Mid-Feb update

Like I told someone the other day, I am regularly irregular. I post once a month. On trivial things. Like websites and marriages.

February has been quite eventful so far. Good events and bad events.

Bad first. Of course. Increased pressure at work. The “recession” or “econamageddon” as someone called it on NPR’s Planet Money podcast isn’t exactly easy on capital equipment sales. And there are other issues too.

Then Voteyatra had to be put in the cold storage. This is all that’s left of it now.

Voteyatra in hibernation

So we’ll have to wait for another day, for it to rise like the phoenix. (pardon the exaggeration). That’s been the most startup-y thing I’ve ever done in my life.

Now for the good. Late January was a visit to Pondicherry (on work). There wasn’t any time for sight seeing, the way the whole thing was planned, but we sneaked in a detour at Mahabalipuram to take in the Shore Temple.

Shore temple at Mahabalipuram

Three weeks later, I was back in the south, this time to Chennai to attend a good friend’s wedding. More on that here.

The week following that was Startup Saturday Delhi #2 which was not as great a success as the first one, but quite decent enough. The networking session seemed quite a busy one. Surely a few things to be learnt from that experience. Ritesh has a more detailed post here.

Last weekend was wordcamp. With Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress and Om Malik, of GigaOM as honoured guests. Quite a lot of interesting (and boring) topics. Met a number of friends there, put some faces to twitter ids, and got acquainted with some new people. Wordcamp was trending on twitter, with the tag #wci. Of course there were a lot of non-specific tweets with that tag, but it gave a good account of the whole event along with all the happenings on the sidelines. A few people have blogged (and live blogged the event) and a google search for WordCamp India will throw them up. For me it was just an inspiration to start blogging again.

Next week is BarCamp Delhi at MDI Gurgaon. So its a trip back to the alma mater. Hope to meet old friends there. Not the twittering type.

Been quite a long post by my standards, and its been a good day.

A new discovery.

If you have been in a Mumbai local train you may have noticed those ubiquitious posters advertising the miraculous services of those great saints also known as Baba Bangalis.

And I thought that up here in the north we never needed them. But like cockroaches, they are everywhere. Only a different name.

Genus: Baba
Species: Sufi Shah.

advertising

He even specialises in some arcane art.
Nice business model. Anyone for setting up a metaphysical treatment chain?

It rained or what reminds me of home

April showers bring Mayflowers
March showers bring me joy
The grey sky above the campus towers
I feel again like a little boy.

The rains remind me so much of home and of Goa. So I went around with a cam (thanks Jai) and took some pics.

Feel free to comment on the pics and the unseasonal rains.

Raindrops keep falling on my head (and everywhere else).

The washed roads glistened.

The sky was grey and calm and the trees swayed in the breeze.

This rose giggled.

The flowers were happy

This one was shy.

The Little Boy and the Magic Flute

I love woodwinds. And I love flute music. So here was one of the greatest flute players, how could I miss it.
Thanks to SPIC MACAY and P.G. for getting him here and to Jai for the cam. As it is I never thank him enough :D. Reminds me I gotta buy a cam.
Here is a pic of the performance.

Flutemaster

The volunteers and some freddies*

So that was a good time had by all. Just waiting for the next one.*For Freddies, please refer to Miles Davis