Journey of the Journeyman

My famous last words
Are laying around in tatters
Sounding absurd
Whatever I try
But I love you
And that's all that really matters
If this is goodbye
If this is goodbye

[Mark Knopfler, If This is Goodbye]

-------

It's been six and a half years

Since the Eighth of December, Two Thousand

My Livejournal will always remain a part of my life

The friends, the memories, the hundred poems

--------

The journey is not yet over

Take my hand, Turn the bend

Started my guitar classes at home with 5 students.

Enjoy the slideshow or click on the photo to get the still from PicasaWeb.

Videos are on TechBangalore, thanks to Prashanth.

Disney guidelines on what constitutes cuteness.
I love the bit on "looks well-fed"; weight-watchers & tummy-tuckers just went out of business !

It is great to work for a company that let's you put yourself on its promo material.

If you go to this website and click on Applications > CardIQ Physio .. that's the product I am building with my team.

Maui, my daughter, wrote her first working program today. She is about 3 and a half.

I had to help her with the puts. The rest is her's.

I told her that you have to "tell" the computer to show your name, so she started speaking her name loudly, lunging towards the LCD display of my laptop.

Bangalore is a fascinating city. BCB4 is happening on 28th and 29th of this month at the Indian Institute of Management.

The Barcamp out here is spectacular for at least three reasons.

1. big
   With over 600 registrants at BCB3 in March/April, this is the largest Barcamp in the word. And if you talk to the people who make it happen, they will, in classical duality-of-life style, tell you that quality rules over quantity.
   
2. times
   Organising anything of this size is rope-climbing tough. And doing that once a quarter. Oh my God. And that too, when there is no direct monetary profit to be reaped. I am neither an economist nor a sociologist (And never wanted to be), but this calls for some serious introspection into human behaviour.
   
3. new
   
   Bangalore takes the definition of an unconference to a new level. When the definition of unconference itself was starting to gather a cruddy layer of formality -- the same new Ajax, Web 2.0, ROR, Bangalore just tore the definitions with BCB3: SocialTech. And this time around, BCB4: Collectives. Whether you like it or not, whether you like your screens in "Beta" sauce or "Classic", doesn't matter; you have to raise your hat to this communities immense momentum to initiate, drive and execute new untested ideas. There are, like in all such situations, a few thought-leaders, and I wont embarrass them by calling out their name, but to drive these ideas through a jungle of a thousand techies (who by design are themselves anti-authoritative, anti-norm), needs a different kind of drive.

Collectives

For those who have not seen the definition or are just wondering whether this has something to do with the paradigm of Java Collections, fear not. It has a simpler name -- BoF - Birds of a Feather. In any conference, you are likely to find small groups of people sticking together and discussing their own personal sweet thing. Could be a passion, could be a problem-of-the day.

Collectives are just that. You get together around a topic or domain and have fun. Two days of camaraderie (oh that's one more thing.. I do not think any Barcamp comes in a two day package).

There are collective around

• core interests: Internet, Ruby, Python, Ajax -- the works
• classical stuff : Compiler design, functional programming, memory overflows
• offbeat stuff: Bicycling in Bangalore, Music (jam/clinics)

And yes, there is also a "Bored of Collectives" collective.

Complete List

Hack Night

Two nights of unbound fun. What more do I say ? I like this a lot, at times I felt that the last three Barcamps was more on the "say" side of the say:do ratio.

SpeedGeeking

 As far as I recall, siddhartha came up with this idea to have this at BCB4. Here are more details.

In all, I am looking forward to this. I will have my usual baby-sitting duties on Saturday, so will be in late. Build new ties, renew old ones, and oh, I am doing a guitar clinic, to answer "all the questions your ever wanted to ask about guitars but found no one with short enough hair".

I put up my recent recordings on SoundClick. Feel free to download and listen to some songs. These were mostly recorded earlier this year and form a part of an "album" that I call Rockstar Parking.

The news has been out for quite some time and I, as usual, one of the last people to know.

Mark Knopfler is releasing his next solo album, KTGC on September 17.

The track list has been released. What tasteful names -- each one a poem in their own right !

1. True Love Will Never Fade - 4:21
2. The Scaffolder’s Wife - 3:52
3. The Fizzy And The Still - 4:07
4. Heart Full Of Holes - 6:36
5. We Can Get Wild - 4:17
6. Secondary Waltz - 3:43
7. Punish The Monkey - 4:36
8. Let It All Go - 5:17
9. Behind With The Rent - 4:46
10. The Fish And The Bird - 3:45
11. Madame Geneva’s - 3:59
12. In The Sky - 7:29

This cartoon had me in splits. Zimbly amazing.

An article on Finland, definitely worth a read. It is well rumoured that Finnish vodka is a treat. Looks like a place my wanderlust needs to be indulged with.

Maui was discharged from Manipal Hospital yesterday. She is recovering. Thanks to all your phone calls, blogbacks, SMSs, emails, beer toasts.... thanks much.

One of these nights, I wrote a few poems on the lounge sofa on the 11th floor of the hospital. The floor, aptly named, "Deluxe" is pretty swanky for a hospital. So, here's one to the other half of our country who will never make it to the 11th floor.

the farmer's wife

tulip hands and lotus feet
pouring rain and hail and sleet
knee-deep water in the field
a little prayer for tomorrow's yield

she sows rice and she sows wheat
tulip hands and lotus feet
works the morn, she works through dusk
she knows her grains from her husk

her purple lips, they seldom speak
but when they smile, rainbows bleak
tulip hands and lotus feet
mother of six, wife complete

trust in thee, my Lord, to keep
what you sow is what you reap
the Gods stop and pay their offerings sweet
to those tulip hands and lotus feet

Last night, lying next to Maui at the hospital, I was showing her some pictures from a magazine, when she stumbled upon an advertisement of P. Chidamabaram's new book on Why Good Economics Works for Everybody.

She looks at the pic and then turns back at me with a wide, beautiful stare, "Dado ! Mr. Bean !!!"

Maui had to be hospitalized yesterday following an unrecovering bout of bronchial infection. Her situation has not improved, but then, it has not taken a tank either. The only room in the pediatric ward that was available was an Ultra-Special and this costs an arm and a leg and then some. Clearly more than the standard 3/4 star hotel rooms in Bangalore. On the upside, it is pretty spacious & quite well appointed for an Indian hospital. I know this might sound a tad derogatory and offensive to some. But after having spent two weeks every night at a prime Indian hospital in Calcutta trying to save Gautam Biswas' life, I know a thing or two.

Anyway, this room's got a TV and I am watching Noddy now. And this room's got an Internet connection and I am blogging now. The sad part about the connect is that the firewalls support HTTP only so I cannot get directly into the GE network. But I did find my way through remoteoffice.ge.com to be able to access my emails.

Now only if I could find how to get the out-of-office to work.

Che liked tricks. One of his favourite was to give his regimens random numbers like 28, 29, 31, even when he had three, in total. Radio-interceptions and captured soldiers served to confuse the opposing forces, who would believe Che had far more soldiers in his possession than he really did. 

This is recipe #17, ostensibly to make you believe that there are 16 more yummy versions that you have missed because you were not looking. 

Made this yesterday evening for dinner. Decent.  Kind of Thai , so I called it Bangkok chicken for want of a better name. My folks would prolly not get the Che thing. The whole shindig took about an hour, I wish I could marinate the meat for about an hour more. That would be nice.

Here is the recipe at the request of my sister-in-law.

Dear Didi,

This dish serves about 4 hungry people. Serve with flavourful jasmine/basmati rice.

About 800 gms of chicken, diced small. Marinate with 150g yogurt (curd), 3 tbsp of green chilly sauce, 1 tbsp garlic, 1/2 tbsp salt, 1 tbsp soy sauce.

Chop 2 large onions.

Preheat the cooking pan well. Pour 10 tbsp of sunflower oil. Heat the oil well and ensure the sides of the cooking vessel is well oiled. Brown the onion with 1 tbsp of garlic for 1 minute; keep stirring. Introduce the meat, keep stirring and cooking the meat with the flame on high. Cook till the water exuded from the chicken comes to a dry (takes about 15-20 mins).

Pour 200 ml of coconut milk and 1/2 cup water. Preferable to have the meat completely immersed. Bring to a boil and keep it that way for 2-3 minutes. Test out the chicken softness with a fork.

Pour 1 stick (about 3 inches of cinnamon) and 2 bay leaves. Simmer down, and cover the vessel with a lid. Cook for 12 minutes.

Serve hot with basmati rice.

The roads are empty and the car is on overdrive. The white dashed roadpaint of the Koramangala Inner Ring Road vanishes briskly under the left wheel of my car. Maui is asleep and Letu is busy reading the mythology book we picked up from Hippocampus a few minutes back.  Seems like Bangalore is bee-lining for the Aerosmith show this evening. This is one show I am going to miss.

I reach home, briefly interrupted by some comic situations at Manipal Hospital.

I am sitting here and trying to guess what the setlist is going to be. To be more precise, I am trying to guess what are they going to open with.

Sweet Emotions ? Dude looks like a lady ? Janie's got a gun ?

Will they do the Armageddon song ? I'd stay awake, just to hear you breathing ...Now, that would have the crowd on their knees.

Or my favourite, "What it takes"...

"Girl, before I met you I was F.I.N.E. Fine
but your love made me a prisoner, yeah my heart's been doing time
Spend me up like money, then you hung me out to dry"

[I always hear it as Spent me up like money, then you open up to jive]
[ For those who do not know the band too much,
F.I.N.E. : F*cked up, Insecure, Neurotic, Emotional]

I am sorry if I sound like cribbing, dejected. None of that. In fact I am having a ball. Talked to Suranjan in the morning, he is still struggling with his Ph.D but going to Switzerland for a conference in a few. And the best part is that a few minutes back, in between the copious amounts of time I had left afer playing hide-n-seek with my two little screaming monstresses, I opened up the shrink-wrap of Knopfler/Harris' "All the Roadrunning".  Pure gold.

There is the ultimate song ever written about live shows, like the one Messrs. Tyler, Perry, Kramer, Hamilton, & Whitford will indulge in today.

"A million miles our vagabond heels
Clocked up beneath the clouds
They're counting down to show time
When we do it for real with the crowds
Air miles are owing
But they don't come for free
And they don't give you any for pain
But if it's all for nothing
All the roadrunning's
Been in vain"

I am waiting to dump it onto my iPod and then I know what I am going to listen to for the last. And as I write, the funniest thing happened. My daughter runs out of the blue and says, "Dado, this song is very good".

I am listening to Belle Starr. 

A week ago, I started going to the gym. My biggest challenge was to be able to make it for 5 days to the gym. So, today I feel accomplished. The good news is that my cardio vascular characteristics are shaping but a bit better than I thought. A week ago, my heart-rate was that of a 65 year old (Ouch!). Today it is close to 25.

It was Niranjan and Assif's farewell lunch today. We went to Wok with Chung's. the place is just off Marathalli Bridge, the location is great, the property is huge, the decor and ambience is pretty bad, the food not so bad, the cost -- medium.

I drove a lot today. Dropped Aditi off at Koramanagala. And then drove to work in Whitefield. God knows why I took the Airport Road. I keep on telling myself, but never learn actually. Like the thousands of French soldier's who braved their destiny at the mystic allure of the Corporal.

"Save my soul from evil, Lord

And heal this soldier's heart

Trust in thee to keep me Lord, I'm done

Done with Bonaparte."

Only Mark can rhyme heart with Bonaparte.

Logged into orkut, morning 6:11 a.m. No, my life is not that bad, seriously. Have been awake for the last hour doing things that are never credited to their true extent by humanity. Like collecting plastic bottles from around the house and putting them in a plastic bag. Tapan, yes, Tapan from Murshidabad - I met him the otherday at the chic grocery outlet. He tells me that the GE Plastics sellout deal is almost closed. Yeah, sellout, OK. I know you are smirking. I know you have that I-told-you-so look on your face. Your damn-silly face. Have you ever spent considerable time in front of the mirror asking the other person how incredibly stupid Nature has been to endow you with this stupid, silly face ? Go, get up. Get up. Its 6:15 am. Go to the mirror on the wall. And don't get me started about the writing on it. Or the blood. Or the back. Why does the wall have to bear silent witness to all things tawdry ? Tawdry is impossible. Impossible is nothing. Nothing else matters. So tawdry matters. That's why for aeons, people have been smashing other people's faces into the wall. Goodbye, wallflower.

The flight from Boston to Cincinnati got delayed due to, first,  security reasons and then, they realized that somebody forgot to put the checked in luggage into the hold of the plane. Missed the connection to Milwaukee. An unholy motley crew: Ben, an attorney from Tennessee (the most mild-mannered lawyer you'd see), Dave, an ex-jail supervisor from Tennessee and me. Fought and negotiated a fully-paid night stay at the Marriott including meals. This is the biggest bed and the largest pillows I have ever seen. The bed might eat me up at night. I am scared.

The title of this post -- that's what the elderly driver of the Marriott pick-up shuttle spoke into the wireless communications device just after we left the airport.

Earlier in the day, met Santanu. Pics from his Nikon over here.