Orlando + MountainView

Here are some more pics from the US trip.


Happy to be eaten


















A plane was kept in the lake in such a fashion that it looked like a crash.




















This is life. This is how my refrigerator looked like in the hotel.



















The adventurous ones. Entry to the theme park in Orlando. We had a blast there.



















Scooby-dooby-doo and me.


















At the Universal Studios theme park

Web 2.0 and 'The Big Fight'

My good friend Navin(http://smriti.com) has been constantly telling me and some of our other colleagues about Web 2.0 and how cool some of the technologies really are in the web world today. Slowly but surely some of the folks around are beginning to explore it, including me. For sometime now I have been exploring Facebook and it amazes me to see the number of applications being developed there. And these are developed by people like you and me in our own time.

I remember my professor Gopinath at IISc always used to say that "Whatever you do, you should become famous on the internet". I am sure he was talking more in terms of research papers and presentations in conferences and stuff, but Web 2.0 is brining in another avenue to become famous on the web. The mad scramble to write apps for Facebook is one such case in point.

Then one day Navin said 'Twitter" and I looked at it and thought "Gawd what a silly little thing" and then I came across this (http://wtips.blogspot.com/2007/04/twitter-tools.html). As the Gauls would probably say "These Earthlings are crazy!!". And lo behold I have started to use one such tool (http://rss2twitter.com/). What this will do is as soon as I publish this blog post, the rss feed for this post will be used by rss2twitter to post a small summary to my twitter account which will be also seen on my facebook profile and on my blogspot page (which means on the right hand side of this page) and to all the people who have volunteered to follow my twitter (using IM.,cellphone, email, etc). Now that is "cool". Just look at the dissemination of information and that too so quickly. There could be interesting business models built around it.

And moreover I am simply exploring the tip of the mountain. I have found an easy way to get to all the cool stuff (ping Navin). And moreover I am pulling more people into the web. If Anupam and Shridhar read this they will be vigorously nodding their heads. Kamlesh would be easily sucked into this.

And now for the Big Fight. It is coming and I can see it. My wife has carefully calculated the time I spent on Facebook and she drops in snide remarks about How I used to discourage her from Orkut. So I can see the inevitable. Probably I can avoid it. Time will tell.

Himanshu's visit to Orlando

The tables have turned after almost an year.. Himanshu is in the US and I am here. Its sad that I get back here only when he is not around. I should visit this space more often, and not just to give him reviews on his postings, but also to write something for our Milestones.



Himanshu traveled to the US on 1st of October, 2007 for Symantec's conference "Cutting Edge". The annual conference was held in Orlando, giving him the added advantage of visiting the Universal Studios Theme Park and enjoy the enthralling rides that the theme park had to offer on the first day of his trip. The rest of his visit was busier and revolved around attending conferences and representing SRL-India through his own stall.



Meanwhile, I am trying to make ends meet over here (at offshore) and waiting for him to come back.. :)

Anniversary the 3rd

Here goes another one.. The 3rd anniversary, celebrating our togetherness through love and scorn, through fistfights and kicks, through laughs and cries, through care and compassion, through separation and reunion and but most importantly through caring and understanding.

Amen... and here's to the cake... Hip Hip Hooray.

Pune to Kashid and Murud

A new day and a new trip. Sometimes I wonder if a lifetime would be big enough to do all the things that you want to do and this includes travel. I guess not but I am not giving up and neither is Jyoti. So here we dive into yet another trip on 8th Sept., 2007 to a part of the Konkan coastline which included Kashid and Murud-Janjira.

The trip:
Kashid lies on the Konkan coast and boasts of a fine beach and scenic surroundings. The time to go there is Nov-Dec but then you would find it a little crowdy. The best time would be to go around mid Sept when the whether is good and there is not a big rush of people. There are a lot of staying options around. We chose Kashid beach resort which was OK (both food and lodging).

Kashid Beach Resort


















Sunset at Kashid


















Himanshu, Jyoti and mom at Murud


















... And leave behind prints on the sands of time.




Road trip
From Pune take the Road towards Mulshi and head towards Tamhini and then Kolad. From Kolad head towards Roha which will then lead straight to the coastal highway and you will hit Kashid and then Murud. This one-way distance is around 160kms. The alternate route is to take the expressway uptil Panvel and then turn towards goa on NH17 and Kolad is on the way where you get off the highway.