3 Posts in 10 minutes...Phew!!

I got really motivated by Jeff Atwood's inspiring post

The Taj

Believe it or not...after more than two decades of living in Northern India, I had never seen the Taj Mahal. This was until last weekend...my first visit to the Taj...one of the Seven Wonders of the World

A cup of Masala Chai

Masala Chai is what I need right now...I am suffering from sore throat because of excessive drinking of diet colas in a cool weather. I am longing for a hot cup of "chai" with ginger and black pepper. It can do wonders to a sore throat.

For the uninitiated, here is the wikipedia on "chai"

Email Signature :-)

"No trees were killed in sending this message. But a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced."

Of Kati Rolls and Music in the Village

Well, if you are a foodie and a fan of Kathi rolls and happen to be in New York City...you have the chance to have the very best 'Kati Rolls' at the The Kati Roll Company. It is one of the best kathi rolls I've ever had (and that is well..saying something!)
After grabbing a roll me and my friends decided to go and enjoy some live music. Caffe Vivaldi is another place not to be missed. With upcoming singers playing live music and singing ballads, this is a new experience altogether!
So have fun in Manhattan!

And All That Jazz!!

So I finally made it to a Broadway Musical! No prizes for guessing which one...Chicago! I must say it was an amazing experience and I highly recommend anyone who gets a chance should go and watch one.
I am trying to get one of my friends take me there during the week...this is my last week in NY for this trip!
And for the rest of the weekend, it was pretty good...got to meet some of the friends and had a good time.

It's the friends you can call up at 4am that matter....

And I am lucky to have enough to continue talking for 2 days at a stretch :)

Well, I am away from home and away from most of my friends and thanks to the technology, I can reach each one of them irrespective of their timezones! I fell sick on the weekend and needed to talk. And I should warn that I am not an easy person to have a conversation with. I am a typical Libran. I will talk on a topic for hours and hours and come to a decision. The moment I reach a decision I take a 180 degree flip and I am now debating for the other side.
Thanks to each one of you for patiently listening to me talking the same thing over and over again. You agreed with me when I needed you to, all the while making sure that I don't hurt myself. Some of you got angry with me...some got more angry than I was!! But ALL of you made my heart smile!

This is to all my friends! I love you!

Back in NY

So, I am back in New York for work. Its quite beautiful here this time. A very pleasant weather for sure.
The weekend was good...walking down the streets of Manhattan is always one of my favorite "todo's" when I come here. I had friends come over for the weekend and we did a nice tour of Manhattan. Seems like I can polish myself into a NYC guide for sight-seeing :D
Well, its Monday again and it's back to work!

Back in Delhi

Sort of an update...I am back in Delhi. Actually arrived 3 weeks ago, but since then I've been trying to settle down with jetlag, messy house and loads of work. Well, out of the three one seems to be settled down...the jetlag :)
My messy house continues to remain so and is probably getting worse by the day. I am waiting for some free time to get the cleaning up done but my coming weekends are already packed.
About loads of work, I am having fun with that. Though I've caught myself talking technical stuff while sleeping last week :D
I am visiting my family this weekend...and really looking forward to it now!

The sun is out...

Well, one would think that I am hoping to get a job with the weather news channel. But I guess I am a bit far from there, I still cannot forecast.
The truth is that (and most will agree with it), NYC is beautiful. It was beautiful in spring when I was here last year, it was prettier in the fall and now I have seen the snowed NYC. Today the sun is out and I am admiring the river (that was frozen just a day ago).
And now that the sun is out I would need to be careful stepping on the snow that has now turned to ice.
I hope to see more of the city over the weekend.

And it snowed...

Finally I managed to see a snowfall today…this is the first in my life and hopefully not the last. The weather channels were forecasting snow in the afternoon but it happened at the perfect time…I came out of my office late in the evening and was hoping to get something for dinner when I saw the flakes coming down. It was really pretty…I took a long time to get into the station…but finally I had to do it when my nose and cheeks went numb!

The Manhattan skyline from my apartment window is blurred because of the snow tonight…My nose is still shiny and I have sneezed twice already, but that’s not going to stop me from going out early morning tomorrow to enjoy the snow

So what if NY did not get a white Christmas. The Valentine’s day is surely going to be white this time :)

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Shopped till I dropped

Today I went shopping for my upcoming work trip to NY. What a day it was! I was out shopping for over 8 hours, almost the same amount of time that I am required to spend at work each day!!! As a result I am tired and in not a very appropriate state of mind and body to indulge in any activity. So I am relaxing hoping to get a good night's sleep.
Thanks to my friend Divya and my friend's mother who accompanied me to my shopping trip and gave their useful comments on my shopping.

CAPTCHA

CAPTCHA is a technique used to differentiate between a human and a bot when submitting data to a web site. This is done in order to counter spam comments etc. It was interesting to find out the full form for the acronym -
CAPTCHA is an initialism for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and
Humans Apart", trademarked by Carnegie Mellon University

Long time no post

I have been caught up at work and haven't been able to post as much as I wanted to.
Basically been busy in more than a couple of projects...Ok...I've had some free time too but that was mostly spent on playing on Neopets
I am writing now because I have this scheduled Virus Scan that has been scheduled to run everyday around noon and it practically brings my machine down. Opening my Visual Studio or even getting that window in focus takes a good 10 secs. And since I am so particular about performance of my machine, I am running out of patience.
This scan takes up most of my CPU power and basically makes the whole experience of working during the scan a BIG pain!! And now since I have too much data (!!80GB!!) it takes more than 3 hours to complete. I wonder what other companies do to encounter this issue. Everyday I am tempted to "kill" the process along with its parent and child and basically the complete family tree!! And the best part is when I kill it, my Outlook takes ages to open any mail that has an attachment. So, it is always a tradeoff.
Well...time to go for lunch, maybe when I am back the virusscan would have hogged its share of CPU and I will get some work done...


P.S. Just noticed that this is my longest post so far. Wonder if I am more vocal when provoked!! :D

ATLAS or ASP .NET AJAX Extensions

Today was my first encounter with the beautiful and easy world of ATLAS. I am making this App with cool AJAX stuff. Will keep posting my findings :D

Chilling @ Below 9 Celsius

The cold has hit the Northern India in the new year. We've had lots of fog for the past two days.
Yesterday, my friends and me had planned on going for a movie. We got the tickets but did not go, thanks to the dense fog.

Though its not that foggy today, it is quite cold. Thankfully I am lying down in the warmth of my blankets (3 of them!!) with a mug of hot milk!

New Year 2007

New Year, New Resolutions and a New Blog. After a failed attempt, I am restarting a blog in the hope of keeping it alive. All thanks to my best friend Vaibhav.

Here is wishing everyone a great new year!!