You Never Know

Last month my cousins were over from the UK . So as part of the Mumbai tour, we hung outside Mannat - Shah Rukh Khan's villa at Bandstand- for a dekko. To no avail - all we got was overhearing one security guy telling another that "Saab abhi nikala hai. Dhyaan rakhna". We did however get a peak at his fleet of BMWs from the gate of the complex (the one on the side road which leads up to Mount Mary Church). This led rise to us discussing the newspaper report that SRK's cars are all BMWs numbered 555. Moving on from Bandstand, we went off for dinner and a drive later along Carter Road around 11:30 pm. Suddenly a vehicle zoomed past us - and my cousin quite casually mentioned - "Hey there's a silver BMW ending in 555 - Didnt you say SRK drives in one of those?" "Oh is it really him?" "Let's follow that car" So we revved up behind the car - honking off a rickshaw and everything else that appeared in between. Getting closer - we saw t...

The day after Sachin Tendulkar did it. Helped India chase down 387 and hit a boundary on 99 to make a century as well as the winning runs. As the last 4 was hit, Anil - my Code Red* partner-in-crime instantly messaged me - "Abhi 2 action point jyaada mila to bhi chalega" Yes - that's the effect Sachin has on us. The feel-good factor when he plays well and India wins. What's happened for Indian cricket on Dec 15th 2008 is the sort of thing you feel you'll never get to watch ever. SRT batting a fourth innings century and India winning the game. Come on - break Lara's 400* too before you retire ! Congrats also to Yuvraj who stopped hitting the boundaries at 80* and leaving enough runs for SRT to get to his hundred. Thanks to Monty Panesar and Swann for not bowling 4 wides to finish the match - and actually leaving 4 runs for India to bat at the end. Congrats to the people(match referee?) who selected Sehwag for the deserved Man-of-the-Match and didnt get senti en...

Issue: Our applications run on Sun T2000 servers which are configured with 4 or 5 Local zones on each Global Zone. 17th November 05:00 there was an issue on one Global Zone which caused 5 separate and simultaneous core dumps to get created on the server. One core in each Local zone. Impact: The 5 processes which crashed on each Local zone were LZ 15 – core created by the wlshell java process. Low impact LZ 27 – one core created by wlshell java processes. Low impact. LZ 25 – core created by HM server java process. Was manually restarted today. Medium impact LZ 26 – core created by PA server java process. This was automatically restarted by the HM. High impact. LZ 37 – core created by HM server java process. Was manually restarted today. Medium impact All 5 crashes above were in Library=/platform/sun4v/lib/libc_psr.so.1 Each core exits with a hs_err_ .log file - which contains the foll details An unexpected exception has been detected in native code outside the VM. Unexpected Signal : 10...

We travelled to Shirdi last weekend - took my own car along for a good self-driven road trip. The road is quite straightforward - from Mumbai take the Eastern Express Highway to Thane and Bhiwandi. This is the NH3 to Nashik, but we took a route avoiding Nashik. Left from home at 7:30 am. First stop was for snacks at Manas Resorts Igatpuri at around 10:30 am. The resort has been nicely done-up and looks a good spot for a weekend getaway a la Fariyas. 7 km after Igatpuri is the town of Ghoti which has a bypass road to Sinnar, which avoids Nashik completely. There is a board on the highway pointing to a right turn to Ghoti. The off-road leads through a market for about 2 kms, but ask for directions to Sinnar/Shirdi if confused. It leads to a railway crossing and a toll booth later - and then the bypass road smoothens out. This route was a scenic drive through some unspoiled lands. The photos show the windmills and lakes seen along the Ghoti-Sinnar bypass road. Another advantage was no hi...

There's been lots of news recently over Sr. Alphonsa - a Catholic nun from Bharananganam, in Kottayam district, Kerala being proclaimed a Saint on Oct 12th 2008. She will now be known as St Alphonsa of the Immaculate Conception. This is newsworthy since she is the second saint from India and the first woman. Many would have expected Mother Teresa to be the first woman from India - but things dont move so fast in the Vatican - St Alphonsa has been canonized 62 years after her death. I was watching the news on Sunday - CNNIBN I think it was - an over-excited reporter outside Mahim church had found a Kerala-ite lady who "had actually been to the church of St Alphonsa" and was asked in true AajTak style - "How do you feel about it?" "Kaise mehsoos ho raha hai"types. As over-the-top as that was - it truly hit me then how proud a moment it was for people like myself and my family - those who have a small (and I mean really small) association with this saint,...