Terra

"Hell, it's about time!"

Ten O' Clock On A Monday

The last 2 weeks have been stupendous, as far as mornings are concerned. I wake up leisurely at 10-ish and lounge around home, checking mail, reddit, etc. till about 11:30. Around mid-day I leave for work.

But, before work, I head to Terra Cafe where I have a scrumptious breakfast, one of:

1. English Breakfast - sausages, baked beans, toast, fried eggs, baked potatoes and tea

2. Belgian Waffle Breaksaft - waffles, infi maple syrup, a muffin, baked potatoes and tea

3. Banana crepe with chocolate sauce and ice-cream, with a side plate of sausages

Plus, the place has stacks of comic books. Read and eat. Nice philosophy. I've caught up on a lot of Calivin and Hobbes :)

After a breakfast like that, the rest of the day simply falls into place peacefully. Such is life.

Red Baron

When I was 5, I dreamt of flying fancy space ships on long interstellar journeys (like from Titan to the planet Eroticon VI (Still to be discovered)). But as I grew older, my dreams drew more real. So by 7, I dreamt of flying fighter aircraft and being the next Red Baron.

However, reality struck this down as well and I just dreamt of being rich (and buying an island) after that. I'm sure most young boys would have gone through a similar cycle.

However, last weekend, I had a chance to actually fly an aircraft. Well a Microlight can barely be called an aeroplane - it weights less than a small car!, but nevertheless it flies. It flies quite well infact.
That's the little critter. It weighs less than 350 Kgs! It's called the Red Baron, the only connection being the red colour I presume. The name's printed on the front, barely visible from this angle.

That's a chopper - same hanger types. It's huge. And utterly cool as well! But back to the microlight now:

So, me: Sitting in the aircraft, almost read for take-off. This was very early in the morning, mind you. That engine above is an 82 BHP thingy - that's a *lot* of power for such a tiny aircraft.

Aaand we're airborne! Now just climbing to a decent altitude. It was airborne is like 20 metres! (I told you it was overpowered :) )

The insides of the microlight. Look at all those controls! OOoo shiny! So we're now just levelling off and turning away from the airfield. After this, Vineetha (the pilot and instructor), showed me how to use the controls and taught me how to turn using the control stick and the rudder as well as how to maintain course, etc :)

A picture of Bangalore from under the wing. (Bangalore is a good 20-odd Km away from the Aerodrome, but we flew all the way there - didn't take long). The good thing about the engine being overhead is the awesome almost-360-degree view.

So that's us still in the air - I've now relinquished control of the aircraft. The engine is quite noisy so we get to wear these cool mic+headphone thingies and communicate with each other over radio! :D ...

Now we've landed and wheeled the Red Baron back into the hanger. Nidhi actually organized the whole thing for me - thanks a lot :) .. she unfortunately was not allowed to fly since she is a commercial pilot and for some unfathomable reason, commercial pilots are not allowed to touch smaller aircraft. Vineetha, the pilot, was awesome. Towards the end, just before landing, she took these totally cool 90-degree turns where the wings were frikking perpendicular to the ground! That was soo cool!

This is almost as much fun as skydiving! I'm thinking I should get a licence and learn to fly one of these. They cost only as much as a car. Hm... Island or microlight - damn! What a tough decision :P.

Marijuana Eyes

Marijuana Eyes

Twin Earths and the Sun

Twin Earths and the Sun

8 x 12 (inches), made using only spray paints.

Hazy Boredom

I just said, "Bangalore is great." And it is. Unfortunately Wipro isin't so hot. In fact, it's quite shady.

So essentially I'm going stir crazy here. I have *no* work. I've met my guide for a cumulative of 15 minutes since I joined (he's always got "burning issues" to deal with apparently). I don't know what my project is about and I'm just sitting here in this room thinking of how bored I am.

To top it off, they've blocked almost anything of amusing value - reddit: blocked. gmail: blocked. xkcd: blocked. calvin&hobbes: blocked. Dilbert: blocked. I've been distracting myself from the excrutiating boredom by translating English phrases from Spanish to German. There's nothing wrong about that: try it. The results are interesting (interestingness depends on boredom levels).

My iPod Nano and books are keeping me company. On the plus-side, I'll have caught up on my year's reading by the time I'm done here. Already since I started "work", I've finished reading Pitch Invasion, The Undercover Economist and The End of Eternity. Now I'm out of books too. Must buy/borrow some more.

I shall catch up with Sod again soon - maybe tomorrow. A whole bucket of stiff drinks should cheer me up a bit.

The first 3 days

Bangalore is great.

Over my first 3 days, I've checked out many parts of the city, figured out how buses work here and also managed to get auto drivers to go by the meter (a rather difficult task here indeed).

Yesterday I visited the Bannerghatta National Park and Butterfly Park. Both were quite nice - plenty of lions and tigers and bears and other animals. The Butterfly Park was really well done too.

I was torn between buying an iPod Touch and waiting for the new version. I keep flip-flopping between "I'm buying it today!" and "Two months later, iPod gen 3." Right now I've postponed the decision till Tuesday.

I'm staying at IIM Bangalore and the campus is simply gorgeous. It's completely green and the weather is extremely pleasant. It helps that many people are staying here as well. We played card games (29, etc.) a couple of nights ago and also played cricket all night (I really didn't know till yesterday that I was an explosive batsman!)

We had an IIMB-intro party last night as well. Lots of rum and coke flowing all round. Is good.

The pubs in Bangalore are quite cheap. And the malls have humongous food courts, which makes me quite happy :)

I found some quaint bookshops on Brigade road. I guess books will keep me company on the long commutes. Did I mention that I figured out the bus system? - and Bangalore has amazing Volvo buses. Just get on and hop off half an hour later, thus preventing auto drivers from ripping you off! And just wave your hand at a bus and he'll pull up right up to you and stop and open the door! So nice! :)

I'm actually having a lot of fun. Oh and my new phone number for the summer is 9986991694.

Haddi / Mohit / Giddu

We herby introduce to you a creature, known to some as “Haddi” and to others as “Giddu”: A monster of epic-hairy proportions whose prime objective in life is to become King and Tyrant of the World. To this end, he cracks jokes that may leave you doubting your sanity. An inhabitant of a rather messy cave, known only as Room 19, he wards off evil spirits by hanging a freshly extracted bone outside his door.

His upper body and lower body seem to want to move in different directions. Thus, his appearance closely resembles the cute, cuddly Kung-Fu panda. Exactly so, he thinks that he radiates awesomeness but in reality only cleans dishes, mainly to cook Maggi in. He is extremely lazy and befits the title “Fat Slob”. Any random sample of his day will have him sitting in the exact same position in front of his computer.



He is apt to doing really silly things at times (See pic (above) for typical example). For one, he chatters incessantly in Japanese, merely repeating the 3 phrases that he knows over and over again. This, he picked up from watching strange episodes of Anime cartoons (and the occasional Hentai). He loves cats and dogs in general and all animals in particular. He gives them names and calls out to them when he passes by. It is hypothesized that the endless amounts of dog crap found daily in D10 is a byproduct of his animal-love.

Haddi is impossible to wake up at any time of day, and especially so in the mornings. He got to classes on time thanks completely to his next door neighbor, our beloved dorm baap, Gilli. But, even the ever-placid Gilli could not take Haddi’s incessant cribbing any more and indeed did run away to Europe to escape this, the “jokes” and all the waking-up. With Gilli out of the picture, Haddi took one step towards his plans of total and complete world domination:

$sudo Dorm_Baap



To add to his positions of irresponsibility, he pestered his first year group-mate Chaman (Name changed to protect identity), to become creatives head and then proceeded to singlehandedly delay all Confluence activity. He pretends to be a marketing Guru and is (quote, from his CV) “An active member of Niche”.

So there we have it: our very own lovable geek, Giddu. All said and done, when he gets down to work, he does radiate awesomeness. His PPO from Value Partners is testament to that. His sense of humor is top-notch and his spontaneity completely blew the competition away, giving him the title of Mr. Chaos. We wish you the best of luck in your days ahead and hope that all your voyeuristic dreams come true.

Physics = Awesome!

Wickedly cool stuff! I'd be working towards a Ph.D in physics had we had some experiments like this in our undergraduate labs!

Too late I guess.

Battle, Bloodshed, Combat, Conflict, ...

Okay people.

It's time for a full-on war to prevent a D grade in CF. Bring it on.

Uh.. can someone teach me CF while I'm at it? :-/