Tiger of Mysore

He still stands tall.. Captured while at Cochin Harbour.

Green Pune

The Commonwealth Youth Games-2008 are nearing and Green is the theme. And the venue - Pune - is indeed green.
My experiments with the lens -

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Untitled

I recently moved to Pune and now I am living with my family. The last 3-4 years were one of most memorable times - in Hyderabad. I made quite a few good friends, learnt a lot at work and had a good time.

But with this relocation I have also realized you miss out a lot when you move away from your friends. No matter what the advancement in communication technologies - mobile phones and internet - you still miss out on something basic. There is nothing like sitting besides your friend sipping coffee- engrossed in one of those endless conversations.
When you are with friends, all through the day at work and at home you tend be more happy, the lighter moments, the good and bad times shared, and the fun! I somehow feel the same cannot be compensated by talking to a friend who is in a different city on a mobile phone. All of a sudden you miss those good times, the late night conversations at the veranda, the weekend mega plans, the midnight dinner at Ohri's, and of course the Biriyani. Distances do matter!

I realize you miss out on a lot of things when you leave a city, friends and work. More so when when you come back to live with your parents, where there is always a generation gap and the resulting conflicting opinions. Only now I realize there were so many changes in my lifestyle in the past few years, which might not have happened had I been staying with my parents. But in my view, they were good, and I enjoyed it! At the end happiness matters. And now I find it difficult to live the other way!

Back in four years

It has been four years since I started using mobile phones and this week marked the arrival of my sixth instrument. I started off with Nokia 1100 and later used phones like LG smartphone and Nokia 6275 - with CDMA internet, bluetooth, and camera. Apart from these they even had excellent value added features like talking to a person on the other end and things like SMS. One reason to move from LG to Nokia was the hope for a better battery backup, which was obviuosly taken care of, but not to the extent I had thought - The previous Nokia phone I used was Nokia 1100.

Now that I relocated to Pune, I thought I would move back to GSM after using CDMA for some 3 years now. I had chosen CDMA initially for wireless internet and better roaming. Since I am back home and no longer need these features I opted for a GSM and my dad gave me an unused Motorola MotoRazr v3i flip phone, which he got an year back but never used it.

An aspiring dude and a flip phone - that's what I wanted. Soon I developed my own style of opening and closing the phone, attending calls etc. While driving if you get a call, take the phone (Flip Phone) from the jeans left pocket, slightly open it, (not fully, though its is completely possible) take it up towards the face and then open it fully with the chin - while the right hand still on the steering with an expression I cant explain on pen, And then after all this say "Hey, I'll call you back".

But it took no time for me to realize that the battery talk time of my new Flip phone was 32 minutes to be precise. This without using any of the value added services. I got a new battery last week and the talk time in that was 20 minutes. I had to recharge the battery every few hours.

Quite frustated I decided to buy a phone with the most battery backup. Went to the shop and asked for a phone which did not have a camera, GPRS, Mp3 player, FM and color display. Soon the person on the counter showed me a Nokia 1200 phone, the entry model in Nokia, which had a very close resemblance to my first phone. The cover said 7 hours talk-time and 2 weeks standby time. And priced same as the model number. I can talk and send sms with this phone, manufactured at the Nokia plant in India - Sriperumbadhur, near Madras.

Back to typing sms's without even seeing the phone and a comfort level I wanted. I have spoken for 3 hours and the battery still shows full. Feels good:-)