Fun in the Sun at Batam

This time, it was Batam. Located about 20 km south of Singapore, Batam island is very much similar to Bintan which we had visited last year. Lush greenery, plenty of 'sea' to 'see', sun, beaches and sand. Nothing less to expect from this truly beautiful island in Indonesia.


Our population doubled this time - we were a group of (lucky?) 13 restless souls, just waiting to get our asses out of our labs and a few hundred kms away from research. And get off we did, in style :). Merry-ly taking the ferry ride from Tanjong Pagar, we made for Batam on Feb the 15th, the start of Chinese New year hols. The ferry ride is a most enjoyable experience - apart from being hot due to the sun, the ride is actually pretty Cool :). Watching the busy Singapore skyline (and along with it, all memories of research fading into the distance.. seriously, no feeling could be better !


Pt-KTM resorts - thats where we stayed. Beautiful place. No testimonial would be enough to do justice to the five-star royal treatment we got there. Just - dont try to expand the name K-T-M :). Since the exchange rate was pretty high, we were millionaires by the time we reached, and immediately set about blasting off every inch of currency that we had stored up.



Water sports are one of the major attractions in Batam. Para-sailing, Jet-skiiing, Banana-boating and Kayaking - these were the items on the menu. Needless to say, we ordered all :). The para-sailing was a first for me- being slightly afraid of heights, I never thought I'd pull(rather, fly) it off, but it turned out to be an awesome experience with a sufficient amount of 'high' to it ! :). After sufficiently wetting ourselves (no pun intended ;) ) on all the rides, we decided to call it a day (er.. at 4 pm in the evening) and go around city-seeing a bit. The Barelang bridge was 'bery bery laang', and actually a let-down.. there was nothing to do there except to.. er.. watch it :). Tired of letdowns, we retired to our beautiful villas.

Needless to say, the high-night was one of the high-lights of the trip. Dumb-C was called for. Despite being 'dumb', we were pretty noisy out there, mind you :). 3 hours and a few kilos of junk food later, we made for the beach, and wasted away sometime until we decided to call it a.. thats right.. night. Next day, after refilling ourselves with enough food for a few days, we set out to Nongsa beach.

Nongsa is one of those paradises on earth called a beautiful beach. Thirteen hot people out there (yea yea, hot cos of the sun ;) ) - we 1st cooled ourselves in the inviting blue waters. Few hundred pics and some desperate attempts at swimming and stunt-making. A pitiable round of volley-ball was followed by a coconut break, and even more pitiable gaming :). Truly, I have never had enough of sea, sand and sun in my life. Finally when we'd all turned different bright shades of crimson, we decided to call it quits and return to the city. BCS mall was our final stand - our shopping consisted of an incredible mixture of tatooing, food, and sun-glasses ! Loads of them ! Finally we made a desperate rush for the resort and then the ferry terminal.

The night trip back on the ferry is a beautiful experience too. An hour or so later, we were thirteen tired but satisfied souls, cribbing about what lay ahead for us in our boring labs the next day. Ofcourse, that was enough inspiration for us to float our next trip plans :). Cambodiaaaaa, here I come !

Ping !

Ok, so I decided to break my 'Bloggers block' again.. Loong time no see, everyone :).. There's been lotsa stuff keeping me away from blogger, but one of the main culprits is - u guessed it.. right here..
Here's how Gtalk changed my life in the past one year.. You'll know you've fallen prey to the Gtalk-olism, like me, when :


1. U get up in the morning after yesterday's late night chat, and the first thing that comes into your mind is "Oh, I gotta sign in !..."

2. Ever heard of the phenomena of 'phantom rings' ? Those mobile vibrations u imagine in ur pocket, even though its not ringing.. yea, that was once upon a time..

Well now its 'Phantom Pings'.. U imagine you heard that ever-inviting gtalk 'ping' sound even though its never there.. Yea, I even hear it in between songs and normal conversations :) ..

3. Your latest hobby is collecting cool Gtalk Status messages.. and building a collection of profile pics to put up too :) ..

4. You g-chat for hours with people whom you never even spoke to in school or college.. and they keep saying "Its a wonder I never knew you well back then..".. :)

5. You come to know about incidents in your hometown/country/other places even before your own folks back in India hear of it..

6. When you're 'invisible', it means 'busy' to ppl.. when you're 'busy', it means 'available', and when you're 'available', all you hear is a bunch of 'ping' sounds every 2 seconds :)

7. While multi-chatting, You are used to multiple emotions at once - you cry in one chat window, press tab and laugh in the next chat window, press tab and get serious in the next one..

8. In real life, you tend to say 'Lol' and 'Rofl' and forget to really laugh sometimes :).. (To be frank, I use np, ty, k and all the other crap too)

9. When you enter lab, you prefer to ping your labmates 'GM' instead of going around saying Goodmorning yourself..

10. You tend to make short forms for every single usage u use more than 2 times a day..

11. You update ur status messages on a minute-by-minute basis.. using 'brb', '@Lab', '@Room', 'out for tea', 'out for lunch', 'sleeping'.. etc.. (yea my gchat buddies wud know :) )

12. Ppl prefer to chat to you on gchat than in real life !

13. When ppl ping u on gtalk and dont find you, they worry that something has happened to you ! :)..


Hmm.. like i saw on a status msg sometime ago, PHD seems to have given me a P(ermanent) H(ead) D(amage) by now :)

Getting 'High' in S(w)ingapore..

Lately, weekend timepasses have become addiction for us.. Part of life.. No, probably the only things in life..

Few weeks ago we went to Clarke Quay, probably the entertainment hub of Singapore. There was an adventure sport : an 'Extreme Swing' that everyone was waiting to get 'high' on. 5 of us were taken in a seat-cage taken to extreme heights, and then released downwards.. Yea no more description - the video is here..



Yours truly was the 'pilot' of the swing.. meaning I was the guy seated in the swing, who would pull a lever that releases the swing downwards. Yea, like the 'lives' of 5 lay in my own hands (chuckle and grin)

So.. You can hear the countdown initially while we're up there.. 15..14...13.. till 3, 2, 1..

Then the 4 losers with me looked at me, expecting me to release at 0.. (I esp remember Naren's face :P ).. and then I say "Now, its MY suspense.."..

And while they're thinking about it.. in the split second, yours truly releases the lever :).. (You can see the gap between 'Zero' and swing release in the video)

Later on we went on exploring other venues to get high again :)

Blogger Stereotypes ?

Was ROFL after reading RC Balajee's (aka Red carrot Jalebee's) post on Blog titles. It was then that it reminded me of another discussion I'd with Venky about blogger stereotypes.

- This may be too much generalization, but it struck me how quite a number of Bloggers are into Free and Open Source Software. Dont think I need examples : about half my blogroll is testimony to this.

Attempted explanation :Maybe FOSS enthusiasts are generally ones who spend quite some time on the internet, and hence invariably end up on the blogosphere too (! ?)




- Then there's the connection between people who blog, and are also into Freelance photography at the same time.

Attempted explanation : No surprises. The freelancers are bound to post up their photos simply because they find no better way to publicise it :).





- This one must be the weirdest. There are a number of Bloggers out there who Run. Yea, run - marathons, half marathons, awareness runs, social runs, jogging, the type. (Run for fun? :) ) You can find quite a number of bloggers posting that they're going for so and so run next week.

And for the love of blogger, I cannot even attempt a reason for this correlation :)




[ I'm still gearing up for 4-80 run next week.. but I assure you.. the decision for this run had nothing to do with observation 3 :).. it's just going to be an experiment as part of my, er, Underwater Acoustics research :P .. ]

A Run for the Fun..

One fine day, a bunch of guys and girls here at NTU became health conscious and started jogging, gymming and swimming (and eating ;-) ) on a regular basis..

That fine day was about a month ago.. Now, we're going to put it to the test :) .. A mini-run race.. 8 km and 27 stories..

Some people run to make a difference.. spread a message.. make a stand.. or simply for health reasons. We're a bunch of 8-10 amateur runners.. So, our aim is more about surviving the distance than winning the 300 bucks :) ..

The 4 - 80 challenge : http://www2.ntu.edu.sg/ENewsreader/Announcement/4-80+Challenge.htm?wbc_purpose=Basic

Yours truly has been attempting the treadmill for some days now with no hopes of reaching the 8 km mark anytime soon :)

The time-less VS The jobless

The other day I got into a usual bout of work-cursing and cribbing over chat with a friend. I then realized he was out of a job, and in quite the opposite situation as me. So, well, we had a 'discussion', (probably a competition :-) ) to prove who was worse off. But after I was done with the chat, I was convinced that in these economically desperate times, it is much better to be in my situation than his.. ie.. - more work to do is probably better than no work to do :).

A comparison of the lives of the time-less guy VS the jobless guy

- Timeless guy : Wakes up in the morning, thinking "Oh, I wish I could sleep more.. but no.. this cursed work reckons me.. When do I get to sleep as much as I want, ever ?.."

Jobless guy : Gets up.. realizes he has no reason to wake up.. nothing to do.. but feels wasted going back to sleep.. so what to do ?


- Timeless guy : Has not enough time to complete work, socialise, take care of health, etc. 24 hours just isnt enough in a day.

Jobless guy : 24 hours is too much time in a day ! Wish I had something to do in these 24 hours... Wish life could go faster than this..


- Timeless guy : Always thinking about changing career track.. looking for new job.. change of field.. grass is always greener on the other (company's) side :)..

Jobless guy : Worried about never even having a career at all.. Believe me.. some grass(job) is better than no grass(job) at all..


I seriously pity the jobless. They end up losing self-confidence. Then hope. Worries about future life are constantly hitting them. And since they have too much time, worrying takes up a major part of life for them sometimes. Atleast the timeless ones dont have much time to even worry !

If, by some cruel twist of fate, you find yourself among the jobless, please find something productive to do.. (sorry, I really cant think of anything else to say). And if you're timeless, well, be happy you have a job atleast :) ..


(PS : Ppl, I have NOT been snoozzzing away on blogger :).. looks like it was a bit of 'bloggers block' that hit me.. hopefully im back on a posting spree now :) )

SnooZZZ..

Ookay, here I am, back to the b'sphere after a nice long period of exams and deadlines. Back to the 'high life' for me. Not much of work pressure now, and waking up is getting so hard because I have been infected by the 'Snooze-flu' (Its more of a mind game than a disease :)). So often here's how a typical day starts for me :

8:50 am : Alarm 1 rings

"Whats that irritating sound? Oh, alarm 1 ofcourse. Purposely selected as the most annoying piece of 'music' among the available list of cacophonies in my cellphone... (Quickly switching off alarm 1) .. The limits of self-torture on myself I have to endure to wake up myself sometimeszzzz.."..

9.20 am : Alarm 2 starts blaring away

"Heey.. its barely 5 minutes since I stopped that last one.. (Take a look at watch) ... Ok maybe more than 5 mins, but too little anyway.. (Eyes barely open, hands working dextrously to disable A3) Anyway, my roomie Ravi is sleeping too, I think I should wait to see if the next alarm ringszzzz..."..

9.30 am : Alarm 3 shouts into my ears

"Ooh Gaawd.. Cant a man sleep in peace.. 5 more minutes.. Just 5 more minutes.. I think I'll sleep for 5 more minutesszzzz"..

|
(1.5 hours later)
|

11.00 am : Ravi shouting the time into my ears (along with a most unparliamentary choice of words that never fails to wake me up)

"What the $%@ is that !@#$ shouting?.. 11 ? What 11 ? (One eye opens to steal a gaze at the clock)

OH MY !@#s.. When did a 5 minutes nap turn into 1.5 hours ! Meeting deadline missed, I am soo screwed.. "



And there starts off my day :)..