Got my five CD pack of Ubuntu 6.06 LTS. Although I am pretty happy with FC5 running on my laptop, will install Ubuntu on my home PC.

Was listening to Rafi's songs on his death anniversary on Radio Mirchi while coming to office today. Its his death anniversary today. Came to office and put my Mohd. Rafi.m3u playlist onto xmms. The first song it played ... almost magically...in the Maestro's soulful voice , the sad version of Muqaddar Ka Sikandar

Zindagi To Bewafa hain , Ek Din Thukarayegi
Maut Mehbooba hain, Apne Saath Lekar Jayegi
Mar ke Jeene Ki Ada Jo Duniya Ko Sikhalayega
Woh Mukaddar Ka Sikandar ..
Woh Mukaddar Ka Sikandar ...

Jaaneman ..................... (The lasting trumpet )

Trying to stitch two photoes in Gimp using the Pandora plugin/extension. Just not possible for me. May be the pics I am trying to stitch are a problem. Got a flat tyre yesterday. Luckily the watchman fixed it. I would have done the job, as I have replaced my tyre almost 4 times now in Pune ... but had a little back-ache last evening. After sucking so much tax rupees , we still get just the potholes to drive instead of roads in Pune. I have been driving a bit lately around Maharashtra, and have to say that the State and National Highways are way better than the Pune city roads.

So finally the plan to Tikona materialized. We left Pune around 8AM, and reached Tikona Peth by 10. The drive was wonderful. Vindy's driving directions were perfect , just couldn't miss it. On the way it was raining heavily. It was greeeeen everywhere. So beautiful. Never drove in the coutryside in rains. After Kamshet we detoured onto Pavna Dam, and reached Tikona via a small Bour Ghaat. Stopped couple of times during the drive just to feel our lungs with the fresh air and feed our eyes with breathtaking views of the green mountains in the distant mist.


Reached the base village Tikona Peth at around 10AM and with the help of a local kid Suresh directly started for the hike.
We have to strode through whole lot of muddy waters. It was water and mud everywhere. At some place we took a right and headed towards the woods and started climbing up. It was just like watching some "rain forest" "tropical" documentary on Discovery channel ;-) It was fun. There was all sort of noises of birds and insects and ofcourse wind. Saw plenty of crabs and crab-holes on the ground. Ganesh tried to catch one. After about an hour we took a break and surprised our co-hikers with hot tea from our newly bought Milton Thermos Flask ! We were almost into the clouds by this time. There was zero visibility in the valley. We were looking absolutely at nowhere ! Had some breadbutter + biscuit and tea and started for the final ascent onto the steps.

These steps made me wonder what exactly was the height of the Mawal-Marathas , cuz these steps look to be build for giant people with an average height of 6 to 7 feet ! After reaching the top it was the most amazing view of a distant Tung and the green fields everywhere. There is an old Shiva Temple with the ShivaLing inside. We tried to locate our car from the top through my binoculars, but couldn't. As it was parked behind a house.

We started our descent from another way, which was a bit slippery and there were similar short rock patches. I somehow managed to slip on one of them :-( But nothing to worry , just a scrach ! So walked our way down through the muds and water and finally reached the Village at around 2:15PM. In all it was the most wonderful hike I had so far. The views were amazing and breathtaking.




Drove back home on a different route, which was not all that good. Roads were bad. Reached home at 5:30.

Watched Pirates of the Caribbean on Sunday. The movie was good enough. But I think Part I was much better. Johny Depp is addictive !

or shouldn't I blog ? Thinking of continue my blog. Lets see how it goes.

So what I have been doing lately...

Been pretty busy with work. Had a short conference + conducted a training in US.
Roadmaps are always in place for each quarter for my team so no much breathing
space. Planning to do a trek this week end. Hopefully the plan goes well.

Got a wifi lan setup at home ;-) My windoze 2K box is crashing left 'n right badly!
Even after a re-install. Will try to install XP on it. Ofcourse it will have
Ubuntu on another partition. Although I am very very happy with RH FC5 on my laptop,
but still would love to have a Ubuntu on one of my boxes.

Been listening to Strings and now Jal .... Have to buy their Aadat CD.
The songs Aadat and Bhikhra hoon main... I dont know why, but make me
so sentimental and some make me young too ! Way to go dudes !

Awesome song ! Almost got goose bumps listening to it!

truly beautiful.

Creating playlists in iTunes. I had tagged all my songs long back in 2001. That is turning out to be
a very good effort by me. It took me around 4 months to tag all 1000+ hindi film songs in my collection with
the correct Year , Composer , Artist tags. Well.... finally am gonna get an iPod mini with iTrip FM
txmitter;)

We tried chicken tandoori this week end in our new Microwave :)
And man oh man ! It turned out to be too good !

Here is the recipe:-

Wash and drain pohe , add salt to taste and some
turmeric.

In a microwave bowl, add little oil , chopped onions,
green chillies, jeera, kadipatta, roasted peanuts,
optional mohri. Put it in microwave high for 3 minutes

for the phoDni. You can stir it in the middle after 2
minutes.

Take out the bowl and add pohe. Mix it well. Cook in
the microwave high for 1 minute. Garnish it with
fresh coriander. Turns out to be "okay" , low calorie
as very little oil is needed.

Got two balloon molly and one red fighter fish in a nice glass bowl this week end !

Used our new microwave - Kenstar ECR34 to cook Kanda-Pohe this week end .. turned out to be good. But pizza wasnt all that good last night. Need to soon go for the free cooking classes for Microwave.

Been to SinhGad trek with my folks. Enjoyed quite alot. Having the cool limbu-sarbat, cucumbers all the way to uphill. It was intimidating while climbing the Gad == Fort. It looked so hiiiighhh up there with that DD TV tower. Especially its getting hotter these days in Pune. Wonder where the "thanDi" has gone !

Should do this more often.

Okay I am not thaaat bad ;)

It was the first day of the 10 days workshop... organized by NSD people at Pune.
I was pathetic at it. I can stand in front of other people. Cant talk and cant
fucking act !:( I used to act in dramas while in school... that was way back infact
I acted on a Doordarshan's marathi programme for kids... KilBil... way back when
I was in sixth standard ;) But now I suck !

Its official now....

Software Industry Leaders Symantec and VERITAS Software To Merge

Our week end was totally packed with the fine arts of indian classical music. Enjoyed thouroughly the
Sawai Gandharva Sangeet Mahotsav and knew what I have been missing all these years. Got to hear some great legendary musicians. Boy am I happy to be in Pune or what :) Came home at 3AM early morning , still feeling sleepy.

I am listening to the live radio stations where they play some cool music !
gxine rulezzz !

Better late than never, I have shifted to T-bird as my mail client. Was using Mozilla
so far, but think t-bird with RSS support would be better. :)

Aaah.... So Yahoo! has copied the trick to send the mail, from gmail !:)