Vohuman's again.

As you may have already read, I was at Vohuman's Cafe on Tuesday, having breakfast. I had:
[1] single egg bhurji
[2] toast butter
[3] bun maska
[4] bournvita

Well, for the longest time, I used to call the waiter with the gay confident gait "Suresh". However, it turns out that his name is "Satish". I shall keep that in mind hence forth. The surprising thing is that he responds to both calls. Why didn't he tell me that the former wasn't his name? If I were him, I would surely have corrected anyone who called me any differently than my pre-assigned handle. Anyways, that isn't the case, and now I know. It's not a very good thing to get people's names mixed up.

Hello sir, Mumbai?

I've woken up at 5:30am to be able to catch the train to Pune on time. It's bloody early, especially considering that I've slept at somewhere around 1:30am the same day. If you do the math, it adds up to something like 4hrs of sleep of which some were spent dreaming.... Anyways, after traveling from Mumbai to Pune for the better part of 3hrs, I get off at the station, and go to Vohuman's Cafe for breakfast. I'm all alone, and not accompanied by anyone -- it feels great to be able to do things on your own for a while. You have just yourself for company, and no one but yourself. Just your thoughts surround you, and your own self fills up the void around you. [interrupted by phone call -- lots of wishful thinking including a rocking chair, gramophone player, a vacation in the middle of nature, a hammock, and a telephone operator accompanied by a really old telephone with just one button -- to call the operator :-)]
I eat my fill at Vohiman's, and get to the other side of the railway tracks. On my way to the bus station, I am greeted by these people who are desperately trying to seek my undivided attention by saying "Hello sir, Mumbai. Only 180 sir". I get so frustrated because I've just come back from there, and these fuckers want to send me back just yet!!!! I can not express my loathe for them. And not just because of this incident, but also because when you really do need them to give you tickets to Mumbai, they ask for exorbitant rates like 250, etc.... which are totally out of bounds. And that's why I prefer the government buses. They have a fixed rate no matter what the day, or the time of day. Plus, these private operators do as they feel and leave you where they feel like at times, whereas the government buses will leave you at the pre-defined bus stops which are very easily accessible by other forms of public transport.

Coffeyness

Coffeyness. What does that sound to you like? The first time I heard it, I went "happiness, sadness, niceness, badness, goodness, wellness", and what not. The thing common about all the above is that they all end in the phrase "ness", and are all prefixed by a feeling. It may be a positive one or a negative one, but it's feeling none the less. So the question that now begs answering is what feeling does "coffy" signify? When I first heard the word, I thought of the drink "coffee", but then discarded it thinking it was just something weird that had entered my mind -- just like many other thoughts that do. I looked around. Yes, I was in the train from Mumbai to Pune, and the coffee vendor seemed to be chanting the word much like swamis chant the sacred mantras day in and day out. Except this guy was openly charging for his wares ;-)
So, now that I had established the fact that the word "coffy" stood for "coffee", it remained to be determined what the word "ness" stood for. "ness ness ness".... was it "ness wadia", or should I say "wodia" ;-) Maybe ness meant something that I was totally unaware of. Or did ness stand for "nestle" as in cuddle. Well, it could be a variety of things. I just let it pass because I was already feeling really sleepy.
However, on the return trip too, the vendor decided to shout out "coffyness" in a loop till he was interrupted by some over enthusiastic individual who wished to drink their sleep away in hope of being able to work with light eyelids throughout the day. Then it kinda -- as if by sheer luck dawned upon me what it really meant. Have you tried saying the word "mara mara" in quick succession. If you have, you'll notice that sounds more like "ram ram". Similarly, try saying the word "coffyness" in quick succession, and what do you get? Viola!!!! "ness coffy".... I almost smiled the smile of realization and muttered to myself under my breath "realization comes late, but never the less it does"....

It's the end of a perfect day....

After the end of Sunday, I was almost humming this song:

It's the end of a perfect day for all the surfer boys and girls
The suns dropping down in the bay and falling off the world
There's a diamond in the sky, our evening stone in our Shangri-La

Get that fire burning strong right here and right now
Its here and then its gone, theres no secret anyhow.
We may never love again to the music of guitars in our Shangri-La

Tonight your beauty burns into my memory
The wheel of heaven turns above us endlessly
This is all the heaven we got, right here where we are in our Shangri-La.

Tonight your beauty burns into my memory
The wheel of heaven turns above us endlessly
This is all the heaven we got, right here where we are in our Shangri-La.
In our Shangri-La
In our Shangri-La


I went row-boating on sunday, and it was real fun. Lots of lying involved in all quarters, right up to the time when I was asked if I had rowed before, and I said "yes". I thought "God help me if I drown", but I guess they were just as concerned about it, since it would involve answering a lot of questions, and bringing back a couple of bodies from the middle of the sea. Not something that anyone would be looking to do for a living. Anyways, thankfully, nothing of that sort happened, and everything went by like a couple of ores in a smooth sea....
Who says team-work doesn't pay -- it did yesterday. I would have been shit tired had it not been for the other person helping out with the rowing. The feeling of being in the middle of the sea, away from all is just too beautiful to describe in words. I would be insulting the moment even if I tried doing that(esp. with my oh so limited vocabulary). If there is someone who can attempt, it would probably be the first non-writer reader to this post. ;-)
Being able to do something inspires something in us. Being in nature makes us feel good about it. Being with someone special through it all transcends all other feelings.

Next time -- speed boating(If we get the chance). God please help us with this one. Can't imagine overtaking a couple of boats with 2 people at the directional radar. But I'm sure it's gonna be fun. Alive or not at then end of it all, I just hope we get great pics. for the album ;-)

Scuttling Saturday

This saturday was a really hectic one in the true sense of the word. We slept at about 5:00am saturday morning, and were up by about 8:00am(Thanks to umzz, and his early morning schedule). Hiten and Smit as usual were the last ones to get up, and we had to literally kick them(oww my aching foot)....
Shete, Umzz, Smit, Hiten had stayed back at my place so that we could head off for PICT the next day. We did, but got terribly late at doing that. The reason being -- we wanted to eat this amazing bhurji that Hiten makes. So, after having our stomach full, we headed off.
On reaching there, we found out that we were the only company who didn't have a single representative(yet!!!!), so we got busy looking busy lest someone were to come up and ask us anything ;-) We began doling out the crosswords that we had prepared the previous day. There was a surprisingly good response for them. We found ourselves giving out 3~4 crosswords per minute(maybe more). Soon, we ran out of them, and had to shut shop -- at least as far as giving them out was concerned. There was this point in time when I was the only one at the stall and was busy:

[1] Giving out crosswords.
[2] Accepting them.
[3] Explaining the instructions to each one of the persons I hand them out to.
[4] Answering questions about CalSoft as a company to over-zealous SE students.
[5] Answering calls.

But all in all, it was fun. At the end of that period when I did all of the above, I was totally zapped, and decided to get something to drink. Th only think in the proximity was water, so I had to go with that. [Remember "There is no substitute for water"].
After that, I decided to catch a few projects that I found interesting. I had time just for 2, so I had to choose wisely, if I did indeed want to examine then at some level of detail. I settled for:

[1] Pretext -> A predictive text input system for mobile phones. This group was from VIT(yes, Rao, and Kunal's college), and was guided by Celunite(Sandeep's sponsor). They exceeded the expections I had had fom them after seeing the big names attached to them.
[2] A project on Image classification. This was a group from Singhad College.

Now, it was time to leave, so we(Shete, Umzz, and I) headed off. They dropped me off at the highway where from I could get a bus to Mumbai. As luck would have it, I got this car pool which dropped me off at Sion stn. It took just about 2hrs, so that was fast. I was too tired to do anything after that except for indulge in some persuasion which would ensure an even better day to follow :-)