Certified crazy

Past two months have been a blur and I guess the next one will arrive and finish before I can say cheese. This spring semester has kept us all busy. Some quick updates on what I have been up to.

April was home-college-home routine. Assignments and homeworks, labs and reports, projects were never ending. Had a 10-day vacation from school in May, so got my family to come over to Europe and went on a tour to Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Loved Austria - must go back if I get a chance. Ma and sis came back with me to Sophia for about three weeks. Piling on good Ma cooked food has its own (side) effects.

Some of us went to Cannes during the film festival and some friends were disappointed that they did not get to see Aishwarya Rai.

There was “Indian Dinner” organized at college yesterday. We cooked food for about 50 people. I still can’t believe we pulled that off - about 25 Indian dishes. I am amazed at the amount of spice some of my classmates can handle. Some others constantly held a glass of water in their hand. Some of us will leave college for our internships next semester and yesterday felt like a farewell dinner. I don’t know yet where I will be for the internship, but I hope I enjoy the next semester as much as I enjoyed the last.

Ah, the post comes rather late. But, I’d rather pen this one down.

Andorra was the vacation that happened - even before college officially closed. On Thursday, the 18th, I was off to Andorra. Because of the famous strikes, I missed my connecting train at Marseilles and then the connecting bus from Toulouse - by a mere 6 mins. Stayed on at Toulouse for the evening, and took the bus next day to Andorra. I had an awesome time with my cousins. We even went to Spain’s Seu D’urgell for a lunch one day. My Aunt made sure I got to have all the little things that I miss - from back home. Even the same Sindhi recipes for some particular bhaajis. *drools* Andorra photos are up on my flickr set. Some more will be added later.

Paris was the vacation that did not happen. But I’m glad I stayed on. Had an awesome new year’s eve dinner, among other things, that would probably not be possible ogling at Eiffel tower fireworks at night.

Since I did not take my camera along to the last trip at Les Deux Alpes, some of Haiyong’s and Chang’s pictures have been uploaded here, with their permission. Thanks guys! Ruchna has a hilarious account of what happened at the Ski trip.

Now, less than a month before the exams start. And then, the next vacations!

o Sometime last month, some of us decided to break the monotony of home to college and back, and went to Monaco for a day instead. Saw “The Casino” (from outside - to go inside, you need an evening dress and a passport, and ofcourse, lots of cash). Saw an amazing number of Porsche and Ferrari cars. There are gardens - trees even on top of terraces of buildings in Monaco. Some people there have awesome toys. Took a ride after years - it was a crazy machine, but hell, I enjoyed it!

o After that followed a month of serious college work - labs, reports, projects, presentations, homework.

o Until last week, when we went to the Weekend of Ski to les2alpes. Fell on my backside over and over again. No broken bones. Its interesting, the things people do when they get drunk. Finally got to taste real fondue and the famous La Raclette (with baked potatoes) and loved it.

o Heading today to Andorra for a few days of much needed vacation - away from projects / slides / presentations / notes.

o Did I mention I loved the Raclette? So much so, that I went in to the same restaurant again, the next day to have some more.

o I have about 20 hours of journeys to make - and no books to read this week. Sad. Travelling without books after a long, long time. Currently trying very hard to read Harry Potter et le prisonnier d’Azkaban.

Paris - check
Eiffel Tower - check
Arc de Triomphe - check
Champes Elysees - check
Musee d’Orsay - uncheck
Musee de Louvre - uncheck
Hagen Das triple scoop ice cream - check
Gare du Nord - check
Onion Uttappam in Paris - check
Rosgullas from Paris - check
Sunday morning mass at Notre Dame - check (in French though)
Brunch at a French Patisserie - check

Paris is Grand! And charmingly beautiful in its own way. It is very much like Mumbai though - people are always in a hurry, well most of the times.

It was an early winter in Paris - too cold, but I ain’t complaining. Maple leaves everywhere. With less than 30 hours on hand, I tried to feel Paris. A lot more to be seen, a lot more to be heard. May be, some other time, some other season.

Did I mention that most of the tourist places checked above were done on a cold, windy evening, without a proper overcoat, in a saree?

Crazy.

Its a wonderful feeling, when, in a random city, at a random place, a random stranger sings out loud one of your most loved songs, to the whole restaurant. And that too, beautifully.

Amazing, what such small things in Life can do to you.

Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn’t know you left open..

- John Barrymore

The Freemap Mumbai workshop (in the series of workshops across India sponsored by FSF-India) was at HBCSE, Mankhurd on February 7-8, 2008. Dr G Nagarjuna introduced us to the speakers Eric Schuyler and Mikel Maron who gave an awesome two day hands-on to ~20+ of the workshop attendees.

Day one had us listening to Schuyler and Mikel talk about GPS and the OpenStreetMap (OSM) project among other things. Slides are available on slideshare. After the introductory session was over, they fielded questions from us, and introductions to the participants revealed most of them were from NGOs with particularly interesting needs - like Pukar Foundation, which plans to use OSM for mapping Social demographics - especially the Dharavi area, and others like SOPPECOM which plan to use the OSM database for ecosystem management. Interesting, really.

We headed out for a quick survey to do before we gathered for lunch. The 30-odd minute survey had my partner and I go around near the Sion-Trombay road right outside HBCSE and identify some POIs.  Post lunch, we were introduced to JOSM (pronounced as `jawsum’) - the editor. The rest of the day went in importing data from the GPS devices to .gpx files and loading the traces on the OSM server and opening up the traces and waypoint files in JOSM. Schuyler used party render on the collection of traces of all participants. This video is the result of the first day at surveying.

On day two, it was decided to either correct the AND data (that was consistently erroneous for Mumbai) or start mapping parts of Mumbai again. A bunch of us, however, wanted some more serious surveying So post lunch, we headed out to the Diamond Garden area in Chembur and mapped the area, and some surrounding roads. This video should be an indication of the fun we had there.

We came back and mapped some restaurants, clinics, banks and other POIs  and uploaded the data to the OSM database. Mikel writes about his experience at the workshop and with the Mumbai traffic - “Mumbai is actually pretty pleasant when you’re in one place, it’s the moving about which causes problems.”

• The talks at Lala lajpatrai college went well.
• Spent more time travelling on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway (and the  Chembur-Sion-VileParle Mumbai darshan trip that comes free with it) than attending talks at Gnunify’08 at Pune. Reached just-in-time for the linuxchix-india talk+BoF.
• Finally got a chance to be at the Kala Ghoda Arts festival this year.
• Had awesome fun at the Freemap India workshop in Mumbai. (This calls for a separate entry)

KDE 4 had its release party on January 20, 2008. We decided to meet up for lunch at Mahesh Lunch home, Juhu.  After an awesome lunch, we cut a cake, and then headed over to Juhu beach for a stroll. Pradeepto went on a clicking spree, and we had to snap back the camera from him.

After the stroll, we decided to head over to Barista and talk a bit about conferences, KDE and some more. Fun!  More photos on flickr.

Linuxchix India had its first meet up at Mumbai on January 5, 2008. Priti, Tazz, VivekVC, Jagdish and I were present at the meet, at CCD Shivaji Park, Dadar.

It went really well. Check out the minutes of the meet and some pictures. Find out if your city has one, and if it doesn’t, plan one!