Circle of Life?

Just came across this news of the 3 condemned assassins of the late Mr. Rajiv Gandhi again moving the Madras High Court for commuting their death sentence. A death sentence which was originally handed over by the special court, upheld by the Madras High Court and then upheld by the Supreme Court. And again the clemency petition was rejected by the President of India in August 2011.

TNN | Aug 29, 2011, 04.40PM IST, CHENNAI: The three convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case have moved the Madras high court challenging the rejection of their clemency pleas by President Pratibha Patil.

Now I figure they are moving the HC against the rejection of the clemency petition. I am no judicial expert and I don't need to be one to understand that it's some utter sham that is going on in here. So, what would they do if the HC again rejects the plea, move the Supreme Court again? And then a new President against the judgement of the earlier President. And I am sure they'd hope another 20 years to pass in this loop. That's one heel of a Circle of Life - a vicious Circle.

From the day of the assassination in 1991 till this day, 20 years have passed. Are we waiting for the killers to die a natural death instead of being punished for what they deserved? They were being punished for what the law of the nation deemed as rarest of the rare case and awarded them the death sentence. And there are some of these political scumbags who cannot rise above their regional interests, who are aiding and abetting this case to drag on forever.


My main peeve is against this setting up a precedence where every convict on death row keeps on utilising the loopholes in the system and drags on their cases for years. Tomorrow Afzal Guru might do the same if and when the honorable President rejects the clemency petition. I am sure there are well wishers for him too in our political class. And then I shudder to think about when Ajmal Kasab takes the cue.


The honorable Madras HC should once and for all end this here. Or some other authority should end this. This is all the more necessary for the people of India to have faith in their judiciary.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Edit: The execution of the 3 convicts has been put on hold for a couple of months by the Madras High Court. There was a discussion about the topic in one of the Social Networking sites that I frequent. Please follow the link below if you'd like to listen in. It's a Google Plus link to my Public post on the matter.


https://plus.google.com/108587007911875191407/posts/A81spCbipyC

The Lokpal Bill discourse today

And note that I say only the Lokpal Bill instead of prefixing it with Jan or Government or Aruna Roy's or for that matter any other name by which it is called. For, in the end it's just a matter of semantics. Eventually, the end result would/should be the creation of an Institution of Lokpal and Lokayukta in the Center and in the States to properly handle allegations of graft against public servants.


I was resigning for the day and just sat down to pen a few thoughts on the ongoing impasse created by Anna Hazare's fast for a strong anti-corruption law and it's continuance into the 12th day with both parties (Team Anna and the Govt. of India) staying put on their stands. Well, it'd be more apt to state that the current situation was not Anna's creation but the creation of the powers that be who over the decades surely and conveniently chose to look the other way when it came to addressing people's grievances vis-à-vis corruption.


Anyway, much have been said about this movement led by Anna and his 2nd fast for the same issue since April 2011. I just finished listening to a couple of hours of discourse in the two Houses of the Parliament today - the Members of Parliament keen to reach a meaningful resolution so that Anna could be requested to end his fast. And I feel good about some of the opinions being expressed on the contentious issues. Isn't this what was needed - a discussion to start with, on the key points of contention? And I am hoping that by the time I wake up tomorrow, Anna Hazare should have enough reasons to call off his fast, on the 12th day. Hats off to his resolve.


And then I think about those occasional voices of discord that I have been hearing these few days on the agitation - about ends not justifying the means, about a new draconian law, about rise of another Hitler (seriously?), about corruption in the very body that is meant to check it, about blind followers, to name a few.


Agree there about people's right to have opinions and then I hope people would also respect my right to have strong opinions too.


My very own thoughts about the means is that the Government has been too thick-skinned to act on it's own people in power who have looted the State exchequer off the taxpayers' money. If not for this stubbornness being shown by Team Anna and his Supporters, expect the government to still be sitting on any future reports that it gets from the CAG or the CVC. I'll have to check the newspapers again, but I heard that, if not for the honorable Supreme Court, Raja and Kalmadi would still have been screwing the nation even after being named in the CAG reports.


Rise of another Hitler? Scary! Corruption in the proposed institution. Well, some give valid arguments, while some probably just had dreams about the law becoming draconian. And that is a discussion has to be done on the provisions of the Lokpal Bill by our representatives. Team Anna does not say that the Parliamentary process should be bypassed to pass the JLB; it demands a sane discourse on the Bill. And then it's not any Tom, Dick and Harry that has come up with the JLB overnight - people who are respected by one and all for their integrity have given serious thoughts on relevant clauses in the Bill. For this very argument that I kept hearing, I went through the relevant section of the Bill and found that necessary checks and balances have been kept to ensure fair election of the ombudsman as well as transparency in the process of removal, should any allegation arise against the ombudsman.


Oh, and the quintessential argument that everybody likes to throw out there - the crowd is subverting Democracy, the crowd is that of blind followers. The crowd, they say is not aware of what are the provisions of the Bill. Fair enough. There are well read persons who do know to a large extent what the fight is all about. And quite a large number of the followers do not know about the nitty-gritty of the Bill. But, they do know that they are supporting the fight against corruption. Isn't that enough? Some are meant to lead and some to follow. And in Anna they have found a leader. And the leaders of the Movement, slowly but surely, are putting their best foot forward in teaching people about their rights and about what rights they are fighting for. Who says that a billion plus Indians should all be aware of the Constitution of India. For that matter, as well read as I may be, I just know that the Constitution of India guarantees me 6 Fundamental Rights. And another new addition (fundamental or otherwise) is the Right to Information. And I know that the Preamble to the Constitution of India starts with "We, the People of India".


In anticipation for a better tomorrow.


-M

Installing Firefox on RPM based Linux distributions

So, I have been using Firefox for quite some time now. In fact from Nov 2004 when v 1.0 was released. There is much written about its awesomeness in many places on the web. And then I have been using Mandriva Linux from about the same time now, usually in a dual boot env with Windows.

Now whenever an update for Firefox is released, I get my Windows FF updated in a jiffy. But with Mandriva it's a different story. Both being different products with different Development and QA cycles, it takes quite some time for the official FF update to be available in Mandriva.

Of course I can always download the latest version straight from the Firefox site and use it. Installation, I thought was tricky, but now it seems easy-peasy, knowing where to put the stuffs.

Currently I am running Mageia, a forked out distro of Mandriva, while I am waiting for the 2011 Mandriva to be released. Mageia, like Mandriva uses urpmi for installing and updating RPM packages.

So, once we have the latest FF downloaded for our distro usually from http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/fx/, just this is what needs to be done once we browse to the path where the firefox*.tar.bz2 file was downloaded -

[mrigs@pragjyotish Downloads]$ su
Password:
[root@pragjyotish Downloads]# tar -xvjf firefox-6.0.tar.bz2 -C /usr/lib

tar as we know is the Tape ARchiver command in Linux

And the options:
x - extract
v - verbose output (lists all files as they are extracted)
j - deals with bzipped file
f - read from a file, rather than a tape device
C - extracts to a directory path

So, these sequence of commands would extract the contents of the firefox-6.0.tar.bz2 archive and place it in the /usr/lib path in the firefox directory. The contents are usually overwritten and the folder usually retains it's permissions (755 / drwxr-xr-x). The related symlink (/usr/bin/firefox) to which all shortcuts point to, does not need any modifications.

I am using this in Mageia but the same can also be used in Mandriva and I'd assume other RPM based distros will also have the same directory structure making the aforementioned sequence of commands effective.

Happy browsing.

Where does it stop..

..Yes, and how many ears must one man have,

Before he can hear people cry?

Yes, and how many deaths will it take till he knows

That too many people have died?

- Bob Dylan, Blowin' in the Wind

Let's call this a plea to the deaf spineless political elite of India - to be strong, to show what it is meant to be leading the nation, to be answerable, to value the lives of the very people who have chosen them.


It doesn't take long for the plea of a billion people to turn into a battle-cry for sounding the death knell of this uber shameless spectacle. Let them not take matters into their own hand - let them not do A Wednesday on the Gurus and the Kasabs, let them not turn a Rang De Basanti on the Kalmadis and the Rajas.

This Google Analytics thingy

..has me excited and I cannot wait till the weekend to write a little about it. Might be an old hat for the tech savvy among you, but this free Google service adds ability to track visits to my blog with far more capabilities than the default out-of-the-box Blogger settings (dashboard --> stats). Screenshot below is from the Blogger Stats page -

Its quite interesting to know Reader demographics for your Blog. For me, inquisitiveness is one primary reason; but, in the long run I view this ability as a means to identify the reading interests of my audience and also to get more visits. Right now I am not generating too much traffic and it's just been 1 day since I have Analytics monitoring my Blog.

The features seem to be interesting. One of them being the ability to track page visits by City/State within a country. May not be accurate (the one from Calcutta, is actually the ISP location of a reader in Guwahati) but it gives a very close approximation. Those Sunnyvale and San Jose visitors would be me, trying to generate traffic for researching on Analytics. I hope to be able to suppress these counts very soon as can be done with the OOTB Blogger Stats. Analytics also tells me about my traffic sources (which mostly are from FaceBook now). I'll soon be exploring the rest of the features as well and be writing about them.

To have this ability for your Blogger.com blog, you need to insert the Google Anaytics tracking code into the Blog template (Dashboard --> Design --> Edit HTML). It's a good idea to take a backup of your current template in case you do not want to lose any customizations you have already done. There are several articles on the web which tells you how to do it (here is one) and I am not going to repeat them here. Once done, give it 24 hours to start showing your first statistics. For any help with the code, let me know in the Comments section, and I am happy to assist.

Will wind up here today. Gotcha go back to work. Keep reading and have a good day ahead..!!

P.S. I hit upon this idea, looking at some Analytics screenshots of a fellow Buzzer. This dude is doing some really kewl shit in his Blog and Buzz stream. :)

The week ends

It's almost dusk here now and the week will soon be over. And even before the weekend is over, the official work would start in the form of calls and discussions with my counterparts in India. Quite an event-less weekend this was. I whiled away most of my time with some meaningless surfing on the web. At other times I had the usual household chores to attend to and then spent an hour studying. Spoke to a few friends over the phone and chat and spoke to the Family. But then, most of my weekends are spent pretty much the same way.


The week was surprisingly better though. Besides the routine affair of work, a couple of good news came my way. This got me planning for the year ahead. So, some of my weekend time was also spent with some reasonable thoughts going in that direction. I am tempted time and again to put all my faith on fate to take me towards what I'd like to call a successful career. So much for wishful thinking. I guess I need to do more than just rely on fate for the kind of success I yearn for. It's been really long since I have worked hard enough - toiled like the way we did before our exams. The fear of the sword hanging up there sure does bring out the best in you.

The rest was all the usual that happens in a normal home-office-home routine. Getting plenty of sleep these days owing to the lazy ass that I have become. Skipped the treadmill runs for 3 days. That puts me back by 19 miles in my goal for the month and a couple of pounds (I hope not). But I collected a few good foot-tapping tracks I need for the work-out. Ate good food. Browsing the web was not that meaningless as it turned out - I prepared this surprisingly good spinach almond shake the other day. For a change, got rave reviews for something edible I prepared. This one's easily made and healthy too. No added sugars. Try it if you can. Went for X-Men: First Class and liked it. This was surprisingly much better than the previous one in the X-Men series. Also learned that the Wolverine DVD that I ended up watching was actually a leaked workprint of the movie. And all this while I was wondering why were the effects this crappy in the movie! It definitely took the fun out of watching the movie. Also need to catch up with the other movies I have missed out these past few weeks - Fast 5, Hangover 2; and waiting for Delhi Belly. And yup, I ate up that smiley faced orange sitting on my desk.


That sums up my past week. Dinner invitation is at a friend's place. So that's one less thing to do at home tonight. I'd settle down now with some music. By the way, this MTV coke studio music thingy is good. A refreshing and a welcome change from the usual Bollywood numbers. Listen in to it.

Almost time for an upgrade, and a test drive

Two recent FLOSS announcements has me excited - maiden release of Mageia and the Beta3 version of Mandriva 2011. Means I have something new (nothing geeky, I assure you) to write about. It's about time I did some justice to the fact that I earn my livelihood from a related industry. Read on.

Would have loved to see Mandriva announcing a final 2011 version by now. But, considering the fact that it has recently been into too much of a turmoil, this nearer to stable release is more than welcome. For the uninitiated, Mandriva is a Linux distribution specializing in the desktop OS segment. It has also made some foray into the  corporate market providing server class solutions to a few medium and large organizations.

Mandriva Logo

Sales pitch aside, Mandriva has always been my distro of choice whenever I wanted Linux on my personal computer, from the days I started using one of it's earlier avatar, Mandrake 7.0. During those college days, besides the learning motive, Mandriva gave me a better looking option against the rather dull Windoze XP (and the duller 98). And then, unlike other distros of those days, it let me play MP3s, watch videos and could 'see' all the FAT32 partitions without much of the geeky mount magic. It got me hooked and I have remained faithful ever since. The reasons have remained pretty much the same over the years with a few minor geeky additions. Look and feel is one big factor influencing my choice of distros and I have preferred it's bluish look to the rather dull brownish default look of Ubuntu. A default brown setup somehow does not strike any chords with me, even to attempt any customization. How I wish Mandriva had a large and strong user base as Ubuntu. It's an easy to use, effective and great looking distro and that is why I spare no opportunity to let people know about it (noticed the Mandriva logo on this blog?).

Mageia, who? For those of you who never heard of Mandriva, I would understand it'd not be wrong to assume that this is the first time you are hearing of Mageia. Mageia, is also a Linux distribution, recently forked out from Mandriva.  

Logo design by Olivier Faurax

The often tumultuous financial situation of Mandriva, led some of its employees and loyal community members to fork out Mageia as an independent community-centered distro. Besides having it's root in Mandriva, this community driven nature is what makes Mageia appealing to me. I wish it luck and hope it fares better than Mandriva.

I am all set to download both these distros and install them on the very first opportunity I get. I'd give myself a couple of weeks to clear out a few priorities and make some space in my bloated laptop, before taking the plunge.

Be it Mageia, Mandriva or Ubuntu, or for that matter even Android, giving us, the users the ability to influence decisions and directions is what enthralls me the most about FLOSS (free/libre/open-source software), and Linux in particular. FLOSS, in fact is about letting people make their choices.

The new blog link

My very few audience would actually notice that I have recently changed the URL for my blog to moonlit-musings.blogspot. What it was prior to this, my new audience may never know and actually doesn't matter.

The blog title still remains the same - Musings. Blogger (the site) did not actually let me have my URL as musings.blogspot and so I settled for moonlit-musings.

The link name is partly inspired by the fact that all of these posts have come up in the dead of night. Not under the moonlight per se; I mean, I'd love to muse sitting under a tree on an open field and inspired by the moonlit surroundings. But for now I'd remove myself from thoughts of such opulence. I could try that some day when I figure out something more reasonable to write in my posts.

Speaking of the Moon, I feel a lot connected to this heavenly body. Connected, not the way some of my friends would quip about - "You have a heavenly body too". But, for some reasons it has always been inspiring and it feels good looking at it. And, my given name in অসমীয়া (Assamese), actually means phases of the Moon.
 
Well, this is it for another moonlit musing. Thanks for reading my blog and please do keep visiting.
 

On a presentation gone awry

That was one nightmare of a Presentation. My second presentation in the day and it went worse than I expected. Top among the reasons being my lack of preparedness for a non-technical topic. Comparatively, the morning presentation, a technical one, went fine, went smooth. I was able to drive home my point, wrap up within the stipulated time and words flew spontaneously. The technical presentation in the morning having to do with work that I deal with daily, was probably one of the reasons I did well in it. It was well received.

But this second one, on the topic of Crowdsourcing, left so much to be desired. And now as I write this post, I am realizing that this is the first time in 5 years that I chose to speak on a topic not related to my line of work. And if memory serves me well, I have in fact never spoken publicly on non-technical matters during my Engineering days and after I started working. That should be a point to ponder.

Besides this, something else that went wrong was the lack of content, not on the topic as such, but in my preparation for the presentation. Eventually I was left searching for words to fit rightly against the pictures and the bullets in my average made presentation. There is a wealth of material everywhere on this topic as well as things that I know of, but, somehow I didn't do quite well in putting these things together, piecing together the thoughts. It's so much akin to me not being able to give 100% to the job at hand, these days. I blame it on the countless distractions in my mind.

Another perhaps less important reason for the bad show was the fact that I was presenting to an entirely remote audience without the ability to 'connect' to them visually. This definitely impairs your ability to get the kind of immediate feedback that you seek from your audience's expressions when presenting in front of people. Telephone, it seems doesn't do a good work conveying emotions - yawning, frowning, pulling hairs. But yes, this would have had lesser impact had I prepared well.

As mentioned in a primer on public speaking, it definitely requires preparing on the topic well ahead of time and rehearsing a few times, even for the seasoned speaker. And yes, I need more public speaking.

Another must win Match: India vs Corruption

I don't know where to start this post from. Should I start speaking about the entire herd of corrupt politicians that are at the helm of affairs in the Country? Much have been already said about them; but the shameless bastards continue looting the Nation's exchequer, unabated, unfazed. Or should I speak about the billions that our Country has lost to the greed of these people whom We elected - pushing the nation behind on the development front and shoving it up on the corruption ladder (#87 in 2010; source - Transparency International).

While I can speak a lot about all these vexing topics, no amount of words would do justice to describing this man with a mission - Anna Hazare. His action speaks louder than these words. As of today (7-Apr-2011, 2 AM PST) this septuagenarian has already been on fast for more than 60 hours and he says he'll die fighting unless the voice of the people against corruption is heard by the the powers that be. He has rattled the power corridors of New Delhi several times till date and this time the movement has already started making its mark. The fight this time is against corruption and the several corrupt Ministers and other elected representatives that are running the country today. The fight is for the acceptance of the Jan Lokpal (जन लोकपाल) Bill by the Government of India, to truly empower the People of the Nation to act decisively against the corrupt without intervention from the Government.

It is sad seeing a 72-year old person having to take such a step - a real surge in feelings for the state of affairs in the Country driving this very gentle man, perhaps. But at the same time it is heartening to see that the movement has caught on with the youth of the Nation supporting it throughout the Country. Support has come in from many prominent figures in the Country from all quarters. All that is needed now is to continue the momentum and rope in more and more support for the cause, for the fasting grand old man and for the hundreds of other Indians who are on indefinite fast with Anna Ji.

Many would want to draw parallels with the Movement in Egypt and the Middle-east. While there can be some similarity in which the Movement is spreading among the people but they are definitely not towards the same end. Ours is a Democracy and we are not being ruled by despots. We are being ruled by Elected representatives, albeit corrupt. This movement is against the corrupt. Having said so, there still are honest politicians and it is these good people who should be leading the Nation.

I am not providing any solutions here. The way has been shown to us by the likes of Anna Ji - we simply need to tread on it. Follow the lead and take turns in leading. I am simply trying in my own small way to support the cause, to spread the word on the movement. Also, many of us (yours truly included) have been guilty of corruption - mostly by means of feeding the greed of the corrupt. We must try to inculcate in us the need to shun corruption in every walk of our life.

After the World Cup Cricket triumph, it's now time to win another important match - against corruption. Just as the nation united during the Cricket World Cup to boost India to victory, people have to create a non-stop movement till the Jan Lokpal Bill is passed by the Parliament. Thousands have already lent their support. But, we are a Nation of a billion plus and a billion plus Indians cannot be unheeded. जय हिंद.

Discuss on Buzz



P.S.: In the past few days, I have been posting numerous comments on News articles, posting on Facebook, Buzz, Orkut and emailing people about the movement. I am probably not doing much, but just my little bit to spread the word. Please consider using all means at your disposal to support the cause.















EDIT <<<< -- Update on the Movement -- >>>

Anna Hazare called off the fast after 97 hours on 9th April after government issued a gazette notification constituting a 10-member joint committee of ministers and civil society activists, including him, to draft an effective Lokpal Bill. Just goes to show that Gandhi and his motto of non-violence are still relevant today. The fight against the corrupt of course doesn't stop here. This is just the beginning and We, the People of India must not lose the momentum. जय हिंद.

Following is the text of the Gazette Notification issued by the Government of India constituting the Joint Drafting Committee comprising ministers and civil society activists to prepare the draft Lok Pal Bill (Source: The Hindu)

“The Joint Drafting Committee shall consist of five nominee ministers of the Government of India and five nominees of Shri Anna Hazare (including himself).

The five nominee Ministers of the Government of India are as under:

Pranab Mukherjee, Union Minister of Finance, P Chidambaram, Union Minister of Home Affairs, M Veerappa Moily, Union Minister of Law and Justice, Kapil Sibal, Union Minister of Human Resource and Development and Minister of Communication and Information Technology and Salman Khursheed, Union Minister of Water Resources and Minister of Minority Affairs.

The five nominees of Anna Hazare (including himself) are as under:

Anna Hazare, Justice N Santosh Hegde, Shanti Bhushan, Senior Advocate, Prashan Bhushan, Advocate and Arvind Kejriwal.

The Chairperson of the Joint Drafting Committee shall be Pranab Mukherjee.

The Co-Chairperson of the Joint Drafting Committee shall be Shanti Bhushan.

The Convenor of the Join Drafting Committee shall be M Veerappa Moily.

The Joint Drafting Committee shall commence its work forthwith and evolve its own procedure to prepare the proposed legislation.

The Joint Drafting Committee shall complete its work latest by 30th June, 2011."

Two cents from a now idle mind

Almost an year has passed since I last wrote here. And I am not surprised that in spite of mentioning that I'd follow up with posts more frequently, I haven't done so. Not that anyone was waiting. It's not that I did not try. It was just that I wasn't able to put into words all the thoughts that had engulfed me over these many months. Things have not got any better. But here I am still trying to do justice to the space that Google has provided me for writing.

A lot has happened over this last year - besides stepping into a new Decade. I was in Schaumburg (IL) a year back and those were very tough times for me work-wise during those days. Relentless work and the icy cold weather just made a mess of my stay in that place. Did not quite get a chance to catch a proper glimpse of Chicago during my stint there - all thanks to these two factors. No Sears Tower too. But got a feel of how chilling it can get in the Windy City. Took my first US Train ride during this time - from Schaumburg to Chicago. A few malls, a few eateries is what I visited during this stay in IL. Did not manage to get my driving lessons. I look forward to visiting Illinois again some day, during summers of course.

My work took me to San Jose (CA) during 1st week of April. A welcome change, I'd say, so far as the weather is concerned. But no respite from work. We still managed to visit a few places in and around San Francisco. Alcatraz is a nice tour. Not worth a 2nd visit though. However, we ended up visiting that place twice. I would come back to the purpose later in this post. SFO for sure is a lively place. The area around the Embarcadero stretch along the Bay reminded me so much of my stay in Geneva an year back. The people roaming around, some running and the hustle was so much akin to what I saw in Geneva around the Geneva Lake. I loved the buzz. Given the food buff that I am, it was hard not to try out a few of the food joints in SFO, especially the Sea Food ones. Crab House at Pier 39 is great. Work continued to be gruelling though. However managed to get a good break during the Memorial Day long weekend. Visited two college friends in NY and went around visiting Washington DC, Baltimore, Atlantic City and bits of NJ and Virginia too. A whirlwind tour it was, but quite refreshing. Soon after I got into a deluge of work and till end June I was all occupied with work. Good food and zero workout left me bloated by 8 Kgs during the first half of the year. More work also meant I could not go take pictures of the famed places that the Silicon Valley is known for - Google, Yahoo!, Cisco, Oracle, Intel. I left San Jose a day before the US Independence Day with a hope of coming back again to CA, especially to Silicon Valley. Oh yes, I had a painful RCT done just a day prior to flying out and no driving lessons yet.

Next assignment was in Toronto and I lived and worked in the Downtown area. This had by far been my best stay outside my country. Canada I heard was very much like the US. But Toronto, I saw, was so so so much different. This was so much more a cosmopolitan city than any other US city I visited and lived in. There were several reasons for liking the place - the eating joints would be at the top among them. I'd discuss about the city in a different post, perhaps. Work was comparatively less and I had a good time the 5 months that I stayed here. The Summers to my surprise were very pleasant - against the stereotype that I had in my mind before visiting the place about Canada being covered in a blanket of snow all year round. Stupid me. Visited 1000 Islands and Ottawa during this stay. I wanted to visit Vancouver and Montreal too but Winter started setting in and I had to move on to a different Project.

So, I escaped the Canadian Winter during 1st week of December and decided to head Home before the new assignment. I had three weeks before my new assignment in the Silicon Valley again (\o/). Visited Bangalore, Kolkata and my native place Guwahati during these three weeks. Met brother after 3 years, met parents after 1.5 years, met best friend after 1 year, a few old college friends after 4 years and some school friends after 9 years! It felt good.

I flew back to SFO on the evening of Christmas. This flight was especially tiring because of the fact that we had to fly via Dubai and the second stretch of the flight was nearly 17 hours. Regardless, I was glad to be back in San Jose after 6 months. And here I am penning these thoughts in a well deserved (pat-on-the-back) couple of leisure hours. One month has passed since I came back and the Winter here is pleasant. Reminds me so much of the pleasant winters that we had back in Guwahati. The Bihu was good here with two of our friends flying in from NJ to visit SFO. And this is when we paid our 2nd visit to Alcatraz. Also visited Napa Valley, the Mystery Spot, the Golden Gate Bridge - everything that I had missed during my first stint in SFO/San Jose.

As I look back now, I do see that my last one year had been real packed with work, with sprinklings of some fun once in a while. That should probably be one of the reasons of not writing here. And yes, spent a number of hours watching good movies as well. More on movies later. I have so many random thoughts going in my mind and I wish so much to put them into words here. It would be better I believe to do that during the hours that I waste browsing nothing on the Web. I will try - not a promise, but a hope to do so.