Today is my mother‘s birthday, so first and foremost –

Happy Birthday, Mom!

I am sure you will be pleased to know that you are now only 1.575 times my age, instead of the 23 times that you were when I was born.

See? One does get younger!

Major Pink Floyd fever seems to be breaking out across town. Everyone (except Kallu) is getting ready to see the greatest show on earth (from our perspective, of course). Whether that is good or bad is debatable, but I am hoping that Mrinal gets more time to jam PF oldies with me – after all, he can’t jam PF with Cryptic (who concentrate on OwnComps, which is A Good Thing[tm]), and Phenom seems to be in hibernation (which is a pity).

Bad news is that he is moving to the complete other side of town in a couple of months. That will put an end to any impulse-based jam sessions – after all, it would take some impulse to come running across 20++ KM with a guitar under the arm, right?

News on the cat is – no news is good news. She comes and goes regularly. Hasn’t brought her brood home to meet her step-brother (Judo, the Dog)yet. Wonder why….

BTW – I thought I’d just mention that our problems with Yahoo Messenger seem to be under control – apparently since Kallu made it his business to look into the issues.

There have been requests from some people that I do what other people do – enable a discussion/comments system in my diary. I am totally opposed to this – this is one place in cyberspace where I can write down my thoughts without having to battle hordes of trolls and snipers commenting on everything I say or do. And I would very much like to keep it that way, thankyouveddymuch.

Note: It appears that some people don’t have a sense of humour (or can’t understand mine), so I will avoid mentioning them in my diary from now on. If you have similar problems with being talked about here, let me know.

If there is one piece of advice you want, then this be it – don’t ever order anything from Planet M’s website.

I have ordered stuff from there thrice. Each time, there was complete silence from them for several weeks. Then I write in to complain, and then they send me a note that the stuff I ordered was unavailable.

Note that until I cribbed, they quietly sat on my money, neither sending me my stuff, nor letting me know that there was a problem, allowing me to make a change or cancel the order. I wonder how much money they are making on interest alone – that’s quite a business model they have there!

Worse, when I complain about this (the fact that they did not inform me), they completely ignore the complaint, and instead send you a boilerplate excuse like this:

“With reference to you order no.xxxxxxx, being an Internet store, we do not have any inventory ourselves. The stock is picked up based on daily orders from music companies and suppliers.

The titles have been put on the store based on the assurance about the availability of these titles with the music companies. While this is true to a large extent, there have been instances of non-availability of titles.”

Note that I now have three such messages in my possession – one for each order I have placed with them – each received as first communication from them only after I complained.

I have had complaints about FabMart, but I grant FabMart this – when they are tripped up, they respond and make good. And in any case, they don’t take weeks to get back to you. And they don’t screw up orders on a regular basis.

Planet M – I will not order from you again. Your online operations are a disaster – at least from my perspective.

In other news – Roger Waters of Pink Floyd fame is coming into town (i.e. Bangalore) on April 13th. And it promises to be the biggest thing ever seen in Bangalore. Now me being a seriously heavy duty Pink Floyd fan, this is an event I will definitely not miss – despite the Rs.2500 tickets. After all, I am not Kallu (who is going to be out of town that day).

Didn’t get to go meet the doc today. Too much stuff happening in office. Shall have to do it tomorrow.

Friend Biju had an accident today. No one was hurt, though Biju was in deepseated shock. Can’t blame him – for a guy who rarely drives faster than 20 kmph (and who hits the brakes if he sees a cat crossing a mile away) to hit someone, this person must have been running at full speed straight across and into the car, carefully targetting it. I mean – Biju hit someone???? Give me a break!

IAC, no one got hurt (despite the usual crowds trying to make the most of it to squeeze money out of the situation), and a trip to the nearby hospital confirmed that.

He he he – but Biju hit someone????? I’d love to stand and stare, but these pigs flying around are distracting me.

Grunt! Oink!

OK, Honey The Cat and her family have been located – safely housed in a dry storm drain close by. As long as it doesn’t rain, they should be safe there. Honey comes in regular as a clockwork to feed, then disappears into the drain again.

Went to office this morning, but crawled back home at lunch with a major sinusitis. Crashed out and slept all afternoon. Not good. Tomorrow, I will visit my doctor. I used to be told that the sinusitis problems I had were because of my smoking, but I haven’t smoked in more than 9 months now, so that excuse does not hold good anymore.

Sunday morning, up with the lark
I think I’ll take a walk in the park….

Bah. Why would anyone get up early on a Sunday, let alone go for a walk? These song writers really need to get a reality check.

No news on the cat and her brood. She comes in regular as a clockwork, eats enough for three, and disappears. Doc Tarique (he of paediatrician in Nagpur fame, not vet in Bangalore) says this is a good sign – it means that she is probably taking motherhood seriously.

We are now hatching a plan to put a lookout on the roof to see which direction she disappears.

Yesterday was havoc at home – Anjali had her friends over for “group study” (yeah, right), and when I came home, and wanted something to eat, they offered to go and get something from the shop. Well, it took them 3-4 trips – first they forgot to get my stuff, then they forgot the money, then the dog ate my stuff, and so on. By the time I actually got to eat something, I was ready to pass out.

Mrinal found a fabulous plugin for XMMS called SndStretch. If we play an MP3 through this, we can slow down the song without changing the pitch. This makes it very easy to figure out fast guitar licks. Tried it on Eric Clapton’s Layla – hilarious, but very effective. OpenSource software rocks!

BTW – in the process of disassembling Mrinal’s guitar, we took a lot of pictures of the guitar and identifying marks (to prove the warranty, since we couldn’t actually send the guitar to Chennai for fixing). Some of Mrinal as well. If you want to know what this guy and his axe look like, go here.

While on the subject of music – I had written to the Stranger Audio guys, asking for a catalog and pricelist. They promptly sent both, and I was amazed by the range of equipment they offer. And the prices are very fair, too – much lower than the prices their cut-throat “dealers” here in Bangalore are charging for them. For example – I bought a Stranger PM100 amp from one of them recently – cost Rs.9500. The actual price is Rs.6800 plus taxes. Even if taxes and shipping come to 15% (actually comes less than that), the price to the end-buyer would be less than Rs.8000!

They also have a lot of other cool and well-priced equipment, including guityar effects, speaker systems and mixer consoles. While this may not be BOSS quality equipment, it definitely is very good quality equipment (judging by the the various pieces of Stranger equipment I already own) and definitely worth investigating.

Sadly they do not have a direct Bangalore dealer/distributor (they are looking for one), but check out their website and request their catalog/pricelist – good stuff!

Sony and Shanu (currently in Chennai) managed to locate a car-cigarette-lighter-powered adaptor for my CD discman – which means that I will now be able to play CDs off the car stereo without worrying about running out of power. Of course, I could always consider a 6 CD changer for the car, but somehow that does not make too much sense to me. And besides – the car stereo that comes standard with the Fiat Siena is of exceptionally good quality. It is actually made by Sony (the company, not my collegue! . Sadly, there wasn’t (and still isn’t) an option for CD player when I bought the car, so I have to take the discman route. That’s cool actually – the car stereo does have a direct input for an attached CD player.

I finished reading two of the three Ringworld novels. While they are great science fiction, I have issues with the way both books ended. Sort of “got to finish this *now*” feel. Haven’t started the third one yet – critics panned it, fans scorned it. I guess I will read it for the sake of completeness, but I don’t have major hopes here. I have a bunch of old Perry Mason novels lined up for reading, thanks to Vinod (who is about to undergo a mind-bending exercise – he is going to read the unabridged Lord of the Rings.

Today being Sunday, I have nothing specific to do except laze around until I hit the scheduling nightmare when voyager, X-Files and TNG play at roughly the same time this evening.

Maybe I’ll jam a bit this afternoon (if I can pry Mrinal loose). There are a couple of old Foreigner songs I’d like to have a crack at, especially “I want to know what love is”. What a song!

Well, the big news is that yesterday, Honey the (very pregnant) Cat disappeared, only to return this morning looking considerably slimmer. Sometime during last night, she delivered her kittens.

Now the problems are:

• We don’t know where the kittens are
• She isn’t showing us

Shubha and Anjali were running the whole morning through behind Honey, hoping that she would lead them to the place, but no luck. The cat happily played “follow the leader” with them, going through the gardens, the neighbourhood, etc. Anywhere but where her kittens were.

Bummer!

More later.

Well, the week is almost over.

Mrinal dropped in yesterday so that I could disassemble his guitar – Sony and Shanu are taking the cracked tremolo arm part with them to Chennai tonight to try and get a replacement.

Had a hilarious time trying to play Eric Clapton’s “Layla” without slipping from the original to the unplugged version, and vice versa. And Mrinal discovered that here was a song where he couldn’t play lead with a plectrum – he had to use plucking – plectrum was too slow!

In office, we have been fighting with (of all the things) photo copying. We have never needed such a beast of a machine – when we needed to photocopy, we sent it down to a shop.

But over the past week or so, copying requirements have gone through the roof – largely with all the paper work involved with the plot purchase. Our man Friday (Ramesh) began to look decidedly hassled with the number of trips he was making.

So today Sony decided to combine the facts that we have a scanner and a laser printer, and with the help of a small little open-source program (ginko) and the Linux standard scanning program sane, we can now do our photocopying in office – cheaper and faster (and less wearing on Ramesh

Hmmm, these past few days have been … let us say … interesting.

Last week, I had to reset my Palm Vx, and then entered a date one day behind – causing all my alarms to go off one day late. Normally this does not matter, since I have daily alarms for TV shows such as Voyager, but this goof produced some interesting side-effects.

One was that I missed friend Swati Sani’s birthday on Saturday – my alarm went off on Sunday. I survived the experience, but she does have a vicious swing to that “you forgot my birthday!” baseball bat she wields

The other side-effect was that my Friday StarTrek:Voyager went off on Saturday. Like a lemming, I turned on the TV and settled in to watch, not realising that there is no ST:VOY on weekends!

You think that’s strange? Well, then what do you call this – there was ST:VOY on Saturday, and on Sunday! Hallmark Channel just went to 7 days a week StarTrek! Yay!

Of course, this created a massive scheduling problem for me – Sundays, there is X-Files and ST:TNG on Star World at 6:30 and 7:30pm, with re-runs at 10 and 11pm. With ST:VOY now showing at 7 and 11pm on Sunday as well, I am in trouble!

Solved the problem by watching 7pm ST:VOY, 10 and 11pm X-Files and ST:TNG, and catching the 11pm episode of ST:VOY on the rerun on Monday at 7pm.

BTW – last night’s ST:VOY episode was a great one (Someone to Watch Over Me) – lots of 7of9!

Still battling with Yahoo – at least we now have their attention. I can’t believe that people can be so stubborn about admitting that they have a problem!

Got some worrying news from Germany – I hope I don’t have to make an emergency trip. Checked my passport, and of course my visa just expired on Feb 28th. Life sux!

The German Counsulate in Chennai simply cannot understand that the reason for my asking for an extended validity visa is not because I intend to seek political asylum, but because I have a genuine reason for wanting to be able to go there when required – I am half German with an entire German family there!

Dammit – even the USA gives 10 year visas to people travelling as tourists, but the German authorities refuse to give me a visa that is valid for longer than 6 months!

Really sleepy day. Nothing at all achieved.

Our secretary Rashmi got engaged today, so we got to answer the phones. And to top it, half the company was out on work at client sites. At lunchtime, I found myself all alone in the office!

OK, so maybe I would be able to get some work done. But no such luck – all forms of Internet connectivity died around the same time.

I gave up, kicked off my shoes, grabbed my Palm Vx and immersed myself in reading Ringworld. What a book!

Internet connectivity came back towards afternoon, but it just doesn’t seem like this is a day for getting anything done. Additionally, the heat is building up, as is static electricity.

Been having tons of problems with Yahoo Messenger, who appear to have flawed policies in their routers that basically makes it infeasible for companies or large groups of Yahoo Messenger users to be behind a NAT’d firewalls or load balanced links.

If this and other problems continue, we will have to abandon YM as well (we had to dump ICQ last year after many years of usage because of their strange ways of doing things, including locking out millions of users for good without so much a word of warning).

Looks like MSN Messenger is set to sweep the market in India – not because it is any better, but because it sucks less. Pretty ironic state of affairs!

Fabmart is definitely leaving my recommended list. Their customer relations management sucks ostrich eggs. The worst sin is that they keep the customer hanging for ages without any feedback on orders, and come to life only when someone hollers.

This morning, Shubha told me that Anjali had ordered a CD from there two weeks ago, and it had still not been delivered. When I contacted them and hollered, they were very apologetic, but that doesn’t fix the problem, does it? I cancelled that order, and will probably go to town tomorrow and buy Anjali what she wanted.

Not that the other places (such as Planet M) are any better. I ordered some stuff from there, only to be kept hanging for a week before they told me that that they couldn’t source the material.

Looks like the Indian online shopping scene is sliding fast.

Stayed at home all day – in a sort of depressed mood. Must be the weather, or the static electricity that seems to be zapping me from all corners. Didn’t even read email!

Shubha has been bugging me all day wanting to show me ideas for the house. But I think I am not yet ready for such a commitment . As friend Swati Kiran said the other day “you two discuss how you want to build the house, then you fight over it, and finally I will build you a dream house and you will patch up” (major dose of Danielle Steele in that lady’s reading list! . So I am trying to postpone that fight for a while.

Took Shubha, Anjali and Judo to the site I bought. Major happy happy all around. Dog drooled all over the backseat. Luckily, I was sitting in the front!

Finally dragged myself online to read mail. Had some email from people asking me about The Secret Project – well, most of you will have figured out by now that TSP was the land purchase.

No news yet from Mrinal – he was supposed to be back from the Bombay gig with Cryptic. BTW – Cryptic won the Best Band award at that competition. Way to go!

Missed yesterday’s StarTrek:Voyager episode (part 2/2) so caught it on the re-reun at 7pm today. Not bad.

Actually, I am quite surprised about how little SciFi one can find on the star TV channels – apart from StarTrek:TNG and The X-Files (the latter about to go into re-reun mode), there is really nothing else worth seeingon star World. Both AXN and Hallmark (and even HBO) make sure that a lot of SciFi is beamed to India – both channels seem to have figured out what today’s generation of English-language TV viewers enjoy.

Am currently reading Larry Niven’s “Ringworld” books. Excellent SciFi.

Darn! If this static electricity problem doesn’t clear up soon, I will have to start using pen and paper to put down my thoughts!

Groan!

Groan, groan!

I am soooooooooo hungover! And I don’t even drink!

Last night, we had a little party at home to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary and my birthday. Just a few friends.

Hmmmmm….

By the time we were rolling, we had something like 50+ people crawling over our lawn!

We decided to invite our neighbours as well from all around – after all they have to put up with our noisy events, so this was the least we could do. Turned out to be a great idea – nice people all around. Shubha knew most of them, of course, but I met many of them for the first time.

But let me rewind a bit….

We had originally planned to have a little barbeque on the lawn, with everyone pitching in with the grunt work, led by Sony (our resident cooking expert . But as we planned things, we realised that this would result in chaos, so we chickened out and went back to catered food from Mrs.Bali.

Towards afternoon, we began setting up things. One corner of the lawn near the house was the music section, where we set up amps, mixers, echo chamber, CD players, mikes guitars (just in case anyone was in the mood to play). We hired bunches of gareden chairs and sprinkled the lawn with them. One end of the lawn was set up as the buffet, with an impressive looking bar beside it.

Major battle with lighting. We didn’t want to flood the place with light, but we did need more light than we had. So we got a huge halogen lamp in and hung it from the roof, but that turned out to be a bad idea – everyone was blinded in seconds. Thankfully, the engineer in me woke up just in time, and we turned the lamp to face the building (which is painted white), resulting in the light being diffused and reflected, creating the perfect lighting effect.

The new amplifier (yep, got it exchanged, it is now a Stranger PM100) delivered major thump, and once we hooked the CD player to it, we had a great sounding music system.

Suddenly, the whole place filled with thick, dense smoke! Total panic. Turns out that someone down the road had a snake problem, and decided to burn down his compound! That is all good and fine, but we couldn’t possibly party in gas masks, could we? Luckily, they saw reason, and doused the flames. While I had every reasonto be hopping mad about the incident, we quickly realised that they had actually done us a favour – the smoke had driven away all mosquitos in the area! Hurray!

Caterers came in on time, and by 8pm, we were ready to party. All we now needed was our guests.

And they showed up in droves! Apart from two of them, every invitee showed up, including our neighbours. Within 30-40 minutes, the lawn was full.

Gopi was the barman, and he had his job cut out. Apart from those dried up sponges from Exocore that needed soaking , quite a number of the people decided that it was time to tipple. And those who said “I don’t drink alcohol” had no clue what it was that made the chocolate mousse taste so good – Mrs.Bali did not spare the rum on that concoction!

A major chocolate cake suddenly made an appearance, and Shubha and I were required to cut it. I could see from the way Gopi was keeping open flames away from it and firmly resisted any candles that this cake too had Mrs.Bali’s “magic touch” in it

By now, most people were shifting from one foot to the other, with expectant looks on their faces. I have a reputation for pulling a stunt at such parties, and I wasn;t going to disappoint them.

First, a long and winding speech. After a while, people were pointing at their watches, then started holding up calendars.

IAC, I put them out of their misery by announcing that my gift to Shubha was a 5400 sq.ft. (500 sq.m.) 60′x90′ (18.2m x 27.4m) site for our own house, located on the road to Anjali’s school and the new International Airport. Thanks to Gopi and Avinash (who pushed and prodded me into making this commitment), and Swati Kiran’s expert advice (she is going to be the architect of the house), the papers were signed the day before. If all goes well, we should start building some time this year.

We then pounced on the food, which was judged “fabulous” by the vast majority, and “marvellous” by the rest. No complaints in that department!

Somewhere along the way, Jessie’s hubby Josh grabbed a guitar and started playing, and I joined him as well. Finally, I stood there and sang a few solos myself.

For those of you who are wondering how the dog took all this – the answer is “not very gracefully”. We had to tie him up at the other side of the house, were he first barked, then howled and finally sulked. Surprisingly, Honey The Cat decided to be a major party animal, and was seen mingling with guests! Not bad for a major bulging momma about to deliver the goods!

Finally, around midnight, we decided to wind down. Guests departed, and the Exocore gang helped clean up the place. Chairs were stacked and put in the garage, tables were folded and packed away (and Sony almost lost a finger there), equipment was packed off, and we collapsed into chairs to catch our breath.

Vaibhav, Sony and Shanu then joined Anjali, Shubha and me for a major yack session, talking about house designs, bitching about various assorted people and generally ensuring that the clock struck 2 a.m. before we finally crashed out!

OK, and in the end – here are some photos! Enjoy!