The powerhouse comes along

Look at this piece. Rocks! It's a HP Pavillion zd7000 - mega powerhouse. Loaded with a massive 1GB RAM and a 40GB Hard Disk this is like a "desirable one" for me. The looks kill - a 17" widescreen with graphics card makes DVD viewing a pleasure. I didn't buy this one so I won't bother with the details. We are taking this machine to Malaysia to work on some video edits and flash work. Keeping our fingers crossed that the operation will be smooth.

Meanwhile I have been arranging the other hardware we will need for the trip. Tomorrow I shall be getting a crash course on better videography. Need to get some expert tips so that I can do a good job around there. I am excited but looking at the client's deliverable list is keeping me under pressure. Besides it's been a tough week at office and I need to get a good night's sleep to re-charge my batteries for the trip.

With so much to write about I am sure my blogging activity should be on a good high - but I promise to cut the crap. Talking about blogs - I made a new blog friend, Sanguine. Hey there, thanks for the comments and some great posts out there at Celeb(be)rating Life.

kapsi goes international

I would call it God's Gift! 2 months into the job and I have got the opportunity to go overseas for a client project. Let me admit that this trip is happening to me only because of the unfortunate passport hassles due to which my senior project manager is not able to be on this trip. But I thank my seniors for giving me this opportunity. I am flying to Malaysia over the weekend and will spend few days there working on a client project. It's going to be a hectic schedule but I guess it's going to be a new experience working on a LIVE project. The pressure is going to be high and deadlines pressing but the team is good so I should be able to manage. A quick preview of where I am going to be:

Langkawi
Langkawi comprises a group of 99 tropical islands (at high tide and 104 islands at low ride!) lying off the north-western coast of Peninsular Malaysia near the Thai-Malaysian border. The main island is known as Pulau Langkawi and 40,000 people live there, mainly Malay. The island is popular as a tourist destination with some excellent beaches. Langkawi is only 50 minutes flight from Kuala Lumpur.

I am not sure if I would have net access and would get time to blog. But I promise to come back and share my experience and also fill my flickr with a great set of photos.

One year of survival

I survived it. Yes, it’s been a full one year since I made my first post on blogger.com. Things have changed over the time and my blog has evolved from just website/software reviews or even restaurant reviews. Of course there was a time when I had to direct people to visit my blog because suddenly I stopped sending out e-mails with new software/website links. Some of them got hooked and some just gave up and some don’t know how to remember that they have to come back here for MORE!

After a few months of blogging I even re-worked my personal website to pick the latest blog posts and show them on the front page. This made it easy for me to tell people just to visit my homepage for the latest happenings. When people asked me on IM:”What’s up?” I just said "the blog is". Go see it! Because if there was anything worth sharing it was there on my blog. Anything else was too personal.

And then there was a time when a good friend commented “…all I see in there is food reviews”. For a moment I even thought it was getting too much. But then if that’s what I am doing (Eating good stuff most of the time) then why not write about it. Good friend Sujeet has been the motivator in getting me into blogsphere and over the time I have developed some regular at the blog like September Girl and Wes Baker.

Is there something particular you remember about my blog. Share your thoughts. Happy Blogging!

A new identity

With job change comes a new identity and a new company backing. But what I really look forward to is a great set of personalized corporate stationery. Last week I got my new business cards and thought would let you take a peek at it. It has been conceptulized by our CEO and I have loved the idea ever since I first met him and exchanged cards.


As a policy the employee gets a mixed set of 3 colored cards. This makes for an interesting subject of conversation when we hand out different colored cards to the many members sitting across the table in a meeting. Armed with the new cards, it's now time to go out and network. More about online networking in my next post.

Crippled overseas links

A fault in an undersea cable has crippled many of Pakistan's internet and mobile phone links overseas. [Full Story]

Can you imagine? Being stranded without the internet. If you are reading my blog I am sure you are one of those who believe the internet is no more an add-on communication, rather has become one of the key communication tools. I remember those days when heavy monsoon showers almost crippled most of Bombay’s telephone exchanges which led to many people being disconnected for days together and let’s not forget those were days when mobiles had not yet made their entry. Things sure got tough. Business became difficult. The old and lonely got worried since they could not reach their loved ones.

Internet has now become a necessity and I sometimes (call me geeky) really wonder how people get along without being logged on to the internet. I use the internet extensively to:

• Communicate
• Work
• Play
• Entertainment
• Information Sharing

If the undersea cables just went dead one fine morning with an “almost” two-week waiting before things got back online, I am not so sure how smoothly would things move on my end. Why do I say this? Because it seems the cable fault may have affected some of the bandwidth capacity in India. I am yet to face trouble with my internet service provider at work or at home. Let’s hope I don’t spend the weekend “internet-less”.

Malaika's Yahoo Mail

Caught your attention didn't I? Well, it seems Yahoo! India signed up Malaika Arora for their e-mail service promotion. I just looked at this when I logged in this morning.

This is interesting, since after endorsing beauty products and pizzas she is now saying which e-mail services to use also. What next? Would love to see Tom Cruise or our very own Shah Rukh Khan say: "I use Microsoft's Internet Explorer for a feature-rich browsing experience." Brand Ambassador for the e-age.

Blood Sucking Aliens

Q: What's your perfect Sunday like?

A: Mine is a Sunday where I get up and report to work after a late night movie show.

Gotta be kidding? No, I am not. I went for War of the Worlds last night and then came into work on a Sunday. God Damn! But hey it wasn't so bad, since the client was coming in only past noon, so I could get my share of the Sunday morning sleep and also a tummy-full breakfast.

Talking about War of the Worlds. What in the god's name was this movie going to be all about? After Minority Report I was throughly disppointed seeing this one. Spielberg could have done some more scripting and the climax a little more intelligent. And what about snatches from other movies. The ship sinking (Titanic) the robotic arm scanning (Minority Report) Alien looks (Aliens, ET). Although this has been a bhel-puri of sorts I think the visuals were brilliantly done. Specially scenes where people are blown away into dust. The close-up shots of the blood-sucking aliens.

My final comment: Watcth this one for the sheer entertainment and full-tension through the movie.

Got me addicted

This post was supposed to go online on Wednesday. But thanks to a crazy work schedule and a terrible Internet set-up at work I have just not been able to login and do work on the Internet. It’s been a very hectic week; suddenly the work scene and social life both seem to be in a full swing – lots of dinners, parties and movies. And then there was something which got me very disappointed.

Orange (my mobile phone service provider) is going to charge me Rs.49/month for GPRS/MMS services. Compared to what I pay now at Rs.99/month this is going to be a good thing but it’s even worst because 99 bucks was unlimited usage and unlimited MMS. Now at Rs.49 I will be charged Rs.3/MMS. What the ***k!

I was just getting used to this lovely thing called MMS and now then came the hefty charge. So it’s going to be bye-bye to my Mobile Blog and also friends don’t get to see/hear from me so often.

Guess there is some marketing strategy to be learnt from it. Orange promoted their MMS services with contests etc. – A complete user experience. Users would have been addicted, MMS would be eating away a great deal of their bandwidth and that’s when they must have thought, time to hit the axe and get people paying up for it. And it’s going to work. You are addicted, you love sending out those photos, those sweet little voice recordings – But now you are going to be CHARGED.

This leaves me with only one thought …………. What if tomorrow morning you got up to see that your e-mail service provider was going to charge you a fee for every e-mail you will send out? Scary? Share your thoughts.