Dare to Dream?

New Delhi!

(Hopefully) I’ll be reaching Delhi before Midnight Saturday (23rd Aug 08). Very excited and anxious at the same time as I’m traveling via Train

Bon voyage Maku!

The week has just started and wait for the weekend has already begun! Here’s why…

The finals for IRock are scheduled here in Pune and you bet we arn’t going to miss them!
Dodge this - I have just booked 13 (yes thirteen) tickets for this Sunday!
Its also my much awaited birthday party (well sorta :P)

So come Sunday - and we iRock!

Past few months were crazy! An 18 hours work pattern was addictive!

But I am so happy to be back to a normal routine. I finally broke a 3 week long jinx and at 7pm, was all set to hit the gym. Its been long since I last smelled myself sweating - and its was such a welcome change. The combination of Bryan Adams (being directly delivered to my ear drums) and abdominal crunches is awesome… you just cannot believe how much it can motivate you!

Just if I can somehow shift my work schedule -3 hours, I can continue this in realtime (one is not expected to hit the gym at 12 midnight!)

June’s target - get back to 32′ 34′ waist size!

Considering that I am more of a night person, my day starts at 9pm

• 9pm - Back from office
• 10pm - dinner
• 11pm - Start work on ApnaBill.com - pack a solid 3 hours of work - feature/bug fixes.
• 3am - Plan to watch a movie - search Rama’s collection.
• 5am - Yawwn! Lets sleep now, tomorrow’s office afterall…
• 10:30am - Waky waky!
• 12noon - Office… (no breakfast most of the weekdays)
• 1:30pm - lunch
• 4pm - Tea break
• 6pm - Snacks
• 9pm - Start for home - repeat the process.

So its almost 2:30am now - and guess what? Movie time

Shubhu is watching Highlander off the DVD - too bad, i’ll have to plan for some other flick…

Ever experienced Speed Dating?

As finding friends/partners is to Speed Dating, finding investors/future-employees is to Startup Lunch.

Startup Lunch is an initiative on the lines of (and by) Proto.in and in concept, is very similar to speed dating.

The startup founders are seated on one side and the candidates get to say hello and have a quick conversation to talk about what the background of the founder is, why he started the company and what sort of person he is looking for, while asking questions to the candidate about the reason to join a startup and what his/her passions are and ten minutes later the same process continues with the next founder. Within an hour, you would have met/spoken to most of the startups, and by the end of the day would know whom to get in touch with for your first/next job.

The event, at present is organized across India - in Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi, Pune and Hyderabad.

Luckily, Pune’t meet has been clubbed with Open Coffee Club Meet. More details about the startup lunch are here

Its an unique opportunity for me - I’ve never met another budding entrepreneur in person - specially when he/she has a business plan in his/her hands. It would be awesome to see what all my peer fellas are upto. And specially important to see how ApnaBill.com is received amongst them.

Oh yes, I’ll be giving a short intro about ApnaBill.com at the Startup Lunch. More about it later…

Can’t really wait till Friday! Can you?

Generally Saturday mornings are for catching up on sleep or early morning shows at Gold Adlabs - getting up is the last thing on everyone’s mind!

But today was different! Everyone was up at around 11′ish - even Kartik (KK) came by (he’s going to be the newest member of D-25 group). And as always, the first thing to do while finishing up the morning chores was to check out the “Pune Times” section of the newspaper - and the thing that caught my attention were the number of “Flat 40%” sale advertisements! - John Players, Peter England, Woodland and what not!

So - Mahesh and I finally teamed up to check out the stuff at these outlets, specially John Players and Woodland - since they were the closest to our home (just 3 kms). Its been loooongggg since I went out shopping for clothes. The last time I remember buying clothes was almost a year ago - and that too from Pune’s bargain market - Fashion Street!

Apart from clothes, I was also missing my watch! Its been more than 3-4 months since both of my watches broke down, beyond repairs. Infact the more used one underwent many repair sessions before I finally decided that it was time to get a new one. And no replicas this time! Though there is nothing wrong with wearing a replica - its just that a “non-replica” has its own charm. - and price tag too!

So, 5pm and we were out in the sun - on a shopping spree! Sun was incidently hotter than expected (I was wearing a red jacket which Rama gifted - thanks d00d). We started off with John Players outlet - and I must say, they have an excellent collection. With 40% off on all collection, it was a good deal. I bought two shirts - a blue checked on white and a white striped on brown for just INR 350 each - not a bad deal atall! Mahesh bought 3 shirts - all for gifting his friends. Next was Koutons outlet - and they had a whopping 50% + 40% off on all range. Mahesh got a nice fitting Blazer/Trousers for himself. I tried few things but then later thought otherwise. We also visited Lee, Reebok and other outlets but nothing seemed worthy enough. Lee had some nice pair of jeans but I wasn’t interested in buying them on fresh prices lol.

And then was the time for THE stuff which was on my mind all day long - a wrist watch! I wanted a nice looking wrist watch for myself within my price range of upto 3 grands. I had done this market research about wrist watches earlier as well - with a very stringent criteria - “circular dial”, “numbers on the dial”, “digital display on the dial with an analog display”, “metallic straps” - and I found that either I have to buy something from Tissot’s range (starts from 18 grands and above) - or seriously rethink about my criterias. So today, I started out with a completely fresh mind with all criteria’s taking the back seat. I planned to take a brand new look at all of the available collections once again. Timex and Titan were two brands on my hit-list.

So - where do we start? Titan was first shop we visited. Had a look around - the watches on display were either too simplistic (golden dials with black straps) or too costly - starting INR 7,000 and above. Naah! Next in line was Lifestyle Mall - the Men’s accessories section had some nice wrist watch brands on display but again - same problem. However, I did saw some good Timex watches there - they even had some discounts running. I picked one watch as a fall back option and decided to check out Pune Central. Mahesh was playing pretty cool all along - as usual, giving his expert opinions on every watch I pick up - infact, he did chipped in some good suggestions lol

I’ve been previously to Pune Central’s Men’s accessories section in my previous watch hunt. I knew what I was dealing with and where can I find the watches which’ll keep my pocket & wrist both happy. Infact, I even bought Mom’s birthday present from Central itself So, again Timex watches turned out to be far more appealing and suiting than Titan, Citizen or Casio. And this time, since I had no preset criteria about the watch I was going to buy, I had a wide variety in front of me. And after about 30 minutes of checking out watches (3 customers finalized their orders in front of me) I zeroed in on a Timex watch. It was a watch with a circular dial, white background, a perpetual calendar and hands for seconds/24-hours apart from the usual stuff and a brown leather strap. In short, it was almost completely different from the ones I wanted when I first went out for watch hunting (talk of those stingent criteria ). But I fell in love with the watch then and there.

The price - 5.5 grands - INR 5,500

I was so damn confused! The one watch, out of the hundreds which I had checked out in the evening - was priced much above my pre-decided price range of INR 3k. What to do now? - Called up Sameer (my bro) - “Dude, if you like the watch - go for it, but make sure that you stick to it for the time to come. Take it as an investment!” - I have never spent that much on a watch and the decision wasn’t going to be easy for me. Though there was a discount on Timex range at Lifestyle Mall, they didn’t had this model on display. So either I had to buy it from here, or forget it.

An idea struck & I called up JustDial services to get a list of authorized dealers of Timex across Pune. Talked to a few of them to check up about discounts, etc & each confirmed negative. That means, what discount was being offered at Lifestyle, was going to be only in that Mall.

We had one more place to visit before I was going to finalize my decision - Pyramids Mall at MG Road - and me and Mahesh were on the move once again. Getting a parking slot, big enough for my Bike was a problem at MG Road - on weekends, its like all of Pune has descended to MG Road. We managed to find a free parking slot for the bike & went ahead into the Mall.

At the entrance, was this guard who was frisking everyone. As we entered, we were also frisked - and as Mahesh was again giving his expert comments on the level and uselessness of this frisking procedure, my eyes were searching for the Men’s accessories section & to my surprise, just 10 steps away from the entrance was the Timex authorized outlet!

The instant we entered the shop, I asked him to pull out model number T2M429 - he showed me 4 different types! Luckily, the same watch was available here with a metallic strap and with more beautiful orange + white dial - splendid! It took less than 5 minutes to finalize the order and get it packed! This was a big deal for me - taking care of this watch was going to be a big responsibility - whatever! I was prepared!

Timex Retrogrades Collection - T2M431 - INR 5,495

The day ended with a munch at Cafe Coffee Day, with all the members of D-25 having a good time, munching on veg puffs, eggless cookies and coffee.

So in the end…

Total shopping in the day - INR 6,245
THE Watch - INR 5,495
Satisfaction - Priceless!

The sentence thats going to be on my mind for some days to come - “Whats the time dude?”

We were asking Nitin that when is his birthday from past 2 weeks & his answer always used to be (silence) - we had wowed that we’ll not leave him if we get to know his birthday ourselves, using our own means.

Well, that wasn’t tough! Today, our cake shy dude had more cake on his face than what he ate

Today was his birthday!

Wish you a very Happy Birthday Nitin

But what impressed me today was his sporty spirit! Though he hated all the cake on his face - he still very happily added this picture to his Orkut profile without any second thoughts! - Whats done is done - Keep it up dude

We then all gathered for a group pic…

Boy! I desperately need my hair back :(

Yes, that was on my agenda today when I left for Jogger’s park.

From past some days, I was consistently doing 4 laps (2kms) nonstop. Towards the end, a 50m sprint to the end point would mark the finishing of the last lap. Yesterday, I somehow stretched it to 5 laps. Stopping the adrenaline rush towards the last lap does it all.

So today, I decided to stretch it even further! 6 laps - this is a record of sorts for me. I never used to run 6 laps (3kms) together at a stretch - even when I played Tennis fulltime!

Tomorrow, I am going to crack the 7 laps jinx! Its going to be a personal victory of sorts!

The only problem in this equation is that running around the same track bores me to death! Thats one of the biggest reason to run anticlockwise on the track - while everyone else walks/runs clockwise. lol - watching people as they go past is one good thing that keeps me distracted from the boredom of running on same track again and again (those 6 laps!). - What will happen if I someday decide to run 10 laps!

BTW, this is not all in the fitness schedule - add to it 100 crunches and 500 skipping

–someone wants to get back into shape! lol

This weekend was like a dream - 2 days, 2 movies, 2 major features implemented for ApnaBill, many bugs solved, slept for more than 12 hours at a stretch, played tennis & what not…

ApnaBill.com’s SVN repository is buzzing with code commits. In last two days, I have checked in code which I was expected to write in the coming week - working almost 18 hours over the two day weekend. With just a few more changes, we’ll have a full blown invoicing system - using which, a user can save or email his invoice PDF anytime for any of the coupons bought through ApnaBill.com - all registered users will enjoy this feature.

Sandy is also picking up pace & is almost about to finish his modules. With his code saftely into SVN, we would be just a few modules short of the feature complete stage. The coming two weeks would be dead hectic for me!

ApnaBill.com touched 300 beta signups this weekend. So, if you havn’t - please signup now on ApnaBill.com - our Beta Signups are going on. I can bet, it wont take more that 10 seconds!

After my new haircut (and the new growth of hair), as per Vishal and my dad - my looks best match those of a retarded child - lol

This name gives me a kick - demolishing people’s notions about me is immensely pleasurable!

This retarded child made a fierce comeback today in his pre-quarters match. I was up against AXA (Pune) in my first match at Josh 07. My opponent’s slices were a double edged swords because of bad condition of the only court where the matches were being played. Center part of baseline on one side and complete left part of the other side had absolutely no friction. So any slice hit by my opponent was like - ‘zuk’ ‘zuk’ !!! Top that with a slice hitter’s slow & consistent game! And on the contrary, all my top-spin shots lost their kick due to the court’s surface! I knew - I had a tough game ahead of me!

And on top of that when the umpire announced that the Men’s singles matches are going to be “best of 3 sets” - my hair stood at their ends! (last year, all the matches except finals were best of 11 games!)

Completely unprepared (and without any practicing on the court or stamina to stand for a 3 setter) we started the match.

The opponent looked like he have had some formal training. He knew how to use Wilson racquet’s “W” and “M” when it came to toss for side’n-serve, he knew that he has to practice for overhead shots before the game starts, etc.

It was a completely service game. Each one of us were holding onto our serves and the scoreboard showed “Mayank(2) - AXA dude(3)” in no time. I knew that I have to come up with a strategy - and fast, if I had to defeat this AXA dude. All his returns were just utilizing the speed of my shots - he was only blocking my shots, hitting none. He was hitting shots at almost 60% consistency - while mine was below 25%

Defeating slow players requires a strategy - Either a very fast or a very slow and consistent game is required! And since I had experienced this same scenario when I played (and won) the same tournament last year - I knew what I had to do! Play a faster game than him and increase my consistency (or decrease his!)…

That proved to be the turning point for the match & the game started to change to a rally based game. I broke his serve once in the first set and managed to win the set by 6-4. I knew my strategy was working! Niceeee!!!

Second set was altogether different… he was demoralized, was loosing energy much faster than me, I was more _into_ the game, I had found a way to avoid slippery surfaces of the court, I was returning almost100% of his 1st serves, I had more confidence & I already had one set saftely tucked under my name - in short, I was thinking!. It was an uphill climb for him, while my journey was more like that of a plateau. I just had to continue doing what I was doing + be more consistency with my first serves. I always had an advantage on this cemented court- my first serves were like bazooka shots! Whichever was in, I won that point… so much so, even the top spin second serves were proving deadly!

So the retarded child struck back & won the second set 6-4 in lesser time that what it took him to finish the first set.

It was a good game to start the tournament with. I had not expected such a tough opponent in the first round itself - but in a way, its good as well. Now I have one less tough opponent to worry about. (People might say that i’m scared of tough opponents - dude, this is a game & I am playing to win it! Strategies are required and every chance to take that point is needed at every step of the match! And 3 setter match is no joke!)

In a nutshell, I won my match today because my opponent was even more unprepared than what I was. BUT, this wont be always the case! Someone, somewhere might be preparing hard, with a dream in his eyes to win this tournament this year - ever since I won this tournament last year.

I’ll make sure that this dosn’t happens in the next match - God and luck always favour a prepared mind! I’ll be prepared the next time!

Note 1 - before ending, a big applause for my opponent - he almost brought me to my knees today. Had he been a regular player, I had little chance in front of him - but as I said, its a game & I am playing it to win!

Note 2 - An advice for the organizers - please respect last year rankings! Second year into the tournament and you cannot expect yourself to be ignorant of how lawn tennis draws are made and filled. There was no notion of rankings in the draw & it could have happened that the top two seeds are fighting each other in the very first round! Grr… - consider last year’s rankings!!!

Off to sleep now, I have a doubles lined up for tomorrow and even have to give another kick start to my Mixed Doubles partner - Pooja. More on that later…

From left - Anand, me, Rehan and Murtuza.

Missing from the pic - Aseem, Nitin, Shubro & our very own Siddharth boss.

Thanks to d00d (Subhasis) for the pic

After meeting the lovely family from Goa (Mahesh’s family & relatives) in the morning, the soo silent office environment at 10 AM is pretty daunting!

Grr…. today’s a beautiful Saturday morning & I have to work my ass off!!!

I was hoping to catch up with my (personal) project at home and upgrade my Fedora installation to rawhide (Fedora 8) using Rama’s new 1 Meg fat pipe (Tata Indicom) - but instead I am here at office, trying to finish a rails project… I’m happy and sad - both at the same moment.

Happy because my project would be delivered on time if I spend these two days in office - sad because I had some other plans for the weekend, which will now have to wait!

But the good part - going early to bed yesternight (10 pm) woke me up at 6:30 in the morning - I was able to pull in half an hour of gym in today’s schedule - which was nice! If I can continue this, I would like to add a 15 minutes of jog as well - morning air is very refreshing and roads are far better than the treadmill

Okay - so much so for the morning commentary - time to code now!

Umm, nothing concrete… but I guess the following are in the pipeline

• Pay off all my pending bills - Phone, internet, credit card, etc
• Clear all the pending debts & be a free man
• Settle monetary accounts with my roomy’s (Tyronne, Subu, Rahul)
• Finish off Ruby on Rails chapter which is still hanging in the air
• If time permits (or on Saturday), get a new rear view mirror for my bike - a long pending update!
• Watch Harry Potter on friday night - Rama has already booked the tickets - i’m a noob in HP’s world, this is the first HP movie i’m going to watch - lol
• Attending office is an obvious task

Oh yes, Anna has just uploaded the pics from Ratish’s birthday - find them all here. Some of the memorable ones…

Meet Ratish, our B’day boy!

The yummy, eggless cake - which was cut into innumerable pieces hehe

The gang! From left - Ravi, Anna, Ratish (on phone), Bijith & Rama

& ofcourse, how can I miss myself from the photo shoot :D

Made for each other - hahahaha hehe - look at that - aww… Ravi & Ratish

PS: Just an update - my feet are almost perfect now - after Sunday night’s fall from the stairs. The crepe bandages are gone, pain has vanished & the dudes are getting back into shape with passing time. Though the docs have suggested to keep them on an elevated position while sleeping -maybe just to ease the blood circulation & stuff - tech medic stuff… whoa!

When I went to Ruby Hall Hospital that night, from what I saw in the Casualty ward - really made me believe that since God couldnt be visible to everyone, everywhere, he made doctors! The way these guys work & with such tireless patience - is beyond appreciation. Always ready to help every other patient that comes to them. Really, Hats off for them!

Ratish, I owe you a big one! Had you not been there on Sunday night - taking me to the hospital at 12 midnight, I wouldnt have gauged the actual extent of damage (which luckily was very superficial). Thanks a ton dude - you guys are a family away from my family

Alloo Gobi is soo passe… Fried Rice is an IN thing! - specially when its one the very few things I know how to cook

Yummy… the delicacy!

Actually, our maid - Anita - sometimes cooks such bad food that we have to resort to our cooking skills! So meet Mr Maku - the cook!

Its almost every weekend that we convert our rice to fried rice… lol

Victory after all… managed to cook a bowl full of fried rice…

& the audience for tonight - for our lovely cooking skills… though Manish had none & Rama (sitting) just tasted it - he wasnt hungry…

Ravi - we saw, we cooked, we conquered - them together!

& finally presenting - DOTM - Dude of the Month!

Anna - the guy who can sit on his bean bag for hours together without getting up even once in full one day - not even to piss! Gawd - he’s crazy! & this new game of his is making him go even more crazier! God - puhleeze dont make any more good games! hahahaha

AFAIR, its been more than 6 months since I had a haircut… last remembered, I visited the babrber in Mundhwa - & that was wayyy back, even before I came to stay with D-25

So this weekend, Me & Rama finally headed to the barber’s & managed to get the trim!

Then… - they perfectly qualified for a pony tail… infact I even sported one for a couple of days before geting tired of managing it everytime… boy! - that was a huge task in itself!

Better… The length’s been shortened a bit - from my chin length to my nose, but still sporting long(ish) hair… (pictures taken @ the barber’s shop!)

As usual - the larger versions are at my Zoto
…thanks to Rama for the pictures