Spontaneous Serendipity

After missing last year’s IPL-1 Opening ceremony, I had made a resolve not make the same mistake again… so we were there, the entire family – enjoying one of the most breathtaking international entrainment package India has showcased in recent times – Champion’s League Opening Game/Ceremony. And as expected, Neiv had a gala time in enjoying the laser lights, music, sixes and of course firecrackers.

The entire ceremony was pretty engaging, Dance mix theme of east meets west was good and performed well. I think Jamilia singing her hit single “Superstar” was a high point of the ceremony. Shaggy was also there but he has kind of become stale and I personally would have preferred some Indian star to perform there instead (Rehman or Sukhwinder would have been great!)

Being a hard core supporter of Royal Challenger’s Bangalore team… I loved each and every shot hit by Uthappa or Tyler but seeing Dravid hit a six was high point in the evening and was worth every Rupee spent on the tickets Too bad the home team lost in the end… thanks to amazing batting by Duminy (99 not out!) but a close game with last ball finish under flood lights and near capacity crowd ensured that the Spirit of Cricket was the real winner!

All in all, it was a thrilling game, entertaining ceremony and a joyful evening!

Pictures have been uploaded here.

Check out pictures and video of Neiv’s Third Birthday that we celebrated last week within family.

Club Mahindra Resort

The plan to go to Coorg was made within minutes when Angshuman & Shipra came up with a brilliant proposition to make bookings at Club Mahindra Resort for all of us. The idea was to just go there, relax and enjoy the rains… and we ended up doing exactly the same!

We originally planned to reach the place around noon but due to pathetic road condition in the fag end, we got delayed by over two hours. Initially, we were really surprised by the excellent road condition between Mysore and Khushalnagar (80kms) but the road thereafter, for the last 26kms, could be best described as “barely motor-able”.

We had a late lunch at the resort on day one, followed by some game activities in the “Fun Zone”. Neiv liked the children play area but rains played spoilsport for him. It continued to rain the entire evening and we decided to call it a day and have a quiet relaxing evening at our room. It continued rain the whole night.

In the morning we enjoyed an elaborate breakfast at the resort and then headed for Abbey falls, which is around 10kms away. The road to falls is a single lane, mountainous and very scenic.  As it hadnt stopped raining we waited for the rains to slow down before heading out towards the falls. Neiv was specially very excited while going towards the falls. We later realized that all the excitement was as he actually expected to see Dinosaurs in the forest/near the falls

Abbey Falls

The falls, which are about 300m away from the parking area, were in the full glory at this time of the year with +9% extra rainfall being blessed in the state of Karnataka this season. However, due to the increased water flow, access to the falls was restricted.  Seems you could sit under the falls during summers, when the falls are just a trickle.

We again spent the rest of the day indoors, enjoying the rains and few games of “dumb charades” while Neiv watched his Fav show “Tom & Jerry” on the DVD.

Next day, we started our return journey immediately after breakfast and though we had planned to make a stopover at the Buddhist Monastery @ Khushalnagar,  as Neiv dozed off enroute, we decided to skip it and directly head home. We reached Bangalore/home at around 5PM after almost a non-stop drive with just one coffee break.

Summary: Coorg disappoints you as a tourist place… all the sight seeing place are scattered far away from each other and the connecting roads are pathetic. But I would still rate the trip as a good one as it was a relaxing trip at a nice resort with excellent food and the entire trip was planned & executed without hassles

How to Reach Coorg From Bangalore: Bangalore – take SH17 to – Ramanagram – Chennapatna – Maddur – Mandya – Srirangapatnam – Mysore – Take right at Ring road towards Hunsur – take right/merge into SH88 – Hunsur – Khushalnagar – Medikeri (Kodagu/Coorg).

Road Condition:
- SH17: Excellent, 4 Lane, pothole free
- SH88: Excellent, 4 Lane till Hunsur and 2 lanes till Khushalnagar (80kms), pothole free. Thereafter the road becomes pathetic, 1 lane, mildly mountainous and full of potholes.

Thanks again to Angshuman and Shipra for giving us company (& of course for the free stay!).

You can check the pictures here.

Cheers!

Bugged Fox!

In case you are an avid Firefox user, it highly recommended that you be cautious when you install Ask.com toolbar. Once installed, Ask.com toolbar messes with Firefox settings and adds the below given string to whatever address (URL) you type. Hence, you are not able to open any webpage and you keep getting the same error message everytime you enter an address (URL).

“Firefox can’t find the file at jar:file:///C:/Program Files/Mozilla Firefox/chrome/en-US.jar!/locale/browser-region/region.properties”

Quick Solution:

1. Uninstall the toolbar from Start >> Settings >> Control Panel >> Add/Remove Programs
2. Go to FireFox install Directory (likely,  C:/Program Files/Mozilla Firefox/Components)
3. Delete AskToolbar.js
4. Restart FireFox and you are done!

And no, this error doesn’t have anything to do with Google Chrome Browser!

Happy Browsing!

After struggling with sluggish performance of my laptop for a long time, last week I finally devoted few hours and some efforts to fix it. And, I would say I am impressed with the little tricks that I learned which improve performance.  Listed below are few things that all PC owners should perform at least once in 3 months of daily use:

1. Defragmentation: Fragmentation of hard disk is the biggest culprit.  Make sure you defrag your drives as frequently as sanely possible. I recommend using a defrag software that does auto-defrag and a lot of other things in background whenever your PC is idle, I like DisKeeper.

2. Clean up you Registry:  Clean up your registry once in 3 months using any free/paid SW like RegistryVictor.

3. Create a New Profile: This is a tricky one, not recommended for rookies. Take a back up of your settings/favorites/Outlook rules/etc and then, reboot your PC in safe mode. Go to your user profile folder (dont try this if you dont know where profile folder is!) and rename it to something else (like X.orig) . Reboot in normal mode. Next time you login, Windows would recreate a new profile folder for you. When you login, you’d notice that all your settings would be gone. But, I bet that you’d notice improved performance.  Restore settings/favorites/Outlook rules/etc. Copy Desktop, My document, etc from your old renamed profile folder. Just be careful to copy only the things you need to avoid bringing in the reason that slowed your PC in the first place. Use your PC for few days or when you are sure you’ve copied everything you needed,  just delete the old renamed folder. This you could do once in six months.

4. Run windows “Disk Cleanup” to delete Temp files.

5. Delete Junk: RegistryVictor also deletes the junk getting accumulated or do it yourself.

Note: No matter what your PC configurations are, unless you perform at least few of the things mentioned here, you computer WILL slow down with usage.

1958 - 2009

An Era ended today.

Michael would always be remembered for his music, his style, his path breaking videos and the fact that he led the entire world music scene for over a decade. Click here to view his obituary on BBC.

The world salutes the King!

In Michael’s own words:

- from “Gone Too Soon”, Michael Jackson.

After many postponements, replanning, etc we finally embarked on the coveted weekend road trip to Ooty. We were assured of good times as Angshuman & Shipra were accompanying us.

The Journey: We started at 8:30PM and reached Mysore via SH17 at 1AM after a pit stop at McDonalds for post-dinner snacks . We were delayed a little en route as we were stopped thrice by the cops for complete vehicle search. In Mysore, Vivek and Yogesh were courteous as ever and gave us shelter for the night. Next day, as we finally left Mysore at 9AM after heavy breakfast at a local deli, I estimated to reach Ooty by 1PM. The NH212 road till Gundlupet is pretty good but was so boring that Neiv dosed off immediately. The road thereafter becomes NH67 and is potholed-to-non-existent for next 10kms.

We had expected to see some animals in Bandipur National Park and were not majorly disappointed as we saw some deer, elephants, peacock and ofcourse lots of monkeys! Before crossing Karnataka state border, forest guards stopped us for complete vehicle check… 4th time in this journey! On entering TN state and Madumalai Tiger Reserve, cops again checked our papers/license. On seeking directions, the humble cop aptly asked us to take left onto a SH67 road after 4kms instead of going straight on the longer NH67  and we heartily oblidged

SH67 is a single lane road for the most part that runs thru the deep forest till the climb starts. The road climbs at an angle of around 35 degrees involving 36 hair raising hairpin bends. Initially, I had to put my WagonR in gear 1 to make it chug along, but later on it took the load in gear 2 very easily. The best part of this stretch of road is that you could amazingly feel the steep drop in temperature and atmospheric pressure. We reached Ooty ahead of schedule at 12 Noon and were resting in our Hotel rooms by 12:30PM.

Day 1: Botanical Garden and DoddaBetta peak
We started at 1:30PM from Hotel and had a buffet lunch at a restaurant close by. We decided to finish off two of the main attractions of Ooty… it being a clear sunny day, we started with Botanical Garden, which I had seen some 10years back. To my amazement not a single thing had changed ever since… it was still the same boring garden with few good plant varieties and was hugely overcrowded. We stayed at the place for an hour or so and headed for DoddaBetta peak. The peak is around 9kms from Ooty city and the road is very scenic. The peak itself was again overcrowded and we were kind of uneasy as the temperature must have dipped to single digits and Neiv was not properly clothed. We stayed there for few minutes, took some snaps, bought stuff from street vendors while Shipra enjoyed horse riding. We were back in hotel room by 6PM, spent the evening by having dinner at the room with a game of dumb charade and long hours of gossip/discussions. We finally called it a day at 2AM

Day 2: Ooty Lake and Coonoor: Dolphin’s Nose, Lamb’s Rock

Next morning we started at 9AM and after heavy breakfast straightaway went the star attraction of Ooty – The Ooty Lake. As expected, the lake itself is/has been pretty disappointing, its just the good weather that makes it so enjoyable. We took a row boat for 5 and went for a fast sail around the lake. After boating and quick snaps, we started with fun rides – Columbus, tora-tora, dashing cars, etc. Neiv had the max fun in the Mini-Train. Later, while Nandini & Shipra were busy buying plants, Neiv and I decided to take a short horse riding trip.

We skipped lunch and directly started for the town of Coonoor from the lake. It is some 17kms away from Ooty and at a lower altitude. Seems, the lower altitude makes it fit for Tea farming and we saw plenty of them in coonoor. Angshuman inquired about the Nigiri tourist toy train at Conoor station but as the logistics weren’t working out, we completely dropped the idea of taking the train. We then headed for Dolphin’s Nose which was around 14kms from city station. The road was good but with one lane and heavy traffic. Every now and then we had to stop for several minutes to make way to some bus/van coming from opposite direction. As expected, Dolphin’s Nose turned out to be a standard view point, though made very famous by several bollywood movies. On our way back we stopped at another view point – Lamb’s Rock – for 40 secs and headed back to Ooty. Had late snacks/lunch at Cafe Coffee Day and as we were pretty tired, we called it a day by 8PM.

Day 3: Wenlock Downs, Pykara Falls and return from Ooty
We finished our breakfast and started our return journey at sharp 10AM. This time we chose to take the longer road – NH67 – so that we could cover Pykara lake and some other sights on our way back. The road was one of the best mountain (ghat) roads that I have driven in India… all with excellent lane markings, etc.

We first stopped at lake created by Kamraj Sagar Dam (Sixth mile) for few minutes and took some snaps. Few kilometer ahead we again stopped at a scenic spot called at Ninth Mile… famous for several bollywood movies  that have been shot there. 23kms from Ooty we made our final stop at Pykara Falls, where you have a tiny stream of water flowing over rocks. There is nothing amazing about the falls but the clean and chilling water refreshed us. Even though the water was chilling enough, Neiv still wanted to take a deep dive inside it…

The remaining part of the journey was scenic but uneventful… we reached Mysore at 4PM, stopped again at McDonald for dinner on the way to Bangalore… traffic closer to Bangalore was a killer… we finally reached home at 9:30 PM… Neiv was all tired and had dosed off somewhere enroute.

Summary: Ooty is a wonderful place with an amazing year round weather. Though none of the sights are breathtaking, the scenic roads, clean air and the lovely weather easily compensate for that.

How to reach Ooty: Bangalore – take SH17 to – Ramanagram – Chennapatna – Maddur – Mandya – Srirangapatnam – Mysore – take NH212 via ring road to – Nanjangud –  Gundlupet – take NH67 to – Hangala – Bandipur – Mudumalai – Theppekaddu – take left onto SH67 after bridge to – Masinagudi – Kalhatti – Ooty = 280 kms.

Road Directions and map available at Google Maps Here.

Road Condition:
- SH17: Excellent, 4 Lane, pothole free
- NH212: Average, 2 lane – 10kms between Gundlupet and Hangala is very bad
- SH67: Good, 1 lane, steep climb and hairpin bends for around 10kms

Find the Picture Album Here.

Alternate heading: Absolute waste of Time and Money

I had extremely low expectation when we visited the heavily advertised “Fun” spot – ‘Innovative Fun City’. And on reaching the site, I was amazed to see that I had to stoop my expectations even lower than I ever thought was possible.

About:
1. Location: It is very very far from Bangalore… 15kms ahead of Wonder La… It is in midst of Bidadi Industrial zone… whoever gave them the permission to base a children’s park next to Toyota Factory?

2. Entry Fee: The total package is of Rs 800/- per head or you may choose to pay Rs. 50/- as one time entry fee and individually pay for each attraction. Each attraction is between 100-200 bucks. They charge/extort Rs. 100/- for Still Camera entry fee!

3. The place: Even though the structures built are magnificent but serve no purpose and overuse of concrete makes one sweat and thirsty in the already warm & dry climate of Bidadi industrial zone. Inside, you see some branded retail shops, eateries and star attraction scattered around and most of them are still under construction.

4. The attractions: I just liked the Dyno park that they have built, rest is overcrowded, unclean, too expensive, not-worth-it kinds. You can get details of each from the official site here.

5. The questions: Why is everything so expensive? 100 bucks for camera entry, 50 bucks for a glass of Cola! Why couldn’t there be some trees to make things cooler and greener?

You can check the Picture Album here.

Wishing Everyone a splendid colorful Holi!

This was second holi at our current residence where we kick started the celebrations with the burning of Holika’s pyre or Holi bonfire. It was nice to see lot of people turning up and performing “pooja” of the pyre. The participation in the event was more than our expectations as we were led to believe that no one was interested in performing Pooja. We had called few of our friends for dinner and it was very late when we were able to call it a day.

The next morning the first one to wake up was Neiv , all excited and ready to get drenched in the melange of colors. Even before we could go down and start playing holi, he was all soaked up in water!

The legend of Holi: In an attempt to kill his god loving son Pralhad, King Hiranyakashyap asked his sister Holika, who had a special gift that prevented her from being harmed by fire, to sit in fire with Pralhad in his lap. As Prahlad chanted God Vishnu’s name he was not hurt, but Holika was burnt to her death.

Holi celebrates the death of Holika and we see where Holi gets its name. The night before Holi pyres are burnt in keeping with this tradition. Holi is celebrated to mark victory of good over evil.

Find the photographs here

We visited the Aircraft Trade show “Aero India 2009” on the final day. Angshuman & family were having some passes for the exhibition cum air show, we chipped in one ticket to get access for all of us.

We reached Yehalanka Airbase at around 10:30AM and by the time we could park and get to the main venue, it was already 11:30AM. The guy who had arranged for passes was generous enough to have us dropped in his car till the farthest possible point

Neiv was having a great time already as he had seen enough of low flying fighter planes enroute to keep him excited for the entire day! The sight of helicopters and sukhoi’s only energized him further. I was kind disappointed to not find any F16s or 18s in the display. I reckon they were a part of Air show only. Later we came to know that one of the F16 had a flat tire while landing after maneuvers.

At around 2PM we went out to have lunch, had couple of drinks with Subway Veggie Delites and coffee day sandwiches. Meeting Ruchir during the lunch was a nice surprise

We returned at around 4:30PM after the show was over and most of the exhibitions stalls had started packing up, reached home at around 7PM beating the evening traffic. Thanks to Angshuman for the passes and the free ride

Find the pix here.

After a very hectic work week… we went to the local amusement park “Wonder La!” with my Bro-In-Law Gaurav who was here for a week. It seems the place is also hit by recession as, in spite of it being a Sunday, it wasn’t much crowded (good for us!)

The main incident of the trip was about my camera being lost and then being found in the “lost and found” counter. Good to see honesty still alive!

About: Tickets are pricey at Rs 598/- per person on weekends, it includes all the rides. You cannot take edibles inside and the tickets are single entry so make sure you do not leave anything behind in the car! Food available inside is good and not expensive. Rides look dangerous but can assumed to be safe as claimed by the management Staff is extremely helpful and always available when you need them.

How to reach: Go straight on SH17 towards Mysore for around 50Kms. Take right into Wonder La! gate in to the village road. Reach Wonder La! after 5 kms .

Road Condition:
- SH17: Excellent, 4 lane without potholes.

Check out the pix here.

Warning: You need a heart to see hard abuses to a cell phone

List of Tests:
Kicked, threw over, stood over, mashed it, drove over it, buried it in snow, hit it with a hammer, hit it with a wrench, heated it with a blowtorch, chilled it to 0 degrees F, held it under running water.

Courtesy: phonescoop

Wishes to all of you for the 60th Republic Day of India. We went down to our local community function. It included Flag Hoisting, cakes n’ refreshment and few fun games. Neiv was real happy on receiving the participation gift in the end.

You can find the pictures here.

This weekend we finally landed at the most sought after place by Neiv - HAL Aircraft Heritage Museum. Neiv had the best time as he was actually able to touch “Fighter Planes” and the “Helicopters” and could play with their “Fan” (in his words!).

I’m sure that looking at Neiv’s interest level, we would be visiting the place again soon!

About: Entry Fee for Adult Indians: Rs. 20/- and I think Rs. 25 for Still Camera. The place is clean and well kept with a collection of few interesting planes. Though it is unrelated to planes but one should not miss to check out the fish pond near the canteen.

How to reach: if coming from MG Road, It falls on the left hand side of HAL Road, 3kms ahead of the Old Airport entrance.

This must be our 6th or 7th trip to Mysore over a weekend and we finally managed to take the token tour of Brindavan Garden and Mysore Palace! I visited the same after 15 years and it was sad to note that there have been no improvements at all.

But it is always good to spend time with Yogi and Vivek in Mysore. The plan was also to cover Ranganthettu Bird Sanctuary but could never wake up on time

Click Here for the photos of the same.

This Satruday morning, we went on a short Road Trip to Hassan. Plan was to cover 3 important historic tourist attraction of Karnataka >> Shravanabelagola, Belur and Halebid.

We started at around 1PM on Saturday, reached Shravanabelagola at 4:30PM. The shrine is on top of a monolithic stone mountain. The Climb of 400 odd steps to reach the top was not so easy with Neiv jumping all over the place. But it was worth the effort with the peace that you get when you sit in front of supposedly “the largest monolithic statue in the world” of lord Mahaaveer. If nothing else, Neiv had a good time running around in the open space in front of the idol.

From Shravanabelagola we went straight to Hassan town for a night halt. The hotel that we took was pretty decent and not too expensive. Next morning we started to Belur, via the impeccable SH57, halting for few minutes to take some snaps in sunflower farms.

The Chennakesava Temple at Belur is definitely one of the rare and not to be missed place if you visit south India. You can get more details about it on wiki. From Belur we went to Halebidu, which is famour for Hoysaleswara Temple. Though it is more famous than Belur, it did not live up to my expectation, which were already set too high at Belur. But I should mention that the place is very well kept and the district admin is taking pains to make it a popular place.

We started back to Bangalore at around 4PM, beating evening traffic, we reached home at around 9PM.

How to Reach Shravanabelagola: Take NH4 Road towards Tumkur, go straight for 40Kms. Take left onto NH48 at Nelamangala, go straight for 100kms. Take left onto a village road towards Shravanabelagola, go straight for around 15 kms (all approx distances.)

How To reach Belur: Take NH4 Road towards Tumkur, go straight for 40Kms. Take left onto NH48 at Nelamangala, go straight for 150kms to reach Hassan. Take right to enter the town. Across the town, take right onto SH57. Reach Belur after 32kms. Take deep left turn to arrive at the temple.

How To reach Halebid: You can either divert for 20 kms to right on SH57 before reaching Belur or could choose to go directly from Belur.

Road Condition:
- NH4: Good, 4 lane, pothole free but usually congested.
- NH48: Good, 2 lane, Pothole free with moderate traffic.
- SH57: Excellent, 2 lane, Pothole Free with rare traffic.

Click here to checkout the photos of Hassan Trip.

Metrics
Name: Neiv Malaviya
Date: September 23, 2006
Day: Saturday
Time: 08:19 Hours (AM)
Place: Gwalior

Special Notes:
About 23rd September
- On 2006 it was the 1st auspicious day of Maha-Navaratra (Holy Nine Days) of Goddess Durga
- It is the Autumnal Equinox
- Famous people born on 23rd September:
* Singer and Songwriter Bruce Springsteen
* Industrialist Robert Bosch
* Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud

About Neiv’s Birth place – Gwalior:
- Named after Rishi Galav
- City of Legendary Indian Classical Musician Tansen and Baiju Bawra
- Queen of Jhansi (ki Rani) was martyred fighting British here
- Capital of Raja Mansingh kingdom
- The 6th Sikh Guru was imprisoned here
- Our Moms finished their graduation from the same college here.

The Story So Far…
The initial expected date that the docs gave was somewhere around 30th Sept and I had planned to fly directly to Gwalior (via Delhi) from Miami on around 26th. But as the Doc advanced the dates, I changed my plans and reached there on 23rd morning.

On arrival at 08:00 AM, I was informed by Rishi (my Bro-in-law) that Nandini was hospitalized early in the morning at 05:00 AM. I went home, took a shower and was ready to go as soon as possible but as I was about to leave for the hospital at 08:30 AM, we received a call from my mumi-ji (Mom-in-law) informing us about the arrival of our baby boy.

My Father-in-law immediately called my parents to inform about the good news, we (Rishi and I) immediately rushed to the hospital only to find my son Neiv waiting for me in his Granny’s arms. Time was about 08:47 AM when I first took Neiv into my arms. I inquired about Nandini’s health  and I was informed that she would be brought out from the OT in about 5 minutes. We used that time by getting acquainted with the new born and posing for some great pics for the family album.

Nandini came out after a while, I was so very pleased to see her well and smiling after a gap of around 4 months. And we all joined for a happy family reunion…

Click here to check the pics of Neiv – Week 1

This weekend turned out to be one of the most hectic one ever since I’ve come to Florida. Bipin was visiting for 2 days and wanted to cover as many places as possible. Here’s the weekend in brief:

1. Friday
a. 9:30 PM Bipin arrived
b. 12 AM midnight to Five AM – Miami Beach (Clevelander, Gloria Stefan’s Mangos, Irish Pub, etc)

2. Saturday
a. Afternoon – North Miami Beach
b. Late afternoon – Lazy time spent on Miami Beach Ocean Drive Boulevard sidewalk. Man that is a lovely place!
c. Sunset – swim at South Beach – where Bips tried twice (and failed!) to get drowned and be rescued by the life guard   babe (but I had to save him instead!)

3. Sunday
a. 6:00 AM start for Key West Islands
b. 9:30 AM arrival amidst heavy thundershowers on the route
c. Around Noon – Sightseeing, Pirates of the Caribbean Museum, Southernmost point of US (90 Miles from Cuba), etc
d. Afternoon – Boat ride deep inside the ocean
1. I was swimming and seeing coral reef underwater for 2 hours
2. Bips and Abraham were enjoying their time by having beer on the boat deck!
e. 6:30 PM Return from Key west
f. 10:30 PM arrival back in Sunrise
g. Midnight – Fort Lauderdale beach

4. Monday
a. 8:35 AM – Bipin went back