Maputo mania!!

Its my 34th day here in Maputo

But, It seems like 340 days since I've been here.

Especially when I was supposed to travel back to Bangalore on 14th.
Shit happens!!

The plan changed at the last moment and my stay was extended till 23rd, as of now.:D

I was precisely 4 hours away from the flight when I was informed about the change in plans. Damn it!

Anyways, I have got used to things like these now. Thats the best thing to do. If you can’t change any particular part of your life, however hard you try, then just get used to it. :D

Maputo isn’t too bad a place to live in. Pretty good, I must say. The streets are not deserted like the ones in Johannesburg. There is no general hysteria about civic safety as there haven’t been any incidents too often in recent times.

The hotel I stay at, is about 100-150 meters from the seashore. The vast, never ending coa st line of Indian Ocean stares into my eyes whenever I look at it.

I haven’t had much time to go out anywhere. Had been to a Jazz concert few weeks ago and then went to two Indian restaurants. :D And also took astroll along the shore , sometime ago.That’s the local sight-seeing I’ve done so far.

The last 3 months have been very demanding and stressful, professionally. I hardly remember a non-work related event in this period. Hang on, I do remember. I used to sleep for 6-7 hours every day/night (based on when I decided to sleep)




Hopefully, this slog-fest is gonna see an end sometime soon!


It could be a serene period for few months after that or may be another hell-ride!!


I’ll keep you all posted. :D

Maputo has made me go crazy!!

I'm finally retiring to bed after 20 hours of work!! Of course, I took a few breaks otherwise I would have vanished into thin air :D

More details to follow!!

Bits and Pieces : 26-Jul-09

Hmmm…

Date is 26, Day is Sunday, Month is July and Year is 2009. Nothing special. Just FYI.

Quite a few interesting things have happened in last few weeks.

A glimpse of those “interesting” things

• I have moved on to a new project (not really a new one but new to me).That makes my visit to Johannesburg in Feb-March this year as the last one for me, to that palce. After 2.5 yrs and 5 visits to Johannesburg, I’ve realized that it was not a bad place at all. There is more to Africa than the crime and poverty that gets highlighted in rest of the world.On professional side, it was getting kinda repetative to me but I’ll forever remember the experience that I have gone through in these visits. After all, it was my first visit to a place outside India.


• Dell finally said that they couldn’t recover data from the “crashed” hard disk from my office laptop. Damn!! Lost chunks of data both official and personal. Sad!


• I finally got to put on an original Manchester United jersey. Courtesy of Venkata Srinivas Kishan’s colleague who had been to England. A dream come true. Next one on the line would be to be in Old Trafford (Manchester United’s Stadium) for a match against Liverpool. Haha. I laugh at it myself. Lets see if I can make this dream come true, somehow!!


• Rahul Dravid has been selected among the 30 probables for Champions Trophy to be held in South Africa this year. Woohoo. Now, that is what I term as “pleasant surprise”. Finally, some sense has got into selectors’ head. Hope the sanity continues and RD plays for team in the tournament.


• Michael “Amazing” Owen has landed in Machester United and has been handed over the coveted No.7 Jersey. MO7 is what he’ll be known as from now on. :-) It was David Beckham and this guy who captured my attention and made me get stuck to the football mania way back in 2001-2002. To see him in my club is like brilliant, effing brilliant!!!


• I watched the worst Akshay Kumar movie ever (watched by me in a theatre).Such a sick movie.Pathetic.Irritating to the core. I mean, what was the producer thinking when he agreed to make a movie on such a story or the lack of it ??!! I was disappointed, to say the least.


• My quiz team has been torn apart by the cruel world of of of, I don’t know what!!! Chaitanya(CDya, pronounced as “seedya”) has relocated to Pune and that leaves only me and Santu(Savanur that is) in the concrete jungles of Bengaluru. Sad!


• Damn these Congressis.They said that the Kargil was NDA’s achievement and the 10th anniversary of the victory in the WAR should not be a nationwide celebration. When will politicians come out of this petty world of theirs where their acts are achievements and others achievements are mere actions with no worth ?!?!?! I feel sad for the people who lost their relatives and friends in the war.They would have been really hurt by this kinda behaviour of the government.Sad!


• Beckham is open to a plan of coming back to Manchester United. Brilliant. I mean, that is where all the football started for me, Beckham at Manchester United. I know that this news is as if it has come out of a story book. But, one can’t completely rule out the possibility.


Can’t think of anything else right now!!

Anyways, I wasn’t expecting to write about these many things. :-D

Cool.

The power is back now and I can post this on the blog.

Couldn’t think of a better timepass with the laptop’s battery staring at me with a wicked smile.

Bits and Pieces : 20-Jun-09

Long time, no see!

Its been almost 8 months since the last post.Pretty long!! Long enough to make me forget about actually having a blog.But, I somehow remembered it.

Right then , without much ado lets get to the bits and pieces that are in a marathon in my head right now :

• 24-May-09 : Royal Challengers Bangalore were defeated by Deccan Chargers in the finals of Indian Premier League 2009.Sad! Ridiculed by many(including Bangaloreans) for following a team that languished at last but one position in the last year's tournament.I always knew the team had all the abilites to lift the cup but wasn't getting things in the right place.Was proud by the performances of the players in the team but was devastated in the end as we just lost by ridiculously low margin of 6 runs.Ridiculous because the way the batsmen goofed it up in the end.Almost got a chance of witnessing Rahul Dravid and Anil Kumble lifting a trophy at an international tournament.(I know the name is Indian Premier League but still...)

• 27-May-09 : After the IPL devastation ceremony 3 days ago, I was looking forward to witness Man Utd lifting the Champions League by defeating Barcelona in the finals.Almost all pundits(including me) predicted a tight match and a close finish.That didn't happen!! Barcelona stamped all over Man Utd and made them look like School kids!! The loss was frustrating,irritating,insulting!! This lead to the 2nd loss in the finals for my teams within 4 days!! (RCB was the first if you have forgotten it already)

• 05-Jun-09 : My dear camera Canon S5 IS's flash was on strike for last few months.I begged my Dad to take it to the service centre thats pretty close to his office(well, realtively..).He obliged and got the job done.But, as the service took time, I couldn't carry it along with me in Goa trip that happened in between this post and the last one(dates, I mean).Never mind!

• 12-Jun-09 : It was 1.30am and serenity surrounded me! Then, I almost screamed my heart out when I read this on my laptop screen - "Internal hard drive not detected".I was thinking of the dreaded "C" word.The Air France flight 447 from Rio De Janeiro to Paris met the same fate and since then this word was hovering around in my head.A #^&@ CRASH!! My hard disk had crashed!!! The sys admin at my office confirmed the next day that It was indeed a crash and would send it to Dell service centre to check if the data can be recovered. I was doomed.It took me a day to regain my senses.I hadn't taken a backup of the data even once since I put my hands on the lappie and was in risk of losing all the official mails, project info, lotsa personal stuff and etc etc.As it stands today, I'm still waiting for the final word from Dell guys on the Data recovery.I'm praying day and night hoping to get the data back.

• 15-Jun-09 : Was listening to music on my Nokia 5800 phone and all off a sudden it threw some memory card error and stopped playing music.Thought it would be a regular glitch with memory cards that I had experienced in my earlier phone.I then restarted my phone to see if it would change anything.What an idea, sirjee!! I couldn't see a single piece of data that I had saved on the memory card.I turned towards "File Manager" and saw the dreaded "C" word(not the same one)!!We curse our politicians and cops and govt officials sunk in this.And now, I was looking at my phone that had a memory card whick took the same path.The memory card was CORRUPTED!! Nokia shop guys told me half an hour ago that I would need to hit the Service centre to get the problem sorted out.Lets see if I can sort this out at the earliest!

Thats the story so far! Uff, took me a while to type.

Also not to forget the disastrous campaign of Indian team in T20 WC.Its better left unsaid.They have disappointed more than a billion people, more with their attitude than their cricketing skills.

Sad but true! The last 5-6 weeks have been disappointing.Every time I look for something to cheer for, it turns sour and leaves me shattered.

Never mind!!

Hoping for better things in weeks/months/years to come.

Hope kills none as someone said!

:-)