I’ve always wanted to go on long road trips, but with both Jo and me working, trying to find a contiguous block of holiday has been rather difficult. With me taking a break and Eid holiday coming during middle of the week, we got a chance to do our road trip. Part 2 continues.. Come Tuesday morning, we woke up earlier than usual and started packing for our journey. Sat down for breakfast and gulped down buns made by Mom.

I’ve always wanted to go on long road trips, but with both Jo and me working, trying to find a contiguous block of holiday has been rather difficult. With me taking a break and Eid holiday coming during middle of the week, we got a chance to do our road trip. With a date set, we next wondered which route to take? We considered Coastal Karnataka(Bangalore - Goa - Mangalore - Bangalore) and Tamil Nadu(Bangalore - Madurai - Kanyakumari - Thanjavur - Chennai - Bangalore), but eventually decided upon Coastal Karnataka after consulting with resident travel expert Ashwin.

2011 was a roller coaster year. Here’s the year in review, in bullet points Sold off my iPhone 3G and purchased a Nexus S Supposed long term US stay gets cut short. 3+ years of work on project gone down the drain. On the upside, learnt quite a lot. Met Manaa in person, after being a very close friend for 6+ years Was elected as Community Moderator for one of the Stack Exchange sites, Super User Wrote my first Chrome Extension to get around WebNonsense crap Bad security practice from the past comes to haunt me.

If you’ve been reading my blog or know me, you probably know that I have a rather regular set of vacation times – ie, a week’s break once every three months or so. This time, however it was slightly different, and it had been about 5 months since I had taken a break. Let’s go back in time for a bit, however. This getaway, was supposed to be a short 1 day trip to Guruvayur to attend wedding of fellow Rubyite.

Its been a very busy, hectic past few months. Besides my day night job( I work at US timings, PITA), I’ve also started contributing to techie-buzz, though my day night job takes a whole lot of my time, and I’ve not been able to contribute much. My Linux blog and as well as this blog has been lying almost in a coma state. I plan to start posting some articles now and then, got it in shipshape with a new theme, so watch out!

Picture from 10th standard yearbook, circa 2001. Somethings are priceless 🙂 Thanks, Kevin.

A little something my Dad sent to me by mail. Brought a HUUUGE wide smile on my face 🙂

Found this post while randomly browsing through facebook groups. Was literally ROFLMAO as I read through this. Here goes Sunday morning breakfast has to be sanna and sorpotel. Konkani is never spoken, always sung. At all family gatherings, (after a few drinks) the older men of the family will bring out their guitars and sing dirty songs and everyone will actually join in.

After running about the Mangalore passport offices, running behind the cops to get verification done, and running to Bangalore passport office and converting the passport application to Tatkal, I finally received my passport in Chennai yesterday. It wasn’t all smooth sailing though - I could’ve gotten it a LOT earlier but Ayudha Pooja, Vijaya Dashami, holidays caused the Passport application processing to be delayed by a week. To add to the complications, I had to apply for the passport in Mangalore I don’t have any valid address proof for my Chennai residence though I’ve been here for more than a year.

In my previous post I’d written about my initial experiences in Mangalore after a 5 month absence. This post continues my previous post. Well one of the main reasons I’d come to Mangalore was for my neice Shriya’s first birthday celebrations and more importantly her ear-piercing ceremony. My parents had been delaying it for me to come down to Mangalore. You see tradition has it that neice’s ear has to be pierced on her uncle’s lap.