Kiran Jonnalagadda’s Blog

Marriage reception. Hundreds of people, just sitting there, staring at the couple under the lights, who’re beaming at everyone who comes up to them, for a good two hours or more. I’ve never figured out the logic behind this format. It’s the dullest thing ever, especially for the visitor who’s companionless and doesn’t know anyone but the couple. No wonder most just head straight for the food counter and out thereafter.

Why can’t marriage receptions be fun?

Boo. Try Baby is Driving instead.

And now, with front and rear disk brakes, made in India. The Hero Octane.

Home delivery with a twist. The cow’s brought to your house and milked on the spot, so you’re guaranteed purity.

What happens if the cow drank a lot of water before setting out?

So happy that a rash of smiles erupted all over.

According to the honourable man, because Bangalore’s real estate market is booming and your new land may have been agricultural earlier, you should be careful of the smell and soil colour. If it’s green or fire coloured or smells foul, don’t build. If it’s black, yellow, white, red, grey, has plants, or smells like ghee, curd or flowers, that’s great! Go ahead and build!

Where do they get these people from?

Does Microsoft distribute spyware as part of Windows? If this report in yesterday’s Times is to be believed, yes. For how else will Windows recognise that it is a pirated copy next week onwards, unless Microsoft has been spying on us all along?

The Tonlé Sap occupies a great depression formed when the Indian subcontinent collided with Asia. For most of the year it is a shallow river, barely a metre deep, but come monsoon and the lake is now five times in area and the river flowing in reverse, bringing in water from the Mekong downstream. Flooded fields become excellent fisheries, supporting over three million people. When the monsoon abates and water flows out, a rich agricultural sediment is left behind. Entire villages are built on stilts in these fields around the lake’s periphery.

I spent two glorious days exploring the ruins of Angkor in December 2005. When done with the temples the second day, I set out to explore the floating village bordering Siem Reap on the Tonlé Sap. My boatman did not speak any English, but his twelve-year old son Chit did. Chit attended floating school, 3rd standard, 7:30 AM to 3:30 PM and served as tour guide after. He proudly pointed at his school as we went past it.

When I left Cambodia the next morning, I promised my hosts I would visit again. Two days is way too short for such a beautiful country.

Cleaning up is someone else’s problem? It’s ok to have trash at your gate as long as it’s clean inside?

In December 2005, I spent two weeks wandering around the streets of Bangkok. I was being decidedly unadventurous, restricting myself to visiting street markets, shopping malls, foreign embassies and some historical sights, all in the name of experiencing local culture.

Then Klaikong decided to give me a taste of local hospitality too, and suggested attending a concert. I expected the Bangkok equivalent of Bangalore’s Palace Grounds, a large open field with temporary stage and sound arrangements. Instead we landed at this place called Saxophone Pub at Victory Monument, where popular reggae band T-Bone was playing that evening.

Not only were they very good, I was also impressed by the ambience at the pub. The typical live music-in-restaurant arrangement I’ve seen anywhere in India keeps a clear separation between performers and patrons. At Saxophone, as you can see in this picture, this is not the case. We were seated on the upper floor from where we had a great view of the scene.

Remove rear mudguard, get splattered by your own wheel. His bag that day must have been a sight.

I nearly didn’t crash into him.

Last week deepsan offered me his cycle. We were going to exchange it Sunday, but that morning it got stolen!

He had taken it out of storage, given it a wash and a scrub, and taken it for a ride to Lalbagh. When he was in there, someone picked his lock and made off with it.

We met later that day at deponti’s place, where she showed off her husband’s chainless bicycle and offered that I could borrow it once in a while. Given the rain this week and a spate of late work schedules, I haven’t been able to take that up.

Calico from Kekus Digital brings the convenience of AutoStitch to OSX. I shot this six image sequence hand-held, without regard for focus, exposure or lighting, and yet it managed to stitch them into an acceptable composite 100% automatically.

Whee!

Unfortunately, it chokes on vertical panoramas, unlike AutoStitch.

Last evening sriniram and I went to attend a talk. We found it rather technical and dry. It wasn’t what we had expected. It was our shortcoming, of course, for a number of others were clearly gaining from it, even engaging the speaker during the question and answer session.

But I couldn’t help but notice: everything the speaker said could be obtained from Wikipedia, where I can control the pace to ensure clarity. In a seminar I have to put up with uncomfortable seating in an unfamiliar place, a difficult accent, and a pace that doesn’t accommodate the gaps in my understanding.

So is it plausible that with improving access to knowledge, we’re seeing falling demand for speakers who solely describe the facts, versus speakers who augment with anecdotes and opinion, things that you still can’t pick up easily off a search query?

Just a little spell, and Bangalore’s roads are flooded. I’m glad I could hitch a ride home today.

At the Bannerghatta post office, mailing postcards. The glue they provide for stamps is messy, and the only applicating tool available is a piece of paper. I’ve got glue all over my fingers now, and managed to get enough on one card to warp the paper beneath the stamp.

It happens in India too? Address is http://www.dhrealtyindia.com/

Rock on, dude!

Priests relax after a long ceremony at the Sree Math in Hariharapura.

The math (alt. spelling “mutt”) is ancient, dating back to the 15^th century. The place at that time was called Kapalam and later renamed Hariharapura, after Harihara, one of the legendary founding brothers of the Vijayanagar empire.

Hariharapura is about 20km along NH13 from Sringeri, site of a far more prominent math. Both maths are located along the river Tunga. The Tunga eventually merges with the Bhadra to become Tungabhadra, which in turn flows into the Krishna, eventually reaching the Bay of Bengal.

deponti‘s husband has a cycle with no chain. It uses a drive shaft instead. I’ve never seen anything like this before. Wonder if they make one of these with gears.

For at least the first half of this decade, Mahiti operated as a low-margin technology services provider to non-profits, primarily in the form of building web sites.

Because of the unusual nature of this operation in a soaring economy, Mahiti had to keep costs low — including employees’ pay, use open source everywhere, and focus on pioneering use of rapid development technologies.

An entire generation of computer programmers found their footing in the industry at Mahiti. Most moved on to better paying jobs. I trained one batch in 2001 and subsequently worked with some of them at other companies. Mahiti’s “graduates” are now to be found at pretty much every Zope and Plone company in India. Mahiti continues to rock on, now even organising events worldwide, and still seeing rapid turnover in their staff.

Someone rides a cycle to work. I see it every day and am sorely tempted to do it too, but 20km is just way too much. 20km even on a bike leaves me too exhausted to do anything else. And then there’s another 20km back home.

No one’s thrown a bike at me yet. hapuchu has a nice one that I’ve been trying to convince him to loan me, and he’s been trying to convince me to buy outright, and we’ve sort of hit a stalemate there.

Now Kiruba and friends announce their having biked all the way from Bangalore to Chennai. Fuck! I feel more like a bum now.

I had an accident today. Sort of. There’s this intersection on the Outer Ring Road somewhere before Banashankari, near mrinal’s house (I don’t know what the area is called). This lane crosses it at a weird angle (see illustration), there’s no traffic light, vehicles cross it all the time, and no one uses their indicator because technically they’re going straight. So you’re on the road and you’re overtaking a slowpoke from the right side, which the traffic police take great pains to remind you is the right thing to do, and all should be fine, right? But no! The fellow is not riding down the ring road! He came out of the lane, is crossing the road, didn’t bother to indicate or look out for you, and now you’re headed for a collision course! You thought he was drifting right to overtake the vehicle in front of him, but he continues drifting right in a pattern that fails to register on one accustomed to Indian road sense.

And so I was riding uphill on the road today when this fellow just froze ten feet ahead of me, waiting for traffic to clear so he could cross the remaining half of the road. Not expecting this, I honked, hard, to express my disapproval, and braked, hard, because there was no way to avoid him this close. A car behind me did likewise. The road’s topography being what it is—steep slope uphill going forward or right—my bike lost balance and toppled. It wasn’t bad: there was no damage, I was still standing, and had stopped some two or three feet ahead of this guy, who merely gave me a contemptuous glance and rode away.

But it was fucking annoying. At this very intersection, four years ago, an autorickshaw cut across my path and threw me off balance. These are the only two times I’ve ever had anything resembling an accident on a bike (save the very first day when I was 15, when I had my senses thoroughly hammered into me; but that’s another story). I’ve never had as much as a scratch otherwise.

To have my stellar record tarnished by a quirky intersection is… upsetting.

It turns out Barcamp Bangalore was stupid and a disaster. I wish we knew when we were having so much fun out there. It is morally wrong to benefit from someone or something stupid.