Vijay Basrur

Merry Christmas

Its that time of the year when you just feel the holiday spirit. Last year I played Santa in office and exchanged gifts. In true Christmas spirit Santa didn’t get any. But the whole event was quite a bit of fun.

This year we are in Kumta for Christmas. It also happens to be my inlaws wedding anniversary today. There’s plenty of sea food on the menu and maybe a long drive along the beach in the evening.

I have never been able to concentrate on work in the last week of the year. Either its the planning for the New Years get-together or its the holiday spirit in office & with the vendors. This year its both.

New Years is going to be with some old friends and their kids. So it will be some good fun over 2 days. The location is a good 60 kms away from Mumbai nestled in the Khopoli forest.

Happy Holidays!

Bars in Goa

I am in Goa for a day on work (yeah..I know its a bad time to come here on work while half of the world comes to Goa this time of the year to party party..but lets get to that issue). On my drive from the airport one can't miss the hundreds of bars that line up the main road.

There are fancy bars (with lovely sit outs under coconut trees), average bars (which have some amount of food on the menu), mom & pop bars (with the owners house right behind the bar), cheap bars (the only food they serve is chips), wine shop bars (the retail sale of liquor is as good as that in the bar), grocery store bars (you can pick up biscuits, detergent etc. while you finish your drink) and god knows how many other types.

You will also spot numerous wine shops peppered along the road in addition to these bars. Going by sheer numbers its amusing to see how much liquor can help in generating employment and income for people not to forget the incentive to spend and get intoxicated.

Will try & drink to that later tonight. Cheers!

Fish platter in Goa

We had no idea how much of fish would be there in a fish platter when we ordered one for dinner. We were at Ritz Classic in Panjim, a place we have frequented in the past years whenever work has brought us to Goa.

Considering it was pitiable that we were in Goa on work rather than pleasure, especially at this time of the year, we decided to splurge a little on sea food. Well the little was a bit too much.

A normal platter would at best get you @ 12 to 15 pieces of meat. This one came with more than 30, not counting the prawns & the squid. I missed carrying the camera else it would have made a lovely photo post.

There was Pomfret, Surmai, Bombil (Bombay Duck), Chonak (a local fish), Rawas, Bangda (Mackrel), Prawns, Squid and 2 more varities which were unidentifiable but tasty nevertheless. The two of us could do justice to only 3/4th of the platter.

I would highly reccomend it but with a gang of at least 4 people & you should be able to polish off the platter easily. It is priced at a weird 267 bucks. A downright steal.

A memorable dinner indeed.

Data Management

This is the 3rd laptop I am moving to this year. I moved to the company paid HP Pavilion TX1000 series from my personal Sony Vaio in June. I got my replacement of the lost laptop last evening. Its the same TX series.

Each time I have spent hours trying to build my data, which is huge. I have several email accounts, many rules on as many folders in Outlook, standard bookmarks and whole lot of addon softwares like Firefox, Google desktop, Picasa etc. To say it has been boring and frustrating is an understatement, not to mention loss of productivity.

There is too much data which keeps getting changed or updated and its impossible to keep a track of the backups. Files & email are easy but bookmarks, outlook rules etc need to be constantly backed up and there's no single tool which takes care of it all.

We sure have landed in the age of information overload. God knows whats in store ahead.

Train Travel

As children, train travel was always the most crucial aspect of our holidays. Thanks to Dad's LTA we would be nestled into the, long gone, first class coupes. My brother & me would enjoy ourselves thoroughly, playing cards being the main feature.

During Engg college, boarding the Sidheshwar Exp was a ritual we followed once every month in our first year and gradually once in the entire term towards the final year. Downing a couple of drinks before boarding at Solapur was a ritual we followed in the last 2 years.

My most memorable journey was in the 3rd AC compartment of the Kurla Bangalore Exp, sometime in Feb 96, for a site visit while working for Batliboi. In a journey that lasted 24 hours, I slept for 19. Pure bliss.

AC travel is the least stressful and most enjoyable as it forces you to relax. Look out of the window, read a bit, get tempted with the hordes of food vendors, fall for some of the temptations (I never miss the Soup) and the best of all… Sleep!

A ride on the Rajdhani is enough to convince you on the pleasures of train travel. A friend has highly recomended that I try the 1st AC on the Rajdhani. We plan to do so in Feb when we are hoping to visit the Mughal Gardens.

This is the first time I have blogged on the train. Remembering some of these train journey was indeed quite nostalgic.

KSRTC

Travel in and around Kumta usually happens in my father in laws Maruti 800. So went to Karwar for some amazing fish at Hotel Ankur and then to Gokarn to meet my aunt in the 800 with my father in law at the wheel.

So when I had to go to Shirali & Bailur, I decided to get there alone by bus. Shirali is where our Muth is located which houses our community's spiritual leader. It is about 50 kms from Kumta. My main purpose of going there was to meet my Dad's aunt who was very fond of me. She is 93 and lives in an old age home run by the Muth. The tears in her eyes upon seeing me, made my trip worth every bit.

From there I headed to Bailur where my mother's family temple Laxmi Narayan is located. I met my uncle, attended the puja and had an amazing lunch after which I headed back to Kumta.

Bailur is a lush green town nestled away from the highway and the approach road is dry and arid making the town a welcome change as the approach road end.

And this brings me to the subject of this post, KSRTC. I depended on the KSRTC buses to get me to & from Shirali. And eventhough they are rickety and all that (they are called Lal Dabbas in Maharashtra) but they run frightfully on time. The conductors are equipped with handhelds which dish out tickets printed on thermal paper. This must be an amazing efficieny move. Along with having a control on the money, it must be giving vital data to analyze traffic movements to add/remove buses on key routes.

Ironically I boarded the same bus both ways & was greeted by the conductor with a smile when I boarded the bus from Shirali.

So in all it was a nice trip. We ended the day with a stroll on Hedbunder beach with a few friends and had dinner at Kumta's only open air garden restaurant. I have never had such thick & juicy Surmai in a long time.

Losses

This is the first time ever I have lost something so valuable, on my own.

I have lost my Timex Indiglo, my Ray Ban & my iPod at different times but all have been stolen in some or the other form. BTW my bag contained my iPod too, so there goes my 2nd iPod.

Honesty & Decency are long dead and buried and you only hear rare cases of things returned by sincere people. So I had no hope of getting my bag back. But what amazes me is that the generation before us never loses hope and sincerely believes in some divine intervention which will return any lost good.

There have been numerous prayers offered by loved ones, all of them for my lost bag and for a moment I really thought that it may work. But GOD has different plans.

Thankfully I have been at peace ever since I was told that insurance will cover most of the losses. The rest will be funded by some of my stock market gains.

So as the adage goes..paisa aata hai..paisa jata hai..Money comes…Money goes.

Come Monday, I will be busy trying to get my material world back on track.