Deepavali 2009

Well deepvali 2009 will be a very special one for a few of us. A few of us from IMEC planned to spend the deepaveli weekend at Triberg. It is a place is the black forest region of Germany. The trip started of a grand not. On Friday we went to pick up the rented car. We haev booked for BMW 3 series or a Merc C Class. We landed at the rental place and it so happened that they had run out of both the cars. So we got an upgrade to a Volvo XC 70. We all set of from IMEC at 530. But by the time we left Leuven it was 630 pm. We had told the hostel ppl at Triberg that we would enter the place by 11:30 pm max. But since we left 1 hour later than the scheduled time, we all got to Triberg only at 00:30. And the hostel was closed. We tried looking for places around, but for some strange reason there was not a single free room in all of Triberg. (FYI Triberg is one of the popular tourist places in the black forest region). So not finding a room was very surprising. The temperature had started to drop in the region. We all decided to put on the winter gear we had taken and go to sleep in the after parking in the parking lot of the hostel. Since we were 5 young men, we decided to keep the windows open, so we dont dies from lack of oxygen. It started to get seriously cold at about 4. All of us could barely sleep, due to the cold and lack of any kind of space to stretch. The next day morning we requested the hostel ppl to let us freshen up. He said we could brush our teeth and answer our morning calls but nothing more. There is a popular saying in tamil which is "Deepavali deepvali-ku dhan kulipeya" meaning "do u take a shower only once every deepvali. In my case, it was one of the few days where i could not take a shower. The deepavali of 2009, will be a special one for hte guys i went on the trip with. More detail of the trip and photo will follow shortly. But in the mean time photo of the car we traveled in.

Leuven

There are many reasons why i like Leuven, Belgium over Singapore. Singapore is what u call a "perfect" place. It can get boring beyond a certain point. But Leuven is not perfect. It is a not as bad as back home, but still there just a bit of chaos in the system here which makes life interesting. The photo below is by no way representation of what you see in here, but it is just a small bit to show that this is not perfect, and you can have "fun" living here :).

Google Street view for Leuven?

Well i had gone to the center to renew my residence permit today. On my way back i chanced upon this car with cameras on its roof. Is this the car for the Google street view. We will know soon i guess.

Trip to Leiden

A drive to Leiden 40euros
A falaafal in pita bread 5euros
A glass freshly squeezed orange juice 3 euros
1 samosa 2 euros
1 softee ice cream at Mac-D 2 euros

The amount of time spent in a car with 5 ppl, the drive to Leiden (it is in Netherlands), and the time spent at Leiden priceless.

There are somethings money can buy. For everything else there are friends to have a good time.

Doordarshan

Recently, after a very long time, i chanced upon the video below. It brought back memories of me sitting with my parents and sister on a small bed in a small house in the then suburbs of Bangalore and watching this video, with me being able to name every single athlete who used to come on the video and my sister passing comments which are just intended to irritate me. So when ever i watch this video far away from home in a foreign country those are the few happy moments which keep you going and act as an inspiration to move fwd. And i really wish i was home in this time of need when i know i will be of some help atleast.

Another one "bites the dust"

Being hit be a chappal or a shoe in India has traditionally been the highest form of protest to express ones anger at a situation.

It all started with the famous Bush incident ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8GOrc0-Ygg) when a reporter threw both his shoes at then President Bush. we are is election mode in India now. It is now that people can use this situation to express their anger the most. Not only this but also politicians are more in the "open" so they can interact more with the aam jantha. So when the Home Minister Mr. Chidambaram was giving his report on the action the Indian goverment is taking on terrorism and Kasab, a journo took this oppertunity to make a statement on the Tytler case. He flung his shoe at the minister ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwUpKYVRh6U). This morning when i opened the news page, i see that another minister Mr. Jindal was "attacked" by the shoe ( http://ibnlive.in.com/news/pc-finds-sole-mate-mp-jindal-gets-hit-by-shoe/89958-37.html) . I think it has now become a fashion for journos to attack politicians with a shoe. But people never underestimate the thinking of an Indian politicain and what he or she can do to win an election. Because soon you might find a member of the miniter support team sitting in the crowd and throwing a shoe at him. Because being hit by a shoe is also important to the politician, as it shows that he is popular, and the Indain media on the constant look out for TRP (no idea what it means BTW) would blow the situation out of propotion and that perticular poitician will be on all the peoples topics (take this very blog for example). So now waiting to see how many politician adopt this strategy, and waiting to see who is the next one who "bites the dust".

real life dark knight

A nice piece of chat i had with a friend of mine, after the stampede incident in a temple in India

http://www.ibnlive.com/news/death-toll-rises-in-temple-stampede-147-dead/74652-3.html

"P: more people die in a temple stampede than all the bomb victims put together !

:|

A: man

this is the joker style

when everything goes to plan no prob

u expect a bomb to blow up fine

few ppl die

but

u put the fear in ppl that it is going to happen

it can be worse

serious real life joker

what do u say?"

This is as real as reel life gets.