2023 has brought a few surprises, one being a change of job. So in between job changes, I found sufficient time to go for a trip. Yes, I did. And it was memorable. The places we covered were plenty and the distance we covered was plenty too. I wish to write all about them, provided time permits.
We started from Bangalore to SriRangapatna and then ended the trip at Ankola along the coast. How we moved from here all the way to coast is nothing short of pure fun.
More on that later. But then this trip was totally unplanned, in terms of places to stay, places to visit. There were couple of pieces of information which I had with which I went ahead.
Now when I recollect, I can say only one thing. All this happened because of God's grace. I feel God was and is the driving force. Second thing which I did after coming back was, I offered Prasadam of the temples to my gym trainer.
This was more of a remembrance, reason being my fitness to drive over a period of 7 days, depended much on my gym workout and my teacher, without which none of it could have been accomplished.
The year 2022 has been good by God's grace. The situation last year had made my stop writing. I had turned so much negative that writing ceased big time.
I was unhappy with my job profile, which currently still holds. I was very much disliked what I did on a day to day basis. More on that I can write later.
But in the month of February, I realized, I was missing my exercise. The whole pandemic scenario had cast a break in my workout routine. I had put on weight, I had my own frustrations and I was clueless. Few days I did have a jogging routine every morning.
But then, my office opened and it broke off. So in the month of February, my running routine too went off track.
With not much option left, I had to get back to what I loved to do the most, that is go to the gym.
And as I write this its been over 5 months I suppose, I have been regular, its been fun, I am seeing results too.
Monday and Tuesday I go to office, which leaves me with 5 days to exercise, but I make most of it.
I suppose most answers to life lies, either in the mountains or in the gym.
More on my habits during pandemic in the following posts!
Since the last few years, I have not been able to complete writing 100 posts a year. I have no regrets, I do have the content somewhere in my mind, which I can catch into at some later point.
There is one more challenge which I had taken on good reads, it was to complete a certain number of books a year.
I have been taking good reads challenge every year for the last 4-5 years and I average about 8 books a year for the last 2 years which is rather ridiculous (owing to kindle and few other stuffs).
This year too, I set 5 books and I am proud as of today mid year its been 7 books. My highest has been 20 I suppose all on kindle. Now that I plan to go to physical copy of books, I wish I can up the number.
After many years on Kindle, I thought of going back to buying books and reading printed books. Without much of a fuss, I made a list of books which I wanted to buy and then placed the order.
I got few of them used ones and I plan to few new ones. I realized, if I get used copy of the books, it amounts to the same as kindle books. In return, I get to hold physical copy of books.
Real reason of going back to buying physical books over kindle are as below.
1. Reading kindle feels slower - too many taps and touches later, I would not have completed even 10% of a book. Classics with 600+ pages end up taking too much time and if its not an interesting read, its even more slower.
2. Reading on a kindle after hours in front of a monitor feels a bit irritating. Though not completely, its the mindset which makes me think that I am staring at kindle which is another monitor.
3. Lack of inspiration - Though I have plenty of books on kindle, not seeing them on shelf causes me to abandon the reading pleasure. This results in lesser books read.
4. Home library - I always have and had a dream of a having a huge shelf dedicated to books comprising of multiple authors. So a step closer to that would be to start buying.
5. Business to local vendors - During lock-down many local book sellers might be having lots of stocks and offering discounts. Instead of buying online versions from bigger players it would be worthwhile buying from smaller sellers, doing my tiniest bit. (also I get to choose from used books versus new books).
6. Holding books, the various designer covers, the thought of classics being placed around the shelf with or without it being read is a pleasure. Waking up to them is nothing next to pure bliss.
7. Reading with marking - I always thought books to be kept clean as possible, but not anymore. Now I am even thinking of using markers wherever needed just for my pleasure. I know it might destroy the aesthetics of the reading experience, but then my reading joy and pleasure comes first.
8. Boasting about the books owned - ahhh - a childhood joy missed out, owing to playing in mud. Never mind, happy to be alive time to catch up.
Cheers,
PS - Downside is my parents are aware of my buying habit and not reading them. They also know that I find less time to read - so its easy to gauge how much I can read and how much I cannot.
I am very much influenced by few people from Television shows - One of them happens to be Edd China. I have been watching Edd from quite a few years may be 2013 - 2017 post which I stopped watching television.
It happens Edd was a part of very famous show Wheeler Dealers which I used to watch. Post that show, I did not know what happened to the show nor what happened to Edd.
Now Edd's back on youtube with a new series of videos under the title Workshop Diaries - which I follow very ardently. The show is all about fixing cars, which Edd does best.
Though owning a workshop, workbench, professional tools, working on cars is a dream of mine, which I am not sure if I can ever fulfill, because of the investment and time required.
One thing which I caught on from the show if not about mechanics - its about Edd China's way of drinking tea.
I am used to drinking tea the Indian way - where we boil water and milk and tea leaves in a kettle for about 15 mins and then drink the same.
But now I am trying to change and trying to incorporate the way Edd China drinks tea - its by boiling water in a kettle adding the boiling hot water to a mug having tea bag and then adding 2 spoons of milk!
Watch the show, I promise you will enjoy their tea break as much as the show!
I waited for two weeks before I got my pack of tea bags owing to lockdown, but boy o boy am I enjoying the new way of drinking tea? Yes I am.
Cheers!
PS - hope someday I get to work in a workshop with some tools too, fiddling with stuffs rather than just computer software!
My office announced a new WFH benefit a second one worth Rs 12k, but the clause was that, this shall be provided only upon purchase of an entity for the WFH aid. And if a person leaves an organization before 1 year, he has to pay it back.
I was initially hesitant to buy something, but then, I thought, what if I buy a new monitor, would serve 3 purposes altogther.
- Monitor with HDMI output aids in PS4 gaming.
- Bigger monitor aids working environment.
- Can run - deskop + office laptop + PS4 all three simultaneously.
So got myself a 25 inch LG monitor worth Rs 12.5k. It definitely helps me in PS4 gaming!
These days, apart from my routine office work, a bit of reading and few other things, I do also play on my PS4. The time spent on my PS4 was a bit less over the last year, owing to lots of things, one of them, being,
- the need to sit in front of monitor already for work, PS4 needed extended hours of time in front of monitor, which I felt drove me away a bit.
- monitor - I had a difficult time connecting my monitor to PS4 as it never had a HDMI input, and my PS4 had only HDMI output, I needed to convert HDMI to a VGA input and that converter had a power adapter add on, this HDMI output from PS4 also carried sound so needed a Auxillary cable which went from (HDMI to VGA) converter into the speaker.
- playing racing games on a PS4 controller without steering, I felt uneasy and cumbersome.
With all these hindrances of plugging I could not play as much as I wanted to. But then, recently I purchased a new game Dirt 4, but never mentioned why I did purchase the game.
I generally watch quite a bit of videos on youtube, about food, PS4 games, few on racing etc etc.
Youtube, prompted me a video on my recommendations which was new and it was about a F1 driver, driving BMW M4 on Nuburgring in Germany.
The driver was none other than Robert Kubica. The video was special and very special indeed. It prompted me to go back.
Robert Kubica had a horrible accident where there was a major impact to his right hand.
He made a come back to F1 which can be considered as an epic one, not that he went on to win etc etc, but the spirit of fightback he brought into the game is just immense.
If someone can come back and drive an F1 car with a hand injury, I felt, this man knows no excuse.
[You can read about Robert Kubica's rally injury on the internet]
I realized all of the above mentioned points of mine, were just a stupid excuse. I purchased a dirt 4 game the very next day of watching the video and I started playing, and in few hours, I got good hang of it.
Though I cannot drive cleanly in any of the stages, in the rally game, I usually end up winning with some damage on the car, but thats okay, I am back to playing!
Before ending the post, my heart felt respect to Sir Robert Kubica, Keep inspiring!
Cheers,
If you want to watch the video - its over here below.
The last post of mine was a month back where in I was attempting to open my laptop to disconnect the keyboard, so that, I can start to use it again. I was under the impression that the keyboard was faulty.
I had failed to open and as I had plenty of things on my mind, I left it as it is where it was and now almost a month later, I come back to it to see what best I can do with it.
Co-incidentally, I do have a desktop computer which has windows vista which is equally unused and now all the softwares over there are outdated and it needs a fresh OS installation to just make it usable.
So, considering, I do not have a bootable USB having windows 10 OS, I thought of asking a professional to do the installation in exchange for some money which would save me time. The so called professional who I was in touch absconded at the last moment, may be, because this whole exercise was not so profitable for him. He might cater only to big business now.
So, I thought until, I find a new vendor or bring in a bootable OS myself, let me make try my luck with the partially opened laptop.
And voila, I had it partially opened, partially detached the keyboard with one screw still sticking, and when I boot it guess what happened, the beep sound vanished and it successfully booted.
Though the keyboard does not work, as I type this from the same laptop, I am using a USB keyboard, which works out like a charm.
So, I am back in business :) at least until the time this laptop boots up and is running... I got loads to write and a month pending in a year. Let me try to write as much as I can.
Quite recently I figured out my laptop had a keyboard issue and thought to myself, if i could open my and unplug keyboard on my laptop, I would be able to use it using a USB keyboard instead of completely discarding the laptop usage.
So, I ordered a laptop repair kit online, and set out unscrewing. After removing three screws the main screw bolted to the mother board refused to budge and it left me totally frustrated. This was one of the reason for me not writing these many days.
A state of cluelessness had covered me, where in I just did not know what to do. I have precious data on my computer which I cannot format without taking backup. My backup hard disk has become unusable and I do not want to invest money on a backup disk, reason being, I do not need one.
I thought if I could fix my laptop and move its data around and format it, I would be good to go with blogging my mind out. But nope, no such luck, and I am back to square one.
I ordered a new game for PS4 and it arrived within a day, reason being, the seller was from Bangalore. It is Dirt4. It is a game which I wanted to buy few months ago. I remember the game was costing 4k an year back. Now the cost has come down, I got to buy it at a lesser price.
Price is not the only reason I was buying this. I wanted to play this game on PS4 because I was bored of all the games I have.
1. GTA5 - too lengthy missions and play time makes me play less. Plus joystick controls make me not achieve good results in mission instead just scrape to completion.
2. Project Cars2 - I infact love this game. But after a while, I have advanced in career mode and driving with joystick and controller makes driving hard. The car just skids and is out of traction and control. I am unable to proceed to win races.
3. Call of Duty - Well - Stuck in a level which involves flying a ridiculous aeroplane. I can never clear this. Plus COD - missions appear to be less intuitive and fulfilling.
4. Unchartered - have multiple discs which I haven't opened. COD has left me bored. Do not want another shooting game.
Planning to order cricket for PS4.
Recently I was speaking with someone on a steering wheel for PS4 to play driving games. But then, considering, how much I play and many things which I have in mind, apart from playing on PS4, makes me not to invest such a huge amount on a steering wheel.
Cheers,
For now, started playing Dirt4, for an hour today. got free time during office hours, while my other team members were busy with their own self induced production or release issue, caused by their own stupidity. Well, atleast they left me unbugged for a day with peace.
It might be my second or third time around, that I am deleting my quora account. I had re-logged into quora for some specific reason not sure around few months back and I had decided not to read much on quora.
But during lockdown, I started reading on quora again, because lockdown gave me ample time to attend meetings and it was during meetings that I was spending time reading on quora.
At one point in time, I felt it was too much of content which was made freely available. Most of the content was of no use to me nor it aided me in any way plus, it wasn't written by anyone famous or by any best selling author.
I figured out, anyone and everyone who wanted to become a writer, improve his or her writing skills used to write crappy answers and I was being used as a guinea pig in the form of reader.
So, it was high time, I put an end to it, and hence chose to do so.
I have not been writing as much as I wanted to, owing to lack of equipment. I do not have a proper personal computer to make an entry and using a borrowed setup which itself has a weird feel to it, makes me write less.
None the less, I have made up my mind to post multiple things tonight, let me do justice to it!
There are a multitude of things which have happened over the last 3 weeks. I have to make a list of all the posts in the beginning so that I do not forget about it. And those are the things which shall come out in different posts.
1. Deletion of quora account (yet again).
2. Dr SPB and his influence coupled with childhood memories.
3. Fleetwood Mac band - Rumours of FM, skateboard guy.
4. Office work.
5. Thinking of writing in a diary.
6. Recent ad on television on coding for kids - 6 year olds and marketing gimmicks.
7. My new PS4 title - Dirt 4.
8. Failed attempt to open up my laptop.
9. Failed attempt to read a self help book, rather failing to read anything after Feluda and Satyajit Ray.
Another favorite song from Sting - I still remember listening to this song on the radio- back in 2002, when there was no youtube, this song was still a rage. Though its from 1992 a good decade earlier.
Guitar of Dominic Miller is nothing less than soothing!
Cheers,
PS - I have clocked 1000 posts - though few of them are in drafts, but over all, this happens to be 1001th post!. Pat on my back, doing what I love!
Seven Days - this song by Sting - is one of my favorites. It started out with trying to get a hang of the beautiful lyrics. But then if you see the video, its the drumming which is beautiful. I know its a team performance.
Believe me, the drumming is special and I only noticed it after reading the comments then listening to it over a good headset. Now as I write this post, I am listening to it with a good speaker and high bass setting. Mind you, Sting is playing bass guitar.
Drummer is Vinnie Colauita - The beauty of the drumming is - how he uses up almost all the cymbals he has over there - and the high hat and tom-tom as well! "No show instead all go".
Now I wonder - knowing how to drum is different - but - key to getting noticed is a pair of legendary artists like Sting and Dominic Miller, and the keyboard player, forgot name - its team work after all :)
I think, exercise is something, which was very crucial to me for the last 6 years. I had to forego regular gym workouts during this lockdown. I do feel bad, not being able to workout. But gyms have opened recently, also working out at home needs a bit more seriousness which I currently do not or did not have.
I do have maintained a regular schedule of running and controlled eating over the past few months, which has made me realize that, I still fit into my older trousers, though I haven't tried all of them.
Our gym has opened. People have started coming, but the fear still looms and I have chosen to wait and then re-join gym. But in a way - I have got a break from the regular routine of exercise.
Taking a break from blogging, would let me have lots of time for work. One the work front, I was working on a parallel project which failed to take off, instead got restricted to one business unit and I stopped working on the same.
The mainstream project ran into a bit of anarchy and work was not that enjoyable. It became a daily routine and it can be attributed to few people who have misled the management and other people. So now, the damage has been done and these people have jumped off the ship and moved to a different team.
So gate keeping code post release has come to me and one more guy in the team, who is a fresher. This has not only brought down my morale, also, after working in a high standard German project, looking at bad standards of coding and designing makes me feel frustrated, yet, I cannot vent it out anywhere nor bring about a change.
Reason? - reason being seniority, people misleading the effort are all established folks in the project and management looks to them for answers :) So, playing wait and watch game, and waiting for an opportunity to scrap bad pieces of code and re-write to my own satisfaction in coming days. If that ever happens, imagine - sleepless night and tight deadlines. Until then, its just routine work!
So, work wise there is work, just that, not so challenging!
This song is very special to me or rather its very special. I had shared the song with few people, and asked if they could figure out something attractive or different or unique about the song.
Irony is nobody listened to the song, forget identifying something unique or attractive. I always I have wondered my tastes in music haven't met a match or a similar person in my known circle.
Believe it or not, when my German colleague shared a Fleetwood Mac album as his favorite on Facebook - boom, I realized, I finally found one person who shares a common musical interest, be it Fleetwood Mac or be it Pink Floyd! (Though I am not a huge fan of Floyd - just a okie dokie fan).
I am a huge fan of Fleetwood Mac, and I consider it to be the World's #1 most under rated band ever.
Let me come to the song as is, before I forget the intention of the whole post.
1. I initially felt the song to be unique because of the lyrics which was telling a story about personal lives of the band mates.
2. Then I saw the video and heard the singing of Stevie - I kind of liked the way - Stevie pronounced the phrase - "Sea of Love". So I felt, this could be the highlight of the song.
3. But then in the beginning of the song - in the video - I could see - Stevie trying to move her shoulders and dance trying to groove to the tune, which again I felt was very special and thought as the highlight of the song. She's fully covered and trying to move shoulder and hips looks very petite and pretty.
4. Christine McVie's hands on the piano play was too good, so I thought this overshadows everything else.
5. Then I felt, Lindsay's guitar picking too felt too good which again over shadowed the above points.
6. But then again, I found something more concrete and more attractive. In the song, Stevie does backing vocals too, which sounds amazing and she's full of confidence. All the other versions of the same song, have other people doing backing vocals, but here, starting at 2:05, Stevie herself does backing vocals. Believe me doing singing and backing vocals during live program - you need to be at your best. So this fitted to be the highlight of the song and very well it was for sometime.
But then again, I listened to the remastered version of this song on my mobile using a good headset and boy what I observed was something totally different, then I felt, I had to write about it.
I have covered most instruments in the song, except two, John's bass guitar and Mick's drums. John's guitar gets overshadowed by Mick's drums.
So, finally I realized the highlight of the song was the drums and you need to carefully observe why the drums are the highlight over here. The sound of the drums are very distinct over here.
Listening to the sound and watching the video, you realize, the instruments used are ::
- bass drum - high hat - and a floor drum
If you see, how Mick is playing the drum set, it needs two feet and two hands all occupied.
A leg for bass drum, a leg for high hat,
two hands for floor drums.
Imagine all four playing throughout the song in sync with one another and in sync with singing and other instruments - o boy - there you get your answer.
Mick's drumming was the most difficult part, because, two hands and two legs have to co-ordinate amongst themselves, before they co-ordinate with others and instruments.
Again no credits stolen from Stevie - who now happens to the only woman to be inducted into RocknRoll hall of fame 2 times! Its her song!
I have listened to the song multiple times and each time, the bass drum just impresses me more and more! Mind you, you need to have a good speaker, headphone or sound system to get impressed!
Imagine, how much practice is needed to get to this level of perfection, and yet you see the effortless drumming of Mick, Mick my respect to you!
Cheers to Mick!
Glad I got this post through, waiting in line for over 3 weeks.
The year 2020 has gone, pretty well, in terms of reading, up until the last couple of months. I do not know, its called the what syndrome, but something affected my reading.
One reason again, could be too much interaction with people, which I definitely have to put it on top of my list. It does hamper when your work gets into your after work hours.
Also, there was one post on pinterest which said - there are times, you wish a book would never end. I think I recently went through such a phenomenon.
Couple of months back, I finished reading adventures of Feluda by Satyajit Ray and believe me, Feluda and Topshe had become like family to me, knowing there would be no more of their adventures, meaning, I had read them all, turned out to be very disappointing and rather heartbreaking.
It has been difficult to move on to any story which has no presence of Feluda. Such was the charm of Satyajit Ray's writing that, I do not feel like reading anything else. The same had happened post my reading of Tintin, but back then, I was a kid and I had an option of playing in mud just to forget the unavailability of more Tintin stories. But now, this year especially, it was tough.. I shall write a post on the Adventures of Feluda later, but this was and is the primary reason for reading less.
Though I started reading autobiography of Goggins, I could not make much progress. I have recently started reading Atomic Habits by James Clear, let me see, if I can pickup some pace on it.
Many more books lined up, I do have set of short stories by Satyajit Ray himself, but knowing it won't be Feluda - feels kinda sad - 1500 pages of Felu babu, LalMohan and Topshe was indeed pure pleasure, if not anything else,
I tried playing post work - But again - there were couple of reasons which made this activity of mine take a backseat.
1. I do not have a spare monitor to play. I can connect to a television to play but the aiming of a weapon on a 40+ inch TV is too difficult. So I thought I would stick to a 21 inch monitor. Considering, I use the same monitor for work, plug and play of play station each time is an effort in itself. So not having a permanent place for playstation makes me play less.
I shall someday buy a new monitor and play without any fuss :), which by the way is again a luxury :)
2. Headaches - After a whole week in front of PC, spending hours in front of PS4 got me headache. Plus play station needs concentration and thought process to be running. It needs energy too. Most of the times, I do not have that bubbly self to engage in a game of GTA5- which would require me to drive a car through the city of Los Santos - and completing missions is kind of lengthy. Will do it some day soon! Until then procrastination :)
