Its Farewell time!

My First Farewell
Its official now. I will be leaving for India this coming friday(23rd May). The news had been official for sometime, but I had been kind of holding it back from most people. The reason ? I didn't want any farewells ! Sounds silly but if you were me, you would have known why. For one, I already am missing this place. I have had a real great time here during the last 2 years, and to think that I will be leaving this place is already painful.To make matter worse, a bunch of people who hold significance in your life, get together to bid you farewell, which actually makes things worse for you because you then realise all the more what you are going to miss.

But then, things don't always work the way you want them to. The news leaked last friday morning and within next 2 hours, I got my first farewell lunch ! It was from the group that I had pretty much had lunch with over the past 2 years and it was only very logical for us to go out for lunch again ! Sanjay, Hemlata, Mohan and Aruna were there. I did miss I did miss a few faces who were the prominent ones on our usual lunch table but weren't there that day as they were either no longer in Milwaukee or were held up with more compelling things. It eventually turned out to be a party from Sanjay as he paid the entire bill. We took it as Sanjay's bday celebrations :)

My lunch group is something I am going to miss real bad. It was always fun on the lunch table. We talked about everything from company policies to movies to fashion to personal life, and a lot of gossiping too. And when there wasn't anything to talk about, we used to bet 100$ on stupid things ! Oh yeah...whether the exit on I-894 was named EXIT 9 or EXIT 9AB was worth 100 bucks :) Memories...
Guys...I will miss you and hope once in a while I will figure in your discussions on the lunch table too !

My Second Farewell
This probably was going to be the only farewell I was going to get until the secret got out. This was at Naina's place. Her mom and bro are visiting her from India and Naina took this as an opportunity for us to meet her family and at the same time bid goodbye to me. But luckily, there wasn't anything that made me feel that it's a farewell. It was more of a get-together with lovely food cooked by Naina's mom. I really had a good time with everyone who was there and each one of us had some stories or other to share. We didn't realise how late it was until the clock hit midnight. Mohan made a brief guest appearance and blessed us with his holy presence. A few people who matter a lot didn't make it to the occasion and I missed them. But then that's how life is. The best part of the evening was that this time there weren't any rounds of TABOO, the game that I dread. Why ? Well thats another story for another day. Its time for me to get some sleep.

BTW, there's another formal farewell scheduled for Wednesday. This time, its from everyone from my project at my workplace.

Atonement

Atonement :(noun): Amends or reparation made for an injury or wrong; expiation.[taken from Dictionary.com]

I recently saw the movie Atonement and I liked it very much. Set around the time of 2nd World War, the story revolves around a 13 year old budding writer Briony who misinterprets her sister's(Cecilia) relationship with Cecilia's lover Robbie, and wrongly(but deliberately) accuses him of something he didn't do that lands him in jail;and her one lie changes the lives of the three forever. Cecilia becomes a nurse, Robbie joins army during the war as thats the only option given to him to get out of jail and Briony,buried in her guilt,eventually follows in her sister's footsteps becoming a nurse too, doing her share of penance. Tragically, Robbie and the Cecilia die,far away from each other, and Briony lives rest of her life with the guilt of what she did, forever looking for her atonement.

I thought it was a powerful story and was well presented. It did move me, significantly,and it had me thinking.

Have you ever done something so terrible that fills you up with grief, remorse, regret everytime you think of what you did, or even worse, everytime you open your eyes? Something so terrible that you wish that one day you get up and you just forget that it ever happened? Have you ?

I have.

Cycling

Over the past few weeks, I have been doing a bit of cycling. Now, I would have called it a lot of cycling had I been more regular. But given the fact that on an average I have been getting on that cycle once every 2-3 days, it sounds more of an agent of killing time rather than the urge of having a healthier life.

A bit of history : I managed to grab a friend's bike after he left this place but wasn't able to manage taking the bike with him. That was an year back. And for one year, the bike stayed in my old apartment's storage tied to another bike through a number lock whose combination everyone had forgotten :) Finally when I had to vacate the apartment a month back, I got a big pair of pliers from Home Depot and released the cycles from the evil clutches. Mohan(a friend of mine) took one bike, I took the other !

A bit about the bike : Well the bike is a basic montain bike from Next called Mountain Ridge and has an all aluminium body and double suspension. It has 21 speeds and rides pretty well. It is a moderately heavy bike that becomes extremely heavy on steep slopes.

So why do I cycle ? Because I just feel like. I don't have any huge expectations(losing weight/saving money etc), but I just enjoy cycling. When I started cycling again a few weeks back, I got on a bicycle after about 5 years! And after the very first spin of wheel, I regretted having away from it for so long :) Its fun to feel the air on your face and to actually endure the pain of taking yourself from one place to another, something I have really been completely out of touch in US because I drive a car all the time here. Its nice to be able to stop anywhere and look around and think for a few minutes before you move ahead. Believe it or not, but when you cycle, a lot of vehicles moving out there look at you with respect(and sometimes with anger too 'coz you tend to slow the traffic)!

Well there are whole lot of other advantages to cycling that you can google over the net. But for me, cycling is fun, and I believe its now going to be an integral part of rest of my life.

So am I going to see you cycle too anytime soon ?

Sony Xperia X1

If you are someone who keeps track of the what's going on in the Electronics world, you sure would have heard of Sony's new Smartphone Xperia X1. But isn't that an old news ? Well, Yes and No. Sony announced the phone way back in Feb. But its back in news now due to some leaks on the net that put the release date somewhere in Sep 2008. Details of the smartphone fewtures can be found here . You got to check it out. It sure is a cool one, specially that arc keyboard. You may also want to checkout the X1 film on the X1 site I linked to above that will give you an idea of the relative size of the phone.

I am more of a business user who has been using a Treo 650 for a while now and I find it exciting and easy to use. Based on my needs, my perception of an ideal phone for me is one that lets me talk a lot, lets me get onto the internet when I feel like, has wi-fi so that when I am in a hotspot, I can use the high speeds, provides support for music and videos, has a decent camera, and has a touchscreen for sure. In all, I want a smartphone that makes me feel smart for owning it.

Personally, this phone has excited me more than iPhone did. Why ? For one, when iPhone hit the market, like many curious people, I went over to the Apple store to check it out. And I sure liked it. But the biggest drawback that I found with the phone was an absence of keyboard. While music and wireless access is fine, when it comes to typing on that touchscreen, I thought it was a pain to be write long messages. My index finger was twice the size of the keys on the screen and I made a lot of mistakes typing. For the 15 mins or so that I experimented with iPhone, I kept wondering if I will ever be able to type with both my hands on iPhone, and everytime, I found myself answering a NO. While everything about iPhone is a breakthrough and I respect the Apple guys for the mega technological innovation, I had to keep down the display unit and head back home :) I still am an old school guy who prefers those 26 alphabets on different keys because, lets face it, I am a normal person who needs a phone for normal day to day activities that includes talking, making notes, mailing, and well, maybe music too ! I don't see myself using applications that will somehow be restricted due to those keys physically being there.

So when Sony announced X1, I thought they heard me ! Here you have a phone that does everything I want it to, has a touchscreen like iPhone that lets me do things easily when its just a touch that is all needed,but when I want to type out something, an arc slider slides out that offers me a full QWERTY keyboard! Phew ! Thats cool ! There are other phones available that have similar design like ATT Tilt but the reviews tell me that the QVGA display it sports isn't a great choice for internet applications. And somehow Xperia excites me more :) Read the specs on the site I mentioned above and see a few videos on you tube. It will excite you too ! And as with all phone launches, XPERIA also has a bunch of other exciting features. But visual voicemail is definitely not one of the, something that I loved on iPhone.

Xperia has it downsides too ! The most discussed one is that its going to run on Windows Mobile 6.1 . Ah, windows here too ? Well, when the phone comes out, we will have to check that out for ourselves. It seems unlikely that its going to have a huge inbuilt memory, but then it will support microSD and I can live with that. But at this time I am eagerly waiting for Xperia X1. I hope it delivers what it promises to.

BTW, the P1i from Sony isn't too bad either. I am still to get my hands on it but I think its a nice option for people who don't want to wait till XPERIA comes out, or think XPERIA may be too expensive for them(the rumored price for unlocked version of XPERIA is said to be around a 1000 $s !!!)

So till then, I will stick to my Treo 650, which is an excellent phone but lacks wi-fi. We never feel satisfied, do we ? :)

Let's give it another try...

I wrote my first blog a long time back...almost an year and a half back. While I thought on many occasions of starting the practice again, the lazy guy in me always preferred taking a nap than to write a note :)

But now that I stay alone, I am tempted again to write something for 2 reasons: it helps me kill time, and , if someone is interested in reading what I write, it helps kill their's too. Ok, that was the lighter side of it. But honestly, I think one advantage of blogging is that you know that someone else may read what you are writing. So you tend to be more responsible, and at the same time, you think multiple times before you actually publish something(atleast I do). That helps me set my thoughts about a thing straight !

So wish me luck. Hopefully this innings will be a longer one.