Pani Da Rang Vekh Ke
Akhiyaan Jo Hanju Rul De

Great song! Sweet Melody. And so ends this weekend.

Ramblings.

Its been a year since S and I have been in a long distance relationship. This is the 3rd time we are in an LDR again.  Every new one seems harder than the last one. God, I dont want any more long distance relationships. One thing the LDR does is gives me time to watch a lot of online videos and listen to any music at any time I want.

My music taste is all over the board. I started off last year listening to Coke Studios Pakistan (Way better than the piece of crap they put up in India). Current playlist is a bunch of Dido hits, eminems stan and landing in london. Talk about variety eh?

Talking about videos, I saw this presentation by Bret Victor, an ex Apple UI designer, a brilliant person. And I think his presentation was brilliant! more about Bret at www.worrydream.com

http://vimeo.com/36579366

Btw: Last year I got to see Coldplay up close. This year I get to attend their concert.

and The IRON MAIDEN! hell yeah! 30+ but finally seeing my dream materialize.

End of the weekend. Back to the grind.

Landing in London - 3 Doors Down.

I woke up today in London 

As the plane was touching down

And all I could think about was monday

And maybe ill be back around 

If this keeps me away much longer 

I dont know what i will do 

Youve got to understand its a hard life 

That im going through 

And when the night falls in around me 

I dont think ill make it through 

Ill use your light to guide the way 

Cause all I think about is you 

Well L.A is getting kinda crazy 

And New york is getting kinda cold 

I keep my head from geting lazy 

I just cant wait to get back home 

And all these days i spend away 

Ill make up for this i swear 

I need your love to hold me up 

When its all too much to bear 

And when the night falls in around me 

I dont think ill make it through

Ill use your light to guide the way 

Cause all I think about is you

And all these days i spend away 

Ill make up for this i swear 

I need your love to hold me up 

When its all too much to bear 

When the night falls in around me 

I dont think ill make it through 

Ill use your light to guide the way 

Cause all I think about is you

The year 2011

Partied the night into 2011. Cold chilly snowy winter. Jan 11th saw the craziest snowfall it could in Charlotte. Also gave me a cute angel of a niece. Went to India for a month, saw a sisters wedding. Came back to the craziest voicemail inbox with 7 interview calls from all various companies and the last that topped it all off. Crazy three months following that saw me move to my dream company. Summer Vacation to ATL n Disney with another niece. CLT->SFO. SFO->CLT->SFO was how the rest of the year went. Turned a leaf from being a windows user to a mac. Extended re-union with school buddies. One's a homie now! Got to play with another cute infant for a while. Saw a couple more cute kids dropped by the stork who was working overtime from late 2010. TV didn't quite cut it in early 2010. Explored the West Coast. Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, San Francisco yeah! Drove like crazy. 1700 miles. 1 traffic light violation. expensive. Beverly hills Grrr. SFO->CLT for Christmas Drove again. 1900 miles. no ticket! Miami/Key West Florida Yay! Partied the night crunk into 2012. In retrospect 2011: -Moved -East Coast/West Coast -Long Distance -Lots of Parties -Lots of babies! not in that order thankfully :) -Lots of driving 2 tickets!:( 5800 miles 3 trips And now here I am listening to some Kings of Leon "The End" (coincidentally!!!)

Snow Patrol - Run

I'll sing it one last time for you
Then we really have to go
You've been the only thing that's right
In all I've done

And I can barely look at you
But every single time I do
I know we'll make it anywhere
Away from here

Light up, light up
As if you have a choice
Even if you cannot hear my voice
I'll be right beside you dear

Louder louder
And we'll run for our lives
I can hardly speak I understand
Why you can't raise your voice to say

To think I might not see those eyes
Makes it so hard not to cry
And as we say our long goodbye
I nearly do

Light up, light up
As if you have a choice
Even if you cannot hear my voice
I'll be right beside you dear

Louder louder
And we'll run for our lives
I can hardly speak I understand
Why you can't raise your voice to say

Slower slower
We don't have time for that
All I want's to find an easy way
To get out of our little heads

Have heart, my dear
We're bound to be afraid
Even if it's just for a few days
Making up for all this mess

Light up, light up
As if you have a choice
Even if you cannot hear my voice
I'll be right beside you dear

And again some more changes

Blogger is rapidly changing! This is so not like blogger and so much like google that I think the good folks in blogger have been finally googlicized!

First came out the much needed bigger app. Now the new dynamic blogger template which makes reading blogs such a fun activity. My only qualms about it is that as soon as you switch over to the new dynamic blog template you lose the personalization that defined your blog your space your creativity.

I'm guessing that'll change soon?!? :)

Keep changing blogger! You are finally catching up with wordpress.

Ages...

Whoa! new Blogger sweetness! Currently listening to Mere Brother ki Dulhan on Spotify. So far the music is peppy, haven't seen the movie yet, plan to watch it soon. Lately Ive started watching Mad Men. I haven't seen the series, I'm still trying to understand what the show is about, But at a base story line, I think Mad Men is headed towards a slow build up of the character Don Draper and his perspective of life. For example episode 14 shows him coping with his boss's heart attack by having a check up. Also shows him reading a novel which is kind of a self realization book. The show also shows a typical 60's sexist Don, slowly opening up to the idea of youth being hired and also more inclined towards the idea of a children in a cartoon sketch up for an advt. Good going so far. been 15 episodes so far, will try to watch as much as possible. Later.

Testing

The blogger app. Which took forever to be created.

Almost felt that google had given up on blogger.

back again

Moved. Alone (temporary). Reading. Blogging.

working on Photography, trekking, adventure and wilderness.

Sad but fighting to keep it exciting.

Lets see.

More to come.

Hairat Hai

Currently listening to Lucky Ali sing Hairat Hai .. from Anjaana Anjaani ... :) .... one day .. i just wanna be riding a bike down monument valley listening to music like this and have absolutely no one around! .. me the bike and ok maybe s ... but thats that ... oh and some awesome music.

Ganpati Bappa Morya

This years Ganpati festival was a bit different. Our Family didnt have the traditional Ganpati stapana at our homes. We are a huge family of 4 grandfathers and 3 grandmothers who are brothers and sisters.. and they each have about 4 - 8 kids on an average and we are the third generation of this tree. Us cousins used to have loads of fun hanging out and playing cards and loads of other games during Ganesh festival. In the two days that we would have the ganpati at our uncles place .. it would start with the first night of setting up the decorations for the idol .. called as "Makhar". Then followed by going and bringing home the lord and the first aarti. This was followed by lunch and lots of cards.. and then the late night hour long evening Maha aarti that was so unique to our family that it was with pride that we all enjoyed this. The next day was visarjan... and with it the official end of Shravan month ... which would mean awesome yummy food in the night :).

Nothing of that this year. All the uncles are old .. some are no more, and so its becoming tough on those that have to carry fwd the tradition. The third generation, us are all dispersed in different parts of the world and cant have it at our places. So we stopped this tradition.

This year to celebrate, I went to a friends place where we sang Aartis in similar tune to that at home, had awesome food, and ukadichey modak and then went to an aarti at the hindu temple.

The end line... Ganpati bappa Morya... tradition or not.. God has his way.. in a nice n lovely way.

Gnight.

Y2K Y2F?!

So remember how Y2K was a big thing a couple of decades back? Well someone needs to wake up and stop synching and integrating everything with facebook and twitter. Facebook updates this .. twitter account link this ... People need to stop making technology that is dependent on being linked and synched with fb and twitter.

Software Technology and technology developers have for ages tried to join whatever the hottest latest bandwagon is. Its by design not the best thing to do.

Can someone please tell the developers of the future that?

Travel

Doesnt travel bring out the best and or the worst of people out? I was recently travelling to a city I had never been to before. Its all under wraps :D. But I think there is no better art than the expressions that people have.

Saw a kid, poor little boy, scared to death. First flight experience. :)
Saw an old lady, lost in between time (read as decades and modern life) walking down the street.
Saw a cute asian girl notice me take pictures of flowers and came forth to better align her flowers on her stall for me to get a good snap.
Saw anxiety on person.
Saw a kid with autism making a lot excited noise in being able to see a plane up close. Unfortunately his grandfather wasnt up for understanding his excitement and pacifying him. God Bless.
Saw a whole bunch of military/Army/ROTC kids going back to their hometowns after a week long exercise. Making new friends at the last minute, sharing information, beer, friendships formed with a common bond and a week.
Met an old colleague, shared coffee and some excitement.
Saw a father suggest his son to kill time by sitting in a phone booth, thought that was fun, Kids response... Can I also call someone? :)
Saw a daughter in her mid 40s taking her mom in her mid 60's to a town monument and saw how they rapidly talked and shared their mother daughter bond.

Saw so many people in one place it was just too nostalgic.

Sometimes I think why do we need art? Art I believe is a medium to express. But if you turn so cold hearted that you can't feel feelings, then art just wont be for you.

New Blogger Template Designer!

Finally! this is really a great thing! wonder what took so long. but this is what I have been wanting. Thanks El Goog!

All this while I did get to learn some CSS and html and template designing. But this is good.

Weekend

Just watched braveheart for the first time in my life. Good movie,
fighting for freedom with a zeal that you just cannot develop in one
day!

Also went to the Charlotte NASCAR hall of fame, it doesn't open for
another 10 days but we got tickets to sneak peek soft opening, it was
really a good experience.

"you can overcome anything in the world but fate" - Richard Petty!!
This is a good lesson of life.

And thencooked food at home watched angels and demons and bravehert....

Now for some reason I just cannot get myself to sleep!!!

Sent from my iPhone

World at war

The other day in DC I visited the holocaust museum, I didn't quite realize what I was walking into until I actually started my tour of the museum. I was overwhelmed with a great grief and sorrow and disappointment with the human race. All the attrocities carried out by these people...You just can't say that you carried out your orders, because at a certain point of cruelty your own principles should have stood between the order and you. These attrocities were conducted by people who really believed in what they were doing and actually enjoyed it.

The museum itself has clippings of dead bodies being pushed into large pits like a farm produce gone really bad. I mean these Nazi bastards didn't even have the humanity to put a cloth over these bodies.

May god just bless the souls of all the people who had to die by the hands of the Nazis.

Mankind just seems to disappoint me over and over...under the pretext of religion, under the pretext of ethnic cleansing, under the pretext of race or be it caste! Do we really need these? Why can't we live an honest life? Don't your religions teach you that? And if they dont then I think they don't deserve to be called a religion.

Of late, the war against terrorism and stuff is also primarily a religious war. It's a shame we didn't learn a bit from the holocaust.

If there is any God, I pray to you to put some common sense in all people.

This is my only prayer to God.

Sent from my iPhone

At the smithsonian museum of natural history at Washington DC

Akheer

Woke up today listening to Juggy D's Akheer...

A very beautiful song...it gives a lot of examples about the end and
suggests that u take His/Her (God's) name....

It's almost like a bhajan kirtan type of a song, but it has a very
lovely meaning to it...

We all answer to some God, even if you are an atheist, your God is
knowledge o the belief that there's no God...but there is.... He is in
all of us, we choose to ignore him at times and we tend to think of
him in times of real needs... Our minds are weak and a lot many times
even the strongest person in the world needs support....

God is beautiful... So is life....

Ok shuffle played an iron maiden song right after this...gotto go and
change the music to the mood

Sent from my iPhone

The scientist

So here I am in a bedroom at a friends house all alone as I wake up...
S is out of town do I decided to drive up to a friends place in DC for
the vacations..

So as I woke up with the sun zoning on my face through the window on a
cold day after Christmas I put the iPod on shuffle and it selects
coldplays the scientist.

This song is such a lovely song...just thought I'd capture the
moment....

Merry Christmas.

Sent from my iPhone

Love

Ever have that feeling? Its hard to describe it, its even difficult when you miss it. What is it exactly? 

I mean waking up to the smile of the person

going home and to be greeted by a hug...

calling someone up when you know the storm just hit your area.. 

yeah .. it is these things.. but its a lot more than this. its not the stuff that we regularly see in tv's or movies or read about in stories. Its just a totally bizarre feeling. 

Its like, even if there are two immiscible liquids and they are poured down a tube and they somehow mix up get on with the flow, and the flow is this smooth streaming of joy, pleasure, peace, calm, care, laughter, smiles, teardrops, twinkle in the eye moments,secret yet public moments where no-one really understands what you just shared with her and no one will really even care about it but the two of you. 

Love's a tough cookie, I may sound a little romantic here, but the point is .. its our anniversary and s is out.. so sometimes its alright to miss someone and pine for em.