Moments

Yeh haseen wadiyaan Yeh khula aasmaan The charm of the majestic Himalayas spread across Northern India is enchanting.  Be it the green mountains stepped at villages glowing green and yellow Be it the lush green valleys with rivers and tributaries meandering in the valley in lower Himalayas in Uttarakhand  Be it the higher altitudes with gigantic alpines trees towering over winding roads in Himachal Pradesh Be it the roads curving along the edges of the mountains rising up to cross over the hill or going down till the valley to cross over a stream Be it the deep gorges that chills your spine when the vehicle caresses the edge of the narrow road to give way to the incoming truck Be it the rocky terrain jutting out of the face of the mountain as you drive around the curve under the huge rock Be it the numerable paths of stones and soil sliding down the hill causing avalanche and landslides threatening to wash you away Each part of Himalayas tells a story, captures your imaginatio...

18 February, 2012 Lucknow was on my travel wishlist for quite sometime. It is the capital of the state where I had spent my childhood for 9 years. ...... Continuing on this travelogue draft after almost a decade.. I dont think I can justify writing it fully. So let me compensate for it with some photos to help me walk down the memory lane. So this trip materialized courtesy a wedding invitation from my classmate at school. She has /had been a friend and a sister. Ah, you noticed the strikethrough on the word.. Well lot of things change in a decade. She is still a good friend at heart but we havent talked for a long time now. Nevertheless, lets us get back to our travelogue. So accepting the wedding invitation was quite natural and even though none of my other schoolmates were turning up for the wedding, I decided to use it as an opportunity to tick off one more place on my travel bucket list ( Can I even have a bucket list? Probably no.. As I cant possibly write down all the places ...

 When I wrote the India vacation blogs , I was feeling that it was the most memorable occasion of 2023. However, here I have, yet another one ticked off our bucket list of south east Asia vacations. This trip has so many firsts - An international holiday planned at such a short notice - just 10 days, A week long - 8D7N trip, A vacation covering 3 different hotels and more that I will reveal in the blog. A pre-trip discussion - as is common in all my travelogues. A build-up.  Bali seems to be the destination of 2023. We had at least a dozen friends and families who bombarded our Facebook feeds, WhatsApp statuses and Insta Reels with Bali photos and videos. "This ought to be done", so we thought. A chance almost came up in October when few friends from India went for 4 day trip. But it was too quick since our Sakaleshpur trip. Next up was our 13th wedding anniversary in November but that didn't work out for many avoidable reasons.. Oops! unavoidable reasons like school and ...

2023 will be a year to remember for us - especially for our India vacation. We were desperately missing trips in India and enjoy Indian hospitality and tasty vegetarian food. So this year, we decided to spend a month long Indian vacation to get enough time for Varsha to spend with grand parents and for us to go on trips in South India. The places on our final shortlist were Kumarakom, Thiruvananthapuram, day trip in Bengaluru, Sakleshpur , Jog Falls and Shivamogga. As part of the Jog Falls trip, we picked a unique place to stay - Ajjanamane. Located 5km from Talguppa station, the rail terminal closest to Jog Falls in Shimoga district, Ajjanamane is a traditional Malnad home with 3 rooms that can accommodate 14 people, large living room and kitchen built in traditional architecture with natural lighting through the roof. The stay includes all the meals that are prepared from locally sourced fresh vegetables. Note that it is a Brahmin, pure vegetarian family and expect only satvik food. ...

A trip in Karnataka during monsoon is challenging with incessant rains, minor landslides and damaged roads. Last time we did something like this was a trip to Chikmanglur in 2018. This year we were determined to do it again, despite similar weather predictions. However it turns out completely different this time. Let's jump into the first leg of the trip in this blog - Sakleshpur. Sakleshpur is a hill town in the Western Ghats, famous for numerous coffee plantations. So the choice of stay is invariably inside a plantation. There are tons of choices with wide variety - from homestay to resorts and wide price ranges - from budget friendly to luxurious. Our destination this time was a lovely resort Rosetta by Ferns. It is located midway between Hassan and Sakleshpur. Ah! there is a back story on why we chose this place. Should I talk about it here? Probably a whole blog dedicated to the journey from Bangalore to Rosetta. Read it here . So back to the topic - Rosetta by Ferns Sakleshpu...

 Travelling on Indian railways was an annual affair for me during my school days. And that became more frequent during college days before the onset of cheap airfares and proliferation of airports all across India. After relocating to Malaysia, flights became a norm and train journeys were becoming a nostalgic past to cherish. So this year's India vacation was dedicated to train journeys. Apart from Vande Bharat Express, high speed train and the latest fanfare of Indian Railways, we were going to take half a dozen trains this month. One amongst them is a tourist attraction called "Vista dome" coach. Vista dome coach is an Executive chair car with lot of fancy features added to uplift the travel experience. To start with, the chairs can rotate 180 degrees. So you can sit facing the way the train is going, or turn around completely to sit face to face with fellow travellers. Even better is that you can turn half way and sit facing the extra large glass windows and admire th...

I was expecting my tenth birthday party to be celebrated hugely and lavishly like my sixth and ninth birthday. Soon I came to know that my birthday was during my … EXAMS. Many people in my school might not come and I couldn’t spend too much time on my birthday, as I had to study. Now in between all of that, my mom, who is currently studying masters, had exams too. That made it even harder to set up a huge birthday party. So I said to myself, “I already had great birthday parties before, It doesn’t matter. I am still having a birthday party regardless of whether it is big or small and birthday parties are not that important anyway.” Still I had my mind set that I wanted a pool party. Soon we arranged a pool party at our apartment, inviting three of my close friends. We ordered some snacks like brownies, tarts, pizzas and garlic bread. We ordered the cake from one of my mom’s friends. My father bought orange and mango juice as the drinks. Finally, in a few days time, came the day I was w...

Do you find Jigsaw Puzzles interesting? Do you find it tough to solve? I’ll show you a few ways to make them easier and fun. Now imagine a thousand piece puzzle! Would you do it? Some of you will say yeah I’ll try, but some will say no way, that’s too hard.  This is my experience. When my mom went to classes that day, me and my father had nothing to do at home. That is when we decided to start this 1000 piece Disney Princess Jigsaw Puzzle. You might be thinking that is a crazy decision. I thought that at first too but I gave it a try. At first, I looked at the pieces and thought it was really really tough to solve but then my father taught me a few techniques that we could do. Sort out all the pieces by colour. By doing this later when you are searching for a piece, you can easily search for it in the groups according to the colour. Find the edge pieces and keep them aside Edge pieces are pieces that are on the outer edge of the puzzle. Then start sorting the edge pieces by colour....

 Writing duel or dual writing challenge. It was an idea that came up during lunch today when me and my daughter (who goes by the pen name Little VG on this blog) We pick a topic and both of us write about it. Today's topic is "Nothing on TV" Here are the two versions from us Little VG version My version Enjoy the differences in writing of an 8 year old and an adult

  “Nothing on TV”  What does that phrase mean to you? Is it something you say frequently? Think about it for a few seconds. Most of your thoughts might be nothing to watch on TV. That is right but there is another thing other than that. It can also mean that you lost connection or signal. Have you experienced this before? Of course! I am sure many of you experienced this before. This has happened to me and every time this happens I am always super impatient. It is just so boring to look at nothing other than the TV screen saying ‘You have lost connection.Try again later.’   It also takes a lot of time to connect back.                         Another scenario of “Nothing on TV” is when there is nothing to watch, what most of you would have thought. It is very maddening especially when you and your family have decided to watch TV while eating dinner on a Frida...

 An artifact of modern world, TV is a great invention that helps you enjoy the visuals from a far off place. Nah that is old school definition of Television.  In olden days, it is true that TV was the only way we could enjoy a match happening in London broadcasted to millions all around the world. With advances in communication systems, in today's fast paced world, people catch up a lot on their smaller screens - be it Whatsapp video calls, Facebook live, or even all the recorded stuff on social media. So what is the relevance of the phrase "nothing on TV"? If we go back three decades, TV was the major source of entertainment on a normal day, replacing the radio and adding colors to the lives of many. Back then, nothing on TV meant despair, gloom and anguish. Nothing on TV could be due to power cuts attributed to bad weather. It could be due to the nasty cable operator who wants to do maintenance of his equipment right when I want to watch something interesting. Due to sh...

Driving to work on a Saturday morning, Raghu was feeling frustrated. What the heck is going on in his company? Why am I supposed to work on weekends? He was annoyed by the callous attitude of his boss and the management. Nobody tells openly what we are working towards. It was not something new to Raghu, having spent 20 years of his career in a defense research organization. But today he was restless and disturbed. He knew he was a crucial piece of the big complicated jigsaw puzzle, that his current project was. Raghu was an expert in electronic circuit design. For the past few months, he had been working on some special kind of amplifiers - a device that could listen to the feeblest vibrations and remain unaffected by the typical sounds that can be heard by humans. What was the amplifier for? Nobody would tell him. "Was it some kind of communication device to outer space? Whose voices would the device hear?" Raghu wondered. He had the prototype device in his bag lying on the...

 Yesterday, 10th March.. A day that I wont forget... Of course there are many more memorable days in my life that I wont forget, but this is one of its kind... A day that I (actually I should say we - my family) landed on a foreign land to become a Non-Resident Indian, NRI.. A long cherished dream of working abroad, in a developed nation, in a more peaceful work culture with better work life balance.. A destination... Not really... probably a pit stop... Dream destination is was the United States of America. So Penang, Malaysia was planned as a layover at a transiting airport...  A year or maximum two to be eligible to apply for L1 visa to USA.. I was so confident of finding that opportunity to get an internal transfer to USA.... Of course, Intel is the largest semiconductor company in the world.. If the opportunity cant be found here, then where else could it be!! But life always has surprises in store. Within probably half a year, I was getting into a new comfort zone.. Lif...

I have started reading many Enid Blyton books in this lockdown. This is how I started reading Enid Blyton books. First I got two wishing-chair books from my father's friend. After I read those I started liking Enid Blyton books, so my mother found more of Enid Blyton books. 😄 These are some examples of the books I have been reading:Little lost hen, Adventures of the six cousins, Goblin's toy shop. This is  what happened in Adventures of the six cousins ,The home of three children's has burnt, so they went to their cousin's house . At first, no one liked each other but when time passed they started doing a dventures together. I am going to read famous books like Famous five and Faraway tree in this vacation. Do read Enid Blyton books. They are very interesting. Little Vg 😄

I am writing this poster so that we can help the poor people and beggars to be healthy and save them from not getting corona virus. -- Real Little VG

The past experience of juggling work and studies from research days at IIT Delhi keeps reminding me of the struggle. Working on the weekdays and visiting the laboratory on weekends for research. By the time I get to second gear and do something meaningful, I realize that it is already Sunday evening and I have to get back home and reset my mind for the office tasks. It feels like we dont have enough time for either and end up sacrificing one for the other. The thoughts of studying in college were shelved in 2011, yet they resurface once in a while during me and my wife's late night chitchat. One such idea was to do an MBA. The inspiration for an MBA came from a visit to a relative, Vice President of Sales. A chauffeur driven Mercedes Benz, full time maid at home, posh apartment in South Bombay and high-flying executive travelling all over the world. Getting to similar position starting as an engineer is a distant dream. We thought an MBA would give me the required skillsets to j...

I am a kid and I am staying in my house due to corona virus. I am a bit bored of staying at home so I am writing this blog so you won't be bored.  "What do you do to entertain yourself?" You can ask your friend to come and play with you.With your friend you can play games such as snake and ladder, ludo, zenga blocks etc. Y ou can do craft, you can draw and paint pictures, watch TV and do many other things. It is fun to do these things. If you get bored of doing the same thing again and again you can invent your own games. These are the things I did today: at the morning I did some worksheets which are sent from school. Then I called my friend to play with me. We played a new game called "Complete the picture by closing your eyes".  Bye Bye. See you next time when I write another blog. Till then, Stay Safe, STAY HOME . -- Real Little VG