Open Source

The winter went zipping past, and the summer's almost had its summit claimed. Chai Biskut is back when the monsoon should have been.

The past few months were not the most interesting, yet some of the nicest. The last 6-odd months have also been the longest I've lived without posting on the blog. I do read blogs everyday though :). Just to give you a peek as to what was on in the Chai Biskut world over these last six months.

November brought in a trip to Chennai and Bangalore. It was Vinodh's wedding reception in Chennai and the trip was made by me and my cousin Manish and we blessed Chennai with probably its best downpours in years. We took the 2604 'Sambhar Express' from Secunderabad to Chennai, could do nothing more than have breakfast and lunch at Saravana Bhavan till the late afternoon. Then Sridhar Joshi helped us get a guided tour of the RRI cabin at MAS. Amazing! Then the reception dinner.

The next morning we had planned to 'do' the LHB shatabdi from MAS to SBC which we thoroughly enjoyed. Met a professor of mine in the train! Spent some time in and around SBC area, then proceeded to YPR from where we were scheduled to take one of my favorite trains, the 7604 YPR-KCG express. Had fun in all the train rides. I wont bore you with further details.

The new year has been pretty good too. No major railfanning trips but then did a lot of air-fanning though. Both real and the virtual. The real included multiple visits to the RGIA at HYD, trips to Delhi, checking out DEL's newest and longest runway, flying over the Qutub Minar and in the virtual world tried my hand at running the Chai Biskut Airlines' on FB's Airline Manager game! Did a pretty decent job anyways..

The Delhi trip was made in mid Feb for the wedding of D's cousin; and even though it was fun, I had to miss the annual IRFCA Convention (at NRM) which took place just a week ahead of the wedding in Delhi itself. You can't keep away from work for more than a few days, can you?

On the personal front, Vidip's getting brattier and brattier by the day! He's now started to speak entire sentences and can co-relate stuff and he does it normally, meaning that Dad's kantri buddhhi hasn't been passed on to the next gen!

Work's getting busier and nice over the last few months and probably the last two summer months were the best of the lot. The only trouble was driving in the sweltering heat.

March-April also brought me in touch with long lost school friends after more than 15 years! Almost 10 of us met up one fine sunday evening and had a fantastic time. Found quite a few of them on FB and that was the icing on the cake.

The past month also featured the first 'official' bloggers meet that I've been to. The interesting thing was that I knew no one there and have now come in touch with quite a few. As for this blog, I've tried to host it on my personal webspace, installed wordpress and imported the blog. But then it did not really work out. So back to blogger, and have only linked my domain here. I'm still developing my main website and hope to have it up by mid-June.


The blog-title comes from the fact that I've dumped Windows from my desktop and am using Linux! Open office ain't too bad, GIMP is a touch tricky, MyPhoneExplorer does not work (even with Wine), and browsing's as easy as it could be on Windows, thanks to Chrome! Loving every bit of the experience!

I'm also heading to Mumbai for a conference next week and will be there from the 3rd to the 5th evening. Will head to Pune overnight and then taking the PUNE-SC Shatabdi on the 6th! Really looking forward to the amazing run. Praying to see some good crossings including some scissors on the run!

And thus, after a 6-month lull, Chai Biskut is back.. have fun!