Pondicherry..

I just don’t know why I get late in posting things. I’ve no idea. I think laziness or may be moodiness. Now I’ve got the mood after drinking a couple of beers and breezers. That too at 1.00 AM in the morning! Anyway this post is about Pondicherry, which I’d visited a couple of weeks back. This time it was me and Chirag. Till Friday evening there was no booking done. When we called up the travel agents found that nothing was left for Friday. So had to do it on Saturday, which also had dependency on availability of tickets. But didn’t want to waste the weekend when we’d a plan. So booked the tickets immediately for Saturday and reached Pondicherry by 5 AM on a Sunday morning. Bus journey was painful in that Non AC bus. Chirag had a lot of complaints about mosquito bytes. The time we got down from the bus several auto wallahs started following us. All of them promised us to take to a good hotel. But don’t believe them. They’re all wolves in sheep’s skin. All big time bastards. One of them robbed us of Rs. 40 for only 1.5 KMs. And got us into a dirty guest house. Since it was around 5.30 AM, we took a little rest. Headed out to discover Pondicherry around 8.00 AM. Had our breakfast. Nothing special. Typical South India breakfast. Dosa and Idly vada. I wonder sometimes how do the South Indians get all the necessary nutrition from such food. We’re told in Bangalore that, bikes are easily available. Quite untrue. Don’t go by such advice. We found a Pulsar only after wandering 1.5 hrs in the market. Anyone you ask would tell you to go “Straightaaaa..”. They don’t say “straight” as its normally said. But they say stretch the last ‘a’ to make it sound like ‘aaaaaa’. Straightaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa……….. Ok okay. Finally we found a old Pulsar, but was quite fit for the need for the moment. So took it for a rent of Rs. 150 and fed it with 2.5 ltrs of petrol, which was enough for Pondicherry. Must confess here, there nothing much to see in Pondicherry except for European/French architecture. That was when I realized that one should read blogs before making a plan for such trips. And thats the reason probably I’m posting this. My first advice would be, don’t go to Pondicherry for its beaches. One was dirty and meant for fishing and another was entirely laid with stones. So beaches are just for a lazy stroll. Spend some time in the French colony. Its worth spending some time at. European architecture can be found every where. Of course Tamil is the default language in the area, every street name is written in English and French too. Not a problem for foreigners and the other Indians also. We went into the Aurobindo ashram. Quite serene place. One more thing people in Pondicherry are very nice. At least thats what we noticed in the whole day that we’d spent there. Roads sometime suffer from traffic jam but road rage was absent. Everyone seemed quite happy and cheerful. No tension at all. And chicks!!! My god…. I’m an atheist. But they’ll force you to believe in God. But I still maintain that I’m an atheist. But chicksssss………. I saw one girl I don’t think I can forget her face ever. She was a goddess man!!! Chirag and I though, its worth taking a snap. But one thing I forgot. Turning off the FLASH. Fuck man. Chirag slowed down the bike and clicked the button. And suddenly what happened was a bright light got fired from my Canon hand canon and everyone was looking at us. Quite embarrassing. Huh.. Couldn’t really help it. Forget it man. We had to push the bike to its limit after that accident!!! Lol. Hadn’t booked the return ticket. When we’d discovered that there was nothing much to discover in Pondicherry, It was time we did it. We booked our ticket online at a cyber cafe on the same Sunday evening. Liquor is dirt cheap in Pondicherry. Thanks to the no tax rule there. Liquor shops can in fact be found at every 100mtrs. It surprisingly cheap. I don’t know about prices in Goa, where I’m going at the end of September!!!! Yippiieeee.. Thikin of buying a Goa T-shirt form Tantra or Offbeat. Chirag bought a 2ltr jar of whiskey bottle. I bought a small bottle of red port wine and a big bottle of white port wine. Both of them turned out to be very good. Ended the day with diner and went back to our shitty guest house. In the morning headed off for bus. When we showed our printed E-ticket in the KSRTC counter the lady there couldn’t believe her eyes that it was a real ticket. Anyway thanks to KSRTC the driver recognized the ticket. Got into our “Airabath” AC bus. Reached Bangalore somewhere around 3.30 PM. Visit to Pondicherry is good for one day only. Don’t plan a stay lasting more than one day. You’ll probably run out of places to see there..

Snaps : http://www.flickr.com/photos/vegdevil/tags/pondicherry/

A small Gmail tip..

The free email service will always be a fight between the three biggies. Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail. All big brands with loads of features. But off late I’m starting to hate Yahoo mail. I’m not able to read many mails because Yahoo’s ads cover one fourth of them. And no doubt its slow like Hotmail. But Yahoo has one thing that Gmail doesn’t have. The neat folder view. I’d been wondering why Gmail doesn’t have a handy way of organising emails into folders like Yahoo or Hotmail. But as always this time also Gmail has not just something but something better than the others. Yes after couple of minutes RnD on the Net I found out how to organize your mails without using folders. And the answers is “Labels”. What we normally do is create folders with names according to the content that’d be stored in it, following our Windows mindset or any other OS mindset. So if you have a folder titled “Honey” or “Darling”, you store all mails from your girlfriend there or use a filter to do so automatically for you. If there is folder “XXX” or “Bad” or “Censured”, you probably store all your dirty mails there. But what if there is a mail from your girfriend which is really dirty!!! You’re in fix now. Where to store it?? But Gmail has the answer. Create your own labels as you want as many you want. Your labels will show up just below the quick contacts on the left pane. When you apply a label to your mail the mail is shown in that label view. So you just use the label as a folder. Just apply both the “XXX” and “Honey” labels to your girlfriend’s dirty mails and you can now access the mail from both your “XXX” and “Honey” label ooppss Folder, if still have the old Windows mindset. Cool.

Last week….

Just finished a bottle of white wine. Feels good. Probably was the best time I’d in last week. A week of sleepless nights working for American clients. Had to attend a team treat after a sleepless night on last Saturday. An entire week of screw ups and big tasks. Don’t know why such weeks come and where from.. Spent the Friendship day without any friends and watching Friends whole day. Had sent a Friendship day plus Good night SMS to couple of friends in the day without properly reading it. Even sinfully planned to tell them that I’d actually sent it in the mid night but somehow reached their cell phone around noon!! Fortunately no one called to tell me about this blunder; probably because they didn’t want me to get embarrassed. Could be just they have also failed to notice it in there busy life. Anyway, probably these things are coming to and end in next couple of weeks. Just waiting for those days hopefully…