Water Bubbles (Photo Blog)

Water Bubbles, originally uploaded by abhishekontheweb.

The bowl was filled with water, and it was made to overflow by placing it under flowing tap water. As the tap water hit the surface of the water in the bowl, I was able to shoot these random shapes of the froth generated. Shot at 1/200th second with flash on. (Looks like cells under a microscope, doesn't it?)

A Day at the Movies

I remember having this conversation with a friend of mine when I was in New York during Christmas. We had booked tickets for a movie, as we had nothing else to do on a rainy day. As we were going to the screens...

Me: You remember the screen number, right? (I always ask that question, every time I go to a multiplex to watch a movie, even if I had the tickets in my pocket).

Friend: Yes, its on the ticket (duh!!). Its screen 9.

Me: Great (dunno why I said that, doesn't make the movie any better if its on screen 9, but whatever)...

We go in.

But its already playing a movie - and looks like it has already reached the climax.

Me: Didn't know that they have started showing such elaborate scenes in trailers.

Friend: Ooops... Thats "Invictus", and its not a trailer.

We walk out.

Me (Contemplating): So, it was screen # 9, right?

Friend: Yup, thats what the ticket said. May be we are a bit too early.

Me (Curious now): Let me have a look at the tickets.

And promptly, I look at the tickets.

Me (Giving that I-knew-it look): Do you remember what movie are we going to watch?

My friend thinks for a while.

Friend (now embarrassed): He he... Now don't you pull my leg. . . . .

(Psst... We were there to watch the movie "Nine")...

New Year Resolutions?

Its again that time of the year when I am forced to answer questions from my office colleagues (esp. my bosses) - "So Abhishek, what resolutions do you have for this year". And I end up mumbling the same answer "I don't believe in these resolutions, as I am 101% sure, come Jan2nd, and I'll be back to my usual routine :)". And that's 1 resolution I have managed to keep for a long time.

I remember, back in my school days, writing an essay on "New Year's Resolution" was a part of the winter vacation assignment. And, talking about assignments in school, I was the laziest of the lot - I always managed to scribble something on my notebook - most of them being the usual "I will complete my assignments in time, I will not wait for the last week to study for my exam, etc etc".

So 1st of January every year is that day when you say that whatever you do today is what you are going to do for the rest of the year, right? (And now, thanks to social networking tools like Twitter, everyone knows everyones resolutions immediately - isn't that scary??). This year, I ended up spending my entire day in bed, down with a bad cold, eating pizza, and watching endless episodes of "The Office". Would I like myself to do that for the entire year? You bet!!! I DO :) :)

P.S - For those of you who might be wondering how unfortunate it is for me to be down with fever on 1st of Jan, it was actually a result of my photography enthusiasm that landed me in such a soup. I had a chance to click some photographs of fireworks at Navy Pier, Chicago, on the occasion of the new year's eve. But there was a catch. The show started at 8.15 PM in the night, and I had to stand next to the freezing Michigan Lake in the cold (it was around -20 degrees Celsius). I ended up with my hands completely numb for the next 30 min, and a BAD BAD cold by the time I went to sleep. Here are some of the pics I took, by the way....

For more pics, go to: Fireworks at Navy Pier

Cooking and Me

Today's hot topic - my cooking. As Agila pointed out, I should blog about it. Good idea!!!

I was never into cooking. Even as a kid, I seldom watched how my mom made those delicious dishes. Until recently, I didn't even know how to boil an egg. The only thing I was able to make was tea. My parents' friends used to praise my "tea preparing skills" like anything (my mom taught me that way back when I was in 9th grade). Otherwise, I was utterly useless in the kitchen. And to be very frank, I never had to worry about it at all. Once I left home for college, thanks to the hostel food and cafeteria, my hunger problems were taken care of - well not exactly the way I would have preferred (implying the food was just horrible). But I survived those 4 years. Then when I started working, office cafeteria didn't make me feel the need to bring cooked food from home.

Living in Pune also had its advantages from the food front. Why would I want to learn to cook when there were numerous eating joints throughout the city. With all types of cuisines imaginable, I enjoyed my stay in Pune.

Now, when I am in US, the regular home made Indian food seem to be a delicacy. Before leaving India, my mom tried to give me a crash course in cooking, but failed miserably (she teaches well, but me being me, had other things in mind at that time).

And yesterday, with a bit of imagination, I tried to make something from what was available in the refrigerator - potatoes and peas (with tomatoes and onions), and some assorted spices. And to me surprise, it actually turned out to be delicious (well, there was no one else to vouch for that). But all in all, I was happy. Now I can experiment with other things. And I realized, that cooking can be fun :)

May be a blog on "Abhishek's own recipes" some day, eh? :D

Chicago

The hibernation ends (yet again)... Yes, just 1 post in the past 6 months!!! Well, I didn't have much to write about recently, other than the fact that I have been on the move since May. But, now that I am settled at one place for quite some time, I thought of picking up this whatever little habit of blogging I had earlier.

Sitting at home after an usual day at work wasn't that common when I was in India - I generally came back home late. Here, its different. Its almost winters now - yes, I mean "almost", as most of my informants have warned me about how harsh winters are usually here. With DST off, things get dark a bit too early. 5 0clock, and its dark outside. And not to mention the constant roar of the wind which I am able to hear outside my apartment window.

I remember, when I landed in Chicago on 15th August, I loved the weather here. It was warm and sunny, and I could see the daylight till late 8.30s. And I made full use of that opportunity to visit some of the most famous places in Chicago - the Field Museum, the Shedd Aquarium, the Adler Planterium, the Science and Industry Museum to name a few. Millennium Park and Lake Michigan are just a mile walk from where I stay, so I used to visit those places frequently. And there was the Chicago Jazz Festival which 1 of my friends dragged me to.

One thing I like about this place is how much information is accessible anytime you want. My earliest friend in Chicago was in fact - google maps. From locating the nearest Walmart store, to exploring the various bus and train routes of CTA, it was really the most useful tool I found during my initial days here.

Now, that the winter sets in, it is getting difficult to get out of the house. But I am enjoying the cold chill - reminds me of the times I spent in north India.

Well, thats a lot of updates I seem to have given. But that pretty much sums up what I have been doing these days.

I leave you with a glimpse of some of the places I have been talking about...

Check out my flickr stream here...

My Blog v2.0

I changed the look of my blog completely today. Yes, as it is quite obvious, the theme is completely redesigned - had to do some HTML coding to tweak an existing theme to make it more functional. And of course, the address of my blog!! Yes, yesterday, I bought a domain (I was in fact a bit surprised to find this domain name actually available, so without thinking twice, bought it).

It has been almost 3 years now since I started blogging here. Now when I read through my earlier posts, I find them quite amusing. Yes, 3 years is a long time. But here I am, posting another post on my good old blog :) . It will be quite interesting to see this post another 3 years down the line (maybe a new design will be due by then? Or maybe I'll have my own website hosted with this URL?)

Btw, to comment on this blog, you just need to click on the bubble near the title of the post. :)

Update: Do you see that cute little "AB" icon in the address bar of the browser? That is also a new addition :)

About This and That..

As the title says, I am in that "random" mood again, it seems. Another uneventful day in office has made me really tired, and so after an one hour nap in the evening, I decided to just update my blog. Yes, today's Friday, and I don't seem have much plans tonight.

I have been reading and smiling at the articles about the latest AIG bonus fiasco, and the hum-drum its causing across America - my take? Those idiots deserve to be treated like that (90% tax?? Ha ha :) )

For the last few days, I have been absorbed with the new Facebook home page - which, after giving an initial scornful look, I seem to like it. I mean, seriously, what's with this "what's in your mind" stuff? I liked "Abhishek is ..." better. But as they say, you get used to the change. But now, I am addicted to the new layout. The best part? I can comment on anything!!! And I just love people replying to those comments, and some of them are really witty replies :). Wonder, how come I didn't miss this feature before?

Listening to trance again - my current favorite being "Metaphorique" by Cape Town - truly mesmerizing :)

Decided to learn German, so, without thinking twice (after hearing about a good institute), enrolled for the weekend session. They are supposed to start tomorrow, so excited about it too :)

Welcome 2009!!

2009 is here, and January is almost over. And, it had been an eventful month so far - Mr Obama becoming the president of United States (and that makes him, unarguably, the most powerful man on earth). Also in the news had been the popularity of our very own Mumbaikars in the British movie "Slumdog Millionaire", and our beloved Mr Rahman for weaving his melodious magic, yet again. I haven't had a chance to watch the movie though, but that's the first thing on my list for this weekend.

Other events which had created headlines, especially in India, is our PM's surgery, which kept him away from the 60th Republic Day festivities. The argument with Pakistan regarding the Mumbai attack continues, with its incessant denials of having any part to play in that event - phew!!! 

The economy is still in bad state, with the unemployment rate increasing (and with the recent announcements of over 70k layoffs across various companies, things seriously look a bit too gloomy). UK has finally announced that it is in recession.

The announcement of the Padma awards have, as usual, created a bit of a news (atleast in my opinion). Conferring the award to our golden boy (in Olympics that is) was expected. And so was the list of filmstars (Akshay Kumar, Ash - which makes her the 4th Bachchan to get it). But did someone forget about the other medal winners at the Olympics.

So, it has indeed been a month of events. Hopefully, things will improve soon (from the financial point atleast).

And yes, this is my 2nd post for this year, and coincidently, it marks my 50th post on my blog (hurrays)!!!

"Death at a Funeral" was Hilarious

I watched Frank Oz's "Death at a Funeral" today afternoon - and I couldn't stop laughing throughout the movie. For the first time, I randomly selected a movie without looking at IMDB review - the title was a bit strange - thought it to be some kind of family drama - but it turned out to be more than that. Not going to spoil the fun by giving you any detail on what the movie is all about - just watch it :P

Me a Trainer?? No Way!!!!

It happened in November. Got a mail from my manager asking if I was willing to contribute something towards the general awareness of the employees here in my company - in other words - taking a training session on some technical stuff I have been working for the past couple of years. Having nothing better to do, I agreed.

The first series of session was attended by an abominably small number of people, but it was fun, none the less - I mean, handling a handful of people in my first EVER training session, helps you deal with LESS number of questions / doubts :) ... After putting 5 days of effort, my first session was finally over (in my opinion it was a success - that's STRICTLY my opinion)... Got a decent feedback, which encouraged me to accept the next training session in December.

Here is the thing now - there are now 25 people who BELIEVE that I can TEACH, and everything turned out to be... well, a chaos on the 1st day. I was thinking - "WHY the hell did I even think of doing this again??". Things cooled down after a day or two (as a few of them backed out) - leaving a decent number of souls (15 to be approx) at my disposal ;) . Infact, I have started liking this new role of mine so much (again), it makes me wonder "Why the hell didn't I do this before?".

I am thinking - how good am I? Teaching has always been my so-called "strength" in school or college days. I am still confused if I am going to take another of these classroom training next month...

BTW, the training is on Java webservices - and my manager thinks I have gained enough expertise to start training people - I was myself not aware of this till the 1st time I started speaking in the classroom..

Monsoons

Its rainy season again... I remember as a kid when it used to rain - it gave me an excuse to skip school, sit at home and watch the rains from our house balcony, especially when the school is about to reopen after a long summer vacation. Or maybe, the teachers won't come to school, so we can have the whole school for ourselves.

But since the time I have started living in Pune, I don't look forward to this season that much... Any one who has stayed here would agree with me. Pune is one of the places where when it starts raining, it rains for 4 months non stop. Yes non stop. And I am not talking about the heavy downpour spells. Its just drizzling throughout the day, with a cloudy, gloomy sky. And this makes the roads (which are already in a bad and pitiable state) even worse and muddy. Not a single road is without potholes. It is a nightmare for any pedestrian to walk without getting his/her trousers and shoes completely covered in mud. And for the poor bike drivers, the conditions are obviously not favourable to drive at any time of the day. Fortunately, unlike Mumbai, there are no floods, or drainage problem, which is a relief.

But that doesn't mean that I have started hating the rains... I still love its first spell, followed by clear, blue, bright, sunny sky, the smell of wet ground, the rainbow... I wish that I was still a school-going kid, and I could enjoy missing the school for just one more day...

Sunday!!!

Another Sunday post :) - now I have created a separate label : "sunday" ...

For the last few days, I seem to be posting a lot on my blog, a few of them being technical stuffs I have been working on this week.

In our company, we have a company blog (ChannelOne blogs by WordPress). Even though it has some advanced features (one that enables the users to upload files directly to the blog server), somehow, it seems to be too unattractive. The themes are limited (till now, haven't found an option to edit the templates, other than updating the header image), and its too damn slow. And, when it comes to posting in my company blog, I am too selective - most of the articles are transferred from this blog, after each post goes through lots of scrutiny.

Last week, in my free time, I managed to watch some old movies (not that old though) - Elizabeth (1999), The Thomas Crown Affair (2000), Cruel Intentions. Out of these, I had already watched the Thomas Crown Affair about 4 years back, but didn't remember the details of the plot. And, I enjoyed watching it again. Elizabeth was good, and was a bit too dramatic. Cruel Intentions was crap (somehow I expected it to be like that anyways, so wasn't disappointed much).

The book I was reading last week is almost nearing completion :) .

Sunday Again

Once again, today is one of those days when I let my thoughts wander, and decide to post those weird and unrelated thoughts on my blog - which is soon going to complete its 2 years (its another 3 months to go anyways). Why do I blog by the way? I guess, when I am supremely bored, and I have nothing else to do - as I am doing just now. It was an uneventful Sunday, and a long one too - really long, when you manage to wake up at 7 a.m. in the morning, and have no fixed plans for the whole day. Yikes!!! 7 a.m!!! On a Sunday!!! Are you nuts?? That what I generally get a response when I tell my friends about it - but thats the truth. Whatever, the main point I am referring to right now that today has been an idle day for me, and for some reason, decided to post my uneventful day's events on the blog, to add one more irrelevant post to it, and to remind me to "GET SOME LIFE!!!!"....

Some of the things which I did today, worth mentioning here, that is, are:

1. Trying to complete the book I had laid my hands on last Wednesday.
2. Watched a movie.

Ok, now lets be a bit elaborate - the book I am referring to, and I am halfway through reading it is called "So He Takes the Dog" by Jonathan Buckley. Nice book, revolving around a murder mystery of a vagabond in England. And unlike a murder mystery novel, this one doesn't have the kind of adrenaline rush action which is a general characteristic of book of such genre. Infact this book is surprisingly calm and slow... And till now, I am liking it.

The second task - a movie. Oh this one is called "If Only" starring the always anorexic Jeniffer Love Hewitt and not so known Paul Nicholls. Good and mushy romantic movie, and a perfect time pass for an idle Sunday afternoon.

That pretty much sums up my day till now :)

In search for a song.....

Recently, I was listening to only 1 song in a continuous loop (lets say, for 1 whole day)...

I had mentioned somewhere in my earlier post about how enthu I was for watching "Frank Miller's 300". This was mainly because of the breathtaking trailer I happened to watch last year. Apart from the great cinematography, the other great thing was the soundtrack. Didn't know the name of the song that time, but I kept watching the trailer, as the combination of the video and the soundtrack was intoxicating!!! 300 turned out to be "bloody" great movie (apart from some of the "bloody" violent scenes when I kept my eyes shut)... Then, some days back, I got hold of the soundtrack from the movie. I started playing all the songs to search for the particular song I wanted. Unfortunately, I didn't find any thing even faintly resembling the one I wanted. Disappointed (the soundtrack distributor had tricked me into getting an album I wasn't going to listen - the songs were not that great when you just listen to them, it sounds better as a movie background)... Whatever, I was disappointed... But, then I searched for "300 soundtrack" in wikipedia (the great!!!), and this time, I wasn't disappointed. Turns out, the music in the trailer was never included in the OST, as it was composed by a group called "Nine Inch Nails" about 10 years back. But nevertheless, I got the name of the song, did a bit of googling, and was able to download it (god bless the person who had uploaded it to some file sharing site :) ).

BTW, the name of the song is "Just Like You Imagined", and it felt great to listen to it in a loop... Its hard rock, with some great piano in the background.... And this time, even without the video/trailer, it was good....

Some Random Thoughts

It has been more than a year since I started blogging. If you look at the earlier posts, you can see that this blog was created as I was getting bored after my college had finished, and I had nothing much to do for some time. Then, once I started working, gradually I got busy (this was in Nov 06). New place, new friends, new responsibilities.... Now, as I am almost about to complete a year as a working professional, I am trying to recollect how the past year has been for me. In a word - "GREAT"!!!! :)

The biggest problem I have in life is that I just cannot sit idle. I need something to do, something to keep myself busy all the time, maybe work, or maybe some time-consuming pass-time... Things were fine initially, with training and all for the first few months. I was excited.... Then, we got out of our training, and a few months of no work. Fortunately, I was one of the lucky few to be allocated in a project in March, and thats when I really got busy (but, I still manage to post some random article on my blog at that time, something related to the excitement of watching 300 the movie etc etc).

In April, we had a short trip to Goa. It was fun, but it turned out to be a too short visit. I remembered some of the places from my previous visit to Goa (that was way back in 1990, i think). And, I managed to click loads of photos.

I got shifted to a new project in June, and had the opportunity to work with a new team. The work was great, and I had a chance to learn about so many new things, was given new responsibilities.

I got a 30GB iPod video 5th generation (late 2006 model) from the U.S. As, I had mentioned somewhere in my previous post, I always wished to own an iPod. Now, I have one. I bought it in July. I was aware that Apple is going to release the new versions of iPods in Sept, but I didn't mind buying the 5th generation model. Even now, after I have read the reviews of the new classic and the touch , I don't regret buying that. :). I have my whole music collection (worth 16GB of songs) with me in my pocket... What else do I want??? It has now become a faithful companion....

So, here I am, as always, sitting idle on a Saturday morning, wondering what to do next.... BTW, here are some pics I had taken some time back, and I thought of posting them on my blog......

This photo was taken from my hostel room way back in college. I loved the way the photo captures the approaching rains.....

This one was taken on our trip to Sinhgarh fort in Jan 2006. I love taking photos of the setting sun
This one was taken on the Surya Kiran airshow in Suratgarh AirForce Station in Sept 06. I loved the red-planes-on-the-blue-background contrast.
This one was taken on my trip to Goa (I told you, I love taking photos of the setting sun)

Fireworks on display at Corenthian Club, Pune (you can check the video in my previous post)
This photo was taken at dusk. I had disabled flash, and had kept the shutter speed to around 8 sec to get the effect of daylight (just check out the yellow street-lamp visible in the photo)

Here I am, on a Sunday morning

It has been such a long time I posted anything on my blog, forget about looking at it..... What can I do?? Just couldn't find time :(

Today, as I got up a bit early (its a Sunday, for God's sake), and as I had nothing interesting to do, I wondered, why not update my blog a bit.... I was surprised to see that blogger is out of its beta stage, and even more surprised (though I many of my friends knew that I had predicted it) when I read about Bangladesh scoring a victory over our beloved "men in blue"!!!!

Going to watch 300 today, excited about it - I was dying to watch the movie, after watching the trailer last year (even though I don't like violent movies at all, I am sure I ll be loving this movie). And back to office tomorrow (had to go to office on Saturday too, damn it).

Aahh.... I just remembered, a long while back, I had posted an article about reviews of gadgets etc..... FYI, I now am a proud owner of Nokia 5300 Xpress Music, and, believe me, it rocks!!!! :D

Thats all for now.... Hopefully, I ll keep posting something or the other frequently.... (By the way, again FYI, I am in love with Google's Picasaweb.... do check out the link : www.picasaweb.google.com , it simply rocks too).