More Hampi slices

Current day Hampi can be quite an incongrous landsacape. There are many things of different sorts being juxtaposed. Start with the rocky boulder strewn landscape through which the Tungabhadra flows. Courtesy of a (so I read) excellent irrigation system built in Vijayanagar times, that has lasted to this date, put in farms wherever there is some non-rocky land. Then 'strew' in the the ruins among all this. Finally give the place "World Heritage Site" status, ensuring a lot of tourists especially foreign. I had pasta for dinner both nights and onion-tomato-cheese omlette for breakfast while I was there. Since I don't get much opportnity to eat Western at Bangalore, took the opportunity at Hampi :-). There is a profusion of restaurants serving (mediocre) Western food. I chatted with the cook at one of the places and he explained how over years of interaction with foreign tourists, he learnt to cook their food. There is a shop selling "German bread" fresh baked daily, and restaurants that have Israeli food (pita, hummus), and even (I think) Hebrew signs. I spied a local kid shouting out to a surprised tourist something like "Bonjour, ca va bien?" and getting a reply in the same language.

Perhaps I can add as the last incongrous element: me cycling around looking somewhat clownish, black leather shoes, formal clothes and an ill-fitting cap.

Newspaper watch -- Cricket

Here's a little bit of news for the cricket types: The record partnership of 664 runs by Sachin Tendulkar and Vinod Kambli was broken recently. Bodepalli Manoj Kumar and Mohammed Shaibaz of St. Peters High School in Hyderabad set a world record with an unbroken 721 run partnership in the inter-school under-13 cricket tournament at Parade Ground in Secunderabad. The opposing St. Phillips team was skittled out for just 21 runs. Which takes the shine off a little bit, as the opposing team it would look was not exactly competent.

Dunno how this stuff works, and how under-13 tournaments qualify for records, but apparently this is 'kosher'. It got good coverage in the Hindu including some praise from Kambli. The Hindu also had a nice cartoon with Tendulkar holding aloft a whole heap of prizes and records, and this particular record slipping off the pile.

I haven't dug through, but you may be able to find the photograph in the Hindu online edition.


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Addendum: Too good to be true. If you had a sneaking suspicion based on St. Phillips low score (21), you were right. In a followup report yesterday, the paper says that that team was absolutely clueless and barely knew the rules of the game, leave alone played with any kinds of cricketing strategy. Their bowlers could just about get the ball rolling in the right direction but not much more. Takes the shine off the achievement.

Lonely Planet -- the new gold standard

The pictures should speak for themselves. They were all taken in Hampi, but I have seen similiar signs elsewhere eg. at Amristar.
For those who are not aware, Lonely Planet is an international travel guide series.





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And something else, just for fun. This was painted on the back of an autorickshaw, again at Hampi

Rusell Peters comedy show

I got this from a post on my high school (Timpany) alumni group.

This link is to a complete comedy show by an Indian comedian Rusell Peters. Very funny and occasionally x-rated.

If the link doesn't work for some reason, Google for 'Rusell Peters' (note the spelling) and click on the first result.

Have fun.

Bangalore slices

Halloween trick-or-treating in our apartment complex. I'll refrain from adding any comments !



Gorgeous Bangalore Palace. I was there recently for BangaloreIT.in, but didn't spend enough time or see that much noteworthy stuff to do a blog post on it.



Poster advertising camel meat for sale at Shivajinagar. (The poster itself was at Ulsoor market, a pretty cool place worthy of a essay)



A pool club in Sivanchetty Gardens (Ulsoor sounds better!). There was a similar one in Hyd which had table tennis too where I played sometimes. There is a certain no-nonsense 'real men only' atmosphere to these pool clubs which is quite nice




Siddique's -- a Bangalore institution

Infosys Puzzles

As part of preparing for the Bijapur thing, I spent yesterday trying to solve a whole lot of puzzles that are usually asked at Infosys interviews. Most of them I found straightforward but here are a couple that are more challenging. I didn't find a logical way to do these just had to try being creative. Answers are in the first comment to this post

In a 10 digit number, the 1st digit is the number of ones in the number, the 2nd digit number is the number of twos, and so on. The 10th digit is the number of zeroes. Find the number


I haven't cracked this yet:

a + b + c +d = d + e + f + g = g + h + i =17.
If a = 4, what are the values of d and g. Each letter taken only one of the
digit from 1 to 9.

More books

'Ravan and Eddie' which I talked about earlier, turned out a disappointment. Not a very fun book to read, although lots of the author's talent in abundant evidence. Similiarly with 'City of Djinns' by William Dalyrymple. I had ready "From the Holy Mountain" and was hugely impressed by it. City of Djinns is about Delhi. Dalyrymple notes that he had a huge struggle to finish the book and it seems to show. There are lots of interesting things he explores but some not-so-interesting ones too and the book doesn't have much of a theme and direction. It comes across like my own writing -- raw and whimsical and too often frivolous :-).

I picked up "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel, but didn't finish it. It was a Booker Prize winner and I'm not impressed at all. It has a story and all, and the writer has some talent but really didn't capture my interest at all. I think this is a personal opinion. Most of the time, I feel my comments are reasonably objective, occasionally not, like this time.

All the above were from Easylib, so its obviously been working great for me, though looks like I might overdo it. Here's my current waitlisted books on Easylib:

Boundless Energy : The Complete mindbody programme for overcoming chronic fatigue by Deepak Chopra. I feel quite lethargic most of the time, hence this.
In Xanadu: A Quest: By William Dalyrymple again. Giving him one more chance
Gods Little Soldier: By Kiran Nagarkar. Ditto
Fire on The Mountain: By Anita Desai. This on a recommendation by an old Timpany classmate, Geeta
Weekend Breaks from Bangalore: I would like to go hiking in Coorg or somewhere
The Motorcycle Diaries: About Che Guevera. Was made into a acclaimed film which I missed on my trip to the US
Caesar: From Colleen McCullogh's tremendous series about Rome

As I said, I'm in danger of overdoing it :-)