Localized Gujarati Geek

* Just feeling so good at /home. I reached home (Mumbai) after 18 hours of road travel by bus. Funny thing was that my son refused to recognized me He has become so naughty too.

Fixing my system which wasn’t updated from last 3 months at moment!

* I had really nice experience yesterday (oppose to my usual real life experiences nowadays). I was trying to get ticket to Mumbai (home). Since, I don’t own credit card (and wish to in future), I was not able to book air tickets, agent was option but I wanted it as early as possible. There wasn’t any train ticket, so I took brave step and decided to go by road (bus). Checked redbus.in and found that tickets are available and they are giving facility to book ticket by debit card too! I try to book ticket but somehow it was failed transaction But, to my surprise, I got call from redbus customer care and they told me that if I can book ticket on phone. I said, oh yes! And, today I get my ticket delivered to office.

I am now loyal customer of redbus

* Bubulle and Sam has already seen it. But, if you ever likely to coming down to BLR this tips and tricks can be useful. So, print it out!

- Do not catch rickshaw on one-way. Even if your offer 1000 INR, they will not come to place where traffic is terrible.

- Do not ask them where cop/policeman is not near.

- Do not catch auto near biggie place like MG Road. They are smart and they will tell you tripple amount of fare because they know that people near these places are rich and can pay whatever they tell.

- Keep your half of your budget for traveling inside BLR, half for rest of the things (like airfare, shoppings etc).

- Learn Kanndda properly, if not, do not speak in Hindi.

- Keep asking to auto drivers, probably after 45 or 50 tries you will get auto which will come with proper meter based fare.

- The last advice: Hire a bicycle. Good for health, Good for brain.

PS: This post is due to our (/me and Kushal’s) frustration of tomorrow’s attempt to get auto from Residency road to Ulsoor.

kthnx.

* With uncertainty principle playing in full form with me, I decided to go to Fossmeet@NITC. But, came to know that there is no bus tickets available! What to do? I called up dear tuxmaniac aka Aanjhan and he suggested me to go by taxi. wow. Pretty expensive it will be, I thought. What ever, we decided to go with burning (hip) pockets and the journey was terrible. I did such long travel (7 hours) in taxi after long time. Anyway, we reached at NITC around 6 AM.

The Keralian atmosphere was excellent and I felt similar humidity like Mumbai and that made me a bit sad. Ah. The event was already kicked off the day before and I attended Praveen’s talk on openid while figuring out that wifi is not working for us (proxy and they didn’t care to let us know password etc).

So, we headed towards lab and enjoyed some Internet while seating in ‘Foss for school children’ workshop. Lunch was ok, but I enjoyed talking with different people and it was nice talk with Ani Peter about current localization work from Redhat. These guys simply rocks! Got my conference tshirt before ‘Medium’ size is out-of-stock.

We were eagerly waiting for our dear Pradeepto, and voila, he came and started his talk! I was attending his talk first time (always missed due to some or other reasons..). Excellent and interactive. No slides. /me need to learn something from this fellow!

We were 100% tired at evening. So, first we changed to better ‘room’. Thanks to NITC co-coordinators who did quick action for this (Why we requested for changing room? Answer: The previous room had only one power-supply plug! and we want to do hacking at night!). We then headed towards ‘Malabar Palace’. Excellent South Indian food and beer.

The next day — I was suppose to give talk on ‘Contributing to Debian’ but by some magic, the talk was disappeared from schedule. Sad. Anyway, we (me, tuxmaniac and pradeepto) gave live talk on ‘How to contribute to free software’. We used SVN, Bugzilla, Wiki, SF.Net and other tools (IRC!) to show how students can use these in college projects and make it much better and how it can lead to Free Software development. I did svn commit for KDE Gujarati (Idea stoled from Rusty’s talk at Foss.in/2007).

We then decided to leave the place. The return trip was amazing. Pookat lake and Mysore Palace. Amazing places. We had nice dinner and Kamat Hotel and I bought one wood penguin too (Total number of Penguin toys=4, Now).

I learned that Calicut is also known as Kozikode

Can you see anything like this in BLR?

Originally uploaded by aanjhan

No, I will not see

* Wake up early, catch bus in early morning. Avoid rush-hour traffic.

* If you can’t wake up early, you will have crowded bus, go inside with hard try and look for person who has next bus stop to get seat. You need to study hard to become master in this - if person is moving his/her bag, keeping mobile/pen/paper in pocket, go nearby and wait he/she stand up and grab the place!

* Make sure that you are not standing near door, crazy drivers shuts it suddenly and chance of injury is high.

* Do not seat on seats reserved for ladies (either marked red or written on it).

* Still, if you can’t find place, play ‘frozen-bubble’ or finish pending calls and wait for your stop!

And, yes. Don’t assume that ’same bus number’ will reach you at ’same place’. The bus number on BMTC is volatile. And, please don’t ask ‘How to travel at evening’, I have left it upon your luck!

* Just say ‘Hi’ to me, if you are in BLR. I’ll be here Even, after journey of 22 hours, I am very much fresh like lime soda. Work is not yet started, but getting into it. I have joined Comat, where very familiar guys - Jace, Parthan and Kushal rocks.

Thanks guys for warm welcome!

* .. because its too cold, and fortunately my laptop heats so much. Sometime bad things are good for life

* What a dream it was: Apple OpenSourced the Mac OS X but the restriction were, it can only built and used on Apple hardware! I wake up and found that Kavin is slapping me with his little hand for this dirty geeky dream. I will read the book to interpret this dream now and probably this is effect of too much traveling by our dear Indian Railways.

* [VAC] I will not able to do any Debian work except answering mails/bug reports during 17th Dec to 27th Dec. Please do NMU if anything is critical in packages. But consult, co-maintainers I am heading to Ahmedabad today night around 8 O’ Clock [/VAC]. Well, its for Office work, so no {VAC} indeed

* This means, I will miss Kavin. He has 1/2 year birthday today!!

* Even it was short notice, I got ticket (last ticket in Bhavanagar Express) luckily! Thanks to our receptionist Rochelle! Reached early in the morning on Friday and again it was headache to get rickshaw with meter working properly! I have to pay 50 Rs (Standard rate for any place for stranger ;)). We have got nice guest home at Ahmedabad. With warm welcome, my all usual weakness from traveling went away in seconds. Took some pictures from 8th floor. Buildings, Houses, Peacocks!

* Day started with meeting, thank God, it was really good meeting than our imagination from previous experiences. Fixed some technical issues. And then we went to our new office. Awesome furniture, spacious area and yes, very good connectivity Again, went to GVP and came back late evening. Ah, before that, Ashok helped me to book tickets for Freed.in! Again thanks to Rochelle and of course Ashok. You rocks man! We then visited Reliance Fresh near Vijay Char Rasta. Damn good (and cheap) vegetables and food things.

* Nirav came early in the morning. Had nice tea and breakfast. Office and GVP visits. Nice trip so far, except my wifi in laptop, didn’t worked. Came back in Shatabdi Express yesterday night.

* How can I forgot to say thanks to Komalbhabhi for nice food