Daily Blogs!

Well, the vada that goes inside the pav of a typical Mumbai vada-pav is a batata vada. It would not taste the same, if it were an aalu vada, or a potato vada. Eeks!

Nope, it just would not. A batata vada is a batata vada. Ask the Divadkars of Karjat.

On a connected and yet unrelated line of thought, since all trains from Mumbai to Pune (and of course, Pune to Mumbai) are suspended, wonder what the many Chikki-wallas and batata-vada wallas are doing?

And what about the monkey’s on the Monkey Hill? Wonder who is feeding them? Poor fellas, hope you don’t starve! (And come on, they are our ancestors… Um well, not they per se, let’s say, their ancestors and our ancestors came from the same stork (in the interest of the censor board )).

Well, I downloaded the whole of the Garfield’s comic strip, right since Jim Davis started sketching them on 19^th June, 1978, to 21^th April, 2004. (Request: Those who have the later ones, drop me a line.) And boy, are they awesome! In 1984 (I was born then, yaay!) now, very very cool… Every comic fan must get hold of it.

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Nadeem has done quite some blogging over the rains. I’ll just summarise. Rains continue to lash Mumbai, scattered flooding and cloud bursts. Central railway is down, with some services running. Mumbai-Pune is completely out, tracks have washed away between Badlapur and Karjat. In CR’s history of 110 years, this is the first time rail traffic has been suspended for over 6 days. And it is expected to resume not earlier than 6^th. Western is coping better, outstation trains to Delhi are running, those to Ahmedabad are still suspended. Locals are fine.

There is quite a loss, trains and buses are damaged. Transport is going to be highly deficient when everything returns to normal. Some places are still without power and (therefore) water. Reliance to blame here. Telecom is returning to normalcy, but has problems still, especially in water-logged areas.

Air traffic, however sluggish, has resumed. International flights are delayed, but are landing and taking off. An uncle left for London, and foreign toursists are still coming in. More on that later, after the ====.

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My dad works as a free-lance toursit guide, and speaks, among other languages, Spanish and Italian.

Foreign toursits who have arrived here, and want to go back cannot do so because of the rains. And those who are arriving cannot do their site-seeing because of the rains, neither can they follow their itenarary, since domestic flights have not yet resumed.

So, there was this Italian couple who landed two days back. Their flight was scheduled for arrival at 0015. Got postponed to 0300. Dad and the travel agent had been to the airport to recieve and transfer them to the airport, and waited for them for two and a half hours, but they did not come out. So they left. And then the tourists called dad in the morning, wondering why he did not come to recieve them. Dad explained how they had been waiting. They said, their luggage did not arrive, and so they had to wait longer in the lobby. They were quite irritated, because they had to go to the hotel by themselves. What a way to start a vacation!

Poor people, they were to fly to Udaipur by Jet Airways. And no planes! Trains would not plying, and so dad could not even go to take them for a city tour. They were so frustrated, but what can we do against the fury of nature? Surely they will never recommend India to people they meet. Alas!

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Now, college is closed for one whole week. Some things these rains do!

I for one am quite happy, but would have been happier if my machine did not have so many problems at this very moment. Sadly, all my time is being spent in trouble shooting the problem, rather than any constructive learning. A lot of things still to be done, and the problem still not solved. This is beyond irritating now. When technology works, it is beautiful, when it does not, what crap! I could just cry!

Reinstalled Windows, and the rebooting problem has still not gone. Will now try and troubleshoot hardware. Got a STOP error. That means something of the following is wrong: RAM, motherboard, one of PCI devices or the way Windows has been allocating PCI devices. Sad!

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Microsoft download sites have now implemented a new thing: You need to install an ActiveX control that determines if your copy of Windows is legal and genuine. Only then does it provides the download link. Another reason to move to an alternative operating system.

I will be installing Ubuntu and/or Fedora Core 4. As a primary OS, provided it detects all my hardware, or at least allows me to install drivers and use it all. Am planning to install VMware on top of it, and run Windows XP inside it, for folks at home.

Wish me luck!