1. My current bag needs to be retired. It’s no longer rigid and does not distribute load properly, which leads to the straps painfully digging into my shoulders (in spite of the padding). Might still use it, but just to carry a smaller day pack and a change of clothes.
2. Hydration packs help. Definitely will reduce the need to stop just to take a sip of water, once I get one
3. I also need a new camera bag, preferably one with an all weather cover (like the splendid Lowepro AW series). My current shoulder bag is brilliant for sight-seeing trips etc. but tends to put me off balance while trekking (not to mention the constant swinging of the bag). Also given that I generally take along just the 18-55mm lens while trekking, for now I think taking along a top loading “V-style” bag would do the trick. Should get one.
4. A trekking pole will definitely help. Need to get one to take the pressure off the knees while climbing down steep sections.
5. While trekking down in the dark, realised the utility of a head lamp. A head lamp definitely helps keep the hands free while climbing down.
6. A leech bite ain’t the worse thing, it’s the aftermath that is. The bite keeps oozing blood for hours thanks to anti-coagulant in the leech saliva. Messes up clothes, socks and everything. Need to figure out someway to counteract this.
7. And the bite itches like crazy while healing. Calamine lotion helps.
8. “Moov” spray (heat rub spray) is surprisingly effective in getting rid of climbing leeches. Must be the eucalyptus oil and other herbs in it, or the propellant used in the spray. Spraying shoes with “Moov” before trekking into leech infested areas (and re-spraying frequently) seems to deter leeches from climbing onto the shoes.
9. Need to figure out an effective way to pull out an attached leech. Read a lot of contradicting advice on the net, so still not sure if popping the leech’s sucker is a good idea or just using salt/ “Moov”.
10. Need to find me a pair of Anti-Leech Socks. (If anyone knows where I can find one in Bangalore, please let me know)
11. It’s possible to wash away blood stains almost completely with just a detergent soak and a hand wash.
12. Action Trekkers are by far the most brilliant (and need I say cheapest) trekking shoes I’ve used to date. Excellent grip on all surfaces and not too heavy and relatively leech proof to boot as well (hardly any leeches got into my shoes).

But here’s the really interesting thing – a significant amount of the people on screen have to actually look at the screen on their music devices to be able to tell what they are listening to !! Makes you wonder what direction humanity is taking, if we can’t even pay attention to what we are listening…

(On a side note, classical music seems to be dead and Frank Sinatra is still alive and kicking )

Lady on phone (in Kannada): Manju? (Or something thereabouts)
Me: Sorry, Wrong Number

Five minutes later:

Man on phone (in Kannada): Manju?
Me: (by now, wondering who this Manju is) Nope, Wrong Number.

Another five minutes later:

Lady again: Some rapid fire Kannada sentences and then Manju?
Me: (in silent desperation, rueing the lost sleep) Sorry, This is the wrong number. Please don’t call again.

After this, it seemed like some the callers had given up trying to contact Manju and I thought that was the end of it and I’d get to sleep peacefully again. But I think I was being too hopeful for about 10 minutes later the phone rang again:

Lady: Manju?
Me: For the 10th time, this is the wrong number!!!
Lady: (Finally guessing, I don’t understand a word of Kannada) *Something something* English *Something*
Passes phone to man. I am hopeful that he will understand English. But…
Man (now on phone): Manju??
Me: (Inwardly regretting for not putting the phone on silent mode) Wrong Number, Sir.

Five minutes later, sure enough the phone rings again. I am now at my wits end on how to get rid of this caller.

Lady: Manju?
Me: (Let’s try broken Kannada, maybe it will work) Sorry, I don’t speak Kannada and this is wrong number (or near enough in Kannada)
Lady: Oh so you are not Manju? So then who are you? (in Kannada)
Me: (FacePalm) Disconnect phone

Finally after much pain, they got the message that I am not Manju and the calls stopped, though not before they ruined a perfect Monday morning of blissful sleep. I think the next time I need a wakeup call I’ll ask this duo to wake me up.

2009 was the year in which I thought I’d visit Ladakh or Sikkim (or so I thought). Unfortunately, since I spent most of the summer hunting for a job, I had to scrap the plans. Though on the bright side, I managed to update the design of this blog as well as create a new photo blog (of sorts) using ZenPhoto. I also got a lot of reading done, but more on that later.

2009 was also the year of travel. While I did a fair bit of travel in 2007 and 2008, I managed quite a bit in 2009 as well, in spite of starting late in the year. I managed a trip to Malshej Ghat and a trek to Naneghat with my dad and sis. Later in the year, I discovered the trekking group Nisarga Brahman and some great pals in the group. I trekked to Gorakhgad and Kalavantin Durga with them and ended the year with a nice trip to Bangalore with some of the members of the group.

I loved 2009 for the opportunities that it presented in terms of photography. From the mist covered roads of Malshej to the vibrant colors of Kala Ghoda to the brilliantly lit night time view of the Sea Link to the fabulous carved temples of Halebidu to the steep rock cut steps of Kalavantin, it’s been one enchanting, kaleidoscopic ride, as seen through my lens. And I’ve loved every minute of it. I also began using a DSLR more often (a big thanks to Chirag) and have come to love the flexibility that it provides. I’m hoping to get myself a DSLR in the New Year, so do keep a watch on my photoblog for updates.

2009 was the year of the Reader. E-book readers finally went main stream with record sales of the Kindle. After years of reading books on the PC and following the E-book reader space, I finally bit the bullet and got myself a Sony Reader (PRS-300 or Pocket Edition, a big thanks to Primus for it). And reading just hasn’t been the same J

While I still read good old “dead tree books” once in a while, I’ve come to enjoy the digital experience. Reading on the Reader has been a fabulous experience so far, and I’m excited at the prospects that technology holds for this space in the years to come.

The last three months of the year bought a lot with them. While the year began well with the fabulous Kala Ghodha festival, I really didn’t do much “culturally” until the last the three months or so. I saw a staging of Agatha Christie’s play, “The Mousetrap”, after waiting for it to be staged for a better part of the last decade. I also saw some brilliant performances in “Waiting for Godot”, which I think was the best play I saw this year.

Winter bought classical music concerts to the city. This year’s Arties Festival had me spellbound and Sangat 2009 had me appreciating fine chamber music. Switching to movies, it has been a good year. Some of the movies that I enjoyed this year were “Cloverfield”, “The Third Man”, “Hunting Party”, “In the Loop”, “District 9″ and “Virtuality”. “Moon” and “Inglourious Basterds” were probably the stand out movies of the year for me.

I also managed to play a small role in getting Social Media Club off to a running start. SMC Mumbai is the brain child of Amit Klein, and I’m glad to have played a small role in getting it started. Four meetings later, we are still going strong and the next year promises a lot more activity and knowledge sharing on social media at the meetups.

The end of the year bought some bittersweet moments as well as some opportunities. The stray dog that we kind of adopted, Ruby, (or the dog that adopted us) passed away a few weeks ago. Sometimes, I still catch myself looking at the entrance to my building, half expecting Ruby to be sitting there. Guess I will take a little time to get used to the fact that Ruby won’t be there anymore.

I also got the opportunity to work at one of the firms that I admire greatly. Unfortunately for me, the job wasn’t in line what I’d like to do in the near future, so I had to give it a miss. But nevertheless, it was a great opportunity.

So to sum up, 2009 has been year with ups and downs, but still a good year. Things may not have gone as planned, but in retrospect they haven’t turned out badly either. Here’s hoping that 2010 is even better.

• E-Ink rocks !! The experience of reading off an e-ink screen has been better than my wildest expectations.
• The Reader’s small font setting is big enough for general reading
• The back-flash and slight delay during page turns are barely noticeable.
• Battery life is awesome. Though I haven’t counted the number of pages, the Reader certainly lasts a long time. I’ve read an average of 4-5 books on it before I needed to recharge the batteries.
• Lastly, Sony’s software sucks big time. The software crashed once on Vista, and after that it refuses to start up. Even re-installs haven’t helped. I guess I will have to move to Calibre or some other third party software to manage my books on the Reader.

In summary, very happy with the device. It’s probably the best investment I made this year

I almost suffered a giant case of buyer’s remorse over my recently purchased Sony PRS-300. Then after a little while, reality set in and the rose tinted glasses dropped from my eyes. Looking at the features a bit objectively, I noticed the following:

• 3G doesn’t work internationally. Wi-Fi only works in B&N stores, none of which are in India.
• The lending feature sounds cool, but in order to use it you need friends with the same device. Something that I feel isn’t going to happen soon for me.
• The device’s second LCD is going to drain some battery power. But that is a minor concern I guess, as it is, even 10 days on a single charge is a lot.
• Biggest drawback, only supports ePub, eReader and PDF (or so the website says). What? No RTF, TXT, DOC ? A big fail in my opinion. Looks like B&N is only interested in having users of its device read DRM’d content on it. On a side note, I feel that the very model of E-book retail needs to change, but I’ll save that for another post.
• And since I don’t listen to audio books and would rather prefer a dedicated MP3 device instead of in-built MP3, MP3 support isn’t that big a deal.
• Ditto for the 2 GB storage and card expansion. Doubt I’ll ever use up 512 MB let alone the 2 GB storage.
• RSS support is apparently limited to what B&N wants you to read. No web support as of now. However, with Android as the OS, I’m sure this will change in the near future.

So all in all, I’m still all for my humble Sony PRS-300. As they say the best camera is the one you have with you when the action happens, similarly the best reader is the one you have currently. For me, I’m better off reading on the Sony Reader now than waiting till next year to get my hands on the Nook.

So far haven’t played around with it much, but will start soon. My first impressions:

• The 5″ screen is actually larger than I expected it to be. Though, 6″ would have been ideal, but Sony stopped making a non-touch 6″ model and discontinued ones were a bit difficult to find.
• The build quality is fabulous. The reader actually feels very solid and is fairly light.
• The page “turns”, that 1 second back-flash when turning pages, isn’t as irritating as I thought it would be. In fact, it’s barely noticeable.
• Lastly, the e-ink screen is excellent. It’s everything that I expected to be. The standard font though isn’t all that great, but I guess I can live with it.

I will post a detailed review a couple of days later, as well as post pictures of it. So keep watching this blog.

PS: Primus, thanks a lot for this buddy !!

Was browsing through Photos at The Big picture from the Hubble telescope (like the one above from the site), reading through the descriptions that went with the photos. I noticed an odd thing , most of these photos are of celestial bodies thousands if not millions of light years away. (The Antennae Galaxies shown here are 55 million light-years away). Now if my understanding of light years is correct, the light that we see today left that galaxy (say the antennae galaxy) approximately 55 million years ago. That is to say that 55 million years have elapsed since the light radiated and reached us, and needless to say a lot might have transpired since then. Now the width of the known universe is estimated to be 156 billion light years across, and the age of the earth about 4.5 billion years. So to put things in perspective light from that end of the universe would take say a few more billion years to even reach us (if at all). So that brings us to the question, what if the universe already started “dying”, would we be dead and long gone along with it before we could ever see any sign of it ?