Packing

Its not easy to get your things packed for a 15 day trip. Never for me honestly, a task which requires lots of planning. Well not exactly "lots" also as most of the times i'll be dragged with the tourist buses everywhere. It'll be tiring as hell without a doubt but i'll jump to that contention after i jump onto the bus's seat. Weather is another let down which is somewhat dodgy in this part of season in Europe.

Out of the 5 places, austria and switzerland are 0 below, so its a no brainer really that everything for winters find there way in. The rest of the places, Rome, France and England are tolerably cold ( but rains are unexpected anytime and everytime ) so something light and flamboyant should do. Apart from the clothes, am taking my Macbook along, to pass time somewhere like in Doha where we have a stop for 6 hrs both ways ( damn ! ) which is very shit i no. Am hoping i'll find net somewhere and could possibly change my fantasy football team in the midweek. I know it sounds a bit crazy but i really don't want to let go of the 2nd position. There is totally no room for any kind of stings in the tail right at the death of the season !! Ok, along with Mac, camera is obvious and specially its charger which happens to be left behind most of the times.

Shopping wasn't that grand for the trip. Just bought a pair of jeans and hand gloves. Trying Jeans is much of a terror i tell you ! One just hopes the jeans you trying should fit in the size you imagine for yourself. Most of times i find myself holding my breath praying to god, that this jeans should fit it nicely. But after loads of jogging and a bit of Yoga, the jeans just slid in nicely ( without tucking my tummy ). I was actually very happy with it :-)

List of things to buy from there is pretty much ends where it starts. UK as always is too expensive to buy anything. But i'll definitely buy a Liverpool jersey ( Black one ) which is no where available in india ( only in palika ). I thought of getting an iPhone but its the same price which am getting here in chandigarh ( without the bargaining shit ) so no point for that. Rest i'll zoom around and pick few things for friends.

I still have a chance of watching a liverpool game in Birmingham but the odds aint pretty. Because mom and dad are completely out of this so, i'll have to manage and travel 170 miles through Tube from Ashford ( thats where i'll be staying in England ) to Birmingham on 26th. I'll go to some pub or something to watch champions league match on 22nd of Liverpool vs Chelsea. I'll be France most probably that time , so odds here also pretty much low to get a place where they showing the match, and specially meeting Liverpool fans somewhere or else i'll have to disguise myself as some French club fan and watch emotionlessly to keep off from the inebriated fans.

Going to birmingham ( the 170 mile trip) alone will be a act of bravery or mindless, am yet to find that out !

Even Ants Can't resist Mac

Down with fever and barely can stay awake for no more than 2 hrs at a stretch ( sleeping like a child really ).  Have been really out of touch with the movie's lately, but day before downloaded 27 dresses. Oh n ya, downloaded Meet the spartans as well but cudnt stand it after 20 min and threw it in the Trash. Unsurprisingly shit movie i tell you. 

Ok, coming back to 27 Dresses, it was a nice movie. One thing which really kept me going was Katherine Heigl. Besides her immaculate beauty, her acting in the film was awesome ! Ok this isn't the centripetal topic of this post. 

It was after the movie when i got up to unhook the laptop from tv ( ya still using the dvi to RCA, n its awesome ) and Damn ( with Chris Tucker effects ). There were hundreds of "ants" . Roaming all over the Macbook. Hell, i was scared and hoping none of them got into any sensitive parts of the processor. Its actually the heat which attracts the ants to your processors. So be careful people. I've heard processors getting ruined due to ant problem. 

My Mac is fine now, ant-less .

Catching up with the "rumour" mill, if you want to get excited about something, get excited about this. Apple is coming up with a iPhone 2 ( not iPhone 2.0 FW) and on many of the tittle-tattle sites, its been called the iPhone Nano. But something new and glossy will surely be up for grabs this year and i might postpone my plans to gift myself with an iPhone and wait for the new gadget. Seemingly it won't be a bargain, but time will decide matters whether it'll be steal or not. 

And something really shocking what i read this week was, that Pakistan gets more Internet Bandwidth compared to India. Damn !! I mean no offense but population wise, don't you think we shud be the ones ahead of them in this ?? 

DVD 9

Its been a fun filled week but most of it left for tomm's SHOWDOWN. Its again the battle between the big boys of EPL. Manchester Untd host Liverpool and its time for "The mighty Reds" to give it back to the Devils inside and dumb outside. 

My football accomplice is back in the town so had a nice time trying few kicks in the park with amazing Gerrard jersey he got for me and playing PES 2008 on xbox 360 ( Phew ). Phew is used bcuz we were not able to get the game for which he spent 14 G's to play one game. But we somehow got it downloaded and we off to a flier really. Am already leading our season winning 3 games out of 4. 

Its actually almost a fortnight when i zoomed into my blog area. Past 2 weeks have been actually "happening " in which the lazy me didn't update my blog. And now, its 1:00 am when its time for some nice mozart flute music and to check the disappointing fantasy week. None of the players did outstandingly well. Oh and ya, totally skipped of my mind, Happy holi (belated) guys. My holi-day mostly involved switching channels of tv and munching gujia(s) ( amaing i tell u ). And gujia's remind of the (out of touch) jogging, which are again on a halt due to some shin problem. Have to get back to my track before i go on a euro trip

Yes yes, finally the last years forgotten jaunt has now materialized and am going with mum dad on 14th april. Am pretty much excited about it ( who won't ), specially when the premiership is in full swing in England and i might sneak a chance to watch Stevi G LIVE !! We going for 11 days in which we have a 2 day extended stay in London, so that makes 13 days. I'll write in detail about the trip when i come back, or i might take the Macbook along and write daily

. Will c.

The biggest blunder of the week :

I've been waiting to burn the very first Dual layer dvd i bought a month ago for Leopard. Have been carrying its image since long in Mac's hd which shifted to dell a week ago. I started burning the disc and ripping off the rapper gently ( It costs 12 times the price of normal blank dvd ). And as usual zoomed into menus and started burning its image. After the echoing PING of the burner, i mounted the dvd and Fuck.. !! I burnt the iso file itself on the dvd, not the image. I just wanted to throw it right of the room really that time. ( the dvd am talking about, not the PC) . But somehow regaining patience i kept it aside. And from past few weeks i had been downloading the patched image file of Leopard for intel SSE 2 and SSE 3 versions. In simple language, wanted to make Leopard run on my Dell. I started partitioning the hard drive (xp), i hav windows 2003 server as well installed on which the SAP thing runs which is extreamly sensitive and is tamper prohibited. I downloaded some new software for reducing the partition of XP and again Fuck, i ended up messing things which formatted the whole XP partition which had the only Leopard image file i had with me. Which luckily i burnt before this blunder. I was so glad to look at the Leopard iso DVD 9 :-)  that i totally forgot the whole agony of what i also "Lost". The whole season 2 and 3. Damn.. and Heroes Season 2 as well which were not that disheartening to loose really. 

But again there's a problem now, I just can't find a fool proof method to triple boot Win 2003 server, XP and Leopard. So i havn't yet installed on Dell but ya, i definitely burnt the Hackintosh Leopard dvd  (correctly ) and trying to find a method to multi boot.

Its time to sleep now. Can't wait for tomm's match. I seriously want Liverpool to literally thrash Manu left right and centre which i no is very unlikely but still, nething can happen in football on any fine day. With Manu not been playing well and last time also we came THISclose to win against them, a big win is very much possible. Lets see what pans out this time.

Go reds !!

Cleaning

Finally i've moved on in my material management ( at home ). Some lame problem was obstructing me from creating a purchase order against the quotation. But it was solved by creating some vague number ranges in the Cost Center of the company. :) I know seems boring but trust me, it aint !

Last week, i spent my time dispensing "things" of various thoughts weighing heavily on my mind from sometime (some material things as well ). Largely my own created mess. Threw out whole lot of papers from my room which surprisingly had colonized much part of the ehh.. other junk from the past 5 yrs. And i found my long lost web cam ! ye.. It was totally out of my brain archives really that such type of thing still predated in my room. Took whole lot of pencils which somehow manage to remain unfound when badly needed. And had no idea i had so many erasers with me. Damn.. Speaking of erasers, Mac is also on the waiting list of my cleaning spree. Again the dark palm imprints are begining to appear beside the trackpad. What i also found in my junk were PC quest cds. ( Remember neone ?? ) Imagine of 98 issue. They definitely didn't deserve any kind of respect now. Going ahead in my junk, i found wires and then some more wires and then some chargers of long forgotten mobiles. And some Gi-Joes as well which share fare amount of memories of my childhood. I had this whole army of Joes and Cobra teams and played with creative ideas. Built army's hideouts, soldiers zipping down through threads was THE ultimate fun that time in my life. 

Which also reminds me, Gi-Joes movie is also being made, anticipated to come next year. But the most awaited movie of 2009 is Prince of Persia: Sand of times. Prince of persia title has traveled through decades really. I remember the first desktop i got at home had prince of persia and some shitty car race game. Prince of persia came from a black and white screen jumping gaps and minding your ass , oh i mean prince's ass from the spikes which used to pop up to and absolutely stunning visuals in 2000, i guess. Not only visuals, the story line was one of the best i've ever played really in a game. I've been out of touch really with the games in the past few years. Only pro soccer and some Splinter cell titles ( all may be ) are the ones really i've gone thru.

Not to forget that another iPhone unlock trophy goes on my so called achievements shelf. Though i hardly did anything but telling my (very abusive) friend the method. He did the rest. Hats off to the people creating unlocking softwares. Anybody want any iPhone's unlocked ? You no who to ask for  !!

Well, Staying with the tech saga, well again i or rather brains behind it come up with another eye popping news. They have managed to create a Terabyte ( 1000gb ) disc. Its just that size of CD/DVD. Normal CD's hav 1 layer where Blue Ray have 8 and TeraDisc's have whooping 200 each storing 5 Gb of data. It'll be made of the same plexglass but the writing technique will be blatantly new. It'll be available till 2010. Frankly, i'm pretty happy with the normal 4.7 Gb ones. :-) 

Here's for people who still have Fibre optics in the corners of their brains somewhere from last year collg.( Yes you Ajgar).. Am sure he's our messiah to explain this.

Some faint memory i have of Gerd Keiser but certainly out of my wits end to explain this.

Quickly, all eyes waiting on today's match at San Siro when Liverpool travel to Milan for the reverse fixture. Am very positive about the game, its all upto Stevi G and Torres hands or shud i say legs to make it a night to remember !

Go Reds.. !! 

A little High little Low..

No, this post has nothing to do with Stuart Little if incidentally something pricked your brain strums. 

This phase of my life should be described as a harbor ! So many ships leaving and i still have to decide which one to board. Unceremoniously in this kind of situation,  you seem to abandon all  hope due to chaos created all over. Well, its not the first time when the things have gone beyond the state of " Tormenting " really, its the moment when you realize the fact that you have suddenly stepped off the edge and things need to be given some more time till they get out of the destabilizer.

Well, breaking the psychological  drama , suddenly out of a spun, a nude guy ran into the cricket field just now. India australia match going on . haha.. And Symonds gave him a Goldberg's spear to knock him out to the ground. Some guts aussies have honestly. I remember watching a video of football's greatest goals, a naked girl ran into the field and luckily got the ball and scored an absolute blinder from 25 yards. That kind of technique will even give a run for money to ppl like Lampard, but certainly not Gerrard ;) . Click here for people who want see that amazin goal :-) .

Ok skimming the share market topic , the only way i can describe the current situation is, that my mum has stopped watching CNBC ( n sadly i don't get to see Tanvir Gill ). It has tipped alomst 1000 pt.s . I still remember CD telling me back in Jan, he'll start his blog  when Shares profit him well. And believe me, the day he said this, the market has rarely donned a green arrow pointing above. But he started his blog :-) despite of the nosedive. 

I wanted to share a cool thing which Microsoft is coming up with. Its already in production but still it might take sometime to come in with full swing. Its Microsoft's Surface. Heard about it ? If no, its time you should  ! 

Its something which every person in the world would like to have it. Check out the video and you'll know why !!

Need I say more ?? Multi touch, multi user experience , direct interaction and object recognition all packed in one surface. Surface has been optimized to respond to 52 touches at a time. Well, hold you breath for the price part. It might be priced between 5000 $ to 10,000 $ and might take several years to reach general consumers. 

So is this Microsoft's turn to start a 'Technological breakthrough' Bandwagon ? 

"Happening"

Have been out of the boil really this week despite of the resurgence of my material management classes ( out of the dead ?? ). It started but due to some teacher problem ( as always ) had to be stopped in dec. As of now, waiting for the CHANGE.. !!

And ya, the big Oscar day today aye ! Needless to say i didn't see ( cumon, we still using rajai's),  It was special this time for me because for once really i stumbled upon some oscars flicks ( Juno, Atonement and ratatouille ) and was expecting them to win something. Atonement for which i wrote earlier ( for the regular's) had an awesome background score , and guess what ? it won for the same. Honestly sometimes you feel a bit recoiled back telling people that you downloaded soundtracks of a movie ( in India ). But i guess i wasn't the only dork in town to appreciate the music. Not to forget the great Mukesh songs i've been trying to find. Amazing songs i tell you !

Well, coming back to our 'happening' country, Raj Thakre ( phew ) has again found his way on the head lines by his absurd statements about chucking out people of Bihar from Mumbai. Nothing more than a laugh i can respond for this really. And how can the week can be described happening without the whole gaga money spilt in IPL i.e. Indian Premier League. Its nice to see things happening like EPL (football) about the whole buying players thing. But certainly film stars buying teams and players sounds a bit nutty. Specially when players are being bought by the owners unlike football where managers do the real work of making a good team. I wonder how people like Preity zinta ( mind you, the real one ) will go about something she's not famous for ! 

My fantasy football has never been better i tell you. I somehow found my winning leash and now on 2nd. Mighty Mr. Maninder came from 4th to the top in slaloming fashion. Still 12 weeks to go, so tables can turn around on any lucky weekend. 

Staying with football, all i can say for this week is OUCH !! 

After a horrific injury to poor Eduardo of Arsenal. Am not a big fan of Arsenal but a injury like this injects the same amount of pain in every football fan's heart. And by the word i described for the injury, trust me, it covers every ounce of gravity which goes with it. Sky Sports people did not allow any of the EPL's contributers round the globe to show the replay of that horrendous tackle. And believe me, it took time for me as well to collect some courage from my mush to see a pic of the injury. I didn't see the video though. 

Get well soon dude.. 

 

APPEND

I seriously can't hold myself to add this jaw-dropping concept video to my post. This is the future guys ! Nokia people are working on this nano technology have created this animated video giving a glimpse of the future phones. Image tapping out text messages on a device of the size of an index card and as flat as a peice of paper, then folding it in thirds to hold it to your ear and make a phone call. Some of the features could start appearing in commercials as soon as 7 yrs from now. 

Varanasi

How many of you have actually gone for 'an' aimless trip for some days without a shadow of a clue in your top shelf , how will you spend your time.

Well my misfortune threw a bucket of cold water to make this nightmare a reality. Conjuring the fact that you traveling to a place like Varanasi and that too with your Sis, its the second worst thing that could happen to you after no ESPN in hotel on a football packed weekend. Damn.. How in the world people watch EPL in varanasi ??

Anyways, thanks to my swift thinking of my bum brains to somehow arrange seasons of Lost (2 & 3). And i tell you what, it was perfect to get my engines pumping to rise above my doldrums.

Varanasi, the first thing which rings a 'ghanti' in your brains is "Banaras ka Paan". Oh ya, the famous Big B's song. Bollocks. I just can't seem to wipe off the scene in our Patiaale da seeneyma ( Tagore ) where people started to actually dance infront of the screen when this song came in the film ( SRK one ). Ok, coming back to vanarasi topic, besides Paan, usual splashes of "red" glory you get to see everywhere.

And its also famous for banarsi saarees in which God went easy on me that my mum wasn't on the reservations charts.

And ya, again another temple city it is. Where ever i go in India, i get to read the same old line on a rusty board. " City of temples". Well this one was different, was with the red gloss on it.

I just went to Vishwanath and the Sarnath temple. Vishwanath temple is all enchanted with its antiqueness and purity. What you can't miss are the monkeys who are striding like stray dogs on the path and stealing prasad of the temple. Me and my sis attended the very beautiful Ganga Puja. Seeing the ardent foreigners listening to the puja carefully made me sneer abt the fact that , what the hell even they can understand in the puja. But actually the sneer fired back at me bcuz even I cudn't get what they were saying. hehe :-). I even had this famous tea of Banaras which was worth every praise i heard about it.

Second day I just relaxed in the hotel which greatly involved dragging Lost episodes on the VLC one by one. Lost is the first series i've seen which actually held onto the ropes leaving a surge inside you for more. Very much unlike Heroes (S02) in which it seemed like people having no powers in the series should be the ones called Heroes bcuz every damn person you see have some or the other power. And same is the case with Prison Break (S03). (Though finally Mr. Scoffield managed to escape after whole cauldrons of twists ). After downloading and watching episodes week in week out, I've honestly feel the director and the script writer of the show should be sent to an actual prison. Its just a prison for god sake ! If they want to show microwaves and binoculars in a prison, they'll definitely loose my tiny share in the % of the total TRP.

Not to deny the fact that even Lost has fair share of bed breaking anomalies but they cover them off well. The biggest of all is the Desmond's time travel and his flashes of future. But at the same time, to have a dramatic stakes of the ultimate endgame rooted in relationships and redemptions gives Lost a better shot at an emotionally satisfying conclusion. There is still a BIG mystery connecting all the survivors of Flight 8-1-5.

 I still have 7 episodes to go from the season 3 which I won't be able to watch now in the train. Damn compartment doesn't have a power plug here. And people really staring out of their sockets to know what i'm typing here. I actually should sleep bcuz its 10:30 ( Damn) and Mac's batt meter aint looking pretty in red. [ Mind you, not the Banaras one :-) ].

And finally what i cud gather and deduce from my trip was, that Scottish and Banarasi Language has so much similarity. In both languages, people tend to speak in an singing flowy manner and to prove my pt. , there's another very comical similarity. In banaras, people add 'bhaiya' most of the time and scottish people add Brother in the end.

UPDATED : Obv i didn't publish the blog in train, and now am through with the season 3. The ending was somewhat dodgy, but perfect !