a card number for a transaction without the card being present and haven’t come across anybody saying yes it is possible.

One possibility is, the card company made a mistake in processing transactions and the charge appeared on my account instead of the other. But I have had this card for last 11 years and they have changed the number multiple times and such a thing has never happened. I can’t think of any other way, wonder if the blog readers can shed some light on this.

Another PC problem/solution

2011-07-15T12:39:00.001-05:00

When we moved to a new apartment the physical location of the router and desktop at home essentially prevented any form of wired communication between them. So, I went and bought a Linksys PCI wireless adapter and plugged it to the desktop. At that time I had a Linksys router and both the adapter and the router played well with each other.

Eventually the Linksys router went kaput and I replaced it with a Trendnet router (for it was the cheaper option). The PC had some trouble adjusting to the different router but the problem was not too too bad. Over time the problem became bad and sometimes so bad that it was a chance if the net was working more than an hour without dropping the connection. I tried all the tricks in the book, like using Windows zero configuration instead of Linksys network manager, adjusting the antenna, dropping the wireless mode to b/g instead of b/g/n and so on, but all yielded limited results.

After struggling with the problem for a while and searching between forums I found the solution. The trend net router allows multiple (11 to be precise) channels to communicate and default setting was to use ‘Auto Channel” select, the solution was to pick channel 1 or 11 and I went with 1. For the last 3 to 4 days I haven’t had a dropped connection and all is finally back to well. But since I have restricted to 1 channel for transmitting from the router I can see my signal strength varying over time (instead of 5 bars, I now get 4 or 3 bars some times). The variation hasn’t caused any disruption to my experience of surfing the net.

The theory behind is that the dropping of the connection is happening due to interference from neighboring routers and solutions were to reduce the frequency of transmission (which is apparently possible with other routers) or use the channel that gives maximum isolation (1 or 6 or 11 in Trendnet). Come to think of it, the problem became worse when my neighbors changed and couple of Indian techies moved next door.

Of course the router has its own problem, once every 3 weeks or once a month I need to disable and enable wireless mode. I don’t know why that is the case but the problem is livable and I haven’t tried debugging.

It’s not always Microsoft’s fault

2011-07-06T11:45:00.001-05:00

Just when I thought that my ordeal of dealing with HD videos is over, I came across the crashing of software problem when working with larger video files (~800MB). I noticed that working with HD videos, both the cores of my system gets pegged to 100% and running at this rate for a few minutes either crashed my system completely or killed the software running. The typical Microsoft response was to check the last installed driver and blah and blah all led to dead ends with no solution in sight.

Out of curiosity. I ran a CPU stress test and started monitoring the temperature of the cores. Sure enough with both cores running at 100%, the core temperatures rose up to 93C and couple of minutes running at that temperature the stress test started giving errors. I used the compressed air cleaner and that cleaned out some of the dust but the temperature did not come down much (came down to 87C). Running at reduced temperature got me a couple of minutes with the videos but not enough to complete the job in hand.

As a last resort, I opened the system up and used an air blower (electric, not the manual one) to blow air over the CPU heat sink and fan. Sure enough a ton of dust came up and longer I blew air more dust came out. After a few minutes of this process and when I was convinced that I have cleaned up as much as I can, I plugged the system back in ran the same stress tests and monitor the temperature. The max temperature had come down to 60C with both cores pegged at 100% for more than 30minutes and I could edit and work the large video files without any problems.

At the beginning of the July 4th weekend I was convinced that the system I have is not good enough to work with HD videos and by the end of the weekend, thanks to my air blower, I am fairly happy with my system. I could have taken my system to one of those places to do a power cleaning but I think the electric air blower is a much cheaper and better option.

It’s not always Microsoft’s fault, some times it is the dust. Although I hold them responsible for not providing better debug tools with their OS.

In this process I found out couple of new things. Since the Klite codecs had been uninstalled, PICASA3 can play AVHCD videos and it can export videos to .wmv files (played by windows media player) without any loss in quality of the video.

Its all about allowing the possibility . . . . .

2011-06-27T16:11:00.001-05:00

Last December, couple of months after our daughter was born, we decided to get a HD camcorder and after some consultation with Dr. Google we narrowed down on a specific model of Canon. All the reviews said, the hardware is really good but the software is a piece of crap and most everything I looked at said “Canon should do a better job”. By the time the device came home I was convinced beyond reason that the software is junk.

To follow the procedure, I went ahead and installed the Imagemixer software provided with the camcorder on to my PC and it worked beautifully to transfer videos from the camcorder to the PC. The next step was to play on the TV, Canon went cheap here and doesn’t provide a HDMI cable but will provide a component cable (that for me is plain dumb). Like many of the Hi-def camcorders out there, Canon records the videos in AVCHD format which my Samsung TV doesn’t understand.

I went back to the installed software to see if there is a way to convert the video to a format that the TV understands. Once I clicked on “Edit”, the software went limbo and it completely disappeared from the screen. I was convinced, this is the reason everybody calls the software junk and went around looking for other video converters and editors. I have been trying for the last 6 months to see if I can find a good converter/editor and none of the so called good ones did any good, either they would hang or they would produce an inferior quality video and so on or they were too expensive and complicated to use.

I was so negative about the software that, I had stopped using Canon provided software to play HD videos on the PC and was trying to use Windows media player and Picasa to play HD videos (which was a dumb thing to do) and had concluded that my PC is slow and need upgrading.

It was not till last week when I changed my mind to consult Dr. Google with the symptoms I have been having with the Imagemixer software. It took less than couple of hours (thanks to this obscure forum) and I found out what was going wrong with the Imagemixer software. Apparently I had installed K-Lite codec (pretty good to play AVI files which Real Player and others refuse to play) and it is not compatible with Canon provided software.

Once I uninstalled the K-Lite, the Imagemixer worked like a champ. I could see all my videos in one place, edit them (have only tried trim and nothing fancy), add music, text and upload all such good stuff. The integrated video player plays the 1080p video flawlessly (enough horse power in the PC). It still doesn’t do the conversion to different formats but the Blu-ray player we now own understands the AVCHD and that problem is solved.

Looking back, I could have achieved this result long time ago, but I was so convinced that the software is bad that I did not allow for the possibility of getting it to work. Once I allowed for the possibility then it took minutes to get the problem fixed.

PS: Keep in mind, HD videos mean ton of storage and both cores on my PC gets pegged when playing HD videos, but the quality makes it all worth it

Then there was one . . . . . .

2011-06-23T17:09:00.001-05:00

About 3 and half years ago (December of 2007), Sandhya and I decided that we should restart our aquarium which was sitting idle after the sudden demise of the previous fish. This time around we decided to get gold fish instead of the ever multiplying mollies. We got 2 first and then couple of weeks later added 2 more.

All was well for nearly a year when one of the gold fish died due to an infection, then came the turn of the big white which passed away in 2009. Now in last couple of days, one other fish passed away. This one was in the very first batch we got and we used to call it a submarine for its round tubular shape. It was the biggest fish in the tank until our big white one day suddenly bulged up and became the biggest. He was a pretty friendly fish and some days we used to feed it with our hands. I am sure it lived a happy life for by the end of life it had grown 3 to 4 times its initial size (when we bought it). It survived our absence for weeks some times (India trips). I am glad it didn’t pass away while we were away, that would have been a more bitter tragedy. All good things have to come to an end and can never last for ever.

That now leaves the whole tank with just one fish. I don’t know if the fish is feeling lonely or I am feeling that, we are debating about adding a couple more fish to the tank.

Everything is amazing but . . . .

2011-06-16T15:06:00.001-05:00

The other day I was a watching a movie at home through Netflix streaming. I rarely watch a movie in 1 sitting unless I am sitting in a theater. So, I had paused the movie at certain point the previous day. The next day when I started the movie I was hoping it will start at exactly the same location that I left off. To my disappointment, the movie started at some other previously paused location and not at the location I wanted. I cursed the Netflix interface on the TV and started forwarding to the point of interest, the internet couldn’t keep up with the forwarding and the only way to continue streaming was to reduce the picture quality.

Damn, 2 unacceptable things the same day and I was almost furious. Then suddenly I remembered the video shown to me by my good friends Anoop and Shraddha, titled “Everything is Amazing, but nobody is happy”.

In the end I appreciated the fact that I am watching a movie in HD sitting at my home and went wow :).

Wonder if Baba killed the Lokpal Bill

2011-06-14T11:44:00.001-05:00

Remember back in April when Anna Hazare went on a fast until death at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi and some of us did a token 1 day fast in support to end corruption. That was a time of excitement when even a pair of poodles supported the cause and the government agreed to work with Anna’s team to draft a Lokpal Bill. All was well and a joint committee was formed with members of civil society and parliament and the draft process began.

Out of the blue in comes our dear Baba Ramdev, who wanted to push his own agenda in the midst of this. I don’t find anything wrong in the noble intentions of our Baba but here is where I think he went wrong.

He wanted to bring all the black money hidden in different parts of the world immediately, what was he thinking or smoking? its not like we can invade Switzerland and Cayman Islands and other tax heavens and loot the money that is stored and only take that is rightfully ours. If nothing this will be a long drawn negotiation between different governments and if they agree on something then we can hope to get some of it back.
When Baba said bring the black money back, why didn’t he declare his 1100 crore assets which mostly owned by couple of his devotees (one of them being his relative) in the first place before asking further questions. I had no idea that Aastha channel was owned by Baba.
When you go on a crusade like this, you need to choose your deputies carefully. Baba’s deputy Balakrishna is the focus of controversy, he acquired an Indian passport while being born in Nepal and why would a deputy of a Yoga guru need a rifle and a pistol.
His other demand of devalue 500 and 1000 Rupee currency is the height of stupidity.
The other thing I don’t get is when he agreed with the government that he will not go on a fast and signed on a piece of paper, why did he go on a fast that same day evening?
When the fast was disrupted why did he run away, one theory is he was scared of being encountered. So, being a revered yoga guru doesn’t he know that the soul is eternal and the body perishes some day and so what if that some day is today and if the mode is a bullet in the head (I am not supporting the governments action here).
His last demand of hang the people who are corrupt, I thought yoga leads to non violence and peace achieved through non violence and action from within is the only lasting peace every thing else is momentary.
In the end I agree with Tehelka’s assessment that whatever Baba did was to show off his people power and increase his image and nothing more.

Thanks to the above, now Anna and team have to distance from Baba and the government can point play their cards and continue a war of words and stall the bill for ever to come.

Right tool (specialist mechanic) for the job is a must

2011-06-10T22:27:00.001-05:00

When I graduated from grad school and took up the job in Austin, I transitioned to Austin with my used Toyota Camry. It was a fairly old but reliable car and I had expectations of it lasting a couple more years with me. I guess it didn’t like the weather in Texas and started having a unique problem, whenever I stopped the car the probability of it taking off again was very low. This problem I had noticed while in grad school but was occurring very rarely and the local mechanic in Rolla, MO couldn’t figure out what was wrong. With the driving pattern in Austin, the problem became real bad and it reached a point that I was scared to drive the car. I took it to run of the mill mechanic shops like Firestone, Break Specialists plus and even a Transmission repair shop. None could figure out what was wrong and eventually I donated the car to an Animal Shelter.

Fast forward to present, my present car VW Passat started experiencing similar problem as my old Camry. It was not really noticeable to me (I think it occurred once or twice that I had trouble taking off after I stopped) but the diagnostics built into the car cried foul and turned the CEL (check engine light) on. This time around I did my homework and took it to Austin Veedub a specialist in VW. The diagnosis came to that the RPM sensor on the car was broken, consulting Dr. Google with the symptoms I agreed with the diagnosis. The repairman replaced the part and the car is running like a champ. I wonder if the Camry also needed this part replaced and would have been fine.

The lesson I learnt from this experience is, when the car is in trouble either take it to a reliable and good dealer (which is usually a myth) or find a mechanic who specializes in my brand of car rather than taking it to the Midas or Break Specialist and so on. I could have taken the Camry to the dealer in town but considering I had only spent a couple thousand to buy the car I didn’t intend to spend another thousand to fix the car (at least that's what I thought at that time).

They want the Toyota not VW

2011-05-31T15:45:00.001-05:00

Between me and my wife we have 2 cars, one is a 2001 Toyota Camry and the other is a 2002 Volkswagen Passat. Camry is Beige in color and Passat is Blue in color. Considering their age, both cars are near or slightly beyond their 100000 mile markers.

The other day when I walked to the Camry, I saw this note on the dashboard and I looked over the Passat and I was slightly happy to see no such note. The mind started wondering, does the Camry look so old in comparison or may be the blue vs. the beige colors making the difference.

My momentary happiness died away for I realized the person who put this note thinks Camry is more valuable than the Passat. I haven’t contacted these people for I have no intentions to part with either the Camry or the Passat.

Another week, another YESPLUS

2011-05-24T10:29:00.001-05:00

It was close to a year since I did the YESPLUS and so when the time and opportunity came up, I jumped in. What a beautiful time I had, one of the best times and one of the most well spent times.

It wasn’t easy to make up my mind again, I had my own reasons, more notable amongst them are, the 5 day commitment, the whole weekend will be spent in the class, I have done it once and so on. Unlike last time when I was playing mind games and I had to get an external trigger, this time around the trigger came from within and I showed up. I am convinced at all levels that I did the right decision.

I interacted with some of the most amazing people, I witnessed the growth in my good buddies, I got to see my goofy side and witness the goofy side of others. Some of the sessions were riot (fun way). I witnessed the rigidness/uneasiness that was there at the beginning of the course giving way to smiles and happiness in the end. The workshop was a no participant left out workshop. It was one complete package of fun and learn.

Last time I went in, I went in to learn and this time I went in to play the game called YESPLUS. Believe me there is a huge difference and both are fun in their own rights.

There are a lot of people to thank for making this event/workshop to happen, more notably are Nitin, Keya and Geetha.

Weekend Update

2011-05-17T15:54:00.001-05:00

Lot of things happened over the weekend. On Friday (May 13) was the birthday of Sri Sri Ravishankar (fondly known as Guruji), so we had a satsang at the Art of Living Center. The satsang had a few firsts, this was one of the few birthday satsang that started off with a Guru Pooja, we did a different meditation than we usually do during satsangs. As usual for any Art of Living activity we ended the session with a lots of food. After the birthday celebration I reached home and saw Guruji’s birthday message in 3 different languages Kannada, Hindi and English.

On Saturday we had organized a volunteering activity at Capital Area Food bank. 11 of us showed up and helped the food bank sort out the donated food (mostly cans and boxes, no fresh produce). There was a lot of learning from the food bank activity.

To volunteer at the food bank, you need to be wearing closed toe shoes (no sandals allowed)
Canned foods were kept even after 2 years of expiry date
Peanut butter, Mayo and Tomato Sauce unless sealed inside the bottle with the aluminum foil, were not kept.
Mayonnaise was kept if it was within 10 months or so of expiry
If the can had a dent and it was expired, and the first 3 ingredients are tomato, those were thrown away
Baby food were only kept if they had at a minimum of 3 months of shelf life
All food came through donations and I was amazed to see people had donated things that were 5 or 6 years beyond expiry
The 11 people who showed up had good fun, we plan to go back again in the near future to do it again

And on Sunday I went for my session of Meru Chikitsa, I have already written about it.

Curiosity got the best for me (Meru Chikitsa)

2011-05-15T16:42:00.001-05:00

Last week, when we were discussing about Dr. Rachael Murad’s visit to Austin, I didn’t consider myself to be one of her patients. For I don’t feel anything wrong with my spine or my back.

When I picked her up from the bus station and spent some time with her driving to her place of stay, curiosity got the better out of me. I scheduled myself an appointment for today (Sunday, May 15 2011). As though it was a co-incidence, thanks to some wrong sleep posture or some such thing, I was having a slight pain the lower back for last couple of days.

During the appointment, the good doctor did a few tricks on my back and near my head and taught me a couple of breathing techniques. The mind was thinking all the time, how am I going to feel better? for she hasn’t done much and whatever she did is too gentle. But in the end, I was in for a surprise.

After the appointment was over, she asked me to stand up and walk around. The feeling I had was amazing, I felt light, there was no back pain, the energy in my body was much higher than with which I had walked in. The awareness was much more elevated. It was almost the same feeling that I get when I do a good round of Sadhana.

Dr. Rachael Murad will be in Austin till May 22nd and is currently taking appointments. Make an appointment and show up, for you do not know what's in store for you.

Mahabharata TV series update

2011-05-08T02:13:00.001-05:00

I finally completed watching all the 94 episodes of Mahabharata and it was a wonderful journey. I wish I had taken time to my complete the journey but the temptation to finish was too irresistible. In conclusion, hats off to the actors for having done such a wonderful job. I think the weakest link is the guy who played Yudhistira’s role, rest all have done amazingly well and hats off to the directors and producers. Its worth every penny.

Now, coming to the actual story itself. There are a few questions and observations that arose in me after completing the series,

Why does Krishna reveal to Karna that he is born to Kunti right before the war, was it his last effort to drag Karna to the side of Dharma?
At the beginning of the war, Duryodhana calls Yuyutsu as his step brother, is he right in calling him like that?
Dronacharya and Kripacharya were the only 2 acharyas (teachers) participating in the war, what was their justification?, Kripacharya was the spiritual advisor to the king, no other king in the war asked his spiritual advisor to participate in the war. If we talk about being indebted, Dronacharya had paid his debts to the kingdom by teaching the princes and their sons. The reason Dronacharya gives is that his guru Parushurama also wielded weapon, but we all know why Parushurama did what he did?
Watch the episodes carefully, Dronacharya gives a better and more plausible explanation on why he asked for Ekalavya’s thumb?
The way Dronacharya was killed is it according to the law of Dharma?
I had similar question for Bhishma’s death but this website seemed to satisfy me to an extent
Bhishma through out the series chastises Karna and in fact tells the king to separate Karna, Dushyasana and Shakuni from Duryodhana’s life for they are the ones who are feeding ill to Duryodhana, But on the 10th day of the battle, out of the blue he claims he knew Karna was the son of Kunti.
If this was revealed on the 10th day of the battle how come Sanjaya did not even mention a bit of it to the King and Duryodhana did not know till the end?
Bhishma is laid to rest on bed of arrows pierced through his body on the 10th day, didn’t gravity have any effect those days, he seems to be at the same height above the ground on the last day as he was on the 10th day.
With the number of arrows piercing his body, wouldn’t Bhishma had died of excessive blood loss in a couple of hours? and how can so many arrows miss all the vital organs to keep the guy alive?
I don’t get why Karna insists on King of Madra to be his charioteer for his day and half war, while people like Bhishma and Dronacharya had fought longer and better with run of the mill charioteers
When Karna’s chariot gets stuck in the mud, why does he get down to lift the chariot up?, he was only fighting with Arjuna and the chariots can just remain where they are and they could continue the fight.
Another point about Karna’s chariot, why didn’t he get another chariot when his got stuck in the ground. If you see the episodes, you will see that Dronacharya changes quite a few chariots in one of the episodes.
The incident when Ashvathama kills the sons of Draupadi thinking they are the Pandavas, was he so blind that he couldn’t differentiate between 13-14 year old boys and mature adults.
Duryodhana is probably the only one I know of who died of a thigh bone fracture, may be he died of excessive blood loss.
In the very first episode king Bharata announces that all his sons are worthless to be his successors and nominates an external person to be the king, but through out the rest of the episodes, every body keep talking as though seniority at birth is the only criterion to ascend the throne.
Being naive and goody goody, was Yudhistira really following dharma?
The answer to the question of was Yudhistira right in putting his kingdom, his brothers and his wife to bet is answered by Krishna in one of the episodes (answer he was wrong and that’s the reason they all are forced on a 12 year life in the forest).
The episode on the death of Abhimanyu is very well done, the story is very nicely narrated
After watching the episodes I am now convinced that Bhagavadgita is an extremely powerful weapon and has the vast potential of becoming a weapon of mass destruction if used in the wrong way.
I am also amazed at one last thing, Gandhari curses Krishna that whole of his clan (Yadavas) will be destroyed through in fighting and still retains enough power in her to change the body composition of Duryodhana the very next instant.

The deaths of Bhishma and Dronacharya can only makes sense, if I assume Krishna is the guiding force behind Pandavas and he is using Pandavas as weapons to establish dharma in the land and pandavas were the only people capable of building a society based on Dharma for the future.

The final episodes where Krishna confronts his brother Balaram and the episode of Bhishma giving practical wisdom to Yudhistira are worth watching.

Mahabharata – TV series

2011-05-03T11:04:00.001-05:00

Off late I have been watching Mahabharata, yes the TV version that was telecasted back in the 1980’s. The episodes are all on Youtube. At the time they telecasted, my knowledge of Hindi was pretty limited, I couldn’t completely understand, let alone appreciate the work. Now that I am seeing for the second time, I quite like the way it is done. They had put in a lot of efforts to make it this good. The dialogues are well written and the concept is well developed.

For those who are more interested in looking at the story from a different point of view, it is fun to watch the ego play of Duryodhana and his friends including mama Shakuni and Karna and how the ego of the family (father and son) destroyed the whole kingdom. It is interesting to watch how Bhishma in the guise of his oath runs away from Dharma and the price he pays in the end by lying on a bed of arrows pierced through the body. The other one that cracks me up is the way Dharmaraya believes that being goody goody all the time towards everybody is Dharma (you will find a ton of examples for this in the serial). In the end I realized the only person who followed dharma till the end was Vidhura and nobody else. The Bhagavadgita part is also very well done.

I think it is worth a watch, considering its free and legally available. It has a few strong messages that are apt even today. On a lighter note, most songs in the episodes have the same tune.

ps: since there is no 1 version of Mahabharata, there are some interpretations that does not match the “actual Vyasa Bharata”, here is a link if you are patient enough to read through.

Genghis Grill – Restaurant review

2011-04-27T13:18:00.001-05:00

Taking a hint from my buddies Anoop and Shraddha, I am writing up this restaurant review

For the busy people, Genghis Grill is a new Mongolian grill on Westgate blvd next to Central market. Place has a good ambience and waiter was very friendly, they accommodate vegetarians and cook our food on a separate grill. I recommend the place to be tried once.

Here is the long version; Other day I took up the intention to do my groceries and thanks to the television by the time the intention manifested it was close to 9:00PM. After completing my shopping, I was driving out thinking about dinner and my eyes fell on this place “Genghis Grill”, a Mongolian grill, after a couple of moments of hesitation decided to at least look at the menu before making a decision. Thankfully they were open and the hostess was friendly and handed me the menu. Looking at the menu I could hardly find anything vegetarian and the food menu was 1 page and the rest were drinks and desserts. I guess the hostess understood my dilemma and explained that don’t have to order from the menu but I can create my own and handed me a bowl.

After I got seated, the waiter took me around and explained to me that I need fill the veggies to the bowl and take it to the grill and let them know that I am a vegetarian. Now, here is the interesting thing, in my previous times (before Rajima and Bhagavatam) I would have been concentrating more on veggies “I think I like and I think I know” and be pretty discriminating, but this time around I concentrated on what was available right in front of me and ended up adding a few pieces of pretty much everything. For the sauce part, I picked the easy one and went with island teriyaki. On the lighter side, I wasn’t surprised when the grill guy gave me green token number 1 (they have different ones for meat and veggies). I went and sat at my chair and couple of minutes later the waiter arrived with my cooked food.

Unlike the other Mongolian grills in town, in this place they stir-fry the noodles/rice with the veggies and the sauce (no rice on the side). The food with all the veggies tasted real good, the veggies had good flavor and were fresh. I think addition of the veggies that I previously used to ignore added extra flavor. I loved the food and the service.

The cost was a tad on the higher end but I have no regrets. Later on, I came to know the restaurant is fairly new and probably less than a week young. So, near future is a good time to check out this place.

ps: there is a small trick to make the food taste real good, do the Bhagavatam with Rajima and you will know.

Rajima tour update

2011-04-21T11:18:00.001-05:00

As I have described in my other blog entries, she is tough, she is hard, she blasts the ego in all forms, she is a fire brand, she is one of the few who resides in the moment, she is one of the few who is well versed in scriptures and one of the few who fully understands the hidden meaning of the ancient scriptures and one of the very very few who can translate them in a way that they make it to the heart directly (it happened to me). Just her presence is electrifying.

It is true that her fire brand way could appear harder to accept but keep in mind it is the same fire that can transform. Some of us are fans of her knowledge while some others are fans of her presentation skills, while others are fans of her singing and as for me, I am a fan for she is Rajima. Experiencing her presence in Bhagavatam (2011) and the Art of Living course (2009), my conclusion is: go with an open heart and an open mind and you do not have a choice but to love her and experience the divine love and the presence.

For reasons inevitable, Rajima will not be teaching any more Art of Living programs in her current tour, that means you cannot be lazy like me and miss one event and hope to catch up with her on the next event. In a way it makes life simple, no confusion and no schedule conflicts and so on, just show up for her Bhagavatam and Bhagavad Gita.

Knowledge snippets from Texas Ashram

2011-04-13T10:33:00.001-05:00

Yesterday was Rama-Navami and guruji gave a beautiful perspective for Ramayana.

Rama stands for light/shine inside us (or as Rajima puts it that which is shining in us is Rama)

Dasharatha is Rama’s father, the name means lord of ten chariots. We with our 5 external senses of 5 senses of perception form the Dasharatha

Kausalya is Rama’s mother, the name means skill (which can be attained by purifying, I will get to this later)

Hanuman is the breath

Sita is the mind

Ravana means the one who does not listen to anybody, he comes up with 10 different types of logic to prove he is right (stands for his ten head). He stands for Ego

So, if we look at the story of Ramayana in a nut shell, we (Dasharatha) with the skill (Kausalya) can give rise to the light (Rama) in us and this light with the help of breath (Hanuman) will rescue the mind (Sita) from the ego (Ravana)

Now the skill, the skill can be attained by act of purification, here are things we can do to become pure.

Seva – Purifies the action, self less action

Satsang – Purifies the mind

Sadhana – Purifies the thought/memory, he mentioned pranayamas, Kriya and meditation

Knowledge – Purifies the intellect, Ashtavakra Gita, Bhakti Sutras, Bhagavatam, Yoga Vasishta and so on

Charity – Purifies the money, guruji said at a minimum 1% of our money should be donated to charity

Fasting – Purifies the body, guruji said to listen to the body and fast 1 or 2 days every six months.

He also spoke about calm with in and action outside and not the other way.

ps: I may have Satsang, Sadhana and Knowledge jumbled, it doesn’t matter just do it all.

Bhagavatam with Rajima

2011-04-10T20:56:00.001-05:00

The other day I was sitting in my office at ~5:30PM and I got a call from my buddy Sanjeev asking me to show up for Rajima’s Bhagavatam sessions. I had almost made up my mind not to go and looking for other excuses to completely make up. Then suddenly there was a shift in my mental state and I decided to show up to the session. After 14hrs (spread over 5 days) of intense sessions, I cannot thank Sanjeev enough for making that phone call.

Bhagavatam as Rajima said on the first day of the class is not just stories but about life, it is about me and you and it is about the lessons to be learnt to lead a righteous life.

Being born and brought up in India, most stories that Rajima talked about during the sessions were not new to me but the fact that it is also my story in the present life was completely new to me. The perspective Rajima presented to the stories were new, fresh and hit home. I had heard and read quite a few commentaries on the stories in Bhagavatam, but none came closer to what Rajima had to offer last week. In an essence she gave the right vision to the story.

If you are like me and had the questions like,

Why was Sudhama being a friend of lord Krishna (the king and god) was so poor?
What is the significance of Elephant Crocodile story?
What is the significance of Amruta Manthana (churning of the milk ocean)?
Was god fair in sending Bali to the underground?, even though he was such a good king and so on and so forth

My sincere suggestion is for to you attend a Bhagavatam session with Rajima. I will do a complete injustice if I even try and answer these questions, the answers coming from the right source makes all the difference. One thing I would like to share though, there is a big significance for all the avatars of the lord (it is not just the story of evolution) and the stories associated with it. Here are a couple of learning I would like to share, don’t get stuck in the physical level of the story or get attached to the form, do not treat the scriptures as cock and bull stories.

The best part I still admire about her is her punctuality, she started on time, she ended on time. Her sense of humor, her impromptu songs (in multiple languages) and the motherly love I felt during the time is something all of us to experience. Not a single moment in the sessions I felt bored or the question “when will this end” arose in me, in fact when she used to say, “we will stop with this story for tonight/today”, I used to feel, “No Rajima, please keep going”. Of course I should be considerate to the vocal chords of the 60+ year old woman.

During the question and answer sessions she insisted that we should, ask things that matter to you, that is bothering you, that can help you make your life better and not hearsay and/or imaginary things and the answers were right on the money.

This is the second time that Rajima has given commentaries on the Bhagavatam in Austin, first time was in 2009 and I didn’t attend. This time around in 2011, I almost missed it too. I definitely consider myself lucky for having completed this session.

There are DVDs of her earlier sessions available for sale but my friend it is secondary or even tertiary, her presence is what matters. If she is in your town and conducting these sessions, do not miss it, just show up.

With my wife and baby daughter being gone to India for a trip, I sure was to get bored (I experienced that for the first couple of days in the week) but thanks to Rajima, the week went past like a breeze. I am sad the series have ended.

Rajima – just show up for whatever she conducts

2011-04-10T14:22:00.001-05:00

Dear Friends

If ever in your life, you find that Rajima is in your town or neighboring town and you are free other than the usual mental excuses, then just show up to whatever event she is conducting. Let it be Art of Living Course or Know Your Child (KYC) workshop or Bhagavatam or Bhagavadgita or whatever else, I assure you from my heart that you will not regret your time you spend with her.

People rave about Rishi’s and Swami’s but I say if you haven’t experienced the nectar called Rajima, you have missed out on the finer things in life. Her interest in developing me as an individual can only be matched by a handful of people in this world. Her extensive knowledge from time zero to present, her eloquence of speech, her analysis of the ancient scriptures and showing me how it applies to each and every one of us in our day to day life, can probably only be surpassed by herself.

She is the total package of knowledge, experience and eloquence (each in right quantity and proportion). She is Fun, Firm and Fair. While sitting through the Bhagavatam sessions, I got to experience her unique ability to draw parallels between ancient and present times and between different religions. Her ability to instill pride in ones own culture by giving the actual meaning behind the rituals and the way she describes why certain gods in Hindu philosophy are represented certain way is a thing of beauty.

There are DVDs and talks recorded or books and blogs that you can find in the internet or market, take my word they are all secondary. What matters is her presence, what matters is the motherly figure sitting in front of you and nurturing you like only a mother can do, what matters is you being there to soak in the divine knowledge.

Last time when she came to Austin, I did the Art of Living course with her and wrote a blog article titled “10 things I loved about Rajima”. This time around I completed the Bhagavatam session and the KYC workshop and words can’t do justice to what I experienced (but words are one of the good means of communication we have and I will write up about my experiences with both of them). I do not need those 10 reasons to love her any more, I love her for she is Rajima, I love her for she cares.

So, in conclusion I repeat again, just show up whenever you can for Rajima’s events.

ps: I almost missed out on this once in life time opportunity, the credit of getting me there goes to my buddy Sanjeev

Fast in support of Anna Hazare

2011-04-06T22:18:00.001-05:00

Today during the Bhagavatam session our teacher Rajima brought up the topic of Anna Hazare who has started a fast until death to get the bill against corruption done right. She said we believe in praying, having a strong intention and doing peaceful protests to get things done rather than retorting to violence and extremism.

So, she asked us to have the intention to eradicate corruption from the whole world and fast a day in support of Anna Hazare. I have signed up to fast till dusk tomorrow. Will you do it with me and support the cause?

AOL Austin fundraiser event with Omkara

2011-03-27T23:33:00.001-05:00

March 26th 2011 was a big day in the history of Art of living foundation’s Austin chapter, for one we hosted the biggest fund raiser event in the chapters history and second we did the event with our long time friends Omkara. A gathering of over 600 people who were totally entertained and enthralled by Omkara.

It started with a simple intention of Sridhar Adapalli (volunteer with Art of living Austin foundation) to host a fund raiser event for Art of Living Austin center with Omkara. Over the last couple of months, volunteers from the foundation made time in their busy schedule to show up at all the possible cultural and social gatherings to spread the word about the event. Some of the volunteers worked towards getting sponsorships for the events while others were busy with e-marketing for the event. The fruits of all the efforts was evident on the event day when the auditorium was filled to the brim (~600 people) and we were scrambling for chairs to accommodate the last few people who showed up a tad late (what a wonderful problem to have).

Thanks to good leadership shown by the team leads and great efforts by the volunteers, the big day went very smooth barring a couple of minor glitches. To issue concert tickets for over 600 people and provide food and drinks to over 350 people isn’t a small thing after all. The setup team had the hall ready by the scheduled time, the ticketing team was very professionally managed, the food team packed and distributed the food as though they had been trained in the art and the ushering team which managed the seating of all the people. All in all it was a job well done and executed beyond excellence.

The band itself did a wonderful job in keeping the attention of the people for the whole 3 hours of the event duration. The addition of Bollywood Shake provided the much needed color to the melody. The band had picked the right set of numbers to sing, the songs varied from the oldies to present day hits and the compilation had both Hindi and Tamil languages. It was evident that we had a great show when the entire dance area in front of the stage was occupied with audience dancing away and the band had to stretch their time in honoring the “once more” requests.

I do not know the financial aspect of the event, how much money the foundation raised or the final head count of the audience or the number of food boxes sold. I am sure I will have these numbers pretty soon and will share it once I have the same.

PIO, Indian visitor visa – some learning

2011-03-26T00:10:00.001-05:00

I recently went through the process of applying for a PIO card for my daughter and for reasons beyond my control, I ended up just satisfied with a visa, but in the process I did learn a thing or two

If both parents are citizens of India then the kid can only get a PIO and not an OCI
Consulate General of India doesn’t handle the PIO cards or anything of that sort anymore, they have outsourced it Travisa (I found it the hard way when the consulate returned my application without even opening it)
Unlike the old times, The new regulations require to send the passport along with the application for PIO card
The Travisa website is well documented a complete opposite of CGI Houston which left things to imagination on requirements for either a PIO or a visa
The Travisa office is also very professionally maintained, when I went to apply for a visa I was in and out of the office in less than half hour. They send you an email every step of the way (I got 3 emails in total, one saying they received the application, second saying they received from consulate and last one saying they have shipped along with tracking number)
The only forms of residency proof they accept are drivers license or a utility bill, cable bill or DSL bill won't work
Visitor visa is the simplest and fastest thing to get (I personally dropped the application I got it the very next day)
One thing I didn’t like was the fact that they were willing to hand over the passport back to anyone who had the receipt.
Tuesday is a bad day to go to Houston as most Indian outfits in Houston are closed on Tuesday
In spite of clear instructions I witnessed quite a few people sent back due to lack of things they were supposed to get

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2 cents donation fund

2011-03-11T15:23:00.001-06:00

Other day I was at the dentist for a routine checkup, they were running late due to some emergency that had come up in the clinic. So, by the time they called me in it was ~40mins after my scheduled time. The receptionist wanted to make up for the delay and gave me a Starbucks card.

The card did not specify the value it held or I did not notice it, I went to Starbucks and ordered the usual, after swiping the gift card the cafe owner told me that I am left with 2 cents on the card. The card supposedly can be recharged and can be used as a cash card at Starbucks, but there is no additional discounts for doing so. Since I am not a regular to expensive coffee, I shredded the card.

After couple of weeks after this event, it occurred to me that the card is an open account which the company has to keep active and it won’t be long before the maintenance cost of the card will go beyond the balance left on the card. The fact that I have already shredded the card there is no possibility of future additions to the card.

Here is a solution I would like to propose to these companies that prefer to sell the gift cards, why not ask the customer if he/she would like to donate the left over couple of cents to a charity. Initially the cents might be small but over time I am sure it can grow to a decent fund. The potential savings on maintenance of these almost delinquent cards alone should be an incentive to take this approach.

VW repair Austin

2011-02-20T00:54:00.001-06:00

Most VW owners in Austin agree with me on the fact that owning a VW in Austin is a pain, not because the cars are less reliable in Austin but because of the lack of quality specialized repair shops, or so I thought.

There is one dealer in town, who from all points of view is below standard. The only option I had getting my VW fixed was to drive 35miles to the dealer in George town. For the last 8 years of the ownership of my VW, I have used the dealer in George town for all the major and minor repair services. I like the dealership, so far I have had ok experience with them. But this year when my car was at 96000 miles and had a coolant leak problem, I decided to find a local independent repair shop. After spending long enough time on Google and yelp and other such places I found this place called Austin Veedub.

Even though the reviews were very positive for this repair shop I was hesitant, but figured I had nothing much to lose and decided to give them a shot. I was pleasantly surprised when they said they can only see my car a week later for they were busy. On the scheduled day of service, my car had more problems than just coolant leak. The service manager Adam was pretty professional and he even arranged a ride for me back to work. They called me the same day with the repair estimate. The thing that really impressed me was that they worked on things that I had quoted as problems and not sneaking around to fix things preemptively. After they did the repairs they realized that one of the repairs they had quoted and performed hadn’t fixed the problem and the actual problem was somewhere else. They were professional enough not to charge me for that repair (there is no way I would have known where the real problem was).

Also, they were professional enough to honor their warranty and replace the part they had put in for free. The repair costs were also reasonable and frankly much cheaper than my dear dealer.

It is not all bed of roses, some times they do not have parts and might have to get it from other places (dealers amongst others) and that could delay the service time. They are located near the airport and getting there is a tad tricky.

In spite of these drawbacks, I like these guys and I am willing to say bye-bye my dear dealer and hello to Austin Veedub. I wish I had tried this place couple of years earlier.

Flickr, photo streaming

2011-02-12T21:59:00.001-06:00

Ever since the arrival of my daughter to this world, capturing her beautiful moments has become my favorite past time. I have the Canon-xsi equipped with kit lens and a decent flash to help me accomplish this.

The next step was to start sharing the good ones with friends and family. I have friends who are either on Facebook or Buzz or those who do not have any known social networking foot prints.The choices were, create an album on Facebook and start sharing for people on FB and upload to Picasa web album and share with rest of the friends. I hate the idea of managing inventories at 2 different places. Another draw back with this approach is it leaves Buzz out completely (trust me, you do not want to link your Picasa account with your Buzz account). I needed the one place to put the pics and share it on Facebook, Buzz and with the rest.

Taking a leaf from my pro buddies Anoop and Madhu, I decided to explore Flickr. The good thing about Flickr is, it can send updates to both Facebook and Buzz. When I realized there is an Iphone app for Flickr (supported by Yahoo) and not for Picasa, I said “Sold”, Flickr is the way to go. Sadly, Google doesn’t believe in investing on a Picasa app for Iphone. Thus started my share of photo streaming on Flickr.

Flickr isn’t without its quirkiness, they limit the storage to 300MB (its working to my advantage though, unlike previous times I upload only the ones I believe are the best), unlike picasa they upload the full resolution pic (eats up storage limit real fast). If the pics are not in the public domain, then sharing it is a tad painful compared to Picasa. But the ability to put at 1 place and share across different social networks beats all these inconveniences.

If interested, you can checkout my photo stream here.

Movie Guzaarish

2011-02-02T11:47:00.001-06:00

Guzaarish, a high profile movie with heavy weights Aishwarya Rai and Hirtik Roshan, movie is directed by another heavy weight Sanjay Leela Bhansali (SLB). I watched this movie on Netflix streaming last week. Before the movie I thought I will have something to write about and after the movie I thought otherwise. But after a few days of cooling off, I figured there are a few things I can write about.

The movie is unique for it tries to address the issue of euthanasia, and does a bad job in doing it. I think SLB didn’t want to make an art movie out of Hirtik and Aishwarya so the movie became a “commercially blended art movie”. The movie had the potential to raise to the heights of movies like Philadelphia (I know we are dealing with completely different things here) but it doesn’t even go anywhere near.

The story line is simple, one time great magician and now a quadriplegic radio host Ethan wants to end his life. Its been 14 years since he has been bed ridden and been an inspiration to lots of people like him. One fine day he decides to end his life, so he files a petition with the court for euthanasia, rest of he story you can find on Wikipedia.

In spite of being a commercial blend, the movie does show the struggles of Ethan’s life, his never say die spirit and his total dependency on some one to take care of him. My biggest complaint is of the government lawyer who does not do his job right. From my point of view, court room was a joke. The witnesses called were even bigger joke.

The movie did raise the question in me, who owned Ethan’s life?, The guy can’t do anything in life and he has no visible responsibilities either towards the society or towards family. He cannot sustain his life style as he is deep in debt. The only part of the body he can move is his head. His kidneys are already shot and his lungs are also failing, the chances of him getting better are 1 in 10s of millions. With all these reasons I felt the court was wrong in saying he cannot opt for euthanasia. I would have at least referred the case to the higher court to decide.

SLB had a chance to create history by making court room drama more dramatic, more involved and giving a land mark judgment allowing the person for euthanasia or at the least referred to the higher courts but I feel he failed.

The oil mafia

2011-01-28T11:33:00.001-06:00

On January 25 2011 Yashwant Sonawane, Additional District Collector of Malegaon was burnt alive by the oil mafia, specifically the kerosene stealing arm of the mafia. He was killed because he was doing his duty.

Right after this there has been some knee jerk reactions from both the state and the central government. The state government is cracking down on the oil mafia and has arrested over 180 people, more like saying “we knew you existed, we knew where to find you, we let you thrive and succeed but you killed a government official and that is why please become governments guests (go to jail for a few days) and we will let you go for we do not find any evidence against you”.

The other reaction I found ridiculous was from our honored central government petroleum minister who said that all trucks will be installed with GPS to track their movements. Mr. Minister, here is a guy who got killed for capturing evidence against the oil mafia and from the way state government has “cracked down”, everybody knows where to find these people and where these things happen. What we need a stronger police protection and a good judicial system, not your fancy GPS for every truck. The other suggestion from our esteemed minister is the reintroduction of blue dye for kerosene. Dear Mr. Minister your blue dye could not prevent Swami Nityananda from using the kerosene (supposedly meant for public distribution) during his recent “purification act/gimmick”, how do you expect the underground mafia to come under control with this measure?

To top this all, CNN-IBN managed to air the video shot by Mr. Sonawane that captured the business of petrol adulteration and the state minister has said that it can be used as evidence in court. First thing, if Mr. Sonawane shot the video right before he was burnt alive, won’t everything that is found in and around where he died become part of the crime scene (too much CSI). If the police had secured the phone and locked it as evidence, how did a private channel got hold of the footage?. The reaction from the minister is really cracking me up.

Besides this is not the first time, one of my juniors from my undergrad days was killed by the oil mafia for doing his job. There was a big hue and cry over the matter when it happened and then business was back as usual.

Flonase or Nasonex

2011-01-26T14:59:00.001-06:00

Both are steroid based nasal sprays, both are administered only through prescription and both are prescribed for cedar pollen related allergies, but for me Nasonex seems to work but Flonase does not.

Austin is sometimes called the allergy capital, one of the main reason for this title is the obscene amount of cedar pollen in the air during months of December and January. It is fairly common here for people to live here for a few years and then start developing allergies towards the pollen. Cedar pollen bug caught me some time in January 2009. When it started I thought I was catching cold but there was no congestion that accompanies common cold, all I had was sneezing and in a few hours the nose got blocked so bad that I could hardly breath. I went to the doctor in 2009, he formally declared that I am a victim of cedar allergy. My condition was so bad that I had to take a corticosteroid shot. The good doctor also prescribed me Nasonex and even gave me a free sample that he had. The free sample and the prescription helped me survive the 2009 and 2010 cedar season.

Come 2011, I was out of nasal sprays and the ones I had were expired. I had to make a trip to the hospital. This time around the good doctor asked if I will be interested in generic Flonase nasal spray, I just wanted something to get relief and I said yes. After a week of spraying twice into each nostril once a day I didn’t get the relief I was looking for. I ran back to the good doctor again and this time he asked me “Are you ready for a steroid shot” and I replied “Not yet, but I want to change to Nasonex”. He gave me a prescription for Nasonex and told me to come back if the allergy symptoms gets worse.

After I switched to Nasonex, the allergy symptoms are gone and I have rarely sneezed. I do not want to be a spokesperson for Nasonex but figured there may be others like me who are struggling with cedar related allergies and can benefit from the switch. One can argue that the cedar pollen levels were the highest in the beginning of January and the levels have subsided since then.

One thing to note is that my allergy symptoms were mostly itchy eyes, sneezing, blocked nose and tiredness (there is no way you cannot be tired when you are sneezing 10-15 times a minute). Others have more complicated symptoms and a steroid/allergy shot may be a better working option. Also, insurance covered both the drugs but out of pocket expense for Nasonex was higher than Flonase.

If it is random, it is fair

2011-01-23T00:02:00.001-06:00

Disclaimer: I am happy for my friends and relatives who got recognized for their achievements during the 10th grade examination. I am not writing this to belittle their achievements nor because I missed out (I was never close to be in contention).

Every year in the state of Karnataka on an average 600000 students write the 10th grade examination, and the government announces top 20 scores and the students who scored them. They get their 20mins of fame when their names get published in leading news papers and they get honored at a few ceremonies here and there. All is well, the students who achieved studied hard and got what they truly deserve. The argument I have against this is, it is more of a game of statistics and the 100s of students who missed the top 20 scores by a few 10s of marks deserve the same honor and respect as the top 20 rank holders. Here is why I believe I am right.

Ranks are declared based on sum total of marks scored for six subjects, 3 of which are languages and the other 3 are Science, Mathematics and Social Sciences. The exams are offered in 2 languages of instruction, English and Kannada. Students in rural areas mostly write the exams in Kannada and most of the semi urban and urban areas use English as the medium.

Students have to pick a first language (worth 25%-50% more points than other subjects), a second language (worth same as other subjects) and a third language (usually worth same as others or sometimes 50% less than others). Typical first language pick in most urban areas is either Sanskrit or English and in rural and semi urban areas it is usually Kannada. For second language it is either English or Hindi and for third language it is either Kannada or Sanskrit or Hindi. The other 3 subjects carry equal weight and the question paper is same across both mediums of instructions.

As typical for any language examination, the grading is relative and the valuators want to keep 15-20% of marks in hand to give it to the next best answer paper they will encounter (which they may never reach during their course of valuations for the year). Combine the 15-20% of marks across the 3 languages and you are looking at some serious numbers. To top this off, for reasons unknown to me, on an average students with Sanskrit as first language typically outscore those of other languages by a minimum of 15-20%.

Now to the rest of the subjects, other than Mathematics in which there cannot be relative grading there is an element of relative grading in the rest ( I agree, it is not to the same extent as languages). But when you are aiming for the top, every bit counts. Also, all of the 600000 students answer papers is not valuated by the same teacher. The evaluators vary from the best doing the 100% type to the worst who just would like to be done as soon as possible.

In the end I feel it is a random process, those who become successful are honored.

I am not a genius and neither I am in the education field but a few days of thought on this subject has made me realize the system is flawed to a large extent. I wonder how come the government hasn’t done anything to fix this. I guess they rely on the random processes so much that they believe being random is being fair.

The price of free shipping

2011-01-07T23:22:00.001-06:00

Most of the times when I buy things online, I consider shipping cost and the reliability of the store to make my decision. So far, most of the times I have used the free shipping and have gotten it shipped to a place where there is somebody to receive (office or home) and sometimes they have left it at the door step of my apartment. I haven’t lost anything so far but the incident I witnessed yesterday has made me think twice on leaving at the door step.

Yesterday when I was heading to office, I noticed a trashed box right outside my door. The box had Amazon.com logo on it, first thought was that my wife must have left it there for me to throw it into the dumpster on the way to office. Another glance at the same I saw words “Nikon VR 70-300” on a box sitting inside this big box. I do not own anything remotely Nikon and nor have I ordered the same. So, second thought was that one of the neighbors must have left it outside their apartment and wind flew it to mine, but there wasn’t any gusty wind the previous night. Upon further observation, it wasn’t trash after all, the box at some point contained a Nikon 70-300mm lens, it was addressed to my neighbor who lives downstairs and it had been vandalized. I took the package to my neighbor and handed him what was left of the Nikon lens.

The funny part is, those who vandalized left all the packing back and took only the lens and had left the hood and the pouch that came in the box. They probably could have made more money if they had taken the rest of the things along with the the lens. The other question, why leave it in front of my apartment when the trash is a block away?, I do not know the answer.

It taught me the lesson that it is not worth the free shipping if the shipping only entails leaving at the door step, if nobody will be home to receive the package. Come to think further, who is responsible for these lost shipments?, I am sure both the carrier and the shipment owner will deny responsibility. There used to be a time when the carriers used to either leave a note at the apartment door or leave the item at at the apartment office, they no longer seem to do it. I like USPS better in that sense for they would either leave it at the package box near mail box or will keep it with them for us to go and pick up. “long live USPS”.

The 40min investment

2010-12-18T23:05:00.001-06:00

For the last ~2 weeks my work life has gone crazy, average working hours are from 9:30AM-9:00PM with a lunch break of half hour and most times it boils down to grab something and eat in the lab. There was no break over the weekend either. Due to this, I was going home tired and drained every day. Because of the time I reach home, dinner was late and hence sleeping late and all such bad habits added to the agony.

In my previous life where I was doing simulations, I could take breaks while computer was crunching numbers and head to the gym or go for a run or do something physical to keep my spirits up, but the current situation is being stuck in the lab and there is more work for me and less work for the computer. In short no physical exercise is possible.

Last night I got tired of this routine and decided to do something about this, of course there were several solutions ranging from taking time off for a day (if possible) or so and sleep through or go to the gym early in the morning before getting to work and so on. After a short analysis I figured, I do not lack sleep and hence sleeping longer wasn’t going to help; exercising early in the morning is good but somehow it doesn’t fit me (I have tried this in the past and concluded that evening is the best time for this).

The answer to my problem was in the seven letter word “Sadhana”, the definition of which could vary depending upon whom you talk to; From my definition it is the routine that gets completed in 40mins or so and has to be done first thing in the morning. So, I set the alarm and made up my mind to wake up when the alarm goes off and slept a peaceful sleep.

Today morning I completed the 40min event and went on to do my other daily activities, I could see a remarkable difference in my energy levels through out the day. As usual I had a couple of meetings late in the evening and action items to catch up after the meeting and by the time I went home I was less than half as tired as I would have been otherwise.

I could have invested this 40mins every day and felt the same way everyday but I am not that disciplined (read lazy).

ps: if you want to know the what I am talking about do the YES+ or the Art of Living Course.

Real or Fake Christmas tree?

2010-12-07T16:55:00.001-06:00

Its Christmas and lot of people do buy a Christmas tree. There is always a debate whether to get a real one or a fake one. I got this on my company email list and felt it’s worth sharing.

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If you use a Christmas tree each year, you may wonder whether a real or fake tree is a better option. From an environmental perspective, the answer may surprise you. But we also want to consider the financial and health aspects too.

Show me the money - The fake tree usually wins the economic argument, as long as you use it for several years. Most real trees cost less than $100 for one use, while fake trees usually cost $200-500 for many uses.

The greener choice - While chopping down a living tree may seem “un-green,” it’s actually the more sustainable choice when you consider what the tree is made of and what it does to the environment when created and disposed. Fake trees are made with polyvinyl chloride (or PVC, otherwise known as vinyl), one of the most environmentally offensive forms of non-renewable, petroleum-derived plastic. 85% are shipped from China, so you have lots of transportation emissions, and more than likely pollution from coal power plants. On the other hand, real trees absorb CO2 during their life, are usually replaced with a new tree, and can be recycled / composted after the holidays.

It’s worth noting that the most eco-friendly way to enjoy a Christmas tree is to buy a live tree with its roots intact from a local grower, and then replant it in your yard once the holiday has passed. However, since trees are dormant in the winter, live trees should spend no more than a week indoors lest they “wake up” and begin to grow again in the warmth of your home. If this happens there is a good chance the tree will not survive once it is returned to the cold winter outdoors and replanted.

It’s NOT healthy to hug a fake tree - In addition to PVC, fake trees contain lead and other additives designed to make the otherwise rigid PVC more malleable. Unfortunately many of these additives have been linked to liver, kidney, neurological and reproductive system damage in lab studies on animals. The Children’s Health Environmental Coalition warns that fake trees “may shed lead-laced dust, which may cover branches or shower gifts and the floor below the tree.” So if you have or get a fake tree, check if there’s a label telling you to avoid inhaling or eating any dust or parts that may come loose.

Lastly, fake trees don’t have the real pine smell, and if yours does I would be suspicious. ;-)

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Call to Action – If you buy a Christmas tree, get a real one from a local farmer and have it composted or mulched afterwards. Click here for more ideas - 5 Ways to Green your Christmas Tree.

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When the intentions are strong . . . . .

2010-11-30T11:01:00.001-06:00

This incident happened nearly a year ago. Back in 2009 we made a trip to India and in that we had planned to visit the Bangalore Ashram. The reason to visit the ashram was two fold, one was to see the place itself and the other was to buy stuff from the divine shop in the ashram. All was well and we picked a date to visit the ashram and since we were travelling from Mysore to Bangalore we added couple more items to our agenda.

We reached Bangalore as we had planned and thanks to my laid back attitude and inadequate planning, by the time we reached the Ashram there was a satsang about to start and because of which they had closed both the divine shop and the main meditation hall. We were told they will open it after the satsang, we were a bit disappointed but we got to see guruji and that took away half the disappointment. Since we had to return to Mysore the same day we couldn’t wait for the satsang to finish and then the divine shop to open. So, we came back empty handed from the Ashram.

After returning to Mysore, we checked out the local music stores to see if they had any of the CDs we wanted and all we got in return was bad (read angry) customer support. All avenues were closed and I was thinking we should make another trip to Bangalore before we get back to the US.

A day or so later some volunteers from Art of living Mysore came around distributing flyers about their upcoming courses and events. My in-laws took the flyer and kept it on the table. I saw the flyer and I remember making comments on its design and sandhya took it for safe keeping and we forgot all about it as we had a wedding to prepare for (sandhya’s sisters wedding).

One fine evening I had a brain flash and it occurred to me that if the Art of Living Mysore is a big enough chapter, then they probably have their own divine shop and I could get my CDs from there. So, I called the number on the flyer and the lady on the other side was really nice (true with any AOL volunteer whose phone number is listed on the flyer) and she told me that they do not have a divine shop yet but there is something better going on in Mysore. She directed me to Mysore Dasara exhibition where Art of Living foundation had a stall.

Next day evening we strolled to the exhibition grounds and visited the stall, we found all the things we wanted and much much more. I was ecstatic, it had saved my extra trip to Bangalore and since I was in the exhibition grounds I visited the Navakarnataka press stall also and got to pick up couple of books from there as well.

Later It occurred to me, when the intentions are strong, nature will show a way and all I had to do was to energize my brain cells and do a little effort.

Why don’t they just call them what they are?

2010-11-23T11:27:00.001-06:00

I saw this in an infirmary and figured its worth a click and share, but apparently it didn’t seem to make an impact on people who work there; I saw the duty nurse smoking outside the infirmary right after I saw this poster.

What really motivates us?

2010-11-17T11:29:00.002-06:00

Ever wondered why linux is still thriving and non profit organizations continue to flourish, the following video might shed some light on the same. The narration is a bit fast, might need couple of revisions before the message sinks in.

Top ten reasons to do the YES+ course

2010-10-28T15:12:00.001-05:00

Ever since I did the YES+ course, I have been advertising it to people. All these days I have been telling that it is a fun course and everybody should experience it once. Over time this rhetoric has grown stale, I decided to compile a list of what I liked about the course. Here is the top 10 list, not in any order though.

1. Seva - Not that I am a veteran in Art of Living courses but I do know a lot about courses offered and I think this is the only non residential course which has seva(service) aspect built in the course.

2. Designed by Bawa – If you do not who he is, here is his blog. He is one of my favorite teachers and one of the few teachers who respond to emails and queries on a regular basis.

3. Coolest teachers in town – The course is taught by the coolest teachers in town, ask any YES+ participant and they will vouch for me.

4. Games – If you thought other courses had games, do the YES+ to know the difference

5. Wisdom through practical – The course points are taught as practical than theory

6. No intellectual discussions – For someone like me who really cannot comprehend Yoga Vasistha or similar ones, but would like to get practical tips to make the existing life better, here is the course for you.

7. Food – There is never a scarcity of food in any Art of Living course and the food is usually catered by volunteers who aren’t doing the course. Here in this course it is different.

8. Awareness about meat eating – Apart from Rajima’s part-1 course, this is one of the few courses that attempts to raise awareness about impact of meat eating on the planet.

9. Yes party at the end – The last day is truly graduation day

10. Making new friends – The processes in the course are different than other courses and we bonded way more during this course than others

Keep in mind I am have not included the usual goodies of Sudarshana Kriya and meditations.

Welcome to the world Avni

2010-10-27T11:16:00.001-05:00

I haven’t been able to post in the last few weeks, for once it is not the lack of ideas but lack of time.

Thanks to my newborn daughter Avni, life has been pretty hectic.I admit, she is a good baby who only complains only when she needs food or a diaper change and we do have a lot of help at home but fatherhood ain’t easy; but from observation, I think it is easier than motherhood. I had written an article on her birth and will post it some time if it clears the review.

Here is a pic of Avni for you all to enjoy.

Columbia river gorge drive

2010-09-21T16:31:00.001-05:00

The famous Columbia river of Oregon has carved through the mountains and created the gorge and the scenic highway, which was our destination on day 2 of our Portland trip. We started off a bit earlier than previous day and started our drive to the gorge, idea was to drive through the highway and end up at Mt. St Hood by dusk and drive back.

Columbia river gorge scenic highway is a narrow and windy road that runs parallel to a highway. True to its name, it is scenic, on the way before entering the gorge itself we witnessed some beautiful farms and view points. Since it was a bit early in the morning the view from the view points were foggy.

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Driving along the gorge we realized the gorge has a ton of water falls, some big some small, some have nicely built access and some are more obscure.

The first one we stopped at was a small water fall with a short hike, there was a ranger led program going on at the same time we were there. We couldn’t attend the program but managed to hear snippets from the ranger. It was from him that I heard that the gorge has over a 100 water falls.

The next one was a more obscure one with no clear view of the falls and we had to do a couple of miles round trip to clearly view the falls, which we had to pass, but the hiker in us wanted to do at least a small hike and hence we took the small hike to the famous Multnomah falls. The distance was small but it had more ups and downs. Thanks to the rain and the abundant shade in the gorge there were a lot of ferns growing underneath the tall trees. Frankly, I had never seen such lush green fern undergrowth till then. The path had a magic of its own. It took a while for us to reach our destination but it was well worth the time.

Multnomah falls, is the biggest falls on the gorge and a true tourist attraction. It is not as big as the other falls in the world but definitely very scenic. It is a cascade of 2 water falls and a viewing bridge in front of the falls. It is a small hike up to the bridge to view the falls in full glory and the bridge was real crowded. There was a hike going up to top of the falls which we passed. Since it was time for lunch we stopped at the restaurant near the falls for food, being vegetarians the only option we had was the burger and the waitress commented that they get a lot of visitors from Texas and I thought we Texans need some escape from heat every now and then.

Driving along we made a stop at one last water falls called Horse tail falls, Sandhya was very happy to for she could take off her shoes and get her feet wet and I was happy to click pictures of the falls and her. If I remember right, this was the last water fall along the scenic highway and the road merged on to the actual highway after this.

Driving along the highway towards Mt Hood, we saw the exit for Bonneville Dam and after a couple of moments of hesitation we took it. The dam wasn’t much and Sandhya wasn’t impressed at all. But it was almost full and due to security reasons they didn’t allow us any where on the dam.

The exit on the road that would have led to Mt Hood was so backed up that we passed Mt Hood and made a U turn and head home. The drive back even though not the official scenic route but it was still pretty and scenic most of the way.

On the next post I will write about Crater Lake and Redwoods.

An evening with Swami Suryapada

2010-09-19T01:53:00.001-05:00

On Friday September 17 2010, Art of Living Austin had the pleasure of hosting Swami Suryapada, a traveling saint from India. Since he was in town for a few hours we had to be satisfied with a satsang and nothing more.

I had heard about swamiji earlier through some senior teachers like Rajima and Commanderji but had never met him in person. So, needless to say I was excited that he will be coming to town. By the time we managed to reach the venue he had already entered the hall and was working on his Harmonium. In the first impression I was blown away by the simplicity of his attire and in some aspects he resembled the guru himself, the beard and the long hair added to the resemblance.

The satsang (or as I usually refer to as Sat Sang) was very different, instead of starting with random songs, he started us off with an initiation mantra which he recited in sanskrit and then we sang a song in the praise of lord Ganesh, next song was in the praise of the guru or teacher and the very next one was in praise of goddess sharada (goddess of learning). At the end of each song he would recite a few more verses in sanskrit. His voice was so captivating and his pronunciation of the mantras felt so authentic that the whole room had gone into a trance. After these three we sang for a while and by then I had lost track of time.

At around 7:45PM or 8:00PM, he said lets meditate and I was expecting we would be getting all the kids out, closing the doors and dimming the lights but to my great surprise none of it happened. He just asked us to clasp our hands above the head and start chanting “Narayani Narayani” and after the continuous chant for a while he asked us to lower our hands and guided us through a small procedure and asked us to open the eyes. I felt lighter, more energetic, I felt I had meditated.

After the meditation, he gave a small knowledge session. He was natural, dynamic, effortless, completely in the moment, spontaneous and had an awesome sense of humor. His talk did not feel pre meditated or targeted towards anybody nor did he have any specific agenda. I felt perhaps after sri sri himself, here was one person who could translate the complicated knowledge of spirituality into a concrete, tangible, practical wisdom. He had the audience captivated. When somebody asked if this talk were recorded, he said all it matters is it being recorded up here (he was pointing to the head). He had the breadth and depth of knowledge.

I would have loved to listen to him if he had spoken the whole night, but the evening had to come to an end and we ended with the kannada song “baghyada lakshmi baramma”. Many people in the audience couldn’t understand what he was singing but his voice, music and the tune made us all enjoy the song.

It was truly a pleasure hosting him and spending the evening with him. Thanks to all who made it happen. I only wish he were here for a longer time and had conducted a course or two. If you ever get a chance to be in his presence, do not miss the chance.

The post would have been more effective if I had posted some pics from the satsang, I do not have any with me and will post them once I get them.

Portland trip part – 1 : Rose garden and Japanese garden

2010-09-14T09:58:00.001-05:00

Me and Sandhya love traveling and would love to take time off from Austin few times a year. So, when the time came to decide on where do we want to go for this year’s vacation, the choice wasn’t easy to make. Considering Sandhya’s present condition hiking was ruled out and hence most of our favorites were crossed from the list. No California and no Utah left us with east coast or north west coast. We picked the north west when my brother announced that he will be moving to Portland for his new job.

When we landed in Portland, it was a near perfect 70F temperature and the greenery of the place completely impressed me. There were a ton of rose plants planted along the side walks. While in Portland we visited a few places in the city, took a road trip to Crater lake and Redwood national park. Also, did a road trip to Mt St Helens. In this part I will cover the places in Portland.

Rose Garden: My brother who is currently a resident of Portland and had visited the places before mentioned that Portland Rose garden and Japanese gardens were worth a visit. He also cautioned us that it is off season for roses. We wanted to start the trip slow and easy, we drove to the rose garden. First thing that amazed me was there were a ton of roses for the off peak season and the park visit was free. They had multi colored roses, some specially bred and dedicated to great personalities. they had roses with single layer of petals to roses with multiple layers of petals. I was amazed with both the quality and quantity of roses in the garden. Some of the roses were in bunches while some were individual, some roses were shrubs while some were individual plants.

They truly had some unique colored roses. Considering it was a weekday and afternoon there were considerable number of tourists in the place. I had to control my shutter finger and see the roses through the naked eyes rather than through the camera lens. The fragrance in the garden is worth mentioning and sad there is no technology to capture the same. It was very colorful and picturesque. I wish I had taken an over all picture of the rose garden to share. Since the garden is on a hill top it also offers a beautiful view of the down town In the end, I recommend rose garden and it is worth the time.

Japanese Garden : Just above the hill top from the rose garden is the famous Portland Japanese garden. There is a small road that we could walk up or there is a free ride shuttle ride to take us up to the park. I have to mention the effort the shuttle driver made to accommodate a handicap women and her scooter into the shuttle, made me think this guy should run for the senate or even better governor. Unlike the rose garden visiting Japanese garden costs money ($10 entry fee). It is a nice place but we weren’t completely blown away by the garden, may be our lack of understanding for Japanese culture or our eyes were colored by such beautiful roses. The garden had some unique and nice things and supposedly one of the Japanese ambassadors to US had told that this place is the most authentic Japanese garden outside Japan.

They had a few unique things and it was real clean and well maintained. I think we spent less time at the Japanese garden than we spent at the rose garden. After the Japanese garden we thought we would head towards Powell book house but on the way we stopped for coffee and shopped at a locally owned grocery store, which my brother said there were a lot of them in Portland. Finally instead of Powell book house we headed home.

Day 2 of the trip we headed towards Columbia river gorge.

Publicizing events at Farmers Market – Event Day

2010-08-17T17:10:00.001-05:00

By the time I reached the market, Sanjeev had already set up the table. Geeta came around the same time I reached. We had good neighbors on both side, on one side was the cloth seller and other was the community radio KO-OP. Here is a list of things I re collect from the day.

The lady who organizes farmers market is truly sweet and very very accommodating.
People who visited the market during the morning 9:00AM-10:00AM were mostly interested in grabbing veggies and fruits and very few stopped by our booth.
For a lot of other folks it was a family outing with kids and dogs and they weren’t interested in us either. In short our target audience was pretty narrow.
Our neighbors from KOOP studio told us it usually takes a few weeks before it registers into people’s mind that we do exist.
I realized it is tough to get people’s attention, even with free food to offer. We started of by asking people “would you be interested in learning about yoga and meditation” and modified over time to “would you like to try our food” and tried to sneak in a flyer while they were enjoying the food
We encountered the whole spectrum in the market. Some donated generously for small things, while some took all we had to offer and didn’t drop a dime into our donation box.
There was one lady who mentioned she has seen our center on N. Lamar Blvd.
I remember one young girl walking from stall to stall asking stall owners if they were interested in the $2 hibiscus tea, I figured that was one way to keep the kids busy on a Saturday. I think she was an obedient daughter for she came around couple of times to see if we had changed our minds about the tea.
Texas heat was brutal, it was bearable in the morning but became real bane by afternoon. Thanks to our neighbors we managed to get some shade every now and then.
I was amazed to hear that our neighbor cloth seller lady was a barsana dham devotee and she moved to Austin for that sole reason.
In hindsight I think people had trouble understanding vegetable puffs, we had to explain it as vegetable lean pockets but made at home (just my opinion).
Juice became a dare, it was a big hit amongst us who were tabling the event and the few who drank it, but most people refused to try the juice. Those who tried were completely blown away when we mentioned the ingredients.
Henna was a hit, Geeta is really talented. She truly catered to her customers with each one getting a unique design to fit their personality. It seemed to me that she has already planned for a alternate career, if ever the need arises.
By the time we were done, we had given away almost all puffs and devoured the juice ourselves completely.
One last thing I learnt was it was not sufficient to buy the canopy sold in the market to get shade at the table, we need some heavy objects to ground the canopy and prevent it from flying.

All in all it was a unique experience, would I do it again? yes, but not in the same scale and would like to get more people involved. It would have been really nice to rotate people at the table.

Publicizing events at Farmers Market – Prep Day

2010-08-08T15:08:00.001-05:00

The volunteers at the Art of Living Austin foundation have a long history with Farmers Market, every now and then we show up there to hand out flyers regarding our events and courses. A passive approach of handing out people flyers and trying to make people aware of us.

Our dear friend Sanjeev decided change this and made a plan to put up a stall at the sunset valley farmers market. The idea was, with a stall located inside the market we get to grab people’s attention for a few seconds than we would have if we had just passively handed out flyers. I had to agree it was quite an innovative idea and it hadn’t been done during my time the foundation. He floated the idea amongst the like minded people and the consensus came to “it is a good idea, but we need to sell food or do some activity. Just having a plain stall isn’t enough”. After some debate on what to do we decided to sell Bawa’s Juice concoction (Orange+Apple+Carrots+Ginger) and vegetable puffs and do henna painting for a donation.

All was well till Friday afternoon when we realized we need to have a permit to sell food items at the market. So, we decided to put all the items up for donation. After completing the shopping work by Friday afternoon, the crew (Me, Sanjeev and Sandhya) assembled at our place on Friday evening to start the prep work.

We all had our work cut out, I was put in charge of the juicer and Sanjeev and Sandhya took up cutting veggies and boiling them for the puff. Despite some oppositions from dear Sanjeev, veggie pizza with bread sticks was the dinner. By the end of the night had cut and steamed a ton of veggies, had made more than a gallon of juice (no water added). There was some drama too with our juicer refusing to work half way through the process. I guess it needed some rest for it came back on after a break.

Next day Sandhya woke up early in the morning and baked over 40 veggie puffs. I helped her a tad bit here and there, but majority of the work was handled by her.

By Saturday 8:30AM we were all set with vegetable puffs, we buried the juice in 10lbs of ice, loaded up our cars and headed to the market. Geeta joined us directly at the farmers market with henna.

The simple idea that Sanjeev came up now looked real. What we learned during our time in the market?, I will write about it in the next part.

No wonder they are called fanbois

2010-07-19T23:39:00.001-05:00

“No Phone is perfect but IPhone is more perfect seemed to be the premise of what Steve Jobs was said during his press conference last week.

While I was browsing the tech usual websites I came across the article “RIM, HTC say Steve Jobs is full of it”. There is not much fun in the article itself as it quotes the statements from HTC and RIM regarding Apple’s statements. The surprise was waiting for me in the comments section, where some person has collected all(most) possible videos on YouTube and other websites that show the signal degradation for different phones and posted it.

I didn’t know if I should appreciate the persons work and dedication or to think some people are so jobless. But wait these are apple fanbois we are dealing with, we should expect this kind of stuff from them :).

I was concerned the link might go away so decided to put a picture of the links this person has posted.

Responsibility brings joy

2010-07-12T11:10:00.000-05:00

Last weekend we had a get together party. After the food was served and most people had left, some of us old timers decided to hang out for some more time and do what we do best, “HAVE FUN”. While some were enjoying singing and dancing and others were busy catching up with things, me and a few others were entertaining some of the kids who still hadn’t left the party.

We were using all kinds of props like white board markers, balls and pens to keep the kids occupied and entertained. During one of these activities with the pens we started demonstrating how to catapult a pen, one of the kids who I must say is really smart decided that it is more fun to catapult more pens at once. It was fun and the pens flew some distance and “only the flying pens” caught the attention of the Mom. In no time the disciplining session started and the kid was protesting against it, I watched for a few moments thinking I shouldn’t get in between mom and kid. But some how I couldn’t digest the fact that the kid was being punished for no fault of its own and I went up to mom and told her its not the kids fault but us(adults) and convinced her to let go. May be she walked away with some anger towards me and I was feeling bad for the whole situation. All of these vanished away the moment the kid smiled and hugged me when I told the kid that there won’t be any punishment and I have told mom that it was my fault.

Later in time, when I was reflecting on the events for the day, I realized the reason I rose up to mom and confessed my wrong doing instead of the kid facing the brunt is because I had been in the receiving end myself quite a few times. I now believe all those situations could have worked out better only if the responsible adults had done what I did.

It truly was nobody’s fault, the kid did not commit a crime as it thought it was having fun, we thought we were having fun and mom thought the kid was acting frenzy without knowing the complete situation. For me it was a situation of “responsibility brings joy”, (want to know more about this, do the August YES+).

I hope the kid got the balloon it was promised earlier in the evening.

Windows Live writer

2010-07-08T22:58:00.001-05:00

For my fellow bloggers, specially who use blogspot. We know how painful it is to use the editor that is built in to blogspot. From my personal experience I always had trouble with inserting images into the blog and adding text around the image without getting into the HTML or I want to insert 1 line between paragraphs and I have to take whatever blogger decides to give me, more I try to modify the worse blog looks (this doesn’t apply to people using Google reader though).

While I was doing some research I came across this great editor just built for blogging, called Windows Live Writer. I think it is the second best tool developed by Microsoft (first of course is excel).

The editor is pretty light, loads fast and will directly link to the blog and can do a 1 step publishing. What you see is what you get. No 2nd guessing on line spacing and paragraph spacing and all.

The image controls are also way more than offered by blogger (I have inserted a test image and tilted it just to prove the same). I could link more than one blog to the editor and could switch back and forth.

Unlike Blogger, where you need click on “preview the post” to preview the blog, the Live writer has a preview tab right next to the “Edit” tab (sweet). Less than a day of using it and I am already a fan. Try it and I am sure you will love it too.

Just like any other Microsoft products it is compatible with windows only and hence will not help my buddies who use “Open Source”.

Dog entertaining a kid

2010-07-06T10:31:00.001-05:00

Another example of a domestic help, dog entertaining a kid. I wish I could get one of these.

Parrot doing Laundry

2010-07-06T10:25:00.000-05:00

Ever Wondered you had a domestic help like this?

Thing that caught me was the curiosity of the parrot.

Shlokas

2010-07-01T10:19:00.007-05:00

As most of us residing in Austin are aware, Austin Hindu temple conducts Sanskrit speaking classes on weekends. A few days ago a question arose in me, Sanskrit is such an ancient language, all the ancient texts we Indians can think of are in Sanskrit. The language is so powerful that a few lines of verses in Sanskrit demands pages of explanation in other languages like English, Hindi, Kannada and so on.

After bouncing this thought off of my wife, I realized that the reason ancients texts are in Sanskrit stems from the fact that it was the medium of mass communication in ancient India. Over time the language evolved and the poets used this language and wrote some awesome poetry (like Kalidasa, Valmiki among others). The enlightened souls used the language to spread their message on meaning of life and beyond life.

All was well and I could see how reviving a language meant starting to use in day to day communication and hope it will survive long enough to give rise to poets and writers. So, that takes care of the prose and the poetry. There is still one thing remaining and that is the Shlokas or vedic chants. Apart from the fact that they are used during worship and only certain people are trained to chant, I do not know much beyond that.

The following posts from our own dear Bawa on facebook has shed more light on Shlokas.

Khurshed Batliwala What's the meaning of Shloka? Apart from the obvious?
G: Let's ask Swami Pragyanandji about it...
SP: There is an ancient language, Sanskrit. There are 2 basic styles in it, prose and poetry. When you use Sanskrit as Poetry then you go towards the meaning of Shloka... But it's not just poetry

Khurshed Batliwala Poetry which is full of Knowledge, with excellent use of the language, which either brings some gain some profit or inspires one into action or brings about some light on a difficult subject is getting even closer to the meaning of Shloka...

Khurshed Batliwala When excellent language made into poetry brings about all of the above together, then this is the perfect Shloka!
Brings light, brings gain or profit for the listener (possibly even the speaker) AND inspires chivalrous, courageous, good action... This is Shloka

PS: Bawa posts lot of knowledge on his facebook page, you can link to it here or follow him on his webpage.

The day Chrome froze

2010-06-21T10:49:00.004-05:00

For the last few months I have migrated over to Google Chrome to be my default web browser. It was all working fine till one day last week, chrome refused to load any website. As a typical user of Windows system, I uninstalled chrome and reinstalled the same, sadly that step did not help (of course I repeated this step multiple times hoping it will work at some point). Around the same time I noticed that the other browsers like Firefox and IE had started to work with diminished capacity. When I say diminished capacity I mean, I do a google search and click on the results I would be redirected to a malware website and pop ups come up every now and then.

It didn't take a genius to figure out that the system has been infected by a malware or some such virus. So, I un-installed the AVG free antivirus (which I had been hoping will save me money) and installed the Norton Internet Security 2010. After doing a complete system scan with Norton I was surprised to see that no virus was found. Next step I ran the Malwarebytes to detect any malware infections, still no luck. One good thing that came out of installing Norton was that the other browsers started to work better (read less redirection to malware and less popup) but Chrome still did not budge.

After doing some Google search I found that the registry settings may have been modified by a virus or a malware and websites suggested registry fix options and alternate browsers. I tried a couple of free registry fix softwares and that didn't fix the problem either.

As a last resort I booted the system with windows installer CD and asked it to repair the system. It took a whole hour and a few reboots and a ton of Microsoft updates later chrome started to work fine and firefox was back up too but another problem showed up and IE refused to load.

Last step was to make IE work and for this I had to uninstall the previous installations of IE using the alternative steps described and then download and do a fresh installation of IE8. After all this IE started to work but with disclaimer "IE is running with add-ons disabled". Again after consulting Dr. Google, I had to install and un-install Google toolbar and again re-install the same to get rid of the disclaimer.

The post looks like an ad for Norton or scare people away from windows towards Mac or Linux but that is not my intent. My intent is to say that registry fix softwares alone might not fix all the problems. There probably was an easy way like system restore to an earlier date but I was concerned that the restore may screw up my installations of Norton and other softwares.

YES+ - We participated, We played, We learned and We had fun

2010-06-14T13:49:00.004-05:00

For a long time I had been asking my good buddies Anoop and Shraddha that I want to write about their efforts in making YES+ happen and appreciate their efforts in energizing the YES+ team. They always told me to do the course and then you can write and my excuse was, when you teach by yourselves, I will think about doing it.

YES+ as it is advertised is the Art of Living Course (basic course, part-1) but designed and modified with youth in mind. Since I wear the old timer hat with the Art of Living organization and I have done quite a few part-1 or basic courses, I did not feel the need to the YES+ course. Basically, what is the point in drinking the same medicine in a new bottle So, I was pretty reluctant to enroll myself and whenever the course was announced I was thinking of my excuses. Finally the time came last week and I was enrolled into it without me actually wanting to do so and at the end of 6 grueling days and 28hrs later, I am glad I did it and I am proud to call myself a YES+ graduate.

The course is a complete package in itself, it has the seva, the sadhana and the satsang (for the purists, I mean company of the good). There are more practicals than theory, the processes/events in the course stir up emotions in you and at the same time you are given the tool to handle it. It brought out the leaders in us and at the same time taught us the very important lesson of life "TO HAVE FUN and ENJOY THE GAME". It was physically demanding (not as much as advertised though). Other courses try to teach the lessons and this course makes you learn the lesson. All done in a fun filled and happy environment. I wouldn't sugar coat and say it was all goody goody, on the weekdays, sessions were long and tiring but definitely not boring. I can't say anymore without giving out the course itself.

For a good course we need 3 things, good venue, good participation and good teachers. This course had it all, everybody gave their 100% and no holding back. The teachers truly led us from the front, they always were there before us and had the place ready for us to start. Some of us knew that they were teaching for the first time but none of us could say they were novice.

In the end I felt the course is advertised in a wrong way, it has parts and elements from the other courses like any other course taught under Art of Living umbrella but in the core it is completely different. In short, it is not the part-1 course targeted towards people in the age group 18-30, it is a course that anybody can do as long they are willing to be physically a bit active.

If the above writing did not convince you to come join the upcoming YES+ course, then here is the carrot. There is a very important meditation that they teach during the course that is not taught in any other Art of Living course.

The post wont be complete without thanking behind the scene volunteers who got us food every day. Special thanks to Bawa and Dinesh for designing this course.

Anoop and Shraddha, you guys rocked. Keep the good times rolling.

Part-2 Course at the Texas Ashram

2010-06-04T11:30:00.000-05:00

After a big push from my wife, I finally enrolled and completed the part-2 course during Memorial day weekend. It was a 4 day course held at the beautiful and scenic Texas ashram. This was my second course but after a long break.

The teacher Commander Suresh, whom we used to call Commander-ji had flown all the way from India to meet his daughter and grand kids and in the middle of his vacation he decided to teach the course for us. He was a gem, one in a million. He took personal interest in each and every one of us. I liked his schedule driven approach towards the course. He used to come up with a schedule for the day to the minute and worked hard towards maintaining it, too bad we students could not keep up with his schedule. His preparation towards the course is another thing worth mentioning, he had the audio for the meditations on his ipod and couple of sets of tapes. He was so sweet, I almost wanted to call him grandpa. His devotion to the master is another story onto itself. He advised us to continue our sadhana on a regular basis and said you will see a benefit but at the same warned us not to attach expectations to the sadhana. He said even if you stop doing sadhana for a week it is almost like starting all over. He was very approachable and non judgemental, this is the first time during my time in Art of Living that I havs spoken to a teacher during the course about my concerns, I wasn't alone either. At the begining of every meditaion he would make sure he could completly see each and every participant and insisted on people to change their postions so that he can have a visual.

The course itself was a roller coaster ride. On day 1 I was completely miserable and was feeling very tired and sleepy, by the end of day 1 I had a throbbing head ache on my right side. At the end of the satsang on day 1 I went to my room and crashed only to wake up at 4:30AM next day. Day 2 was better then day 1 but by end of the day left side of my head was throbbing away but the intensity was milder than previous day. It was on day 3 morning during one of the meditations, something flipped and I was energized and went on a complete high. By the end of the day 3 I was on cloud nine only to be brought down in night by some weird dreams. Next day morning I was sad again that my high is gone but the sadhana in the morning gave it back to me.

The days I was feeling tired, my mind was thinking may be its the heat outside that was making me drained, or may be I didn't sleep well previous night or I didn't have enough for lunch and so on. At one point I started thinking, I am probably wasting my time here and should have stayed home and played wii and saved some money also. But something in me kept me pushing and I simply followed the teachers instructions without questioning and now that I have completed, I feel it was well worth the money, the time and everything else. If I think back the duration of the course was exact for me, if it had been even a day shorter I would have come out with a negative thought and not on a postive high.

I went to the course with lots of questions on my mind and I came back with all of them resolved. Another observation was on the meditation in the course, start of the course the meditations were more like sleep sessions or day dreaming time for me but by the end there was a complete 180 degree phase shift in the meditations. On the 3 days of the course we got three specific messages from "THE MAN" himself.

On the way back I got the wonderful opportunity to drive commander-ji back to airport and that in itself was a experience. When I appreciated him on his time sense during the course, he said the sign of a true leader is to be ahead of the rest and report 15mins before the expected time, this he said he learnt while he was in Indian Navy. He said you need love and discipline to progress on this path and not just quote guruji and create chaos and think we are enjoying it.

Thanks to Selva, Yamuna, Prakash, Uncle and Aunty and a bunch of other volunteers, all the cottages were well kept and the food was amazing. We didn't feel a pinch while staying at the Ashram.

One last thing I have to mention is the co-ordination among us 4 room mates, they all were just truly wonderful, using the bathrooms in a sequence went like clock work. Each one honored others timing very well.

A beautiful experience in the end.

An year without cable TV

2010-05-10T10:08:00.029-05:00

About a year ago, US went through its digital TV transition. I saw an opportunity to get rid or minimize my addiction to television and I took it.

At that time we used to have Time Warner cable at home and were pretty happy with it. I was aware that I am becoming more and more addicted to TV and used all kinds of techniques like, not watching repeat telecasts, watching only selected channels and so on to reduce my addiction but none seemed to work. My excuse for not getting rid of cable altogether is that the analog transmission at that time was crappy and getting rid of cable means end of TV and I had tried this once before and had failed (I watched a lot of movies and spent money on movie rental than cable TV). When the US went through its long awaited DTV transition I had no more excuses to get rid of the cable and with a strong mind and heart I took the chance and got rid of the cable.

I consider that to be a very wise decision and I must say, I had complete support of my wife in making that decision. The idea was we will give it a 6 month try (of which we were out of town for close to 2 months) and see if we miss cable.

I confess, initial few weeks were tough for me and I used to watch some of the paid programming on ABC and NBC and so on. But over time I discovered the flavor of network TV and I started following certain shows in a day instead of mindless surfing of channels and shows. Currently my favorite channel is CBS and I occasionally switch to ABC, NBC or FOX. I still haven't fallen for reality TV which most of the network channels want to emphasize or developed a condition that says "no David Letterman or Jay Leno", no sleep.

My own analysis says that I do not gain a ton of time on week days but I do gain a lot of time on the weekends. A trial that started with a time limit of 6 months has now reached a year and I am quite happy about the fact that I am saving money every month.

I realized how easy it is to fall back when I discovered Netflix streaming of movies and shows, I started watching the show 24 like a maniac (completed season 1 and season 2 in less than couple of weeks). Thanks to my breathing practices, I am able to get it under control without falling into the cracks.

STOMP

2010-05-05T19:35:00.001-05:00

If you thought you need a precision tuned musical instrument to generate music then stomp is here to prove you wrong. If you ever tried generating noise using house hold things and imagined you generated music then check out stomp, they truly generate music with household things.

Thanks to our Bahraini friend, some of us were fortunate enough to witness the show yesterday at paramount theaters in Austin. The show was spectacular, incredible, no adjective would do justice for the show.

Never in my wildest imagination I had thought that somebody can generate music with things like broom stick, trash can, pipes, sticks, match box, cigarette lighters, gutter pipes, trash bags, news paper and on and on. They had amazing rhythm and the co-ordination among the members of the team was a feast to watch. The short hour and half show was an interactive one with the artists interacting with the audience very frequently. The show had comedy too. Some parts of the show were pretty loud but not unpleasant The show was performed in a single stretch without a break. I definitely would appreciate their stamina and teamwork. I came out of the show thinking, all I need is rhythm and music just happens. At the end of the show the artists got a well deserved standing ovation.

It wouldn't be fair on my part if I do not complement the acoustics of the paramount theaters and their organizational skills. I doubt if there is any other theater in Austin with better acoustics than paramount theaters. Their organization skill of employing just enough ushers and distributing them arond the theater in right quantities is something to learn from.

The group is currently performing at Austin Paramount theaters and they will be there till sunday. The tickets are well worth the price and keep in mind the shows are running houseful.

Wild flower drive

2010-04-13T14:24:00.001-05:00

This blog is dedicated to the people who are in Austin, Texas and like the wild flowers that have sprung all around Austin. If the wild flowers that have sprung in and around Austin have made you want for more then here is the drive you should consider.

Take TX-71W towards Llano and take TX-16S towards Fredericksburg. You will truly will be in for a feast. Fields are filled with colorful flowers. I am not sure how long will these last, so if you want to make it do it soon. While you are there you can take FM 965 and visit Enchanted Rock and the Wild seed farms in Fredericksburg. If you are even more enthusiastic consider the willow city loop (we didn't do this).

Here is a glimpse of what you might see.

The above red flowers were not on the way but at Wild seed farm Fredericksburg.

Some times simple solutions isn't what I want

2010-04-13T10:00:00.020-05:00

After I posted a comment on my friend's blog, I realized when it comes to myself, many a times simple solutions is not what I look for. Here is one example for the same.

I retired my old Athlon based PC and built a new Athlon X2 based PC. Everything was new including the hard disk and the OS and all. The PC was running fine for a few months and then started blue screening and complain "Insert OS disk and boot". I used to faithfully re format the disk and re-install the OS, until I realized I can solve the problem by unhooking the SATA cable from the hard disk and the motherboard and re insert the same after some time (cooling time).

Over time the blue screen became more and more frequent, it was like sitting on a time bomb not knowing when it will go off. I suspected the memory interface, so I slowed the memory speed in the bios. I downloaded memory stress test and ran the same, there were no errors in the memory interface.

Since I had already invested too much money on the new PC, I had to fix it and make it stable. I debated on changing the hard disk. but I wasn't sure whether it was the hard disk or the motherboard that was faulty, I decided to ditch the SATA disk completely and installed the OS on an old IDE hard disk. The 80GB space on the IDE disk was not nearly enough to hold the pics and the music among other things, hence I decided to use the SATA disk for data.

The instability of the PC got solved but every now and then the data disk would drop off and become unavailable. The only way to recover was to unhook the SATA cable and hook it back. I did some research on forums and based on those suggestions, I uninstalled the nvidia SATA drivers. This step did help to some extent and the data disk fail became less frequent.

One fine day I realized I had an extra SATA cable and decided to swap the cable, I can't believe all my problems with the PC is solved. The fact is I had this cable for ever and could have done this long time ago but my logical mind couldn't accept the cable could be at fault, but turns out it was. If only I had taken this simple step in the first place, I could have saved myself a lot of agony.

In hindsight I think the cable was failing as the temperature of the CPU box went up and the system used to blue screen once the cable failed. For a long time I had setting "Reboot on failure" and hence I used to get the error "Disk not found". Uninstalling the SATA drivers helped because the data transfer rate reduced and hence the heat generation reduced.

Not fair at all

2010-04-07T11:01:00.000-05:00

Mr. Shoaib Malik - Ms. Sania Mirza wedding hurdle has finally been cleared. For those who read times of India online you couldn't have missed the dispute. For those who don't, turns out the cricketer was already married to another girl by name of Ms. Ayesha.

Times of India has been running articles on this every day for the last couple of weeks and made sure it got the prime time. I was pissed that the paper is giving such importance to this. They had interviews with this lady Ms. Ayesha and they were posting comments from Mr. Shoaib and Ms. Sania also, in the end they managed to keep the issue alive very well.

Till today Mr. Shoaib kept denying that he ever knew this girl Ms. Ayesha from Hyderabad and denied even meeting her let alone marry. Today all of a sudden he decided to divorce the girl he has never met.

The unfair part I am screaming about is the settlement, a paltry Rs 15,000 that too to be paid in 3 installments over 3 months. To top it all, everybody is happy with the settlement. I feel it is one of those settlements that is not even worth the paper it will be printed on.

I wonder if the TOI forgot to add a couple of 0's in the end.

Rainbow inside the apartment

2010-04-01T09:30:00.001-05:00

Couple of weeks ago we managed to capture a beautiful rainbow formed on the window blinds. Before the geek inside you start to wonder where was the prism for the rainbow, the light was going through the aquarium.

Here is another view of the same (playing with settings on the camera).

Snippets from Corpus Christi trip

2010-03-26T12:37:00.000-05:00

After every trip I usually log a travel log about the trip. Since this time the trip was pretty local and we visited standard Texas attractions I will only post snippets.

A brief history of the trip : we started on Saturday morning and spent most of the day at Seaworld San Antonio. In the evening we headed to Corpus Christi and spent the night. On Sunday we spent the day at Mustang Island state park. In the night we took a stroll on bay front road. On Monday we toured USS Lexington warship and visited Texas State Aquarium.

When you book a hotel room through Hotwire, they do not guarantee the room type, for ex: I had asked for a room with 2 queen beds but because the hotel was so completely booked due to a conference and all I ended up getting a room with 1 king size bed.
I got pulled over by the highway patrol on the way to Corpus Christi not because I was speeding but one of my license plate lights were out. I didn't get a ticket but a warning (not a verbal one but a printed one).
Sea world still has shows with the killer whales but I could see that they weren't pushing the whales as they used to do before. I guess it is good both for the whales and the humans.
If you ever visit seaworld SA don't forget to do the lori bird feeding, it is a unique experience of holding a small cup of nectar in hand and having the bird sit on your hand while sucking the nectar.
Seaworld SA does not host the Clydesdale horses anymore, instead they have couple of Texas longhorns and couple more uniquely Texan animals.
If in corpus christi you decide to tour the aquarium and the warship on the same day, I suggest you do the aquarium first.
In the aquarium I suggest not to miss the wild flight show. It is a truly unique and a great show.
Driving from Corpus Christi to Austin, if it is spring time and you are a bit adventurous, try the scenic route along highway 181 and highway 123. We truly were in for a surprise when we saw lush wild flowers all along the way. Google says it takes close to 4 and half hours if you take this route, but we managed to do it in less than 3 and half hours. Keep in mind you need a good GPS and a truly alert mind if you decide to take this route.
I have been to corpus twice so far and I think mustang Island state park is a better beach than corpus christi beach.
The sand in mustang island state park is so fine that it is guaranteed to fill in to all nooks and holes of the car.

Mesmerizing concert by ustaad Zakir Hussain

2010-03-11T09:00:00.002-06:00

Last September when the founder of the IFA announced at the end of Manna-Dey's concert that ustaad Zakir Hussain will be coming to Austin, I grew very exited and made up my mind not to miss the concert at any cost. Then the India trip happened and my parents decided to make a US trip and so on and I almost lost track of the concert. It was not till a couple of weeks ago when a friend of mine said he picked up his tickets, it again dawned on me and I hurried to get my tickets. I aimed for the lowest level for the tickets only to find out its all sold out and was forced to be bumped up to one level higher.

The concert started with a 3 men Bengali folk art team playing their version of drums. They played really well but I personally felt it went a tad too long. Once ustaad entered the stage he simply took over the show. Rest of the first half of the concert was dominated by ustaad and his younger brother Taufiq Qureshi, who has an amazing talent to modulate breath. The one most people would definitely remember was Taufiq's performance of husband and wife fight.

The way ustaad described the language of tabala was truly remarkable. He described a train, a canon and quite a few other things in the language of Tabala. Words just can't do justice for the performance. I am usually the kind who would look at the watch every now and then but during the first half of the concert (7:30PM-9:00PM) I didn't even think of my watch. A combination of Taufiq and ustaad's performance was truly mind boggling. During the first half it appeared as though the whole room was in a state of trance.

The second half started with subtle music of violin, the artists were great but I couldn't appreciate it much. I think I have a mental block for Indian classical music with violin. The second half gained momentum when ustaad and one other guy on mridangam joined the violin duo. There was one more artist playing another percussion instrument (I don't know what it is called), he was also wonderful. The concert ended with an amazing performance with all the nine artists on stage. In the end the artists got the well deserved standing ovation from the audience.

One thought came to me during the concert, the speed at which ustaad's hand moved and generated such fine and wonderful music, can I move my hand at 25% the speed let alone generate any pleasing sound in the process.

They truly were masters of percussion. It was worth every single penny and probably more. It was a memorable event. When I told my mom that we are going to a concert on Thursday of the previous week she was indifferent but after the concert she felt she would have missed something if she hadn't gone. We all were truly mesmerized.

This was my 2nd concert of ustaad in Austin and I loved both of them. Thank you IFA for bringing such a memorable event to Austin.

The day March 6th turned out to be special both for me and the IFA. IFA was celebrating the 15th anniversary and we were celebrating my parents 35th wedding anniversary.

The technology of spirutuality

2010-03-09T13:52:00.001-06:00

A beautiful talk by Bawa aka Kurshed Batliwala. I have been following his blog for quite a while, but never heard him or watched a video from him. This is the first video I watched and it is truly inspirational. I like his presentation skills, organization of thoughts, the simplicity of his speech and the quotes themselves.

It is a series of 7 videos on youtube and here is the link to part-1 of the video. Watch all the 7 and don't stop in the middle, it is pretty lively and entertaining.

A must see for everyone even though the talk is targeted towards YES+ category.

I thought of just a google reader share but realized this video series deserve a wider publicity than just the reader.

Agra

2010-03-02T09:30:00.010-06:00

Last part of my India travel log.

Agra is the home for world famous Tajmahal, I was pretty skeptical of the place before I went there but after seeing the place in person, I agree the place has a charm of its own. There are two other buildings in the same complex as TajMahal, one of them is a mosque and the other one was under renovation. It is one of the well preserved archeological monuments of the country.The security arrangement for TajMahal had some weird rules, they wouldn't allow you take your tripod with the camera or a charger with the cell phone.

It was here I witnessed the looting of foreign nationals, the government charges them 10 times the money for entrance fee and the guy who takes care of shoes for them was also doing the same.

Inside is also well preserved as the outside, tombs of both Shahjahan and Mumtaz Mahal are next to each other (united at death). The semiprecious stones used to decorate the walls inside are still intact and haven't been looted, needless to say photography is not allowed inside the Mahal. Even if they did I am sure I wouldn't have gotten anything nice considering the crowd inside the place.

One thing I didn't know was the existence of Agra fort, this one is much better than the ones in Jaipur. It was first captured by Babar from the Lodi's (who had captured it from Rajputana and who in turn had captured from others) and has remained under Mughal control from then on. On the outside it is built with redstone and the interiors are partly white marble. It was surprising to know that the fort was the center of Mogul empire, for I always believed Delhi to be the center of Mughal empire. It had a treasury and even housed a mint inside it. The fort was naturally protected by the river yamuna whose waters were used to surround the fort in case of a siege.

Just like Amer Fort, Agra fort had the section where the king met the ministers and a section where king met with the people and finally the inner section with a garden like the one in the below pic where queens used to live.

The fort has a beautiful view of Taj Mahal. It was the official abode of most Mughal emperors and was once home for the famous Kohinoor diamond. It supposedly was here that emperor Jehangir declared himself as the king even before Akbar died and this is where Aurangazeb imprisoned his father Shahjahan during his last days. Looking at Taj Mahal from the fort made me think, "Is this what Shahjahan saw during his final days", may be a more clearer view as there wasn't any pollution in the air during those days. Only part of the fort is accessible to visitors as mode of the fort is under renovation.

I didn't like UP as much as I liked Rajasthan for the roads were pretty bad and infrastructure hasn't been developed much.

Dent Works Austin

2010-03-01T09:30:00.004-06:00

One of our cars has the tendency to attract trouble every now and then. Not that it is a rogue car or one of the hottest cars in the parking lot. It is a good and plain old Camry, its not even red in color. But for some or the other reason other cars and people either love it too much or hate it too much and keep denting it. I am not talking of door dings, but bigger ones. The ironic part it always happens in our parking lot.

First time it happened, we were pretty pissed off and asked body shops for quotes and the quotes were pretty unreasonable. Then I did a google search and found this place called Dent Works, it is a paint less dent repair shop. I have been to body shops but never to a paint less dent repair shop and I was pretty skeptical. We took it in for an inspection and the owner said "Yes he can get it fixed ". I thought in my head this means it will look better than what it is looking now but to my surprise he had fixed it so well it was impossible to say that the car had a dent. The area of the dent appeared flawless. The best part we got the car the same day and at a fraction of the cost of what we would have paid the body shop.

Recently when it happened again we didn't think twice and took our car to the same place and got it fixed. I truly recommend this shop for dent repairs.

Actually, reading all the things available on the web regarding paint less dent repair, it is one of the easiest and best ways to get the body damage fixed. It keeps the paint intact and no repainting or color matching required. But the trick is to find the right technician to do it and also not all dents can be repaired this way.

Hamilton Pool preserve

2010-02-23T23:01:00.001-06:00

Hamilton pool preserve located on highway 71 in southwest Austin. We went there last weekend and was pretty stunned by the place. The entry fee is $10 per car and there is a quarter mile hike to the falls/pool from the parking lot.

At the end of the quarter mile downhill hike we saw a green pool and a water fall, there was also a small trail that took us behind the falls. Thanks to the rains so far this year, the water fall seemed to be in pretty good force. The pool appeared emerald green but the water flowing out of the pool was pretty clear. The overcast sky on Saturday added to the charm.

A worthy place to visit for Austinities, the trail was pretty wet due to the recent rains and the other trail leading to the river was closed due to the same reason. The preserve allows swimming at our own risk (no life guard on duty), we did not see much facility to do a picnic sort of thing there.

Ajmer, Pushkar, Fatehpursikri

2010-02-20T19:00:00.004-06:00

We made a day road trip from Jaipur to Ajmer and Pushkar. Ajmer is the home of the beautiful dargah. The place is very unique that people from all faiths and religions visit the place, it has a long history for it has one door built by Ala-ud-din-Khilji and one built by Emperor Jehangir. It was one of the crowded places I have ever visited. I felt the place had an unique energy of its own.

Pushkar boasts of the one and only brahma temple in the world. The temple is quite big and is a temple complex with quite a few smaller temples inside. There is a lake in pushkar but it was pretty dry when we went. The locals claimed lack of rain but my engineering mind said all the canals to fill the lake have been blocked by housing development around the lake.

The next stop was towards Fatehpursikri on the way we stopped at one of the Rajasthan Tourism's hotels and had the best aloo paratha's we had ever had.

Fatehpursikri, as per my remembrance of the history it was part of an effort by emperor Akbar to shift capital from Delhi. There is a beautiful fort in Fatehpur with a mosque in the center. The fort is built with red stone, while the mosque is made from white marble. It appears like a fort from the outside but from the inside it appears as a place to enclose the mosque.

The windows of the mosque are so uniquely designed that from a distance it appears like a sheet of glass than a stone window.

The guide mentioned Akbar's wife Jodha had a small temple in one of the corners of the fort. According to him the below pic is the inverted temple built for Jodha.

The unique feature about the doors in the above pic is that all the doors are of same height but they appear as though the preceding door is smaller than the succeeding door. It is not a photographic gimmick but is built that way.

The fort also has the tunnel through which supposedly Anarkali was smuggled to Lahore and it also houses the graves of lots of near and far relatives of Akbar.

A beautiful place reflecting Mughal architecture but it is so infested with people who claim to be tour guides and photographers that it takes some of the charm away. Supposedly lots of bollywood movies have been shot here.

Art of Living Austin Center

2010-02-18T11:34:00.005-06:00

I have been associated with Art of Living Austin for more than five years now and I have witnessed its progress as an organization. It was just a couple of years ago when some of my friends took the initiative and decided to have a place we can call a center. There were lots of logistics to be worked out including but not limited to, how to finance the place?, what would we like to accomplish from this place? and aren't we good the way we are?.

I too had all these questions and to say the least was not too interested in the center. Thanks to the YES mind of some of the people who just dedicatedly worked towards changing everyones attitude (including me) from a NO to at least a May Be and we had a place.

The center presently sits in a commercial complex at 5555 N Lamar and does not seem much from the outside. Inside are two halls, one with yoga mats spread over uniformly (which we call the meditation hall) and other a lounge for people to hangout while some activity is going on in the meditation hall, but this is the place we can call our own. Here we are not dependent on others schedule to host an event or organize a course. No fear of getting kicked out for we ran out of time. We no longer have to hunt for a place to hold a satsang and because of its central location and accessibility by bus route makes the place even more attractive. Just a couple of days ago I celebrated one of the most awesome shivratri's.

Kudos to the people who truly drove the initiative and made it all happen. May be my perception, but it seems that we are having lot more events and activities now that we have a center.

Yes, I do see that the whole thing could have gone south and the skeptics like me could have bragged that "we been right from the beginning". But I am glad to say that it is not the case and the center is thriving (from what I can see). It is truly an example of great vision and leadership.

India Trip/Travel Log-3, Jaipur

2010-02-10T20:13:00.000-06:00

Our Journey started in Delhi and Delhi to Jaipur has a beautiful highway/toll road, the toll is pretty expensive and they collect money every few kms. Road/tourist tax in Rajasthan is much higher than UP but roads are better maintained than UP.

Jaipur can be divided into old city and new city. The old city has Hawa-Mahal, City Palace and Jantar Mantar. The new city has the developed part of Jaipur. Jaipur has 3 forts (Amer Fort, Jiagarh Fort and Nahargarh fort), we only visited Amer and Jaigarh fort.

The royal family hasn't completely relinquished its power but has retained control over parts of Jaipur. I felt there is still a sense of respect towards the Raja.

City palace is owned by the present Maharajah and he has converted part of the palace to a museum and tourist attraction. The curious attractions were the dress worn by one of the previous Raja's who was 7ft tall, 4ft wide and weighed 280kilos and the huge silver drums constructed to carry ganga-jal (water from river ganges) to England. Inside the palace the present maharaja is funding an art school where the local artists/artisans are encouraged, great effort to preserve some of the ancient art secrets. We didn't have much time but the paintings were truly marvelous.

Next stop for us was the sound and light show at Amer fort, it gave us a brief history of Rajputana and of the Amer fort itself. It was pretty spectacular, one of the attractions that should not be missed while in Jaipur. The show commentary is offered in 2 languages (English and Hindi) and English commentary almost costs twice as much as Hindi.

Jaigarh fort is a massive fort and felt like it had more emphasis on protection and defense than architecture. The fort boasts of one of the world's biggest canon, so big that it was fired only once and never after. The fort has a well inside which supposedly was a cover-up for a treasury. The treasury used to be locked by an unique lock that took 5 keys to open. The fort supposedly used to have a rain water harvesting system, the small canals used for the same are still intact. The guide mentioned that the fort used to have enough storage space for ration to survive a siege of several months. If you visit this place hire a guide to tour the same.

Amer fort is a more beautiful fort than Jaigarh fort and is much smaller and more artistic than Jaigarh fort. The fort has undergone transformation over time and I felt this fort had more muslim/moghul influence than Jiagarh fort. This fort seemed a place for peace time than war. One of the unique things I remember about the fort is the royal bathroom, it had so many smaller rooms inside it that I almost got lost inside. The fort also had a modern paid bathroom and it was so well done and maintained that for once I felt the money was worth.

HawaMahal is a 5 storey unique building built in the heart of Jaipur, it was built for queens to watch kings parade while it was passing through the heart of Jaipur. It has unique windows that are designed for view of outside from inside and not the other way. The guide told us that the older queens were given lower floors and younger queens used to get the higher floors (seniority in reverse order). Hawa Mahal has some unique designs to maintain privacy and security of its residents.

The other attractions were Jalmahal which is submerged in a lake and in the process of being converted to a hotel and Jantar Mantar, which we didn't have time to visit.

It was good to see that the Rajasthan government is in the process of preserving the places through repairs. At the same time some miscreants were showing their talents in calligraphy on newly repaired walls.

I felt Rajasthan has maintained the link between the past and the present, the forts have stood test of time but unlike other places they haven't whithered away, they have gone through modifications and transformations but they haven't lost their originality. I truly appreciated the Rajputs for having maintained their culture intact through the Moghuls and the British. Some of the palaces are still left intact and maintained as tourist attractions and not converted to hotels.

On the whole Jaipur is an expensive place to visit but worth one's time to visit. It is a good idea to hire a guide to see some of the attractions but remember to bargain/bargain/bargain.

Avatar-3D at IMAX

2010-01-30T16:46:00.007-06:00

After 3 weeks of waiting to get the tickets on the day of the show, we finally booked the tickets in advance last week and managed to see the movie at Bob-Bullock IMAX theater. The movie is very well done, kudos to James Cameron and the team. Kudos to the actors also, for each of them have performed really well, I came out of the movie truly hating the head of security and the corporate guy and at the same time loving the simple life of Na'vi people. The movie truly transported us to a new world.

The movie plot is not ingenious but the execution is really wonderful. The story is about the planet Pandora where a mining company is in the process of destroying the planet and everything the natives believe in, all the name of quarterly profits. The hero in the interest of getting his real legs back volunteers to enter the world of Na'vi (inhabitants of planet pandora) and slowly learns their ways and starts respecting their simple way of life. He gets transformed so much that in the end he leads the natives in a war against his own people and for a change the natives win (happy ending, which was wonderful).

The movie reminded me of the story of American Indians and for that matter my own country India but with one difference, The Na'vi people are more selfless and placed their society and way of life more than self. I don't want to reveal any more.

Now to the IMAX experience, this was my first IMAX commercial movie and it was worth every single penny. It is tough to describe in words the experience other than saying it was a big screen and seats are elevated. A combination of Avatar-3D and IMAX is worth the extra cost and effort. I recommend everyone to watch the movie in IMAX if you have a chance.

India Trip - Experience/Travel Log - 2

2010-01-21T12:42:00.011-06:00

Since I named one of the previous blogs as "India Travel?experience part-1", I am compelled to continue and put out a part-2 for the post. This one I will cover the south India travel and in the next/last part I will cover North India travel.

Climbed up the stairs of Chamundi hills in Mysore, It was a fun experience. There is a spot about 2/3rds of the way up where we drank some fresh sugar cane juice. The interesting part I noticed was that some of the stone steps were either getting a make over or getting replaced, I was glad to see the economic progress was not just restricted to "volvo" buses.

Payed a visit to Krishna Raja Sagara dam, a dam built across river Kaveri. Built in a932 by the legendary Sir M Vishweshwaraiah, I would consider it an Engineering feat even by today's standards. The entrance to the dam has changed over time and the new visitors won't even get a glimpse of the dam but are escorted straight to the brindavan gardens. The gardens has a bunch of fountains which get illuminated in the night. My observation, the number of fountains hasn't changed at all and are pretty much the same, they don't seem to have changed in the last 20 years but the number of people visiting the park has definitely gone up 100 fold.

We made a road trip to Dharmasthala and Kukke Subramanya, both are piligrim places located in Dakshina Kannada district. The road is through Hassan and the road is amazingly well built till Hassan, but after that it is well built in patches.

Dharmasthala is a wonderful place for couple of reasons. It is one of those pilgrim places which we visit on a decently regular basis. The number of people visiting the place is phenomenal. Even more phenomenal is the fact that the temple provides free lunch and dinner every day of the year. The sheer logistics involved in feeding so many people (some say average 5000 a day visit the place) is mind boggling.

Another very important reason is the diversity of the place. The primary god is shiva who is mostly worshiped by Lingayat community, the people who perform the pooja belong to brahmin community and the executive management is handled by Dr. Veerendra Heggade who happens to be a jain. I wondered if Jerusalem could learn something from here.

Kukke Subramanya is about 60kms from Dharmastala and it is a smaller temple. When we reached the temple they had some pooja going on and people sat through the end of the pooja without any noise, but the moment pooja closed and prasad distribution started, the same set of people rushed so hard that it made me wonder are these the same set of people who a moment ago were so gentle and nice? It wasn't like the prasad was limited, the temple authorities repeatedly were announcing that everybody will get the prasad, I guess it was all falling on deaf ears.

On the way to these places we stopped at Anuganalu (near Hassan), where folks from BCRT have transformed a barren rocky hillock to a green forest. A good place to stop and have a look for all green lovers and conservation enthusiasts.

One last thing I observed on this trip was that the people of Hassan, unlike that of Mysore and Bangalore are still breeding Indian breed of cattle. As a conservation enthusiast I was very happy, there is still hope for the Indian cattle.

Traditional Indian weddings - stimulus to local economy

2010-01-17T22:56:00.000-06:00

Ever since I started blogging, I feel like a news reporter looking for incidents and things to comment/report. One such event was the wedding of my sister-in-law, which recently happened in Mysore. It was a traditional Hindu wedding with traditions and customs followed to the extent possible.

Usually, I don't like traditional weddings and I feel they are both a waste of time and money and a big energy drain for every one involved. But this time around I started looking at it with a new set of eyes or rather came up with a different point of view. I felt the weddings are a stimulus for the local economy. Here are the reasons why I felt that way.

The silk sarees that were bought, I feel we wouldn't have bought them and in such quantities if not for the wedding.
The flower decorations in the hall and the just the flowers/garlands bought for the wedding. I am sure most of the flowers used in the wedding were locally grown.
In the last post, I spoke about the Indian farmers market, when I went shopping for the wedding, I saw in some cases we were buying out some of the trader’s daily quota of veggies.
The wedding hall expense was one I couldn't justify but when I saw the number of people it employed to run the show I think I am partially satisfied. The people working there should be paid better is a different question altogether.
The stuff needed for the pooja in the weddings, I know that there are lots of stores in Mysore and Bangalore who for generations have been doing the business of selling pooja items.
I think I need to make a special mention for beetle leaf, the wedding on the whole required quite a lot of beetle leaves. It was used in the pooja and it was given to people with their take home gifts. I am sure most people who took it home simply put it in the garbage bin but the farmer who grew it got his fair share (for the critics: yes, “fair” part of the statement is debatable) .
Traditional Indian weddings require a lot of coconuts too, for they are used in cooking, pooja and also take home gifts for the guests. At a time when coconut farmers are losing market and money, weddings are definitely a hearty welcome.
The photo/video person also makes his money with such events.
The cook who is an independent contractor also employs people under him and takes his share.
The priest conducting the wedding earns his living through this.
There are a lot of things that are unique to our community weddings and I felt these unique things keeps us closer to our roots (villages)
Even though gold/jewelry takes up decent share of the wedding budget, I don't want to comment on the jewelry aspect, for I believe the return on investment in terms of stimulation of economy in the local area is not immediately seen with gold.
Mysore dairy had a separate section with an officer dedicated to handle wedding and big function orders.

All in all I felt wedding is a big job creator and an industry in itself. Don't get me wrong, I am not advocating for expensive or lavish weddings but I am just pointing out the fact that the money spent is helping the economy and is doing it on a broader range.

There are other advantages for a traditional wedding besides plain economics, like the gathering of relatives and friends whom we probably wouldn't have met in years and preserving the culture and traditions for one more generation.

India Trip - Experience/Travel Log - 1

2010-01-13T09:49:00.005-06:00

I recently took a sabbatical and went to India for over 6 weeks. It was great to have such a long time off. I came back very well refreshed. I initially landed in Delhi and after spending some time in Delhi, went down to Bangalore and then to Mysore. Mysore, I had a wedding to attend and help out with the same. After wedding visited a couple of Temples in Karnataka and then made a trip to Jaipur and Agra and after a brief stopover in London finally made it back to Austin Here are some experiences/travel logs and so on of the same. I will publish in parts, for one long list will be boring to read.

I got to experience the true spirit of India when we traveled 7adults + 1 child in a Tata Indica. We didn't travel too long, just a few tens of KMs and I have to admit the road was pretty nice too.
Witnessed a completely women operated petrol bunk in Mysore, everybody from manager/cashier to the person who checks air pressure in tires were women.
Volvo buses were pretty much seen everywhere both in Bangalore and Mysore. I may be technically wrong in calling them Volvo buses because both Ashok Leyland and Tata Motors are making similar buses, but the people of Bangalore/Mysore recognize the brand name and call them “Volvo”.
Banashankari-II stage had new and improved foot paths with some new and good looking bricks on the footpath. Needless to say pedestrians haven't recognized the improvement and hog the road.
Traveled on NICE road in Bangalore, only half way done but very well built. I could truly witness the man power we have when it took 3 people to get us a toll ticket to travel on the NICE road.
I remember seeing a pen store at the UK airport which sold pens that were worth few pounds to few thousands of pounds, to my surprise I saw a similar store at Delhi airport. The prices were from few thousand rupees to few tens of thousands of rupees.
We went to Sapna bookstore in Mysore, newly opened and nice looking. Lots of things to browse around and they have organized their multimedia things to one floor and books to other floor. There are a ton of people employed to help customer in each aisle. The sad part was when each floor had no idea what the other floor carried and even with their sophisticated computers there was no link between the 2 databases.
Delhi airport this time around looked better organized than before, people were behaving well and there were no line cutting and all such things. I almost gave them a rating of 4.5 out of 5 but decided on a 3 when at the last moment they changed the gate numbers from where we were supposed to board the flight. Come to think of it, probably it is an airline problem and not the airport.
I witnessed some wonderful customer support by the staff at Mysore dairy, I was there to order milk for the wedding and the whole process took less than 15 minutes. The staff was very courteous and very helpful. The interesting part, even though they seemed pretty computerized they still maintain orders in both digital and paper format (not just a print copy but a ledger of orders).
While helping out with the wedding preparations, I went to the Indian version of Farmers market. Just like in US, people from the neighboring farm lands bring their produce and put it up for sale. But unlike here, there the market happens every day and the number of people in the market is in the order of a thousand. The people who shopped varied from every day normal people to people who sell on streets to people buying for functions like weddings and such things. Come to think of it, I didn't see any fruits sold; mostly it were all veggies. The place seemed to generate business for more people than just buyers and sellers. There were those people who helped lifting the heavy merchandise that is bought; there were the specially modified 3 wheelers which we in India call “luggage auto” to transport merchandise that is bought. There were also lots of cows which were feeding either on the veggies itself or the discards. There were the "government officials" collecting fees from the vendors and some of the local goons collecting whatever suited their taste for the day.

IItf – 2009

2009-11-20T00:55:00.009-06:00

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

2009-11-16T03:19:00.003-06:00

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

2009-10-28T13:01:00.003-05:00

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

2009-10-26T10:28:00.002-05:00

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

2009-10-02T14:07:00.004-05:00

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

2009-09-28T16:47:00.005-05:00

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

2009-09-24T14:51:00.006-05:00

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

2009-09-18T13:26:00.003-05:00

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

2009-09-14T11:30:00.015-05:00

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

2009-08-31T09:46:00.001-05:00

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

2009-08-26T10:07:00.007-05:00

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

2009-08-24T10:20:00.005-05:00

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

2009-08-05T14:49:00.003-05:00

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

2009-07-30T13:34:00.001-05:00

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

2009-07-15T13:47:00.005-05:00

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

2009-07-14T16:10:00.003-05:00

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

2009-07-06T10:32:00.007-05:00

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

2009-06-26T10:39:00.007-05:00

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