Saturday, May 22, 2010

Life in April 5 - May 21

Today has been a very fortunate day. So i thought the best way to celebrate would be to write my blog posts. A lot has happened in the past month and half and a lot of that lot deserved a blog post. But i am what i am and i will be what i am. In other words if i could have changed i would have but i have not and this has to mean something if not nothing. Ok enough! lets get going.

Lets start with the today's string of fortunate events. All are related to my workplace. There is an awesome culture here where on every friday somebody from my company presents a lunch talk. On friday the entire company has lunch together and somebody presents something and that something usually has been very interesting. I started to organize these talks since Aug last year and it was fun. It used to be very difficult to find people to talk but ever since i got to organizing people started volunteering and it just became a regular habit. And i got to hear many interesting things in the process. As i am going on vacation in June, i took retirement and they gave me a gift to appreciate my work (isnt that cool! - others gave talk and i got the gift). It was a flip camcorder.

Then, on another front, there was a jobvite forwarding contest to spread the word that my company is recruiting. We got points for forwarding an email and later using that points, there was an auction system to buy stuff. In that i bought a mystery gift which resulted in 100$ and then i bought a bose speaker system which is awesome! So today was an awesome day in my life. Free gifts and all in one day.

But it was not only today, this has been happening in the entire week. On monday during the company meeting, i got an award - Just do it award, something that is given quite selectively to individuals for taking initiative. So this has been an awesome week so far!

And it is not only this week, i should say this whole month. I had been kept quite at office during this whole month and have kept on working a lot and due to this, i have been quite happy with myself and have done some good work both algos, systems and relevance. So overall a very good work in office too.

Since i spend most of my time in office, i think the above section tells what happens most of the time. But that is not what all i do. Here is what else happened in no particular order.

The blue mug. Went to watch this awesome play starring Vinay Pathak, Rajat Kapoor, Ranvir shorey, konkona sen sharma with Gurshi. More details in a separate blog post.

Black mountain hike - I hiked 10 miles roundtip up to Black mountain with Nikesh, Very good hike. We left early in order to enjoy the morning and have the entire day free. Very good decision. Getting up at 6 am; listening to the chirping of birds in morning; the morning fresh air in mountains, all was very well. We were back from hike by 11 and as planned we had the whole day but once you have hiked for 4 hrs, all i did in that whole day was to sleep. :)

I moved. Yes within mountain view only but i moved to my new single bed apartment. Pramod Gupta (Modi) who is interning here at Mountain view is my roommate for three months. Bought a lot of house hold items such as microwave, blender, futon, plates etc. Realized that i do not have most of the stuff that is needed to live independently. Went to a lot of garage sale hunting, it is a lot of fun to buy cheap second hand stuff. I love it! Atleast thats what i did for 2 consecutive Saturdays.

India trip planning - Still going on but on vacation from June 2 to july 5th. A lot of time spent in buying tickets, visa appointment, documents, further trip etc.

Preparation of my law course - 20% complete but did something. Lots of stuff to cover.


There was a blog contest in office. Wrote two entries, those are the two previous blog posts. Wanted to write about those topics and it was a good opportunity.

Knitting - Progress on my hat is going on.

Cooking - I do not write much about my cooking experiments because they are true experiments and in the true spirit of innovation, they must be left undocumented. :) But it is good enough to note that i tried.

The new thing - Team Asha Marathon training - Yes! I joined it. I am training for half marathon. This is my newest boldest thing - aka in fashion for this month. So far i am able to run 3 miles without stopping and a marathon has 13 miles. But 2 weeks ago, i could not run even 2 miles. I am happy with my progress so far. It is a great thing to go in the morning to run. Team Asha has coaches and before run there are stretching exercises and after the run there are strengthening exercises. Its great to get tips from these people. I have learnt a lot. I am not shooting for any time, all i am focussed is to complete it. I have bought new shoes, new clothes, new accessories for it and it is very fun so far. As i make progress i will write a more detailed post. But i may miss the training as i will be gone. But lets see how it goes.

Movies -
Cinema club -
Touching home A true story made by two brothers Logan and Noah miller on their father. Their father died in jail and they promised that they will make a movie about him. With no direction/acting experience, but ssheer determination, this movie is their result and it is not a bad one. It is not that good but when you hear that it is a true story, when you realize how they made this movie, hoe they got financing, how they got Ed Harris to play it becomes an amazing thing! A heroic effort. They have written a book on the making of the movie - Either you are in or you are in my way which tells how they went about making the movie. I have that book signed by them, yet to read. The two brothers were there at the movie screening and it was great to see them, talk to them.
Winter's bone - This won the jury prize at Sundance film fetival. It is a story about a 17 year old girl with two small siblings aged 6 and 10 and a schizophrenic mother, in search of her meth addicted father who has put their house as bond for his bail. His court date is coming and if he doesn't show up, they will loose their house. Her performance was awesome and so was the direction. A lot of cast was new/unknown. The irish music was great. The new girl's performance is awesome.
New -
Iron Man2 - Slept in the movie.
The secret in their eyes - This year's foreign language oscar winner. Liked it! Not found it as impressive as some of the other foreign language winners that i had seen so far but the ending was indeed thought provoking, scary. Its an Argentinian movie and it gives a lot of look and feel of an Indian suburb. Would have loved to watch an Indian movie like that.
Old-
Night on Earth bu Jim Jarsmush. Very good movie. 5 different stories about 5 taxi drivers in 5 different cities. All during night. I love these kind of movies. And Jim Jarsmush is a great director. Need to watch it again.


Music -
Bought pandora's membership this month. It is just too good. Have been listening to classic rock. New artists that i got to know -
Natalie Macmaster - Came to know her through her song on a TED presentation. She is a Irish singer who also tap dances. Her videos are very good too..
Natalie Hall - Link : http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/823 Again via ted talk. She sings old poems and those poems are very good. TED talk explains everything.

Other interesting TED talks/video -
http://www.ted.com/talks/anil_gupta_india_s_hidden_hotbeds_of_invention.html?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2010-05-11&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email

Indian Classical music [Link via Nikesh] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXnV5HzS7nA

What motivates people [Link via Brian] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

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