a new beginning

i'm very bad at making and keeping resolutions. unfortunately for me, i lose sight of my goals too easily. this year, i'm gonna bombard myself with my resolutions to the point where i don't even need to consciously think about them. and i've left out things that are too hard to achieve :D

so here's my list:

• wake up before 8am on weekdays.


• maintain a personal diary.


• exercise for 1 hour on atleast 12 days a month.


• walk for an average of atleast 30 minutes every day, minimum 20 minutes every day.


• save atleast 60% of my salary every month, till i either buy a car or a house.


• don't drink on more than 2 occasions in a month.

6 resolutions. 3 about health, 2 about money, 1 about discipline, 1 about self analysis. pretty balanced...i hope.

now i have to make sure i follow them...i'll start by waking up before 8. wish me luck :)

oh and i almost forgot, a very happy new year to y'all!!! may 2008 be a year of great dreams, great opportunities and great successes for all of us :)

the year that was...2007!

this year is in it's last 24 hours. i guess it's time to look back and do a little introspection.

things that happened to me in 2007, in no particular order:

i got my first job.

i lived away from home for the first time, and for 6 months at that.

i made my best friend so far.

i witnessed how truly uplifting friendship can be.

i became financially independent.

i postgraduated.

i learned to cope with the break-up of my most serious relationship till date.

i started reading blogs.

i started blogging.

i lost my health, in ways that it can somehow never be regained.

i started supporting my family financially.

i invested.

i paid tax.

i budgeted.

i tracked my expenses.

i learned that i'm stronger-hearted than i think i am.

i learned that i'm weaker-willed than i hoped i'll be.

i learned to not give up completely, even when everything's bleak.

i learned to trust people with my innermost secrets.

i rediscovered the child in me.

i rediscovered god.

i cried with sorrow.

i cried with joy.

i cried with empathy.

i realised that there's no perfect life.

i realised the depth of emotion that everyone around me has.

i realised how carefully designed and delicately balanced my body is.

i realised how easy it was to upset that balance.

i learned to trust in god no matter what.

programmed buying

i'm not much of a shopper. i plan, deliberate, save, plan some more, sleep at home for a few months, and finally duck in to a shop and come out 30 seconds later with whatever i wanted to buy. and that's for the (un?)lucky few things that i actually ended up buying.

that's right. no shopaholicky rush for me, no feeling of accomplishment for me. just a feeling of "ah well...one less thing to buy now" :D

it was the same when it came to buying a new phone. more than a year ago i decided i wanted a new phone. i started asking people. comparing features. comparing reviews. looking at my bank balance and future bank balance.

told people that i'm gonna buy a phone "sometime soon".

told people that i'm gonna buy a phone "after my first salary".

told people that i'm gonna buy a phone "after i finish paying off people i borrowed money from".

told people that i'm gonna buy a phone "after i save up enough of money to buy a good model".

told people that i'm gonna buy a phone "after it releases in india".

told people that i'm gonna buy a phone "anytime after my uncle comes back from singapore just in case he buys it first".

my uncle returned from singapore. i put off asking him for a week.

i went to the mall yesterday for like the 10th time this year, to check out the phones on sale. that guy probably recognized me from the entrance.

my dream phone was finally on sale. it looked as good as the websites said it would. it had all the features the websites said it would. it was my dream phone, all right. i had enough money in my account to buy it. but somehow, i looked at it and said...naah. not this one.

before i went to sleep last night i told myself i'm buying a new phone tomorrow, come hail or high water (ok, maybe not high water :P)

i wanted to wake up at 9, leave by 10, check out the phones available near the shopping complex near home, check out a few other electronics shopping complexes spread over the city, finally make a decision and go and buy it.

i made a mental list of probable phones. i told people the contents of that list and asked them what they thought. added phones on their suggestions. removed phones on their advice. i coordinated what time i would be where, so that i would some friend or the other for company at all of the potential destinations.

i woke up at 2pm instead of 9am. had a leisurely lunch.

i told my mom i was leaving to buy a phone.

i sat down to check my mail. i thought i should check out the prices of phones before i leave (part of the "informed buying" process :D). decided ebay india was the best place to look. i entered 3 of the 5 phones without finding any results. decided to broaden my search.

a phone caught my eye. i had seen it before (there are very few phones i haven't seen or been quoted for, with all my months of window shopping :P)

the price was good.

i hit bid before i even verified the features (i sometimes trust my memory more than i should :P)

there were 16 minutes to go before the auction ended.

i had lost my ebay account.

i called my friend who regularly buys stuff off ebay. thrice on his cellphone, and once on his home phone. he didn't answer.

i used "forgot username" to get my username.

i unsuccessfully tried "forgot password" to get my password.

i unsuccessfully tried signing up for a new account.

i finally succeeded in creating a new account.

i hit bid. with (to quote ebay) "under 20 seconds left".

5 seconds later, i won the auction.

10 seconds later i actually scrolled down to make sure it really was the phone i thought it was. thankfully, my memory served me right this time.

i now am the proud owner of a xda zinc.

i'm still half dressed. the phone i brought was never on my list.

i still can't believe i've actually brought a phone on the spur of the moment after over a year of planning. i guess i will believe it when i hold my new phone for the first time.

sphincter extraction

i hate people who randomly pull figures out of their ass, usually with little or no logical explanation. my name for it is "sphincter extraction" - and looking at how often i come across these smelly numbers, it seems like people seem to love doing it as much as i hate hearing about it, if not more.

for example, today, i read/dugg an article on yahoo news that claims that accidental use of "reply all" cost the us economy USD 650 billion (that's almost 5% of its GDP, btw).

some time ago i read that changing the background of google's home page to black would save the world thousands of kilowatt-hours worth of electricity in a year.

in either case, the numbers are entirely meaningless because nothing is concretely defined.

what is the definition of "accidental" use of reply all? how do you define cost of receiving such a mail? don't we have to also factor in the potential loss of productivity caused by not getting an important message because you weren't included in the conversation?

for the black google thing, it's even stranger when you consider that an lcd screen actually uses *MORE* electricity to display black than to display white, while a crt one uses less. if lcds outnumber crts (which i'm jolly well sure they do), black google would actually use *MORE* electricity. and even if they did save a million lightbulbs worth of electricity, it would be less than what my block uses in a year. wonder where they got their "377,753.418 watt hours saved" line from.

maybe i should calculate how much money was lost due to sphincter-extraction-based reports. now that would be a nice number to pull out of my ass.

bad luck and strangers

ever wondered how bad your day needs to be before random strangers have pity and try helping you?

i found out for myself a couple of weeks ago.

i occasionally travel home from work by bus, typically on days when i've got something interesting to read and nothing better to do once i get home - just like on that tuesday.

it was a lesser-than-usually-packed bus, and i stood at my favourite spot, the one which, from experience, has the greatest chances of getting me a seat and the least amount of pushing-and-being-pushed-around involved. there were only two guys standing nearby, both obviously having the same set of 5 seats as i had in mind. the people sitting on those 5 seats looked fairly typical, and i had every reason to expect a few of them to get up anytime in the next 10-15 minutes.

a couple of them did. unfortunately, the ones who got up were nearer to the guys who were standing in 'my zone'.

oh-kay. not the end of the world. i held on to my spot, moving closer to the seats where no one had got up from yet. in the meantime, more people got onto the bus, and some of them (intentionally or un-) stood in the places previously occupied by the now-sitting guys. no problem. i figured i had a better chance of getting a seat now, so no bother.

i guess i sometimes fail to sense the difference between probability and certainty. those new guys got their seats before i did. more people moved into their places.

i shifted around a bit to accommodate the new probabilities in my mental model of who's likely to get up next.

probability let me down again.

so what. only 20 minutes over, i have 45 minutes left. more people should be getting up anytime now.

i was right. more people did get up.

i was wrong. the people who got up weren't the ones who were supposed to. and that was after taking into account the fares on people's tickets (it's a long distance ride, so i can predict how long people are gonna sit from the colour-coded fares on the tickets :D)

finally, about 20 minutes before i would reach home, there were only 4 passengers standing in the bus. 3 of them didn't want to sit.

the 4th person was me.

i guess that's when i hit the threshold. the conductor walked the length of the bus, called out my attention, and *pointed out* the seat at which someone was going to get up at the next stop.

that's right, the conductor actually told me something to the effect of "that person is getting off at the next stop. please stand there before someone else beats you to it."

wonder why i felt relieved, considering that i was the unluckiest guy on that bus.

the days of our lives

i love my dad's lp collection. it contains the stuff i grew up on before i was old enough to start swapping audio tapes and then cds with college friends. it's probably the one 15" by 15" box that contains more memories than any other part of the world put together (except possibly for the almost-crate of photo albums my dad has clicked over the years...he was *very* shutter happy :))

right now, i'm listening to engelbert humperdinck's melodious voice crooning "love me with all of your heart". it's like i'm 5 years old all over again :)

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sometimes, it feels like i was a kid in the 60's, a teenager in the 80's, and my life so far is 50 years of music squeezed into 24 years of living it

--- kris, 25th december, 2007

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merry christmas, everyone!

search queries that return my blog

one of the great things about using feedburner (and now, google analytics) is that i can see where my traffic comes from. most of it is from predictable places (my orkut profile, my notes on facebook etc), but a decent amount come from google searches (surprisingly, i've not seen any references from searches on any other engines). some of my pages are (or have been) even the first result for some searches.

in a not so-very-rare-fit-of-narcissism, i've made a small list:

kris orkut (top two pages...woo hoo!!!)

embarrass yourself on stage (yeah, very surprising!!! my post isn't even about it!)

special olympics siteswap

olympics synchronous siteswap

kris ban orkut

cellphone virus aaj tak

hamrrage (yeah, it's a typo :P)

other notable also-rans:

cellphone virus do not answer (used to be on top till f-secure beat it! still second, so not too bad anyway :))

thackeray sena ban orkut
(1st page result)

sena ban orkut (again, 1st page result, but slightly lower)

oh and btw you can also misspell kristopher noronha in google and have it offer to correct you...w00t!!! :)

private memories

my online life documents my real-world life quite closely, and for the past few months, a big part of it has been covered by my blog. of late, though, i've been deleting a significant (but not exactly large) number of posts, on the sole grounds that they contained stuff that is too personal to out online.

i hate deleting stuff (yeah, gmail was definitely designed for me), and so that got me thinking. as of an hour ago, i think i've arrived at a solution:

i need to keep a personal diary.

anyway, i'm still trying to decide whether to keep it online (i.e. a password protected blog), or maintain it like a more traditional book.

hopefully, it won't be too long before i write my first diary entry in 3 years.

ps: post on personal blogs vs diaries coming up. it's been typed and saved on my cell for months now, and i'm simply too lazy to transfer and proofread it. maybe in a few days.

the facebook revolution

i signed up at facebook on 9th of july this year, after a lot of coaxing from a few friends.

i remember using the "friend finder" the moment i signed up, and sent out invites to all my gmail contacts who were in facebook's database.

24 hours later, i had 55 facebook friends, vs around 400 orkut friends.

5 months later (today), i have 181 facebook friends, vs 442 orkut friends.

i randomly felt like clicking on the "friend finder" again today. to my surprise, 110 of my gmail contacts were on facebook, and i didn't even know it! strangely, 43 of those people were entirely unfamiliar, to the extent that i don't even know how they ended up in my gmail contacts. still, that leaves 67.

since i personally know all of those 67, i think i can safely assume they'll accept my friendship request. in other words, i should be at 248 friends sometime in the near future.

it took me 2 years to find that many friends on orkut.

i may be wrong, but social networks seem to be evolving to a point where it's just a mater of a few clicks before all your friends from another social network are added to this one.

this feels like the economic concept of perfect competition. social networks are already gaining inspiration from each other and becoming roughly homogeneous, and they're now gaining members (customers?) too. the only assumption left to be fulfilled is "perfect intelligence." :)

bend and break

i've been typing an average of over 1 post per day over the past 3 days. i have not posted even one of them. that's because i've not been feeling like posting for the past 3 days. as much as i don't want such a thing to happen, i don't want to do something i don't enjoy.

i think i need a break.

shop till the guy (almost) drops

disclaimer 1: opinions expressed here are solely mine. opinions that i claim to apply to a specific group of people (e.g. guys), are based on my perception of that group, which is usually warped (yeah, even about guys :P)

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disclaimer 2: some parts of this post are true in spirit, but *all* of it is true in letter. strange but true.

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spoiler: the most interesting part of this post is at the end. if you know me well enough, or if you're a regular reader and have more intelligence than the average plant then you should know that already. if you're a plant and you're reading this then i'd love to meet you and shake your...um...leaf :D

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guys are widely known, for mostly justified reasons, to hate (or atleast dislike) shopping, especially with or for a girl. the endless number of jokes on this subject have already served to ram the point very clearly into the thick of every girl's brain. as a result, guys are rarely taken out shopping by girls, unless the thing being shopped for is for the guy concerned. this has led to a situation where girls (including some i know) actually prefer shopping alone to taking a guy along. i think that's a really sad thing, because i feel guys should be taken shopping by girls. if they're not, they'll never know what they're missing. and they're missing a lot. oh and by "going shopping" i don't mean sitting in the car in the parking lot while the girl shops alone. that definitely doesn't count.

so anyway, yesterday was the last day my best friend marj had to spend in mumbai before she leaves the country never to return (atleast, not for the next couple of years), so we decided to meet up for lunch. and since she's got a real packed schedule, she asked if i didn't mind accompanying her while she purchased a "couple" of things. i obviously didn't mind (best friend + leaving for good + last meeting + ***couple of things*** = pretty convincing).

lunch was awesome, and both of us were pleasantly full (me a little more pleasant than marj, but that was thanks to the long island ice tea being better for my temperament than the fruit juice or whatever that was, was for hers) when we decided to hit hill road at bandra, the mecca of shopping in mumbai. for women, atleast.

now i'm not the sort of guy to dismiss doing something just because it doesn't seem like a guy thing to do (short of cross-dressing and other freaky stuff), so i decided to be as participative in the shopping process as i could (and in some cases, as participative as i was allowed to be...like outside the lingerie shop). hence, i gave a lot of opinions, suggestions, and most of all, pointed out the most arbit stuff to her, the way that a kid points out everything edible to her mom in the hope that one of the things bing pointed at will somehow fit her mom's fancy and get purchased.

and i offered to carry her bags.

it was quite a bit of fun, really, flitting about from shop to shop, seeing a lot of outfits/shoes/junk jewelery on the way, some really hot/cute and some downright atrocious.

still, the bags were growing heaver by the minute, and from some point i was carrying about 5 big bags, each of which contained smaller bags of each individual purchase. a few hours later and "we" were still shopping. at that point, something happened that made up for the lack of the funny element of the entire evening:

a shopkeeper (excellent salesman that he was...) called out to me and said the rough equivalent of

you have brought so many things, now buy something for the girl.

i guess he's never gone shopping with a girl before. if he did, he would have definitely known that it's impossible for a guy to purchase 5 bags of stuff and yet have the girl purchase anything under 10 bags of stuff. it's just the way life is.

anyway, i thought i had it bad when i came across a guy flanked by two women...and about five loaded bags in *each* hand. as he passed me, i overheard him say:

you've already emptied my wallet, so why are we walking around now???

i guess he's never gone shopping with a girl before either. if he did, he would have known the answer - "because we're still shopping!!!"

oh and at the end of the 4 hour shop-a-thon, i forgot to buy the one thing i wanted (or rather, needed). i guess i'll just tell my mom and ask her to get it for me. and then not accompany her to the shop.

work and religion

today, i realised i can effectively sum up my attitude to work with this one statement:

if work is worship, then i'm an atheist.

---kris, circa 2007

the hillarity of latency (or why timing is everything)

a couple of days ago, i was running late to work. what made it even worse was that i had a meeting scheduled right at the start of my day, and i was pretty sure i'll miss the start of it. as part of my mental preparation to entering a meeting late, i asked my friend sneha (who was also attending), to text me the moment the meeting started.

i reached 15 minutes late. unfortunately for me, i didn't receive any message either. either way, the meeting went off fine (hopefully i haven't messed up my manager's opinion of me too much :D), and sneha and i went back to our desks.

it so happened that we both had to meet someone that day, and he hadn't reached work yet. sneha and i decided we'll go meet him together when he arrives.

2 hours later.
(actual sms conversation follows)

s: He hs cm jst nw.
k: You can im me na..if ur feeling rich you can better spend the money by buying me lunch...unless you have free sms just like me :) anyway..we'll meet him now

30 seconds later.
(sneha calls me)

s: you okay?
k: ya...i'm coming there...let's go.

a minute later.
(i walk over to sneha's desk)

k: let's go meet him.
s: who *are* you trying to meet!!!

(5 minutes of discussion follow, till we finally realise exactly what happened)

sometimes, timing is everything.

ps: a vital but implied piece of info is missing from the story. let's see who can figure it out - other than sneha, of course :P

a haunting deep breath

of late, i've been listening to songs by muse over and over again. i feel a very strange attraction toward their songs, and that's despite me being unable to understand a lot of their lyrics, and their music being considerably heavier than my usual tastes. i just keep hitting "back" after each of their songs is nearing its' end, so much so that there have been days when i've only listened to one album of muse and nothing else, simply because it takes me an hour to bring myself to get my player out of repeat and to move to the next track.

today, while listening to new born (my favourite, and the first muse song that i ever heard, way back in 2001), i suddenly realised why. it was very startling when i realised it, but so obvious when i hit back and listened to that and muse's other tracks.

the lead singer (Matthew Bellamy) breathes in audibly.

i'm serious. he does. it sounds something like a reverse gasp, and it's before virtually every line of most songs, sometimes more noticeable than others, but almost always present.

get your hands (or rather, ears) on "new born". it will haunt you.

ask eraser - tada??? nada!!!

i was pleasantly surprised today to find that two people who's blogs i subscribe to posted about the same thing, just 25 minutes apart. ladies and gentlemen, i now present: seth godin and rahul batra.

the topic in question: askEraser. it's apparently ask.com's response to internet users' demand for a good search engine that doesn't search and mine their search history. wonder how well it'll work.

rahul's post is (quite typical of his style) short and sweet, while seth's post offers some interesting insights as to why privacy isn't all that important to the average internet user too.

anyway, as far as i'm concerned, i'm sticking with google. if data mining my personal communication was that big a deal, i'd have never used google products. looking at the way i use the internet, it seems to me that i've been trying to feed google as much data as i can about myself, so that one fine day they know exactly what i want before i can think of it. and yes, it wouldn't surprise me either :D

the birth of a new media monopoly

a few years ago, seth godin wrote an article about copyright, the internet and the media industry. i ended up reading it today when he wrote about how right he turned to be about the future of the media industry.

a few things about his article beg highlighting:

• the media industry, unlike most other industries, thrives off monopolies.


• a big part of their monopolies hinged on their monopoly of the distribution media.


• the internet has virtually ended their monopoly.


• they're trying to tackle this 'problem' by putting the genie back in the bottle, i.e. enforcing copyright laws.


• there's no way they can succeed at putting the genie into the bottle...atleast, not for good.


• the history of the media industry has proven that free media has always proven to be a boon, if used correctly. it was true with radio, it was true with tv, and now if used correctly it can be true with the internet too.


• media companies and moguls are trying to solve the problem by throwing more lawyers at it.


• media companies could get a better solution by letting go of the crumbling monopoly over distribution, and instead embrace the internet to create a new monopoly: a monopoly over knowledge. specifically, knowledge about potential customers


• knowledge could be used to virtually eliminate their marketing costs, or atleast the majority of it. it could be used to give artists a feel of what the audience wants, rather than the traditional approach of making media and then finding the audience for it.

seth also describes a way for media companies to embrace the internet and *still* make money. over to him.

we didn't burst the bubble!!!

no, we didn't. i swear.

guaranteed to get you rotfl whether you are or know a software engineer or have positively anything to do with technology or the web or (insert lots and lots of e-buzzwords here :D)

Exercise in speed-blind-texting

what do i do when i've decided to go to work by bus, and the bus takes so long that i'm super late, bored, and still only halfway to work?

Arbit stuff.

Today's arbit timepass: how fast and how much i can type on my cell without looking at the screen (and making as few mistakes as possible).

That's right, i've been texting/mailing/blogging from my cell so much over the part few months that i can type without looking at the screen, that too with the t9 dictionary on my cell on. Very useful when sitting in boring/sleep inducing training sessions and occasionally meetings at work.

I just hope no one from my office reads this :P

i just realised i also know the locations of the symbols i use for smileys too. Yayyy!

Current count for this post: 9 looks at the screen, 3 of which resulted in corrections.

Ps: proofreading resulted in just 7 more corrections. Double yayyy!

oh my god...she's...what!!!!

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disclaimer

i don't know where's the fine line between spoiling the plot and whetting the audience's appetite as far as hindi movies are concerned. my hindi translation skills also suck.

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i went for a hindi movie with marj yesterday (i.e. a few hours ago). dhan dhana dhan goal.

we were a couple of hours early for the show, and the hall was surprisingly empty, so we landed ourselves stall tickets to the second-from-last row. when the movie started, there was exactly one group sitting between us and the screen: this one family of three.

one middle aged looking dad, one probably middle aged but hottie mom (she had nice hair and...um...a decent figure :P), and one pink-clothed, hyperactive, giggling, 5-odd year old bundle of energy who passed off as a girl.

we got in just as the trailers ended. stood for the national anthem. movie started.

movie started off good. set in london. nice theme (by my standards, a gang of asian small timers who are suddenly forced to make it big on the football club scene to earn the prize money to save the precious but dilapidated club that's the only place they can play on, is pretty good a theme for a hindi movie). plus there's john abraham (for my friend to drool over) and bipasha basu (for me to ogle at) ;).

oh, i haven't got around to potentially spoiling the plot yet. so here goes:

scene (using characters' screen names, except that i'm "kris" and my friend is "marj" and...uhhh...forget it):

shaan: (in bed. under covers.)
shaan: (puts arm around wife jenny in sleep. ends up catching thin air.)
shaan: (half wakes up and searches for jenny in bed.)
shaan: (wakes up and sits in bed.)
marj: "he's wearing red pants!"
kris: "it's ok, he's in bed. i've worn worse."
shaan: (looks around for wife. sees bathroom door open.)
shaan: (walks into bathroom. jenny's sitting there sobbing.)
kris: "she's wearing pink pants. even better!"
marj: "shut up!"
shaan: "what happened!"
pink-clothed, hyperactive, giggling, 5-year old girl sitting in front of me: "i'm pregnant!"
marj and kris: (stunned silence.)
(5 seconds later)
jenny: "i'm pregnant!"

i just loved that movie.

my vacation in tweets

i've been twittering a lot from my cell the past few days, mainly because gprs has been my only contact with the outside world while i was on vacation (excluding the occasional phone call :D)

an insight into my week long vacation. my posts' inspirations mixed with lot of random other things. every tweet other than the first and last one typed on my cell :)

11:37 AM November 24	about to leave for mangalore...finally!!! also just discovered that my mom didn't know i had been drinking last night till i told her :P
01:02 PM November 24	There's never a dull moment when travelling with family. Like, my granddad called fat people MBBS:members of big bottom society :D
02:40 PM November 24	Train started moving half an hour ago...now for a 1186 km long journey...and 19 hours of continuous movement
05:38 PM November 24	Had a good afternoon nap in the train...will now get back to reading asimov...the weather's getting cooler too...awesome!
10:15 PM November 24	Had a lazy evening in the train...stood at the door and enjoyed the breeze, going to sleep early because everyone wants the lights out.
10:18 PM November 24	Network sucks big time and my cellphone's battery is about to die...looks like no more twitter till i reach mangalore :(
11:36 AM November 25	Train reached mangalore an hour ago...and i'm now at aunt olga's quiet, neat and homely place...it's nice!
01:06 PM November 25	Reading on my cell, noticed that a lot of my subscriptions are to video/photo blogs...guess i'll have a huge backlog this week.
01:51 PM November 25	Had an awesome lunch...chicken biryani and fish curry and fried fish...whoopee!!! Now the only thing left is my siesta :)
02:48 PM November 25	My first *full length* blog post that went straight from my cell to my blog. Blogger's doing it's job, and well!
03:48 PM November 25	Gotta get ready in time for mass - apparently the church's quite a distance from my aunt's place.
05:29 PM November 25	At the chapel, almost half an hour early for a change...it's such an idyllic place...oh and mass is open air, with a small chapel nearby :)
07:23 PM November 25	Exploring the area around the chapel while my parents and aunt chitchat :D
08:24 PM November 25	The buses in mangalore are amazing...some have disco lights, some have disco music, some, like the one i got, have both!
09:10 PM November 25	Going out for dinner...seafood is supposed to be mangalore's speciality...lets hope the food is as good as the menu :P
10:22 PM November 25	Whoa...that was one awesome dinner...fried king prawn and pomfret curry...seafood heaven!
11:34 PM November 25	Had a lovely day...now about to tuck myself into bed...or maybe listen to some music or play worms world party on my cell first :)
01:50 AM November 26	Fell asleep listening to "hey there delilah" and missing daf...woke up in time to watch my cell switch itself off :P
07:28 AM November 26	Woke up at 7:30am without an alarm, which is super early by my standards - this holiday is doing me a lot of good!
08:13 AM November 26	Apparently the new orkut doesn't display scraps in anyone's scrapbook when viewed on my cellphone...how crappy!!!
10:33 AM November 26	2 hour breakfast...1 hour shower and shave...now that feels like a holiday!
11:43 AM November 26	On my way to the beach...and hopefully a fun bus ride before i get there too :)
12:59 PM November 26	Buses are nice and airy...no windows, just metal rods to the ceiling. Strangest of all, there are no tickets...just a dirt cheap flat fare
02:06 PM November 26	Beach was lovely, but not safe to bathe in :( had a nice long walk, a couple of shades of tan...and some nice shells :)
02:42 PM November 26	Parents didn't want to hang out at the beach too much cos there was too little shade...so we're on our way back now :)
03:35 PM November 26	Time for a nap...zzz!!!
08:51 PM November 26	Went to search for sultan's battery, a medieval watchtower that's located nearby. Unfortunately i didn't find it before sunset :(
10:13 PM November 26	Another sumptuous dinner...i must weigh myself when i get back...i'm sure it will be more than i expect :P
11:31 PM November 26	Blogged, chatted with my aunt about today and random stuff...now going to have a nice cold shower and hopefully a good night's sleep :)
09:59 AM November 27	Woke (or rather, was woken) at 9, to a treat of fresh dosas and green chutney...a typical south indian breakfast :)
11:10 AM November 27	On my way to st. aloysius college...supposed to have a centuries-old chapel with amazing murals :)
12:12 PM November 27	The chapel was awesome-every inch of its insides were covered with breathtaking murals...next stop, mangalore's museum :)
01:10 PM November 27	Got lost on the way from the chapel to the museum...the bus passed my aunt's place, so i got off there instead :P
04:06 PM November 27	Feeling sleepy post-lunch...but we've got better things to do! Let's see how i drag my mom and bro to go river rafting :)
06:26 PM November 27	Went canoeing, but couldn't convince mom to powerboat :( Also caught sultan's battery *before* sunset this time :D
10:38 PM November 27	Treated my folks to dinner...first subway, then pizza hut...they enjoyed the subway, but i enjoyed the pizza more :P
09:56 AM November 28	Woke up late...but got ready in record time...or rather, i tried...but 30 minutes is pretty good by my standards :)
11:35 AM November 28	My folks and i visited my mom's 87 year old godmother and her sister...it was so nice, and they're so sweet and cultured...charming, really!
12:38 PM November 28	Now visiting my grandmom's cousin, it's amazing to hear tales of my grandparents in their youth...how sweet!
01:41 PM November 28	Back at my aunt's home, hot & tired. Blogging about my day...let's see how far i get before lunch or sleep get the better of me :)
07:09 PM November 28	Lunch and sleep *did* get the better of me...but i woke up and hit send on what's been my longest mobile post so far :D
07:53 PM November 28	scrolled through my posts, today's was 24 pages on my phone screen, while the longest of my past 20 posts is just 14...whoa!
10:16 PM November 28	Awesome dinner cooked by my aunt and her cook...and we had fr ronnie noronha for company too...3 noronha families at one table :)
12:17 AM November 29	Had an hour long walk-cum-chat with my bro...exchanged thoughts and philosophy, got lost and found our way...nice!
02:27 AM November 29	Having nice long bedtime chat with bro about humour, sarcasm and arbit stuff...this is why i love my family!!!
02:27 AM November 29	Having nice long bedtime chat with bro about humour, sarcasm and arbit stuff...this is why i love my family!!!
02:58 AM November 29	Midnight snack time! Bro and i managed to steal quite a bounty from aunt's fridge...wonder what she'll think when she wakes up :P
10:19 AM November 29	Was woken up at 9, because everyone else was almost ready to leave. Managed to delay them for an hour before i was ready :P
11:55 AM November 29	The museum was just about ok...bit of a disappointment, really...could have been better maintained :(
01:07 PM November 29	On the beach...almost! Folks were feeling hungry so we stopped at a roadside cafe to have our picnic lunch first :)
04:19 PM November 29	Had a relaxed day at the beach...unfortunately the sea wasn't safe here either, so spent the day basking in the sun :)
05:08 PM November 29	Done exploring, now in the bus on our way home :)
11:24 PM November 29	About to tuck into bed...i had something to blog about but can't remember it now :(
01:30 AM November 30	Wrote and submitted super long blog post that hit the limit of my phone's text editor - 28 cellphone screens...wheee!!!
09:37 AM November 30	Woke up at 9 as usual, but this time because my aunt whose place we're staying at was leaving for work. Ciao, aunt Olga!
12:25 PM November 30	About to leave aunt olga's place for the railway station...the end of a lovely 6 day vacation :)
02:53 PM November 30	The train's started moving...i've almost finished "robot visions" by asimov. Goodbye, mangalore!
05:51 PM November 30	Sat at the door with my bro and chatted about art and this year's christmas crib...will now switch to the more comfy seats :)
08:20 PM November 30	Out of one state...and into another! If the train's on time, there's 13 hours to go before i'm home :)
09:21 PM November 30	Sandwiches and fruit for dinner...feels like a picnic, except that i'm about to go to sleep in the train :D
10:01 AM December 01	back home at last...feels so nice to be at my comp after ages...and yeah, the spiders enjoyed a week long vacation inside my pc too!!!