A Matter of Life and Death

Good bye

noreply@blogger.com (Sachin Bharadwaj) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 16:28:58 PST

My dearest friend AH,

You've bereaved me today so badly in this alien country. I reckoned you to be one of my closest friends in this country and how could you desert me out of the blue like this? I cried my heart out for your departure, I have no more tears left, my eyes are dry and sorrow is all I have in my heart.

We both biked together, we both were into photography, we both were fans of jazz music, we loved soujouk wraps at the corner Mediterranean restaurant, we both spoke passionately about our family, we argued about Linux vs. Windows. Who am I gonna continue all this with?

You were supposed to suggest me a good mountain bike, you were supposed to have dosa with my family, you were supposed to share Armenian music, you were supposed to bring me baklava prepared by your mom, we were supposed to travel together, we were supposed to do this year's help portrait in bay area...you've left with me with too many unfulfilled promises!

We became close friends in no time and in no time you left me alone. The office seems deathly silent to me. I miss your jokes, your laughter, your questions, your ideas and most importantly your presence. You don't know the extent of melancholy that you've brought me today.

May your soul rest in peace and may your family have enough strength to cope up through the situation!

Miss you,

Sachin

South Lake Tahoe

noreply@blogger.com (Sachin Bharadwaj) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 18:02:32 PST

A one day guided tour of San Francisco to Mehar and Anandan turned out to be two days trip to South Lake Tahoe at, quite literally, 11th hour. By 10 in the morning, we were driving up north on SR237. With short breaks for coffee and lunch, it took us a good five hours to reach South Lake Tahoe. The roads get narrow and curvy as we approach closer to the city and the landscape turns rocky and piny. We first stopped at the frozen Sawmill pond at the junction of Sawmill road and Lake Tahoe boulevard. It was a new experience for all of us to walk on the fronzen lake, it was extremely slippery and fun I must say. After few clicks there, we continued on Lake Tahoe blvd till the lake. What surprised and disappointed me was the fact that there was no snow in Tahoe this year. A place known for its snow resorts didn't have any snow except for a bit of it on mountain tops.

The lake looked splendid in the evening light - shimmering crystal blue waters, clear blue skies with fleecy clouds at horizon, mountains at the perhipery, flying gulls and wading ducks. We then head to a different part of the lake (behind Harvey casino) which gave a feeling of beach with gold coloured sand and tourist friendly setting with benches and swings and restaurants. We also stopped by at Harvey's casino to get a feel of a casino and it was opulent with colourful flashing lights and people busy losing their money. The casino is huge and it houses various steak houses and bars and also Hard Rock Cafe, South Lake Branch. I made one interesting observation on Lake Tahoe blvd - Stateline avenue demarcates California and Nevada states and right on Stateline there are a bunch of casinos on Nevada side!

We checked in at a more humble Best Western Inn, relaxed for a while before heading out for dinner. We walked around in Crescent V shopping center where the boys bought the much needed gloves and cap. Most of the casinos, which they call resorts, offer inexpensive buffets and we chose Montblue resort for our dinner. For $12.95, we got awesome food which consisted of varities of steaks, pastas, sushis, noodles, tacos, soups and desserts all after waiting for 30 minutes in the line. Montbleu casino also was brimming with crowd and the pool side was getting ready for the party which Anandan and Mehar enjoyed as I slept.

Early morning I woke the boys up and drove them to a mountain near Zephyr cove which gave a beautiful vista of the lake, though I couldn't click anything great since I didn't have tripod. It was freezing and our finger tips went numb despite wearing gloves, the heater in the car was such saviour. We then had a heavy continental breakfast at the hotel before checking out. We wanted to check out a ski-resort before leaving Tahoe, we took SR207 off Lake Tahoe blvd and drove up all the way until we found a man made ski-stretch while we somewhere near Quaking Aspen avenue. The guy in the parking told us that it was overcrowded today and we may have to wait for hours before we get a chance to ski. We drove all the way upto Emerald bay which offers some terrific views of the lake with an island in the middle of emerald coloured lake. We then head back straight to San Francisco for the guided tour, with me being the guide. Stay tuned for SF photos...

South CA

noreply@blogger.com (Sachin Bharadwaj) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 22:38:27 PST

After a heavy and healthy breakfast at Days Inn, we walked around the colonial downtown of San Luis Obispo after which we went to this tiny little Danish town of Solvang in Santa Barbara county. Solvang takes you straight to Denmark with its beautiful Danish provincial style buildings and windmills. The city is so small that it could be traversed by foot in 20 minutes, another option is a tourist bus pulled by two mighty horses. The town has beautiful restaurants, coffee houses, bakeries, antique stores et.al. with no traces of contemporary architecture.

From Solvang, our next destination was Santa Barbara to catch up with Ajit and Deepa for lunch. We had sumptuous Mexican meal at State street in downtown and walked up to waterfront and ambled around the beach for few hours. The beach isn't that great, it's got quite a long pier on one side and a huge wharf on the other. Post sunset, we head straight to Long Beach, checked in, had dinner and crashed.

The plan for the day was Catalina island, which is about an hour long sail from Long Beach by Catalina express ferry which costs $70 two ways. We disembarked at Avalon and explored the island for a while by foot and hiked up all the way upto The Inn on Mt. Ada from which there was a panoramic view of the beach and the island. Yet another meal at Mexican restaurant was delicious albeit a bit expensive. After a futile attempt of semi-submarine ride or kayaking, we hired a golf car and drove along the other side of the city where the casino was located. We returned by 6'O clock cruise to Long Beach.

CA1 - Scenic Route

noreply@blogger.com (Sachin Bharadwaj) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 21:07:15 PST

The first day of our four days long vacation to south California was spent pretty much on CA1 scenic route. I had to push myself hard and the rest of them harder to start the journey by 4 in the morning, finally we hit the road by 4:30 which wasn't too bad. By the time the first rays of sun reached the earth, we were close to Monterey, one of my favourite little towns. We just took a small stroll along the beach and continued to 17 mile drive. We took a stop at Spanish bay and all other major landmarks on 17 mile drive. Ravi who was griping about starting early realized it was worth it when we drove on 17 mile drive, the tender auriferous sunshine greatly beautified the waves and thin layer of fog worked perfectly well for my photography. We stopped at Bixby bridge at Big Sur for few clicks and continued almost till Gorda by the sea, where we stopped at one of the view points for our lunch. The menu consisted ofPuliogre, gulab jamoon and Kerala mixture. We then stopped at Piedras Blancas elephant seal sighting center. The beach was crowded by a pack of elephant seals for birthing and breeding. The males were gigantic and lazy and they made occasional loud roar. There were calves suckling their mothers and there were other immobile ones which kept tossing sand on themselves. We felt blessed to witness such a rare winter drama of elephant seals. We then spent some time guzzling beer at Hearst state beach picnic spot. The beach has a long wide pier and is overlooked by Hearst's castle. We also ambled in some random village on the outskirts of San Luis Obispo and got to see opulent orange sunset before crashing in at Days Inn, San Luis Obispo city.

Eclipse at Golden Gate

noreply@blogger.com (Sachin Bharadwaj) — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 19:21:26 PST

When Sankar told me on Friday evening that they were planning to shoot the lunar eclipse at San Francisco at 4 in the morning, the very first idea that struck me was "Why the hell is he inviting me?" but I gave him an impromptu response "Yeah sure, I'll join you guys". I'll tell you what it means - Waking up at 2:30AM, driving for an hour to reach San Francisco (though he drove this time) with the risk of whole city being clad with dense fog, standing somewhere along the bay in the dark exposing yourself completely to the freezing winds of the Pacific, exchanging views on how to shoot and finally shooting the eclipse. When I substitute the previous sentence with "sleeping warm in the hotel and waking up to a sunny morning with hot breakfast", it was real tough for me to go for the former option though I was at the verge of choosing the latter.

The beauty of going with seasoned landscape photographers is their preparation. They knew the fog forecast, they knew where the spectacle was gonna take place with respect to Golden Gate, they knew where to mount their tripods and cover the spectacle from and they had precise idea as to how their shots should look. Precisely at 4AM, we were at the parking of Crissy Field Center. We reached the bay front without much difficulty and we initially felt the weather wasn't that bad either. After a bit of scouting, we settled down at the beach front and mounted our cameras on tripods and waited till 4:45AM, the time when the eclipse was to start.

Compared to the other photographers with whom I went (Sankar, Raja and Anand) my gear was the most primitive and most basic. I shot with my good old 20D with 17-40/4L and 70-200/4L mounted on my Manfrotto tripod. I didn't have remote release and I was running low on battery to use self-timer. I then decided, if I don't have good photos...WTF...I'm witnessing one of the rarer nature's phenomenon with Golden Gate in the foreground. Finally the eclipse set in at 4:45AM and I started shooting, I felt a bit disappointed. 70-200 was a bit too short to shoot such an event and 17-40 blew out the eclipse completely. It was a tricky affair to capture the penumbra initially - try to get the penumbra the moon surface would wash out; try to get the details on the moon would result in no penumbra. Add to the disappointment is the biting cold winds which made my fingers ache despite the gloves. Things started looking slightly better in terms of photography after 6AM when the twilight of the dawn made the rosy moon look beautiful. The sunrise also painted beautiful clouds in the east.

By the end of it, I was wholeheartedly grateful for Sankar for inviting and glad about me that I pushed myself out of the bed in the cold to make it to the event. I haven't got any great shots as such, but it was an amazing experience to witness such a spectacle at one of my favourite landmarks, Golden Gate.

Rodeo Beach

noreply@blogger.com (Sachin Bharadwaj) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 21:54:57 PST

On a nice sunny Sunday afternoon Mr. and Mrs. Ravi, Sundar and myself set out in a gas guzzling Chevy Impala to Rodeo beach in the Marine county, slightly ahead of San Francisco, off 101 highway. Why Rodeo beach? Because I had seen the photographs of the haystack in the beach and I wanted to click them. We followed this route which was definitely better than driving just on 101. We grabbed few beers in one of the wine stores in SFO. I have this inexplicable excitement when I drive on Golden Gate and this time was no exception. We had to pass through a single lane tunnel which has a 5min long stop at each end. The beach has got free parking and clean toilet but there's not a single store around to get even the basics like water. There are hiking and biking trails that lead to some beautiful inaccessible beaches, we took the hiking trail before treading on Rodeo beach. We walked for a while, settled down close to a cliff off the trail and finished 3 large cans of beers accompanied by yummy koDubaLe and ChintamaNi style peanuts.

After beers, we came back to Rodeo beach and I waiting for the sun to go down to shoot haystack. The genius in me suggested the team to walk barefooted on the sand and am thankful to them for not having killed me for that idea...for our feet we felt was cut open and burnt at the same time due to cold and coarse gravel. I had to wait for a while before I could shoot the haystack since I didn't have the GND filter and I so wished I had one at that moment. So finally the sun was down and I could shoot the haystack the way I had seen and here are the results.

Twin Peaks, SFO

noreply@blogger.com (Sachin Bharadwaj) — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 16:03:35 PST

Had been to Twin Peaks in SFO on Friday night with a bunch of my photographer friends to do the cityscape in the night. More about the peaks here. The view of SFO from the top of the peak is breathtaking. Most of SFO's major landmarks are visible from here during the day and some during night. The most brightly lit street on the right third of the photo is Market street, the garland of lights on the right is the Bay bridge and the beautiful Golden Gate can be seen on the left. It was extremely windy and chill when we went, I couldn't take a single shot using my 70-200 lens mounted on tripod due to winds. I had to actually place it on the wall and shoot. Here are few of my photographs, the first and the third photo were shot with 17-40/4L and the second and the fourth were shot using 70-200/4L all in bulb mode. It was actually hard to shoot, I didn't have a remote release, I had to keep the shutter button clicked by my finger for more than a minute to get the exposure.

Shanghai shots

noreply@blogger.com (Sachin Bharadwaj) — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 18:09:00 PST

After nearly 4 long years of gap, I felt glad to be back in Asia's fastest growing city - Shanghai. I lived at my in-laws place in Baoshan which was very far from downtown Pudong/Puxi district, but I got a chance to visit Lujiazui area once and click few pictures. I also visited Shanghai glass museum in Baoshan and also a nearby park. Here are few pictures from the trip.

Metallica dance!

noreply@blogger.com (Sachin Bharadwaj) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 05:42:08 PDT

We guzzle a few cans of KF strong before entering the concert, the usual ritual which we've been following for quite sometime now.

The cops stop the vehicles randomly after the concert and smell your mouth, the usual ritual which they've have been following for quite sometime now.

Yesterday both these rituals coincided and we were stopped on Chord road by the cops, right in front of ISKCON temple, on our way back from the concert. P3 who was in the driver's seat rolled down the glass and the cop was rather friendly to him. He came close to his mouth but somehow couldn't sniff the beer which we had guzzled almost four hours ago. He probably felt sorry for having stopped us and asked P3 "Yen saar kudidhe bari dance nodkond bandra?" (What sir! Without drinking you just saw the dance and came eh?)

Metallica in Bangalore!

noreply@blogger.com (Sachin Bharadwaj) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 01:38:48 PDT

The stage was set, the lights were on, the ground was muddy and slushy, the air was impregnated with the sweet smell of Marijuana, the recorded music never seemed to be stopping - Ozzy, Pantera, AC-DC and some new age metal, every now and then outbursts from the crowd to start the show, few stray mortals kept walking on the lit stage once a while. Precisely at 8, the entire arena went dark and the famous "Good, Band and Ugly" soundtrack, "The Ecstasy of Gold" started playing and the crowd went completely frenzy - shouting, devil horning, clapping, yelling, singing along, banging their heads. It was just a foreplay before the start of the act! Within next few minutes "Creeping Death" was belted out by the band which made us wait too long for them. Metallica was finally live and kicking in my very own city - Bangalore!

After their disastrous St. Anger album, there was a big chasm between Metallica and me. I was just hoping that the concert shouldn't comprise of only their latest tracks and thankfully it didn't. There were just two tracks from "Death Magnetic" album in the whole setlist and rest of them were all their classics. The setlist was beautifully crafted with numbers like Fuel, The Memory Remains, For Whom The Bell Tolls, Fade to Black, One, Nothing else matters, Sanitarium, Enter Sandman, One, Master of Puppets, Seek and Destroy etc. Times of India newspaper journalist somehow heard the track Wherever I May Roam in his reveries and falsely reported that they played that track!

The energy of the crowd, which was as vast as an ocean (numbered about 40000), never seemed to diminish till the fag end of the concert and that, I'm sure, was a very big surprise for James Hetfield which was evident from his expression when the crowd hummed the extended backing vocals in The Memory Remains. He was absolutely stupefied and remained awestruck for a while with both his hands off the guitar. Kirk Hammet's solo was super mellifluous and it beautifully faded into Nothing Else Matters. Fade To Black was a total surprise and very welcoming. Roberto Trujillo's bass was brilliant and Lars Ulrich never seem to get old. I so wanted them to play Four Horsemen and see Ulrich perform his drum stunt running around the stage! Nevertheless I was happy with whatever we were bestowed upon by the Gods of Metal whom we grew up listening to. The concert went on for almost two and half hours with three classic tracks in the encore (Am I Evil?, Battery and Seek and Destroy). Ulrich ended the concert with a positive note by promising the fans to return to Bangalore again. Metallica's name was definitely missing from the list of concerts that I've been to - Iron Maiden, Megadeth, Opeth, Black Sabbath - to name a few, now the list is complete. Whatever now gets added are just the sides are just a bonus.

Better luck Delhi! Beef up your security next time!

The complete set list is here:
1.     Creeping Death
2.     For Whom the Bell Tolls
3.     Fuel
4.     Ride the Lightning
5.     Fade to Black
6.     Cyanide
7.     The Memory Remains
8.     Welcome Home (Sanitarium)
9.     Sad But True
10.     All Nightmare Long
11.     One
12.     Master of Puppets
13.     Blackened
14.     Nothing Else Matters
15.     Enter Sandman
Encore
16.     Am I Evil?
17.     Battery
18.     Seek & Destroy

Diwali 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Sachin Bharadwaj) — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 03:10:09 PDT

Few pictures from this year's Diwali celebration. Most of the ground level shots were shot using 50/1.8 while the sky ones were shot using 70-200/4L. Also I've changed the layout of my blog to fit in 1024 pix wide photos to have a bigger and better view. Let me know if you guys like it

Karanataka news brief

noreply@blogger.com (Sachin Bharadwaj) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 00:08:12 PDT

Some of the recent news brief from my state:

Deve Gowda sheds crocodile tears because Ashok Kheny built NICE road around Bangalore. His futile efforts to empathize with the farmers who supposedly lost their land looked funny.
Reddy brothers got arrested. CBI raided Janardhan Reddy's palace in Bellary that had few dozens of diamond studded gold bangles, Rs. 40 crore cash, gold plated phone, 18 crore worth chopper, 10 crore worth DC designed Volvo bus, 8 crore worth Rolce Royce, golden throne and whole bunch of other golden sundries at his place. He's leading a humble life now sleeping on straw-mat and eating prison's uppittu for breakfast.
Yeddy got arrested too. Surprisingly Yeddy, who is usually good at crying, didn't cry but bore a smiling face while surrendering to police.
Actor Darshan beats up his wife and holds his son at gunpoint for which he was put behind the bars. Since he couldn't promote his movie "Sarathi" at the time of release (for he was in the prison), he blocked traffic in Majestic area today to get blessings of God and his fans as a part of promotion. News channels broadcasted his arrest drama so long that it outran all his movie length put together.
HD Kumaraswamy was the only smart-ass to save his head from Lokayuktha/CBI despite owning the whole of Kumaraswamy layout. Kudos to you Mr. KS!
Corporators are shit scared in Bangalore these days after a couple of them were assassinated in the city.
A new trend is observed in the state - the moment a VIP gets arrested all his hidden diseases surface and he is immediately moved from prison to infirmary.
The most lucrative business in the state currently is to start a news channel which telecasts 24/7 sensational drama and entertainment.
Namma metro inauguration is on 20th October, the very first line from MG Road to Bayyappanana Halli. Finally it happened! People are requested not to throw trash and spit inside the train.
BBMP is the most animal friendly organizations on this planet and has put PETA, PFA to shame by their animal friendly decision they took in the light of metro inauguration. They net all the stray dogs in MG road area for a smooth inaugural ceremony on 19th October and they're gonna let them free on MG road on 21st October!
Raichur is in a pathetic state. 2 of the 4 thermal towers have stopped functioning which has resulted in unscheduled power cuts and load shedding in the city.
Kids in Raichur district are dying out of malnutrition almost on the scale of underdeveloped African countries. Nobody has bothered about it yet.
Average number of pot holes in Bangalore still remains a constant. Old ones are filled and new ones have just sprouted out.
Metro work in the rest of the city has disrupted the lives of everyday commuters with everyday traffic jams in the city.
The increased fuel prices has resulted in increase in pollution levels in Bangalore. Auto drivers who used to mix petrol to kerosene in 75-25 ratio have just swapped it and almost all autos spit out venomous white smoke.
Homestays around Bangalore are making quite a business since the oblivious IT crowd's weekend is pretty much spent there.
The traffic police just won't give a damn to control the traffic, he's just waiting at the signal constantly praying that someone makes a mistake and he can pocket his quick buck.

Ninn camera andre kelbeka???

noreply@blogger.com (Sachin Bharadwaj) — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 07:40:56 PDT

As a photographer, quite often, you get this appreciation which is more derisive than cordial - "Amazing photograph, what camera did you use?"

The immediate and appropriate reaction for it would be to swirl your camera and knock the person down whoever dare to ask that question. Yes it's as ridiculous as asking your mother "The food's so delicious what vessel did you use?" or asking painter "Your painting's great, what paint did you use?" or an architect "The building's great, what bricks did you use?"

So I came across this person who saw the album containing my son's photographs and he liked the photographs. The very fact that he liked the photographs was satisfying enough for me, but he didn't stop it there. He felt the desperate need to appreciate my work verbally and blurted out, "ನಿನ್ ಕ್ಯಾಮೆರ ಅಂದ್ರೆ ಕೇಳ್ಬೇಕ?" (Your camera means unquestionable!).

It's worse than asking "Amazing photograph, what camera did you use?". It's as thought telling your mom "Your vessels make delicious food!" and the likes... He didn't even know what camera I actually use to shoot those pictures. He spoke as though I had no role to play in those photographs...huh! As though the camera magically composed, set the exposure, focused and shot the photograph! I was so tempted to give my camera to him and ask him to shoot but I resisted and gave him a lame smile since he was elder to me by two generations.

Maze of my mind

noreply@blogger.com (Sachin Bharadwaj) — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 07:04:38 PDT

I gifted myself a Parker fountain pen recently, that inexpensive student class pen. I love scribbling - worthless words, technical crap, pseudo code, geometrical figures, stupid thoughts and mindless ramblings. I have a dream of writing a novel with a fountain pen and I wish somebody gifts me a Sheaffer or an Omas pen someday. Buying this pen had one creative effect on me, I penned down my very first poem and here I'm publishing it...it talks about the constant friction between the heart and the mind. Please do share your thoughts on it...

Maze of my mind

As I dig throught the labyrinth of my mind
With the hope of peace I yearn to find
The dirt and dust has made me blind
And left me deprived of love and kind

I start with good and drift to evil
I often wonder if its heart, the devil
Oh no she's too servile to be so vile
And she's the one who brings me smile

The maze of mind is infinitely consuming

Leaving me all devoid of feeling
Heart's lost, she needs some leading
To find the way out without much bleeding

This maze someday I hope to obliterate
Before it devours my heart, too late
And wish for better and beautiful fate
Restore good heart to her happier state

Delhi Belly

noreply@blogger.com (Sachin Bharadwaj) — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 09:56:39 PDT

Went to New Delhi after many years and I must say I just loved it. The weather wasn't infernal, metro was too convenient, Chandni Chowk and Pahar Ganj were bustling with people, enjoyed good food and wine, the visa work was fruitful. One thing that was missing was my camera, I carried my wife's cute-little-pink camera which saved a lot of of burden for me. I could squeeze in Lotus temple, Chandni Chowk, Qutub Minar in whatever little time I had. Have clicked few photographs and here they are...all are SOOC. Since there was no raw shooting option in Canon SD1100IS, I didn't particularly feel like editing them in Lightroom. So here they are:

How a coffee screwed my plan

noreply@blogger.com (Sachin Bharadwaj) — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 08:06:14 PDT

On my second day in New Delhi when I woke up, I decided that the day was gonna be a low budget day - "I'm gonna have all the fun but by shelling out least money, just like strict backpackers do", I told myself. I was able to live up to it to a great extent and here is how my day went:

Breakfast of two alu parathas at PaharGunj: Rs. 20

Roadside tea: Rs. 5

Metro ticket to Lotus temple: Rs. 18

Metro ticket to Chandni Chowk: Rs. 18

Lassi (big): Rs. 20

Kulfi: Rs 10

Rajma-chawal at Mirchi Lal's: Rs. 10

Mishti Doi at Annapurna Bhandar: Rs. 18

Roadside dahi bhalle: Rs. 15

Gulab jamoon prashad: Free

Metro ticket to Qutub Minar: Rs. 19

Collective taxi from metro station to Qutub Minar and back: Rs. 20

Metro ticket to New Delhi Railway station: Rs. 19

Roadside paratha and curry: Rs.10

Roadside tea: Rs. 5

Roadside chickpea masala: Rs. 10

Roadside peanuts: Rs. 10

Airport express metro: Rs. 80 (No other cheaper option)

I reached airport almost two and half hours before my flight, the exhaustion of the day made me sleepy and I didn't want to fall asleep and miss my flight. Coffee looked very inviting but the least expensive cappuccino was about Rs. 80 and I thought about it for a while if I really wanna have it and obliterate the "low budget day" I so obediently followed since morning. But coffee looked like a thick blanket on a cold night, chilled beer on a sunny afternoon - it was too hard to resist. I thought it wasn't too much of a splurge for a good coffee and I went to the counter. "One cappuccino please, extra hot and strong", I said. Without saying any word, he placed the order and gave me the bill.

It was Rs. 160!!!

My heart just lacerated! I had seen historic monuments, eaten most sumptuous food and drank most delicious tea for not more than Rs. 40 and now I had to pay Rs. 160 for a coffee! I also had emptied a bottle of KF Premium for Rs. 110 in a local bar. All the memories of Rs. 5-15 coffee at SLV/Brahmin's coffee bar/Vidharthibhavan haunted me. Such a beautiful budgeted backpackers day turned out to be a big ridicule just because of a coffee!

"Your menu says Rs.80 but you're charging me just the double of it...is it like 100% blow-up offer you guys have?", I asked with a wicked smirk.
"No sir, we don't have the 'small size' you asked for, we just have regular which costs Rs. 105. Then you asked us to make it extra strong, add another espresso shot to it worth Rs. 39 plus taxes sir. That's how it's Rs. 160 sir!"

I was too tired to ask him why the hell didn't he inform me before ordering it. "You should have actually given me a large one and charged me Rs. 250!", I told him, grabbed my coffee and walked off!

Other coffee related article of mine: Espresso Americano

Euphony...Live in Concert

noreply@blogger.com (Sachin Bharadwaj) — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 10:57:58 PDT

eu·pho·ny

[yoo-fuh-nee]

–noun

agreeableness of sound; pleasing effect to the ear,

especially a pleasant sounding or harmonious

combination or succession of words

I feel extremely proud to present my friend and running partner Bharath's band, Euphony on my blog. I was invited to their debut performance and I must say that they just lived up to the definition of the word as above. Their music was indeed very agreeable and pleasing with beautiful classical touch to all their songs both by mellifluous sounds of Santoor and brilliant vocals by Koushik and Bharath. The concert was held in K.H. Kalasouda in Hanumantnagar, Bangalore. I wish the band a great future.

The band line up was:

Koushik Aithal on vocals

Bharath BJ on vocals and synthesizer

Sandip Chatterjee on santoor

Ashwin on keyboards

Sanjoy Banerjee on tabla

Pramath Kiran on drums

SFO again

noreply@blogger.com (Sachin Bharadwaj) — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 04:17:18 PDT

Here are few more shots from San Francisco. This time no Golden Gate or Pier 39 or Alcatraz or Lombard street but it's gonna be Seven sisters (seven beautiful colourful Victorian buildings) and trams and cars. All photos were edited using Adobe Lightroom 3.0 on Windows XP.

Napa and Sonoma

noreply@blogger.com (Sachin Bharadwaj) — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 03:05:28 PDT

Napa valley in California is reputed for its great wines and I am definitely convinced by that fact after tasting some of the most delicious wines grown in the region. Napa was about an hour's drive from Sunnyvale, to avoid wicked traffic of San Francisco we chose to 680, reached Vallejo and reached Napa. We drove through some beautiful landscapes to reach Aretsa vineyards which offered wine tasting and tours, we settled to just wine tasting and that was the first time I relished some of the very rich Pinot Noirs, Chardonnays, Merlots, and Cabernet Sauvignons of the region. The wine tasting costs $15 per person. The landscape was great outside for few clicks, it was lunch time by then. We drove down to Sonoma town a beautiful Mexicanesque town with a zocalo and historical buildings turned into fine dine restaurants around it. After a delicious lunch at Swiss hotel, we took a walk in the beautiful neighbourhood around the central square and started driving towards SF.

Enroute we saw the exit to Muir woods and Stinson beach on CA1, we diverted towards them and I thoroughly enjoyed the drive. Unfortunately it was a super overcast day on CA1 and I'm not posting any photos of the drive.

17 mile drive

noreply@blogger.com (Sachin Bharadwaj) — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 07:21:51 PDT

I knew about CA1 highway that runs along the Pacific coast and I finally got a chance to drive a part of it - Monterey and 17 Mile Drive. From Sunnyvale it was an easy drive, take 101-South and keep driving south until you see the Monterey peninsula ramp continue driving along the coast. Anyway I'm not giving precise directions to get there, Google maps and GPS serve that purpose better.

We started early on a Saturday morning, by 7:30 we were almost out of Sunnyvale city limits, the weather was pleasantly cool and misty. I reckoned it to be a bad day for photography and it indeed was except for the evening we spent in Monterey downtown. The first break we took was at the entrance of Monterey city for a desperate coffee in one of the gas stations. We also ambled around the beach just on the other side of the road, the water was freezing cold. Except for few dogs that were getting trained to fetch the ball in sea not a soul entered the water. The shoreline had naturally decorated by beautifully eroded stones. The garden overlooking the beach was crowded by bikers and joggers.

We then continued to Ocean avenue, a picturesque drive along the ocean where we found lazy seals on the beach. It was protected area and it was hard to shoot from behind the fence, the light was bad for shooting as such. We stopped at a couple of place on Ocean avenue before we turned to Monterey downtown, it was a lovely little town with colourful buildings that brought back to me memoirs of Mexican towns I have visited. We then looked for 17 mile drive directions and with few minutes were at the toll gate.

17 mile drive is a private property with an entry fee of $9.50 per car (free for bikes). The drive passes along the great Pacific ocean with numerous stopover points. It starts off with Spanish bay, a calm and elegant beach with soft sand. We wet out feet in the icy cold waters of the beach, guzzled a chilled clamato beer and continued. We stopped at almost every point of interest marked like Lone Cypress tree, Point Joe, Bird Island etc. At Bird Island point we broke for lunch on one of the picnic benches along the sea side and devoured Puliogare, chips and carrot salad that I had prepared and packed to save money.

We exit 17 mile journey after Pebble beach and drove all the way till Caramel by the sea. We stopped on one of the roadside beaches and guzzled another beer and returned from there to Monterey city downtown. We walked around Canary Row, Fisherman's wharf, Montery bay aquarium sipping coffee and clicking pictures. It was a super pleasant sunny evening to endlessly amble around. The view of the sea from the pier is just splendid with various fauna and vivid hues of the water. We were done with the city in like an hour's time and we started our return journey with a useless stopover at Gilroy.

One important tip: Start late to 17 mile drive since most mornings will be misty and hazy, early evenings seem to be the best time for photographing.

Baylands Park, Sunnyvale

noreply@blogger.com (Sachin Bharadwaj) — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 10:56:21 PDT

Baylands Park is located in Sunnyvale at the intersection of Muffett park drive and Caribbean drive. It's a great place for runners for its beautiful trails and also for zoologists for its rare fauna of the protected seasonal wetlands. As you walk along the trails you can see countless burrows dug by the rodents and you find information about the rare species in their wetland habitat. The park's also got picnic spots with grills and tables, recreational area and stretches of lawn. Here are few photographs from the park:

Santa Cruz

noreply@blogger.com (Sachin Bharadwaj) — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 11:13:57 PDT

Went to Santa Cruz beach a weekend ago and here are few photographs. The beach was as expected a crowded one with families of all ethnicity I could imagine - there were Latinos, Asians, African Americans, Caucasians, Middle easterners etc. The beach was bustling with life both on sand and on Board Walk, an ocean front amusement park having roller coasters and carousels and food vendors and coffee houses and souvenir sellers and game centers and what not! The beach was crowded with flocks of seagulls and pelicans as well. The day was bright and sunny but the water was super cold, I enjoyed the dip and swim in the sea thoroughly.

I couldn't see any great landscape shot, so I chose shooting people and capturing the essence of the beach. All photographs were touched using Adobe LightRoom.

Thanks again to Smitha and Mrudul for planning this trip.

SFO

noreply@blogger.com (Sachin Bharadwaj) — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 23:19:45 PDT

I always wanted to visit two cities in the US and am done with one of them, NYC is yet to be done. Am not gonna be wordy in this article since SFO doesn't require any introduction unlike places like Baihaba or Jame or Likabali. All I would say is Golden Gate is the most beautiful man made structure I've ever seen and is an eternal gift to the photographers. SFO is definitely the most beautiful city that I've ever visited - extreme graident roads, posh and colourful houses, the Alcatraz island, summer fog, the mountains and the awe inspiring Golden gate connecting them, the downtown skyline, the blue bay, Lombard street meanders, Pier 39, the China town, the bustling Fisherman's wharf, the magnificent Palace of fine arts...

SFO Skyline

Alcatraz

The gradient of Lombard street

View of Alcatraz from the peak of Lombard Street

The famous tramway of SFO

Lombard street meanders

Highly vignetted shot of Golden Gate

Golden Gate

Lines and angles of Golden Gate

Golden Gate with surrounding flora

Geometry of Golden Gate

Sailboat on SFO bay

Graffiti on Golden Gate

Bay and the bridge

The Gorgeous Golden Gate

Candid shot on bridge

Bridge from the parking

Golden triangle

Diameter of he Golden Gate cable

SFO night light shot by camera suspending

Weeping ladies at Palace of Fine arts

Pillars at the Palace of Fine Arts

Reliefs at Palace of Fine Arts

Rotunda at the Palace of Fine Arts

An unknown building in SFO

Dragon in China Town, SFO

Poster at Teatro ZinZanni

Pedicabs near Pier 39

SF Tram in Pier area

Still boats in the pier

Fruitseller in Pier 39

Resting boats

Ani in carousal in Pier 39

Golden Gate from Pier 39

Alcatraz from Pier 39

Interesting tour guides

Bar that opens at 6AM

Market street to Fisherman Wharf tram

Cruisers in Fisherman's wharf

SF Kites

Pier 39

Rule breakers

Chronology problem

noreply@blogger.com (Sachin Bharadwaj) — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 21:51:13 PDT

Airtel's got some serious chronology problems, look at the two messages I received this morning (check the time stamps).

Message from 121

07-07-2011 8:32AM

We wish to confirm the receipt of your payment for Rs. 276.85.  Please note cheque/ECS payments are subject to realization.  View/Pay your bills at www.airtel.in

---------------------------------------------------------------

Message from 121

07-07-2011 9:47AM

Your Airtel Mobile Bill dated 03-Jul-2011 for Rs. 276.85 has been generated.  It will reach you by 14-Jul-2011.  Due date: 21-Jul-2011. Dial *121*13# for bill details.

Vim basics

noreply@blogger.com (Sachin Bharadwaj) — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 04:31:14 PDT

The drive for this article is mainly my developer teammates who keep struggling to edit and browse code in Linux environment, everybody wants a Linux version of Source Insight but unfortunately it's not there. So in this article I'm gonna key in some basic commands that I typically use during my code analysis / development / browsing. Of course there are innumerable tutorials on the net to browse through, this one's limited to commands that I use...

Code browsing:

For effective code browsing, I use combination of vim, ctags and cscope. Goto the top level source tree and execute the following commands to create the symbol database.

$ cd kernel

$ ctags -RV * && ocs

The above commands take a while depending on the size of your project and create 3 files: tags (contain the tags which vim will use to jump to), cscope.out and cscope.tmpls (these two files will contain cross references to symbols which cscope will use to find a particular symbol) which you don't need to worry about. It'll be used by vim and cscope and anyway cleaned during clean build. I usually use two terminals when I'm browsing the code, one always runs cscope and the other vim.

To open a particular file do this from the directory where you created the tag file.

$ vim arch/arm/mach-omap2/control.c

ctrl+] : Jump to definition of a particular function or a macro or a symbol, place the cursor on that press.

:tsel : If you have multiple definitions of the same symbol, you this command to choose the symbol of your interest.

ctrl+t : Will navigate you back to the place where you jumped to a particular symbol

gf : If you want to jump to a particular file (e.g. a header file), place the cursor on that line and press gf to switch to that file.

ctrl+6 : Will return you back to the file from where you jumped to using gf.

:buffers : If you have made multiple jumps using gf, this command will list you all the buffers (locations).

:buf n : With the list of buffers from the above command, you can jump to a particular buffer (location) using this command. n is the number which the above command displays.

/string : Forward search a string

?string : Reverse search a string

n/N : Find next (find again) in the forward/reverse direction

* : When you keep the cursor on a particular word and press asterisk (*) it finds the next instance of the string.

# : When you keep the cursor on a particular word and press hash (#) it finds the previous instance of the string.

% : Match braces and also #if and corresponding #else or #endif

:g/ : This is a very useful command, it lists all the lines containing string in the entire file.

:g/string/d : Deletes all the lines containing string in the entire file.

:g/string/t$ : Copies all the lines containing string to the end of file

ctrl+v : You can select column using this option, yet another very useful command.

yy : Yank line (copy line)

dd : Delete (cut) line

ndd : Delete n lines

x : Delete (cut) a letter

nx : Delete (cut) n letters

p : Paste

yl : Yank a letter

ynl : Yank n letters

yw/dw: Yank/delete word on right

yb/db : Yank/delete word on left

ynw/dnw : Yank/delete n words on right

ynb/dnb : Yank/delete n words on left

. : Repeat the recent command

ctrl+f : Page down

ctrl+b : Page up

u : Undo

ctrl+r : Redo

J : Join two lines

^ : Goto the beginning of the line

$ : Goto end of line

gg : Go to the beginning of the file

G : Go to the end of file

H : Go to the first line of the page

L : Go to the last line of the page

M : Go to the middle line of the page

o/O : Insert new line below/above the current line and enter edit mode

A : Edit at the end of the line

I : Edit at the beginning of the line

C : Delete from the cursor location to end of line and enter insert mode

S : Delete the current line and enter edit mode

d$ : Same as C but will not enter insert mode

split : Splits the file in two windows horizontally

vsplit : Splits the file in two windows vertically

! : Execute a shell command without quitting vim

My .vimrc file (which usually resides in home directory and contains all the vim settings looks like this)

set nocompatible
set autowrite
set backspace=2
set backup
set backupdir=~/.VIM,~/tmp
set cindent
set filetype=make
set hlsearch
set history=50
set ignorecase
set incsearch
set laststatus=2
set matchpairs=(:),{:},[:],<:>
set matchtime=7
set ruler
set shiftwidth=8
set softtabstop=8
set showfulltag
set showmatch
set smarttab
set smartcase
set smartindent
set syntax=make
set title
set viminfo='50,\"50,%,n~/VIM/viminfo
set visualbell
set whichwrap=b,s,h,l<,>,[,]
set wildmenu
set nowrap
set notitle
set background=dark
set background=light
set ic
set nu

Cscope or the ocs does not need any description, as such. Run ocs, look for the c symbol you want to find in the entire workspace and you can navigate to each of them.