The Year I would like to forget but can't

31st December, Last day of 2008. It really had been a roller coaster ride for me. Taking a cue from Pratik's blog I thought I will also summarize the year gone by. For me this was a really bad year but let's see..

For the good It was ...
A year which started on an ecstatic note having just bought my own apartment.
A year when I found that I do have real friends who will stand by me no matter what.
A year I enjoyed my hobby of photography clicking memorable pictures filling up my HD with images.
A year I grew up a bit & saw my priorities in life changing drastically (for the good).
A year when I was named TAKI, BEWADA etc which I am proud to be :)
A year when I came closer to my Family.
A year when I could no longer miss any moment of being with my dear ones.
A year when the worst stock market crash didn't affect me at all.
A year when my cousin & many of my very good friends got married.
A year CFoV came to life.
A year when my nephew Aryan was born.
A year when my Manish Bhaiya settled here with family.
A year when many new fine dining restaurants opened in Pune & I tried most of them.
A year when I matured in blogging & got my own domain for it.

For the bad it was ...
A year which took away from me the person I loved the most. The only person whom I loved more than myself, my mother. With her my dreams, my purpose went away and went away some part of me which changed & transformed me & my life in countless ways.
A year when I cried the most.
A year which shattered my family.
A year when I lost my faith in God.
A year when I injured my wrist in an accident and suffered from back to back health problems for about two months.
A year when I lost my beloved camera.
A year, home loan interest rates ran northwards right after I took a huge home loan.
A year when I could no longer take things lightly or be a kid and had to start acting responsibly.
A year when my learning curve went to an all time low.
A year when I didn't travel/drive to any new place.
A year of shattered expectations from my nearest ones.
A year when my Father suffered from stress and faced new problems through out the year.
A year wasted for my brother.
A year of financial crisis at Global, National & personal level.

So, personally, a year I would like to forget but can't and I am glad this year ends today.

Hoping & wishing a better & happy new year for me, you and everyone :)
Cheers!!

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Strawberry Sundae!!!

Strawberry Sundae small (1 scoop of Strawberry & vanilla ice cream with
fresh Strawberries & whipped cream) we had @ newly opened
Amul Ice cream parlor in Lane no 7, Koregaon Park.

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Offoh Calcutta!!

I am writing a blog after a long break (due to my hand injury), and it feels good. But sadly I will be sharing one of my worst restaurant experiences ever. I visited Oh!! Calcutta last Friday for dinner and we were first to arrive at the place. We ordered a variety of non-veg items, thanks to Kundu, who could understand the Bengali menu.. It's not very friendly to a non-bangla fellow like me :) But nevertheless food was really good. I actually enjoyed the food, drink & my time there, even though the service was a bit slow. Which was okay with us as it was Friday night & we were not in a hurry.
But trouble started after we finished and asked the captain to get the bill @ 10pm. After next 20 minutes when there was no trace of the bill & the captain (who attended us during dinner). We asked another captain to get us the bill as it was boring waiting after your food & drinks are over. Another 15 minutes pass and yet no word from them. We get up & approach one of their responsible looking staff near their billing counter and asked what was the problem why we are not getting the bill. He told us there is some problem with the computer. I couldn't understand why didn't they give us a manual bill. Worst part was that we were neither being informed about the reason for delay and nor being attended. No one even bothered apologizing to us for the delay. I sarcastically asked them to give us some game to play so that we can kill our time waiting for the bill. But they were too shameless to notice. Finally bill case after a wait of 50 minutes (interestingly other people were leaving in the meanwhile who came after us). We made card payment and there they go again. It took them 20 more minutes to get the card swiped. I then noticed that they had put a service charge of 10% in the bill itself. That was pretty ugly, paying 10% of the amount for the service which had all of us frustrated. I asked them to return the feed back from I had filled earlier, I wanted to change it and mention this lapse, but they didn't get it to us even after repeating the request. I then called the manager and told him about the service. He just politely said sorry about that and said they had some problem with computer.

I personally felt that they had an obligation to at least wave off the service tax on such a bad service, and they should have served us some drink while they made us wait. They didn't even serve water.
Highly unprofessional behavior & hugely disappointing service from a upscale restaurant where you are paying about Rs. 1000 per person ... to spoil your mood & evening ???

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Accident

I met with an accident yesterday night. I was driving back home after enjoying late night show of Quantum of Solace. Suddenly an errant biker came in front of me from wrong side of a circle. Reaction time was small, i jammed on breaks, saved him but skidded myself. Got a hairline fracture in my left wrist, thankfully my pillion was unhurt. So, I will not be blogging for a while now. It's really irritating typing with one hand.

UPDATE: Orthopedic I met for treatment said its just a bad contusion & there are no fractures. And that I will be fine in about than two weeks. Such a relief, though It pains bad & it's two weeks before I can use my left hand again, but it's still better. That x-ray diagnosis by the junior doctor had scared me.

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Start-Up Cinema at Entrip

Anthony Hsiao, director of Entrip & a member of Pune Open Coffee Club (POCC) had suggested a new way of interaction for members of POCC; a Start-up Cinema. Idea was to have a casual get together for a movie, hosted by any of the member and as a kick off to the idea Anthony & Nick(co-founders of Entrip) hosted the first cinema on the roof top of their office on SB Road and "Pirates of the Silicon Valley" was the movie chosen. Provided it was the first meeting it worked out pretty well. As the meeting time was 9pm; by the time people turned up and every thing could be setup to start the movie, it was already late and by the time movie ended it was quite late for a Thursday night. So, not much time we could spend on getting to know each other and all. But still it was a very good experience. Movie was great & we came to know that Nick is a good photographer as well and he clicked some of the photographs when we were all set to start. We should be seeing them shortly after it's uploaded on the group. Most of the people were from Entrip but there were people from some other companies as well (including me of course). I felt that time was a bit of a constraint; had it been a little early, it would have turned out to be an excellent event; as we would have got to know more people.

So, overall it was great fun & things were pretty good for the first meet. All thanks to Entrip, especially Anthony & Nick, for initiating & hosting such a great event. I am sure we will be seeing more Start-up Cinemas going forward. Cheers!!

UPDATE: Our host Anthony has shared the images of the event here.

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CNN interviews people using 3-D Holograms

I tuned into CNN in the morning to check the status of US presidential election. As expected Obama was leading the race by a good margin. But there was also something unexpected; I noticed that some of the people they were interviewing in their studio looked a bit eerie. They had a light beam beam surrounding them and sometimes their quick movement looked fuzzy, as in a video streaming over internet.
I got interested and started paying attention, then they said it was a holographic interview they were conducting. I was surprised, it all looked so perfect, the quality & detailing were so good. It took me quite some time to notice it wasn't actually a real person they are talking to. Especially because it was a full 3-D view. They changed the camera angle from side to the back and you couldn't make out anything out of the ordinary. It was so real and I was impressed. Have a look at this video to see for yourself.

It's like watching a scene from a sci-fi movie like Star Wars. I got curious to know how it's done & what all has been happening in holographic technology and found out that this was actually the first time 3-D holographic technology was being used & CNN launched it only for the big election night.

The details on the technology are not yet available other than what US today reports,

"CNN will have 44 cameras and 20 computers in each remote location to capture 360-degree imaging data of the person being interviewed. Images are processed and projected by computers and cameras in New York. There'll also be plasma TVs in Chicago and Phoenix that will let the people being interviewed see Blitzer and other CNN correspondents. Bohrman says the network can project two different views from each city so Blitzer can appear to be in the studio with two holograms."

The win of Obama after a tech savvy campaign, a flying car being made by Ferrari & 3-D hologram technology to interview people live. What an year of new trends & technology it has been so far.

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Hamilton Shines in F1 History

Lewis Hamilton created history by becoming the youngest world champion in Formula One history. Though it looked that he will repeat history by missing on his yet-another-chance to do it, but he kept his nerve and raced to glory, securing the world title just by a single point. It was a nail-biting finish when Hamilton exploited the wet condition with wet tyres to overtake Timo Glock from Toyota at the final corner of the race, to get his minimum required 5th position finish & rightly deserved championship title. Felipe Massa, only rival to Lewis, performed his best and got the win at home ground but still lost the title to Lewis. It must have been a huge disappointment to him as till the last moment he had the championship within his eye-sight. But definitely his commendable performance this season gave Ferrari the constructor's title for the record 16th time. A perfect showdown to conclude the action packed season. Now just waiting & wishing for a better next season.

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