Im at home for the weekend, as monday is Republic day and on tuesday I have just one hour class. Today, as always at home, was another lazy day; I woke up quite late and had my breakfast at noon. Reading the newspaper i learnt that there was a flower exhibition in Kadri park here. Nothing to do at home, I drove to the venue at five in the evening. There was a small crowd in Kadri park who had come to witness the huge variety of flowers. The main attraction was the "Pushpa doni" (flower boat) that was erected in the middle of the park. It maily consisted of roses and anthoriums. It had 6000 hibrid roses , of 3 colours: white, red n pink(see pic).
There were few other interesting things to watch there including bonsais (there were grown banyan trees, in pots!), sculptures made using fruits and vegetables. It was totally worth the time.
Flower exhibition- M'lore
Happy 2k9!
Hey guys! A very happy new year to all! I guess its a little late to wish you new year; as by now, you must have already started breaking your new year resolutions. ;) I only tried it once. Had a long list of things i wanted do throughout the year; but couldn't take care of them even for a few weeks. For this year there's just one resolution: to enjoy the whole year spending max time with friends and family. Have already gone out with friends twice in the first fortnight this year, and another trip to Wayanad has been planned for the coming weekend too. A class trip to Lakshadweep is also on the cards.
The last sem at college has just begun and i must say i am JOBLESS! With just 12 hours of class in a week, i keep looking for new ways to kill time; searching for new games, new movies, books etc.
Hope you too have a great year ahead. happy bloggin. have fun!
PS: Here are some of my favs from the past fortnight.
Best book: Tristan Betrayal- Robert Ludlum.
Best movie: Slumdog Millionaire.
Best game: World of GOO! :)
Engineering students == Nerds??
Last week I was on my way home. Most of the branches( actually all except Comp Sci) had planned trips for the weekend. As we didn't have any trip, I decided to head home. And this time I was alone, and so I carried a book to read during the journey.
After a few stops and half a bottle of pepsi, three guys, in their 30s, came and sat opposite me. I gave them a smile and continued reading the book. For most of the time, they were discussing something about their work and also about politics, from what I overheard.
About 2 hours passed. And then I heard one of them ask "Are you an engineering student?" I lifted my head to find all three of them looking at me. I told them that I was. He then looked at his friends and gave them a didnt-i-tell-you smile. I wondered how he understood. I wasn't wearing any t-shirt with the college' name on it. So I asked him. He told me that it was because I was studying for such a long time!! I couldnt help laughing. I showed them the cover page. The guy sitting to his right read, "A Thousand Splendid Suns.... Oh! Its a novel!"
LOL.
They too smiled (the friends of the guy who asked me smiled more than him this time) and then we continued with what we were doing earlier.
But what made him think that engineering students studied all the time! This is the first time I am hearing such a comment about engineering students! One visit to our hostel during the exam time would surely change all his misconceptions. It would have made more sense if he had asked if I was a medical student. Or maybe not. Nerds are there in every college. And there are lazy guys too. You can find people of every type in all the colleges; irrespective of the stream. The college or branch has nothing to do with how much time one spends on studies!
And yes, the book is really good. Khaled Hosseini writes about challenges and attrocities faced by Afghani women especially in the late 20th century; written beautifully and in simple english. The author was able to keep me reading until the train stopped at Mangalore station.
PS: Again... Engineers are not nerds!
Any engineering student out there, who would like to comment on this? ;)
Back in college...after a bad day
Today, I'm back in the college after the onam holidays...but the trip back wasnt very easy this time...My train was supposed to leave Mangalore at 230pm...but before that, some people of Bajrang dal broke into some of the churches in mangalore(Milagres church, and few other churches) and destroyed some idols there!!...and that obviously resulted in agitation; and within an hour, the roads in the city were blocked...people were pelting stones at vehicles and there were police everywhere...So i wasnt able to reach the station. Then we thought of going to Kasaragod and catchin the same train there; but the roads enroute were blocked too... Then we decided to go to the second station in Mangalore, and luckily we got there on time (actually an hour early for a train that was 1.5 hours late!). And I managed to get back to college. Lucky Renzil...he was supposed to come with me, but left early morning because he wanted to watch the race in the afternoon.
But why do these people do such horrible things?! Cant they just forget about others' religion and live in harmony? Yesterday there were serial bomb blasts in Delhi and now today this!...Will this ever end?! Its the duty of us, 'educated' people, to spread the word of secularism. Most of the wars today in the name of religion. Lets consider people before considering their religion, nationality, caste or anything. Lets make India the world, a better place to live in!
Hoping for a better tomorrow...
Links out:
Mlore shut; police protesters clash-TOI
Mangalore tense-IBN live
PS: Do watch 'A Wednesday', a new hindi movie starring Naseeruddin Shah, addressing the issue of terrorism and communal violence. Its good!
Google - The next Microsoft (?)
There is no doubt that Google is expanding at an alarming rate, and is all set to be the biggest company in the IT industry.
Was going through the new products of google at Google Labs. There you can find new projects of google, most of which are in the testing stage. There you can find gtalk-labs edition, with invisibility feature (but it has some other problems). One interesting software I found here is "Lively by Google". Its a chat software; but much better than the normal ones. Here you have to create an avatar for yourself, before chatting. You can have fun playing with the animated avatars. There are many chat rooms too(discos, club bars , cafes, beaches, etc), which you can join. And the avatar sometimes reacts according to what you type too...if you type lol or rofl, your avatar would start laughing!
I was watching Download- The true story of the internet, a documentary on discovery channel hosted by John Heileman, sometime back. It showed how Netscape had challenged Microsoft in the 90s, but eventually lost the battle to the giants. But google now doesnt show any sign of losing.They have now come up with their browser- chrome- which is not the best browser now, but is only going to get better. Once Google comes up with their own Operating System(they do use "Goobuntu"- a linux distribution based on ubuntu, but only internally), and something to replace MS Office, they can have the monopoly. But microsoft is not going to watch everything, doing nothing!
