Hot Feet, Hot Hatch, Hot Hydie… Its summer time folks!!!!

I know it has been a long time (more than a month) since I blogged. The initial josh of blogging has fizzed out and many people have already reminded that to me. I was actually thinking of writing about the Tirupati and Bangalore trips in a single post but the Bangalore (I don’t like the new name Benguluru) trip is getting postponed every time I talk about it, hence the delay.

There was lots of activity in the last 30 days - trip to Tirupati, a long due exam, some really bad movies, dating tips to first timers, bouts of fitness-freakishness, visiting cousins, loosing helmet in office parking lot etc.

Hot feet
Benu had the Tirupati trip in his mind from a really long time. And as always, things just remain inside. So I had to step in and take charge and get things out of his tilted head. So before it got too late (meaning peak summer and the vacations), we booked the tickets on the first weekend of April. We decided to walk up the holy 7 hills this time so we booked the darshan tickets for the evening slot. It was my first time up the Tirumala on foot so I was looking forward for it. I have been on other such journeys/treks before though. (Sabarimala twice, Kedarnath in heavy rain & zero visibility, Vaishnao Devi once). (Yes, I have traveled a LOT. From Kanyakumari to Kashmir, Gangtok to Amritsar. The list of places will easily scroll to 2 pages, not including the 15 months Europe stint) (self-dabba thoda jyaada ho raha hai abhi :p maybe I should stay grounded to the current topic and not drift away) ( I wonder how people used to write before the brackets ( ) were invented) So where was I….yes Tirupati. Though it was still the first week of April, it was very hot especially since we were walking in the mid afternoon. Don was having problems walking for 5 minutes continuously in that heat ;). It took us 5 hrs to reach Tirumala with lots of stops in between and blistered feet. The darshan was over by late night. The next day we had planned to visit Kanipakam but couldn’t make it because the highway was blocked due to an accident. Traffic was stranded for miles. We came back halfway since we had to catch the train early evening. And as always, I had my camera with me all throughout the trip.

This was from the train on the way to Tirupati. I got up early just to capture this.

I was always fascinated by the windmills at Tirumala since I was a kid. No wonder I have invested in Suzlon :) Here is a tip - usually on bright sunny days, the background gets over exposed and you cannot get far-off or tiny objects to be visible clearly in the picture. You can rectify this by reducing the exposure value (the EV number) in the camera. Lowering the value captures less light by altering the shutter speed and(or) the aperture size of the lens.

The EV reduction trick works here too. Look how blue the sky looks instead of bright white. I don’t believe in altering/enhancing photos in photo-editor softwares.

Hot Hatch
It was time for us to buy a new car at home. And convincing everyone that it was time for us to buy a new car seemed like a big uphill task. But when it comes to convincing people, no one can get better than me. Hehehehaha *evil laugh*. In a couple of weeks, everyone at home wanted a new car :) . That was the easy part, convincing the folks at home. The difficult part was to zero in on the car. And as usual, it was me who had to take care of this job.

There was lots of hype about the new Maruti Suzuki Swift Dezire, the sedan version of the highly successful Swift. Or Swift-with-a-boot as all the auto mags started calling it. Though it isn’t visually as perfect as the swift or other sedan, it has its own charm. And with that class breaking price tag, it was the perfect car to fit our bill. But as it turns out now, there is so much demand for the car and so less supply that the waiting period is close to 9 months with all dealers freezing future bookings. Generations change in that period of time !! Who wants to wait for another generation? Other options were the beautiful Chevy Aveo and the practical Ford Fiesta and other hatchbacks – the Hyundai Getz and the Chevy U-VA. The sedans were very good but I never liked the idea of buying the base variant of any car - just the bare-bones car without any bells and whistles. And what pissed me off most was that safety features are only present in the high variants and none in the base. U-VA was good and Tim liked its looks a lot but somehow it didnt appeal to everyone. Finally, we decide to go with the Swift hothatch. The fully loaded 2008 Zxi model with ABS, airbags, 1 DIN stereo with steering controls was the best VFM. Delivery period 3 weeks as promised by the dealer.

Now waiting eagerly to lay my hands on the black bug-eyed temptress. I always hated it when it rained in the mornings while going to office. The city roads would become a mess and driving would be a nightmare – a clear indication of how our hard earned money is filling up the bank accounts of the government officials. Now I am hoping the drive to office this monsoon would be a pleasant experience. A complete post will be dedicated to the beauty once it arrives :)

Hot Hydie:

Ah, the summer. It is here in its full glory. 40 degrees centigrade is just another day in Hyderabad. The carbide-ripen mangoes & coconut vendors taking shelter under trees and not a single soul on the road in the afternoons – that’s the current state of our dear ol’ Hydie. It’s so hot that people have stopped coming out of the work areas in office for tea in the afternoons. I have experienced the hot-seat on my bike a couple of times already this summer, you get to see mirages on car roofs if you go out in the afternoons. Global warming they say? By the way, if anyone is interested, try watching the award winning movie by Nobel Peace Prize winner and the former vice president Al Gore. The movie is named An Inconvenient Truth. It tells us how deep in shit we currently are when it comes to climatic crisis. It was on TV last month and was also screened in my office a couple of months back (the number of people who attended the screening indicated how least bothered people are). Anyways, like I said before, I am eagerly waiting for the monsoon to arrive.

And now moving away from everything hot to something cool. The last 2 movies which I saw were really good. Ghamyam and Parugu (yes, you read it right, I AM watching telugu movies regularly since late. It shows how bad life sucks ;) ). Ghamyam had a very different story which I liked. It even had a bike with character. Parugu was kinda ok. The lead actress should have been someone good. She wasn’t that great but resembled Gajula’s Apasara ;). One of the songs was shot at The Petra, Jordan (or something similar to it) – I was blown away. Did not expect it in a telugu movie. All credit goes to the director.

Well, life isn’t going to be all peachy from next month. Benu is moving away to Bangalore and Don is off to UK from June 1^st. Once they are gone, weekends will become boring :( Please let me know if you people have plans for the weekends, I will be more than happy to join in :) (males given second preference. My mail id can be found in my profile ). If you had asked me a few days back, I would have stayed back at home during weekends and watched cricket. But the way Chargers are positioned in the tournament right now, there isn’t much to cheer. What a waste of a brilliantly talented squad. I don’t know who is to be blamed? Lakshman? The coach Robin Singh? The DC management? Does it matter now?

Anyways, me signing off now. Happy summer time folks.

P.S: Did I mention I have joined guitar classes?

Ciao

~nk

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