An achievement

I am always intrigued by the question, "When was the last time you did something for the first time". It is really challenging to do something new, especially when one is past average living age!
However, I feel elated when I do something that fits an answer to above question..
Yes, I am very proud to have completed a course on Coursera. I completed Machine Learning course with 96.9% score. It is a complex subject that required a lot of math. Luckily, this time I had company. Satya and I started this together and helped each other to recover from traps. Hope this is a good stepping stone to steer my career towards Statistics and Data Science.

Monsoon Trek to Kodachadri - Day 2

Sometimes we think others are too unfair to us. That was exactly what I felt when some devotees did not let us ride in their hired jeep, though there was plenty of space. Least did I know that Almighty had different plans for us!

Rain had given some brake in the morning. At poojari's house, we had a plate of plain and set dosa each. I never thought Dosa would be so tasty at that altitude and terrain. It was very tasty indeed. After breakfast, we did not want to trek down as the shoes were completely wet and fear of leeches. We requested some devotees if we could get a ride back to main road. Though there was space, they did not let us ride along. So we decided, it was futile to wait for more Jeeps as generally nobody comes up with vacant seats.

So we decided to trek down. I calculated that was a saving of 400 bucks!! We put our wet shoes on and started our descent. As expected leeches were waiting for us. Sun was out, no rains made it very humid and that is when leeches are very active. We had lost the leech candy that we carried previous day. So we were defenseless against leeches. We paused briefly in the clearing, but it is difficult to remove leeches without proper weapon. We covered the path swiftly and reached Santosh Hotel tight and fit. We had half a dozen leach bites in each leg and blood was oozing out, which is not scary anymore.

We departed from Santosh hotel after savoring fresh guavas and 2 shots of hot lemon tea. We decided to take an alternate route to reach main road, as the one we took yesterday for our onward trek was also infested with leeches. On the way, we thought of checking out at Iskcon temple. It was pretty big farm and Krishna temple there. We were just in time for afternoon prayer. We attended the pooja and the devotee there offered milk. That was quite tasty and gave me needed energy.

After the Iskcon temple, there is a deviation to the right, another Jeep trail. We walked along this new route. after about 10 minutes, we heard a stream flowing nearby. Few minutes later the stream was right next the jeep trail. Madhu was excited at this sight and asked a localite

Madhu - "ಇದು ಯಾವ ನದಿ?" (Which river is this?)

Localite - "ಇದು ಹಳ್ಳ.... " (this is just a pit...)

For us it was heavenly, we immediately decided to take a shot at the water. We did not realize we had spent more than 1.5 hours in the water. It was very refreshing.

The walk to the main road was easy. On the way, we bought a jack fruit too. At Kollur, had nice darshan of Goddess Mookambika. While walking back to the bust stand from temple, booked return tickets on VRL, thanks to technology. After having some light food, it was time to get back to Bangalore traffic.

Epilogue:

The Jack fruit wasn't very tasty. Few leech bites were itching for a week. Memories are ever lasting.

Dreams - Chemical activities in brain

This was very strange. I was trying to find a derivative of myself, and was shocked when I found it is zero. How is it possible? I am not a constant function, I was awakened from sleep, I realized it was a dream. I was sweating, could not sleep for a long time.

I have been studying Calculus recently as a prerequisite for more deeper Neural Network. This is my yet another honest attempt to understand Neural Networks. It was like Déjà vu going through differentiation after more than a decade. I think, I still don't remember the complete dream, but it was really strange. I can't believe I was trying to find derivative of myself!!
The following day was very dull which was expected. I could not sleep following night too, woke up at 12AM and watched 'August Rush'. I loved the movie. The amazing effect music has on someone like me who don't understand the technicality.
It brought me back my new dream to learn music. Not sure how it is going to affect the brain cells. It has been 2 days and no dreams yet!!

Monsoon Trek to Kodachadri

Day 1:

It has been one of my dreams to trek to Kodachadri in monsoon. It came true on the last weekend of June 2015. This was my 4th time to Kodachadri, but this one was going to be a special one.

Madhu readily agreed to join when I told him about the plan. I did 5 rounds of running/walking in Vijaya bank layout park on a sunday and some 30 min work out another day. That was my fitness test to ensure I can endure the trek!

We reached Kollur at 8:30AM by SRS sleeper bus, one hour behind the schedule. Freshened up and had idly and dosa at a local Ganesha hotel. The KSRTC bus conductor was grumpy and did not seem to like 2 lunatics with heavy backpacks trekking to Kodachadri in the rain. Nevertheless, he was kind enough to stop the bus at the trek starting point. It is unrecognizable now, because of overgrowth of vegetation in rainy season and concrete road.

Get set go....

A step out of concrete road, there were waiting ever hungry leeches ready to suck our blood. After tightening the shoe laces and making sure everything is fine, we began our walk into the wilderness by about 10:30AM. It is a walk through a defunct Jeep trail for about 5 km initially before actual climb begins. For about 3km from mail road is thick jungle and lot of fallen leaves on the trail had made it perfect setting for the leeches. There were dry patch of open land where we could stop and remove the leeches. Since the gradient was small and we were brisk, not many leeches managed to reach skin. It was however drizzling intermittently.

After about 5km we come to a small village called Valur. It was approximately 12:15 when we reached Santosh Hotel, which is now quite famous in blogs, is a good resting point. The hot lemon tea was very refreshing. As usual, Madhu had a dosa here. I was happy with nice guava and lemon tea. By this time, rain gods were in full mood. We left Santosh Hotel at about 1PM.

 Jeep Trail, near Valur

Made some friends @ Santosh Hotel

The path becomes steep and it is through thick jungle. That means, it is leech territory, where leeches were brisk and we were slow. Thanks to the Santosh Hotel owner who gave us a weapon to fight against leeches (A mix of salt, tobacco and lime tied in a cloth and a stick to hold the lump). This was quite effective, a touch of the tip will make the leech fall off. Once has to see it working to appreciate it. There were lot of trees fallen across the trail, raining heavily, we had to take a short detour into the jungle to go around and find the track. All this had to be done very quickly, a second pause will give a dozen more leeches to get onto the shoe and make their way inside. Once off track, it is very difficult to get back on track because it is very easy to loose orientation inside the jungle. Every direction looks same, fear of leeches and heavy rain will make it crazy.

Negotiating Obstacles...

The weapon to ward off leeches!

After about an hour of climb, we reached a bald patch of the mountain. I remember the view from here was breath taking, in my earlier trips. But this time, we were in the clouds. We could hardly see anything few feet away. Occasionally mist cleared giving us the glimpse of the surrounds. It was totally out of the world. Heavy winds were making rain drops reach ground horizontally. It was as if some one was spraying water on me. I just sat here on a rock and enjoyed the sound of wind and rain. This is where one feels a connection with nature. Mind becomes empty.

The paradise!

There is one more stretch of climb through thick jungle before we reached Kodachadri. Throughout the climb it was raining continuously. Thanks to the de-leeching stick, both of us reached the peak without a single leech byte. I consider that as an achievement given my fitness level. It was about 3:30PM, approximately 4.5km uphill trek.

When we reached the government inspection bungalow (IB), water was dripping all over us. The guy in charge asked us to dry ourselves outside. Entrance hall to the IB was all wet and I could understand the situation. The rooms have to be dry to sleep in night and naturally the IB in charge was quite irritated. After having quick lunch (wasn't great!), we started towards the Sarvagna Peeta. This is where Sankaracharya witnessed goddess Mookambika. 

This was the best part of the trek. Rain gods lashed us with full fury. Continuously rained till we reached the peak, which was approximately about 1.5km uphill from IB. It was as if gods wanted us to bath in fresh water before visiting Sarvagna Peeta!! It is a dilapidated stone mantapa, inside is a stone statue of Sri Sankaracharya. Sat here and closed my eyes, let all the thoughts flow. This is where one can review all thoughts - happiness, miseries, challenges, achievements and strike a balance. When I was ready to leave, felt lighter. After this would prefer to walk in silence.

Rain had stopped by this time. Sun was setting in west. Started walking back to the IB. There s a small Ganesha temple in a cave (50m detour on the way). It was very pleasant and calm. Offered sesame seeds laddu to Lord Ganesha.

I was not in a mood to eat dinner, so slipped inside the sleeping bag and called it a day.

I was never so confused...

All along the way to home today, after reaching home, I have this strange feeling. I was not normal. My heart feels heavy, mind confused, I am totally blank. It was like the sixth sense at work. 

Unable to comprehend what was happening to me, I just sat in my room alone. It was a terrible feeling, I had to sort it out, otherwise I know I can't sleep for days.

I just sat alone and started introspecting. What happened today. I had just resigned from my job at Honeywell. What does it mean?

1) I am unemployed. There is no protection.

2) I will not get salary. I have planned to take care of stuff for few months.

3) The world outside is wild. There is no corporate might that protects interests. I am prepared for this.

4) I have to work harder. I love this.

5) I will no longer meet, talk to my friends regularly - Yes. The heart beat is confirming, this is the reason for my mood swing. I am afraid that I am going to miss wonderful people I was working with. I am going to miss tea times, all interesting discussion during lunch, deep technical discussions, debugging and solving problems, spontaneous humor. This is what I am going to miss most. I am already feeling lighter as I discovered the reason. I convince myself, I can be in touch with my friends by various means. So, it is like going onsite, though there is no Lync or Outlook as in corporate, but there are WhatsApps and Facebooks in social space.

At the end of this writeup, I am feeling relaxed and lighter. Things are getting clear.I think I need a really heavy movie to cheer back, I think Shawshank Redemption will do the job.

Power of Subconscious mind!!

It was dark. I am running to escape from a big ball of rock that is rolling towards me. I am huffing and puffing in my bid to escape from it. I know it is going to crush me, unless I did something. Suddenly a screen flashes in front of me with two options.

Somehow I know the option "DISMISS" is my only option to escape from the impending doom. As the rolling rock approaches me, I press "DISMISS". Suddenly, everything is calm and placid.

When I woke up, it was 7:30 AM and it was bright and sunny outside the window. I am confused, what happened to the alarm clock? All the dramatic events came flashing in my mind(conscious one this time). Bloody hell, my subconscious mind is playing with me. The stupid thing that is the result of some chemicals in my brain tried to control me. What the heck. Next day, I kept the mobile on the table, farther away from where I sleep!

By the way, I sketched that picture... something I did after an eternity!

Back! after a long peregrination

Finally I am back to writing after a long, nomadic peregrination. A lot of things have changed for me. I too tried a lot of things, but nothing gave me solace as writing. This is how I talk to my-real-self, look back, reflect, retrospect, introspect, fix things that can be fixed, cherish beautiful memories.

Wow, I am feeling so relieved that I am back to writing. It feels so good to write, I will need good content to write about, so I must do certain cool things that would become the content, then I write about it. I hope this virtuous cycle would give me enough escape velocity to jump to a higher orbit. That sounds like a good plan. All the best for me to execute it!

My Love Story - Books

Books are great companions that are always by my side wherever I needed or not needed. Just carry a book everywhere, it will always act as a filler for boredom. I am forever grateful to my pal Sridhar who introduced me to this wonderful hobby. Back in engineering days he gave me this book, Jurassic Park, written by one of my favorite author, Michael Crichton. That is when I fell in love with books.

Recently I finished The Krishna Key. It is our own Indian version of The Da Vinci Code. It was a page turner with anagrams, interesting characters. There are characters equivalent to Robert Langdon, Silas, The Teacher, Bishop Aringarosa etc. I like the way author explains importance of 108, connection of 786 to 'Om'. This book also added new goals to my travel love story. One day, I want to visit Somnath Temple in Gujarath, Vrindavan and Mount Kailash.

It has pure Indian connection, as the name clearly indicates, it is about Krishna. Author has done a neat job of connecting a lot of dissimilar things to carve a fiction story. Somewhere in the middle, though I was loosing interest, the story immediately gained momentum. Prior to this, I enjoyed living through Shiva Trilogy.

I am not a fast reader. I enjoy imagining the whole scene and become a part of it. There is also a phenomena called Post-Read Depression. Last time I went through this was when I finished 7th part of Harry Potter series. After I completed this book, I didn't know what to do. I took some time to come out of depression, reading the 7th part second time also helped!

Now that I have finished a book, I enjoy choosing the next book. I have been planning on a non-fiction from sometime. Thus my love stories continue....

Love, Life - wandering thoughts

"Love" as a noun means "A strong positive emotion of regard and affection". I am referring to this meaning of "Love" in this post.

It is such a wonderful state of mind to be in Love with someone or something, it can not be explained in words. One has to go through this state to feel it. When one is in love, one starts to live for it (Listen to 'Find Yourself' from Cars!). As one lives through it, one will make a love story. The story invariably ends or looses its intensity at some point in time(Could be happy ending or otherwise).

Now, what next? I think this is very unstable state. One becomes very unproductive in this state. Lot of questions start haunting the mind. A slight negative thought is disastrous in this state. This is also the beginning of a change.

What I propose is that one should start finding the next thing to fall in love with. I think falling in love is the most important and beautiful thing.

e.g. Fall in love with music, learn a musical instrument. Live for it, live in it. Life seems so beautiful.

For geeks, fall in love with a technology and live learning it and live in it.

For elevated souls, fall in love to bring a change in society. Fall in love with nature, follow every rainbow, climb every mountain.
But there are some things that are impossible to fall in love with. Don't loose heart, that is where movies like 'Lucia' comes to help. Fall in love with such things in your dream. Live the impossible in your dream.

Wow... there are so many things to fall in love with. One life is not enough to love everything that is out there!

Lucia - One of a kind movie

"ನೀ ಮಾಯೆಯೊಳಗೊ, ನಿನ್ನೊಳು ಮಾಯೆಯೊ" (Are you inside an illusion or illusion inside you)

This was the whole essence of this movie "Lucia". This is one of the best movies I have watched in Kannada. This has everything - Simplicity, Energy, Life, Love, Dream, Melody, Deception, Fear, Comedy, Greed, Reality, Colors, Devoid of Colors and so on... in appropriate quantities.

This was the second of all the movies I have watched in theaters that I wanted to watch again... no, I wanted to live the movie again.

Songs are very different, people will have their reservation to like or dislike. But I liked.

I don't want to write more. This movie should be watched in theater and one should live the movie. Watching this movie a second time will make it a very different movie.

Director Pawan Kumar has amazingly played with colors(and devoid of colors). Hats off to you Mr Pawan. I am sure you will go places.

As I write this post, I am listening to the very song sung by Sri Vidyabhushana Swamy. Aha, I wish I get lost in my dream, and I think my dreams are devoid of colors.

Restarting digital life...

I knew Google was going to stop their Reader service. I had several bookmarks stored in Google reader I was following regularly. All these days I was so occupied in life, I had not realized that Google indeed had already stopped the service. Now that I have some time for myself, I tried exploring what is happening in digital life. I realized that I have lost all my RSS feeds.
I had lots of blogger friends, I don't know how to get back with all of them.

May be that is an indication for me to clean up my mess and a fresh start. That sounds good. It appears to be in alignment with what is happening in life at a macro scale. I am figuring out how to create and sync feedly on all my digital life interfaces.

Rooting my phone

Finally I rooted my Sony Xperia Neo V to Cyanogenmod Jellybean 4.1.2. I was very reluctant to do this from quite some time.

Thanks to my pal Sridhar who thinks rooting the phone is a matter of fact. Having not rooted the phone this long, I felt like I am an outlier(in negative way) in Android world. I still remember the days when Sridhar told one day that he formatted his hard disk. That was about 14 years ago. I was beginning to learn about hard disk, yet formatting it was already a matter of fact to him. Those are the days....

Coming back to reality, my stock ROM had become a pain to use. As with all mid range Xperia phones, 358MB of RAM, 420MB of internal flash will leave the user with no choice but uninstall an app to install a new one. The phone was so slow that it would show called ID couple of seconds after starting to ring. I had to revive it or brick it.

Whole process was straight forward. I could not get fastboot detect the device on Windows, so did the whole thing on Ubuntu. Now I feel like it is a new phone. So responsive, ability to install apps on SD card, I am feeling like I have a new phone without spending a penny(but of course few hours of time). UI is also refreshing.

Migration to Jellybean is what excites me. I am more interested in Google Now, the feature where the phone starts learning about me. When other humans, including myself, could not understand me, I wonder what will phone learns...

So far, Jellybean has been sweet, everything is working as expected, hope it continues to be that way....

Happy Navaratri!

Happy Navaratri wishes to one and all. May the goodness prevail over all the evil in the world.

I was in US last year during this time. This year I am very much here, had good time washing my car after a long time. The exercise made me feel all rusted rusted parts of my body. I felt good when finally my car looked spic and span, barring a handful of scratches here and there. The bike did not get as much attention as all overexercised parts of the body had started singing.

It was a good scene on roads as all vehicles were wearing a new makeover. Washed, decorated with flowers, colors, banana plants(not sure if it is called something else?). I wonder how many lemons were crushed today!! I did a handful of them...

100th post!!

Whoa, it is my 100th post. Is that an achievement, I don't know. 100 posts in 8 years. When I look back and analyze the number of posts per year, the more I wrote, more I was being myself.
The year 2012 was a very challenging year. The year which saw a new comer, losing someone very close. The year I started questioning my own deeply rooted beliefs about what I believed as the most important ingredient of life.
I bid farewell to 2012 standing on top of Vaishno Devi shrine, hoping genuinely 2013 will bring new perspective in life. While the year did bring some clarity, it has not been very easy one.
For an aquarian born, having INTP personality, I guess I can handle the challenges very well. I am well aware that I will be facing many cross roads in the year to come. It is a tough job to choose right path as life does not offer an 'Undo' function.
Hoping to be more of myself....

Raspberry Pi it is!!

I managed to boot Raspberry Pi today. These are my first impressions.

I powered it using my Samsung micro USB mobile charger. Connected to LG 32" TV using HDMI cable. The awesome part is Keyboard and Mouse! Logitech RF wireless Keyboard and Mouse worked like a charm when I connected the dongle to USB. RJ45 cable connected to Router and Ethernet port on Raspberry Pi. SD card loaded with Raspbian "Wheezy" OS image.

It booted to command prompt. "startx" started the Xwindow system. It was nice to see my entire TV as desktop. Midori browser connected to internet effortlessly! Was happy to see my blog. Logged into facebook.
I wanted to publish this post from the pi itself, but google disappointed me. For some reason midori could not go past google accounts login page. Youtube was also disappointing as there was no flash player installed. I could not install any other browser too. Hoping to explore more over weekend!

Ede tumbi haaDuvenu!

Today's telecast of ede tumbi haaDuvenu took me to my old world. It was about my favorite poet K S Narasimha Swamy. It was very interesting to learn how this great person became poet. It took me back to my dream world and I am still floating in it. I hope the feelings last long!

"Back to School" after a decade!

I was really skeptical if I was ever going to enjoy class room again, I was totally taken by surprise. It was an awesome experience sitting in class and listening to the extremely tallented professors. There was no dull moment!
Of course I am talking about my MBL contact classes. Those professors are extremely talented in their fields and they kept entire class of 150+, completely inhomogeneous audience glued to their seats. I didn't realize the time at all. Class was full of young to old people with most of the crowd from non-law background. It was quite interesting and well spend 1.5 days.

A Quick Decision

Last Friday I enrolled for Master in Business Law course at National Law School of India University, Distance Education Department. I hardly had time to decide. I came to know about it from my colleague Avinash on Thursday. Friday was the last date for enrollment with fine! Just filled the form, paid the fee and thats it.

My another colleague Satya has been inspiring me on 'Business' and I too had been planning to do something related to Business. I could not afford a big hole in my pocket. When I went through the syllabus of MBL, I felt at least it will improve my general awareness. I don't expect it to change my career, but you never know. Either way, it is no harm.

I have spent a decade of professional life, not really trying to do anything big. Let this decade be the crazy one. The least thing I expect is the satisfaction that at least I tried.

Operation Fitness

This is my second innings towards fitness. I should say I was fairly fit during 2008. Post 2009 I started skipping work outs and put on weight. Stress, no work out and tension impacted adversely on my fitness. 

After my mother went to London to visit my sister, my culinary skills took care of my food intake and I started loosing my waste line by a thread. I felt good about it. Recently, I started to go on long walks in mornings, but my laziness ensured this routine is not regular.

Today, after noon I just decided to go on one such walks. I walked and walked and walked for about 2 hours. It started raining, still I kept walking. A sardar gentleman stopped his car and asked me if I wanted lift... Wow, I felt happy that world still has some goodness in it and I thanked him for the offer and told I preferred to walk.

After sometime, I got bored of walking. I took a bus to return. I checked in google maps and realize that I had walked for about 8km. Not a bad way to kill a Saturday!!

My plans!

I always wanted to travel around. I used to go on trekking and travel with friends. Something inside me was still not satisfied.
So after a lot of thought, I became a member of Youth Hostel Association of India. And, I have signed up for National Himalayan Winter Trekking Expedition to Dalhousie. My cousin Madhu prompted me to take this action and I think I did a good thing.
The plan is to make this as economical as possible, so we are going by train and as much as possible will travel in second sleeper class. I have signed up for Dec 25th batch. While returning, we are planning to visit either Jammu or Amritsar. We are still debating.
A new desire is making rounds in my mind. How about biking trip in Goa arranged by YHA!! I will have to buy a bicycle and train myself. Let me see how I execute it.
Of course there are family trips lined up for Tirupati and Kukke Subramanya etc.