Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

Can’t think of a better headline than this. I know you are supposed to make the title interesting and attention grabbing but thats something I have always sucked at. I find it easier to write the body and the summary and let the title fend for itself…

NEways thats not what this post is about (Though I might write about that in the near future) This weekend I metup with Aditya who was my classmate in 9th and 10th at Boys High School, Allahabad. He is the one who actually got me interested in computers so he’s to blame for all the messes/catastrophies I have caused using computers 🙂

We were meeting each other after a loong time (The last time was sometime in 2001 or so) so we had a lot to catchup on. It was fun. We had coffee in Cafe Coffee Day and then walked around Sec 18 in Noida. Then we had dinner at this place who’s tag line was “Come taste some bad food” which was really interesting and great marketing as the only reason the both us decided to eat here was to try out a place that asks you to try some bad food. Don’t remember the name of the place (Aditya do you remember what the place was called?) but the food was actually good and cheap. Then we talked a bit more over a long dinner (It was too hot outside so neither of us wanted to go back out). Once we were done with dinner we went for a drive around noida which was fun.

Came back and read Battlefield Earth by L Ron Hubbard again. The book is 1000 times better than the movie based of it. Then I crashed. Woke up late on Sunday, was initially planning to go meet some more friends but the temprature outside convinced me otherwise. So I spent the day reading and watching old Stargate episodes.

Thought about writing another article but it was Sunday and didnt’ feel like using my brain…. 😉

Well this is all about my weekend… Will post more later.

Cya,
Suramya

My article on ‘Converting Video Formats with FFmpeg’ is to be published in Linux Journal’s June edition. 🙂

Source: Linux Journal Contents #146, June 2006

– Suramya

This weekend was awesome fun, I had visited my grandparents place and really enjoyed myself. Me and mom left for Basera at about 6:30 am after I was done with work and had breakfast and we both freshened up. It took us a little more than four hours to get there due to traffic and both of us spent the time talking. Halfway through we stopped for Shikanji (Lemonade) at my favorite place (I stop there every single time we pass through) and got some new cassettes because the only ones we had in the car were ‘Best of Kishore Kumar’ (Which I really like, but you can only listen to it so many times) and ‘Atal Ji ki Kavitae’ (Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s poems). Then I went to sleep because I wanted to be awake when we got there.

In the meantime my cousin and nephew were calling us every 15-20 mins asking us where we were and how long it would take us to get there. Finally we got there and I got to meet everyone. My mausi (Mom’s sister) and my cousin Axu were also there so I got to meet them after about 7 years. It was awesome. I had last seen her when she was in 3rd grade and now she just gave her 10th exams. My Nephew’s Shaurya and Laksh were also there so I spent a lot of time playing with them. Laksh has just started to sit unaided but can’t sit for a long time so we had to watch him carefully so that he wouldn’t fall.

Then we drove back on Monday morning with Mausi and Axu. The drive back was fun. We stopped at Rajkumar mama’s (Mom’s brother) place and had pakora’s and Lassi. It was awesome. When we got back me and Axu talked for a while and then I went to sleep ’cause I had to work in the evening and I had to be awake for it.

Well this was a condensed version of my weekend. Will write more later.

Cya,
Suramya

So what have I been upto for the past two weeks since my last post? A lot as it turns out and I would have posted about it sooner but I was having trouble with my net connection (I would get disconnected every 5 mins from the net). I lost all net access on the last monday and didn’t get access back till the next day. Then I had a ‘choppy’ net connection: Meaning I was only able to stay online for 5 – 10 mins before getting disconnected. It made working remotely very interesting to say the least. On Saturday I went to the BSNL office and asked one of the people from there (Mr Gulbir) to help me get the connection working. Everything looked ok from their side so the guy actually come home with me to test the system and get it working. We managed to get it up and running for about 5 hours before it died again. Today I went to him again and took my dsl modem and laptop with me. He again spent a lot of time working on it with me and we finally got it working. Here’s to hoping that it stays this way… 🙂

To prevent this from happening I am getting a AirTel DSL line installed tomorrow and the advantage of that is that this connection has an unlimited data transfer limit. (Yes, BSNL has a 10 GB cap on the data transfer and then you pay 80 p /MB which sucks) So now I will have two DSL lines at home. Which is cool :).

I spent most of last weekend with Gaurang and Kangan. They are getting engaged next month on the 18th. It was a lot of fun, I metup with Gaurang on Saturday and we went to PVR Saket to meet Tarini and Raoul. We had lunch together, talked a lot and caught up with eachothers lives which was a lot of fun and then me and Gaurang went for a movie (Minuch) It was ok. A bit long and a bit boring, Not something which I would have choosen to watch on my own… Plus we had these three annonying females sitting behind us who were going ‘What did he say’ every few mins… And that was really annonying.

Once we were done with the movie we picked up Kangan from work (Yeah she worked on Saturday) and we had a snack/dinner at Priya complex. It was nice to catchup with friends after such a long time. Then we went over to Anuj’s place where Gaurang was crashing for his visit, since he was out of town we had the place to ourselves so we spent most of the night talking and then watched movies. The next day was also fun as all of us were feeling lazy and didn’t really do anything except talk most of the day… In Kangan’s words “Its Sunday, don’t make me use my brain”. In the evening we went to Ansal Plaza where we just hungout for most of the evening and then when it got late and they started shutting the place down we drove back and I got home. Unfortunately I still didn’t have net access so I wasted time reading the new Robin Cook I bought when we (Tarini, Gaurang Raoul and me) invaded a bookstore. Most of the next day was spent lazing around. I got net access back for a little while so I worked a little but then lost access completely so I couldn’t work.

On Tuesday me and Gaurang met for lunch and later Kangan joined us. Later we (Me and Gaurang) went to Monica’s wedding. It was nice and she looked really nice. I did take a few snaps but they are on Gaurang’s phone so hopefully he will email them to me soon.

The rest of the week was pretty uneventfull and I just relaxed at home.

Well this was a brief summary of what I did for the last couple of days… This wasn’t all I did but there is no way I am typing out everything I did. I am too lazy for that… so this is all for now.

Cya,
Suramya

You know I just realized that some of the people who visit my blog do so to actually catch up with whats going on in my life and not to hear he post about random stuff that I found interesting. So to fix that oversite here’s a brief update on my life and what I have been upto:

* Today I attended Akhil and Navya’s engagement party. It was a really nice event. Yes they actually got engaged and it wasn’t an april fool’s joke (As I initially suspected it to be…) I guess many people probably didn’t show up because they thought that it was a joke…

* Wished my cousin happy birthday. I remember that it was a pain convincing anyone to come to her birthday party because everyone thought that it was a joke…

* The flooring is being put in the house we are constructing here in Noida, India. The white marble floor looks amazing. I did take pics and posted them online you can check them out Here

* Read my first Anita Blake novel by Laurell Hamilton. It was interesting though I found her way of writing very choppy (She uses too many short sentences) so it was a bit difficult for me to get into the flow of the novel initially. Once I got over that the novel was actually pretty interesting. However I still prefer Kim Harrison’s books on vampire hunter’s (Dead Witch Walking etc)

* One of my friend is getting married next month. I won’t name her here yet because she asked me not to so that she can break the news to every one… but considering that she is getting married in another 18 days she better hurry up and tell everyone or I will…

* A third friend is getting engaged to another friend next month. Lets see if I can attend the engagement. It would we awesome if I could…

What else… Yeah its getting pretty hot here in Delhi with a high of 35 Degree C (96 Degree F)

Well this is all for now. Will write more later.

Cya,
Suramya

Yup, life is fun. I havn’t been posting stuff because I didn’t feel like it because of a hectic schedule but the past few days have been fun:

The weekend of 18th Feb:

Went to the 81st birthday of Padmashree Mr. Ram V Sutar, a sculpturer whose sculptures have been put up everywhere. Check out this site for a list of some of his works. This was the first time I met a Padmashree reciepient and it was an awesome experience. I wish I had my camera with me at that time but…

Also met Richa, my cousin sister when she came over for lunch on Sunday. It was fun talking to her after such a long time.

The rest of the time:

Staying up late working on stuff. Waking up even later. Couple of times I went to bed at 11am – 12 pm. The only bad part was that since I was up my parents would ask me to come for a walk with them to the plot where we are building out house. Other than that it was just work/sleep/read books/watch TV.

Today/Yesterday:

Didn’t sleep all night (Was working), then left for Rajkumar Mama’s place at 6 am, came back at 12:30 pm (Didn’t sleep the entire time, ’cause I hate sleeping in a car.) Then when I got back I couldn’t sleep, so I read a book for a few hours and finally fell asleep at about 3:30 pm. Then at ~ 4:30 pm I got a call from a friend. I spoke to her for a while but I really have no idea what I talked about. I only remember who it was because I had wished her all the best for her exams earlier in the day. I hope I was making sense on the phone…

Then I went back to sleep and work up at 7:20 pm to start work. Now its almost 4 am but I still don’t feel sleepy.

Lets see… I think I will read something and then crash.

Oh, I also watched Final Destination 3. Its pathetic. No match for the original and even the sequel. Didn’t even bother to finish watching it.

Well there was a lot more stuff that happened since I last posted but I don’t feel like typing any more.

Will post more later (maybe).

– Suramya