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Life
Sangita - always a friend!
Sangita! If there was anyone in my life I place after my mother it would be her. Even though she is just a year older to me she always held that place of a woman I could go to for comfort. I have known her since I was fifteen. We grew up together, kept in touch for a long long time but as fate would have it, life took somewhat divergent paths about ten years ago.
Tags: life, photography, sangita, wisdom
After a lot of reluctance I am pushing myself to revive the journal writing, this time though I am going to use a self hosted Wordpress on my site at http://tariquesani.net/blog/. Yes the URL says blog but I essentially want to keep this as a journal. No! I do not want to revive the journal vs. blog flame wars.
If you are reading this on the Live Journal site – you will notice that the entry has been cross posted, I will cross post perhaps for a few days and then stop… All the entries right from 2002 have been imported in to the Wordpress install.
In a reversal of sorts I have decided to host my pictures at flickr and will be using the blog to post links to them. The current Coppermine install at http://tariquesani.net/ will stay because of SEO reasons, but sooner or later I will make the complete site Wordpress based.
For the interested the theme used is a modification of Amazing grace theme – I chose this theme for the rotating headers and warm colors – am finally getting bored of dark colors for my websites 
Anyone having any suggestions for themes are most welcome.
Some day I will make a list of all the widgets and plugins I use.
Saturday I wrote to someone
(06:47:09 PM) Tarique: life SUX – it is weekend and I am dreading it
After the *adrenaline and endorphin high* from foss.in of the past week waning, I was feeling kind of lost… Had planned to hook up with some friends to go a nearby village and see the Bar-headed geese but that fizzled out. So decided to sleep late….
Woke up at 9 which is late by everyday standards but still early enough to go bird watching – by 9:30 we were out, much to the annoyance of Swati’s hypothetical mom in-law. A three kilometer drive and we were walking the catchment area of Ambhazari lake. Seeing that the number of migratory arrivals has increased was heartening. We spent the next two and a half hours there and racked up a massive count of 104 species! including a pair for Bar-headed geese. Got very few pictures though as my D70 is now nearly dead and refuses to focus, doing a manual focus is too frustrating to be worth its while.
Between all this Swati could talk to her cook at home and we knew that there will be hot aloo parathas waiting for us. On the way we stopped at the DVD shop and picked up some DVD/VCD among them was 8 VCD set of “Yeh jo hai zindagi” and much to our delight Aasim is absolutely loving the series. Watched 2 episodes… post lunch time was spent watching the movie “Mumbai Salsa” an ok movie to watch once….
Evening? – thats best left out of a public entry….
Finally it happened… the first barbecue party at the new home. While such parties were a norm almost every third week through out the winter at the old place it was just not happening here.
We were just three families with the kids.
The fun part in any barbecue is making the kebabs and steaks, right from lighting the charcoal to putting stuff on the skewers and grilling it – everything interspersed with drinks and expert comments from everyone 
Apart from the usual malai kebabs and chicken tikka – the marinade for which Swati has perfected – this time we had excellent steaks of Surmai fish and we also tried Thai style fish grilled over coals in bannana leaf wrap – we used a biggish Red Snapper for this. All this was washed down it lots of white wine, Oh! yes there was also some Roti and smoked Dal but even the kids kept asking “Dal? – whats that!!”
Tags: life
I had mentioned that 40 is considered a watershed and many who have crossed it still say “It feels no different”.
Is it the same for me? ummm…. no not really there have been two very major changes in the past year.
#1 We moved into our new house and office – the sheer fact that it is newer, much much bigger and filled with stuff which we coveted since long makes me happy – Yeah! I am an easy person to please.
#2 The Chikungunya I was infected with just prior to my last birthday has unfortunately turned chronic and several of my major and minor joints cannot take much punishment – this effectively has restricted several of my outdoor and indoor activities, I can no longer run up the stairs – knees, I cannot jog for more than 1.5kms – hip, I cannot walk for more than 5kms – ankle. Things like bouldering, hang gliding and dancing are pretty much out of bounds forever. Ugh! putting it in words makes it sound much worse than it really feels and the fact is that there has been some improvement over the months and I am still hopeful.
The above two combined have also put SANIsoft firmly on the path we wanted – so the going is still great I would say
“Modern day Americans are often trapped in lousy, disappointing, soul crushing careers. If they are not divorced already, their marriages are on the rocks. They live far outside of their means, rack up thousands of dollars of debt, and then they work overtime to pay for the toys they never have time to play with. They dedicate their lives to pleasing ungrateful children who won’t amount to much more than they did. Hours of their downtime is spent in front of the television, switching from reality show to reality show, because it is easier to watch other people live life than it is to live their own. In a rare moment of creativity, they might write a secret out on a postcard and send it to a website because they don’t have a single person in real life that they trust enough to share their fears with. They feel all of this on top of the usual human maladies of sickness, death and grief.”
From: http://www.violentacres.com/archives/169/most-people-are-depressed-for-a-very-good-reason
How long before this is true about us Indians? or are we already there?
Comments, reflections, denials and proving me wrong most welcome…
Woke up early yesterday morning despite a late night on Saturday and sat at the doorsteps waiting for the newspaper, perhaps it was sub conscious realization that there are very few Sunday mornings that I will get here now perhaps a couple more….
It was nice to know that the neighborhood birds have not completely forgotten me and were there promptly to give me company. After a leisurely scan of the papers, fueled by some coffee I walked around to check out what else was interesting - apart from a male Paradise flycatcher nothing much.
The later part of the morning was spent watching the Animatrix DVD which I had managed to pick up and then talking with Aasim about the possibilities in a Matrix world. By the time we finished it was time for some yummilicious Biryani from Swati.
I don’t really know where the rest of afternoon went, except Aasim occasionally coming in to demonstrate some Yoyo tricks (and failing most of the times)
Around 4 O clock in the afternoon Swati stepped out to call Aasim only to discover that a pair of Dusky Craig Martins were collecting mud for their nest from our driveway, if you are into bird watching you would know that these birds are seen more often flying than sitting and it is definitely rare to have them sit within a few feet – I could get a full-frame shot with just 200mm
The drizzle which had started around 10am turned into a steady downpour by evening – Monsoon had hit Nagpur – Finally. This time it arrived with a whimper and did not give us a chance to do our usual going around the city and getting wet in the first rain after which we use to stop at the favorite Samosawala and have piping hot Samosas.
I was regretting this at the dinner table – when there was a knock at the door, a friend had got Biryani! and not just any Biryani it was Hyderabadi Biryani flown in straight from Paradise, Hyderabad
Ahhh… for small pleasures of life
Tags: life
Once you promise you have to… the little girl chimed , She was one of Aasim’s friend asking for his bicycle for herself to ride. The sincerity with which she pleaded stuck with me.
So as I had promised myself that I will update this journal more often here is it… Earlier this week we returned from Pattaya after a reasonably successful weekend business visit. We had the Sunday to ourselves so we shopped for… Thai spices!! Swati could manage to procure a decent spice kit, hmmm I wonder if there is a proper word for a “spice kit”? We also got a whole lot of cloth things – they are much cheaper in Thailand
Other than that things are still in a flux, Monsoon has still not hit Nagpur except for a few showers which in a way is good – the exteriors are being painted.
My programmers have turned the SANIsoft blog into a place to put ‘notes to themselves’ – which though not the sole purpose is generating a lot of traffic. People do get stuck and frustrated on small things which once known make you bang your head – here is a selection…
- How to install ‘xdebug’ PHP extension for XAMPP on linux
- CakePHP installation in /~username/
- How to setup/run XAMPP in your home directory
- CakePHP Model’s created / modified gotcha!
Just re-read the above and like the previous entry this too ‘looks’ forced but I don’t want to worry about that for now
Today, after lunch, myself and Swati decided to explore the neighborhood of the new place. As I have written earlier it is surrounded by rich birding ground.
After walking about 500m we were already seeing birds like Yellow wattled lapwing, Red winged Bush lark, Black breasted finch lark, Rain quail….
Well it is their habitat and while other bird watchers have to trek long to see these we realize that we are fortunate – then it happened once again!!
Coming over the horizon I spotted a huge bird flying towards us, Once again I gasped “Vulture” and Swati said “Can’t be …”
But as it soared above us there was no doubt it was an Indian long billed vulture! Unfortunately this time I did not have a camera 
but I guess this is not the last time, we are on to something here !
After nearly 3 weeks of grueling 18 hour days, yesterday was a day when we did not have things lined up to be completed before the day end… in fact we had nothing lined up.
Aasim returned from Delhi on Saturday evening; suddenly grown-up in some ways – 20 days is the longest he has stayed away from us but we were glad that he was enjoying with his uncles while we were overloaded with work.
Entire this year up till now has been driven by a single goal – getting the new home+office completed! Every other activity including bird watching and photography was put on hold, not only because there was so much to do but also because for the first time we were executing a project which depended on future cashflow projections.
After seemingly everything has been listed and accounted and then a margin added, things turn up which inflate your budget – this we were warned of by many people. However I am extremely relieved to say that though things did turn up there were enough areas where we had over budgeted and the final tally is going to be within the estimate which we made in November 2006. There were some scary moments but thanks to each of our clients every projected payment came through and then some more… …
While the office shifted on 1st of this month, shifting the home to the new house will still take a few weeks but we are there for all practical purposes – shifting is like making a software live – no matter how many tests you did – there are always bugs, you can only minimize the number. For the office too there have been minor irritants like water leaking from a couple of places in the glazed windows, condensation on AC dripping when humidity is 80% but they appear to have been solved for now.
A couple of days ago we noticed that there is a brood of 3 just of of nest Shikra chicks which play in the garden – it is fun to watch them as they play aerial tag, scream for parents or just hop around utterly unafraid. Coming Sunday I intend to go around the forest which is almost encircles the new house…
We have also been busy writing on the SANIsoft blog in the past few days
- Paperwork and Procedures
- Multilingual apps with CakePHP
- MediaWiki Gotcha
- Showing combobox option instead of value in editor grid for extjs
- Use cake console with LAMPP
- PHP array to JSON in CakePHP
Yes, I do intend to update this journal more often
Tags: life
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