Computer age? Ofcourse it is!

The stone, copper, bronze and iron ages are long gone. They say we're now in the 'computer age'. Would another name be more appropriate? Something like 'Space age' or 'Nuclear age' ?

Whatever you think, my vote would surely go for what it is popularly known as. Especially 'coz of something that happened recently.

I was at home in Mangalore, having dinner with my cousins. My lil cousins were testing their spellings. After few words (which included even PSP and GTA :) ), Chotu asked his younger brother, Riki the spelling of cartoon network. He thought for sometime and then said,
"C .. A .. R .. T .. O .. O .. N -space bar..."!!! SPACE BAR!!!

All the jaws in the room in the room dropped except one that continued with the spelling "N-E-T-W-..."

PS: Source of cartoon: home.planet.nl

Joy of Giving - Post II

I was walking along the Pune-Sholapur highway towards Magarpatta junction to catch my auto to Amdocs. Two small kids, a boy aged around 8 and the girl a couple of years younger to him, passed by; and they were asking people for some money. I never give money to those who beg. There are many people who beg when they can actually do some work. And about those who really cant work, I believe many of them only earn for their 'employers'.

Coming back to those kids, I wanted to give them something then. First because it was 'joy of giving' week, and I was looking for an opportunity. And secondly, I wanted to start my birthday in a nice way! ;) In a minute they were in front of me, the boy said that they were very hungry and wanted something to eat. And when I asked them if they wanted some ice cream, I saw the girl's eyes glow. Both of them nodded quickly. We walked to an ice cream parlour which was a minute's walk ahead.

The place had just opened for the day. There were only two waiters inside. I asked one of them to get two double scoops of icecream for them. While having their ice cream they introduced themselves. The girl's name was Lakshmi and the boy was Maruti. He then showed me his name tattooed on his arm.
It was already past 10 and I was running late for office now. So I told them that I had to leave and then went to the counter to pay the bill. But as I was paying, both of them put the icecream into the vessels they had and rushed out! Have no idea why they did that! They were perhaps scared to eat there w/o someone to see that they weren't asked to get out by the waiters.

When I came out and looked around, they'd already vanished. I then continued my walk towards the junction.

"Joy of Giving" week

This week, from 27th of september to the 3rd of oct, (the week coinciding Mahatma Gandhi's birthday) will be observed as the Joy Of Giving week in the country.

There are millions in the country who aren't as privileged as us. Trust me, you are really lucky; for reading this post sitting in front of a computer, when there are boys n girls, who haven't even held a pencil; for no fault of theirs. They were just born in a poor family. You can easily find people around you who could use a helping hand. And if you haven;t done anything yet why not start on the joy of giving week. Sachin Tendulkar, Saif Ali khan, Nandita Das, Rahul Dravid, Azim Premji, Geet Sethi are some of the celebrities supporting the cause.

At Amdocs, the community relations group is organizing few activities during the week. Most of them include collecting funds for conducting events at different NGOs in the city. The events organized are

• Special Kabala Shabath: At Amdocs, the teams have an informal get-together, called Kabala Shabat (means cake meeting) every friday, where we also buy some eatables, sweets, and colddrinks; and have some good time together. Next week we requested teams to voluntarily skip it once and contribute the collection for that Kabala Shabat towards the fund.
• We are facilitating sale of Diwali articles (prepared at Rachana, an NGO) and candles and diyas (made in Meghalaya hostel, another NGO). The amount collected would go towards the respective organizations.
• A special game of housie-housie conducted by instructors at dance institute of bollywood choreographer Shiamak Dawar. They would teach latest bollywood dance steps to the participants during the game.
• Delivering roses with messages to colleagues for a nominal price.

So this week, you too try to do something for another person. Draw a smile on someone's face; and find one on your's too. :)

Links:
Joy Of Giving home page and blog.
Follow JoG on twitter.
and me here. ;)

PS: In mumbai now, enjoying the 3 day weekend. :D

Duke's nose trek and valley crossing

On the 6th of this month, I went on a trek with valley crossing on the Duke's Nose which is situated in Lonavla. The trek was conducted by Trek'di, a trekking club I found on google when I was back in Mangalore. The valley was around 850m deep! And for 800 bucks I thought it was a good deal. And when I saw these two pics of the valley crossing on their site, I had no doubt about registering for it. :)


The biggest challenge for me was reaching the station at 6 in the morning, which meant I had to be up by 430! LOL! I could only manage to go to bed by 1am but somehow woke up on time and made it there.

We caught the 620 local train to Lonavla, and reached there at 0750. Some guys from Mumbai also joined us there. When we were walking towards the exit, I heard a couple of guys just behind me talking about Manchester United and Chelsea. I realised twas bcoz I was wearing a cap with 'Chelsea' logo behind it. Thats how I met Albes, Vamsi and Prashant who also work and stay in Magarpatta City. Their offices are next to the Amdocs tower.

We took a sumo from the station to the base of our trek. There we had our breakfast at a small restaurant stall. And after the breakfast, we had to sign an agreement which read "I am solely responsible for my safety and for any mishap during the trek and Trekdi isn't responsible for any of my actions." Everyone was so positive after that..hehe ;)

Then we started off. It was drizzling a bit. And was foggy all around. You could see only a 5 meter radius around you. We reached the top of Duke's nose pretty soon [took around 40 mins]. But the main part was yet to come.

From the top of Dukes nose, we had an awesome view. There were clouds below us. We could see rives, waterfalls far away. Well, we couldnt see them very well. They were just a few white lines among the green landscape below.

Can u see the cable across the valley?
click on the pic to see it

When we reached atop, the cables were being setup. There were two trees acting as the base anchors for the cable. And from there, the cable went to three different secondary anchors (just in case the tree got uprooted because of a really heavy guy ;) ). There was another cable too, connected in a similar way, for safety.

We were first shown a demo crossing by one of the organizers. After that, the participants started to cross one after the other. At midday, it started raining. For a couple of hours, it was ok to stand in the rain. After that, it wasn't very pleasant for sometime.:)

Ropeway to heaven

At four, I got ready to cross. The sky had cleared by then too. I got strapped and hooked to the cables; and was good to go. When I was crossing, I kept looking down. The ground was sooo far away; almost a kilometer down! And it was a great feeling to be hanging on a cable so high above. For the minute, I was crossing, I even forgot that I was scared of heights. :P

Looking at the ground far far below

It was over pretty soon. But I had one of the best 60 seconds or so of my life. The best so far was without any doubt the Bungee jump in the second year. :) Even though this was much higher than the bungee, I enjoyed the latter more; the feeling of free fall is totally different.

Below is the video of me crossing.

Next on the 'to-do list' : Rappelling on a waterfall. :)

'Cut' my tea??!

Ive spent two months here in Pune and it doesnt look like I'm gonna learn Marathi soon. Some rickshaw drivers and vendors speak to you in Marathi even if you speak to them in hindi. You then have to listen to them carefully, pick some words from the sentences that sound like some words in hindi, and then use the situation to try and decode what the person was tryin to tell you. And yea, you also have to know the local lingo. My recent experience would perhaps explain that.

Yesterday, I had gone to a restaurant close to my flat for breakfast. Being a Sunday, I obviously woke up quite late. So there wern't many things to eat, left there in the restaurant. I decided to have a vada-pav and a cup of tea. It is self service there. So after having paid, I went to the counter to collect it.

While preparing tea for me the guy there asked me "Bhaiyya, chai cutting hai kya?" (Brother, is the tea 'a cutting'?) I could only respond with a confused "KYA!!!" (WHAT!!)[What was he going to cut into a tea?? Or was he going to prepare a special tea for me? But I had paid just Rs.4 for it; and I don't think I would get something special for that. :P] It could be some specialty of the place. But I didn't want to take a risk and wanted to ask some reliable person about it before taking 'a cutting tea'! So I was about to ask him to give me a cup of ordinary tea; but the guy at the cash counter interrupted and told the waiter that it was indeed a cutting! Now I was curious, and grew more and more curious as time passed.

Later he kept my plate of vada-pav on the counter and then placed a glass of tea next to it. That was when I learnt what it was. It was the quantity! They served it in a very small glass [they perhaps called it the cutting glass ;)]. Its as if the've cut a piece from the large glass of tea. It looked like the younger brother of the other glasses that I then observed on a small shelf there.

Hmmm...long way to go...:)

PS: A really good week in the sports world for me. Fisichella gets Force India its first podium finish at the Belgian GP. India won the nehru cup. That's really big for Indian football. And Chelsea win four of their first four matches in the BPL.

PPS: Going on a trek on 6th Sep to Duke's nose(Lonavala) with valley crossing. Its gonna be the most exciting trek I've done. Looking forward to it. Check this space for a post on that soon. :)