Honnemaradu...

With a certain pesky animal out of the way, the time was ripe. But the plot had been hatched weeks ago knowing that this time would come. Maybe it’s the monsoons of India or plain ad-hoc-ism that this time of the year I get extremely interested to shrug the world off and head into the wild! And boy, we just did that and how!

This time around it was a often-trekkers-known place called Honnemaradu near the Karnataka district of Shimoga. Nine of us office guys-n-gals packed minimum stuff and headed to this environment friendly place where no smoking, drinking or even outside food is allowed. The facilities were also minimal with only an open well and four walls to do as a bathroom and a dilapidated toilet with a single pipe outside as the only source of water! But the staff in-charge at the place was skilled and well mannered and helped us have a great time.

The weekend spent in the islands was exhilarating and calming at the same time. The serene surroundings with nothing but wilderness around were a treat to the eyes. But what activities were planned for us took us into the groove! First we had a few hours of life-jacket aided swimming in the Sharavathi River, in the backwaters of the Linganamakki dam. Then we took coracles into the river and learnt the basics of rowing and maintaining direction. After a really tiring session in the waters we came back for lunch and after resting for sometime we headed off to one of the islands for a night camp and bon-fire et all!

It already got dark before we reached the island and then we all had to take our torches out to find wood for the fire. After a crazy half an hour of finding dead twigs and wood as fuel [we are not to uproot any tree for this purpose] it was just we and the stars. All of us learnt the basics of laying out a tent in the middle of nowhere and then had to put up one ourselves. After that we had a great buccaneering session – just the fire for light and high pitched songs under the billion stars. Stuff of dreams! :)

Early morning we rose with the sun and had the arguably best half an hour of our trip. Sitting silently on the shore of a water body watching the sun rise in all its splendor, disturbing early morning mist and clearing the clouds is one experience worth having a 1000 times. Then we rowed back to the mainland and after a great breakfast of poori-sabji we were all ready for the trek up the nearby hill. We walked the trail of 1.5 kms that lead us to the hill top from where we could see the winding river and all the islands sprayed around and also the dam at a distance.

All was not yet over and we once again forayed into the river and this time as pairs in canoes. We had to put to practice what we learnt about rowing and each pair rowed to a distant island from the mainland and back. I would say it gave a sense of self-worth. Though we did not want to leave the place we already had a train waiting for us back to Bangalore. So we left with a heavy heart but a heady experience from Honnemarudu to Jog falls before taking our train back home.

I am going back again!

The out-of-the-world week that was!

Wow what a week it was! I am yet to come out of the heady feeling that I was in, throughout week Jul9-Jul15. Without any shadow of doubt, it has been the best week of my life, as I comprehend it now. Even if I do want to bring it all in here and save it for posterity, read it sometime in the future and derive happiness from the words, I don’t know if I would do justice to those inner feelings through these mere words. All I would want to do is capsule this week’s time for repeated consumption! Alas… time won’t wait, so here it all comes in the blog.

Sun Mon Tue – Marriage (growing up)

The 9th and 10th of July was my cousin’s marriage. Being a part of this family function and also playing a useful part in the proceedings gave me immense satisfaction and was sure a learning, growing experience. In simple words, my inner voice said – ‘you are now 24!’ And I can assure you that’s not a bad feeling at all. 11th was rest day and nothing works better than taking leave from office spending ‘quality’ time with near and dear ones. I enjoyed the food, the people and everything about the big fat wedding! :)

Wed Thurs – Food (Bliss)

The excellent streak of amazing food that I had in Chennai stretched into Bangalore also. 12th July, Wednesday was super lunch at Krishna Kafe. 13 July, Thursday was shopping@ Forum and dinner at Pizza Hut. Of course the company I had for both the sessions made the midweek worth remembering! ;)

Friday [Jul 14] – Crossing borders

This was predestined I suppose! The storyline is, a someone from across the globe decides to go on a crazy ‘hat-hunt’ with a equally crazy guy across the city! And did the rain-god have a ‘dry’ sense of humor or what! Both of us were totally-totally drenched before we could reach the theatre for the evening show! [Albeit with our prize cap safe with us]. The consensus was that, if only the movie was for a smaller duration, Superman Returns could have been enjoyable! And yeah, she loved the gift! :)

Saturday [Jul 15]– Perfect finish

When in a dream everything feels great but chances are that we will forget it once awake. But there are some dreams that refuse to go even after we are wide awake because the last few moments of the dream were such exhilarating moments. This Saturday was such a finish to the great week. Everything (well almost) was perfect about the trip 7 of us from office took, to Nandi Hills 60kms off Bangalore, on 4 bikes! :) The weather was just perfect for a long drive with really cool wind and the occasional drizzle. Clean roads leading to the mist covered hills in the horizon, with flush meadows / agriculture land on either side was irresistible. And I do have to mention the ‘wow’ home-made breakfast and lunch we had taken with us to the trip. I am actually unable to get words to describe the fun and frolic we had atop the hills playing cards, mocking the monkeys, taking umpteen photos and having a blast!!


Life is good, as it has been for quite sometime now and I don’t intend to stop having fun like this!

Unwind – Rewind

The past two years have been significant for more than a few reasons. It is extremely difficult to learn lessons from life as and when it is being taught. Only retrospection makes us wiser! And now as I rewind and look forward to shifting gears in life, I am sure I will cherish the memories of the past couple of years. I will keep reminding myself of small incidents that the lessons consisted of so that the crux stays with me and what I learnt does not get lost in this seeming poser that life is.

This entry seems to be THE most personal in this space as of now, but I needed to put this down to tell myself where I stand now. It is not a 100m race we run to go at one shot. It is a whole lifetime which we remember by stages and I feel I am stepping onto my next stage. God be with me.

Latest motto fad:

tEjaswi nAvadheeta mastu
(Let, what we study be invigorating)

Saha veeryam kara-vAva hai
(together, let us achieve great deeds)

Does "grey" matter??? YES IT DOES!!! :D

It’s a good feeling to WIN! And ‘we’ won it today! Nowhere near the achievement like the one below, but a win nonetheless. ;)

Ok… the ‘we’ is Karthik my roommate, Gurmeet my friend and me. We formed the ‘DOES “GReY” MATTER’ team for an event conducted by a Wipro division as celebrations for 5 years of their completion. There were two preliminary rounds where as individuals forming a team we had to display various skills. There was a standard two minutes time slot in which each of had to give our own introduction, two more minutes for displaying our latent talents [I drew! :D what else? ;)], and two more minutes for describing an incident in life that changed our perspective towards life [I talked Tsunami! easy na…life n perspective n all…:D]. So after doing all this we reached the final which was held today.

In the final we had a crazy round, where each of us had to fill forms with questions like fav color and fav holiday destination. Then the judges would exchange the sheets and ask one about the other! To check how we gel as a group and how well informed we are about each other! The next round we were given a topic to be discussed and presented for 3-4 minutes., which our team managed to do competently well.

So there! We won!!! And we get coupons to one of the retail outlets in Bangalore! Boy did we have fun! Sure! All of us are happy that 3 people who know very less about each other teamed up and the team clicked! Congrats Karthik and Gurmeet! :D

PS: There were audience-questions and moi answered correct to win myself two tickets to 'ICE AGE-2' :D!!! Cool movie!

Is it 'too late'? or not?

What you need to know

I am gung-ho!!! ‘Cos my cousin has just won a National Level competition conducted by Microsoft. No mean task! And this was a competition conducted at three levels! First at the college level at Amrita College, CBE they were asked to present papers. After being selected for a zonal presentation they had to come to Chennai, compete with some 30 odd teams and they came out trumps. I was there when these guys presented their ‘Automatic Call Taxi – Detector and Router’ project. Arun if you remember it was on your laptop this was presented! :D

Next they get selected for this National level presentation at Hosur Road, Bangalore which was held yesterday. They had to compete here with 20 teams from all over the country. And they present this [the one titled iTRUST- An End to End Trust Based Model for Access Control]. And guess what? They win it hands down! The Prof from IIT-B, who was top panelist congratulates them on this achievement. One Ms.Sheila, second only to Gates in MS as my gullible cousin put it [and I think I might be wrong here], presided over the function and gave over this cool cash prize of 75k to the team of three. Great going Chicha and friends!!! KUDOS!!! AWESOME!

What I need to know

Just when I got this sms from my cousin saying he won it, the first thing I told him is – ‘guys, this ain’t something simple. Please leave any other work you guys have and find out all the procedures for patenting this stuff. Let the 75k go towards that. ‘Cos I know anyway that you guys don’t booze! LOL’

And that’s when he told me similar sentiments were displayed by all and sundry! His HOD had asked them to patent this stuff way back when they presented his to him. But probably my guess is that even he did not know how much he meant it. Now that this has won the prize it becomes utmost priority for it to be patented immediately. Even the IIT Prof and many other corporate people who attended the seminar shared similar views.

My Question

The hitch here is, MS clearly states that they will video tape the whole event and will use any or all parts of the presentations. So how will this affect these guys patenting the stuff? Will the patent hold? I am a bit at sea regarding this patenting stuff. So am finger-crossed and waiting to hear more from my cousin. People reading this tell me what you think.

PS:

Dei Chicha, nee thaanda intha kathaila hero! Go on and put your comments here telling what all you did throughout this journey to the top! ;) oru periya kathai sollu paapome

PS2: ---- [for those who dont read the comments section only]

i got some facts wrong on top...so here's the correct version, from my cousin himself.....


hi guys n gals....actuallly he had mixed up the whole stuff...here is the real stuff..to start wit..this competition is Microsoft Student Proj..for more info visit www.msapp.net or www.microsoft.com ..last yr we presented a proj by name"Radio Taxi Management System".it carried us to south India level where we had to giv it up coz at the time of review we had exams n so cud not finish code.still after the exams we completetd the proj n got the certificate too from microsoft.now this yr bein the final yr we planned to do a proj tat was feasible within tis sem for the final univ review as well as for Microsoft specifications.so this time we did iTrust-An end to endtrust based access control.for info on this view www.msapp.net n click project exhibition link.so here the first level had 7000 teams fallin into the fight.from there we moved to the next level of competing wit 600 shortlisted teams.from there it was the India finals in banglore yday where we had our stal for exhibition among 20 best proj in the country.finally after a lot of hot judging n reviewing n exhibiting n panicking n sweating n waiting n questioning n.....there it was announced..around 6:30evenin we were told we were to present our proj o stage.still we tht its just to entertain the crowd.wat we had in store was just amazing.it was sosimilar to any film fare award festive(i mean the set up..the call for the team..the focus light on the presenters....)we did our [presentation n took our seats in the crowd.n finally wen the prize distribution came.we held our breaths only after our team werre announced the best proj team n we were offered a cheque(a big one like for the man of the match in cricket)of a small amount Rs.70000.so tat was the whole thing.