GTM Speaks

Day 1 with Windows 7

2009-12-05T11:30:00.002+05:30

I got a Lenovo T61 laptop and installed a copy of Window 7. All shiny bright blue and flashy screen. A belief of Windows cannot be perfect was beginning to fade away. After 30 mins started trouble, BitLocker fails to work and forced me to use to TPM and the later forces me to reboot the laptop.
My grunting continued on with Win 7 device manager never recognized the presence of Nvidia card. Power manager sucks as the battery drains in a hour. Horrible Lenovo build quality added to my misery and nothing felt good using the shiny new Win 7.

If all this was not enough to restore my belief that Windows cant be any better, I left it on screensaver and soon within few minutes the ancient dark rider resurfaces, BSOD and the laptop shuts down.

I have no inclination to switch it back on. I already started to miss my mac, Damn I love Mac :)

Corporate Culture- The story of a hardworking ant

2009-11-08T16:51:00.005+05:30

Came across this slideshow on how culture in a Corporate house transforms from a small company or a startup mode to an enormous process driven organization.

Indigenous innovation - Gola stall near Hinjewadi - Pune

2009-11-08T16:43:00.003+05:30

I have seen internet cafes named as Gooogle or Yaaahooo!! etc but Google home page made into Go Gola banner for this Gola stall is pretty creative and impressive.

Namaste London

2009-10-09T23:17:00.012+05:30

//Sidenote: I have been told by many to resume blogging and write about my travel stories as they somehow found them interesting and good read. That was quite welcoming and also sorting of surprising as I just rumble about what I did and what I felt about any that I do.

I was pretty apprehensive about my visit to London. Two reasons being I have little work to do there which is usually not the case whenever I travel and second being I really never liked Briton basically for historical reasons as I am constantly reminded of how they screwed India for 200 long years and left us with an epidemic which only grew over the last 60 years known as the Bureaucracy.

Coming back to talking about london, London is a city of “amazing” history, art and architectural evolution. The city's recorded history dates back to 11th century. The city of London is just about 1 sq mile adjoining Westminster and the city grew over centuries. You can see architectural advances and variations in variety of buildings- palaces, cathedrals, towers that were built from 11th to 21st century. These age old buildings are still preserved and kept intact and each has a long story to narrate.

London is also a city of royalty. The royal traditions still sustain with it being the Kingdom of Queen Elizabeth II. One such ritual to watch out for is “change of guard” in front of Buckingham palace. The experience is enthralling and no where to be seen for free :).

This city has seen crazy number of battles for supremacy and over powering from roman invasion to the world war II. Over these battles, they conquered many kingdoms and over powered many rulers and stole all their riches. Most of these stolen priceless treasures are now displayed in their museums and attracts many visitors charging exorbitant entry fee.

I visited Tower of London where the royal crown jewels are displayed. All these jewels are used during coronation ceremony and last used 56 years back when Elizabeth was made the queen. One jewel I really looked forward to see was the Kohinoor diamond which was stolen from India(They claim it to be gifted to the Queen Victoria). It now decorates the Crown of Queen mother. It was the largest diamond in India weighing 186 carets but now recut to 105.6 carets to fit the crown. Crown jewels also has the “Imperial Crown of India” which is not officially part of coronation ceremony but worth displaying as it has 6000 diamonds, Kashmiri saffaries, columbia rubies and costed 60,000 pounds. This amount was entirely bared by the revenue of India as King Edward was visiting India and needed as new crown. They also had the largest diamond in the world, “The first star of Africa”. I saw every possible color when these diamonds glittered.
//Sidenote: Bloody!, they looted India and rest of the world so badly that they were gone by the time we realized. I felt really good having seen these but some of them should have been in India instead of England.

I saw National gallery which preserves over 2500 paintings including constetello, piccaso, van gogh. I have also been to many other places in London like Big ben, Greenwich, Westminster abbey, Piccadilly circus, oxford street.
//Sidenote: I collected all these facts and details during my travel through audio guides and asking others.

I loved the city for its huge gardens and architectural beauty but there were instances and aspects which made me even more annoyed and aghast. I hated British accent, Gawd I couldn't made head or tail when some spoke. I was in a constant repetition of “Sorry, Dint get you”. Second was the hotel that I stayed in, The Grosvenor(Pronounced as Grovnor, coz they dint want to sound gross I guess ;) but apparently he was the richest man in London who got a street named after him). The hotel sucked in many ways, no Internet, I see folks older than 60 only staying there. Finally, I got cheated by a taxi guy. Taxi guys are apparently the highest earning(~100,000 pounds) in London and they can only drive after passing supposedly a very difficult ,The Knowledge.

Signing off in UK style, Cheers mate!!

Slideshow of London photo from Flickr

Pandem Kodi(Fighter Cock)

2009-01-15T21:39:00.015+05:30

Cock fight is a very old tradition in Andhra and its a ritual during the Sankranthi festival. Its particularly prominent in East and West Godavari districts. Though cock fights have been banned years back, they are still prevalent in many parts of E-W Godavari(esp. Bhimavaram) continuing ancestral customs. Cocks are groomed round the year to make them fight during this season.

After much pursuance, we finally managed to find out where Cock fights are happening. There is a tight ban on this in West Godavari, so our only option left was to travel to East Godavari. We have an acquaintance who invited us to Marempalle to watch the fights. Marempalle is an isolated village surrounded by acres of paddy fields and coconut trees. The village atmosphere is very pleasant and serene with extremely hospitable locals. There is a prominent Raju's presence in this village and our host was one too who holds a key position in the village.

People are very passionate about their fighter Cocks and very closely associate them to their pride. These cocks are of fierce breed and each of them is groomed with extreme care. The cocks are daily fed with badam, cashew and eggs mixed along with fodder(some eat egg directly too). The features and legs oiled and massaged everyday. After massaging, the cocks are taken out for a swim to strengthen their legs. It costs around 1500 bucks to groom each cock and some often own more than 100 cocks. They are brought up separately to prevent fighting with each other.

Cock fights is an amusing game and is a delight to watch. People from various villages bring their cocks and set them for fight. Its a written rule that cock decides its fighting partner and time of the day its ready for fight. Just as there are experts at predicting starts, they are expects at cocks who can tell the right time its ready to fight by the changing color of its features and with whom it wishes to fight. Once the cock chooses its opponent, the experts again decide if its the rightful opponent based on it height and size. After verifying, the owners of cocks get equal sized knifes(again based on their sizes) and tie them at back of their leg.

The fight begins after they decide on the bet and people around put their bets on either of them among each other. Once the cocks are set for fight, they pounce over slicing the other. The fight lasts not more than a minute and one of the cock bites dust or falls dead. I know many wouldn't like this part but its undeniable part of the game. The losing cock is immediately sold and believe me there are many buyers as its meat tastes delicious. Each cock weights around 3-4 Kilos and each Kilo costs 1000 bucks.

Even I had the taste of it. The hosts served us chicken pokoda made from fighter cock meat and nothing is anywhere close. Its made from the best breed of chicken. We even had Seera Meenu(a very small fish) which tasted heavenly too. It was altogether a new experience and I had absolutely fantastic of a time.

Mac`ah` Majaka

2009-01-06T18:53:00.009+05:30

After a long wait(from the time of its launch), I finally got my new Mac Book Pro. A 15 inch glossy screen with a black border, precise curves, a cute black keyboard ala Mac Book or Air and a huge trackpad; alas wheres' the trackpad button btw?. First look at it and you ought to say "Woo! Looks Awesome". The single aluminum block body gives it an impressive finishing.

New Mac - Old Mac

Over my last MBP with a decent enough configuration(2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo chip, 2GB Memory , 150GB disk space and a ATI Radeon X1600 graphics card), the newer one stands out distinctly. The new series MBP is power packed with a 2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB Memory, 300GB disk space and a very impressive Nvidia GeForce 9600M graphics card. It also comes with an extended battery which claims to provide a backup for 5 hours(recorded ~4 hours on mine so far- Amazed!!) and an ability to replace/extend the hard disk which is a boon for many.

Black keys with a glow

With more curvature over the edges, the back cover has been perfectly chisseled with just one line of screws visible. The battery shares space with the hard disk; both covered by a lid. The overall dimensions have increased over the previous version: a wider screen(though screen space is same) and a sleeker screen depth. This change in dimensions has a proportional impact over its weight alas the sleek look it owns.

Apple managed to re-engineer in-built speakers, bringing significant improvement in the sound output. The ballistic sound is a league apart from its contemporaries. Apple also deserves a standing applause for its innovative trackpad by merging click button into it. A tap or a press any where on the large trackpad is enough to generate a mouse click.
Oh Yeah! is that all is what you might ask? - Well, I am not finished yet.
The power of multi-touch is unleashed by enabling various functionality at the touch of each finger. Its best shown in System Preferences -> Trackpad.
Just to iterate all the various functions-

2 fingers - Secondary or Right click, scrolling.
3 fingers - Slide horizontally to move forward or backward (Works only on Apple apps; doesn't work on firefox).
4 fingers - Slide up to show desktop, Slide down to show all windows in the space.

Well, its not over yet; you can even enable right click by clicking on bottom right of trackpad.

Apple no longer wants to maintain legacy. It no longer supports DVI port replacing it with miniDVI port and Firewire 400 replaced with Firewire 800. Well if you have decided to use the latest, you gotta upgrade to other components too. A miniDVI to DIV is given as an accessory but sadly all DVI to VGA converters don't fit into them. Heres the downside, you can upgrade all your accessories to support the new mac but you can upgrade your entire infrastructure which still uses a lot of legacy components.
The edges on topside of keyboard can also do with a bit of curvature as they are sharp, esp. the slot for opening the screen.

Thats all about my new mac; all shining and getting curious gazes from everyone the moment I open it.

Where's the Party tonight?

2009-01-01T00:58:00.006+05:30

What are the plans for tonight? was the hot topic of the day. The same question was ringing throughout the office. Most preferred to stay at home stating the security threats while some talked about private parties after complaining about the exorbitant prices of most publicized events. Overall, majority of the people I came across have planned on a simple and pleasant evening with Family or Friends or Both and there's no better thing to do than spending time with them.

Planned events never worked (or rather meet the expectations) with friends and its always got to be extempore. Even I had an answer to be above question- Will meet friends somewhere and we will hangout somewhere. I am always sure that The Somewhere will be a bundle of places and surprises. Somehow, the journey to Somewhere always starts from Tiffin Center(Vivekananda Nagar colony).

Suri decided that the night shouldn't end without drinks. After a couple of drinks, we hit the road on an auto pilot mode cracking and poking jokes at each other. Just like how Harold and Kumar finds the White Castle, I found Dominos with a bright sign board as our destination to end the year or rather to start the New year with a pizza instead of a cake. We walked in and ordered the pizza to be delivered in 10 minutes before the clock strikes 12.

The electricity dept. has their style of celebrating the New Year by switching off the power for 15 seconds. The moment the lights were off, we too started cheering wishing each other and eating hot delicious pizza in iStyle :)

Its 2009 and a New year for everyone. People were out on streets cheering and expressing their happiness over starting the new year stopping passing by cars; shaking hands and giving Hi Five's.

That was my party for tonight in ma style. Happy New Year 2009 and have a rocking year ahead!!!

Suri's Birthday- Trip to Suryalanka

2008-12-28T18:57:00.008+05:30

It was the Christmas eve and more importantly birthday of one of my closest friends' Suri(Surendra). We needed a get away and we decided to celebrate the birthday and christmas in Suryalanka. Suryalanka is on the coastline, 6 Kms from Bapatla town which is still an upcoming tourist destination. The facilities are still rudimentary and there are no activities around the beach. Its not a perfect tourism destination but a very pleasant get away from the chaos of the city.

We started on 24th December at around 6AM in a comfortable Verna and drove along NH9 and took a diversion at Narketpalle towards Nalgonda route to get to Guntur. The drive from Guntur to Bapatla is around 35 Kms and we reached Bapatla clock tower by 2PM.

We picked up some amazing mutton biryani from Syed Babu Hotel in Guntur which is very different from the usual Hyderabadi biryani. The mutton pieces are cooked in milk and served with gravy made of Dosakai and water extracted after boiling the bones.

We managed to see beautiful sunrise and sunset on the same day. The sunset was more beautiful on the shores of Bay of Bengal. We drove to Suryalanka an hour before the sunset and relished the heavenly sea breeze, playing with the waves, watching fishermen setting for sail and pulling the nets left for catching the fish all day.

We made our arrangements for a perfect evening. We carried a tarpaulin, few candles and 2 chimneys to the beach. After the sunset and enjoying the waves, we spread out the tarpaulin next to the boundary wall of the resort, lit the candles and placed them in the chimneys' making the sand as base. Time just passed away sitting there watching the waves and continuing our usually unusual gossip. The night ended with a small party, celebrating Suri's Birthday with a cake, wishing each other Merry Christmas and clicking few photos.

Naveen and Ravi joined us in celebrating the birthday on 25th. We had not much planned for 25th, so we decided to go to Amaravathi which is 35 Kms from Guntur and a 70 Kms travel for us. Amaravathi carries a long heritage with a Buddhist stupta built by Ashoka and Shiva temple. It is prominent for Bowdha sculptures and a huge Buddha statue is being constructed there. We visited the museum which displayed the remains of stupa and could not visit the temple as it was closed during afternoon. On the way to Amaravathi, we visited Hanuman temple in ponnur. The Hanuman idol was more than ordinary, it was about 30 feet high.

We had amazing food throughout the trip, as such food is awesome in all of costal andhra. We packed food and ate in the fields under the shadows of trees which made the food even more tasty.

We spent the evening same as we did the day before; on the shores of the sea. This trip was very pleasant and memorable with close friends around enjoying every moment we spent together. Cheers to Suri for organizing everything and Happy Birthday again Bro!!!

View all trip photos @ Suryalanka Trip Photos

Feeling of being an Absolute Loser

2008-12-18T10:43:00.000+05:30

The feeling of being a complete loser hit me hard at times. There happens a lot of introspection of what had gone wrong and how I am just being helpless in overcoming such situation. Well, there are many reasons for making this outrageously insane(in others words) statement about myself. I am not writing this blog just to vent out my anger but to giv’in some thought about things that have been happening and not happening and what efforts I ought to put’in to get myself outta depths of being a total loser impression.

/* Side-note: There is a voice for everything- tangible or intangible. The inner self also has a voice of itself which only you can here. Similarly, even my inner self to me constantly and everything in this blog is a forum for the inner me to voice its opinion ON RECORD. */

I always wanted to write in the bestest of my moods but this one starts on a different foot. I get a strong feeling that completely puts me off and makes me feel extremely dejected for failing to manage events happening around me.
Be it-
spendin time wid friends,
interacting wid strangers or people with acquaintance,
even while giving solutions over work related tasks.

I haven’t been giving 100% to everything I do and wish to change this for the better ME.

Preface Note

2008-12-14T20:07:00.000+05:30

I always wanted to start a new blog with a Jubilant mood but that never materialized. The moment I start writing, I end up having wavered thoughts and draft an unsatisfied post. After a streak of blogs on multiple hosts starting from googlepages(creator- which now deprecated and reborn as Google sites), Wordpress and some on Blogger too :) -
GTM Speaks is yet another blog from the tip of my fingers and broadness(or grossness) of my thoughts.