Thinking about getting married?

For any of you out there who are thinking about getting married, here's a checklist of questions or things that you should have discussed and thought about with your 'to be' before getting married.

It's an interesting mix of questions that are relevant even in the Indian context, some of them even in the context of an arranged marriage. Take No.2 "Do we have a clear idea of each other’s financial obligations and goals, and do our ideas about spending and saving mesh?" or No.3 "Have we discussed our expectations for how the household will be maintained, and are we in agreement on who will manage the chores?"

So if you are thinking about marriage or know someone who is, take a look at the questions.

ps. I never thought I would be posting stuff like this :)

No more vids

Thanks to privacy concerns from R about posting videos online, I have taken them off the blog, I will however continue to post photos. So if anyone wants to see them in the future, email me and I'll send you the private URLs.

ps. Privacy concerns, R is already getting more American that she knows

Three Bridges

SLR camera vs. point & shoot camera

With point and shoot digital camera's getting better and more sophisticated, I have been tempted by the idea that an SLR camera is unecessary, especially for everyday photography. Another factor against buying SLR's is cost, the D-SLR sold today are prohibitively expensive, with a basic kit starting at about $600, whereas you can get a good digital point and shoot (p&s) for less than half that amount. There is also the 'manual' option, either get a Nikon FM-10 or a Leica (if you have a lot more money) and you should be set.

I have been scanning a lot of my old film-negatives over the 10 days (thanks to Jeff, who generously lent me his scanner), and the one feature of all the old photos that stands out is how well exposed they are. Let me elaborate, when I take photos with our current digital p&s, the photos are very nice, the focus is sharp and you can see the features I was aiming for well, but thats about it. I see nothing of the mood in the room, there is often no depth to the photo. I often take photographs to try and capture the mood or the scene, the way something looks to your eyes, and that is hard to accomplish with a p&s. SLRs let in a lot more light onto the sensor (irrespective of whether the sensor is film or a chip), and that allows you to capture subtle lighting and shadows that together make a good or even a great pic.

I know I will be using my SLR a lot more, and saving up for that D-SLR, pity they get outdated so soon....

Anyway, thats my 2 cents on the topic.

How happy is your country?

A new article in the BBC shows what they call the "The First Published Map of World Happiness" (pdf alert). Denmark is supposed to be the happiest place in the world, while Burundi is the unhappiest coming in at 178th. So where does India stand? Pretty poorly at 125th, which brings me to my next question. Does this mean that when I moved from India to the US (which is 23rd on the happiness scale) I went from being unhappy to happy, and that will I be unhappy when I go back.

To be clear, I get that these are measures that represent whole countries, but come on... how realistic are these estimates and do they mean anything wrt. real people?

So, to make this a bit more realistic, I searched the net for a measure of unhappiness and I found a chart of the suicide rates across the world. Turns out Denmark is 27rd in terms of suicide rates (higher is worse), well ahead of India (44th) and the US (45th). I thought happy people didn't kill themselves!

Anyway, thats my $0.02 on this.

Youtube

I don't know how many of the folk who read my blog have come across YouTube, a video sharing website, where users can upload their videos and share them. While the majority of vidoes on youtube are crap and worse, occasionally one comes across gems like this one - where the hell is matt?.

A Goose that eats French fries and Chicken

Originally uploaded by sharathbs.

This was one of the geese roaming the Philly zoo, it ate everything people offered including fries dipped in ketchup and a strip of chicken, there's something almost cannibalistic about the latter...

The Philadelphia Zoo

We visited the Philly zoo yesterday, long walks for the 3 of us but all in all a day of fun :)

The Philadelphia Zoo is America's first zoo, and its a pretty good one too. While their collection probably isn't the biggest or most extensive, their animals look happy and well looked after. Also, I really liked what they had done for their monkeys, their primates looked really happy and occupied, unlike other zoos where they typically looked bored to death.

All in all we had a lot of fun and we hope to go back there soon and maybe we will see all the animals next time... We even got a zoo membership that lets us visit the zoo free for a whole year :) Hope T appreciates it.

The last place where I saw so many peacocks running free was Delhi

Mouse Rides Frog in Indian Monsoon

(from the National Geographic online)

Tuk tuks in Brighton

It seems the humble ricky has made it to England, and its being touted as a "a safe, economical and environmentally friendly means of getting around congested cities" ;) Obviously the bloke who wrote this has never been in an Indian ricky..

I'm back

After a fairly long break from blogging for various reasons, I'm back better than ever and certainly more happy than ever thanks to having R, T and A with me again.

The last few weeks have been fairly hectic with my moving into a new place and getting stuff ready for the threesome to arrive. Then 2 weeks in Mumbai, that extended to 3, thanks to the dreaded mumbai monsoon viral fever (I like calling it that) that we all caught just before we left for Philly. Anyways, we are all here now and the kids have settled in really well, all things considered.

T seems to be really happy to have his Papa back, A has really settled down well both to the new place, new routine and a father hadn't seen... R on the other hand is pleased with the house and its location (we're very close to most amenities). So all is good in mad-scientist land, and if anyone wants to know, work is going well, albeit slowly.

Google trends revealed

Google just announced a new service/website called google trends, and its been an interesting ride. I tried out some searches just for the heck of it, not really expecting anything very interesting, but boy, was I wrong.

Here are some interesting searches/comparisons:

India vs. China (surprising result though)

Bangalore vs. Hyderabad (I wish I could say Bangalore rocks...)

Google vs. Yahoo (this one's a bit misrepresentative, remember you are already on Google searching and no, its not really a search engine popularity comparison either. )

Bush vs. Kerry (from the US presidential election 2 years ago, notice how Kerry tapers after the election frezy was over)

PC vs. Mac vs. Linux vs. Unix (a bit hard to interpret)

Manmohan Singh vs. Sonia Gandhi

MIT vs. Stanford vs. Harvard (apparently MIT rules)

Ubuntu vs. Redhat (notice how Ubuntu comes out of nowhere in 2004, coinciding with the release of the first major version of Ubuntu then)

And now for some interesting ones (I'll explain why..):
Red Sox vs. Yankees (the spike you see in 2004 corresponds to when the redsox won the baseball world series after a 100 year gap)

The Olympics (the 2004 peak corresponds to the olympics held in greece, the 2006 peak corresponds to the 2006 winder olympics, the small 2005 peak is a mystery, if anyone figures it out, please comment)

Coke vs. Pepsi (here's whats strange about this one, look below at the countries with the most searches, new zealand has the most searches for Coke?!!!?!? Apparently the country with 70 sheep per person also does 70 times (pure underestimate) more searches for coke, but not pepsi per capita than the rest of us)

Cricket vs. Soccer vs. Baseball vs. Football (this one's pretty complicated, notice the cyclical search pattern for football and baseball corresponding to peak seasons for the games. The peaks for football are not for any american version of football but are really for the real football aka soccer as the most searches come from the UK, figure it out :)

If you have gotten this far, I guess you have tried many if not most of the searches above, and hopefully many of your own. Its really interesting how certain searches/trends peak at certain times, when some significant event has occured. Its also very interesting looking at the regional split of the searches, to see who was searching for these terms when and and (if you can figure it out) why. Its like looking at some form of global consciousness on the wolrd wide web over a period of time, scary and wierd..

Microsoft and Google Grapple for Supremacy - New York Times

What do you get when you have a goliath in software grappling with an upstart, a damn interesting fight. A New York Times article illustrates very well whats at stake and what may decide the final outcome. Whether their take on it, that "Historically, the company that won the war for talent, won the war" is correct only time will tell, but the ideas in the article are interesting.

Anyways, irrespective of who wins (maybe they both will or maybe for a change, we the consumers will), it will be a damn interesting fight.

Philly rocks :)

The news reads "Philadelphia City Council Clears Way for Citywide Wi-Fi Network" finally... Philadelphia was the first major urban center to plan a city-wide wifi network. This has been in the works for a while now, the plan was to unwire 135 square miles of the city, using WiFi mesh networking hardware :) From those intial plans of providing free wifi to its poorer residents, the city had faced numerous regulatory issues that had threatened to scuttle these plans.

Anyways, to cut the long story short (if you want the long story read the generous dollops of links in this post), at least the city council in Philly has approved these plans, Earthlink was chosen earlier in the year to build and run the network. Its all supposed to be up and ruerizonnning by fall 2007.

Just in time for when my Verizon contract runs out :) :)

ps. I have really begun to like Philly, more about that in another post

The first issue of Superman

The first issue of superman is now available online. Its almost certainly not online legally, and its sure to be pulled down sometime soon, so take a look while it lasts. Even if you are not a superman fan (like me), do take a look as its really interesting. It's a little bit of history on this icon of American pop-culture.

The blog problem

So here's my problem, do you blog about people you know. Common sense tells you that you don't write your opinions about people you know (well or otherwise) into a blog. First of all blogs are too public, everyone can read stuff you put on, I mean everyone. Worse still, if you are opinionated and stubborn like I am, it can get you into all sorts of trouble.

There have been many occasions when something or someone has bothered me enough for me to vent steam publicly, like on a blog. But I never have, and I have always wondered what the consequences of something like that would be. For any of my friends reading this, you'll know this better than anyone, if you want to know what I think (for better or for worse), you only have to ask and often it doesn't even take that.

Sitting by myself in the US over the past few months has given me a certain sense of social isolation, I don't have too many people to crib about, as I don't know too many people :) It's been a welcome break for people, but it has also made me value my friendships and relationships all the more. But I'm digressing. I wish I had a larger audience or at least a more responsive one (hint hint) so I could get a broader perspective on this one.

ps. this is what happens if you spend 4 months away from your family in an alien country, you treat the wwweb as your dinner discussion area

A game of darts (with cars) anyone?

So you want to play? Well, this one's a bit different.... its not what you might expect. Check out this topgear video and you will know what I mean, it's one of the most insane crazy things I have ever seen, and you really have to see those cars fly :)

Make water go uphill?

Maybe Escher got it right after all, you can make water run uphill. Watch the video too, its interesting but not a great watch, you'll see what I mean :)

I guess the other thing to keep in mind is that you are putting energy into the system (the underside of the water droplet is heated), so its not really the same as water running downhill.

The world shrinks in Maine

As a friend of mine from Maine pointed out, the world has really become a lot smaller. The sign points to real towns in Maine, and its famous enough for it to work for this search.

TurfWars in the Biotech era

"Watching grass grow was never so exciting", reads the last line of this interesting article on cutting edge plant biotechnology. Read about how the grass growing on your lawns in the coming years may need less water, weeding, and mowing.

Interesting factoid: Nearly 50,000 square miles of the continental US is covered by lawn, according to estimates by ecologists at NASA's Ames Research Center. Using satellite and aerial imagery, the team calculated that irrigated grass covers three times more land in the US than irrigated corn does. That makes turf the nation's most widespread irrigated crop.

Move over global warming

If you thought global warming and its consequences were frightening, wait till you hear the latest version of this old environmental story. Its called global dimming, and its consequences, in combination with global warming are frightening. All the air pollution spewing out of human consumption, has two components of concern. The first are the greenhouse gases that we have heard so much about, the second is something we often take for granted - particulates. But I'm getting ahead of myself, let me explain..

Agricultural scientists over the last 10-20 years were puzzled by an observation, the sunlight we were recieving on the earth seemed to be getting less, about 10-30% less. What was even more puzzling was that the reduction seemed to be happening globally, but no-one knew why this was happening. These results were either ignored or filed away by most of the community. However, when this was combined with the observation that the water evaporation rate was decreasing all over, it meant that the decrease in sunlight was very real and had a real physical effect - as the water evaporation rate is highly dependant on the level of sunlight.

When scientists finally took notice and examined this further, they discovered that world was seeing a new phenomenon - global dimming - the sunlight falling on earth was decreasing. It was being reflected by a clouds in combination with a 3km thick band of particulate pollution in our upper atmosphere. This, as it turns out isn't too good, as decreased sunlight means changed changes in evaporation rates and heating of the surface of the earth, and consequently cloud patterns all over the globe. But, this was not all, the double whammy came in the form of its effect on the global warming and temperature on earth. Decreased sunlight through global dimming seems to have been mitigating the effects of greenhouse gases on global warming, by cutting the amount of sunlight getting through.

So the increase of 1 to 1.5 degrees C that we have seen due to global warming would have been much worse had it not been for global dimming. But thanks to decreases in particulate emissions all over the world, especially in the west due to strict emission standards, this protection (if you can call it that) will soon be gone. We may be seeing increases of 2-4 degrees C in temperature all over the world, which would be accompanied by large increases in the sea-level, and unpredictable weather over the next 20-50 years. No-one knows how bad its going to get or how quickly the temperatures are going to rise.

What really frightened me about this story is that none of the scientists that took part in this PBS-Nova special could really predict what the point of no return was, and they were sure there was one. When would the increases in the temperature on earth be too much for us to reverse?

God help all of us, and to my sons T & A, I'm so sorry.....

The real skinny on HybridCars

A New York Times article - Life in the Green Lane, has a complelling and sensible argument about what is good and bad (yes, there is such a thing) about hybrid cars. Turns out, hybrid cars are very fuel-efficient for city driving, but fare much worse on highway driving. In fact, on highway, a conventional car which is fuel efficient may be more cost-effective and better for the environment.

So how do you treat the waiter?

Ever wondered how CEOs and other top execs evaluate the people around them, well here's an interesting insight. Apparently how you treat a waiter says a lot about how you handle your inter-personal relationships, not only in the restaurant but also in the workplace.

As the article points out, we often perceive a waiter as a subordinate, maybe even a servile. So how you treat him, in what is essentially a neutral environment, says a lot. In the article, many CEOs talk about how their judgements based on the 'waiter-test' were often borne out in real life. When you think about it, it makes sense.

Exotic new species near Mt. Everest

An expedition near Mount Everest has uncovered many new exotic species, including this dangerous looking hornet/wasp whose head is about 1cm large, scary looking bu#&er. Its interesting how many new species have been discovered in the recent past, especially when you think about how omnipresent we humans are.

I had always assumed that every place there was to discover & explore had been explored, I mean this is the 21st century. The last wild places that they talk about on TV, they dont exist any more. So its surprising and nice when new species are discovered, including new mammals, which are a lot harder to miss. Recent discoveries include many new species of primates among others - a new macaque species in India, another new monkey in Africa and the newest addition from the Everest expedition.

Check out the rest of the pictures of the expedition here, including the very dangerous looking hornet which is called the "yak-killer" by the locals.

A Pisco Sour

I had my first taste of Pisco at a Chilean friend's house last night. Pisco is a really strong liquor, brewed and distilled from grapes, reminded me a bit of vodka. I had a Pisco Sour, which is probably the most common Pisco cocktail around and a great party drink to boot. Its also some of the strongest alcohol I have ever had (46% alcohol or more than 86 proof). What's more, its very smooth, so you have no idea that you will be tottering around the room, until you've had...

...a bit more than you should've

Ahem.... thats what I hear... from people... other people you know...

I also had some really nice empanada's, I only mention this as they looked just like the kadabu's my Ajji makes, except they had eggs & meat in them... Shiva Shivaa

The SBI Strike

This is the headlines that a prominent news channel is running - SBI strike hits corporates, commoners.

So WTF were they thinking? That customers who expect service from a bank that is keeping ALL THEIR money, would be happy with a long bank strike and support the employees. The employees may think that they have the bank by the balls, but its really the customers who have the employees and the bank by the balls. I know this is less of an issue with govt banks, as even if all private citizens bank elsewhere, the govt will continue to, if only to justify the very existance of the banks (If you dont know what I mean, please walk into a CBI branch and you will catch on pretty quickly).

Its my money and I can take my business where I want it. If I were an SBI customer, I would be wondering why I had an SBI account, and why I didnt open an account at a private bank? Why I had to wait for 6 days to withdraw money or do any other bank transaction? What striking employees dont realize is that episodes like this leave vivid memories. When you get screwed over like this, you dont forget. If I were a customer with SBI, I would not only open a bank account at a newer private bank, but I would certainly move a lot of my money there, maybe even close that old account with SBI once I'm comfortable with my new bank.

And then people, especially govt employees wonder why companies are being privatized... this is exactly why. And whats probably worse about this sordid episode is that this is the largest and probably the best performing public-sector bank in the country.

So let me also say something I should have said earlier, I understand that employees have legitimate problems and are often getting the short-shrift from companies, and that labour laws are required to protect employees, but there are better ways. A one-day strike would have sent a enough strong message, better still have a rotating strike at different branches on different days across the city, so that even for that one-day that there is a strike, customers are not left in the lurch.

Anyways, thats my little rant for the day. I have always hated the poor service at most public sector banks, and stuff like this really makes my blood boil. So I had sound off, no PSU employee will prbably ever read this, and if by some improbability they do, they may still not care enough to get it, but at least I feel better now that I have sounded off.

After all this is what blogs are for right? :) :)

Now, cars that drive themselves...

Last sunday, I watched one of the most interesting races I have ever seen. The Great Robot Race | PBS was a race for self-driven cars (no driver, no remote operation either) across a 130 mile course of unpaved road in the Mohave desert in Nevada. Once the cars leave the starting line, there is no human interevention at all, they have to negotiate turns, bad roads, obstacles and find their way to the endpoint themselves. All this for a grand prize of $2 million from DARPA, the American advanced research & development agency, which is a part of their department of defence (DoD).

This was the second year for the race, last year no vehicle completed the race and only one got as far as 7-miles from the start. Compare that with 5 vehicles completing the course this year. You really have to watch the program to see how remarkable all this is. What was also interesting was the different approaches different teams took in order to solve the same problem.

So what are the potential applications for technology like this? Well, DARPA wanted to develop this technology to replace drivers in hostile areas like Iraq & Afghanistan, as army drivers there are specially vulnerable to attacks. But the potential is probably endless, at the very least you could replace bus-drivers for most long-distance traffic, replace cab-drivers and eventually all drivers.

You can watch the whole program online at PBS and read a lot more about driverless cars here.

My first robot :)

I bought a new vacuum cleaner a few days ago.

So what??

Well, I'll tell you what... it vacuums by itself :) , its the Roomba from iRobot. As a kid reading science-fiction stories, I always wondered if I would ever see one or could hope to use a robot in my lifetime. But I would have never thought of a lowly vacuum cleaner as my first robot.

What makes the roomba really cool is this - set it down in the middle of a room and press the clean button, and you're done. It zips around the room cleaning dirt, cleans along the wall, avoids obstacles, even cleans around them, and if it finds more dirt at one spot, it stops and cleans harder at the spot. It really works really well, way better than the conventional vacuum cleaner I was using until then. While it's more expensive than a regular vacuum cleaner - if you buy a new one (I got my factory-refurb at about half price at Amazon), its really worth it, especially if you are an OCD / clean freak who loves vacuuming often.

But most of all, its the cool factor. Its a robot, a little helper that zips about and does something for you... makes your life easier, how cool is that!!

Worse computer viruses & worms

This Worm Is Nasty, Brutish, And Sneaky, this was the loud title of a recent article on the new generation of computer viruses and worms that are being released. The threat is very real, here's an excerpt if you dont have the time to read the real thing:

But the real shock came when Pickett decided to test another bug by infecting his own PC with it. Out slithered a program that promptly installed itself deep inside his computer. There it became virtually immune to detection from the basic antivirus software that scans for dangerous code. The bug -- known as a "Trojan," which in turn was hidden inside a "rootkit" -- was designed to activate whenever a Web surfer typed in a user name or password for bank accounts or Web sites for dating, social networking, or e-mail. Pickett went to a bank site and entered fictitious log-in information. Right before his eyes, those data were sent streaming back to Russia, joining the IDs of thousands of real victims. His reaction: "absolute horror."


This business-week article highlights just how real the threat is. So if you run Windows, please install a good firewall and a good anti-virus software, and scan your computer for viruses regularly. Not being tech-savvy is no longer an excuse. This is especially important if you do any financial or confidential transactions online.

Mysore Palace at night

Basement Window

Now running Dapper Drake

I just installed Dapper Drake flight5 on my laptop. For those of you wondering if I have lost my mind, dont worry I havent. Dapper Drake is the latest release of Ubuntu linux, a flavour of linux I have been trying out for the last year.

A good open source alternative to M$ Windows has been something I have been interested in a while, and its good to see a version of Linux that is finally coming close. For anyone who has ever tried installing Linux or using Linux for that matter, it can be pretty daunting. I once took a whole day trying to update a program on Fedora, and didnt succeed. So when Ubuntu gets to a point where, installing/updating a program is as easy as a Win/Mac, then there is good reason to cheer. The fact that Ubuntu now lets me log onto wireless networks (what Win and Mac users take for granted) underscores how far free OS alternatives have come.

I wont bore folk with why Linux is so much better etc., everyone has an opinion on such stuff and I wont bore you with mine.

I hope to post some post-install procedures I used to get Dapper to a point that I'm happy using it instead of Windows. I hope that helps other newbies like me who spend considerable amounts of time trawling the web trying to find useful guides to getting everything up and running.

Photo blog

Being a passionate photographer, its always been frustrating to realize that its pretty hard to post photos online in one central place. I have had a flickr account for a while, but if you want to associate those photos with your blog, you need to do that from within flickr, etc. etc. All in all, things were painful.

Hello, a program that Blogger encourages users to use, was always off limits as it didnt work behind a proxy server (one of my few complaints with the computer system at NCBS. Now that those restrictions don't apply, expect to see many more photos on my blog, and more often.

I hope to post photos more often now, with some luck, I may actually get better at this photography stuff...

A Tree

Interesting signature :)

Yes, its another post on Firefox, but it isnt what you think it is. I came across this signature belonging to a slashdot subscriber. I thought it was really funny, so I had to post :)

"Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes."

Constant gardener - go see

My initial reaction to the Constant Gardener was rather tepid. The almost anarchic wife of a british diplomat who keeps breaking the rules, how boring...

But there are many things that set this movie above the rest, fine performances by Ralph Fiennes & Rachel Weisz (she won an Oscar for this role), very realistic somewhat raw imagery from some of the poorest parts of Africa, great music and last but not the least, the very interesting premise or plotline. So, do big pharma companies take advantage of poor people in the third world, they probably do. The movie also reminded me of why Africa always makes me sad, I dont think there is any other place on the planet that attracts such misery, wish we could fix it...

Go see this one.

NBA game I went to...

Originally uploaded by j's shoebox.

This is a snap from the NBA game (Philly Sixers vs. Chicago Bulls) I had gone for a couple of weeks ago. Really enjoyed the game, it was the first big basketball game I had ever gone to, and I always wanted to see an NBA game.

That said, its amazing how well organized the games are, nothing like the unruly cricket games you shudder to go to back home. Anyway, the Sixers won the game in a closely fought game that was pretty high scoring.

Will get T & A for these things once they are old enough :)



ps. The photo was clicked by Jeff

Confiscating free software :)

I have been a big fan of everything copylefted, and I have tried to switch over to free software as far as possible (firefox, linux, openoffice, etc.). But more intersting is how people react to all this. The thought that software, something that someone spends time, effort, and presumable money making is being given away for free... What kind of a capitalistic concept is that.

An amusing and interesting article on something similar was published in the Times. What I find really revealing about the incident is how incredulous some people are about any potentially commercial process being non-profit.

To give you another example, my dad's friend could not believe that Skype, which enables you to talk with video to anyone anywhere in thw world, was free. His disbelief was so complete, that my dad actually called me up to make sure that there wasnt something he was supposed to be paying for.

I mean why have telephones if you can do all this for free? I agree, maybe telephones are on their way out, maybe not soon but sometime in the near future.

thats the great thing about the internet, you can do pretty much everything off it, and very often you can do it for free. But the best I think is yet to come. Hopefully sometime in the future, all communication will be seamless. Whether its an image, data, music, video or voice, it will all be carried by the same network and displayed by the same small handheld device. And I can stop buying all these devices (TV, computer, cell phone, IPod dont have that yet, PDA and a camera).

I love free software, after all who doesnt love a freebie...

An electrode in your brain anyone??

Slashdot is running a story about an eminent neuroscientist who wants to stick electrodes into his brain to learn more about how the mind works, especially consciousness. I think most folks who record from the brain have thought about this at some point in time, some more seriously than other. In any case, he makes some interesting points about what we know about the brain and the "big" questions like consciousness that we have no clue about.

Btw, brain recordings from conscious "reporting" humans has been done for many decades and there are many references to that work in the interview.

ps. any volunteers for this kind of work??

technorati tags: neuroscience

The new addition

The new One
Originally uploaded by sharathbs.

I also wanted to announce the arrival of our second baby, a healthy 2.8Kg baby boy. We still havent decided on a name, will keep folks posted.

Both baby and mama are doing well, he looks a lot like T is what I'm told. I personally dont think so, T was much more like a gargoyle when we was born, this one's a bit better :)

UPenn

I have finally made it to UPenn, after all the trials and tribulations, I feel like its an accomplishment in itself. Though, it really isn't.... The real work is starting now :) Hopefully I will have some more time for blogging, as R & T are still in India. But then again, maybe not.