Badi's Blogosphere

In the forests of Cameron Highlands, Malaysia, after a long drive followed by a trek which seemed to never end, I saw the world's biggest flower.

( check out )

Some trivia: It doesn't live for more than ten days. I think we got there on the tenth day. To catch flies it has a scent that smells of rotten meat to attract bugs. The locals spend all day protecting the flower from wild boars, because they believe the flower is sacred.

The ShowCase event at work was very profitable for our team !
( Look at the big fat cheques )

It's been a long time since I wrote anything and I wish I could write long articles like this one:

http://spiritualdegrees.org/articles/consumption.html

But, due to lack of time and focus, I think I'll urge my friends to read worthwhile articles written by others :-). In this article, Nathan Huening addresses some of the implications of living a spiritual life in a consumer-oriented culture by way of the 1999 sci-fi film The Matrix as analogy. Very insightful. Enjoy. Also, I'd love to read critical analysis of this article in question.

Everyone's doing it. And I don't wanna feel left out. Here I am, this is me, there's no where else on earth I'd rather be. Well, you get the message... http://360.yahoo.com/badikumar Yay!

In other news,

• our team had terrific fun at the Manipal County resort
  
  
• A bunch of us from the Baha'i community in Bangalore went outing to Mysore for 3 days. This outing was clubbed with training on one of the Ruhi books . The Ruhi Training material is a series of 7 books which have been produced by the Baha'i community in Columbia over 20 years on research of the Baha'i Writings and practical experiences in the teaching the Baha'i Faith to the masses. Check out the pictures of the outing here
  
  
• shankerbalan , gromhellscream, Swaroop and I are heading to Cochin tomorrow. Double Yay! We'll make balan take us to his backyard. First time for him too. Uber-cool arrangements made by our good friend, balan. Facilities include 2 vehicles for transport, one-day cricket tickets, bookings in a resort and many more to come. It's his home town afterall. Hmm...Now, when I come to think of it, Is he trying to fool us? It's April 1 day after tomorrow.
  

Praised be Thou, O my God, that Thou hast ordained Naw-Rúz as a festival unto those who have observed the fast for love of Thee and abstained from all that is abhorrent unto Thee. Grant, O my Lord, that the fire of Thy love and the heat produced by the fast enjoined by Thee may inflame them in Thy Cause, and make them to be occupied with Thy praise and with remembrance of Thee.

It's fasting time again for the Baha'is all over the world! The fasting period is from the 2nd of March to the 20th followed by the Baha'i New Year on the 21st. Let me quote myself from my last year's entry...

This is a period of abstention from food and drink from sunrise to sunset. The period of fasting is followed by the Baha'i New Year Naw-Ruz on the 21st of March.

The Bahá'í Faith is the youngest of the world's independent religions. Its central theme is that humanity is one single race and that the day has come for its unification in one global society. Apart from the various principles such as...

a. Oneness of God
b. The origin of all religions is one and the spiritual teachings in them are the same
c. Oneness of the Human Race
d. Independent Investigation of the truth
e. Equality of Men and Women

etc.. that the Baha'is believe and practise, there are certain laws and ordinances that they are obliged to follow. One among them, is fasting.

( Read more... )

I'm really liking the features that fotopic.net offers! Its too good. I've put more pics from Dharamstala : http://badi.fotopic.net/

BTW, FlickR is good too! But the 10MB per month is a handicap. It takes 25 months to match the fotopic.net capacity!

I was in Dharmastala visiting my granny, for the three-day weekend. And thanks to my cousin, I saw places I had never seen before around Dharmastala even though I go there atleast once in three months! I have loads of pictures, but just a few here: http://badi.fotopic.net/c402064.html

I particularly like the one with me and my toothless granny !! :-D

Yes! It's the Year End Party and we are all going to chill out in the MGM beach resort in Chennai! the HR has promised loads of fun. Let's see ;-)

My team, the Platform Engineering team of Yahoo! Banglore organised a TGIF party with an "ethnic" theme. I was very glad to see atleast 50% of my colleagues turn out in ethnic-wear. And we set a model too...

I would have liked our team to give a classical music performace. But, due to lack of appropriate talent, we had to resort to performing a western number; slyly changing the theme of the day to "Fusion between east and the west" ;-).

Well, I missed one thing...I was the lead vocalist!

The mysore city which is about 150 Kilometers from Bangalore, attracts thousands of people during this season for the Dasara festival celbrations. It is estimated that the number of spectators who witnessed the "Jumbo savari" ( the elephant ride ) yesterday, was around a million!


Also took this opportunity to visit the Mysore zoo after a long long time ( almost 12 years )! Well, a pretty sad feeling seeing "wild" animals in small cages, no place even to take a long walk ...

Check out the cool pictures of Karwar and Goa here on my site. Huh! This site of mine looks so abandoned!! Blame it on lack of time :-)

Awesome stay and fun in Karwar and Goa for a 4-day long weekend....except forthis

I could have saved some energy if I had blogged this incident a bit earlier. I have lost count of how many times I have repeated this incident already. But, here goes...

It was a pleasant stay in Delhi. But, wasn't a pleasant day for me! My interview appt. was at 11:30AM, but I reached there by 10, only to find out that the "appointment" is not for the interview but for "reporting". And so, I reported at 10:15AM and waited in the 3 different long queues ( for different purposes viz., pre-screening, TTS courier service, personal Interview ) for 3 long hours. There were a bunch of U.S. consulate guys who were in-charge of conducting the interview and the irony was...the issue of the visa depended on which interviewer you go to and not on the documents you carry! One of the American officers was rejecting every other person in the line. It was highly unfortunate that the very guy had to call me over! He asked only 3 questions: (1) What's the purpose of your visit (2) Who are u living with , what's ur father , brothers/sisters ( basically family details ) and (3) Show me your invite letter.

I answered accordingly. He went through the invite letter from my U.S. engineering manager mike_radwin fully. He also skimmed through the covering letter which the company had given me. After that, he just said. "I see that you do not have compelling ties to your home country and you are a potential immigrant. So, I'm sorry..I cannot issue a visa". On asking him to explain, he said " I'm not convinced that you will come back to India and not stay back in the US if I issue you a visa". He went on to say.. " Moreover , I am not aware of the existence of this company" . I asked, perplexed, You don't know Yahoo.com?? and he said.." I do know it. But, I am unaware of its existence in India. You better re-apply to a consulate near you which knows better about your company and whether your company has history of sending people to the US". Then I brought to his notice that couple of my colleagues had obtained L1 visas right there. And he ended the conversation saying..."L1 visa is different, Sir..I'm sorry".

It was an unfortunate waste of time and money!

There is a first time for everything that we do in our lives. I went through a host of first-times' in the past two days! The following list shows them all ( not in any particular order ). But I'm sure I have missed something . Anyways, here goes...

* This was the first time I was visiting Delhi
* Was the very first time I travelled alone out of state!
* First time to the US Embassy with a Visa application
* First time in an aeroplane :-)
* For that matter, it was the first time my visa request was rejected.
* And last but not the least, this was the first time I went to the Baha'i House of Worship in New Delhi ( popularly called the Lotus Temple ).

The journey as a whole was a nice experience! Want to write more about it...But, I'm jet-lagged from the journey! Maybe later..

From bluesmoon's journal:

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/76/story_7665_1.html

1.  Bahá'í Faith (100%) 2.  Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (100%) 3.  Sikhism (93%) 4.  Reform Judaism (85%) 5.  Liberal Quakers (84%) 6.  Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (80%) 7.  Orthodox Judaism (80%) 8.  Orthodox Quaker (78%) 9.  Unitarian Universalism (77%) 10.  Eastern Orthodox (75%) 11.  Roman Catholic (75%) 12.  Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (75%) 13.  Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (74%) 14.  New Thought (73%) 15.  Islam (72%) 16.  Seventh Day Adventist (67%) 17.  Hinduism (64%) 18.  Scientology (60%) 19.  New Age (58%) 20.  Jehovah's Witness (51%) 21.  Neo-Pagan (50%) 22.  Mahayana Buddhism (43%) 23.  Jainism (42%) 24.  Theravada Buddhism (41%) 25.  Secular Humanism (37%) 26.  Taoism (33%) 27.  Nontheist (30%)

Spent 2 days and 1 night in the Cauvery Fishing Camp ( CFC ) 100KMs away from Bangalore. Well, even though it was called a "Fishing" camp and many people came there to fish, all of us from Yahoo! went there to do some adventure activities! These activities were given funky names like "Squirrel Flying", "Rope Traversing", "Pamper Poll", "Jumma Ring", all involving some kind of physical strain to your biceps either by pulling, stretching or hanging on to a _rope_!

We did swimming and coracle riding on the river Cuavery. We also did rappelling, meaning "A descent of a vertical surface, as a cliff or wall, by sliding down a belayed rope that is passed under one thigh and over the opposite shoulder or through a device that provides friction, typically while facing the surface and performing a series of short backward leaps to control the descent." ( Courtesy: dictionary.com )

Night safari was a joke. We could only see a couple of deers and "wild" rabbits. Nevertheless... Overall, it was good fun and I enjoyed it.

Here are a few pictures...
( Pictures )

Who's been commenting in your journal?

( LJ Stats )

1	badikumar		57 comments	30.81% of total
2	Anonymous		26 comments	14.05% of total
3	yathin		15 comments	8.11% of total
4	smriti		11 comments	5.95% of total
5	rcgirish		9 comments	4.86% of total
6	gromhellscream		9 comments	4.86% of total
7	mekin		7 comments	3.78% of total
8	noelladsa		6 comments	3.24% of total
9	avinashn		5 comments	2.7% of total
10	krishi		5 comments	2.7% of total
11	abiligiri		4 comments	2.16% of total
12	kalyan		3 comments	1.62% of total

How to make a badikumar

Ingredients: 5 parts intelligence 3 parts crazyiness 5 parts ego

Method: Layer ingredientes in a shot glass. Top it off with a sprinkle of curiosity and enjoy!

Gmail was, and still is, a race in its own respects for the netizens. Yahoo! will start offering FREE 100MB mailbox for their "loyal"[1] users from the 15th of June. As for the other enhancements, you can have attachments of upto 10MB and Y! Mail has got a brand a new look and feel. And ofcourse, "incredible search facilites using cutting-edge search technology"...

• Search don't Sort
  
• Keep it all in context
  
  

Well, I'm kidding for now! But, let's wait and watch! Take a look at a snapshot of my mailbox ( Yes, I've got it! )




Let the race begin..er, restart!

[1] I do not have enough information to define this term yet!