Which Way?

The Travellers

Varun "Sore to the eyes" Abhiram, Rakesh "Rakeesh" Kumar, Rakesh "I'm a telugu movie hero" Kumar

The Journey

The journey started like any other. The bus came late and started even later. Watched a brainless telugu movie called Varsham in the evening (they had worse movies playing afterwards)... and ironically it started raining cats and dogs at night! So heavily it was almost like something out of a horror movie. I hardly got any sleep at all - the bus kept stopping along the way because there was this little kid in the bus who had a little too much Fanta to drink and he had to 'go' every two hours. And well, I can't really sleep on an inclined seat anyway.

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Last time our tour guide had been to the places we were visiting was 6 years ago (he said that when he was introducing himself), so he had as much knowledge about the places as we did. The bus driver was someone who couldn't drive faster than 30km/hr and had the habit of applying the brakes after crossing the speed breaker (each time there was a red suitcase sliding from one end of the bus to the other). Oh and he was also as familiar with the places as the tour guide, so we got lost almost everywhere. As a result we spent more than half the trip in the bus. But it was a lot of fun thanks to the Sri Chaitanya lecturers who kept mocking the tour guide. So much so that the poor guy reached his breaking point towards the end of the trip. Then there was a heated exchange which obviously ended with the guide shutting his mouth. Needless to say, we had an incredibly entertaining time in the bus.

The Places

I've already written quite a lot, so I'll keep this short. You can thank me later.

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Ooty is definitely one of those must-see places! If you haven't been there already, go there the first chance you get. Nothing much to see in Bangalore except traffic jams, the Vishveshwara Museum and more traffic jams. Hardly any tourist spots in Mysore either (unlike Ooty, which is filled to the brim with them), but the Mysore Palace is another of those must-see places. I haven't seen such intricate architecture in my life! The paintings on the walls are so amazing they make Karthik look like someone learning to hold a pencil. Each room is a piece of art in itself. No wonder they don't allow cameras inside. Photos just won't do it justice. Like Morpheus says, "You have to see it for yourself".


Few (very few, I know) photos from the trip above. The good ones you will find uploaded to my photo gallery, one every week.

Broken

Made this wallpaper on the day I left for the trip. And I hadn't even packed yet.



Comments welcome. Trip update coming up shortly. I need to sleep now.

Remember, Remember, the 22nd of May

Because I finally got to see V for Vendetta! Absolutely loved the movie. And I saw it on the IMAX screen, so it was even better! The screenplay especially is fantastic (the dialogues are from the book?)... some excerpts from the IMDB memorable quotes page -


V: Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished, as the once vital voice of the verisimilitude now venerates what they once vilified. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin van-guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose vis-à-vis an introduction, and so it is my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.
Evey Hammond: Are you like a crazy person?
V: I'm quite sure they will say so.


[after a hail of gunfire doesn't stop V]
Creedy: Die! Die! Why won't you die?... Why won't you die?
V: Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof.


Well, all I can say is, if you haven't seen this movie yet, go book your tickets right now!

I also saw Darna Zaroori Hai yesterday. Now this is what I call a light horror film - not entirely serious, but still creepy in a fun kinda way. You might be confused, but that's the way it is. Loved the beginning of the movie when the title appears! The story with Randeep Hooda and the one with Rajpal Yadav were also really good. The movie was also technically superior to Darna Mana Hai with all the fancy filters and the slant/low angle shots. All in all, a movie you'll have fun watching.

I suck at reviewing movies, so if you're really interested, you can read Karthik's reviews of them here and here.

Now for the important news. I'm going on small trip with a few of my friends, we're visiting Bangalore, Ooty and Mysore. I leave the day after, and I'll be back on May 30. So no posts till then. And I won't be online either, so no use messaging me.


Edit: Just noticed that my 'Broken' photo made it to the weekly photo contest finals.

10,000 Photos

No, I'm not trying to make some smart reference to Tool (ok, maybe I am). It just so happens that when I transferred the latest bunch of photos to the computer, I realised I had crossed #10000! And unfortunately, the 10000th photo is one of ahem... plain, boring 'ol me. I was fooling around with the ISO settings that day and since I was the only available subject to shoot, I was shooting myself. If I had known I was approaching #10000, I would have never done such a thing.

Now since I'm such a sore to your eyes, I'll be kind and not put up the pic here. You don't have to make those signs of relief so obvious you know.

OK, now for some other news —

• It's Karthik's birthday today, so... Happy Birthday Karthik!! (better get this posted before midnight)

• Karthik also got an internet connection recently, and his blog is located here now. Lots of new posts there.

• Played Toby's Boulder Doch and saw Pablo's new photos. They rule! Elephants and Tortoises also rule!

• Posted a new photo on bytephoto.com. It's not great, but you should see it anyway.

• I'm reading a book! I can't remember the last time I ever read one (except textbooks, which I'm forced to).

It's Been A While

I'm done with exams, done with the craziest semester so far! Now I can get back to the things I love doing. Not that I haven't been doing the things I love all this time, it's just that I hope to do a lot more of it now. Sorry about the lack of updates the past month and a half. There will be regular updates here from now on, so you can visit often. You just love reading my posts, don't you?

I started writing a post about how the technical fest (if you're saying "What technical fest??", scroll down a bit) went earlier, but never finished it. I thought of finishing it today, then I realised you're probably not interested in reading about it anyway. One, because it's really old news. Two, why the hell do you care how our technical fest went? But since I spent some of my precious time during exams writing it, I won't let all that unfinished stuff go to waste. So here's the post in all its finished glory -

Ciencia '06

The response we got in such a short time was really good! I was surprised because the posters weren't put up in colleges early enough for people to actually notice it. Oh well, I guess the generous prize money helps you take notice of things. The attendence was very good the first day. Everything went off as planned. But then there was this very interesting talk on Security in the evening - it was so interesting that by the time the guy was done talking, there were about 3 rows of people left in the entire auditorium. Two rows out of the three were the lecturers - they unfortunately didn't have the luxury of leaving and were all trying hard to keep their eyes open. Well, now they know how hard it is for us to sit in some of their classes. The guy was really qualified, god knows why he talked about stuff even a school kid would know.



So anyway, after a very exciting close to the first day of the fest, we were almost certain no sane peron would show up the next day. And that was what happened. Nobody showed up the next day except the lecturers, the organisers and the people who were going to get prizes - they wouldn't miss collecting all that good money, would they? Too bad, because they all missed an excellent talk (no sarcasm here) on Entrepreneurship Skills by Mr. Neil Gogte of Leapstone Technologies. Oh and of course I was there because I was the unofficial official photographer covering the event (didn't take up the responsibility by choice in case you were wondering) since the official guy never showed up (intelligent fellow). So as a result, there are some cool pics of the event which you can see above.