Wishing all of you a very Happy New year.
– Suramya
December 31, 2007
December 30, 2007
Attended Nidhi’s wedding
Attended the last wedding of the year (for me atleast) today. Nidhi (a classmate of mine) got married today. A bunch of us friends got together to attend the wedding. We got there at 8:30pm thanks to my leaving on time and very little traffic. The event was fun.
I got to meet a few classmates that I hadn’t seen for 10 years. Nidhi looked pretty. The food was great but it was freezing and as the wedding was in the open we squatted next to a heater and refused to move for most of the evening. We didn’t stay all the way till the wedding itself as they had delayed it a lot. The barat had come at ~10:30 pm but Nidhi only came out about 11:30 pm. It took her about 1/2 an hour to get to the stage for the Varmala and none of us had the courage to wait till the phere’s as it looked like it would take a lot of time for that to start. So we left at about 12:00 am. Nidhi was the first person I know who cried at their wedding.
Well this is all for now. Will post more later.
– Suramya
December 26, 2007
Christmas Celebrations and the day after
Christmas was fun. I spent the day just relaxing and at night I drove to Gurguan. Tarini had thrown a “small” get together at her place just for good friends and had invited me to attend. The drive to Gurguan was ok, even though I had to drop mom off at the mechanics I got there in 45 mins. Then it took me more than an hour to get to her place from there. The traffic was insane. It took me almost 45 mins to drive a 1 km stretch of road.
But when I finally got there it was fun. We had a bonfire on the roof along with a barbecue. A lot of people came and this was the first bonfire I attended where someone actually played the guitar. It was nice. Tarini cooked a bit. The food was surprisingly edible 😉
Got done at about 1 am, then crashed at Kangan and Gaurang’s place (Gaurang was also at the party) for the night. The next day we got up at about 10am, had breakfast and chatted with Kangan’s mom till about 12. Then drove to Gopinath market to select pics for Kangan and Gaurang’s wedding album. That took us till 4 pm. Then dropped off Kangan at work and me and Gaurang headed back to my place (with a stopover at Nehru place).
Over all a fun day/evening/day.
– Suramya
December 24, 2007
My niece’s Annual day
Today I attended my niece’s annual day with my cousins. Rakhi didi and Ritika picked me up from home at about 3pm and we drove to Greater Noida to attend the annual day. We were supposed to be there at 5 pm (latest by 5:30) but we got there at 4:10pm. The annual day was ok. I was telling my cousin that I hardly ever attended my own annual day but here I was attending my niece’s annual day. So she told me that that’s what Mama’s do…
The show got done at ~8:00pm and we drove back to Rakhi didi’s place and had pizza for dinner. Then we stayed up till almost 3 am talking. It was a fun visit.
Well this is all for now. Will post more later.
– Suramya
December 23, 2007
Pushkin’s Last Poem
Went and watched Pushkin’s Last Poem today with Tarini and Rahul. It is based on the life of a Russian Poet called Aleksandr Pushkin. The play was directed by Bhaskar Ghose and hosted by the Yatrik Theatre.
The play was a bit long(~2 hours 15 mins). If they had cut it by 1/2 an hour it would have been great. The play was interesting and a lot better than what I had expected. I was prepared to fall asleep during the play if it got too boring but it never got to that point. I think it was worth spending the time and effort to go and watch it. Though I don’t think I want to watch it again. It was good but not that good. 😉
The cast of Pushkin’s Last Poem
– Suramya
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December 21, 2007
December 20, 2007
PDF Editing & Creation: Open source alternatives to Adobe Acrobat
I personally don’t like using PDF files. They are bulky and need extra software for me to view them. Plus they are a pain to export into html (which I like). But they are a necessary evil especially if you are dealing with the corporate world/goverment where most of the forms etc are in PDF format maybe because they allow the creator to choose the layout/content and make it hard for others to modify without spending a lot of money. Atleast that used to be the case, now there are most than 50 alternatives to Adobe Acrobat that you can try out and use for free. The following site has a listing of all the tools with a brief description of each: 50+ open source/free alternatives to Adobe Acrobat.
I regularly use Open Office to create PDF’s that look good. I have also tried using the PDF creator but didn’t keep it as Open Office took care of all my PDF creation needs.
Check out the list. You might find the some tool that will save you a lot of money.
– Suramya
December 18, 2007
December 17, 2007
December 10, 2007
Gaurang’s wedding
This week I attended Gaurang’s wedding. The actual wedding was on the 8th but I was there from the 4th onwards (with a brief trip back on the 5th). I got there early in the morning on the 6th and then spent most of the day helping with the wedding preparations. Actually most of it was just receiving people and dropping them at the various messes. Also spent some time preparing the schedule and welcome package with Aunty and Uncle.
In the night Gaurang’s Cousins and friends had arrived so we spent a lot of time eating/drinking and talking. It was a lot of fun. I got a lot of good blackmail photos. We were regularly going to bed at ~4:30 – 5:00am. Thats why the mornings were usually a blur. 😉
On 7th it was the Sangeet which we had to attend in Gurguan. We were supposed to reach there at 6:30 pm but due to the late arrival of people and random delays we only managed to get there at 7:45 pm. We had hired two buses to get there as there were ~50 of us going. Once we got there all the tika’s an the puja’s etc happened. Kunal and his mausi made Gaurang eat one laddu each (the entire thing at once). After that his mom hid the Laddu packet otherwise everyone would have fed him one each.
Kangan looked nice. I took a lot of photos and videos (~1.1 GB) and this time for a surprise I have posted them online also. 🙂 Well, the video’s are not yet up as I still have to figure out how I want to handle it, but the pics are up.
After all the jazz was over everyone headed out to the dance floor which Kangan and Gaurang opened. We then danced till 11 pm after which Kangan and Gaurang had the last dance to a very slow song.
Got back to Delhi at 1 am, helped Gaurang a bit with packing and then crashed. At 4 am Viraj, Shantanu and the rest arrived so they woke the both of us up. So talked for a while before crashing at 5 am.
On the wedding day we made sure we were on time and got there at 5:30 pm as promised. It helped that we were staying a 5 min walk from the auditorium. The whole thing lasted till 11:00 – 11:30 pm and by 12 everyone was out. There was a bit of a mixup with the rooms as the road to the Infantry hostel was completely blocked off so five people couldn’t get to their rooms. They had to be adjusted in other rooms. So me and Gurunathan uncle spent some time to dropping people off in their rooms. After everyone was safely in their rooms me and Natasha left (I had promised to drop her off) and I made it home about 2 am.
Over all it was a great wedding. I enjoyed a lot. I could have filled a couple of pages with the stuff I did at the wedding but I am too lazy to type it all out. So you will have to be satisfied with this.
Well this is all for now. Will post more later.
– Suramya