Category: Live Journal Entries

You are a middle class 45 year old woman, you and your husband have been slogging for as long as you remember to create some decent saving. You have a 15 year old son who aspires to study in US of A. Suddenly one fine morning your mother calls up and says cousin ABCD had called up saying that there is a cure for Parkinsons and she needs Rs500K to take your 75year old father who has very severe disease. You say you will answer in a day.

You call your sister, she says that she is totally broke (which you know is true) but adds that she would have gladly given everything she had.

You research and find out that the treatment is only 25% successful, so the choice is your son’s career / future OR a probable addition of a few years to your father’s life.

What do you do?

For the record – this lady refused and was called selfish by her mother.

On the technology front SANIsoft finally shifted from BNC co-ax < gasp > to a switched network. Now to read more about packet sniffing on a switched network. I read it is much more difficult but not impossible. Don’t ask me why and what 😉

I wouldn’t do it ever – I love myself more than I can ever love anyone else.

Leaving a stable job, a nice city just because a girl refused your proposal!! Its so frustratingly stupid. Hey if she refused you she didn’t deserve you for good OR for bad, but making your own life hell is not going to solve anything.

If love is often cruel or destructive, the reasons lie not in love itself, but in the inequality between people.

I guess what he needs is a friend, preferably a female friend, to talk to and cry and be over with.

Damn it – he was a good programmer… …

Also I would like to know your opinions on my previous post

Swati to me sometime today afternoon : “You start a relationship based on trusting people, I do it based on not trusting them. That to me makes great business sense’

Proved right once again. Only can wish that it was not true.. ..

drove his mobike from Hyderabad to Nagpur yesterday. Some pictures are here. Reminded me of the similar stunt that I had pulled with my brother when I was his age. We drove from Nagpur to Hyderabad to Vizag to Chennai to Bangalore to Hyderabad to Nagpur.

That too on my 100cc Hero Honda, Thinking back I am pretty amazed that the machine survived the entire trip without a single problem!!!

Sid is going to Goa from here, was immediately tempted to ride along with him (here to Pune and Pune to Goa) but alas! I am not so free a man now, too much work, new projects, new programmer… …

Besides not fair on Swati who wanted to do the trip herself. My other (not so) crazy idea is to do the Nagpur – Hyd – Bangalore trip on a bicycle, am reasonably confident that I can do it BUT sigh!

A nice Sunday!

Began with Swati waking up late, well not very 9am, and I was to blame atleast partially 😉

Then we cooked a lunch of Chinese Fried Rice, Noodles, Chicken in Dark Soya and Wine Sauce and some soup. Except for the soup which was a bit too salty everything else turned out perfect!!

The afternoon was spent lazing and horsing around with Aasim in turns, towards late afternoon it started to rain and all of us went out for a drive. Stopped by the lake side for a while and just returned back… …

After exactly a gap of one year yesterday I impulsively picked up a copy of PC Quest from the newsstand – $Deity knows what I was intending to prove.

The magazine is now more direction-less than ever before. One thing which has prompted me to pick up the copy was a review of Xara Webstyle 3 – believe me the review occupies a quarter of a page!! The issue also contains 2 full page ads of PC Quest Linux 8.0 to be released next month, the CD picture says based on < gasp >Red Hat 7.1 < / gasp >

Spent some time on working with Dream Weaver MX templates – This version of DW has a greatly enhanced template capability and looks like it will be for the first time that we can provide a truly WYSIWYG Editable templates for PHP based applications, something which has been troubling me for quite some time now.

Also downloaded and installed Mozilla 1.3b – mainly for the calendar support – now to write a script which changes the .ics files to .pdb which will work with the Palm Calendar. I have the needed proof of concept code but it is scattered all over my network 🙁

Aasim started it all!!

Usually we dont exchange gifts on Valentine’s day BUT this time Aasim wanted to give his mother a secret present on Valentine. He had seleted this wrist watch before we went to Delhi and had made me promise that we will buy it when we get back.

Yesterday when I asked him to come along to buy that watch he suggested that I go alone and get it on his behalf!! I did not.

Swati got the hint that we were up to something, went out and got me this!! Though not real antique it is well made and the carvings on handle and sheath are real nice.

The last picture in the set is something I stumbled upon rummaging thru old memories. There was this guy at the road side or some fair who for Rs10/- wrote our names on a grain of rice!!

I underestimated the power of my puny dial-up, I was indeed able to upload all the pictures yesterday but then I had no time to write about it.

The pictures are in a chronological order, I am writing below “what was what” as much for my reference as for anyone else 😉 The complete picture set spans a period of 2 days, have shot some interesting fillers between the various ceremonies, so here are the ceremonies in serial order

“goad bharai” literally – filling the lap – Groom’s mother and aunt blessing the bride for happiness and fertility.

“tilak” Bride’s brother honoring the groom and then vice versa

“ring ceremony” Borrowed from the west… …

Everything is interspersed with lots of loud music, dancing and good food.

Next day

“mandap gadna” Groom’s uncles and brother in-laws bring things which will be used for the marriage pavilion (this is symbolic now)

“haldi” Groom is applied a paste of turmeric and sandalwood, this action usually spills over to other members present and is generally lots of fun 😉

Then before leaving for the venue the brother in-laws get the Groom ready and the ladies do some more stuff significance of which escapes me now.

“baraat” The Groom is taken on a horse back in a procession till the venue accompanied by music and dancing and fireworks.

After which is the marriage ceremony depending on the “mahurat”, the designated auspicious time, In this case it was so late that the guest had dinner and went home before the actual ceremony could take place… …

As luck would have it the NiMH on my camera ran out of juice by this time and all I could get was a couple of shots of the Bride being brought back to the Groom’s house… …

Just to repeat everything is interspersed with lots of loud music, dancing and good food.

Interested? The pictures are here

As an aside if anyone feels that Me and Swati look so unslept – it is because we were 🙁 Add to it Swati’s Asthama which has been going on since past 2 months… …

BTW Two of the pics of Swati which I took before we left are here and here

New Delhi girls are more pretty than those in Chennai, Bangalore or Mumbai (in that order)

Came back today morning 4 am with lots of pictures, memories, sweets, sore throat and a fever. Rushed right back to celebrate Bakr Id.

The fever is down but the body ache is killing. Hope to be better by tomorrow. Have optimized the wedding pictures for the web but they still amount to 16Mb (169 total) I don’t think all of them will be uploaded today.

Been wondering if to write a detailed account of the wedding or just let the 169000 words speak for themselves… …

We leave in an hour or so I think (basically will get up when Swati hollers) Will be back on Wednesday morning and hopefully I will have a lot of pictures of a typical north Indian wedding rigmarole.

Morning me and Swati were talking how nice it would be if we had jobs instead of our own business – right now instead of trying to tie a hundred dispartate things together I would be happily just waiting for the journey to begin and not have a care… …

I signed up for an RPG which begins this weekend – hope they don’t kill off my character before I return.

May be I shouldn’t have … …

Thankfully Swati’s asthma and allergies are all under control since we made qt the official *Office Cat* she stays in the office and is not allowed inside the house. qt doesn’t mind it because she gets to sleep undisturbed in the office.