smr’s blog

Note the capital b. Happened unplanned (Friday, May 18th). It keeps getting better everytime. Was more conscious. Was able to cook 5am dinner.
Every time I say not again.. but it does happen again. But its awesome, godly. Love it. Not ‘often’.
Slept only for a few hours, so the full day was blissful. And a visit to ice-n-spice and finjaan made it rock even more.

sick
Had a screwed up health for a week last week. Fever, cold and then cough. It sucked. Had forgotten how we fell ill. Was having good health from long long time. It was interesting to learn that when you get sick there is nothing you can do about it. I can understand how people feel when they are ill.

Bridge
Finally got some time to learn bridge. Only cards game i heard of and didn’t know to play. No one around me knew, so finally got lessons from net. Gameplay is of a normal trump game, except for the dummy player whose cards are visible to all and is played by partner. The important and tricky part is bidding. Lots of bidding rules make it little difficult to learn. But it does rock. Liked the game. this site has nice tutes, and can play online with bots and multiplayer.

g33k hosting
geek hosting is rocking. Thanks to Manjeet for letting me use his credit card and all users so far.

Jagjit Live in concert @ Hyderabad
Yea.. again, on June 2nd @ Shilpakala Vedika. Tickets available at Wangs Kitchen, HiTech and Music World. I thought this was last time. Didn’t have any wish of listening live again, but couldn’t resist as soon i heard about it. Hope this time he sings ‘mein nashe mein hoon’. Will surely request (read shout) for this ghazal this time.

Mere Yaar ki Shaadi Hai
Rakesh got married to Seema on 8th at his native place Palojori, Madhupur, Jharkhand. I with Vidit, Khare and Madhukar reached there. Nir also reached from home. More details are in Khare’s blog. Was a long long journey by train. Hyd - Kolkata - Madhupur and Madhupur - Asansol - Bardhaman - Howrah - Hyd. Yes, we ditched single reserved train and changed 3 trains from Madhupur to Howrah to accompany Khare as he had missed his 4 hrs late train. How can someone miss a 4 hrs late train? That you must ask Khare only. And Nir didn’t get down from train at right station ‘coz he was sleeping.

First marriage of a close friend. So it was surely a special marriage, which i didn’t want to miss. First marriage of college mate, that I attended. I surely had a great time at the marriage. Rakesh disappointed me though, didn’t allow me to give bumps.

Added few more states - Orrisa, West Bengal and Jharkhand to my visited list and visited the last metro - Kolkata.

Cards @ journey
Got a satisfying dose of cards all along, especially in the trains. Played mostly 29. There weren’t enough people who knew my favorite game - sweep. Sweep is a very popular game in my native place, which I found surprisingly unfamiliar at many other places. It is similar to casino, and probably is pahari derivative of it. Will consider writing this sometime.

Pics from the journey are here. None are from marriage. They are on Khare’s and Nir’s camera.

Reading @ journey
Also finally got time to finish iWoz which I’ve been reading once in a while for more than 6 months now. A really nice book. He does share lots of thoughts with me. Clears lots of misconceptions about history of Apple. He does show an ugly face of Jobs many times, which wasn’t really required; I believe it to be true though. His stand on engineer vs manager was cool. This books gives a nice definition to engineering and innovation. He will remain an inspirational figure for me. I wonder if I will ever be able to pull pranks of the order he did. A must read for engineers.

Also got time to read In Spite of the Gods, a book Vidit was carrying along. It was ‘a fine introduction (of Indian politics) for unacquainted outsiders’ (in one of the reviewer’s words) to me. Definitely a nice read, but of not much values to me.