If you're in Bangalore and haven't eaten at one of the Hyatt restaurants yet, do yourself a favour and have a meal here. The food and service both are outstanding.
The backpacker that I (like to believe I) am, I've observed that nothing compares to the flavour, freshness and personal touch of street food. Up until now.
Hey people, I haven't kept pace with the recent proliferation in taxi services. What is a good way to get from Bangalore airport to civilisation? Does it make sense to hire a cab for the whole day (someone else is bankrolling) if you wanna visit multiple places?
Watching a video in my news feed this morning, I'm suddenly staring at a familiar face. Good show Saudamini Jain, and congratulations. I know famous people now.
Blessed to be witnessing Vikkuji's performance live again. Must have been twelve years since the last one... was it March2Gujarat, March2Shiksha or March4AID?
Nilay can now officially cycle. Der aaye durust aaye. He says I should put this on Facebook "where all the people in the world are there". Talk about being a showman!
Speaking of Panneerselvam, can a Tamizh friend enlighten me what his name means, before I start making stupid jokes like "this Paneer fellow is raising quite a stink".
Now that we have gotten rid of Amma, can we change Chennai back to Madras. Or do we have to wait for the MKs and this Panneer fellow to be laid to rest?
Madrasi friends, need some help. Can anyone loan my team member a DVD drive (internal or external) and an Ubuntu CD for a day? Or a fast broadband connection (we will then take care of the rest).
This is how close we were to the stage yesterday :)
For those of you tuning in from the west, this is not romance, it's brotherly love.
I wish we could have stayed long enough to watch the whole vanvaas chapter. All the brotherly love between Lakshman, Bharat and Ram would have been a good lesson for my two naughty tots.
Thank you Jaya Goswami for absolute front seats to the Ram Lila. We had to race like crazy to make it, but it was worth all the effort. Look forward to seeing you soon in Delhi. Have a safe journey.
I found my 'Boys' (2003, Tamil) album after a long time. Kavin has been hooked to 'Girlfriend' and tries to sing along. "Papa please play that song which I don't understand". Nilay has performed his favourite, 'Boom Boom', for your listening pleasure. Quite the showman he is.
Moral: Rahman still rules. Barry, recommend some more albums for the boys. They refuse to hear anything else and I'm tired of the Boys album.
First World problems (while living in the third world):
My new Nexus 5 runs stock Android 4.4.4. My dated HTC One S runs Cyanogenmod. The notifications settings and home page capabilities of Cyanogenmod are so advanced compared to stock Android, that I find my new shiny phone unusable.
I've replaced a lot of stock firmware with open source versions before. But replacing Google's "true Android experience" with Cyanogenmod feels so wrong.
Anyone here work at CalSoft Pune? Please hang your head in shame, because your company sucks! Had a weird interaction with the CalSoft HR team. They wanted background check information on a former Thinvent employee. The amount of harassment that the poor candidate (and Thinvent) went through is simply shocking.
Delhi has stray cattle. Allahabad has stray swine.
Chennai has stray Emus!!!
I remember protesting against Emu/Ostrich farming at the Marina in 2001. Not only is the practice inhuman, it doesn't make economic sense either. But hey, now we have the novelty of stray Emu, so looks like it all ended well.
Tamil Nadu by road after eight years. I've been missing out on the good stuff.
The roads are still the best in the country. The coffee is refreshing even at random highway stops. The hills make a beautiful backdrop to the scenery.
But they still won't serve idlis after noon. Denial of service ho gaya.
Bengaluru Metro track passes within a metre of residential windows. No barriers for sound, privacy or security. Trust the bangalore administration to not think through simple things. Trust Bangaloreans to not put up a fight.
