The day was riddled with some more mess ups. We didn't get the tickets at Inox, so had to settle for Rex. Then CCD and Barista was house full. So, had to grab our cuppa coffee from 'Nescafe' outlet. McDonald's was canceled. :@ Anyways, even amidst all these blunders - the pretty little walks n talks are most memorable. Sometimes it seems many years have passed since that day. And sometimes, it seems to be just yesterday's story. What makes it more special is the fact that it's not gonna happen ever again. :k There can't be another '1st Time'. And, now that SS has moved to USA, there won't be a 'walk n talk'.

More Flashback

I remember my childhood B'days. Every morning after my B'days, I used to get up very early to see my gifts. Once I got a toy machine-gun. Another year, it was a wrist watch. I was so childish then to tell point blank - "Dad, this is a ladies watch." :( In my early teen, when I had my 1st crush, I called her up on my B'day to hear some nice words from her. :$ I never revealed my B'day in college [except for very close friends] fearing the 'birthday bumps' which is an ass kicking 'ritual'. So, the wishes I received on my B'day were always low. I really didn't care about that. All I cared about was that one call from Sowmya. Every B'day, I used to wait for her call. She used to call just out of courtsey - but who cared. I was blind. 4th n last year of college - we had a 'break-up'. So, no call from her. But that was compensated by Sneha bhabi's call. That was a funny day. And the '07 th was the most memorable as I told in last chapter.

Orkut Blues

Orkut was voted the 'Youth Icon 2007' and very aptly so. Nothing has gripped the nation as amazingly as Orkut. [mmm, maybe except for cellphones]. There's never a day when I don't check my scrapbook. [mmmm, :p except for weekends when I usually don't have net access]. One very useful feature of this Orkut was the B'day notifier. Even if you forget your friends' B'day, it's displayed on your homepage. So, you save yourself from the embarrassing 'Sorry I forgot / missed' situation. Orkut was a real helper in this regard.

But today, I'm a little angry on this same feature. Whenever someone is wishing me 'Happy Birthday' - I can't help thinking - did they really remember my B'day or did they saw it on Orkut? Surely more n more wishes are pouring in, thnx to Orkut. I love receiving calls n msgs n stuff. So, not complaining about Orkut there. But the feeling of - 'did they really remember?' is a spoil sport. :(

Maybe I'm being a little hypocrite. Orkut B'day notification is good when it aids me and is bad when it helps others on my B'day....!! That's not fare, is it? I myself can't remember all my friends' B'days. But I do try to catch up with these. Like the last time I posted this B'day Countdown and this one. And they are not just my 'near n dear' friends. Some of them are just acquaintances. Still, I just try to make their B'day a little more special for them in my own little way. And, the word here is not Orkut.

Early Wishes

1st call I received was from Sis - dot at midnight. Bro missed. Got call from home this morning. Another call at night was from Rajan. SS did call this morning. That was a pleasant surprise. My 1st international call. :) I thought she might've forgot. But she didn't. Talked to her after almost half a year. Orkut scrapbook is seeing a constant flow of 'wish' scraps at regular interval. Ria sent a lovely mail - where she wrote a poem for me. So nice. And oh, Sneha called. She couldn't keep her promise on New Year's. But she did manage to call this time.

The Lunch

This was a big disappointment. All but one of my friends in office are in night shift today. So, the grand lunch party was ruled out. And the only one in office preferred to lunch with DC gang. Well, he isn't aware of my B'day. Probably he hasn't logged into Orkut till now. But what difference does it make? He preferred my enemy over me. Great B'day gift, huh?

I had my lunch alone @ nearby Krishna Cafe. And what a lunch it was. When I asked for the menu, the waiter looked at me in such a way as if I've violated his religion. I had to settle for shitty south Indian meal. That too, at double the usual cost. Crap.

Rest of Office-Time

Rest of the day in office was pretty gloomy. Nothing much to do and nothing special happened. Around snack-time, the 'news' broke in the team, via Orkut. That's when some team-mates wished me 'happy Birthday'. Nothing much after that. Am now just wrapping up work here. Will fetch a cake on my way home. A little party at home.

Rest of the Day

I couldn't fetch a cake on my way back home. But my room-mates managed to find one. I had ordered pizzas for everyone. So, there was a little cake-cutting ceremony, followed by pizza hogging. Got a nice snazzy diary as a gift, a very apt gift for me. If you donno, I write diary since my school days. They are a real stress buster and your closest friend when U really need a shoulder. U can say - this blog is my online diary. :)

Anyways, we then watched 'Evan Almighty'; so-so movie. Sneha had sent some beautiful msgs, to wish me for the last time for the day. A big party is waiting this weekend, when all my friends will be free. For the time being, that was the wrap-up of my B'day.

Sum it all up

So, all in all, how was the day? If numbers are anything to go by, this year I received the most number of wishes. But still there's a hollow feeling. Didn't get a call from dad. :( And even Ria was offline whole day. Couldn't reach her even for a second. :k Didn't have her number, else I would've called her. And most of the day I was gloomy. So, to sum it all up, it wasn't that good a B'day. '07 is still the best.

We were allowed to leave office by 5PM. But I stayed back till 8 as all my friends were still in their offices. Still I was 1st person to reach home. Real party started post-10PM. We didn't go out to some 'new year spcl' party. Instead some 10 friends gathered at my place and hit the floor. That was followed by lavish dinner, chicks [as in, chicken actually], beer and rocking music. 11:45. It was time to prepare to burst into 2008. A huge box of crackers came handy. We all stepped into the new year with much spark and noise, thanks to the non-stop burst of crackers. After all of them were extinguished, we settled for movies. Couldn't find anything brand new; so watched 'F4 : Rise of silver surfer' and 'Die hard 4' - back to back. It was late night and with a huge headache - it was time to hit the sack.

1st Jan - the new day of the new year. I started with buying some new stuff and giving my flat a new look. It wasn't really planned to coincide with the new year day. The official holiday facilitated it. Took 3 snazzy cots and rearranged my room. Now, it no longer looks like a "extreme bachelors' den". ;) Things are much more organized now and due to proper placement of trolley, bags n stuffs - which were all strewn in the extra room ever since shifting here- we've got a brand new dining room. Isn't that great?

Next step was cataloging my DVD collection. Replaced all the thick DVD-cases with slick ones. That made a lot of extra space in my DVD carton to accommodate more DVDs. At last count, there are 100+ DVDs with 250+ movies. WOW. Even I was shocked and thrilled. Think I'll start something like my own SeventyMM service. :p


Ohhh, New Year resolution. Well, I never really make a 'New Year Resolution' 'coz they turn out to be worse than promises of politicians on election campaigns. After a month or so, all resolutions are forgotten.

Well, that was all for New Year celebration. When back in office this Wednesday - everything is back to normal again. Again that 11 - 6 routine job. Let's hope for something 'New' here. Anyways, lemme know how was it for you? What did you do on new year eve? Leave a comment and lemme know.

And, it's B'day of couple of my friends. Well, technically, I can call 'em just acquaintance; 'coz I haven't met them personally. Just SMS, chat, mails and lunch time darshans. Well, guess I'll meet them someday. For the time being, wishing them a wonderful life ahead. Many many happy returns of the day Sunitha. Happy B'day Garima. :)

And ohhhh.... in all these gung-ho, I forgot to tell you about my special day. That was this Sunday. I went out on a shopping after a long time. That's technically correct, 'coz we guys don't consider cloth purchase as shopping. It's shopping only if it's got something to do with gadgets. So, this Sunday I went to SP road to buy upgrades for my 1st Love - my PC. ;) After a hell lot of running around in that mohalla, I finally had to settle for less than what I had in mind. Anyway, at the end of the day, these were in my possession -

• 80GB Segate Baracuda HDD
  I actually had 300 GB in mind, but was told that my AMD board won't support more than 160GB. :( As I already had a 80GB HDD, got myself the remaining half.


• 512MB DDR RAM
  Here too, had 2 GB in mind, but again, board won't support more than 1GB. Again, took the remaining half.

• Creative Inspire 4.1
  Ahhhh. This is the koolest stuff that I laid my hands on. Awesome looks and mind-blowing sound. You gotta have atleast this if you're a music enthusiastic.


• Logitech MM Keyboard
  My last KBD [iKey] was in ruins and no one other than me could type using it. So, had to find a replacement for it.


• Sony 20x DVD writer
  I was long pining for a DVD writer. so, finally got myself one. Complement for not fulfilling the 300GB HDD desire. :)


• 2GB Memory Stick Pro duo
  Another thing that I wanted to have for a long time. The 512MB card bundled with my w810i wasn't enough. It was already brimming with data. So, bought some extra space for it.

Well, all that's left now is a PC table. Really need to arrange all these things in a nice manner. Just made all the connection last night and fired the 4.1 in the highest volume I can manage at 2100 hrs. Ahhhh, the sound of muzix....

Garima Goyal

[ GET Pool - Chordiant ]
B'Day : 3rd December

New kid on the block. Joined Ness just couple of months back. Dances like crazy, party-rocker, budding painter and good cook. She's also from Rajsthan.

Pankaj Soni

[ SE - Ventyx ]
B'Day : 5th December

Our Angrej. :p The 1st day I saw him, sitting at the coridor, I thought he's some guy from onsite. But, as it turned out, he was the new member in our CM team and he's from MadhyaPradesh.

Neha Arora

[ Assistant Manager - Internal Communication ]
B'Day : 7th December

Possibly the best thing to happen to Ness. It is a fun place to work, thanks to her. She comes up with exciting ideas of events n stuff every now and then and releives us of our stress. Cheers to her.

Shlok Mahipal

[ SE - Ventyx ]
B'Day : 12th December

A friendly person with the most intriguing smile I've come across. Person with a agile mind behind a handsome face who faces any thing (literally) with a smile.

Neeta Ganghria

[ GET Pool ]
B'Day : 19th December

Honestly, I don't really know her. But surely would like to. Saw her at last week's 'Ness Star Hunt', rocking the floor on the tunes of Hey Babyy. Neeta - do call me. :)

Suman Kumar Rai

[ SE Trainee - Ventyx ]
B'Day : 25th December

Possibly the brightest recruit in our team. Got a snap-award in his 1st month itself. Apart from that, very social animal. :p You won't get bored when he's around. Afterall, he's a XMas born. ;)

---

Alright, that's the list for this month. They'll get one surprise gift from Ness and a greeting from me. :) If you want to wish any or all of them on their birthday, do leave a comment here or mail me. I'll forward your msgs to them. Have a great day.

But when I reached office at evening and pinged her after finishing with my login rituals, she was already in a meeting. There goes my pastry.... :( There wasn't any 'congratulation' mail from HRD or manager. And even my manager didn't say anything after I told him that it's our anniversary. :( Maybe he was busy with some pressing issue. Anyways, our team-lead did congratulate us. And, my fresher days' mentor Ajay, whom we fondly call Guruji, mailed us. That felt nice.

And then, at around 10:30 PM, when I wasn't expecting it at all, I received one call from Su..... That was shockingly pleasant. You know, when you crib for something whole day, but you don't get it; and then suddenly it is given to you when you were least expecting it; it takes you to the 7th heaven. That's how I was feeling. Chalo, at least someone cared about this day, not just to do away with a duty. That itself made my day.

Had gone home for Diwali. Just before leaving, we were given a huge box of crackers from office as Diwali gift. Sadly, can't take it home, as they can't be carried in flight. Indigo flight from B'lore to Calcutta was a breeze. Had plans to meet a friend there. But seems that friend wasn't that interested in meeting a 'stranger'. ;) Thereafter, reaching RPH was hell lot of a problem. The train which usually takes 4 hours to reach RPH, took 7 hours; and I reached home at 10 PM. :@

Stay at home wasn't that great though. Had nothing to do and school friends were not there at RPH at that time. So, was pretty much locked up at home. Diwali day was fun. Lighting up the Diya s felt so good, just like the childhood days. Meeting up uncles and aunties after so many days was thrilling. So much so that, I just didn't feel like coming back to B'lore. But I had to.

Return journey was another case. It's quite complicated. I took a train from RPH to Burdwan, then from there to New Delhi. Allahabad, Kanpur, Aligarh, cities I've heard of but never been to, were en route. Reached Delhi at 10PM. Now, I needed to go to domestic airport. But I was kind of scared about night life of Delhi; I mean life on road. I was told that it's quite dangerous to travel in Delhi at nights because of loots, robbery, murder et al. So, I was unsure how to reach Airport. Anyway, I took a prepaid auto. And for the first time, tested the cold in Delhi. I was shaking from head to toe in the auto. When it stopped for refilling at a gas station, I drew out some warm pull-overs from my trolley and saved myself. :D

My flight from Delhi was at 0520 hrs. So, had to wait for 6 hrs at the airport. And, the GoAir flight wasn't good either. Though their ground staff is best in the industry [ in the sense, good looking ;) ], on-board staff is total turn-off. Anyways, I took some snaps from my window. But they didn't come out well. :( Reached B'lore at 11. Headed straight to office after freshening up at home. But didn't get a warm welcome. Rather, I was thrashed by manager for not informing him of my late arrival.

Since that day, I'm in a soup; am under constant watch. Blogger, Orkut, GTalk - everything is barred for me; eventhough everyone else is using them. Anyways, I guess I need to prove myself first here. Bring it on.

This morning, I just hit upon the idea of browsing my site of interests on my mobile. So, downloaded Opera mini and hit the small highway of www. Browsed all of 'em on my w810i. Using GTalk application of ebuddy. Interface is not that good, but is working for me for the time being. Checked my own blog. It doesn't look this good there, but yep, it's not bad either. Felt good about that. Opened Orkut also. But sadly, can't read scraps there. :( When I closed my browser, my account was down by 10bucks. Hmmm. Will be careful from the next time.

And, finally - the big event is here again. BarCamp Bangalore 5 [BCB5] - winter edition. It's happening this weekend. And, I'll surely be there. Can't afford to miss it after being there on BCB4. So, see you there.

After nearly 6 hour journey to cover 30 km from the airport where millions of fans followed the Men in Blue, Dhoni and his boys finally made their way to the Wankhede Stadium for the felicitation ceremony. While the team was ostentatiously felicitated at the ceremony, one disturbing fact that I and almost everybody observed was the way BCCI officials took center stage by dominating the first row along with politicians. With the exception of Captain Dhoni, all the other players were relegated to the second row. Indian Politicians....!! Won't miss even a single chance of hogging the limelight. Check related report video of Times Now below -



Anyways, now that they have fulfilled a nation's dream after 24 years, rewards are raining on our national heroes. Yuvraj Singh was handed over a reward of Rs Rs 1 crore for his brilliant six sixes. The gift from sponsors Sahara is a house worth Rs 25 lakh for each of the 15 members of the team. The Baroda Cricket Association is giving a prize of Rs 11 lakh each for Yusuf and Irfan Pathan. Gujarat government is giving Rs 5 lakh each for the brothers. Then there's Porsche for Yuvraj, Rs 21 lakh from the Haryana government for Joginder Sharma and a surprise gift and Jharkhand Ratna for captain Dhoni from home state Jharkhand. List is still going on.

Anyways, already a lot has been said and written about all these happenings. But there are two things that caught my attention yesterday. Check them below -
Why Misbah got Out?
Game of Religions?
Religion on Sports field.

The team India will be here in Bangalore to kick off the future cup on 29th. Hope to see the same mad-rush to catch a glimpse of the Men in Blue.

Check whole lot of videos of this mega event on my video blog - Here and Here
Catch all the action in Snaps in my Photoblog - Here

Related Post

India wins T20 Final
Gals don't watch cricket!

The level of enthusiasm among Nessians is commendable. Everybody is gung ho about decorating their bays and so are we. In our CM team, I [for the namesake] and Deepti are co-ordinating the things. To start with, not many people were interested. The first meeting we had to discuss what are all the things and ideas we'll need, was complete chaos. Everybody was just joking on this or that - like "We'll get a live cow. That'll give an authentic look to the field", "I'll regularly bring my cloths to dry here in AC" .. and so on. Meanwhile, Deepti was constantly trying to put some sense into their heads. But, as is the way with boys; it was just a fun ride for us. Deepti was turning bright red by every moment as she hates to be ignored when she's saying something and thinks the joke is on her. Mercifully, she didn't loose her cool completely and shouted on us. Few essential things were decided and we were raring to go.

Got some things from the common resource and allowance to buy our own extra props yesterday. By eve time, we had almost everything we needed. Arti leave strings, flowers, KG cardboards, Thermocol, glue, markers, - the stuff. And as always, I was on a clicking spree. Check some stuff below.

Some decorations are already done. Rest will be done on Monday. Will keep you posted about the happenings of Tuesday. Stay tuned for the big day.

OK, 2nd thing. Last night I designed [redesigned actually] an 'About Me' page for my blogs. The last one was outdated now. So, needed to revamp it with latest infos. The page is now done and is awaiting approval. Actually, I've used background graphics from another site. So, have sent a 'request for approval' mail to them. Once it is approved, U'll get to c it and appreciate it. [ I hope. :) ] Keep a watch here.

3rd news. My this site G@P v4.1 crashed again today. The CSS stylesheet, which is hosted at googlepages was unable to load, again, due to allocated bandwidth cross. Guess this site again got huge traffic, though google analytics didn't show any such surge as of then. Will check it tomorrow. Changed the site template to point to the backup files. Anyways, the main template was up again in an hour. So, everything is back to normal now.

4th news. 3 out of 5 of my blogs had their post count as 25, all on the same day. Didn't see it all day long. Just after posting the final post on Vlog, did I see it. Amazing news, huh? Check the 'Silver Jubilee' posts of these 3 blogs :-

• iWizard : Blogger Hacked?
• Vicky @ Work : Since I don't have U.
• Vlog : Best of the Best

Ok, that'd be all for now. It's too late in office. Catch U tomorrow. Take care.

Anyways, some gals were still getting Mehendi done on their hands. There was Tattoo Painting and Food Stalls. And also 'balloon shooting', which reminded me of fairs in my hometown. There was this plan of screening a movie today. But seems that event has also been called off. Was hoping to see LRM once more. :(

All in all, this day didn't leave upto my expectations. What with all these 'Maha Mela' gung-ho...!! Maybe, 'coz I was late for it. But still....

Anyways, here are some pics from what I captured today -


[ Click to Enlarge ]
And here are some iDay special wallpapers from santabanta

Then it was July 19th. Within midday, last day's record of 697 visits was broken. That was exciting. Every hour the count was increasing. When I left office at 1730 hrs, the count was somewhere near 870. And I knew that it's surely gonna cross the 1K mark today. And of course, when I checked my stats next day, the count was 1,123. Yayy. 1st day when my site got 1k+ visitor on a single day. Click image on the right to check the hourly visitor count of 19th July. And click image on left to see the Subscribers added on that day.




That's a cause of celebration, I guess. 'Coz my site didn't cross the 100 visit barrier before. And now, all of a sudden, it was attracting 1k+ visitors and growing. Today, yesterday's record is already broken, once again. It's already 1,213 by 1700 hrs. Crossing 1.5k will take another day, I guess. Check below the daily visit stat from 17th to 20th july 5 PM.



Thanks to all my visitors for taking so much interest in my site. The major factor here was surely Harry Potter. Visitors came here for HP, saw it and loved it. I guess, after this HP mania is over, my visitor count will plunge a bit. But I hope it won't dip too low. My next aspiration is to see my blog featured in Blogs of Note. Hope that day will also come soon.

Once again - thnx to all my visitors. Have a great time here every time U visit. Leave your comments and views. Lemme know if U want me to write about any specific issue. U can always drop me a mail or can directly chat with me using the chat box. I'm always there. Have a great day.

Update : 23rd July
As expected, My daily site hits has crossed the 1.5k mark, starting 21st July, at the end of which, the visitor count was 1,524. This count increased on Sunday, 22nd July - with a total count of 1,595. So, even after HP7 is released, people r 'luving it'.

Pheeew. Now I am feeling a bit relaxed. Whole of last week, I was juggling with lotsa request from visitors for the spoiler, the overwhelming response to the poll, the notice from google, my site crashing under the immense load, 1000+ visitors on a single day. Readers from world over tried every possible means to reach me to get their hands on the spoiler. They left comments, dropped me a mail and directly chatted with me. I couldn't help but reply to all of 'em. It's really been a very VERY busy week, filled with anxiety. So much so that eventhough I had the full spoiler with me and was talking 'bout it with my readers, I myself couldn't read even a single page of it. So, I guess my wait isn't spoilt ...!! Think I'm "evil cunning monster"...?? Ohhhh, please don't fret. I wasn't waiting for the release with all eagerness. If someone else told me the ending, it doesn't matter to me. I don't eat n drink n sleep HP. But, ya. I do like this series and adore it.

I guess this is the last post of my blog's Harry Potter series. As U prepare yourself to dive into the ocean of HP's adventure - lemme take U through the happenings in his life - right from the very 1st time. Read the quick recap here.

That would be all for now. I know nothing comes close to the excitement of tonight. So, won't bother U much. Grab the book ASAP and do let me know how did u like it. Meanwhile, have a look at some pix from the latest Harry Potter movie #5.