Shyam's Blog

It will be good to have a small 100-cc 2 door car in India. Just take the kinetic honda engine and put a chassis. As most people use two wheelers and they don't ride with more than 2 people, it is a good idea to get a small 2-door car to suit Indian market. Do you think it is worth manufacturing? If yes, please fund ;) and I will start the business.

We get to hear - "barli, barli", "chennaag mugsi Anil-bhai", "ondh-ondh barli", etc. These are what Robin Uttappa (the wicket keeper) shouts to Anil Kumble when Kumble is bowling. This reminds me of Srinath-Kumble batting in Bangalore in 1996 when they defeated Australia in the Titan Cup. The duo batted and had a partnership of 50+ to chase the total after India had lost 8 wickets. They used to shout, "baa baa baa .." to get quick singles.

I always was curious of the pani puri smell I got near Madhavan Park, Jayanagar when our office shuttle crossed that intersection. My other friends in the shuttle had also mentioned about this and we had always thought of getting down and trying it out. The D-day had come today when we had only two passengers plus the driver. We decided to stop there and get a taste of pani puri. It had turned really cloudly. By the time we could stop and go there, it was raining cats and dogs. We settled inside the cover sheet which was extending that vending cart. We two (my fellow passenger and I) invited our driver too to join us. Together, we enjoyed 1 plate pani puri each in the rain! We next ordered 1 plate each of masala puri to finish off our feast. We ran back to the shuttle in that pouring rain and got drenched. May be, the rain God was surprised with me eating street-side pani puri and expressed it with heavy down pour. For that matter, this is the first time in my life I ate pani puri on t...

I am home today because of elections here. It was a nice day-off from going to office because I had to get some of my pending tasks done. As I was working, I could hear loud movies from the next house. May be, the exams are over for those kids. All day, they had one movie or the other running. This reminded me of our days as kids when we used to watch movies once the exams were over. In those days (it might sound like an eon ago ;), but I am talking of 20 years ago), when we were in Shimoga and Hubli, there was no cable TV to pick the movies aired. We rented VCP for Rs. 60 a day and each movie cassette rental was Rs.10 per day. So, on an average, per day, we used to watch 3 movies in 24 hours. The movies which we watched were - Mr. India (twice on the same day.. ha ha), The man who saw tomorrow and Ganeshana maduve . This scheme was sponsored by mom :). Dad apposed it though. Any other movies in the list, bro?

I was sitting in music class waiting for my turn. It is usual to listen to other students till my turn arrives. A small 10-year old boy was being taught a varna in ‘sriraaga’. The boy has learnt half the song and was presenting it before moving ahead. His singing of ‘ni’ was always the N2, instead was N3. When the guru corrected it, he was able to repeat the correct one. For next few times, he was singing the wrong ‘ni’ and corrections continued. Just then, I started to think – “How can a kid recognize or distinguish different notes?” On the other side, I have seen students in the age range 25-35 who cannot differentiate microtonic notes. Couple of days ago, one of my friends was asking me the biggest question of Indian Classical Music – “What is raga and how do you identify them?” My short answer to that was, “I need minimum 30 minutes to answer that question.” After giving him scientific explanation, I am sure he was satisfied. I would like to tell what I told him. This basic descrip...

I visited Whitefield and surrounding areas yesterday (Sunday) and became allergic seeing those concrete structures built in that area mainly for IT. There are no trees which surely makes the place 3-4 degrees hotter than greater Bangalore. The outer ring road is good except for road humps every 100 meters. I drove 3 hours yesterday in the hot sun to attend a house warming ceremony of my wife's cousin. Distance traveled - 70 Km. That area which is near to ITPL is an ecosystem by itself. It doesn't really depend on Bangalore. It has schools, hospitals, apartments, shopping malls, restaurants, hotels, and even a railway station. Though I got a chance to see that part of 'Bangalore', I wouldn't plan to visit that place very often.

It was 5:30pm and I was sitting in the shuttle after the day's work. Minutes later, one gentleman asked the shuttle driver, “Does this bus go near Jayanagar 6th Block?” After a quick 'Yes', he got into the bus really satisfied to sit and get settled. Seeing a new face who was heading towards so called 'my area of Bangalore South', I was curious to know about his whereabouts. Got to know that he was from Nagpur and had come here for his internship. This was his Day 1. Before I could ask the next curious question of, “how did you come to office in the morning?”, Mr.N started narrating a story. Couple of other passengers in the shuttle were on phone. The story started as an interesting one and was turning out a thriller. After my co-passengers had cut the phone, I told this guy to stop the story there and restart from the beginning to get the context. Here goes his story as his narration: Today is my first day in Bangalore and I took the BMTC (local bus transport) to r...

Did this over the weekend.

I was thinking about music and kids when I was watching a Kannada music competition on TV. The kids were singing songs from the movies and the theme of these songs are mostly romantic. If kids are recommended not to sing such songs, what else can they sing? Their age is not that to thing philosophic too. That would mean, they can put in their expressions and emotions in classical music. Then, what else should they sing? Kids here are in the age ground of 8-12. For them, only text book poem suits. If art is not taught at a young age, it is hard to learn when one grows old. So, art has to be put in to child"s for it to mature when he or she gets in to maturity level. My suggestion is - Do not expose kids too much to the performance level. They really have a long way to go.

After a long time, I watched a Kannada movie, Milana. My mom wanted to watch a movie and I searched in my database (external hard disk with 200 Kannada movies). We agreed to watch Milana in our home theater. The movie is good with good music. Only bad part of the movie is fights and actions which become too much by the time movie ends. Next weekend, the schedule is to watch - vundu hOda koNdu hOda.

Coin Collection My FIL gave me few coins which he had in his travel bag which he uses for his Europe visit every year. My brother and I had collected a few coins which was given to us by dad who in the '80s visited Europe, US and South East Asia. Mom and I added coins from the Middle East to this collection. In the past few days, I did a sort of all the coins which were stored in one box. First thing I did was to get a few coin albums. Since I had few currency too, I got a currency album. Now, the collection looks really good with lots of precious coins in the treasure. I took one of the albums in by office shuttle and showed it to my friends. They liked the collection and have received a positive response from them. They said, "I too have few coins. Let me share them with you." Most common coins among collectors include coins from the US and UK. Next common set is from Singapore. Not many have coins from the African and South American continents. In my collection, few ra...

No time to blog is the title and I am blogging! So busy it has been for the past few days that I hardly get time to check my mails. Not even a minute of free time at office too. I have been sleeping at 1am to get the day's work completed. Today, I had scheduled a meeting with person A in office to discuss about a project. Instead, we discussed things about image processing and online gaming. 'A' did his ME from IISc from '95 to '97.