Wednesday, May 31, 2006

You know ur in Delhi if...

...you are driving around in a white-coloured Qualis, and people are running behind you.

Monday, May 22, 2006

It had been a while since I wanted to take a break, forget work and completely CHILL! And that's precisely what I did last weekend at Chennai.

My plan was hit Mumbai on Thursday and move to Chennai on Friday for the factory meeting and then chill bigtime over the weekend in Chennai. As luck would have it, I sprained my back just 3 hours before my flight to Mumbai. In fact, I couldnt move initially and I almost saw all my plans go down the drain. A frantic call to my in-house doctor (Mom), and I realised that this aint all that serious. I decided against staying back, and armed with a dose of painkillers, I flew to Mumbai.

Fortunately, things improved the following day ( Moov really works! ) and by the end of Thursday, I could actually walk comfortably. Of course, I took no chances and got as much as rest as I could.

The following day, flew to Chennai. The place was HOT! (literally). The factory visit went fine. By evening, I was on the taxi to Anna's place and I finally reached his place around 7pm. As luck would have it, Annna had a leg injury earlier in the morning, and he'd declared that mobility might be an issue for him as well.

The injuries didnt really upset our plans thought. Saturday morning,we woke up late to some great breakfast! :) ( Anna's mom's dosas are amazing!!). Headed off to the clinic on Anna's Eliminator to check Anna's leg. 40 minutes and 1 X-ray later, the doctor recommended complete bed rest for Anna. We left for Spencer Mall the very next minute :)

Had lunch with Joseph at the mall, and left for Joseph's place in the afternoon. Post that we went back to the mall to collect Anna's bike and then decided to head to Besant Nagar beach where we would rendezvous with the rest of the motley crew - Samoj, Meril & Surabhi.

The trip ( or should I say journey) to the Beach was fun! Anna got lost and we kept going around Chennai in circles, thanks to which I actually got to see quite a bit of the capital. We finally reached the beach and moved right into Barista for some cold shakes. Once the rest of the crew joined us ( the girls were pretty late...fairly predictable anyways) , we left for dinner at a nearby mallu joint.

Dinner was mostly fish ,parrotas and rice. And I dont think i'll forget the look on Surabhi's face when she saw the Puttu(rice cake) and Kadala(Channa) curry she'd ordered for!! During dinner, we generally caught on gossip, PJs and of course the standard pulling of legs we normally do. Post-dinner, we headed to our respective places. Before I hit the sack though, I wanted to complete one milestone on NFS. I didnt complete it and went to sleep anyways.


Next day, woke up early and headed off to Besant Nagar Church. BN church was actually a large compound with several buildings. I being new to the place, was heading to the chapel ( I didnt realise this was the chapel and the mass was in the main church elsewhere) and would have stayed there wondering where the mass was, had I not bumped into Meril.

Once the mass got over ( Meril,the choir was great!! And were u near the mike cos I could hear only ur voice! :p ) , Meril and I went to her place, where she was staying with Surabhi and another roomie. Anna joined us there, and we had some North Indian breakfast. It was quite good, considering it was made by MBAs ( just kidding!:) ). Post the breakfast, we headed off to Anna's place for more breakfast. The rest of the day, we stayed at home so that Anna could get his recommended bedrest.

By evening, I was off to delhi. Sitting in the flight, I smiled as the 3 days of fun flashed before my eyes...it almost felt like I was living the college days again.

Thanks guys for the making the trip ...AWESOME!!!

Saturday, May 06, 2006

Its been hectic these days. Real hectic. Decided to catch my breath yesterday and take out some time for art. Anna asked me to make him a t-shirt design(he actually liked my work...doesnt happen too often). Spend an hour or so to come up with this..



For starters, I wanted to capture the "serious-glam" side of Anna. Fortunately, I managed to stumble across the right snap of his in Orkut. I also didnt have the patience to hand-draw his image. That's when I stumbled on the Color depth reduction feature in Irfan. First, I decreased the contrast of the original Image by about 30% and increased the gamma correction factory by about 2.33 ( I love confusing my readers with useless hi-fi technical stuff..he he). After that I used the Color depth reduction feature to get the almost portrait like look seen above.

Blind Ambitiion ( not be confused with Blonde Ambition), came out of the look in Anna's eyes.

I have avoided the use of colour. It was a not a conscious choice. However, I feel its an effective one.


Once I was done with the above, I caught up on some TV. Came back an hour or so to review the work, when the spoofy side of me took over. I spend another hour with the above work to come up with this magazine cover..





This is perhaps my 3rd or 4th Mag cover ( the others were done in college ) and is by far the sloppiest :)

The cover attempts to capture the life and times of Anna in Gurgaon and his growing frustration with the Mall City. Hope I've captured it all, dude!