Trek to Visapur

I'd gone to Visapur last Sunday with a bunch of friends. It was a nice trek... The landscape is quite nice. We took a hell of a while to get there, but that was expected. You cannot expect to be quick when you're stopping every 15 min for clicking photographs.

The trek was entirely worth the time and energy spent. Not for the experience of trekking or anything though... It was worth it because I had the chance to listen to a hilarious conversation between one of our group and his friend. And I'll narrate it!

The rest of the group had gone off to see a temple, after we'd climbed the fort. That left three of us at the place where we'd had lunch. The three were (... with Gandalf, Galadriel and Elrond!) Me and a couple of guys I'll call Abba and Enthu. Abba was half asleep when his friend called. After the customary exchanges of greetings, this is what transpired...

Enthu: I need a place to lie down... My leg hurts...
Abba: Here, you can lie down next to me.
She: Who're you talking to?
Abba: Ah that's just my girlfriend. Asked her to lie down next to me... Hello?
She: ... (static) ...
Enthu & Me: HAHAHAHAHAHA. Due you have no idea how to talk to a girl.
Abba: Arre but she's not even my girlfriend or anything for her to just cut the call like that!
Enthu: Dude are you mad? Why would you say something like that to any female?
Me: Really. You're mad!
Abba: Arre damn. What do I do now?
Enthu and Me: (still laughing) Call her and patch up.
Enthu: By the way, the first response you're going to get is 'WHAT?'.
Me: Hahahaha
Abba (calls): Er...
She: WHAT?
Abba: Er that was just my friends playing a prank... There''s no girl here...
She: Hmm... Have you reached the top of the fort?
Abba: Yes... It was fun.
She: Have you had your lunch?
Abba: Yes...
(Enthu and I are still snickering at the poor chap)
She: Are you tired or anything?
Abba: Nah I'm alright. How's your program going.
She: It's not really working... There's some debugging to be done. When will you be back?
Abba: Er I'll be home by around 4...
Enthu: Arre you might as well forget about getting home before 6:30
Abba: SHHH! er...
She: You're not going to be here by 4 eh?
Abba: Er... we might get a little late...
Me: (to Enthu, both of us still laughing) Look at him... She's so concerned about him... He hasn't even asked her if she's had lunch or anything...
Enthu: Really re... What a pathetic fellow.
(The conversation went on a little, in this manner. Then, there was this uncomfortable pause)
Abba: ...
She: ...
Abba: (Now desperate to get conversation going again) Tell me one thing... Have you ever had Krackjack with jam?
(At this point Enthu and I started doubling over with laughter)
She: Krac.. What? What is wrong with you?
Abba: Er nothi-
She: Are you alright?
Abba: Er..
(We were still howling with laughter)
She: ... (static) ...
Abba: (To us) Look what you did! She cut the call again!
Me: HAHAHAHA that wasn't us... you did that yourself... KRACKJACK AND JAM HAHAHAHA
Enthu: Is that really something to ask her?
Abba: Arre I was just... damn... just wanted to talk to her about lunch...
Enthu: So you asked her if she'd had krackjack and jam? HAHAHAHAHA
.
.
.


And so it went on for quite a while... He even called her again, and we had more cruel laughs at his expense!
The whole trip was justified, just by these 15 minutes!

A Small Trip

I've been wanting to go biking someplace for a while. Last Sunday (i.e. not yesterday) that's just what I did. Took a couple of friends and another bike, and off we went to the Khadakwasla dam near Pune. I was disappointed by the length of the journey. It was rather shorter than we'd planned for...

Nevertheless, it was fun. Three of us. Two bikes. And the (mostly) open road. The area around Khadakwasla is quite a place... It's alternatively full of lush green vegetation and dry deciduous trees. Sets up the landscape quite nicely.

Those are of course our bikes. I rode both of 'em for reasonable while (not at the same time of course!). The Unicorn is a silent performer. The gears almost never run out, the engine is noiseless, the ride is smooth. The Apache on the other hand is agressive, racy and just dying to surge forward. We nearly went around the entire length of the dam reservoir.

I've got a couple of other pics as well:


Khadakwasla, in hindsight, is a nice place to go if you just want to spend the morning for a short ride. For a longer ride though, I'd strongly suggest a longer distance, say Panshet Dam or Pavna Dam (The author wishes to let you know that there are other places you can go to, around Pune, but just don't ask the author. He doesn't know... not just yet anyway).

It was my first taste of biking, my first baby steps into a wonderful new world. I rather like it!

Poetry in Motion

Bajaj is really pushing stunt biking in India. At least that's what I think. So what kind are you? Do you believe that bikes are a thing of beauty and can be graceful when desired? Or do you believe that they're just machines. Lifeless and soulless entities capable of only brutishness?

If you're part of the latter, I strongly suggest you look at this. You will be converted.



I really love the part where they catch hold of each other's hands. That is poetry in motion, if there ever was such a thing.

And you might want to check out the Pulsar 200 advertisement, which is in my opinion another piece of brilliance.
Pulsar 200 Advert

Abstraction

I have this feeling very often. When everything I see becomes fodder for abstract thoughts. All sense of reality is shred away from the smallest things... becoming more and more unreal as I think about it. Words. They're a favourite theme for abstraction. The word in question swiftly loses all sense as I drown in my sea of abstruse ideas. It goes on until I have no clue what the word means, or how I spell it. Then, my mind blanks out and reboots.

It gets worse with things I see around me... The IC engine dissolves into a piston reciprocating in thin air. And then details are added in, without there yet being a cylinder. And then my mind overloads and reboots. The maths equation gets split into a thousand small pieces. Each piece, my mind tries in vain to define. And fails spectacularly after heroic attempts to make sense of half of them. And again, the reboot.

I try to read a book, and the thermodynamic problem I decided to give up on more than a year ago, waltzes into my head. And it will not leave me. Till I've exhausted all my mental faculties. And all that remains is the reboot.

Sometimes I think it's too much for my tiny mind. I do not possess the mental powers to sustain long period of abstraction. But then again, if the powers that be were listening, I wouldn't even have the small periods of abstraction.

It doesn't really matter thoug... *Reboot*

Language

The English language is beautiful. To be more precise, the Queen's English is a beautiful language. It's really sad to see these days, the way this language is being murdered. It started with the Americans, who insist on making perfectly good English spellings agricultural and crude. A case in point is the word manoeuvre. As I type this, my American coded Firefox browser displays this as a spelling mistake. Of course, the Americans would want to spell it as maneuver. That, is a terrible spelling. It just takes the whole finesse out of the word. And so, a supremely crafted spelling becomes crude. This is a worrisome trend. The larger problem is that many people who use spell checks in British English speaking countries, end up with the 'corrected' American spellings.

And then we have SMS. In India, the youth takes pride in decimating the English language, wth sn10ces lyk these. AAARGH. That probably makes the Queen cringe and Shakespeare turn in his grave (The author is well aware that Shakespeare couldn't even spell his name right, let alone other words. However, he is unable to think of a suitable name to use. You are requested to pick an English great of choice to replace the poorly chosen Shakespeare.). Even a purist like me is willing to accept such spelling in short messages, but it starts becoming scary when you read these spellings in official letters. And Examination Papers. And on the News. And in magazines. Where will this end?

Language is a gift. A gift that has led mankind to where we are now. We must not, must not, let this gift go in vain by terribly mutilating it.
< /Rant >

*Sigh*. Like that will make any difference.