Last time I went home, I was browsing through a treasure chest of old photo albums. Among them I noticed a few pictures of my dad and his friends when they visited Agra and the Taj Mahal; some 30 years ago. They all looked so special; capturing the excitement of each moment perfectly.

My thoughts went to the thousands of photographs I had taken over the years with my camera. Did those photographs have those qualities? Off course, some of them do, but they are lost within the numerous ordinary ones I had taken. Cameras have come a long way since my dad’s bachelor days, the technology has improved beyond recognition - but have they lost that magic touch? During the age of the film camera; you always thought twice before clicking. You always waited for the right moment, adjusted the frame to the right position, because each click made a dent in your pocket. Digital cameras? Who cares; click, click, click. Maybe one of them will be your perfect shot. You will think, I’ll delete the others later. Usually ‘later’ comes quite late, and invariably your patience runs out while trying to weed out all those unwanted pictures and those real gems get caught in a pile of junk. Years later you will find yourself in the same situation as I am - a few hundred good pictures in a total of ten thousand; faced with that daunting task called as ‘filtering’.

So what do we do? I have a solution. Take prints of your best photos. As soon as you are about to transfer those pics from your camera earmark the best ones and take those prints. It brings back economics into photography. And now you are forced to think twice; just like the good old days. You’ll be left with a few albums of those nice clicks; that you can enjoy over and over again. I know the environmentalist in me is screaming inside; but hey; it is only a few sheets of paper; I’ll make it up some other way. Or you tell me another solution; this is the only one I have

So finally I have dedicated some time to do research for this post. Here you go

1999, sometime in November, armed with a brand new 28.8 kbps dial-up internet connection, I began my first endeavour on the Internet. I uploaded my first webpage. I still remember how exciting it was back then; to see my HTMLs being served for the first time to people around the world. So here I present a ‘Rusty’ museum of sorts; with screenshots of how this website evolved into what you see now. It was a great nostalgic trip back; seeing all these sites again

Click on the images to zoom

November 1999

This was the first version; hosted at spaceports.com. I was still learning how things were working. Notice the awful choice of colours!

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November 2000

Even worse colour comibination; but now with more content and also the hottest retro thing on the web - Java! (the left nav bar)

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February 2001

Things are getting way better now; the colours don’t hurt the eyes much. Not too much improvement with the content though; except for the embaressing bio-data up front

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September 2001

The first ‘real’ design. Java is gone, CSS comes in. Design is still very teenage; with a goofy name for the site ‘SmileHouse’! But this really special; because this was when I started writing my blog I had also shifted to a much better host called DigitalRice.

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August 2002

CSS skills have improved beyond recognition! I really loved this design. The site has become more dynamic; as I had finally learned some PHP. The blogging system there was hand coded in PHP. And this time the site moved to paid hosting; even though I never really paid It was hosted for me by Vishnu and Vivek at sig9.com

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October 2003

And finally the base for the current design. I also dumped my buggy blog engine for Wordpress. And around 1.5 years after this; I finally had registered a domain for myself. The hosting also slowly shifted to asmallorange.com; with the space provided by Anand bhai. It has remained there ever since.

You can also browse some of the sites from the Internet archive:

• 2001 - 2003
• 2003 - 2006
• 2006 - 2009

It was hardwork to get this done; I had to find my old hard disks; then get it working and so on.. but it was all worth it. Special thanks to Shyam for letting me plug-in my dusty 10 year old HDD on his PC!

02:15 am, National Highway 63, around 15 kilometers before Hubli…

A Mahindra Bolero screeched to a stand-still on the other side of the road. As we got out of the vehicle, I could see 2 burly guys in white shirts holding something that looked like a hockey stick. My skin went pale and I could feel a cold chill pass through my spine. Scared to death, but the first thing I thought of? ‘Finally, the “blog” incident I needed for this trip!’

Two days earlier…

This was going to be my third Goa trip in 6 months. But I was always thrilled by Goa’s atmosphere, moreover we were driving and it was my first chance to try the Scorpio. So I could safely say that I was all excited in anticipation.

For the onward journey, we had taken a rather unconventional route from Bangalore, via Belgaum into Maharashtra (Sawantwadi) and then to Goa. The roads were narrow and mountainous after we crossed the Maharashtra border. But it was decently maintained and had low traffic with the added plus of a scenic drive through the villages and mountains. We reached Goa by about 10. The next two days was spent on experiencing the things that you come to Goa for - the beaches and the booze! My co-travelers were also much luckier than me with the casinos and managed to win around 5k!

But the real adventure started after we left Goa. We took the more standard route back, via Karwar and Hubli. Somewhere on the forest roads towards Hubli, after Yellapur, our headlights started to dim out. We first thought the battery had gone weak and then realized that the alternator had burnt out. The electrical systems in the car started failing one by one and finally our headlights were gone and we were left with just one feeble park-light. There were no big settlements before reaching Hubli, which was still around 50-60 kms away. It was already 11PM and our best chance would have been to get to Hubli somehow and find a mechanic there. So we stuck to the first truck we could find with a proper enough backlight and tailed along with it, with no lights of our own at all.

After a few kilometers of tagging along, the truck driver in front of us stopped as he realized that we were in trouble. He came to have a look but there was nothing he could fix. Hubli was still 25 km away and the driver told us to keep following him, and that he’ll guide us to Hubli. So we went along. 10 km ahead and our engine cut off. There was not enough power to even drive the control unit of the engine. Tough luck. The same technology that is bread and butter for me via Bosch, made us get stuck in the middle of nowhere.

We asked the truck driver to carry on, since there was nothing more he could do. We pushed the car to the side of the road and tried in vain to reach everyone (the limited few) whom we knew of, in Hubli. We called up the Hubli traffic police and informed them of our situation. But they couldn’t do anything either till morning. We couldn’t even lock the car, because the battery didn’t have enough power to roll the car windows back up. We were basically stuck; without food or water till morning which was still 8 hours away. So we set up camp inside the car. The mood was still ok, with everyone joking about all that happened. Then came the Bolero; just after 2 o’clock while we were still sitting and chatting.

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The two big guys rushed towards us and asked me something in Kannada. I told him I don’t understand the language very well. He gave me a cold stare, and then proceeded to go through all of our luggage. We (atleast me) were still scared to speak much. Suddenly as the Bolero moved to cross the road into our side, I noticed a green board with the lettering ‘Police’. I breathed a big sigh of relief! They asked us a lot of questions and still looked very intimidating. They told us that the road is not very safe, but what could we do - we cannot abandon the car there and go. They told us to stay there at our own risk and then get a mechanic in the morning. Then they took away 3 bottles of port wine that we had bought in Goa telling that it wasn’t legal (my @#%#)! But loosing a bit of wine was way better than what I had thought would happen initially; so it wasn’t that bad ;). We were terribly disappointed by the attitude they showed to us; though. Not even showing a hint of helpfulness.

After this incident I guess we all started to get tense. Only then we started to realize how much of a risk we were taking staying at that place. There were too many what-ifs running through my mind. What if the an overtaking truck knock us off the highway? What if a group of thugs come and beat us up? etc etc. I couldn’t sleep for even a bit, till the sun came back out.

Morning came as a relief of all of us. Ranjith suggested that we push start the vehicle. It didn’t seem a great idea to me; since the engine could cut off while running at any moment the battery dies out. But we decided to try and then limp ahead to Hubli some 15 more kilometers ahead. We pulled out all the equipment that could take away even a milliamp of power - the horn, the music system, the brake-light, the indicators - everything, leaving the engine control unit all the bits of power it could get to make the engine running for atleast 30 minutes. We push started the car and went as fast as we could to Hubli. And we made it! 8.30 am and we were finally back in civilization and in the Hubli railway station parking lot. We got a mechanic to repair our alternator. It took us 5 or 6 more hours; but finally we had the car repaired; all roaring to go. No worries left, we reached Bangalore, just before midnight.

All’s well that ends well!

Map of the route we took. Marker ‘F’ is approximately the place we got stuck.

Goa photos coming soon!

Thursday night. I had gone to sleep quite early thanks to a darned headache. I heard the landline ring. Irritated again that people call to the stupid landline rather than to my mobile (technology has grown, wake-up sheeple!), I got up and picked up the call. It was Bachu, my roommate, all excited telling me that if I don’t want to miss Sachin’s 200 better come fast to Shyam’s house (we are a TV-free home, you see). So I get dressed quickly and run to our very own homely sports-bar.

There’s some excitement going on in there as I reached. Sachin has reached somewhere around 170, Bachu is yelling trivial anecdotes about Sachin, Tony’s not combing his hair or looking at the mirror and even Shyam’s not playing TF2! That was when I knew this was going to be something special. So I took a seat and joined in. As soon as I sat down, Raina gets out. Hmm.. I thought I brought my bad luck with me. Boy! Was I right.

The game was taking interesting directions; with Ravindra Jadeja keen on taking singles every last ball of an over and not giving the strike to Sachin; when I first noticed an unlikely visitor in the kitchen. A pretty big rat; let’s say the biggest I have seen; not that I have seen many. I announced our royal visitor to the other friends in the room; and the usually cool Shyam all freaked out. “Oh! Its going to bite me when I’m sleeping. I’m going to get swine-flu and stuff”.. hmm.. swine-flu from a rat? Well, let’s discuss that later.

So we decide to fight this guy. And by chance it got trapped inside one of the plastic carry-bags lying around. The rest of the party wanted to kill the rat; but I somehow found a bit of compassion towards the animal and convinced them not to do it. Since the rest of us had an excuse that we didn’t have shoes on; we assigned the task of capturing the rat in the bag to Tony. Naturally the rat gnawed away the other end of the sheet and was on its way to its next hiding place.

Meanwhile in TVLand: Tendulkar has no chance to reach 200; but India can still win. If only Mr. Jadeja gave some strike to him. We are all in a dillema now whether to watch the TV or mind the rat. Every 3 balls or so, the little guy would peep out from its hiding place and as soon as we make the slightest of movements; it would go right back in. This hide and seek continued for a while… and then the unthinkable happened … Tendulkar got out

While we were mourning the departure of Sachin, our hero peeps out from his hiding place and runs right into the sink drain. Sensing the kill, the brave Tony Thomas strides in for the final act and closes the drain with a mosaic tile in pure ‘Quick-Gun Murugun’ style. That’ll do, we all thought. Shyam runs out to get something to seal our hero shut. But alas before he reached, the little guy, amasses all the power he has; slides out the tile; rushes out; and winks at us proudly for the effort (ok it didn’t; but I’m sure it would have, if it could).

The Indians are sinking to deeper trouble; while the rat is still playing hide-and-seek with us. Finally we managed to trick it to go back to the drain. Everybody quickly swings into action and we trap that darn rat finally. Victorious we set our focus back on the tv set. India may have lost by 3 runs and Sachin may not have hit a double-ton; but we did win our chase against the rat!

So what’s so blog-able about this? Small moments like this; tend to be lost in bigger memories of the past. I just wanted to treasure a few ‘big’ small moments… so that I can be all nostalgic in the future

A few years ago, I had an email conversation with my friends regarding life in Bangalore. Most were of the opinion that it was just too trashy and mundane a life and that the main reason for that was the city itself. I had more or less concurred with those thoughts there. But many days and months after, I think I’ve slowly started coming into terms with Bangalore.

I come from a sleepy suburb of the small city of Trivandrum, with all its old world charm. Compared to Bangalore, the hustle-bustle, the traffic and the noise is almost non-existent there. So I was brought up, being used to a bit of peace and quiet. The transition to the metro life of Bangalore was quick, and it wasn’t a very easy one. It was like you had gone fishing beside a serene lake and then suddenly getting kicked into a Metallica concert.

One thing Bangalore gave to me (and a lot of us) is freedom - financially and otherwise. Used and misused it, and in the meanwhile enjoyed it a lot. It gave me new meanings to life and allowed me to see things in other dimensions. I appreciated all that but still it never felt like home. I could never imagine a settled life here. There was always a feeling that I was a stranger in a strange place.

But that was some time ago, and time changes perspectives. I spent last week in my dear own Trivandrum celebrating Onam with my family. It was good, but strangely for the first time really, I started badly missing Bangalore - the congestion, the traffic, the crowds and everything associated with it. That was when the realization came that I had indeed accepted Bangalore as my new home. Bangalore has now become the routine, and Trivandrum the (welcome) aberration. They say home is where the heart is… I guess I have learnt to give some part of my heart to Bangalore… 3 years down the line.

I would describe myself in the weight attribute as a little bit over average; 5 to 6 kilos above the technical norm for my height. And I am pretty consious about that. So when my friend Anu told me that she had undergone this magic diet going by the name “GM Diet”; I thought if it shaves off some kgs and since it lasts only for a week, why not give it a try. So I did.

Surprising myself; I actually managed to more or less follow the diet up until the sixth day with minor altercations. And I did loose 2 kgs (though the claim from Anu was atleast 4kgs). But the thing that interested me the most was why would General Motors; the car manufacturing company in dire straits; come up with a diet plan? With the “Internets” at my disposal; I went searching. And as I suspected; GM had nothing to do with their namesake diet plan. That too from the reputed New York Times. So why did I still follow it? I saw no harm at that point of time and the article writer himself said that he too had lost a few pounds.

After the whole experience though; I would suggest not to do it. It’s not worth loosing 4kgs in a week only to gain it back in half that time. Though I’m not an expert in the way the human body works; I suspect such rapid cycles of weight-loss and weight-gain would not do any good for your body. The best thing to come out of it though was a no non-veg week after a long time (I took the vegetarian diet). I don’t feel any rejuvenation of the mind, the soul or the body after undergoing it, like various sources on the net claim it to do.

Lesson? Nothing beats exercise. If only GM had come up with a plan to cure laziness!