Swati Tai's wedding

Swati Tai's wedding to Rajesh Joshi went off without a hitch yesterday. It was held at the Dadar-Matunga Cultural Center in Mahim. The muhurta was at 12:15 PM. Anoop and I left Pune by the Deccan Queen Express at 7:15 AM and reached Dadar Central at 10:15 AM. Mrunal's husband and in-laws were also on the same train, and we took a taxi to the wedding venue, reaching there around 11 AM. Kedar came in a short while later, having traveled by Neeta Volvo. The three of us changed into clothes appropriate for a wedding, and went to a nearby Udipi for a quick snack.

Coming back to the mandal, I said hi-hello to everyone assembled. Took a few snaps. The muhurta started on time, and I went on the stage to get real close-up photos. Rajesh is a professional photographer, and he had some of his pro buddies taking photos with their high-end equipment. At the rituals came to an end, 2 of his friends stepped up quickly behind him with the intention of lifting him off the ground. This is a custom popular in Punjabi weddings, and has become the latest craze in Mumbai due to all the Bollywood movies. The pandit sternly warned Rajesh and his buddies that if any of this stupid crap was committed, he would not go ahead with the rites. They thankfully gave up.

After the ceremony, the pangat were laid out and everybody had lunch. It was 3:30 PM when I had lunch with the last pangat. After lunch, Anoop left for Pune by the 4:15 PM bus since he had to study for his exam tomorrow. Kedar and I went to the nearby paan-wallah to get a dozen paans, and the guy took almost 45 minutes to make them! We went back to the pandal and had some snaps taken with the newly-wed couple. After that, I was damn exhausted and ready to drop. I went to one of the spare rooms and caught a nap. Shubhanan, Aai, Kedar and Mrunal did the same. I was up at 6:30 PM and got fresh. Aai, Purva and I were to leave by the 8 PM bus, so we had an early dinner.

We left for the bus station at 7:45 PM, and I was afraid we would be too late. As it turned out, the bus didn't leave until 8:20 PM after picking up as many passengers as possible. It took us almost another hour to get to the expressway, after which it was smooth sailing. A short stop at a food mall was the only break we took. Reached home at 11:30 PM. I watched TV for half an hour thinking that it was only 11 PM. I finally switched it off at 12:15 after I saw the clock. I conked out immediately.

Apocryphal story

I had to pull off a good lie at work today. I hadn't shown up to work yesterday, and had left early on Wednesday afternoon feigning illness. Today I made up a story of how I had to go to Mumbai Airport to urgently pick up a package for someone. For the record, the story is as follows:

I wasn't feeling well yesterday, when I received a call from a close friend saying that his father had been hospitalized. This friend had just returned from the US five days ago. When I reached the hospital, I was told that his father had just come out of unconsciousness. My friend (who remains anonymous in this account) had to get to Mumbai Airport ASAP to collect a parcel which was arriving by air freight. His father was going to get it, but his hospitalization prevented him from going anywhere. So at around 12 PM, my friend and I left for Mumbai via the expressway, with him at the wheel of his Maruti Zen. The guy hadn't driven on Indian roads for 3 years, and he damn near killed the both of us on sevral times. It took us four hours to get to Sahar airport, as we had to stop every now and then to ask for directions. Another 2 hours at the airport before we got the package, and then I drove back home, reaching at 9.30 PM. All the time I was suffering because of fever and general headache, but I somehow stayed awake.

Back to the PI

This is not the PI that Sharad and I were working on, but the older NP PI. Kaushal told me that there's a bug on the PI, but it turned out to be a case of missing functionality that was reported as a bug! Manisha is the authority on the PI, and she forwarded me a whole list of documents along with a schedule. There are 5 days allocated, but I wonder if I would be able to do it. I won't be coming to work tomorrow, and I have to complete the damned PSSP shit too! Let's see.

Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0

The 1.0 version of Thunderbird was released 2 days ago. Unlike myself, I didn't install it right away. I was waiting for Moox to release Pentium-IV optimized builds. But they haven't been put up till today, and I couldn't resist any longer :)

Checked in!

Code change for bug 18805 landed in P4 in CL# 35298 on 7 Dec 2004 at 4:44 AM EDT.

RSS feed

This is cool. The Thoughtlog now has an RSS feed. Yaaay!

Bug fixed!

Finally I completed testing of the 611 bug on Solaris. It took the usual frustrations of setting up and matching OIS, Webpass and DS. I'll have a code review later in the afternoon and check it in.

Seinfeld!

I got a slew of Seinfeld episodes on \\ps2052. I watched part of the hilarious episode The Soup Nazi.

The Army of the Twelve Monkeys

Saw a fantastic movie called Twelve Monkeys on Star Movies. The plot has been explained on numerous websites, so I won't go into detail about it. It's about time travel, mixed with a whole lot of other issues like insanity, end of days, animal rights, viruses etc. There's a nice twist about the time travel thingi. Bruce Willis is sent to the wrong year in the past, and jailed for insanity! Fascinating!

It's impossible to guess what's real and what's not till the very end. It stars Bruce Willis, Brad Pitt and Madeleine Stowe. Brad Pitt is just AMAZING as a raving lunatic. Till now I thought the guy couldn't act, but one has to see it to believe his performance. The direction by Terry Gillian is just terrific - you have to fight hard to distinguish the insane from the real. I couldn't quite get the ending because Mrunal and Shubhanan showed up just ten minutes before the finale. That was bad because the conclusion was the most important piece of the puzzle.

Dempo striker dies after scoring goal

I saw this live on TV yesterday! And no, his death was not because of joy at scoring the goal. I switched on the TV (DD Sports) to see a replay of the goal being telecast. Just as the ball was shown going past the goalie into the goal, the right side of the screen captured the goalie putting in a horrendous tackle on the scorer (Christiano Junior). My instinctive reaction was - Shit, what a tackle! Actually, it can't be classified as a tackle. It was a heavy punch directly in the side of the striker's head, right under the ear at the base of the skull. The most vulnerable spot of any living thing. When live pictures were telecast again, the referee was frantically waving to the medics, and a Dempo player was hysterically pumping the striker's chest! What the shit I said to myself, the guy's probably dying!

The next ten minutes were a farce. Imagine players rubbing the palms and feet of the striker, someone arguing about giving artificial respiration, someone pumping his chest, others frantically praying, some too dumb-stricken to do anything but stare blankly! The very fact that the guy was dying, or was indeed already dead, just did not seem to register on the officials. All this time, the most despicable insensitive crap was being telecast in the name of commentary. The commentator kept saying the usual tripe - "Let's hope it's not a serious injury... looks like he's taken a bad knock... he's still lying on the ground." WTF??? The guy was DYING!

Finally, a full fifteen minutes after the fatal blow, an ambulance rolled up alongside the fallen striker. By this time I was convinced he was dead, because he didn't move a muscle when he was lifted on to the stretcher, and his arms and neck just flopped uselessly at the slightest push. Photographers were all over the place, clicking away with abandon. The ambulance departed, and the game resumed.

I switched to the news channels, but they were running a story of a death threat that had been issued to the Indian cricket team. No way they were going to cover the story of a football player who was possibly killed on the field! There was no news about him for the rest of the day. Today, the first thing I did on reaching work was visit the TimesofIndia website where it was confirmed that he indeed had died. The report painted an even more horrible picture! The ambulance did not have respiratory equipment, it took 25 more minutes to weave through traffic to get to the hospital, and it ended up at an orthopaedic clinic when a full-blown general hospital was practically right next to the stadium! Talk of irony and negligence! SHIT!