Tuscana - not upto expectations

The plan for this weekend was fixed- After three days of being confined to a room for training, I needed to break out of the routine- Dinner with a friend and her family, followed by a wedding to attend out of town. However, due to exigencies, the dinner never happened - it was my idea to post pone it as my friend was too nice a person to cancel a long awaited dinner - even if she had to struggle to attend it. I was too tired from sitting at home on Saturday and decided against going to the wedding - honestly - waking up at 5 was unthinkable!

 So, on Sunday, I wanted to go out and in the evening, I called up my buds and told them that we had to go out for dinner - the place could be decided later. After a depressing CSK loss, we decided to go to Tuscana - one of the many restaurants on Khader Nawaz Khar Road. 

Valet parking - good.  Immediate seat availability - good. Free wifi - awesome - atleast for Shanky who wanted to watch his football game. Menu - nice and varied.  RHS(the prices) exorbitant - but we ignore it on AJ's “order” . The quantity was abysmal, and the quality average-but then, its been a long time since I had Italian and I quickly scooped up the last piece of pasta from my plate. The environment was aesthetic - what with it being a new place

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Overall; not a place I would visit again. Tuscana (Italian) - expensive and not up to the mark. I would rate it 3/5 - First timers - a definite yes, others - not so much.

And wonder of wonders - Mumbai won the match and gave CSK two attempts at the final - not that they would need the second ;-)

Training (is for jobless people)

Well, I have been wanting to write for a long time. Believe me - there are at least 5 half written posts sitting in my pc waiting to be finished. I just haven’t had the patience to sit on my PC at a stretch and work on them. This time, it is different - I am sitting in a training session and am bored. However, I have my lappy with me and thought that I would make myself productive and here is the result - a post on what I learnt from the training.

This was my first full time training after leaving school and I made the mistake of assuming that I had not changed. Well, I have-big surprise- you would say. I had a hard time sitting through three whole days of it with nothing to do but to listen to one guy talk. Its been a year since I am out of school and already, I am the only person that I want to listen to. Added to this was the fact that the training was sloooooooooooow. I usually do not complain about slowness and consider it as free time given to me, but this time - when he started talking about how functions put data on the stack, about local and global scope and worst of all - when he declared flamboyantly that opening a file in write mode erases all the content - it was too much even for me to accept.

No offence or insult to the instructor though! he was this cool guy with a pony tail who did seem to know his stuff and looked like he had done a lot of these trainings, but was forced to slow his pace because of the audience. The only bright spot was the evening of the second day when he started talking about Objects and privacy. To be honest - the reason, I think , I was happy is because nobody else seemed to understand what I could! Does that make me an arrogant bastard? Well, if I am then, so must be a lost of other people!!

After two and a half days of Python training I learnt two lessons:

a. It is not only the topic or presenter that matter- It is the participants

b. I no longer have the patience to sit in a class and listen - I prefer to learn on my own be it even from a stupid web page

Bottomline: Python - 7, training - 3, trainer - 8, knowledge - 5

Apple's Think different campaign

"Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes, the ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them... about the only thing you can't do is ignore them, because they change things, they push the human race forward; and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do"

I do not know why, but for some reason, i consider myself a part of this group!! Do you think it is a bit over my head?

Watched a movie for the first time after returning to India. Escape(the theater) was, to be honest, a little disappointing. I was expecting a huge improvement over theatres from 3 years ago, but it was not all that different. Small theaters with nice lighting designs. The seats were larger with deeper cup holders.  There were stairs into the hall as in the U.S, but there ended the change. The restrooms were again, ultra modern- beyond usability. The parking is also ridiculously expensive! Rs. 80 for 3 hours!! Over all  I would, any day, prefer Sathyam over Escape!

The movie we went to watch - Tangled- was quite a different story though... After the frustration at having to shell out another 20  as rent for using the 3-D glasses, I was waiting for the boring movie to start, but I was to have a pleasant surprise. The movie was not anything that my friends had projected it to be. It was a very nice, true to the story animated musical. The 3D effects were good - the songs were in simple English and more importantly not monotonous and high pitched. The animation was good and the faces very pretty. The scene where Rapunzel sets foot on the ground and "begins to live" her life for the first time surprised at everything and scared of every movement and the one where she is torn between wanting to explore the world but also wants to not hurt her mother have been excellently brought out. Of course, people who know me would know - the best part was Rapunzel with her boy cut - she was just too cute :) A movie that I would recommend for all kids and for everyone who still has a kid lurking within. 

An interesting question

A line taken from the medical examination sheet of the Tamil Nadu driving license application.( A doctor is supposed to fill up this sheet):

3. (a) Does the applicant to the best of your judgment suffer from any defect of vision? If so, has it been corrected by suitable spectacle?                                  YES / NO

If you were the RTO office responsible for approving the application, for which choice, above, would you approve and for which choice would you reject the application?