Hello 2010

Before I think about things 2009 brought... let me revisit my 2008 wishlist:

1) Baby

2) EOS 40D

Well both the wishes came through within the first 3 weeks of 2009. And there on, I've been totally occupied with either #1 or #2 :) I am sure Anita hates my occupancy with #2!! So the rest of the post is going to be bragging about the two new things in my life.

All I can remember in 2009 is the night of 13th January. That was the day Anita felt contractions and we admitted to KEM. After that point whatever happened was just out of the world expereince. At 1245 on January 14th the doctor told me that we were blessed with a baby boy. It was the best thing in my life (leave 2009 apart) to hold the new born Adi minutes after he came to existence. Thrilling to its core...

Since that day...time has flown ... The first couple of months were full of confusion about how to handle the baby. But slowly we both settled on our parenting roles and Adi settled as an individual in our family. There were times of commotion when Adi was unwell, but with gods grace, we saw it through. Now that Adi is growwing fast, it fun all over the place.

Professionally, 2009 was full of pressures ... thanks to the global recession. Work has been interesting and quite rewarding in terms of learning experience. Thoroughly enjoyed working on big ticket items for huge clients. Working under these pressure situtation has helped me grow as a mature professional and I feel a considerable upgrade from what I was last year :)

But the spot light of the year in office was the intra department Cricket tournament.. THE SPL. I played cricket after about 3 years, and man... it was fun. It took a long time to realize that even if your body is able to give 80%... your brain is not able to handle the emotions on the field. Temprament has gone down the drain. Despite of many oppurtunities, lack of temprament led to fatal errors, costing our team a spot in the Quater Finals. Nevertheless, it was the best team bonding effort ever made in our company.

Photography has been going steady, learning has been immaculate. Nov 2009, we (Photographers@Pune) hosted a photo exhibition, "Drushtikon 2009", featuring works of over 55 photographers. It was a total hit, and we saw over 7000 visitors in the 3 days of the exhibition. The overwhelming appreciation has kept our morals high to host Drushtikon 2010!

All in all... a good year, ofcourse with an addition of a new car (Indigo GLS) in the family, and a couple trips to Goa, Diveagar, Sangli, Mumbai made it more exciting.

Hoping the new year to be as enticing as this one has been. Happy New Year Folks.. Wish you the best in 2010!

DiveAgar - and again...

I have been to Dive-Agar time and again. The place never seems boring. I still remember the first time when we went there... way back in 2002. It was a coastal village, untouched by tourism devils and one could get the feel of true Kokan.

Since then there have been many developments happening. But doesn't matter, who cares if you get to eat the best fish ever!! As Pratik says, "CONSISTENCY is a word that POTNIS and BAPAT (from DIVEAGAR) should patent!"... For the past 8 years we've been relishing the same quality of sea food!

This time round there were a couple of interesting incidents that made me think beyond the food :) ...

For our journey from Pune, we had taken along some bread for sandwiches. And as expected we weren't able to finish the entire loaf. When we reached our rooms, there was a very cute calf tied close by. We were tempted to feed it with the left over bread. But to confirm, we asked its care taker if we can actually do that. We assured the care taker that the bread was fresh. To which he replied, "Saheb, bread taja asel tar me pan khau shakto." After realizing what just happened, we handed over the bread to him and left the place.

In the evening, while I was walking along the streets, I saw a small kid (about 6yrs old) trying to play cricket with a stick. Just for the heck of it, I offered to bowl. And to my surprise he connected all the 8-10 balls that I bowled with the stick. I agree I am not a great bowler, but connecting accurately with a 100% strike rate was something commendable for me. Real talent for sure...

Later in the night, I overheard a couple of local boys discussing their new year eve plan. Four-five of them together had contributed 70/- and were planning on how to utilize the money to the fullest. Some discussion towards having chinese food resulted in a proposition to share one dish of something (costing arround 40/-) amongst all of them. And they were truly content with their decision.

Perhaps, these events are an evidence of the difference between cities and villages ...

Meanwhile, some of the trip photographs:

India:Google

Recently I got an awesome email about google searches... it started a laughing wave amongst colleagues which is still active... Here is a short description of the content:

When we type anything in the search box, the intellisense prompts us with a set of possible strings that you might want to search for. This intellisense suggested search strings are based on the number of hits each string has received in the past.

Now comes the fun part... TRY THIS

1. Browse to Google.com (When browsed to google.com from a system located in India, mostly the request would get redirected to google.co.in ... Use the "goto Google.com" link below the search box)

2. Start typing any word ...let me take the example in the email itself.. start typing the word "Removing"... Notice what the intellisense suggests...

3. Now browse to Google.co.in and again start typing the same word "Removing" ... and notice the suggestions ...

I leave the post match analysis to each one of you...Happy ROFL :D