Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Germany and Paris

A long standing desire of mine came true on first week of Feb. I always wanted to Paris and see the Eiffel tower one of the wonders. At last came the opportunity my way. I had to go to Germany for official meetings for a week. The news to Germany came at a very short notice. Had only 4 working days to get everything in place and fly on the fifth day. After a lot of trips to my travel guys was able to get things in place, but for the ticket. Travel guys mixed up my ticket with another kumar. Till I reached the airport dint have my ticket. But then the travel guy was helpful to get the ticket to the airport at 12 in the night and handed over it to me. Now at last I had everything to go to Germany.
Had an ok flight to Germany. Most of the flight tried to sleep only to be wakened by the fat guys who was sitting beside me and snoring away to glory. Landed in Germany and for the first time in life saw snow. It was very nice feeling to see pictures hills covered by snow. Later reached the hotel and got freshened up.
The week passed by with nothing much. Had to attend some requirements meeting and meet a lot of people. I was supposed to leave Germany on Sunday. But tried and pushed my travel by a day so that I get at least one weekend there.
Friday came and I dint have any plans for the weekend. Four of us decide to go to Paris. Later in the day got a link to one of the travel agent. Called them up and for my luck got a booking for that night to Paris.
Hurray I was going to Paris.
I was exited to go to Paris. We boarded the bus in the midnight and reached there early in the morning. The bus ride was good, slept through the journey. To our surprise there was no immigration check and they dint check the passport :). 6 in the morning we were in Paris. The tour guy took us around the city for an early morning sight seeing in the bus. Later around 11 he put us in the hotel. After getting freshened up we had food in a Bangladeshi hotel and left from there to discover the city on our own. The travel around the city was by metro and boy O boy I was very much impressed by the efficiency of the metros. We dint have to wait for more than 5 min in any place to catch a train. And all the places were well connected by metro. If you know the places and stations were you want to go, it a cake walk. But for us, as I had not done my homework it was a bit difficult to get around the place. First day we had a little difficulties, once we took an opposite direction train and had to come back in the same train where we started.
On first day we visited
Arc de Triomphe
French Revolution monument
The opera house
Louver museum from outside
The garden outside Louver
Last but not the lease "Eiffel tower with lights"
By the time we saw these places and standing in the queue for almost an hour to go to the top of Eiffel tower it was very late in the night. Came back to the hotel only to find out that all the hotels were we stayed was closed as it was around 11 in the night. At last we found a pizza/burger place and eat something which was very bad.
The next morning 2 of the guys who had come with us dint feel like going around. But I had all the energy and enthu to go and see some more places. So me and another guys left early in the morning and went to Louver. It was a good experience, saw original painting of " Mona lisa ". Later we went to Notre Dame. This place was really worth going. All through the trip clicked snaps like crazy. To view the snaps and the master pieces taken by me click on the link in the links section :). It was 12 in the noon and was time to go back to hotel. We found some place were we had some food as we had skipped breakfast to go to Louver. Then boarded the but to head back to Germany. Next day I caught a flight back to Bangalore :).

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Photos

Monday, January 08, 2007

Photographic interests me these days

Among my interests and hobby I am finding photography very interesting. Its bringing out my creative myself out. I am happy with my Canon A95 digital camera but always think of owning a Canon EOS 400D. I will one day definitely one it one day sooner or later. Some of my armature work can be seen on flickr/prakool.

Have been reading on photography from digital-photography-school. The blog is regularly updated in tips and tricks which we can use in our day to day photography.

The most interesting thing in photography that I like is to capture the minute details of a small object, as I don’t have a very good macro lens on my camera have to be satisfied with what it offers.

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Duet

After almost a year at SAP, the product that I was working in secrecy is now out and open. The project was code named Mendocino, now it is officially named as "DUET". While working on this project it provided an opportunity to let me learn a lot of new things like designing, drawing UML diagrams etc. Now I can say I know a little bit on XML and XSLT, worked on these quite a lot.

It feels good that some thing you are working on is launched in the market with such a bang. Go through www.duet.com to know more about Duet between SAP and Microsoft

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Yet another day

Today I got the confirmation letter here at SAP. This time it was not like the first time when i got confirmed, it was just another letter that i need to file in my career file. Almost 3.5 years in the industry now and already feel like been here for a very very very long time. Now I feel like I need some thing more than a software job. I am not sure what I am intrested at this point in time, hope i will be able to find the answer sooner or later.
Current mood: confused and lazy ;)

Friday, December 03, 2004

Trip to Cambridge

Last week end on 28th Nov 2004 we had been to Cambridge. The trip was good everyone enjoyed it. The trip started like this.
On Friday night we decided that we will go for a one day Cambridge trip. Our pandya (sudheer) booked the tickets on Friday evening. We decided that everyone will meet up at the tube station at 6.30 sharp. Me and harsha from Cleveland hotel, pandya, sir (uday) and mama (subash) from their house. Saturday was my last day in the hotel so I had to pack up everything and move out of the room in the morning itself, although I had shifted my big suitcase previous night itself, I still had some stuff left to pack and move it. Woke up at 5.30 and started getting ready. As I was packing harsha came at 6.20 sharp, I still was packing it took another 10 min. once packing was done I put everything in harsha’s room and we left for tube station. We reached there at 6.45 15 min late J. Others had come there at 6.30 itself. It almost takes 1 - 1.15 hours to reach the bus station form our place and our bus was at 8.30. We got a train at 7 and everyone were blaming us as in me and harsha for coming late. But then I was optimistic and was telling everybody that we will reach the bus station in time. As I said we reached the bustation on time and our buses was waiting for us. We boarded the bus. Since I dint have any sleep the previous night, got into the bus and slept, the next I woke up was when we were close to Cambridge town.
We reached Cambridge at 10.25. I thought the bus would be stopping at a proper bus station, but it stopped at a rather small gully kind of place. Everyone started getting down, I thought this might some intermediate stop and told everybody that the bus might go invent further. In a few min the bus was almost empty, so I though that might be the bus stand and we got down. Turns out that is the bus station, I got to know only while returning back. All of us got down and the weather was very cold there but sunny. We started walking towards a busy street, this street lead us to a market place. We saw a map on the wall, and we found a information centre close by and all of us went there. We spent around 30 min at the information centre to enquire what all place we can watch. They gave us a map and a list of place that are worth watching.
From there the first place we went was to The Great St Mary’s church. It was a very old church and it had a tower from where we could see the whole of Cambridge. To climb that tower we had to pay some entrance fee and we all climbed the tower. The view from the tower was breath taking. Most of the named colleges of the university could be seen from here. We took a lot of snaps and sir took video from his camcorder. Sir was very much interested in seeing the king’s college, and the lady at the information centre had told that King’s college would be closed at 2.00 pm. It was 12 by the time we came down the tower, when we came down the tower in the church there was this English classical sing going on, we watched it for 5 10 min and headed to king’s college. King’s college is a very beautiful college, it has a huge chapel and the college has great buildings. From there we went few more colleges like Clare college, Trinity college and St’ John’s college. Trinity College is the most wealthiest college in Cambridge and its awesome, after see this college I felt like I should have studied at least a small one semester course here. St’ john’s college is just next to Trinity College and they both are arch rivals. St’ John’s also has some marvellous buildings, we heard some of the seans from Harry Potter were shot here.
By the time we had seen the colleges everyone was hungry and we went in search of Pizza hut. We started walking and asked a boat guy, he said we were completely in the opposite direction of the place, so we took a right about turn and went to pizza hut which was .5 km far. There was a huge queue for pizza hut and the queue had come out of the place on to the footpath. We waited in the queue for about 45 min and entered the place. Man I have to tell u guys some thing the girls in Cambridge are too good. We had our lunch and by the time we came out it was 3.15, and it had already started to get dark. We went to the boat guy again he had given as some discount on the boat ride. So we took the boat tour, it was a good experience. The boats are called as punting and the punter gave us some history lesson of the place and took around different college and gave there history behind it. Punting took almost an hour, by the time we got down it was pretty much dark and the weather was chilling. So we went in to a French coffee shop and had some coffee, it was too good after leaving India this was the first time I had a decent cup of coffee.
From there we head back to the so called bus station which was at 7 pm. So we went the around 6.30 and waited of the bus. While waiting at the bus stand the was a cute figure in front of us, we were hoping she would come and sit beside us, but unfortunately she dint have a reserved ticket. She had to wait outside until all the reserved ticket ppl boarded the bus. After that since there was still seat remaining the driver gave her one ticket. She came and sat behind us. Once the bus started we all slept and the next thing we know we were in London.
All in all the trip was good. The best part of the trip was we saw a lot of good looking girls, and good looking buildings. If u have read till here then I will be uploading the snaps in couples of days.

Tuesday, July 13, 2004

Life

This is an song on life, really good. Go on reading it and give ur comments on it.

enjoy the power and beauty of ur youth, but never mind u will
not understand the power and beauty of ur youth
untill they faded,
but trust me in 20 years look back at photos of ur self recalln away u can grasp now
how much possiblity lay before u, and how faboulus u relly looked
u r not as fat as u imagin

dont worry abt the future, or worry but know that worring is effective as trying to
slove an algebra equ by chewing bubble gum
real troubles in ur life r apt to be things,
that never crossed ur void mind kind that blindsise u at 4 pm on some ideal tuesday
do one thing everyday that scares u, Sing

dont be rekless with other ppl's heart, dont put up with ppl who r rekless with ur's, flawless
dont waste ur time on jelously, sometimes ur ahead sometimes ur behind the rase is long
and in the end, u only go through ur self

remember compliments u recieved, forget the insults
if u succede in doing this tell me how
keep ur old love letters, throw away ur old bank statements, strech

dont feel guilty if u dont know what u want to do with ur life
the most interesting ppl i know dint know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives
some of the most interesting 40 year old i know still dont

get plenty of clacium, be kind to ur knees, u will miss them when they r gone
may be u will marry, may be wont,
may be u will have children, may be wont,
may be u will divorce at 40, may be will dance the funky chicken
on ur 75th wedding anniversy
whatever u do dont congrulate urself to much or brate urself either
ur choices r half chance so r everybody else's

enjoy ur body, use it every way u can
dont be afraid of it or other ppl think of it
its the greatest instrument u will ever own
dance
even if u have no were to do it, better in ur own living room
read the directions even if u dont follow them
do not read beauty magzines they will only make u feel ugly

get to know ur parents, u never know when they will be gone for good
be nice to ur sibblings, they r the best link to ur past
and ppl most likely to stick with u in the future

understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few u should hold on
we r carved to the gaps and geography and life style
cause the older u get the more u need the ppl u knew when u were young

live in new york city once but leave before it makes u hard
live in nothern california once but leave before it makes u soft
travell except in certain aliable routes
priceses will rise, politisians will falianter
u too will get old and when u do u will fantasise that when u were young
priceses were reasonable politisians were noble
and children respected their elders, respect ur elders
dont expect anyone else to support u
may be u have trust spot, may be u have wealthy spouse
but u never know when either one might run out

dont mess too much with ur hair, or by the time ur forty it will look like eighty five
be carefull whose advice u buy but be pacient with those who supply it
advice is a form of nostelgia despensing it is way of wishing the past form the disposal
wiping it of painting over the ugly parts and recyling it for more than its worth