Tag 4

I have been tagged by Mrunalini. I have no choice but to fill up the blanks and pass on the tag to four others. I have been threatened with ex-communication from the blogging community if I don't comply. So here I go.

4 Places I wish I never be in

• Babrala village, Meerut, UP - Not when you are waiting at 11:00 PM, for an 4 hour late overnight passenger train in this small village in eastern UP, amidst the many Bhaiyyas, their Bhabhis, Bahubalis, Netaji, police afisars and professional kidnappers (thankfully I had forgotten to wear my Armani that fateful day. sigh!)
• Chennai - 2 months of summer internship in the blistering hot weather, extremely limited supply of brackish water, unfriendly people (women in particular). My only wish is to convince all the bhavan's - Saravana, Murugan idly shop .etc.etc to shift to Mumbai and Bangalore, so that I can enjoy the delectable dosas and ghee pongal for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
• Mekele (Ethiopia) - 50% power deficit in a country with one of the highest crime rates among developing nations. You dare not venture out. Especially when the most happening shopping street with discs/pubs is called Chechnya for obvious reasons.
• Andheri Station - At 9:00 AM morning rush hour, Diamonds are waiting to be studded at SEEPZ, Computers are all ready to be booted up at Powai, Attendance needs to be marked at colleges in Vile Parle, Dabbas crying out to be eaten, Meetings already behind schedule at nariman point. Is someone's work more important than the other's?. Sadly, the trains are not smart enough to figure that out. what are you waiting for then. Chalo! Chalo! Chalo!

4 TV Shows I never liked to watch

• Rakhi ka Swayamvar - I never thought the institution of marriage can be made to look so silly. Just like when the half Canadian half Gujarati Elesh, professes his love to Rakhi in British accented Hindi "Rakhi tum bahut achhi, shaadi me-tum, main good husband banta". To which, Rakhi's brilliant reply " Okies! me loving Elesh too muchs. Me good wife becoming, homely homely types". Sic. Sic.
• Boogie Woogie for aunties, uncles and grannies - Dance is fun to watch. But .
• Telugu movies dubbed in Hindi on SET MAX - Forget the lip sync if there were any, dialogues and characters are so unlikely to ever speak hindi. Its funny, yes, but for just as long as you can bear it.
• Star Parivar awards for best performances in Saas Bahu serials - It requires some real public interest to appreciate the many layers in the emotions enacted by the finest actors in the most challenging of roles in some of the greatest epic dramas ever broadcast on TV.

4 places to see before I die

• Fjords in Norway
• Lake Baikal in Siberia, Russia
• Trek up the crater of Cotopaxi in Equador
• Diamond mines in Angola

4 dishes I would like to be served for lunch today

• Tofu/Paneer Malai Tikka for starters
• Kaju masala with garlic naan
• Thai green curry with steamed rice
• Sizzling hot brownie with vanilla ice cream for dessert

4 Books I started reading, but have still not completed

• Midnight's children by Salman Rushdie
• Atlas shrugged by Ayn Rand
• Imagining India by Nandan Nilekani
• White Mughal by William Dalrymple

4 Movies I Can Watch Again & Again

• Children of Heaven
• Sound of Music
• Independence Day
• Mckenna's gold

Here are four people, I tag. I can bet all my worth, none of these guys are ever going to fill the form and pass the tag to others.

Mahesh

Siby

Wayne

Kasturi - I heard rumours about some secret blog for a limited audience.

Curse of the Black Sparrow

For all the hatred & venom , I spewed on the black sparrow it is payback time now. Just when I was about to venture out of home, a routine mechanic check crossed my overcautious mind. I don't know if it was the mechanic or satan himself in disguise .. vetoed my bike journey. sob sob. Here I am in the painfully undesired comfort of neeta volvo, racing against time to keep my date @ pune. As if, that was not enough, I am being put through the grind of watching mallika in maan gaye mughal e azam. is jungle se mujhe koi bachaoooo!

A speck by any other name is called speck

Can you see the speck?. Yes, that's me. I have even tried to draw your attention with big bold letters, well that is as big as I have ever got till now. Someone said I am black, another one said I am white, I thought I better clarify it myself. But never before had a speck ever clarified, its blasphemous. No speck can ever get too big for his pixel!. The Someone didn't like black and the another one didn't like white. Neither liked me, so why bother to hear me out. I liked them both coz besides someone, there was only the other one. I lacked choice. I still stood out. But nobody seems to appreciate that fact. Some one chose one among the hundred similar white dots and other one chose one of the blacks. I have been asked to wait. As they say, that one day, someone will seek shades of grey. I am waiting.

Black Sparrow

Godspeed! or lets call that 60 kmph, though god wouldn't mind me going a few notches higher. Any amount of insistence on my part doesn't seem to perturb this junk piece of machinery called XCD 125, that a few years ago Jackie Chan sold on TV to gullible Indians, promising a cruising comfort, even a pseudo flying experience. By the time, we could discover that takeoff speed limit is 60 kmph, Jackie had fled the country and gone underground since then. May be such miracles happen in high altitudes of Wuhan settlement of Xian province. Definitely not in Chinchpokli village of Thane district.

Well, I call my bike Black Sparrow. It is no Black hawk or a Street hawk. It is just a small twittering sparrow. Now black sparrow has been put under my care by my friend Shyam Kumar CFA, who has gone back to his native village to work in the NREGS scheme. He believes, it pays better fixed salary and fringe benefits than his earlier job with an investment bank in Mumbai.

So Black sparrow and me have hatched this plan for a weekend outing. We will go driving from Mumbai to Pune and back over the weekend. Yay! Being a bike, a small bike at that, I don't have to pay toll at any of the roads. After the superb spell of rain over the last month, I expect every patch of land to be clothed in the splendid green, that my digicam captures so beautifully . Waterfalls all along the route would definitely add to the misty aura of my presence. Now picture this, a black bike in a misty green background posing with a handsome guy in a bright red T-shirt. Now, that the wardrobe has been decided, next is the route. Mumbai - Khopoli ( Zenith Falls) - Lonavala (Karla caves) - Kamshet - Pune it shall be.

Ohh, I forgot to introduce our gracious hosts at Pune, the good old Mr & Mrs. Mathew. Mr. Mathew or GURUJI as we youngsters so lovingly call him, is an epitome of innocence and simplicity that has won him so many fans on orkut over the last several decades. Well, I have also been promised an audience with the Ms. Kumari, the Crown Princess of Jharkand and Mr. Arren, Formerly the counsel to the Vice royalty of Kanpur.

Bertie, my dear roommate has promised to be a return companion. But black sparrow doesn't fancy him much, believes three is a crowd. With or without Bertie, the return trip plan is to take me to amby valley - pavna dam - Lonavala and back. I forgot to add, the sumptuous but expensive meal I have promised myself at Sunny Dhaba near Wakarphata on the old mumbai - Pune highway.

All planned and just a few prayers pending. I have offered my 2 rupee coin to Sea God at marine drive yesterday, which he gleefully accepted. I was made to understand this amount would go into keeping the tides low as well as internal transfer to the Rain God's account to keep my route clear and pleasant. Will drop another rupee today as well, just as a surety.

MCom. Pass.

Finally, did my first mobile commerce transaction. Purchased a Rs. 99 teddy bear and gifted it to myself. But for me the real value of M Commerce will be realised, when on a Sunday afternoon sitting at CCD, me & my friends suddenly decide to check out a movie at Fame Andheri a good 15 km away. Some utility, I must say. Now for Travel booking, I would any day find Internet more convenient. But gifting .. hmm .. me not the gifting types though.. But the application promises to be sooo cool, that I am tempted to try it out.

Fancy this gift shopping feature. My mobile has contacts of all friends with their postal address,email, mobile numbers and birthdays stored. Now I do get birthday reminders otherwise. But this application that runs on my mobile finds the birthday in the contacts table, reminds me to buy a gift ( from among the many options) and on purchase even pulls out the postal address for delivery of the gift. The reminder is also persistent asking me whether I really don't want to gift this person anything. Yes or No. This repeats all day, until I decide. Cool isn't it :).

Now sample this Movie ticket booking app, Come friday morning, you get reminder on the movies releasing on that day. You make a choice of movie and timing, it next asks to select friends or friends group to invite and automatically sends an SMS to them with the details. Their replies are also tracked. If you are taking your own sweet time to book tickets, it will also send reminders on the status of seat availability for the chosen show just to induce that urgency.

The third cool bit is the analytics. Mobile call usage trends, purchase trends, application usage preferences (games vs music/videos). All useful to target products and services more accurately.

But still somehow, I am still wary about keying in my credit card details on the mobile. The application developers have found a innovative way around it. Use of cash cards as an alternative. The Pre-paid cards limit the upside for any losses due to hacking, while providing the convenience of mobile usage for small token purchases. NGPay already accepts ITZ Cash cards for mobile transactions in India.

Yes, I can hear cynic in you shouting aloud, "I don't need any of these.. neither now nor in the near future". That's exactly why, you have the apps store application (like apple apps), which will catalogue all your application needs, so that the moment you need, the store application will download just the right application for you on the go.

A few other apps really impressed me at the store. Smart Sound Manager - keeps track of my workday calender and appointment schedule to automatically switch between silent and loud mode. Works really well for me. First, my windows phone synchronises with the outlook calender at office. Second, most often, I tend to switch from loud to silent while getting into a meeting. But once the meeting is done, I rarely remember to switch back to loud mode.

Just Do It is a smart task manager. The usual task manager on phone just maintains a list of TO BE DONE things. Most often, the list is obscured by other items competing for the limited screen space. So I never felt convenient using the tasks feature, instead stickling loyally to the good old post-it sticky notes. But this application, goes one better. It captures all the tasks in the form of a screen saver, which is activated after 10 seconds of idle time. Now, you have enough screen space with big fonts and a near perpetual display to catch your eye all the time. Now thats what I call a really cool e-postit.

Face2Face does something like face capture in a photo shot on the mobile phone. So after a click, it requests you to tag the faces identified with contacts on the phone, much like the tagging on orkut/facebook. Now all calls from friends will be accompanied by their smiling faces beckoning you to pick up the phone. For someone like me, who thinks a camera is the most useless accessory in a phone, this app comes as refreshing change.

Ofcourse, there are the usual suspects - the much written about GPS or bluetooth applications. I cant let my imagination go haywhire now.

It is just soo exciting, thinking about the numerous possibilities that mobile phones can create in the future ! Goose bumps!

Moon Peak

I have just finished reading Jeffry Archer's Paths of Glory. It is about the life of George Mallory, the unofficial first person ever to summit Everest, though there is no recorded evidence to prove that. Needless to say, I am mighty inspired. All I want to do now, climb up to the summit of any one of the Himalayan peaks, even the smaller ones would do. Now the problem is I don't have the time or the money to spend on a grand Himalayan expedition.

My criteria is simple

1) Mumbai - Summit - Mumbai journey should not take more than 5 days

2) Summit should be at least 5000m high with a height above snow line of at least 1500m

3) Me can't scale some steep snow cliff with ice axe and all, so difficulty level should be average

4) Definitely don't want to spend more than 20k all inclusive on the trip

Need to take quotations from mountaineering clubs or do some heavy duty Internet research ?

Naah ... I know the peak I want to scale. Ever since the day I saw it, over 2 years ago, I have climbed it at least 3 times, even saved a colleague's life once and survived an avalanche another time. Now its time do it for real. I feel it is the closest I will ever get to really being a mountaineer.

The name is Moon Peak and it towers behind Mcleodganj in Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh. The photo of the snowline as seem from the hotel, where I stayed. The snowline starts from a glacier called Triund, which was barely 9 km from where we stayed. I almost trekked there last time, had I not been held back by my lazy friends, who rather wanted to spend time playing cards, singing and dancing. But yes, the research was done nevertheless. Snow boots, sleeping bags and basic equipment all available for rent at Mcleodganj for a few thousand thousand a day. Professional guide is also available for a few hundred a day. It is a day's trek to Triund and another one day to peak and two days on the return. Since Dharamshala is well connected from Pathankot ( 2 hours), Assuming I would need half day each for the onward and return flights making it a total of 5 days - yipeeee !. Let me also clarify the climb doesn't require great mountaineering expertise. Loads of Enthu and some stamina would suffice.

Peak - Moon Peak (5010 m)

Base camp - Mcleodganj ( 2000 m)

BTW .. there are a few other peaks in Garhwal, Kumaon and Sikkim. Some of these are not easily accessible or others don't fit into my criteria.

Now coming to the purpose of writing this post. I need able and willing partners to give me company.

I am married. I am planning to get married. I am stuck up in project. I don't have any leaves left. I am broke. I am old. I am unfit. I think you are crazy. I better get back to my work.

These are list of acceptable excuses. If not, its worthwhile to give a thought on making this trip.

I am in no hurry. I just hope one day, We will be able to do this. :).