ThoughtfulChaos

It was by and large an uneventful week. No major ups or downs. Now that I think about it there were only small small ups ... so I am not complaining.

Book mela
There was a book exhibition in my office few days back and I bought 3 books

• The Collected Novels of Khushwant Singh (Train to Pakistan, I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale Sing and Delhi).
• The Tagore Omnibus 1(Gitanjali and many of Tagore's stories and novels.
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

I have always wanted to read Khushwant Singh so I snapped up the book as soon as I saw it. The Tagore book seemed very intimidating (poems!) so I picked it up for the challenge. And Pride and Prejudice has always been on my To Read list since ages (but I keep forgetting to acquire it) so...

Roomies update
Shibu, my roommate, is going abroad (or 'onsite' in professional parlance). He will be leaving for London next Sunday. He is going for a couple of months to master a new process (He works for a BPO). So now I can demand a treat from him before he leaves (and 1 more treat when he comes back). Kapil Naidu is my latest roommate. He hails from Hyderabad. He joined Kanbay, Pune a couple of weeks back.

Non-stop rain...
There seems to be something wrong with the Monsoons this time. They just don't want to stop. After the heavy spell of rains about a month ago things quietened down for some time. I thought the rains would slowly go away. Well... they are not as bad as before but it still rains for a few hours everyday. In the morning everything is usually sunny and warm. In fact the weather is really very nice in the mornings nowadays and I wish it would remain that way the whole day. But after about 3 o'clock everything changes. It becomes dark all of a sudden and by 4 or 5 it is raining. And this is a very irritating drizzle kind of a rain. It neither rains properly nor does it not rain. I have to carry an umbrella everywhere I go. And more than once it has happened that I am holding the umbrella over my head and walking and walking (and lost in my own thoughts) and it stops raining. I do not realize it has stopped raining and carry on with the umbrella still open. Now an umbrella is a non-man thing (girls will vouch for this I am sure)... on top of that an umbrella even when it is not raining... yikes!

Light sponge cake
Now I realize the true import of my parents' words "You will miss home food when you leave home...". At DA-IICT food was really very good, in terms of quality and variety... so I didn't miss home food that much. But here in Pune in the locality where I live there is not a single good mess. I have got thoroughly bored of the grandiosely named Anand - Punjab da Dhaba (my regular eating place). But now the situation has ameliorated to a great extent because ghar key niche waali aunty makes dinner for us now. So quality is quite good even though the Maharashtrian touch is sometimes irksome. But breakfast (and late night snacks) are a major problem. There are only so many times you can eat Maggi or Bourbon biscuits. There is nice bakery near my house called Diamond Bakery. Last week I discovered a new item there: Light Sponge cake. And boy, is it wonderful! It is very filling and very tasty. Not very rich in cream or butter or anything so I don't mind eating it again and again. I have been eating so many of these sponge cakes that the guys behind the bakery counter now smile and hand me over a couple of there sponge cakes even before I ask for anything...

First time flier
Vineet is coming back next week. I am going to Mumbai next week on the day he is coming and then both of us are flying (yes flying!) to Ahmedabad. I will be in Ahmedabad for the 4-5 days. This will be the first time I will be flying!

Pudchya Varsha Luvkarya!
Punekars have finally said bye to Ganpati Bappa for this year. And it is much quieter since almost all the pandals have disbanded. But believe it or now I am actually missing all the noise. There was a small pandal just outside my flat and the first time the loudspeakers blared I was a bit pissed off... but guess what... I actually enjoyed listening to the songs because almost all of them were the latest Hindi film songs. There would be an aarti in the evening and maybe a devotional song or too and then film songs and more film songs. There were even a few English songs (Its my life!). Many of the songs reminded me of Navratri in good old Ahmedabad...

Tweaked the site a little
I have been making minor improvements to this site. I have taken off somethings and have added in some other things. No major changes but lots of minor changes (many of them behind the scenes). I have also tried to reduce the size of the pages so they are rendered more quickly. I have also added a "Subscribe by Email" feature. You will get any posts I make in a day in a single post so you can read my blog without coming to the site everyday. I was having a few problems when I was testing the changes in IE so give me a shout if you see anything out of place or not working properly.

More organized study
My routine has become a bit more organized since the last 10 days or so. I am back to my nocturnal ways. I study or read late into the night and wake up at around 9 in the morning. My office has flexitimings so its OK. I have been reading more about Ruby since a few days. I am following the very good Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide a.k.a the Pickaxe book. I have put RoR on the backburner for now and will pick it up once again after I am fairly familiar with Ruby.

Chalo guys thats all for now...