Happy New Year

Hello all. Wish you a very happy new year!

It's been 6 months since my last post. Wish I could blame writer's block - but I have only laziness to blame.

So many things have happened in the past few days and I felt I had to write something.

Modi won a landslide election. I wanted to blog about the election, and also wrote a few lines. But I never published the post and it lies peacefully in the draft-box. I had predicted that Modi would win in the post and also wanted to give a few reasons as to why I would vote for him. The counting is over and Modi is back. So I'll not say more about him.

I did some sightseeing in Ahmedabad in the last week of December. I went for the Heritage Walk of Ahmedabad with a few friends. It was a great experience and I recommend the walk to everyone living in Ahmedabad, especially people like me who have never lived in the old city. The walk starts every morning at 8 from the Swaminarayan Temple at Kalupur and ends around 2 hours later at the Jamma masjid. I've uploaded a few pics on flickr. You can have a look at them at http://flickr.com/photos/43964938@N00/sets/72157603543996027/. My only criticism of the walk is that is wasn't properly guided. Our guide hardly knew English, and didn't explain anything much on the walk. I would be willing to pay more for the trip (Rs. 20 right now) just to get a good guide. Wonder why they can't provide audio guides for the trip. I also went to the Adalaj step-wells a few days later. I was a bit hesitant about going to the place as I had heard lots of stories that the place was not well maintained and also that it stinked. But it was nothing like that. The place is an architectural marvel and was very clean on that day. If you have not seen the place recently, then I urge you to take a trip back. As with the Heritage Walk, the step-well is a must-see for anyone coming to Ahmedabad. I don't have pics of the place right now, but will upload them on flickr as soon as I get hold of them.

That was the last week of my blissful vacation. The past 2 months have been the most relaxing after my 12th vacation. There were hardly any days when I felt bored. No one believed that I woke up every morning at 6:30 to play tennis. I'm so glad I started playing the game and I hope to continue playing tennis as long as I am in Ahmedabad. Another thing I'm happy about is getting my laptop fixed. Those who have worked with my laptop would know about my crazy laptop. I have to keep windows media player playing some song as long as I'm working with Windows else my computer would hang in a few minutes. Sadly, that problem is not fixed, but I've installed Fedora 8 along with Windows and there's no such problem with it. My laptop fan too had a weird problem. It just wouldn't start by itself in the morning. So I had to keep checking the temperature and give my laptop a good whack when the CPU was hot enough. A few good whacks and the fan would start working and keep on working all day without any fuss. That problem is solved and the fan starts by itself.

The final semester of my under-graduation has now started. In my college, the 8th sem. is the Major Project sem. which means that we have to do a project either in the college or in some company. Doing the thing at Nirma was not an option for me, so I'm interning at Tata Consultancy Services for the same. I'm currently placed at TCS Gandhinagar and will be working on a non-government project. I'm not sure if I can tell you more about the project as I've signed a confidentiality agreement with TCS. :) I'm hoping that I can get the project in Ahmedabad so that I can continue with tennis and not drive 60 km everyday.

I guess I've written enough now to make up for the lost 6 months. So till then next post, au revoir!