Beatles on my mind

Been listening to The Beatles yesterday. I've got a huge collection of their songs, and I'm a big fan of their music. Though I'm not from the Flower Power mood of the sixtees/seventies, but I really dig this music. Its groovy, baby. Serious music lovers may not really appreciate their music. You may think its outdated, but I think their stuff is timeless. While they may have sung a lot of inane numbers, some of their songs are sheer poetry, and some are real gems.

The ones that I love are "There's a place", "A taste of honey", "Please please me", and sooo many more.

For poetry, you just cant beat "Across the Universe". Check this out:

Words are flying out like
endless rain into a paper cup
They slither while they pass
They slip away across the universe
Pools of sorrow waves of joy
Are drifting thorough my open mind
Possessing and caressing me

Get the complete lyrics here.

And a real gem is "Imagine". Its a slow song, almost like the blues, and an imaginative (?) song. :)) Check this out:

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Get the complete lyrics here.

Happy listening!

Moving House

As if my IIMB classes were not enough to do over the weekend, I shifted houses yesterday. I mean, not that I decided to shift all of a sudden. Had been thinking about it for more than a month. Then finally decided to make the move. Made my current house owner very sad. I've moved into a lovely apartment. I've a big bedroom to myself now. Ah. The pleasures that money can bring :) M happy. Its got a balcony, with a sweet breezy in the evenings.

Moving house is a pain, pack all the stuff then unpack. Settle in, put all the touches on the house that makes it personal, and a home. I packed up on Staurday night, then moved on Sunday. Finished moving in the afternoon,then spent the rest of the day arranging the stuff. Its back breaking work, but I'm so happy with the results. AH.

Flora and Fauna at Pompei Valley

These photos were taken by me on 4th June, 2004 on a Plantation called "Pompei Valley" in Coorg. I use an Olympus Digital camera, one of the best mid range cameras Olympus makes.



After a long struggle, I cornered these two ducks at the edge of the pond and got close enough to photograph them. This series of photos shows them getting into the water.




A grasshopper cleverly hidden between the tall grass.




A Dragon fly coloured like a tiger at the pond side, alighted on a stalk of grass. I had to wait a long long time before I got this one. This is an absolute beauty.




An orange dragon fly, praying on a broken stem of a small plant.




A Hibiscus flower in full bloom taken in Macro mode. I love the colour on this one.

How to get a photo put on a Blog

To start with, lemme say that its tough to get a photo put in my blog. I got a bee in my bonnet many days ago about Hello. Its been much talked about here. But it doesnt work from behind a corporate firewall. Sigh. ANd Blogger doesnt host photos on its free service.

So what do I do next? I started hunting Google for free photo hosting website. Found them by the spades, but most of them were very shady. Finally settled on WeBlogImages. You can upload photos there, and hotlink from your blog on Blogger to it. That's cool.

So, I did that. But finally I've hit this link on Blogger help. It talks about Photoblogs, just what I need. Why could I have found this help article earlier. Now lemme go throught the photo hosting sites it talks about. Sigh. Life sucks.

Hmm... a novel personality test

Here's an interesting personality test I took. I found it on riverblood's page here. It seems to be fairly accurate; I gave it a 4 rating, on scale of 0 to 5 for accuracy. Hmmm, am I like this? Duh.

Its a Cattell-16-factor test. You can take the test here. Its free! Other tests are at Similarminds.

Cattell's 16 Factor Test Results Warmth |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 82% Intellect |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 82% Emotional Stability ||||||||||||||||||||| 62% Aggressiveness |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 86% Liveliness |||||||||||||||||| 54% Dutifulness |||||||||||||||||||||||| 78% Social Assertiveness |||||||||||||||||| 58% Sensitivity |||||||||||||||||| 58% Paranoia ||||||||| 30% Abstractness ||||||||||||||||||||| 70% Introversion ||||||||||||||||||||| 62% Anxiety |||||||||||| 38% Openmindedness |||||||||||||||||| 54% Independence |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 82% Perfectionism |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 82% Tension ||||||||| 30%

Orkut problems

Sigh. Why does Orkut have so many problems. Is it because it is a beta site? Must be, cant be any other reason. Its a amazing networking site. Simply the best. But I wish it wouldn't fuck up ever so often. And its been agonizingly SLOW, the lowest that a server can fall ;o).

Cant seem to get any work done on it. A separate thought, does anybody do any work on Orkut?? Huh. I only raise questions that I cant answer. There's a specific problem right now. I'm started the Loyola School community there, but suddenly its not showing me this community under my Communities tab. I got such a scare, maybe its been deleted or something. So I did a search for it. And found it, and it still shows me as the moderator. But now it suddenly shows the number of members as 3. Weird. Hope its some temporary problem, and Orkut is up and running tomorrow...

About a bird

On my way to work today, I stopped at a traffic junction which was manned by a traffic policeman. It was a mundane sight, one of the roads was being let through by the policeman, and others were waiting for their turn. As I looked on, suddenly the policeman left the middle of junction and plunged into the oncoming traffic. He started diverting vehicles from some spot on the road, all the while scolding and berating the drivers. It was such a strange sight, and I was trying to figure out what the cop was doing. Then it was clear: There was a crow on the road which wasn't flying away, and the policeman was going to rescue it.

All the traffic came to a standstill, while the cop first tried to shoo it off the road. The bird was evidently injured, because it started hopping slowly for the side of the road. Then the cop picked it gently, and put it on a wall at the side of the road. Traffic started again with a roar. But my story is not ended yet. Somehow, other crows knew that this one was injured. As I watched on, some other crows landed beside this one, and petted it with their beaks, touched beaks with it (were they kissing? are crows social birds?). Then as if in slow motion, the injured one began to topple over, and the other two lunged for it and caught its wings with their beaks! It hung there for a few seconds with one wing held in the two crows beaks and body hanging below, then it slipped and fell on the ground.

Dimly I heard honking behind me; I had been so absorbed in this little birdy saga and now I was holding up the traffic behind. Guiltly I moved on, but my heart was with the injured crow. Did it manage to get back home safely (wherever home is for the bird)? I dont know, but I like to believe it did.

Again many days later

Shhesh. Just dont find myself hauling my ass here to write some words of wisdom from my life. Been more than a week since i returned from Coorg, and I havent written a thing about it. Sad Sad, bad boy. Who? Just me. Oh. talking to myself again. Naughty. I'm stuck in the office and its late, 10pm. I should be home right now, waiting for my cook to come and make hot piping food. But here I am, since I returned from my brief vacation, I've been stuck with lotsa work everyday at the office. Late hours, story of my life. Sigh.

Lemme write a bit about my wonderful vacation in Coorg with my gf. We had such a marvellous time. We left here on the 3rd June in the morning at 9am. By KSRTC bus, from Bangalore to Madikere, via Mysore. It was a very comfortable journey, and we reached in the afternoon at around 2:30. We were booked into a private resort in the middle of a lovely plantation, called Pompei Valley Resort. Check out the flora and fauna at the resort here.

We rested on the first day, then spent the second day (4th June, 2004) roaming around the town. Its not a modern town, somewhat shabby, but very quiet and peaceful. The views are not spectacular, its not very cold, but for all that it was kind of quaint. Unfortunately, the weather was not very conducive to sight seeing, it kept drizzling on and off, but for all that we had great fun.

The next day, on 5th June we hired a car and roamed around all the tourist sight seeing places in a 100 km radium around Madikere.

Many days later

Havent posted for quite a few days. I'd been travelling in South India, to a lovely place called Madikere, in Coorg district of Karnataka. We returned yesterday night from there. Right now, I'm at a cafe near home. Havent been to the office coz my gf is not well. Been checking my office mails all afternoon, got tons of them. Its a lovely evening outside, and is turning out to be a very pleasant evening.

Gotta write stuff about the trip tomorrow. Right now, m too tird to do that.