I just passed into the realm of Joblessness!!!

• It takes 2762 steps from my apartment to the end of the road.
• There are 36 peahens and 3 peacocks in the house behind out apartment building
• It takes the pav bhaji wala 16 minutes and 47 seconds to get my order
• My fish can stay still for half an hour at a stretch
• I can play crappy guitar for 13 minutes before someone gets irritated
• I bargained for a pimped out watch and got it down to Rs 150 from Rs 450.

Kite Flying

Every year, the month of February used to bring a lot of excitement in me. The fact that my birthday falls in February was just part of the reason. Another part was a holiday we kids were so looking forward to. That of Uttarayan - The Festival of Kites. Being a South Indian, I was not a natural at flying kites. but that never stopped me from running along with the other kids with those long sticks and the Langis (a stone tied to a long piece of thread to be used like a sling) to catch kites that got cut in a fight. I was also interested as hell to be able to fly kites like the local kids. The kite flying festival is so intense. People get threads which are dyed with color and glass powder so their thread is "sharper" than the others in a fight. There are also those numerous tricks involved to cut the other kite.

I enjoyed this festival for about 8 years before i got cut off from it when I shifted out of Baroda. I did try a hand at kite flying now and then but as it turns out, Gujarat and Uttarayan is the best place and time to do so. So now that I am in Ahmedabad, I at least got the place right. I scouted the city for two days and finally found a place where they sell kites off season. Payed twice the price and got the kites and the thread. Me and my room mate went to the roof of our apartment and got the kite to fly. Well, it wasnt that smooth. It took me about a half hour of trying to finally get it up. It went up about 200 meters when the eagles started attacking it for some reason. But then, it was so much fun dodging the eagles and sometimes even chasing them with the kite. my first attempt didnt last very long as the kite tore after half hour of flying. Or maybe the thread came loose. But even then it was a real exhilirating and satisfying experience.

I went up to the roof again the next day and flew it much higher. My estimate is about 700 meters of thread. This time it was up for almost an hour until we decided to get it down due to lack of light. It was a much more complete kite flying experience this time as I achieved a perfect landing!! :)

Flying Stampedes

So we are three guys (Jasdeep - Jas, Will and myself) who are the engineering interns at Distributed World Power. We are the only interns who are here yet. We have been busy for the past few days setting up the "Engineering Division", and starting up new experiments. We are presently working on preliminary system tests. I have got the opportunity to work with LEDs for the first time. I am facinated by that technology. I get to test their charecteristics and brightness and stuff which is pretty cool.

Today we got down to rearranging our office to create an engineering section. While coming up with a name for the engineering team, Jas came up with 'Flying Stampedes'. And for some reason, that name is still sticking to us, though we don know what that means or why we call ourselves that. Anyways, now that we have our own space and all experiments ready to start, things should get much more interesting.

Of Dal Bhati, Srikhand and Char Rastas...

I grew up in Baroda, Gujarat, with a lot of memories. It used to be a quaint little city at the banks of the Vishwamitri river with a very beautiful and rich history and culture. Its adorned by the Royal Palace of the Gaekwad family and has a lot of museums and gardens. In many ways it can be called a twin city of Mysore because both Mysore and Baroda Royal Families were very closely connected and both cities were modeled along the same lines. I remember roaming around the old city areas of Nyay Mandir and Mandvi and having kachoris at that famous shop around the corner in the market area. My time in baroda has been the most fun time I have ever had.

All those memories of mine came back to me like a flash back when I visited the old town areas of Ahmedabad yesterday. Being here on an internship might be the best thing I have done in a while. We were roaming around Gandhi road and Relief road for hours. It was so similar to Nyay Mandir and Mandvi areas of Baroda. Those stuffed, dingy shops, the hot humid weather, those really old multi-storied housing above the shops (some of them as old as the city itself), Those zillions of wires cris-crossing the space above the roads, Those sandals, clothes and kites stuck in those wires, all these made up for such a wonderful experience. Maybe I was laughed at, maybe I was ridiculed, but I could not help taking these pictures. It was as if I was roaming around in my childhood again. The only thing missing was my Dad's or my Mom's hand dragging me along.