My Watch: Casio G-Shock

Was playing with different camera settings, liked this snap & hence sharing.
Photo Credits: Atul T.
Camera: Fuji FinePix S3000
Mode: AF

Weekend shopping!

Saturday, I had been to Bombay (Mumbai, as it is now a days called) for shopping. This probably was the first time I've ever participated in shopping clothes! Yes, all other times I just used to go and act as a model putting on everything my Mommy n Daddy asked me to. But this time I was a GOOD Boy and helped a lot in shortlisting the clothes and of course modeling too! We had gone to Heera Panna (in Haji Ali), one of THE places in Bombay to shop if you want quality stuff with decent prices. With more than 150 shops in the complex you can really experience the phenomenon of "Shop Till You Drop!". You get lots of things there: clothes, electronics (PDAs, mobiles, players, etc), deodorants, cosmetics, footwears, home appliances, and almost everything that can be imported! Spent most of the day there and an hour or so at Crossroads (where, after NO energy left to choose things, we only did window shopping).

Sunday, as usual, played football, we had only 14-15 guys on the ground, but, of course, enjoyed playing. With the on-going tournament concluding we expect more people to return (read 'they better return') to their regular game. Kanbay bags the first position (heard Sameer's performance and composure despite Infy scoring the first goal in initial 5 minutes of game was marvellous, which in essence got them thro the game well), followed by Infy and then Persistent.

After dozing for rest of the day until I had no desire to sleep any more, I went to cousin's place in the evening and there on idiot box (read TV) I happened to see ( ... yuck!..., sorry) "Coffee with Karan" ( ... yuck! ...) !!! And ( ... yuck! ....) what do I ( ... yuck! ...) tell you about this (... yuck! ... ... yuck! ... ... yuck! ... ... yuck! ... YUCK!) Well, I'm sorry guys, cannot proceed any further, but hope you got the message ;-)

Nothing more interesting .... Am back to ground zero as of this writing and supposed to report to my manager with weekly status (excluding this weekend stuff).

Ocean's Eleven ...

Nevis Gang on Singhghad Trek on 22nd May 2004.
Standing L-R: Ranjeet, Kiran D, Gaurav, Keyur, Meghana.
Sitting on bar L-R: Prabhat, Amit K, Atul, Deepti N, Mayuresh, Ramesh.
(Photo Title suggested by Suguna M).

The Alchemist: Paulo Coelho

Just finished reading 'The Alchemist'.
The book is about a shepherd, Santiago, who leaves his homeland in search of treasure hidden near Pyramids, far far away from his homeland. He believes so strongly in his dream, that he abondons his age old profession, at which he is damn good. Childish, as it may sound, but it's a story which says how important it is to hold onto your dreams. The point author tries HARD to drive is the 'Follow your Dreams', come what may! It's all about positive attitude and taking everything in the right spirit, listening to what your heart has to say and imerse yourself 100% into task at hand! My GOD! I just revealed the secert formula for success! Don't believe me ... well ... just read the book and see for yourself how all the universe conspires to help you achieve it, if only you have the persistence to follow it with all the faith you have and believe in your dreams.
If you are interested, you can read an extract here. Feel free to borrow my copy.

Moral:
Hold fast to dreams for if dreams die ...
Life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly!

Nevis' First Anniversary!

Nevis celebrating it's First Anniversary by pool-side (on 2nd April 2004).


Top L-R : Deepti Nambiar, Deepti Khanna, Archana, Meghana, Arun, Atul (gray T-shirt).
Bottom L-R : Suguna, Boney, Amol.
(photo credits Raghu).

Mahabaleshwar!

Splendid view on the way back from Mahabaleshwar!

Feel free to comment, help me improve this photo.

My First photo on blog!

Arun, Sreeni and Me (Left-to-Right)


Taken at IBM (Pune) campus.

Mughal-E-Azam: Gets wonderful in Colour!

This Diwali, I watched Mughal-E-Azam in color! It took about 30 million rupees ($660,000) to colourize the original. And I should tell you it's a must-watch movie! The movie is coloured so well that no one can say it was originally a B&W movie. And of course the movie itself is also *AMAZING*. If you haven’t seen it, go for it NOW! If you like Songs or like Direction, or like Acting, or like Dresses, or like Movie Sets, or like Lyrics, or like Dialogues, or, like Love Stories, or (not to mention) love Madhubala [1] and [2], then let me tell you that this one has it all, it indeed is a FEAST waiting to be devoured! Many of the movies have focused on the ill-fated love between Mughal Prince, Salim (Dilip Kumar) and courtesan Anarkali (Madhubala) but none, till date, have come close to the grandeur of Mughal-E-Azam! I personally consider it to be one of the most meticulosuly directed movie ever made in Bollywood. Of the many facts about the movie, the stunning one is that it took well over a decade to complete it (somewhere around in 1960s), and you will notice no difference in looks of any of the characters! Isn't that splendid! What the hell ... , No!!! Well, then check out for yourself and come back with your comments, I'm waiting to hear from you!

[1] http://www.rumela.com/gallery/madhu_bala
[2] http://www.bollywoodpicturesgallery.com/madhubala.htm

My Weekend!

My Weekend update!
Played Volleyball after a long-long break due to the on-going corporate football tournaments. Enjoyed a lot but those suckers (read Deccan Gymkhana) have rented the volleyball court to some outsiders, and they occupy the court for most of the time. Occasionally they play match with our guys, but only 6 senior-most of the guys get to play :-( So I have to be satisfied with out practice. Nonetheless it was fun. As a rule (for myself) had gone to play football Sunday morning with the Univ United gang! Only 12 guys turned up but we enjoyed every minute of the game. No movies this weekend, how sad :-( Other than these, I did nothing worthwhile sharing. Looking ahead for a cool week ahead as Diwali is closing in!

Wish you all the bloggers/non-bloggers:

A Very Very Happy Diwali and Prosperous New year well in advance!

My Books Wish List (Non-Techie)!

Remember Wish Lists? Well, I was reading someone's blog when I tumbled upon his Wish List link, eagerly I clicked on it. And vooo...! That's what I wanted, a way to maintain Book Wish list and share it with buddies. Here [1] is the my wish-list of non-technical books (Technical books list to follow soon). It's still INCOMPLETE, and I plan to update it regularly, so keep visiting my blog [2] for I'll post a message here as and when I update it. Before this, I've been maintaining my Books Wish List as an M$ Excel sheet (and still maintain it as primary copy). You can sign-up here at Amazon and create your wish list! Nothing great about it, but *THE* best part is that you can share your wish list (yes exactly for the reason that someone might happen to read it and gift a book or two. It works great if you, unlike me :-(, have a GF ;-) LOL ).

Links:
1. If, for some reasons, you cannot view the list, and read the post all through this point, implying you are really interested in having a glimpse of it, go to amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist-homepage.html/ and type in my mail address (princeatul at gmail dot com) to search for my list.
2. http://the-shaolin.blogspot.com

Geometric Beats Nevis off the Super Six :-(

Well, the game started off pretty well, our captain had made an amazing strategy to the detail of whom to substitute after how many minutes of the game. We had marked their forward (Satish, if I'm not wrong) pretty well, to the extent that he started cursing-n-abusing his team mates for the incompetence of not being able to pass the ball to him. The ball was in their half for most of initial 10-15 minutes. But Alas! The joy was short lived, our defense slackened and this chap got pretty good passes, one of which he converted very well. This brought the morale of the whole team down and in the second half we took one more goal. We played pretty well in the forward, with about 3/4 shots hitting unluckily to the poles and a few just passing past the goal. But that was unavoidable since we had a BIG BIG hole in the mid-field forcing our forwards to carry ball all the way from midfield to the D-line. By the time they reached there, they had no stamina left to judge *where* to hit. We lost with 0-2. But our team's performance has improved a lot compared to what we were during previous tournament organized by Pugmarks. But guys, the spirits are still high and we intend to practice with more rigour. May GOD bless us!