Americans working in India ?!!

Is that a dream or something ?? Looks like this can also happen. Read this if you dont believe.

Canada Olympic park

Last sunday me and my roommate venki planned to visit the canada olympic park. We took the CTrain from Southland LRT station to Brentwood and got the route no. 408. We went around the park.It was kind of fun and exciting to be in a spot where once winter olympics had taken place.

Well, at the same time it was a bit disappointing that we were there on off-season.So no snow, no events. But still the place was really worth spending some hours and getting an experience of what it is like to be in a olympic plaza. At the beginning there is this stage where the huge olympic torch used to burn. Then we entered into the museum, there was a mini speech by a volunteer in an auditorium on how the winter olympics was formed and how it came to calgary.Then there was an interesting video for about 30 mins with selected clips from various events.

Once the presentation was over the volunteers escorted us and explained various minute details in the museum. We had a great moment too, when we could get a snap of standing on the podium with olympic medal :).

Then we went on to look in to various places where different sports like luge, skiing, ski jumping etc., used to happen. Especially the starting point for ski- jumping is a 90 metre tower on top of a hill. It was tough trekkin on the hill to see the ski jumping centre with the cold wind blowing along the luge trail.But i swear the breath taking view from the top of the ski jumping centre was worth it. May be we should plan to revisit after Mid- may when winter events will start.

Infosys chief's interview

Here is a great interview from the chief mentor of infosys Mr.N.R.Narayan Murthy on Infosys completing 25 years. Its really great to hear the words of a great man. Every line he speaks is a gem to treasure and full of knowledge. The most important thing to note is despite achieving great success he is so humble and still has lot of energy and he is raring to achieve greater heights.Really inspirational. Go ahead and read the Interview

Rains

Rains are always fascinating thing. After a long cold spell of frustrating snow and chillness,last week we had some sun last week. It was a refreshing change, and unexpectedly since yesterday it has started drizzling with light rains. It was the first rain of the season. Usual expectation from a first rain would be to enjoy the smell of the mud! But some how i could not feel that smell here, may be due the dampness alread present due to snowing.

Right from childhood rains have been welcome change.Its a great feeling to curl around the couch on a rainy day and munch on a bunch of onion pakoras(a south indian snack) and whatch cricket or tennis.Having a hot coffee is great too. Drizzling is what i like the most. To walk on drizzling in an isolated place where there is no traffic, is like reading a poem. Some things in life hardly change.This is one of those feelings.

Avant browser

Recently found this cool browser, that has lot of good features. Especially the most important feature i liked is having "N" instances of browsers inside one window and the ability to minimise everything to one icon in taskbar. This really useful to me, since im always used to keeping open a lot of windows.

You can download it for free from here :
http://www.avantbrowser.com/download.html

yet to check out other advanced browsers like Firefox and mozilla.

Wikipedia

Though i have visited wiki before, never spent much time on it or analysed it.Recently checked this wikipedia and it sounds amazing.Its very interesting to know that wikipedia is one of the (?!!) largest ever growing open source encyclopedia.Its opensource since anyone who registers with wikican add articles to it.Due to this very reason, the quality of its content is doubted. Just to check this, i randomly searched some topics on it like,

1.my city
2.a south indian god
3.compound interest
4.Serialization (some hard core technical stuff)
5.love

I should say the results are great.Putting it in simple words,There is something for almost everything.Looking for something ? check it out in wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/

Missing all things indian

Being away from india for an extended period of time, im missing all things indian. Although life is good here, its never like being in mumbai or chennai. One miss all those small pleasures that makes life more beautiful.

Here is a list of few things that comes to my mind and makes me nostalgic about mumbai now :

• the Mani's cafe/Madras cafe food from matunga.
• Going to siddhi vinayak temple once in a while.
• Watching a weekend tamil movie at aurora theatre,matunga.
• catching the last train to andheri at 1:19 AM from elphinstone.
• having the first tea from chaiwala, on mornings after full nite deliveries.
• watching sun tv songs late nite / as well as keeping it loud and pissing off the house owner.
• Buying latest hot selling books (paperback) for really cheap price @matunga/churchgate.
• visiting my uncle's home.

and the list goes on...

I think the songs writer knew how it feels when he wrote "sorgame endraalum athu nammoora pola varuma".. meaning "Even if its heaven it wont be like my village".

An evening with cowboys

Last week on friday night we happened to be at Ranchman's, calgary.One of the most authentic cowboyish hang-out places in calgary.From the beginning since i came here i had the dream of meeting authentic cowboys,and it was time to see some.Luckily it was st.patrick's day and the theme being green on that day, most people wore greenish and the boys got their first serving of Green beer which is available only on that day of the year.

On one side the dance floor was vibrant with a couple of instructors teaching and helping people perform "Line dance" a special for the Irish event.We had our dinner and it was quite good i should say.Later it was fun watching people trying to ride a mechanical bull that keeps rocking.Man, i thought once my project is over, im gonna give it a try before returning to india.Hmmm..an evening well spent.