As the subject says its been a while visiting this blog and keeping it updated.

People who still follow me through feeds other than my friends in masters Yey! I completed my masters. Still wondering how fast the last two years have went by. Staying in hostel was a totally different experience and was real fun.

Still looking out for a job. I am free for grabs only for job ;-) (of course u gonna pay me if u r hiring me!)

Right now spending good time at home. My nephew keeps me busy on one of the days during weekends.

Have got a couple of things going on in life, some good, some bad, some frustrating and some i don't know what to say. I will post about them in coming days hopefully(with strings attached!).

PS: Still wondering how to end this post.

Every day while going and coming back from dinner at college I usually look up to the sky for a daily doze of star gazing. Yesterday being a Friday(and also i was not feeling well) i came back pretty early compared to other Fridays.

Unusual to the daily routine today there were no stars visible due to the cloudy atmosphere, instead there was lightning and thunders indicating a possibility of rain. It had been a long time I sat back and watched the lightning. All I did yesterday night was to sit back and look at the lightning and the way they occured. Every lightning was different from the previous one.

For me lightning always brings back some old memories:
When i was a kid one of my uncle used to tell me that there are people up there who take photos and thats why you see the light coming and going. So he told me whenever I see such light in the sky don't forget to give a smile. Boy i was so lame back then i took it for real. I used to watch the lightning with a smile. Later in school when I got to know about about the clouds formation, lightning and thunder storms I knew that I was taken for a ride by my uncle.

Even after knowing about all these, the thoughts of smiling during lightning still amazes me. It was something my uncle wanted me to understand, to always have a smile on face no matter what situation you are in. Thanks to him to this day I still haven't left the habit.

Another thought that comes to my mind whenever lightning starts is the rain. Just as the rain drops starts kissing the ground, a layer of dust rises up and it has a really strange smell which cannot be simulated(sorry for the usage of technical jargon) to the precise extent by any artifical rain or sprinkling water. I don't know what is there in that smell but i have loved it since my childhood days.

A totally different level of satisfaction from my regular routine. It was indeed an electrifying experience.

As soon as i logged in to livejournal the homepage warned "Its been 16 weeks you have last posted". That shows how lazy i have been this year. No matter its 16 weeks or 160 weeks its a good sign that i am writing today. This article is more about that how 2007 has been for me.

I will start of writing some of the most joyous and happier moments and later some of the sad moments. I personally feel all those sad events were an indicator to better the situation.

Some of the happy moments
The most happiest moment was the arrival of my nephew(son of elder sister). He is named Samarth and his arrival in the family has made us all feel alive and energetic. The icing on the cake was his arrival in may which increased the number of celebrations and events to cherish in may. We both share birthday in the same month along with my sister and brother-in-law wedding anniversary.

My next happier moment was when i laid my hands on my new Karizma(yeah i got one this nov). Its an absolutely beauty and kicks up your adrenaline on the road.


Some of the Sad moments were

Dad getting admitted to hospital twice this year. Its been an alarming situation and dad has taken things seriously now. He has changed his food habits and is very cautious about what he eats. This also made the whole family to rethink about food habits. I have changed my food habits too eating healthier food and avoiding junk. Its been several months i have stopped eating pizzas and chats.

I have been sick many times this year and i am suffering from dehydration this new year eve. I have been lying all day since yesterday afternoon and already my back and neck is hurting. But I am doing a lot better now than what i was today morning. Hope to get back some energy for the new year and get back to form.

There have been some negatives in the academics too for which partly i am responsible and some i don't know for whatever reason.

I have traveled the least this year and its been nearly a year my last trip to Ooty that i remember was somewhere i really traveled. Its has been a disappointing year in terms of travel but i have spent all those time playing with my nephew so i have no regrets.

All in all this 2007 was an eventful year. 2007 is already almost past and everyone is waiting for the new year. Wish everyone a happy new year 2008. Enjoy every bit of it.

Well this is an unusual thing that happened with my destop PC mouse.

I am not a big fan of the mouse though but i really felt how much these mouse come in handy, since most of the webpages in the current day have a lot of links navigating to the "username" box to log in to the mailbox or signing out required atleast a lot of key hits on the keyboard.

Last weekend my PC mouse had given up showing no signs of pointer movement on the monitor. The mouse pointer was glued to one place and i had a hard time navigating and using the system. The most used key on the keyboard was the "Tab" key. Adding to this the left click of the mouse was also not working. This is one day I will always remember since it tested my patience to the limits.

This saturday I wanted to check whether the mouse is still not working so that I can buy a new mouse if needed and to my surprise it has shown some unusual characteristics. I am able to use the mouse as i was using it previously and yes the left click seems to work just as it is supposed to.

Wondering what technology work has went in manufacturing such mouses showing some self healing characteristics. Is it the turn of computers and devices to emulate the human capability of self-healing and adapting to the environment? I have got no answers for these. All i can do is wait and see for the future ;-)

Its been almost nearing 2 months srinidhi celebrated his birthday, we(Ajay,Kiran,Pradeep,Me,Shreyas,Srinidhi and Uday) had not gone out for lunch/dinner.
Last we went out for a treat was Shreyas all-in-one treat ;-)

The KJ gang was ready for a treat and last friday it was time for Srinidhi to treat all of us.

We had been to "The Dhaba" which is near HSR layout, located on the service road of the outer ring road just before Agara lake. This is the 2nd time we were visiting the place and last time it was Pradeep's treat. The place is good, serves nice food. I feel the cost of food is little high compared to the quantity he serves. Most of us ordered North India food except for Kiran. It would be good to order North Indian food(Tandoor foods) at such places than to try some rice items.

There were a few photos taken. Will upload the photos and update this post with the link.
Shreyas posed for a few photos which was one of the highlights for the day as I have never seen him so camera friendly.

Update: Link to photos
http://picasaweb.google.com/shankarravi.s/SrinidhiSTreat

Its been a long time i put down something for an entry in my journal and was thinking what to talk about.

One more Ugadi(Hindu new year) gone past. As in the Kannada song
"Yuga yugadi kaledaru Ugadi marali barutide"
this time it was just a simple one with nice food at home.

Its indeed getting hotter by the day.
The fan's speed is gone up.
Waiting for the monsoon.

One of the shortest trip i have ever done. The plan for trip was a quick decision and we(me & shyam) wanted to visit the nearest place not visited till now and it was a unanimous choice "OOTY"

We left from my house around 5 in the morning, took the mysore route to Ooty. We were at Ooty by 10.30. We visited first the Botanical garden and then the rose garden. Ooty is the place of plants and flowers, mountain range. Botanical garden had different kind of trees, shrubs, herbs etc and a few flowering plants too. Have taken a few snaps of them which will be posted up in a few days.

Next visit was to Rose Garden. I had seen flower show at Lalbagh in Bangalore and it remembered me of those days. There are thousands of roses of different varieties and you need to have a huge memory space in your cameras to take snaps of each & everyone of them. Being in the rose garden for quite a while we started to lose patience and decided to move on.

Next stop was the lake. There were too many people in the Lake wanting to go for boating which made us feel unbearable to go out. So we hit a U-turn and we were back towards Ooty city. Next stop was Dodda Betta which is one of the highest peak in the Nilgiris. You get to see a nice view of Ooty city from the top and the surrounding peaks and plateau.

Next place on our list was Coonor. Coonor is around 20 kms from Ooty. There is an alternate route from Dodda Betta to Coonor which we took and the roads were really pathetic. I was browsing for some details about Ooty on the net, where I came across this “Ooty was known as Queen of Hills but now it is Queen of Potholes” and I totally agree with that. There is too much of only patch work that has been done which makes it not so good to drive. You got a few places to watch at Coonor and most of them are view points and a park known as SIMS park. We visited the Dolphin nose from where we got to see beautiful waterfall. I have decided to visit it someday. Need to search some details about it. The route to Dolphins nose is also very bad and not much direction pointers to this place. So you got to enquire local people for the route.

After Dolphins nose it was a final call that we take the route to Bangalore. We came back to Ooty had snacks and started our travel back to Bangalore. The Bangalore-Mysore highway is a pleasure to drive clocking at 110kmph on most of the stretches in Shyam’s Alto. We were back in Bangalore by Midnight.

I still have to collect the trip photos from Shyam. Check out for update about photos link

This christmas gave us a chance to have a long weekend few of my friends planned for a trip and we decided we'll be going to kerala this time. This is the first time i am visiting kerala. We had been on a 4 days trip to Wayanad, Munnar and Alleppey. We missed out on Tekkady due to time constraints. Will be updating about the trip and few snaps of the trip shortly.

Update:

We started off from Bangalore at around 11PM reached Mysore by around 1.15AM. Stopped in front of the palace, took a few snaps and off towards Sultan Bathery. There was a lot of traffic near the Kerala RTO check post. We hadn’t faced such kind of a traffic block in any of the other borders of Karnataka. We were almost stuck for 2 hours. We reached Sultan Bathery (SB) around 5AM in the morning check in to the hotel we had reserved. Some of us had a short nap and every one was ready by 9. We had breakfast in the restaurant and left for Edkal caves. It’s nearby to SB nearly 10 kms. After reaching the place you need to climb for a short distance and you get to see a nice panoramic view of the surrounding place. Not much to see at Edkal caves but once worth a visit.

Next thing in our mind was Lunch. We were so hungry since our breakfast was not so good. We came back to the main road and ate at a nearby hotel. Don’t expect great food at such places.

Next destination was Meenmutty falls. We had read about it in few sites that its one of the beautiful falls in Wayanad. This is nearly 25kms to SB. You have to walk around 4 kms to reach the falls in which 2kms walk is in a coffee estate and the last 2 kms is more of a downhill walk. You need to flex your leg muscles very often here. But believe me its worth all these effort to watch the waterfall. One suggestion would be to visit this place just after the rainy season, coz you are sure to get a good sight then. It was almost evening and we had to return back to hotel room. So we started our ascent back. We reached back to the hotel and had a very nice hot water bath. This was one of the best experiences of hot water bath after a tiring day. Later we had dinner at a nearby hotel and left for munnar.

To reach munnar we took the Calicut-Cochin NH-47 route. As you proceed from Sultan Bathery towards Calicut (Kozhikode) you get to travel through a ghat section known as Vythri ghats. Roads are pretty bad at certain places and repair works are ongoing. It takes a while to reach the bottom of the ghats. Once you are on the flat land its smooth ride to Calicut and once you reach the highway its a pleasure to drive but you get bored traveling on a straight stretch. We need to take a diversion from the NH-47 towards Munnar. It takes you through a place called Kaladi. This is the same place where Adi shankaracharya was born. Continue in the same route to reach munnar.

In munnar we visited the Top point which is one of the highest points in the place. It is mostly covered with clouds and you get to see good scenery, tea estates. On the way to Top point there is a lake where you have boating. We did not stop for boating since we had to still visit few other places and we had to head towards Alleppey by evening. Our next visit was to Rajamalay wildlife sanctuary where you find the endangered Nilgiri Tahr. We got to see only one of them.

Next stop was Alleppey. We didnt do nor visited much here. We had been to the backwaters for a boat ride for 3 hours. Was a nice first experience traveling in a boat. We hired a small boat. The boat me charged Rs 500 per hour so it was 1500 Rs for 3 hours. You get all varieties of boats but you need to bargain as they say charge a little more if not enquired. House boats are also in plenty but reach the boarding place at the earliest in the morning since most of the boats get filled quickly and you will have to wait for a long time for the boats to return back.

After the boatride it was packup time heading back to Bangalore. It was back to same old Cochin-Calicut-Mysore-Bangalore route. This time too we had to wait for an hour at the Kerala RTO check post. We were back in Bangalore around 6AM and i guess most of my pals went to office and slept there [;-)].

Wayanad (Sultan Bathery):-
How to reach by-
Road: Sultan Bathery is well connected by road to Mysore, Kozhikode(Calicut) and Bangalore
Its around 110 kms from Mysore, 130 kms from Kozhikode and 250 kms from Bangalore. It is just 25-30 kms from Karnataka-Kerala border. Kalpetta which is the district headquarters of Wayanad district is just 25 kms from Sultan Bathery.
Train: Not sure whether there is any train service to this place. Mysore and Kozhikode are the nearest Railway stations
Airport: Nearest airports are Kozhikode and Bangalore
Accomodation: There are lots of hotels in Sultan Bathery and Kalpetta so you should not face any difficulty for accomodation

Munnar
Road: Its around 110 kms from Cochin.
Airport: Cochin is the nearest airport.
Accomodation: If you are travelling during the holiday season or summer it is better to reserve from your nearby place. There are a lot of hotels but it will be advisable to book and go.

Alleppey
Road: It is well connected by road since NH-47 passes through this place. Nearly 80 kms drive from Cochin and 200+ kms from Trivandrum.
Railway station: Alleppey is well connected through Railways. Cochin is the nearest railway station and there would be regular trains to alleppey for sure. Please check for timings from your nearest Railway station.
Airport: Nearest airports are Cochin and Trivandrum airports.
Accomodation: There are lots of hotels so you should not face difficulty in finding one.


Trip photos are up at this link:
http://picasaweb.google.com/shankarravi.s

Wish you all a happy deepavali and Ramzan festivals

This is the first time i am breaking my deepavali tradition of tripping.
Last year i was at Hampi and the year prior i was at Goa.

I am sure many of my friends would be having fun visting places and i am sitting at home writing this blog.

No regrets though but surely missing it. Have to wait till December for travel. :-(

The so called Devotees (in alphabetical order):
Ganesha
Raghunandana A.K.A Pandu
Ravi Nandan A.K.A Dabbi
Ravishankar A.K.A Gingi
Suhas A.K.A Kulla
Vinod A.K.A Victory

Dropped out Devotee
Raghuvara

Well this tirupati trip was destined to be different from our usual one.
There were too many twists in the trip of which majorly we should thank/bang vinod for (dharamdetu miss aytu).

As usual we all planned for the trip at the last moment. Bus tickets were booked in the normal express bus of KSRTC by Dabbi. Raghu dropped out of the trip due to personal reason and ganesha chipped in.

Our megastar victory (the long legged monkey) wanted a better bus, so he got tickets booked in some private travels. The twist for the trip starts from here. He hadn’t seen the bus nor had the brains to book 3 rows of 2 seaters. He blindly booked 2 rows of 3 seaters.

Friday 21 July
We started our journey from Anand rao circle (near majestic). The bus was scheduled at 10.00pm but it arrived at 10.15pm. This journey was the most horrible one I have ever experienced to-date. The so called 3 seaters was congested. Adding to the problems was some Telgu movie being telecasted which was so awful. Having Blade basiya (Kulla) with us, we can never feel lonely. We spent time cracking jokes, remembering some old moments and also few dharamdetu for victory (inna swalpa kodbekagittu missaytu)

Saturday 22 July
We reached Tirupati at 4.00am and then we left to Alipiri to get the darshana tag. The darshan timing was on Monday 24 july at 12pm. This was the second twist of our trip. Now everyone was thinking how to get darshana on Sunday. Then victory said that we could take some special pooja ticket which will be issued at specific vijaya bank counter both in tirupati & tirumala. We reached the place (I don’t remember the name of the building) at 4.30am. There was already a long queue of people for the tickets. We too joined the queue and slept for a few hours in the queue itself. Ticket issue started at 8.00am and we got our tickets at 9.30am.

After getting the tickets we had our breakfast in Tirupati and then left to Tirumala. Pandu had made some arrangements at Udupi Mutt. We logged in (sorry checked in) at around 12.30pm. All of us slept for a few hours and later had our lunch. Then we visited the museum nearby. It was a nice place and we spent nearly an hour at that place. Then we returned back to our room and again back to bed.

Sunday 23 July
Darshana reporting time was at 3.30am. All 6 of us started to get ready from 1.30 am and we were at the place at 3.40am. The queue was already pretty long. Atlast at around 5.30am we got to see the deity. Wow what a wonderful view worth waiting in the Q for so long. After venky’s darshan we had short breakfast (since it was not good), collected the ladus and visited varaha swamy temple nearby. After that all of us had proper breakfast at Woodside hotel (nice hotel). After fuelling ourselves we left to Akashgange and papavinashini. Nothing much at both places but since they are closeby visiting the places is ok. Later we returned back to tirumala and then Logged out (checked out) of the room and left to tirupati.

We reached tirupati at around 1pm. We had plans of going to kanchipuram. We enquired the journey time and the bus facility for this place. The journey time is nearly 3.5 hours. Since we had reserved 10.00pm bus to Bangalore we didn’t want to risk it. So we dropped the plans to kanchi. Pandu and kulla had plans of returning to Bangalore in the evening bus. They got 2 tickets for 3.45 pm bus. The other 4 were not keen on returning so we planned to see Sri Kala Hasti which is nearly 37 kms from Tirupati.
The buses are very frequent to this place and we can reach the place in just 45mins.
We visited the temples in Sri Kala Hasti and left back to Tirupati at 5.00pm.

Back in tirupati we still had 4 hours so we visited Govindaraj swamy temple and another pushkarni nearby the temple. We had our dinner at Bhimas Hotel and left to Bus Terminus, collected our baggage, boarded the bus. The bus left around 10.30pm 30 minutes off schedule time but still reached Bangalore at 4.00am. Back in Bangalore we had to take auto at that time of the day.

Well everyone was tired during the whole trip (which none of us had never been), legs were paining. All in all it was a totally different experience of tirupati which will always be remembered.

The only thing we missed out is to bang Kulla (his normal dose) and especially Victory. I am sure everyone is waiting for it.