Cycling Trip to Kovalam

Last weekend, June 28th Sunday to be precise, I went on a cycling trip to Kovalam, along with few friends. All were either interns or employees at my workplace and many of us had connections to IITM which made the logistics of trip bit easier.

We rented cycles from a shop at Saidapet the previous night itself. On the day of the trip we assembled at Velachery bus stand little before 0500 hours and took off. The map with trip details from RunKeeper is on the right. It was mostly straight ECR trip. In total we covered >70kms that day.


Some observations here:

• Early morning trip was really nice. No sun, little traffic and city actually looked beautiful.
• We could see other riding cycles in groups, in both directions.
• I had music playing on one ear and kept the other open for hearing ambient sound. Cycling to western classical is good. :)
• Chennai could do better with roads. There is basically zero consideration for pedestrians or cyclists even within city limits.
• I used both RunKeeper and Strava to keep track using the later during return trip. I found each lacking certain features I liked, with RunKeeper doing better, especially for cycling. Paid version of Strava will be equivalent to RunKeeper I guess, but considering it is not one time payment but a monthly subscription I don't think that's worth it.
• I would be willing to pay RunKeeper for one time if they implemented a better interface and made it easy to embed or share the activity in other places. Basically I think these apps should decouple payment for app features & UX development, and subscription for continued support like fitness coaching or more detailed stats storage etc that they offer. I understand the latter can't be provided with one time fee.
• Strava linked two way with my Fitbit account but RunKeeper has only one way link. That's a minus. I have a Fitbit Charge HR device if you are curious.

• The beach could really use some attention from the tourism board.
• It was filthy everywhere.
• There were hardly any dust bins.
• So many people visiting but no decent restaurants.
• I had to search the entire town(village?) to find a water bottle that is trust worthy. 'Aquapinana' brand was more common. :)
• We spent there until noon playing around in the beach with cycles close by since they did not have locks.
• Return journey was split with first leg to Muttukadu in the hopes of boating.
• The rates were so exorbitant, we decided not to. I went to Kerala few months back and similar setup costed a fourth or fifth of this. TN tourism board let down again.
  
• Then we reached Lydie's and ate a good vegetarian food. Usually non veg options are limited by veg members of the office group but this time we had a vegan as well! Double whammy. :p The ambience was good, the food tasty with big enough portions. Give it a try if you happen to be nearby.
• From there it was straight to IITM and Gurunath for rest and celebration of trip completion. We expected some leg pain but that never happened(next day was fine too ). What did happen was literal pain in the ass. Those seats need to be more comfortable!
• Then from there to Saidapet again. Felt how unfriendly Chennai was to cyclists again.
• The last time I drank so much liquid in my life was when I participated in 25km race walking representing my college. In went bottles after bottles of water which all just evaporated.

At the end of the day, it was a nice trip, an exhilarating and fun experience. As I spied a 'Welcome to Chennai' board on ECR on return trip, Kingsroad from A Game of Thrones started playing, followed by The King's Arrival; it couldn't get any better. :-) Should try Mahabalipuram next.

PS: Photos here are copyright Rakend (our official photographer. :p).

Mylapore Middle Street

Recently I went to Mylapore for a work and I reached too early. Not knowing how to spend nearly two hours, I roamed around the place. One could spot pristine, upper middle class houses on one side of the road and slum on the other! I have never before seen so much difference on two sides of the road.

எங்க குடியிருக்கீங்க?
நடுத்தெருவுல சார்!

Most of Mylapore was bit like my old residential place(Chromepet) with very smallish streets and women fighting at water taps (To subject any Tamil learner to the ultimate test of language proficiency, ask him/her to decipher women-at-metro-tap fights. :D)

The most interesting thing that I spotted (and the namesake of this post) was the street in the photo; I was literally laughing on the road with people giving me strange looks!!

The Trek to Tada Falls

On the way to forest office

On Sunday, 9^th Jan, I and 6 more friends from IITM went to Tada falls (aka Ubbalamadugu Falls - 13° 36′ 35″ N, 79° 50′ 34″ E) near Nellore in Andra Pradesh.^[1] We took a bus from CMBT to Tada (busses to Nellore & Sri Kalahasti go via Tada), where we reached by 11.30; had food at a Tamil Mess (irony! We used to eat @ Andhra Mess near IIT when bored of our mess.) Then we rode in an open share auto till the forest office gate.

Base Camp 1.(Yes, we could have come till here in auto; But we walked 4 kms)

Then we walked for about 4 kms to the base of the hillocks.(Base Camp 1) There I saw the clearest rivulet water I have ever seen. It was so clean that it became difficult to find if water was there or not!

The main falls is located in a hill at a height of about 7000 feet. We started walking after a while and split into two groups. Till a Shiva temple(Base camp 2) the path was, though uphill, mostly sandy and kinda ok with small stones. There we got some guava fruit and crossed the brook again and got into more rocky path.

Climbing rocks!

After that I was enjoying the nature so much that I stopped taking photos. :-( The rocky path went somewhat parallel to the brook and sometimes we had to cross small sub-brooks. We reached the small falls and spent some time admiring nature. Then the path(the non-path) became very hilly and we had to climb high rocks to reach the main falls.

I was thoroughly enjoying it so far and the sight there made me sad. There were quite few youngsters who were swimming and drinking; Beer bottles, both new and broken, could be found around the water pool; The place was filled with so much trash of all kinds(polythene, plastic tumblers, soft drink bottles...).
[Rant: If those idiots wanted to drink, why not go to some pub and drink to their heart's content? Why spoil such a place? Indians exhibit worst behavior when it comes to things like this.]

Along the brook.

We spent few minutes there and decided to return.(I could not stand in that place with all those things going around me.:-( ) We three felt a little elated and adventurous after the climb that we decided to take not the path by which we came, but the downstream of brook itself.

Destiny! [Caption by Mandar ;-) ]

It was not only rocky, but slippery too this time, since algae had grown over rocks due to water. It was exhilarating, and sometimes fearful that we might not take correct route when brook sub-divides and end up roaming till death. :p We finally managed to reach Shiva temple where the brook intersected the pathway and we switched to it. Thereafter downhill was simply sandy cum stony path. :-) Overall I felt happy and elated about the whole affair. :-) A nice experience!


[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubbalamadugu_Falls

X and Wayland

In the context of Ubuntu waiting to ditch X in favour of Wayland, this fortune I got today is interesting:

I have never seen anything fill up a vacuum so fast and still suck.
-- Rob Pike, on X.

Steve Jobs said two years ago that X is brain-damaged and it will be
gone in two years. He was half right.
-- Dennis Ritchie

Dennis Ritchie is twice as bright as Steve Jobs, and only half wrong.
-- Jim Gettys

Hmmm, why do I keep getting good fortune cookies today?

Discovery Of The Day

Mess food tastes like real food at 12 o`clock. ;-)

Note to self: Somehow make it mess at 12 every day!

The Funniest Bus Travel

This happened while I was traveling from Taramani to Velachery two days ago. A man(hereinafter called 'X'), who was visibly drunk, boarded the bus in next stop.

[Translated from Tamil]
[Conductor sounds a whistle]

X: You rascal. How dare u whistle at the ladies sitting before you? Who allowed you to sit in ladies side?

Conductor: How else do you expect me to stop and start the bus?

X: Doesn't driver knows where stops are? Or you stand near him and say these things.

[Conductor gives him a ticket to Velachery and sounds whistle at next stop]

X: Won't you listen to me? I'll give petition about you to Kalaingar.
[He comes near conductor and starts shouting after he gives another whistle to start the bus]
I'll complaint to police, MTC and I know minister. What's your name?

Conductor got irritated and sounded a whistle to stop the bus and told him that Velachery has come. He got down in the middle of nowhere, still scolding the conductor. :-D

Sema comedy. I was laughing till I got to bed that day. :-D :-D

Love and Pi

Love is like pi – natural, irrational, and very important.

Lisa Hoffman

:P
Got from here.

The Latest Comedy by The Hindu

Here.

Update:
An explanation of what might have actually happened:

...today, international conferences are attended by Iran's President, not the Supreme Leader. So the person whom Mr Natwar Singh met at the NAM summit was probably the President, who at the time was Ali Khamenei. Perhaps his 1982 anecdote also refers to Ayatollah Khamenei (who was the president throughout the 1980s). He was not the supreme leader then, but he was an important man;
...

Library

I was reading this essay and it had the following note:

1. The library is a large building filled with books and journals. It functions sort of like Google, but deeper.

Ha..;-)

I'm Connected Again

The connectivity is back in the campus after more than three months. I'm so happy. :D

PS: Remember this post about Carte Blanche? Well, my team was the champion. :-) But I hate that certificate which had that achievement in as small font as possible.:(

Viagra Like

Today in the joke of the day gadget(iGoogle) I saw the list of  Viagra like drugs that would be very useful in life. one such drug is

COMPLIMENTRA: In clinical trials, 82% of middle-aged men noticed that their wives had a new hairstyle. Currently being tested to see if its effects extend to noticing new clothing.

These two had me in splits(emphasis mine):

ANTI-AGRA: Promises the exact opposite effect of Viagra. Currently undergoing clinical trials on U.S. Senators.

LIAGRA: This drug helps men lie more successfully when asked about their sexual affairs. Will be available in Regular, Grand Jury and Political Strength versions.

Ha ha ha...

I'm Back

You Can Search For Any Nonsense And Still Get Results!

I don't mean a page with 5 results. With results containing thousands of pages!!

Try these Google searches:

asdf

abcd

jkl;

eeeee  (weirdest)

nonsense

:-)
Ok ok... The "Nonsense" search can be justified since it's a word. It's just to sum up my reaction to the other queries.

Its Exam Time Again!

Assessment-1 starts coming Monday in my college. And the first paper is our worst: Propulsion. Yesterday night(around 11) my friend AR texted me and the chat went like this(my shortest SMS chat, i suppose):

AR: wat doin? studyin still?
Me: ya.. you?
AR: am goin to sleep. do u understand?
Me: I understand that u r feeelin sleepy. s tat sentence such hard to understand?
AR: i asked if u can understand wat u r readin. gud nite.
Me(confused and irritated): No. good night.

Reading  textbooks  always leads to confusion and mental tiredness. :-) Really. The great Bertrand Russel said this:

Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education.

Ha Ha Ha... I Never Thought 'Society' Could Be A Person's Name

This Book is written by Hacking, Counterhacking and another one fellow called err.. Society.

According to my college librarians:

Couldn't control laughing... lolz....