Premshree's (品速力) Personal Weblog

Was in New York couple of weeks ago to meet friends, etc. Sometimes I feel like I should just move there, but I don't want to work for Yahoo! in that case. (That'd be like working for PWC in San Francisco.) Oh well, we'll see.

This was shot from the top of the Rockefeller Center (or Top of the Rock). I highly recommend it if you want fantastic views of the New York City skyline. Views from the Empire State are nice, but not as good as the Rock; also, there is practically *no* line to get on top; and, of course, you actually get to see the Empire State. :-)

More pictures here.

The long weekend last week was Death Valley. We hadn't planned well, and since it was a long drive, we rented a car -- a hybrid -- sadly from SJC. And I wasn't allowed to drive, apparently, because I need to be _25_ to drive a _hybrid_. WTF.

Fujicolor Superia 100

While I wasn't particularly excited about the freezing weather, I'd imagine it's much better than being there during the summer. The most fun part was hiking the sand dunes. More pictures here.

Krunal and I ended up doing a Vegas/SoCal road trip the week leading up to New Year's. Nothing was planned -- the only thing we knew we were doing once he got here from Boston was Vegas. After a couple of days in the city, we started looking for rental cars. Everyone was sold out, and when available, regulation cars were at like 90-100 a day. I called good 'ol Mountain View Avis; they had a car. We head there next day (fuck, it's nuts to commute down south without a car) and Mr. Anil says, "I'll give you a Mustang. Convertible. 29." Gotta love the guy.

So we started off for Vegas. Things were good. I drove more of the California part because in Nevada it had to be Krunal all the way. After having dinner (at some Denny's) we continued down I-15S. Krunal suddenly realizes we're running out of gas! The friggin' indicator was fux0red! Anyway, we couldn't do much so we kept driving for a bit (that bit ended up being more than 15 miles) in hopes of finding a gas station. No luck, so we moved to the right-most lane. The car stops. Wouldn't start. Fuck. Quickly put the parking lights on, and later pushed the car more to the right (the darn thing kept shaking when a truck would go by). Anyway, so we're fucked. Called NHP, but they said they needed a mile marker and it was waaay cold (less than -5° C) for any of us to go figure. Called Avis. Their Vegas location was closed and the woman who answered wouldn't help us any other way. Called again, and now they'd just hang up. (They'd say "hello" exactly twice and then just hang up.) Bastards. We called another Avis location (I think) and explained our situation. She was extremely helpful. She managed to connect us to a towing service, who was supposed to bring us gas. The guy later called us to find out where we exactly were. We managed to give him directions using the GPS (15 miles away from exit 31 or some shit on I-15S; at this point we were about 20 miles from the strip). Anyway, after maybe a couple of hours he came, without fuel -- the gas station that he thought he'd get fuel from was closed. Oh well, so he said he could tow us to the closest gas station which happens to be in the strip. 20 minutes later all we see are lights. We fill up the tank and look for a motel.

Anyway, so that was that. We spent a couple of days in Vegas.

We weren't sure what we wanted to do next, so since Hoover Dam wasn't too far, we headed there.

Traffic was crazy and later I wondered why people even bother coming here. Anyway, next we thought we should head to check out Grand Canyon. Checked maps/GPS and we were on our way. Half way there, we filled up gas in the middle of nowhere in Arizona. It was way late at this time and we were told there's no point going at this time. So then we decided we should head to Santa Monica.

We got to Santa Monica late in the night. Couldn't find a cheap place, so ended up going to Inglewood, close to LAX. Breakfast next day was at the Taco Bell next door -- and I was shocked to see what I saw. The guy told us it's standard-issue LA. We then headed to Venice and later Long Beach. At this point we decided we needed music to be played from the iPhone, so we ended up at some Apple store in Manhattan village to buy the iTrip -- where we learned that the darned thing works only with iPods. Okay. We then headed to Griffith Park in the Hollywood hills to get a view of the LA skyline (not a clear night, sadly.) Later we headed for dinner at some restaurant in Huntington Beach where we were to meet Cathy and Peggy.

We had decided to head out of the area that night, but both of us were extremely tired. So we drove 6 miles to some motel in Beach Blvd. in Anaheim. Later that night Cathy called up saying they wanted to check out SeaWorld in San Diego the next day. That was a good thing, because plans to meet in Vegas had gotten fucked-up. So anyway, they called in the morning saying they were on their way. We left an hour later. So we were in San Diego.

Nice time was had. Later in the night we headed downtown for some coffee for our drive back to San Francisco.

More pictures here.

(I'm glad I ended up writing this. It's been a while since I've written about any of my trips. And that sucks.)

It’s about time I showed some appreciation
For what you skilfully achieve
If you’re not a figment of imagination
Then next time I visit I don’t think I’ll leave

-- I Heart NY by Lea Simpson

While in New York City this time around, I promised myself night shots. Here’s one:

Here’s one in film (Nikon FM10 // Ilford HP5 Plus 400):

More pictures from the city here.

Chennai was HOT (was there for a friend’s wedding). The city feels good, though; it’s got that vibe and all. Calicut was, umm, hot. But nice. bluesmoon has more.

Btw, health’s better.

After having some food at Donau Tower, I took the U1 to Karlsplatz, and then the U4 to Schönbrunn, home to The Schönbrunn Palace, and various other things of interest: a zoo, a public maze, The Gloriette, etc.

I didn’t go inside the palace (12€, I think). Instead, I decided to walk up to the Gloriette. Yes, there’s a café there too; it was closed, though (I think it’s open in summers). This was probably the awesomest (and most romantic) place I’ve visited here. And the view from here is awesome too:

I was feeling hungry at this time, so I looked if there’s any of the recommended restaurants somewhere close. I found Pizzeria Mafiosi off a lane on Mariahilferstraße (and also very close to Westbahnof). Anyway, it was a really long walk, and I was dead tired. I had a mug of beer and a huge pizza. All in 5.7€. Made me realize what suckers the Pizza Hut (and the likes) folks back here are. Anyway, the place is nice, but wasn’t necessarily worth the walk.

I headed back to the hostel, took some rest, and then decided to visit St. Marx Friedhof (St. Marx cemetery). Mozart was buried here. (Beyond St. Marx Friedhof is Zentralfriedhof where Beethooven and other famous artists are buried.) So I took the U3 to Volkstheater, then the U1 to Karlsplatz, and finally tram 71 from Schwarzenbergplatz to St. Marx Friedhof. It was quite late by this time—around 18:00 or so, and so couldn&rsqauo;t enter the cemetery (closes at 17:00).

Now there was a Chris Rea concert at 20:00 at Guglgaße (it’s at another end). I was *way* too tired, so ditched. Wish I had attended.

All pictures from Schönbrunn »

This ends the Vienna series. Hope you’ve enjoyed them. All pictures from Vienna »

I’m hoping to go backpacking around Europe (Amsterdam, Bavaria, Prague, Kraków, Bratislava, Budapest — something like that, I guess) later this year. Let’s see.

After Prater, I took the U1 to Donau city—Vienna DC. This city, on the river Danube, is where many of the offices and newer residential areas have come up. This is the place where all the modern buildings are. In other words, nothing much to see here. But this is where you need to get off to visit the Danube Tower. To get there, get off the station and walk across all the buildings you see. You’ll see the Danube tower in the middle of a huge park.

It’s 165 m high. Entrance is 5.3€. The lift takes about 30 seconds to get you on top. And... there’s a café and restaurant on top. Yeah. I had coffee and Topfenpalatschinken (pancakes filled with sweet cream cheese, served with custard cream and chocolate). The restaurant rotates (it takes 26 minutes for a complete rotation), which means you can sit at one place and get a 360°-view of Vienna.

One can also bungee jump from the tower (probably the only place in Vienna?).

All pictures from Donau city »

The previous night, after having walked quite a bit—from Westbahnof to Otto-Bauer-Gasse (that’s where Rani is)—I realized that this place is probably not very big. So, next day morning I walked all the way from Westbahnof to Naschmarkt (walk on Mariahilferstraße until MuseumsQuartier, turn right and walk towards the Karlsplatz station; again, you’ll know what you’re looking for). The Naschmarkt is a Viennese fruit and vegetable market opened in 1780. There are quite a few (cheap) wine shops, lot of patisseries, and a few cafés on one side.

I walked the length of the place, and then settled for some coffee and a sandwich. (I was looking really hard for this one recommended café, but I couldn’t find the damn place.)

After walking around some more, I took the U1 from Karlsplatz to Praterstern, the home of the 65-meter high Giant Ferris Wheel. The Prater fair is “a Viennese institution”. Too bad I didn’t care to find out whether the place would be open (open during summer only).

Behind this area is a huge park, about 21 km long and 250 m wide.

After a bit, I just walked in some random direction. I found nice colors:

More pictures here and here.

After Stephansdom, I went to the Hofburg Imperial Palace. Looking for the Hofburg Imperial Palace, rather. It’s walking distance. I don’t remember which street I walked through; it won’t be difficult for you to figure out in any case. Maybe you could walk to the Opera, and figure out from there. I didn’t really go inside the palace or anything (I don’t even know if one can go in—it serves as the residence of the President of Austria) but, anyway, the walk to the place is fun. Looking at the map now, I think I walked through Heldenplatz. Yeah, positive. (Sidenote: if you need to use a loo, there’s one in here, in Heldenplatz. It’s just outside the entrance to the Imperial Palace. 1€ to use the loo; 0.5€ to use the urinal. Just mentioning this because the loos in stations are not very clean.)

After that I headed to the Kunsthistorisches Museum (entrance: 10€). Again, walking distance. Opposite this is the Naturhistorisches Museum (I didn’t go there). Photography is permitted in most (all?) museums here, but you’re not allowed to use the flash, of course. Here are some pictures:

I then randomly walked across the road and landed at MuseumsQuartier. Just walked around there a bit before heading to a kaffe haus. I took a random street to look for a café. I ended at this small place called Cafe Kafka. The staff didn’t speak English, so I had an interesting time trying to explain what I wanted.

It was about 15:00 or so at this point, so I still had lot of daylight. Again, I walked on a random street, and I saw... snow! Lots of it. I had never seen snow before I came to Vienna.

Later in the night, after taking some rest in the dorm, I headed out to look for one of the recommended bars. Then, halfway, I decided I didn’t want to go to bar alone. While walking back to the hostel, I cam across Rani, an Indian restaurant recommended by folks here. I had no intention to have Indian food, but I wanted to check the place out anyway. People like it! The place is quite cheap (vegetarian curries costs between two and three euros), and servings are large. I mean really large. It’s run by Indians (Punjabis); they’ve been in Vienna for about ten years. (Sidenote: most Indians I saw in Vienna were newspaper vendors from Punjab.) I just had a mug of beer and left.

I’ve uploaded quite a few pictures today. All pictures from Vienna so far »

The most prominent place you’d see on any map of Vienna is Stephansplatz. That’s where St. Stepehen’s cathedral is. Getting there is straightforward: just take the U3 from Westbahnof to Stephansplatz. Come out of the station, and you’ll know what you need to look for.

I had gotten there pretty early—somewhere around 7 AM (yeah!). And that, I think, was a bad idea. There’s not many people around at that time. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I just walked down toward Schwedenplatz, then turned around and walked down toward the Opera. Turned around (again), and walked toward the Opera (again), on Rotenturmstraße. I was hungry at this point (Vienna is known for its cafés, so I decided that I’ll do all my eating only from those places), so I ended up at Daniel Moser. Not a very big café, but it’s good enough, and not very expensive—4.7€ (I think) for a Viennese breakfast.

Now was a good time to go into the cathedral. When I got there, there were loads of people around—a lot of them tourists (mostly from Japan). The cathedral is quite nice; nothing fentabulous, though. I walked around inside the cathedral for a while.

The nice thing about this place is the South Tower. I asked a few folks how to get on top of the tower. There used to be an entrance from inside the cathedral, but for some reason it was closed. Anyway, so you need to enter from outside (exit the cathedral, take a left, walk around).

This is the view from the top (click on the pic for a larger view):

Like you can see, climbing the tower is a rewarding experience.

Pictures from and around Stephansplatz »

Sleeping: If you have loads of money, you probably can stay in a fancy/non-fancy hotel. I didn’t want to spend too much money, so I decided to stay in a hostel. I stayed at Wombat’s Vienna (voted one of the best hostels in the world, etc.; they have one in Munich, and are going to have another one in Vienna sometime in May 2006). The place is awesome. They do their best to make sure you don’t pay more than you need to: 16€/night in a four bed dorm; eat-all-you-can breakfast for 3€, etc. Bed linen, pillows, etc. are provided. Bring your own towel and toiletries.

Wombat’s has a pretty good bar too. It’s almost always packed in the nights.

When you check-in, they give you a map of Vienna that has pointers to places to visit, cafés—kaffe haus, as they are called here, bars/pubs, and dance clubs. Vienna has very good public transport—the underground trains, trams, and buses. Using the map you can easily figure out how to get to one place from another.

Some pictures from Wombat’s »

Getting there: Just follow the instructions mentioned here. It’s at a place called Westbahnof. Trains are available every few minutes, so it’s a good idea to use the S-Bahn and then U3 to get there (3€), instead of using the City Airport Train (8€).

Other things: Instructions/information in most places are available only in German, so it’s a good thing to learn a thing or two. At least, make sure you know common words like ausgang (exit), eingang (entrance), Straße (street), gasse (lane), etc.

Unlike most Europeans (or at least the impression given by books like Lonely Planet), Austrians are a very friendly bunch. (A couple of times, I was actually offered help while I was trying to figure something on the map.)

You can see a *lot* of Vienna in a couple of days, but you’ll end up not seeing a lot too. But I recommend not to plan things to the smallest detail. It’s more fun to not have a direction.

David, who’s studying computer science, and Ori, an army programmer, provided much needed company the day before the conference. Everyone in Israel needs to go the army (at around the age of 18). And that’s why Ori’s there. There’s also this “scheme” where one can finish graduation first, and then join the army; in this case, you have to serve in the army for six years, but the state sponsors your education. David chose that option. Like David said: “At least I can’t get fired for six years.”

Ori’s mom drove the three of us to the conference everyday. We went in quite early the first day, to help with some organizational stuff. The conference was quite nice. I especially enjoyed all of Larry Wall’s talks. (Awesome guy, he is; more in a later post, I think.) My after-conference hours were mostly spent with Mark, who moved here recently from London. Interesting, knowledgeable guy. I learned a lot about Judaism, Israeli politics, etc. We even went to a local political debate in Netanya. Mark took notes of all the stuff that the politicians said.

Interesting thing that happened in Netanya: Mark and I went to a pub at around 22:00. The place was empty, and we were wondering if they’d serve us any beer. The nice lady at the bar told us the place would open around 22:30. How’d that for Bangalore?

Last day of the conference, after most talks were over, I buggered off to Tel Aviv. It’s like any modern city. Has an awesome night life, and all that stuff.

I feel like kicking myself for not staying an extra day so I could visit Jerusalem.

Security at Ben Gurion airport is amazing. I didn’t have much problems while entering—I got my visa stamped in a few minutes. While exiting Israel, I was questioned for about an hour or so. It was difficult explaining what the conference was about. When I tried to tell them about the free software philosophy, they couldn’t believe me; they thought it was some illegal stuff. I also had to show them my presentation material. Really! Anyway, in the end it was all good.

All pictures from Israel »

Oh yeah, Vienna was *love*. Have loads of pictures. Will post them over the week. Sound good?

I have never felt so cold before!

Damn. Weird keyboard, this. Laters

Driving to Netanya from Tel Aviv felt like driving through California. Nights and mornings are chilly; otherwise the weather’s just awesome.

Here are some pictures for now.

So I’m off to Bombay in a bit. The evening will be spent partying with Krunal (who’s in India on vacation). Tomorrow morning all of us (family) fly to Mangalore, from where we’re headed to Mookambika (I realized that I’ve been there before). After that we’ll head to Calicut.

Back in Bangalore Monday morning. Long weekends are fun. :-)

I have been using Kayak for planning an upcoming trip. It’s awesome. It’s got all the Ajaxy goodness you want. Simply brilliant.

And there’s more interesting stuff:

[...]

Perl, of course, is the great do-everything of scripting languages. It is not exactly elegant, but it is supremely powerful in qualified hands.

We've started to do some work which we might normally do in Perl with a newish language called Ruby. I'm all smitten with Ruby: it has much sexier object-oriented structure than perl. I'm thinking of asking her to the prom. Don't tell my wife.

[...]

Blogging is teh suck and all, but I’ve had an interesting day, so I might as well blog

Well, yesterday was spent at office. Now that’d normally not be interesting, but, yesterday happened to be Diwali, dammit! (I realized it was Diwali when I saw lights and heard crackers bursting when I went to the balcony for you-know-what.) Anyway, so I hoped I’d do some shopping — toothbrush and toothpaste shopping (both of which, like every fucking time, I had forgotten to carry). Anyway, the Chinese rock songs followed by Virgin Radio Classic Rock meant that it was too late for me to buy anything. I just wanted to do something, so I went to Lakeview (a really nice snack place on MG road). Had some coffee, roast lamb sandwich, and read some Freakonomics. Went back to office after that and then slept for a long time.

Today, as I said earlier, was interesting, which is why I’m even posting this crap. Well, so I was hoping to get my baggage from Thai today (since it must’ve arrived in the airport the previous night). I called the Thai city office; they said “the baggage has been sent from Bangkok, but that’s all we know.” Basically implying that she doesn’t have information whether my bag mysteriously decided to fly mid-air or something. She gave me the number of the Thai airport office. (Unlike the impression that I might’ve given you about the lady, she had a really sweet voice.) Anyway, nobody’d answer at the airport, so I decided to just go to the airport and get done with. Turns out things are (understandably) not as simple as I thought — my baggage was with the customs, and they require a relieving letter from the Thai folks. Unfortunately, turned out the Thai folks wouldn’t be in until at least 14:00 because they don’t have flights flying on Wednesdays (it was 11:30 at this time). So I headed back to office. I get a call from my uncle that the airport folks had said that my baggage had arrived, etc. I called the airport folks, and turns out I had to go to the Joint Working Group, not the Thai office. So I headed to the airport (again), got my baggage. Next thing to do was to book my flight to Bombay. You know how it feels to carry two bags (one of them over 40 kilograms of... chocolates)? Yeah. So there were just too many folks at the Kingfisher counter, so I decided to screw them and headed over to the Jet counter. Managed to get tickets. My flight was at 18:00. (It was 15:00 at this time.)

I headed to office, packed things I needed to carry, etc. Now the interesting thing is that I didn’t have any of my clothes, which meant that I had to go home for them. So I got a rick guy who agreed to take me to Hennur and then to the airport from there. I reached Hennur at about 17:15. We left at 17:20. Half way the rick runs out of gas. I reached the airport at 18:00. When I get to the counter, I’m told that the flight has been closed. There, I actually missed my flight. This is the first time that this is happening to me. Sure, I’ve been late and all in the past, but missing! — this’d be the first. Well, there’s always a first time and all that jazz.

Anyway, I’ve been booked into the next flight, scheduled for 20:45. Gives me good reason to spend my time composing this thing. I didn’t know the WiFi here isn’t free, btw.

Anyway, The City will make up for all of this shit.

Yahoo Hacks

Yahoo! Hacks was released some days back. I got a copy while I was in Sunnyvale (thanks, Paul!). And there’s one that arrived in Bombay too. Sweet.

(In case you don’t know, and didn’t read Paul’s entry: I contributed two hacks to the book — one on Ruby, and another one on REBOL.)

Go, get yours!

Other things

Hong Kong is sweet. Too bad I couldn’t meet Cecily. After having lunch with some of the Yahoo! HK folks, I headed to the airport. I reached there at about 15:30 or so; my flight was at 16:00. I thought I’d reach easily and all, but gate 70 was like at one end! Anyway, I reached the gate at 16:10 — that’s ten whole minutes past the departure time. Interestingly, there was some problem starting the engine or something, so I made it! :-) Haha.

After I reached Bangalore, I wait at the baggage claim for an hour or so with no sign of my baggage. A few more minutes and there’s no more baggage from that flight (TG 325 from Bangkok). Yay, you couldn’t screw me up better, suckers! I was hoping to fly to Bombay tomorrow (err... that’d be today now), but thanks to all this baggage crap, that won’t happen.

The other day, my dad was telling me something about a domestic airline called “Go Airways” or something like that. Heard of it? Got a URL?

We drove to LA from Sunnyvale with nothing specific to do there in mind. We started Saturday 5:00 and reached LA around 11:00 (as we had expected). When we reached Los Angeles, we spent some time in Santa Monica, and then decided to head to Universal Studios.

These pictures don't do justice to how much fun the place really is — you have to experience it.

We had dinner and headed back to Sunnyvale. We were back Sunday 5:30.

Funny thing is I’ve seen LA, but haven't seen Frisco yet (drove there once and returned, since we couldn’t find parking anywhere). Well, IAC, it was good to see a place with people and life.

I’m off to Sunnyvale Monday, which means, if I get time, and I manage to bug David Black enough, I might be able to make it to RubyConf after all. That’d be really nice. :-)

Say, how does one remain sane in a thirteen hour flight journey?

Update: I won’t be attending RubyConf. Apparently, there’s no space to squeeze me in. :-(