Moving on..

After about 6.5 years of working at my current company -- Amazon.com -- I will finally be saying goodbye. Looking back, I have to say that I had an amazing time here. But staying any longer would have just been complacency on my part.

There are so many friends, so many sweet memories that happened in this time.

Right now, I am in the middle of getting everything closed, packed and shipped back to the United States. It kind of feels strange -- the last one year in India has changed so much in my life in some ways. The time in India was very memorable, though I can't complain enough about the life (or the lack of it) in Bangalore.

Punjabi ghazals, anyone?

When someone mentions Punjabi music, most people probably think of Bhangra, Daler Manhdi, Malkit Singh an the like. Try this
for a change.

I picked up this album by Kiran Ahluwalia because I remember I had seen the album photo online somewhere, and remember that I had kind of thought about getting it sometime. I saw it when browsing in a store, and next thing I was listening to her amazing voice in my car. Her story of leaving her job to go find music is impressive too. But really, her voice, and her rendition of the ghazals, is something you get hooked on to easily.

The Lisp Way

My journey with Lisp continues. I had progressed to the second chapter of SICP, and now Ajit has swiped it from me. So I'll have to get another copy. (The book's a lot cheaper in the Indian edition -- Rs. 400, or about USD 9.)

I managed to find the Common Practical Lisp book in a store in Bay area. This one's a great read as well. I'm actually reading this stuff in flights, lord forbid.

It's getting to the extent where I have been thinking about past stuff I've done and how I could have done them that much better if I had picked Lisp to do them.

I couldn't find Peter Norvig's book I was looking for in stores anywhere, and I was in the US for a short visit and didn't have time to get it from Amazon. But I have plenty to work thorugh for now!

Physics of 15 Park Avenue

The title is a little misleading. I have little to offer on the physics of 15 Park Avenue. But I have some observations. For those not in the know, 15 Park Avenue is a new movie by Aparna Sen -- the director of the amazing Mr. and Mrs. Iyer.

I saw this movie a few weeks ago, and we weren't prepared for the grim mood of the movie. Nevertheless, we came away impressed with the movie. Before you read any further, there are spoilers below -- so if you haven't seen the movie, you might be better off not reading ahead.

From the very beginning of the movie, it seems to have a thread running about questioning reality, and there is also a thread that keeps mentioning quantum physics. Shabana Azmi is a quantum physics professor. She befriends a neurologist who is treating her sister -- played incredibly by Konkona Sen -- of schizophrenia. Together the doctor and the sister have conversations about what is real and what is not. The movie ends where you are left wondering what it was all about -- and it kind of ties these odd ends about quantum physics and reality and alternate worlds, though still leaves a lot of questions.

The other interesting aspect about the movie was how all the characters revolved around Mithi the schizophrenic. Everyone brought their perspective -- the educated sister treats her like a project and a responsibility, the old mother just looks on helplessly, the maid treats her like a pain she has to endure, the deserting lover looks at her with guilt and seeks redemption in trying to help her.

In one of the conversations in the movie, they discuss a sadhu who "hears voices in his head." The mother is an instant believer who thinks this can happen. The scientists are all non-believers and think he is a charlatan. The doctor brings his perspective -- maybe the sadhu is schizophrenic? And this ties the conversation with Mithi, who talks and lives in a world different than the one others around her are living in.

--

I saw Rang De Basanti last night -- another patriotic themed film by Aamir Khan. It was many times better than the damp affair called Mangal Pandey, of course. The movie had its flaws but I thought the movie was quite well done.

Teaching myself Lisp

Whenever I can make some time these days, I try and make progress with learning Lisp. To begin with, I started with a refresher on Lambda. I remembered some of the lambda calculus stuff, but not a whole lot. Google search pointed me to Wikipedia entries, so that's where I went.

Next I searched for some basic tutorials on Lisp that could get me started. This is the one I ended up using: http://www.notam02.no/internt/cm-sys/cm-2.2/doc/clt.html
Once I was through with this tutorial, I started looking for good books. I found the Common Lisp: The Language book online. I've now downloaded it on my powerbook (which is running for hours on battery now!)

I always felt I could learn better if I had programming problems to work through. They make you wade through some basic concepts that elude you when you are simply reading tutorials etc. After I looked around a bit, I picked up the class assignments from a course at Georgia Tech (where I actually had spent 2 years, without taking this course -- what a waste!): Class CS 2360.

I am almost done with the second assingment now. They weren't very tough, but I couldn't stop myself from smiling when I solved some simple problems like swapping the first and the fourth elements of a list, or implementing simple set operations.

I also bought a copy of Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. It's been a great read so far -- I am still in the first chapter.

Of soundtracks, Korean movies and Indian copies...

I saw the Sajay Dutt starrer, Zinda, this weekend. I thought the movie was a far superior product than what one would have expected. I think it's also largely due to the ability of the lead actors being able to carry off their roles. There were all kinds of goofs and letdowns, but nevertheless this is a good product from Bollywood.
One of the funny goofs was when a guy whose both hands have been cut off is asked where the girl is, points using what must have been his third hand, "upstairs."

Now, one of the reasons, I am sure, this movie appeals to me is that it is remake of the Korean movie Oldboy. I have a weak spot for Korean and Thai movies, and I end up watching a lot of junk from them just because I want to not miss out on a rare gem somehow. That's how I got to see Attack the Gas Station, Jakarta, The Eye, One Missed Call and so many other very good movies (imho). In any case, Zinda did a good job with the production though they could have easily done with someone better than the leading ladies they actually hired -- one thinks of Shilpa Shetty.

One or two movies every couple of months seem to have really good soundtracks. Bluffmaster did it with its hip hop tracks a month or so ago, and now Zinda with its tracks by Strings. Pakistani bands seem to be the flavor du jour, and fully deserved too. Jal, Fuzon, Strings -- all these guys rock!

Lisp..

I met Ranjit for lunch a couple of days back, and naturally there were plenty of geeky things to talk about. He had made references to Lisp related blogs recently, and conversation steered towards functional programming and like for a bit.

About a year and a half ago, when I started working on a brand new product, the nature of the product naturally lent itself to be implemented in a functional programming langauage -- or so I believe. Unfortunately I can't talk about it in detail, but I was very excited that I might get to tinker in Lisp or ML once again. But it wasn't to be. This time, however, I am a little bit more determined to just work in Lisp for fun, if nothing else.

This led to an exercise of installing CLISP on my powerbook. I have Panther (10.3), and the majority of my pain in getting CLISP installed was in finding how to get the Xcode developer tools installed. It turned out that the whole thing was incredibly simple once you knew where to install from. In any case, as of this morning, I have CLISP on my laptop, and I feel like child again, eager to get back home from work and play!

Bringing the powerbook battery back to life

For some time now, the battery on my 12-inch powerbook had been behaving erratically. I noticed it first some 4 months ago, when the battery went from 100% charge to dead in about 10 minutes. Initially I thought the battery must be close to dying (it has been close to two years of usage). Last week, I decided to at least tamper with it a little bit. With only a little bit of internet research, I figured that the problem is probably related to the memory problem, and I found two ways people have fixed similar problems. I narrowed down the possible things I could try to fix the laptop to these two: boot up open firmware, and try to reset nvram; and try and completely discharge and recharge the battery a few times.

I didn't know how to boot up in open firmware, and this place had some good information to get me started. Other people had written about how they had fixed battery problems in open firmware too.

Once my powerbook was in open firmware, i reset-nvram, and reset-all -- resulting in the latop restarting. There didn't seem to be any effect. The battery was still draining pretty quickly.

Then I started the process of draining the battery completely. In order to do this quickly, I downloaded BatteryAmnesia, but it didn't work -- it kept reporting that the AC adapter is connected when it wasn't. It probably did its best and there was a problem with the battery I needed to fix, but I was a little disappointed with the software -- as a programmer myself, I expect programs to work when users use them.

So I began the process of letting the battery drain off completely, and then recharging it again. After a couple of these sessions I noticed that the powerbook would start reporting only 1% charge left after about 20 minutes of work, but then would stay on for another hour or so at that level. In some ways, the problem was fixed -- my battery was lasting much longer now than it was earlier.

After a few more sessions of fully draining the battery and recharging it, the battery seems much healthier. It is charging and draining at a much lower rate -- which does seem to indicate a "memory problem" as the root cause.

Kumarakom and Allepey

A couple of weeks ago Pooja and I went to Kerala. We planned it at a very short notice, but we managed to still get to do what we wanted to -- which was a day at a lakeside resort in Kumarakom, and a houseboat cruise. We were initially trying to book it online, but decided to go through a travel agent, in the hope of getting better rates. It turned out the buggers charged us the rates we saw online, and added their own margins on top of it. I've seen the same thing now with just about everything in India -- flights, hotels, holiday packages. Probably the best rates you want are already available online now.

I wholly recommend Kerala visit to everyone -- it is indeed a place out of this world. Sitting by the water in Kumarakom in the evening was probably one of most pleasant memories in India. The day and night in the houseboat was great as well. We travelled from Kumarakom to Allepey, but I believe most of the cruises are from Allepey to Kollam.

Hampi

We went to Hampi on the new years' weekend. It was a very quiet new years, but great nevertheless. The city of Hampi was a part of the old Vijayanagar empire till the 15th century, when it was brought to ruins by invaders. This was the first time I saw preserved ruins of a whole city. Cities like Delhi, Udaipur, Mysore, Hyderabad have their own (and even longer) history, but there are layers of cultures that have hidden, or completely erased what existed centuries ago. In most of these cities you can still see the more magnificient pieces of architecture -- the palaces, the forts -- but in Hampi you can look over what used to be an entire city, complete with markets, temples, festival grounds, drainage and drinking water aqua ducts and more.

The city has boundary walls that have gates to come in and go out -- large enough that elephants used to come in years ago, and buses make it through easily now. The moment you enter Hampi, you immediately feel as though you've been transported to a different time. On barren rocks you see beauty in the form of architecture of old everywhere. I found it fascinating to see what seemed like resting places for trekkers in several places -- in the middle of what seemed like nowhere.

The most majestic and impressive of the temples was defintiely the Vithala temple. This temple has "musical" pillars. It is difficult to describe but there are actually different instruments that you can hear when you play on different pillars. Besides this, the Queen's bath was interesting -- one of the times when the good old phrase comes to mind: "It's good to be King!"

We stayed across the river, and getting there by car was quite an adventure. The village across the river from Hampi is now just a row of guest houses and garden restaurants, all catering to mostly foreigners and hippies. Nevertheless, it was not very expensive. I recommend though that you stay in Hampi, preferrably in a guest house or in the Hotel Mayur Bhuvaneshvari that's run by the Karnataka government. You have to take a boat to go across the river, and it stops running at 8pm, and doesn't start till 6am. We were planning to leave Hampi very early morning on Monday, to get back to work in Bangalore, and had to drive some 40 km on very bad roads to get across.

And it was just six years ago...

Today I had to make a call to Bank of America to get the address of the location where I opened my account. While I was asking the CS rep at BofA to help me with it, it occured to me that when I opened my account, the bank was called Seafirst, and so many things were different then. So much has happened since then, it doesn't seem like it was just six years ago. I can almost remember all the months, sometimes even weeks and days, that made up these six years.

Come to think of it, how can human brain just keep cramming up all these memories, and have them so readily available all the time?

We saw King Kong. I had been patiently waiting for this Peter Jackson remake of the 1933 movie, and it didn't disappoint. The New Zealander has put $207 million to good use.

What makes it all worth it in the end...

People talk of crossroads, and the Frosts of the world have extolled the value of the road less travelled. I have been thinking about some drastic changes, some of which are now right upon me (such as marriage), and some I am thinking of bringing upon myself (such as work). There are several different ways one can go, and many different places one could potentially end up at. So I am asking myself, what makes it worth it all in the end?

Blogging has been light of late primarily because life's gotten a lot more mundane (yet hectic) since I came back from my vacation. I was in Chennai on a recruiting trip, and managed to dine at the fabulous Murugan Idli Stall. Besides that, nothing of note's been happening. I am off to Goa for a weekend of party before I tie the knot a week or so later.

Here's to the last few days as a bachelor!

Reality check in Bangalore

I've been back in the office for the past 2 days. I am trying to figure out what I want to be doing now. In the meanwhile, everything about Bangalore only sucks more. Our office has moved to Banerghatta road -- which was supposedly voted as the worst road in India on a TV channel. After a couple of days of long commutes managing to stay alive despite craters on the roads and buses moving around like misguided asteroids, I am questioning why I am here doing what I am doing. Nothing could be worth enduring the shithole that Bangalore has become.

Shopping in Sri Lanka

A bunch of us spent some 4 days in Sri Lanka last week. It was primarily a trip to do some shopping, and also to travel a bit. The only thing going for Sri Lanka, I thought, was that there were probably a lot more beaches to check out.

We managed to only see Bentota beach, and a little bit of the beaches closer to Colombo. Rest of Sri Lanka seemed not very different from India, except that it was maybe a little less crowded, people were a little more well behaved (they actually stop for pedestrians!), and food was not as great. Other than that, as an Indian you would probably feel right at home -- almost to the extent that you would expect these people to know Hindi. It even happened to us a few times -- we blurted out in Hindi to the auto rickshaw driver or the taxi driver, and didn't realize for a second why they didn't respond. Indian Rupee works just as fine in most places, you have to haggle your way through everything, and we didn't look out of place. We felt so much at home that we decided we should be paying the Sri Lankan fares for all parks and temples we visited -- which were of course much less then the charges for foreigners.

We stayed at the Hilton for the first couple of days. I had found out that they have squash courts at the Hilton, so naturally I went prepared. I got a chance to play squash after about 6 months, I think, and loved every second of it. It left me quite sore for the rest of the time in Sri Lanka -- and I felt all of it when trying to jet ski in Bentota the next day.

Our time in Lanka felt like we were driving around most of the time. Traffic seems really slow there. The drive to Bentota took us longer than upwards of 2 hours, and it is just over 60km from Colombo. The next day we drove to Kandy and stayed at the really lousy Queens hotel there. The hotel seemed to have been left behind by the British, and the folks who took it over seemed to have decided that by just letting it be makes it all the better. On the way to Kandy we stopped at an elephant orphanage -- still called that though the original orphans are now grandparents and parents of the rest of the elephants in the orphanage now. We had had some really good time up, close and personal with the elephants in Nagarhole, so it didn't seem that much of a novelty. Nevertheless, elephants are majestic, and command respect when you lay eyes on them.

The third day we were back in Colombo, this time at the Taj Samudra. This hotel was definitely worse off than the Hilton, but better located and decent facilities. Their dinner pricing was quite baffling though. They had priced their buffet at three times the price of the most expensive item on the regular menu -- not surprising then that hardly anyone touched the buffet.

The fourth day was a rare day when I went on a shopping spree for about eight hours at a stretch. We started at Odel (great for clothing, especially t-shirts), moved to House of Fashion (amazing for jackets -- unbelievably low prices!), Arena (which was apparently unceremoniously shutdown for no apparent reason), Paradise Road (really beautiful store, good selection of Dilmah tea, hand paper stuff, handicrafts and more) and then back to Odel to wrap it all up. At Paradise Road I also picked up a book called "Colpetty People" by Ashok Ferrey. I've read half of it now and it reminds me of RK Narayan quite a bit in its prose, and Saki and Roald Dahl in its stories and characters. The book has short stories bases in Sri Lanka, or with Sri Lankan characters. I like it so far.

Back in Bangalore, it seems just like it was before, only worse. The rains have helped make the traffic situation worse -- and I thought it couldn't get any worse. Bangalore seems to heading to some kind of a climax -- one day the traffic will get so bad that everyone will run out of petrol just sitting in the cars, and will have to leave their cars on the road to go home; everything will come to a standstill. It really does feel that way when it takes 2 hours to drive half a km here. And if the people ruling this state would have their way, all of us should soon start farming.

Headed back home...

As all good things do, my surfing vacation ended. :(

But it ended on such a great note, I can't complain. For one, I am doing a lot, LOT, better than when I first started. I am turning more and more, and am able to go across waves!! How cool is that. Whenever I've taken holidays in the summer I've felt that I needed to have a summer sport. Snowboarding's been a great winter sport. With surfing, and, to a slightly lesser extent, diving, I finally have one. Ever since I saw the surfing movie Step Into Liquid, I've felt a need to learn surfing. I tried my hand at it for 3 days in Oregon about a year ago, and that was like tasting blood. Unfortunately I hadn't been able to do it again till now. It feels great to finally get past this constant desire in me to want to get into water.

The other reason it was so great the last 3 days was that, hold your breath, there were dolphins surfing right next to me!! Imagine getting on a wave, catching it, and as you surf a dolphin jumps out from beneath you and surfs the wave next to you! And this wasn't no Seaworld. This was open ocean. I can't describe the feeling... I was howling with joy when it happened.

Look Both Ways

I checked out this movie today at an art house theater in Brisbane. The theater, called Dendy Cinemas, reminded me of some of the smaller art house theaters in Seattle. Anyway, the movie was surprisingly very good. It is an Australian movie, and though I was expecting good stuff, this one exceeded expectations. Slow, downplayed emotions, very real stuff, and nicely put together.

Surfing got even better today after the break. I am beginning to turn and go sideways, and am hoping to take that a notch higher by the end of the week!

Go Dive!

I took a break this weekend from surfing and came over to the Great Barrier Reef for some diving. I did two dives this morning and in one word, it was INCREDIBLE. I think everyone should learn diving, and then explore the world down below water. It's bigger than IMAX! ;-)

I am staying at the Heron Island, an island on the reef itself, in the Marine park. It is a really tiny island (takes about half an hour to walk around it), and it sits on top of a huge reef shelf. The dives were a short boat ride off the island.

During the first dive, I was a little disoriented. Being under water, at 40ft, is still somewhat of a novel experience for me. And everyone else on the dive being expert divers kind of made me look even more green. I was under water for nearly half an hour, and for most part I spent it kind of under the spell of the incredible beauty that surrounded me, not to forget trying not to make too big a fool of myself. It was one incredible experience -- to be surrounded by amazing stuff that IMAX movies are made of, with water squeezing the air bubbles in you, and then there is even more beautiful things that swim by you, taking you somewhat by surprise.

The second dive was a lot better. I was a lot more relaxed, and if I thought the earlier dive was fascinating, this one beat it hands down. We descended to about 18m, and swam along the reef for about half an hour. At one point the divemaster signalled us to come over, and we swam around a coral to find a, yes!, a shark beneath it. It was at least a meter long, maybe 1.5 meters or so. At first sight, I felt a slight twinge of fear. But when the divemaster just went close to its face and waved it out from the coral, I let myself just take it all in. I was swimming 18m beneath the sea level, about a couple of feet away from a 4.5ft shark, the one with the JAWS, so close I count its gills and had time to compare it with what I had seen in books, documentaries and Spielberg's horror flick, and my guide was even close to it and trying to scare it out of its hiding space. I assumed it wasn't going to come for me -- there were more meaty looking divers around me. Surely the guide wouldn't be waving at it if there was indeed a risk. So, I just watched, fascinated, enthralled. No shark cages for me, no sir! Just give me this fearless divemaster!

On my second dive I had taken my underwater camera with me. On the first dive, I reckoned it would be too much hassle, too much of a distraction. I clicked one photo before the dive to make sure the camera worked but, as though to make Murphy the lawmaker give the i-told-you-so smile, the camera refused to work once I entered the water. So I have no pictures to prove what I saw, but I know I'll never forget it either. Tara the fearless divemaster was there as a witness!

I think everyone in this world should learn to dive and explore the world under water. It is worth it! Go dive!

I am headed back from my trip to Heron Island, back to the "mainland." I start my third part of surfing tomorrow morning. My break from vacation has ended, and the vacation itself is drawing to conclusion. In another eight days' time I will be in Bangalore, and then there will be families, flights, weddings and back-to-work.

Bollywood is everywhere!

This Sunday I spent the afternoon at the Queensland Multicultural festival in Brisbane. The program listed music and from from lots of different countries. In fact, it was crammed with performances all day long, with 4-5 shows at the same time. There was food from everywhere as well. I tried a Bolivian dish, the name which I already forgot.

There was a significant presence of Indian music there. And food too. There was a classical music performance, and a Sikh music performance (a guy called Dya Singh who was made out to be a world famous, but I hadn't heard about him before). But what seemed to be much more predominant theme from India was Bollywood. the emcees kept talking about the Bhangra show in the evening and a chance for everyone to learn the dance moves of Bollywood. Among other cultural shows there were bunch of performers singing and dancing to Bollywood songs. Bollywood seems to be defining the Indian culture everywhere, for good or bad. The "filmi" dances and the mushy songs with peppy music are everywhere and there is no escaping. It's like one of the asian underground performers said, the brown invasion has begun.

Crazy Frog

I had heard this song on radio in Maui, couldn't find it in the stores in the US or in India, but finally found it here in Australia. It's funky and though I haven't heard the original Alex F, I like this version.

On my way to Brisbane this evening I heard an incredibly funny recording of a guy in the US, who calls his boss while he is driving, and happens to see a road accident in front of him. The RJ said that the conversation is available on the internet as a podcast and an MP3, but I haven't found it yet. If I do, I'll post a link. It was a rare gem. If someone does have access to it, please send me a link!

Surfing's been great. Little by little I'm getting the hang of it. It get damn tiring after a couple of hours out in the water. But when i catch a wave, it's just sweet!

I checked out the local Carrumbin wildlife sanctuary yesterday, and spent some time up close with kangaroos and koalas. Koalas are incredibly cute little things. I saw a few sleeping in the trees -- all rolled up into a ball, wedged between two branches.

This weekend I'm planning to check out Byron Bay area, and more of Brisbane. I had dinner there at a restaurant/bar called 1 degree, and a drink at the Jade Buddha, both at the Eagle St pier. It was Friday evening, and almost everyone seemed to be out and about. The central area is littered with hip restaurants, coffee shops and bars everywhere -- and all of them seemed to be packed today.

Brisbane

This morning was great. I surfed for some 3 hours and the conditions were just about perfect. On the Rainbow beach here, waves were glass-like and the Sun on the sky made everything even better. My third day into surfing here and I think I am getting a lot better -- it may have just been the conditions, but today felt great. The conditions gave me a lot of rights (the waves coming in from the right) that I caught all the way in. Awesome, awesome.

In the afternoon, I took a train to Brisbane. I had bought the Brisbane Sunday Mail, and I was overjoyed to find that Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle is playing here. And in Japanese version with English subtitles too! It wasn't something I could pass up on. I had written a long time back about the movie, and I knew there was no way I could catch it in India. It's a shame that there is no mainstream audience for international cinema, even in metropolis, in India. There are all kinds of small cliquish clubs that watch old cinema classics, but that's about it.

The latest from Miyazaki was beautiful as ever. Miyazaki's world is so enchanting. This time around, however, the movie itself wasn't as impressive as his earlier works. The story did not seem very well put together, and the characters seemed to be almost rip-offs from Spirited Away. Nevertheless, it was worth the afternoon.

The rest of the time, I roamed around in Brisbane, mostly around South Bank. Whatever little I saw of the city, I liked. I've always believed that a river, and to a slightly lesser extent an ocean, gives a city more character. Cities that have neither aren't worth living. Brisbane has both! In just the small area I spent time in was littered with several restaurants, coffee shops, and art galleries. Over the next week I am thinking of checking out several more parts of Brisbane.

Some thing I learned about this area: signs of "XXXX" mark bars or beer shops. I am not sure if this is widespread across Australia, I believe it is something specific to the Queensland area. Apparently a joke goes that the sign says this because Australians can't spell beer. Also, the shops that sell liquor are called, very aptly, "bottle shops."