Shyam's Blog

Yahoo! is the official partner of ICC and its events. Twenty20 World Cup which is scheduled in the next couple of weeks is the latest hot news. The Cup was in our office for display. The crowd was so much that I didn't get a chance to have a glimpse! This picture was taken by one of our colleagues. Visit Yahoo! Cricket for latest cricket news.

Met one new friend at office few days ago. K is a very interesting and enthusiastic person. He has a degree in Architecture and has been working in our company as a researcher. I had kept a perpetual motion toy at my desk and as was walking by, he dropped in to check with me. That is how I got to know him. There are many things interesting about this person. Recently, he has been working on collecting information about 'Indian Toys' which parents/kids design and play with. It could be just a toy made out of old tire or something made out of bricks (kids of construction workers often play with these). These toys are not available in stores! You need to see his blog about these toys here . Apart from working at our office, K teaches a Design course in one of the colleges here in Bangalore. Lastly, he is a fan of our 'annavru'.

Bought a bunch of CDs today. VCDs and DVDs have come to a rock bottom price. 3 movies in one DVD costed Rs. 45. Tenali Rama, the one on DD few years ago, was available in DVD for Rs.200. Got few other Kannada/Hindi VCD/DVDs.

Neighborhood outhouse. Picture taken to experiment shooting rain. It was a rainy Sunday evening. I just reminded my mom the fun of rain + ---. She understood my mind and came up with pakoda-s. It was an awesome effect!!! Thanks mom :).

Old building of Mysore still standing tall as grand offices.

Took this picture with a long exposure of 3". The light available was from the sodium vapour lamp in the street.

Last night, when I saw the flower blooming, I had seen a bud too (above). That bud bloomed tonight (below).

Brahma kamala This flower blooms in the night and this is a very rare sight. Also called Queen of the Night, Brahma kamala very beautiful and the fragrance is very nice too.

It is not easy to maintain your own house in good condition with every system working perfectly. Same has been the case here. If tube lights get repaired, next comes switches not working properly. If those are sorted, water pump stops working one morning. In rainy season, our house becomes a mess with water dripping from the roof top. We keep buckets to collect water. This repair is still pending for the past decade or so. If I had thought everything was working this morning, the gas lighter to light the stove in kitchen stopped working. Interim solution is to use match sticks. To check the washing conditions of our baby's clothes, my wife is disappointed with our maid's work. Solution - wife washed all clothes once more. That is not the end of list - Mom wanted some print-out urgently. She requested me to print it ASAP. The printer didn't print anything after trying for an hour. Dad always sorted this out very patiently. As he is away in the US, I don't want to touch i...

Philately Got a chance to visit the General Post Office (GPO) for some Philately hobby. It was good to get a wide collection of stamps, first day covers, special covers, miniature sheets and couple of books. My brother and I were crazy about stamps during our childhood. On the way to school, my brother used to get down the auto to get a stamp and first day cover. Those days, these philatelic stamps were 60 paise and first day cover, Rs. 1.60. After few years, each stamp was Rs. 2.00. When I last bought stamps in 2003, rates were Rs.3.00. Now, it is Rs. 5.00. Best I got this time was a Jasmine miniature sheet - the sheet is scented with Jasmine! I bought a book which has a list of stamps of India from 1800 to 2007. On my way back, I wanted to experience Vajra bus (A/C city bus). I went to Majestic from GPO and then didn't find that bus. So, had to come in normal bus :). No doubt it was a wonderful experience to travel in the city bus after many years. The Cottonpet Road is such a di...

It was very sunny couple of days ago and my car was sweating in the hot sun. Just then, I remembered the invention of our dad in Hubli. After recollecting that, I was getting ideas of writing the great inventions of our dad. As kids, my brother and I were always amazed by the ideas of our, dad-the inventor :). 1) Car shade - In Hubli, we had bought a new Maruti 800 and took great care of our car. Since we parked the car in the portico, most part of the day, sun used to hit the car. To avoid this, dad made a beautiful idea of coming up with a portable shade. This shade resembled the olden day ceiling fan of Indian royal palaces. These fans were handled by the servants who used to operate it by pulling the rope. In dad's idea, he bought a big 4' x 8' mat and a thick nylon rope. He fixed the mat to the ceiling which had couple of hooks. When sun hits down, we used to bring down the curtain. 2) Mango plucker - Eventhough it was a replica of dad's childhood plucker, the one ...

Vaaggeya Vaibhava 2009 Vaaggeya Vaibhava, a 5-day music festival to commemorate all the composers of Carnatic Classical Music was organized by Balaji Sangeetha Vidyalaya and co-hosted by Sri Jayarama Seva Mandali, Bangalore. The main organizer of the festival was Vidwan D V Nagarajan, who is the head of the music school. I am fortunate to be one of his disciples. It was a great feast to all music lovers and musicians who performed at the festival. Kids, upcoming artists, music veterans - all performed and offered their tributes to the Trinity of Carnatic Music and to all Saint composers in Kannada. On Sunday (May 3), Vid. Anoor Dattatreya Sharma and Anoor Ananthakrishna Sharma were felicitated. Pancharatna recital by nearly 300 musicians marked the Sunday morning session. In the evening, Pandit Praveen Godkindi and Vid. Anoor Ananthakrishna Sharma performed a vocal jugalbandhi concert which enthralled the full capacity audience.

I was walking towards my bank this morning and I as was crossing the road, one auto-rickshaw (auto) guy inquired, "Where is PES College?" From this question, I clearly understood that he is not from this area. If that is the case, how can people improve the usage of auto-rickshaw? Many a times, citizens of Bangalore can't hire autos to their specific locality as there will be very few customers in that area. I was thinking - why not create a network of autos? If I was want to go to point C from A, I could take an auto to B and someone from B must connect me to area-C. That way, the empty trips of auto drivers can be reduced. Also, we can localize these autos and make the system work more efficiently. Basic thing is - create junctions and connect those junctions. I got this concept from transmission of packets over the network with hops. Do you think this idea would work?

Catching the milestones of babies is a very fascinating thing to mom and dad. I just realized that my wife and I are no different in this regard. We track every bit of development. Last week, our son who crossed 4 months couple of weeks ago, started to flip from his back on to his tummy. Since then, he flips during sleep too and sleeps on his tummy. From my childhood memories, I do remember that I always slept on my tummy. This seems to be my son's first matching of genes with his dad ;). As I was writing this, my mom and her friend doctor rang the door bell. My mom saw my son sleeping and told her friend, "his dad also used to sleep the same way as a baby"! What a co-incidence of writing this blog!!!