Had been to Samarkand on Infantry Road for lunch with colleagues yesterday. The Afghan themed restaurant which was designed like a cave looked amazing, the food was even better.

The place was packed to the brim as we arrived and we had to wait at the bar. The bar menu was really informatively done. We were taken aback when the bartender passed us a bottle The food was truly delicious and the desserts were very unique. I guess with a price tag of approx 500/head its got to be that good

Sreenivas And Prasad

When we were leaving for the restaurant Sreenivas(our NRI VP) wanted to ride Prasad’s TVS. Prasad was more than happy to hand over the keys and what followed was pure fun. I was riding behind Pramod and managed to take a few snaps of the duo burning rubber…

It took us almost 4 hrs to get back and working but the whole affair was absolutely fun.

Today was “Holi”, the Indian festival of colours… I had absolutely no expectations of the day coz I had never ever played holi but all that changed in the evening. First Anant appears from nowhere all covered in gulal(coloured powder) and threatened to cover us in colour right at our places if we did not come out and play… Guess what we went out and had a blast…

We played for like 15 min and that was totally special for me… We were covered with red and blue all over our faces and hair… Theju and Preethi hv explained the event beautifully in their blogs.

I returned home early to take a bath and had a few things I had to get done but I got this call from Arpit who ocassionally drops in, he said he wanted some software off the net immediately… I msg him back saying that I am covered with colors and will take a bath and he can then come and take it. When he arrived I had just finished my bath a few min ago and had put on clean clothes… He was covered in gulal and said that he just needed my help to get another friend out of his house to play. I knew its going to be colourful so switched back to my old clothes and joined him, Shabari and Appu to Hemanth’s place.

We reach Hemanth’s place and I give him a call to get him out but he does not pick it up… I walk up to his door and hear his voice… A bell and few sec later he comes out and is all game to play… We spend a few mins throwing gulal at each other… We then try to get Sangeeth involved and she refuses to budge, she says she is at home and that she knows we will put color on her. We manage to convince her that we just want to eat ice cream together and tell her to come to Appu’s place.

The next phase of the plan was Swetha… We go to her house after confirming she is home. We are told that she was on the terrace and then just pounce on her… It took us like 10 secs to get her coloured… Shabari then calls Sindhu(her sister) over in the pretext that I hv bought my new car… Arpit was busy getting a bucket of water coloured… This was special colour that lasts longer(2-3 days)… the water was blood red when he was done with it and he poured half of it onto Shabari, watching which Swetha was laughing away to glory when Arpit dumped the rest on her.

We then welcomed Sindhu with more gulal and she was really not expecting us to be playing holi, her favourite shirt looked a little different today . We then headed to Appu’s place where Sangeeth and Kishore were waiting for us… One look at us and Sangeeth sprinted inside… Arpit managed to throw some color at her and she really got upset . She said she had some sort of allergic reaction to gulal(we told her it was organic but she would not listen)

Kittu joined in the fun as we coloured ourselves with all colours we could get our hands onto… not to mention a lot of eggs and more permanent colors in water. It was late into the night when we got done and decided to call it a day…

Today was another first for me and I so loved doing it. Special thanks to Anant and Arpit they made this day memorable

Photos From Applibase:

Holi Celebrations In the Night :

Had been yesterday to Rangashankara to catch the play “Hamlet” with my collegues from Applibase. The play was the first play I hv been to in almost a decade and it was worth all the running around .

The Indianized version of the play had (hold ur breath) Duality(2 ppl playing almost every char), Dialouges in English(classical lines by Shakespeare), Hindi, Tulu and Kannada. 3 forms of Dramatics(Dhrupad, Yakshagana and Theatre), 2 ppl playing Hamlet(one being a really beautiful girl ) and some hilarious sequences.

Fortunately Preethi had given us all a link to a summary of Hamlet, so we were not taken back by this flavour of it. If you hv not read it, please do before you go to the play its worth the effort.

I loved the whole ensemble and the way they showed duality the best. The way they captured two events done by the same char in the same time without forcing the char to move around was beautiful… not to mention the ability to show unspoken expressions by one person while the other says the dialouge.

I was the most comfortable with the hindi dialouges… they were fast and heavy(trust me they were) but were incredibly eazy to pick up and some of the rude comments by Hamlet(in hindi) during the play were really funny.

Amoung the actors… Loved both the Hamlets but the male one stole the show(would hv loved to put up names but no official website and my memory aint that good ). The female Hamlet said the famous line(refer post name) and was immaculate in her performance, great work keep it up. Rest of the cast complemented perfectly and the enter ensemble delivered perfectly.

I cant wait to get back to watch some more plays… plan to catch 2 more next week, that depends on when my friend’s wedding is(hv to plan arround it). So here goes… the start of a new hobby called Theatre.

PS: Read the play’s review here

You breathe every second of your life,
But the seconds that really count are the ones that take your breadth away…

That line makes so much more sense after a weekend like the last one….

Last weekend Team Applibase set out to spend a couple of days in Bandipur. Firstly special thanks to Anant… he got the booking done for us at Bandipur and without that we would have had a lot of probs wrt lodging(considering the Tiger Census and all).

The plan was simple… Go to Bandipur, enjoy Trekking and the Safari, Trek a mountain or two on the way back and be at Bangalore early monday morn. The execution was very different…

14th Jan 2006 4:00 Am

I was still weary from the last two days… My fever seemed to have reduced considerably but Mom was still anxious to see me go when I was not perfectly healthy. Dad was to drive me to the station, Dad simply tossed me the key and said drive.
(At this point I would like to say I have never driven my car. The reason being that when I got my license I was too happy with my bike license that I never drove my old car and when we got a new one dad was too scared to let me drive… I had not driven for like 2 years.)

I had been practicing driving lately on weekends and I promptly took the keys and half fearing missing the train I drove it. We were at the train station at 5:45 and the train was set to leave at 6:30.

Pramod decided to skip the trip thanks to some work( ) but the rest of em where there. Anant was busy in the weekend and could not join us and Musavir was out of town all week so did not make the trip. Shruthi and Vidya also had managed to excuse their way out of the trip

6:30 Am

The train finally started moving and we were all seated next to one another. The initial part of the journey was all getting used to the train and putting the luggage in place. Soon the black sky parted and a streak of orange appeared in the horizon… We spent most of the time talking to eachother and taking pics.

Our next major station of intrest was Maddur… Thanks to the famous “Maddur Vade”. We managed to buy a few of the Vades and they were really delicious. I by this time had forgotten all about the sickness and was biting into the roasted dish.

We then got down to playing cards… Asha suggested the game commonly known as “Donkey” (I guess the creator was not very original atleast in the naming part ). The game involved luck and a lot of memory… Theju and Asha seemed to have played the game before coz they were all ready with stratergy and all… the rest of us ended up learning the game the hardway .

A few rounds of “Donkey” and we realized we were arriving at the Mysore Railway Station. Mysore was the capital of most kings that ruled Karnataka and surrounding regions, its not hard to explain why… the city looked royal right from the start and if you get near the Palace it gets as royal as it can be.

10:15 Am

We got out of the train and headed straight for the prepaid auto stand. We had 7 of us so one auto had to hv 4 ppl and Asha, Preethi, Theju and I boarded that one. Sid, Prasad and Varma climbed into the other one. We asked the auto driver to drop us off at a decent restuarant near the Bus Station.

A few mins later we had had our breakfast and headed to the Bus Station which was right across the street form the Resturant. We had to wait for a bus heading towards Ooty as they went thru our destination. We got busy again taking snaps while we waited for the bus. We had just missed a bus and had to wait like 30 min for the next one.

As soon the next bus came there was a rush to get seats and it became so crazy that ppl who were getting down could not manage to get out of the bus thanks to ppl trying to get in. Many threw their belongings in thru the window so as to reserve the seats… Have to mention that Sid did the same… but almost a few secs later another bus to Ooty arrived and the crowd split into 2 and we managed to get seats in the second bus.

We were tired and this bus journey was comfortable enuf to get some rest… I was sleeping in almost no time… The bus stopped once for about 15 min at Gundlapete, where the driver and most of the travellers ate their lunch.

Pretty soon we were on our way again, our destination was only an hour away. The scenery got picterusque in a hurry and everywhere we looked it was either beautiful fields or green mountains under clear blue skies. We requested the conductor to stop when we reached Bandipur and he promptly did it.

3:00 Pm

The first thing we did was head to the office and see if our cottage was available. A few min of walk and a look into the register informed us that our rooms were available and we could have them. The next concern was food… suddenly skipping lunch did not seem like a good idea. We luckily found a mess but only Dosa was available and we ordered one each.

We spent some time taking pictures of us in the beautiful surroundings.

The officials later informed us that they did not allow treking anymore. Our only choice was the Safari. We decided to get acquainted with the surroundings after unloading our stuff in the room. Theju and I got busy taking photos of Deer that were close to our room. I got one of my best snaps of a tree in B&W(below). The walk was refreshing through the woods and we tried following sounds of footprints(we were pretty sure they were deer)

Our walk ended when we reached the pond near our cottage. Sid decided to make “Blair Which Project 2006″ starring Theju… they ran arround with the cam as if theju was being chased by a wild animal… the video was just too hillarious.

We were then infromed that were were not allowed to go into the forest(we were already in it ). At this moment a group of elephants were just arriving for their bath. The Mahouts had mounted a female elephant while her calf was scrambling behind her. I was totally intregued by the animals and decided to get some closeup snaps. The mother was in the mood to be photographed and posed beautifully for me. The calf on the other hand was as curious about me as I was about him and started moving towards me. I guess I kindof wanted space and moved back and it came faster towards me… at this time I thought it was charging me and jumped way out of reach of the little elephant.

The little one seemed much less intrerested in me by this time he ran for the pond and started swimming. It was really beautiful watching the baby elephant play with the other elephants, it was having so much fun.

5:00 Pm

We headed for the evening Safari, we were one of the last groups to get to go to the Safari. Initially we had planned to take a night Safari but that had been stopped since sometime now. To add more to our displeasure we had to take the regular safari with a bus as all the Jeeps were booked. We booked a jeep for the morning and climbed into the Jeep.

We had no luck with Tigers in this trip but we saw a lot of Spotted Deer and other animals. The bus stopped near herds of deer at which time all the people in the bus leaned over to one side to get a glimpse of the animals. The Deer were not very scared and continued its grazing keeping an eye on us.

We returned to our rooms later in the evening feeling a little satisfied with our wildlife interaction. We decided to take a walk later when the sun had set and in almost complete darkness. We were amazed by the count of deer around our room. All we could see were their eyes and there were hundreds of them all around us.

We played a game of cards in the night and that was followed by a game which Sidharth invented called “Robot” (christened by Sid… NOTE: not at my approval ) Will blog about that later .

Sunday 15th Feb 6:00 Am

The morning safari was more like the one we expected. We were up and ready early and really expecting to see something. The Safari did not disappoint… we started like the previous day with a lot of deer but things picked up soon. As we were driving on our path stood a magnificent Single Tusker. The elephant kept heading towards us and our driver took a u turn making our backs face the animal then drove a safe distance from him. He stopped twice to kick sand and throw it over his body, the elephant was amazing and we had to stop at a fork in the road and hope that he took the other route so we could continue with our journey.

After getting past the Tusker we saw a few monkeys and a lot of deer… The rest of the safari was almost uneventful (compared to those 10 min with the Tusker).

Once we were back we packed our bags and headed for GopalSwamy Betta… We had heard so much about the place that we had to drop by. We stopped at a village called Hangala ( 10KM from bandipur and 8 KM from Gundlupet ). We had to hitch a ride to the temple at the top of the mountain from Hangala… After asking around we settled for a Pick Up… The guys climbed onto the back and the girls sat up front and off we went.

The drive up the mountain was simply amazing, the wind blowing thru our hair and the feel of speed on our faces. The ride up the mountain was filled with some of the best scenerys I have seen.

The Temple on GopalSwamy Betta was beautiful… There was a story associated with the place which the priest at the Temple was explaining the tourists. I got to listen only the ending part which said that there were no crows on the mountain (the reason was what I missed ).

We spent sometime taking photos and taking some mid air snaps which I totally loved.

On the way back down we stopped at a pond and took a moment to enjoy the clear beauty surrounding us. We climbed up some rocks and sat down on top to savour the spleandor of the mountain.

The driver seemed to be in a hurry coming back and drove really fast. At one point my cap flew off and I had to run like 300 ft to got retrive it back .

We got a bus to Gundlepet and then took a bus from there to Mysore.

3:00 PM

We reached Mysore hungry and rushed to a nearby restuarant to grab lunch. After lunch we unloaded at the room and after resting for a few mins we walked towards the Mysore Bus Stand.

We had made plans to climb Chamundi Betta. We got down at the foot of the mountain and walked on the road expecting to see a section of the mountain where steps were laid. We walked for almost an hour and we finally came to the steps. Sadly it seemed we had chosen the wrong road and had walked a long distance to get to the steps. The steps led us to the huge Nandi. The beautiful stone bull was halfway up the mountain. By the time we got to the top it was almost 7 in the evening and the sky looked beautiful with stars.

We entered the temple and bared the crowd to get a glimpse of the goddess “Chamundi”. We ate some bhel puri and chaats outside and took the bus back to town.

The dinner was at a very badly lighted restuarant. I finally got to taste some wine and a scumptous dinner before getting back to the room. We played cards till almost 2 in the night and then decided to get some sleep before heading home.

The train was at 6:30 am and we managed to make it and get seats. The trip back was uneventful as the group was seperated coz of the unavailability of seats in a row. We finally reached Bangalore at 10:30, a little late coz the train had to stop at 2 places for a crossing.

This trip was truly special and here is hoping for many more trips…

Some other photos from the trip I loved :

PS: Sorry for the late entry, considering this trip happened about 3 weeks ago. I blame sickness and the size of the entry for the primary reasons. Theju has an entry posted on the same trip (he did it earlier today )

Theju brought over the kitten on friday to give it to Vidya, whose place is only a few min walk from office. On the insistance of yours truly and few other interested people we asked Vidya to bring it over later in the evening. She kidly obliged and here he was.

He looked scared initially and in a few min got used to us and stopped mewing. He was absolutely agile moving from one place to another and before long he had visited all our hands. The little baby was hardly bigger than the plams of our hands put together.

He was quick to fall asleep too. Going to sleep as soon as he found a nice warm place. We took pics of his teeth and paw when he was asleep and they came out really good.

Sleeping

Teeth

Paw

Once he was up again he was busy playing around and trying to grab our fingers. This pic is my favourite…

Sidharth then placed him on my shoulder and the following photoset speaks for itself. Cats have an amazing sense of balance and grip…

Once he was on my table he was walking all over the place. For a few min he tried nibbling on my mouse’s cable and then gave up and tried to find a way down. He walked over the keyboard onto the laptop and finally back to my seat. Boy was he cute…

The time spent with the kitten was amazing and considering this is the first time I have played with a kitten (Im more a dog lover) I cant wait to play with a kitten again .

PS: Photos courtesy Theju

Preethi and Asha were the perpetrators and the crime was giving us hours of fun. The plot involved getting us in the same room (something that is incredibly hard to achieve) and put us head to head in a tournament. The tournament involved skill, determination, hunger(I know u guys are laughing) and pain too.

Asha and Preethi were not a part of the competitors and that left just Pramod, Prasad, Theju, Shruthi, Anant, Vidya, Musavir, Varma and I. The draws were done before the start of each event and the first match was between Theju and Prasad

Players: Theju v/s Prasad
Event: Matching music tapes with their boxes
Result: Prasad wins 1-0

The one minute timeline for these events turned out really little for this specific match. Prasad managed to find one matching set while Theju was left empty handed (Ironically half the tapes belonged to Theju )

The Winner

The Loser

Players: Shruthi v/s Musavir
Event: Marking consecutive numbers on a sheet of paper with jumbled numbers.
Result: Musavir wins 3-2

The game sounded simple yet there was so much complication. Shruthi listened to Pramod’s advice and went on a marking spree marking every single number on the sheet. That would have been great but there was never enough time to mark em all and Shruthi was left high and dry by the final bell. Musavir managed to find 1,2 and 3 and beat Shruthi’s 1 and 2 (not to mention a decent no of 34,87,35,96,56,12 ect.)

Shruthi tries marking everything on the paper

Musavir gets one extra in the game of numbers.

Shruthi giving her piece of mind for Pramod’s humble advice

Players: Anant v/s Pramod
Event: Lighting and Blowing off a candle.
Result: Anant won 47-42

This was the closest match of the day and Had it not been for the short moment where Pramod had to take a new match the score would have been much closer. The fun part was the comments passed by Shruthi who was still angry with Pramod and is always angry with Anant…

Anant and Pramod

Blowing Candles

This left Vidya, Varma and me. The one remaining from us 3 would play a lucky loser. Verma turned out to be the one to play the lucky loser and Vidya and I were set to compete in the next event

Players: Vidya v/s Me
Event: Cake eating Contest.
Result: Yours Truly won 4-3.5

We all expected a Cake eating contest and Intrestingly my least favourite contest was what I had to be a part of. A pair of Delicious Pineapple pastries were laid in front of us and we were instructed to not use our hands. The event started and all I wanted was to finish ahead of Vidya and after eating 2 pieces slowed my pace to just be ahead of her. It worked and I won by half a piece.

Cake Eating Contest.

The gutton with his work

Players: Varma v/s Vidya (Lucky Loser)
Event: Pick up 2 Rs coins from a heap of 1 and 2 Rs coins
Result: Varma wins 9-5

This one was a blindfolded one. They had to dig into a heap of coins and pick up all the 2 Rs coins and create a stack of it. Varma did a smart job and felt the change in feel of the coins and managed a decent stack of 9 coins. Vidya also managed 9 coins but ended up picking two 1 Rs coins.

Search for coins…

Players: Anant v/s Prasad
Event: Carrying Grapes from one bowl to another with a spoon in the mouth
Result: Anant wins 4-3

Anant was really good at picking up the grape and Prasad more consistent delivering it to its place. Anants margin of victory could have been much better save his habit of dropping grapes half way there. He must have droped like 3 or 4 of them.

Playful Anant

The Contest.

Players: Musavir v/s Me
Event: Carrying Cotton balls from one bowl to another with a spoon and blindfolded
Result: I won 12-10

The whole time I was Blind folded I had no idea if I had got a single cotton ball across, so it was quiet a surprise that I found a whole bunch of them in the bowl. Video evidence later showed I had picked up a bunch of them very early and dropped it on route to the destination. Musavir was consistently delivering 2 or 3 but I had one luckly break with like 7 or them that sealed the victory.

Me Blindfolded…

Musavir Blindfolded…

Players: Varma v/s Musavir(Lucky Loser)
Event: [Semi Final] Carry Peas using only a straw
Result: I won 8-3

Varma was on the run immediately from the start and managed to leave Musavir high and dry. The margin of victory in the end was pretty large.

Players: Anant v/s Me
Event: [Semi Final] Pick Chillies from a bowl using only a straw
Result: Anant won 4-3

The event started and Anant picked up the lead immediately, after being prompted by Varma I switched to holding the straw almost at the end giving me grip. The end result was close and Anant had won picking one more chilly

Anant was quick and precise

Me and Chillies dont match

Players: Anant v/s Varma
Event: [FINAL]Roll an apple using only your mouth over a book and back.
Result: Anant won 7-1

Anant dominated this one with Varma struggling from the start. Varma managed to get the apple across but dropped it very often causing the point not to be counted. Anant was more consistent and picked up the prize.

Victorious Anant

Anant’s Prize “The Pen is mightier than the Keyboard”

We then moved on to Group games. This particular one involved stacking up a set of baloons within the alloted time. The teams were Pramod, Anant, Musavir and Asha(Team 1) Theju, Prasad and Vidya (Team 2) and Preethi, Shruthi, Varma and me(Team 3). The time limit was 20 min.

Team 2 won the event with a pretty large stack, Team 3 came in second with a stack just a couple of inches short and Team 1… well they participated

The Winning Stack

Varma with the Runners up stack

Team 2 with their prize.

The next was a round of a game simply called “QUESTIONS”. Its pretty simple, a group of people form a circle and ask a question to their neighbour in a clockwise fashion. The person being asked the question must not answer or hesitate (s)he must ask their neighbour another question pretty simultaneously. The questions must not repeat and they must not be derived from other questions. The last person who is not eliminated is the winner.

Some cool eliminations from the event:

Pramod to Varma “Do you like applibase?” (Varma replied ‘yes’)
Pramod to Preethi “Do you have any boyfriends?” (Preethi did not reply and hesitated before asking the question)
Pramod to Theju “Does KDE rule?” (Theju lost concentration)
Me to Pramod “Is Anant good at Warcraft?” (Pramod replied “NO”)

Some good ones but did not cause elimination

Anant to Me “Do you think I will get killed this year?” (I did not get eliminated but he was clearly poining towards Shruthi)
Shruthi to Anant “Do you dig your nose?”

It was finally Anant and Me remaining and I asked “Where is Europe in the map?” and he did not reply and I won (finally )

There was no prize for that event but then we did the random prize thing. Each of us paid 2 bucks and got a random gift each. Guess we all won something .

Finally, the event was really fun and I want to thank Preethi and Asha for making it so much fun… Thank you girls , here is to a beautiful year at Applibase

And finally the Pic of the Day:

This moment made my year