This is interesting. What will they think of next?

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Some more pictures from the Bangalore Meet here.

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The Mumbai folks had their May meet and attendance was 17 people. A few short of our very own BMBM.

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Finally managed to upload all the Mangalore trip pictures. My camera had tripped out during the trip so some of the pictures taken later were with a low end digital. Arjun, fellow blogger and photographer had even sweetly offered me use of his Canon digital, but I decided to enjoy sights without the lens. My sister accused me of not being able to enjoy places without my camera, and I suddenly realised (with lots of guilt) that she was right. I have become so used to looking at everything through frames that I get a little antsy without it! To prove her (and myself) wrong, I proceeded without a camera thereafter.

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Venky sends me this link to Feedmap, developed by CS Thotha. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to set it up, but you might have more luck…

bLogout. For once, Suman comes up with an interesting word :)

So instead of sitting in a coffee shop or a Koshy’s, we’ve decided to go away somewhere for the next blog meet. And appropriately, the meet will be called bLogout (trademark Suman!).

The plan for now is to head to a place called Kadumane. My inclinations right now are towards Honnemardu, but Suman feels it might not suit everyone (please support me, if you think Suman is wrong and we can always change the destination)!

We are now planning to head to Honnemardu (provided we get the bookings). It’s a really fun place with water sports to keep everyone busy.

If you’re interested in joining in, please do email me or Suman by Mon/Tues next.

The date is the 3rd weekend of June (18,19).

If we have enough people expressing their interest by Monday/Tuesday, we will go ahead and make the reservations. Please do not email us saying you can’t make it or suggest another date.

So bLogout folks! It’s fun!

And if you have questions, go read Suman’s FAQ! Please don’t get scared though. He does tend to go over the top :)

At the theatres: Watched Star Wars, Episode III (Revenge of the Sith) and I must say that I found it better than the last installment (Attack of the Clones). Though I’m not a Star Wars fanatic, I do admire George Lucas for dreaming up such an immense saga (and that too, not in order!). I guess Star Wars fans will probably like this version going by the way the movie is raking in the moolah. This is also the last installment, the one that seals all the episodes, so I guess the reception is expected. I thought the whole Anakin Skywalker being sucked into the dark side and turning into the evil Darth Vader was a little sudden. And to think it was all for a woman’s love. Sigh. They never learn do they?! Anyway, if you’re out of work, it’s a good idea to head to a theatre and watch this one.

This is the way the episodes were released:

Star Wars, Episode IV (1977): A New Hope
Star Wars, Episode V (1980): The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars, Episode VI (1983): Return of the Jedi
Star Wars, Episode I (1999): The Phantom Menace
Star Wars, Episode II (2002): Attack of the Clones
Star Wars, Episode III (2005): Revenge of the Sith

Which one was your favourite episode?

Some new discoveries last weekend (when I was supposed to be studying my French, but did everything else but!):

Cosmo Village - A lounge bar. My first visit. Heard quite a bit about the place. It’s a decent joint. Liked the comfortable sofas. Nice music. (However, I have got quite a few conflicting reports about it). Crowded like all other places on weekends. I have a feeling that no one stays home anymore (I can hear you say: look who’s talking!). Wherever you go (any day of the week) you have to battle not only traffic jams but also crowds. Unfortunately, all these cool joints close early. So at about midnight, we had to beat a hasty retreat. It’s located off Brigade Road.

Dublin – the bar at the Windsor Manor. Out of the window, there’s a pretty pool. It had just rained, and the skies were turning dark. One particular tree beside the pool had about a thousand parakeets on it (and I didn’t have my camera). The weather was beautiful. Watched the F1 on the big screen. Kimi Raikonnen won. Felt a little sorry for Shumi though (where was he?!). It was the seventh consecutive race without a Ferrari victory and Schumi must be now wondering how he allowed his greatest fears in the form of Räikkönen and Alonso, to get ahead. Ah, a friends says he’d become arrogant. But I think he’s a champ and will bounce back. Regardless of all the talk of his going old. He should go out in style at least after all his exploits on the track.

Opus – A neat place somewhere near the Palace Grounds area, can’t remember the name of the road. They had karaoke night on Sunday. It was a cool evening and thankfully, it didn’t pour since we had seats outside. Nice music. Some great singers emerged from the woodwork (or wherever they were hiding). One from our group who floored everyone singing Ironic and No Doubt. I am quite sure some of them were professionals, the way they were singing! We missed winning a champagne bottle for the birthday boy by a whisker, methinks! A nice place to chill out, if you’re looking for good music and a chilled out environment.

Any other chilled out places you know in Bangalore?

After a couple of years using Movable Type, I am changing over to WordPress. Despite all the wonderful work thanks to Jay Allen and his MT Blacklist, I was still getting way too much spam. It was becoming a pain to remove it everyday. I am hoping WP does not give me as much stress :)

It’s going to take time for me to get used to the new interface. Updating my blogroll etc. is going to take me some more time, so do bear with me. Any problems that you might encounter with navigation, links etc. - do email me. Meanwhile, let me get back to work…

Circa: 1993. I was working with the Indian Express, Pune. In the production section one evening, I was busy producing some supplement. When I was walking out of the room, one of the artists called Dulange, handed this to me. I’ve kept it with me, since I really liked what he did.

Circa 2005. I was at the karaoke night last evening at Opus, enjoying listening to people sing, when this caricature artist called Ashwin, asked if I’d like my mug shot. I said, why not?

Quite a few differences in the two and I’m not sure I quite like them either :) I quite prefer the one done more than a decade ago! And it has nothing to do with the fact that I was more than ten years younger at that time ;)

Joe Satriani rocked and everything they say about him being a god is true!! He was simply amazing.

If Knoffler rocked, Satriani rocked with a capital R! He came on stage in his trademark black shades and black t-shirt. He took his guitar at 7.00 pm and only stopped at 10.00 pm after 3 hours of continuous strumming, riffing, raffing and whatever the hell is does with his guitar. As Arnab Suman rightly commented, the guy makes love to his guitar.

Adel managed to get loads of pictures on his brand new camera (mere paas Nokia 6670 hai!) and Suman (mere paas iPod hai!) was in 7th heaven after actually shaking hands with the man at Reliance Webworld earlier that day. The ticket he bought was the lucky one and he got to meet the man himself. Poor Arnab was devastated since both had bought tickets together. Better luck next time, Arnie! (I must mention Arnie’s friend Saurabh who kept calling his friends through the concert and made them listen to Sat on his phone. I think he missed most of songs in the process!).

While the music rocked, the management of the event, by a group called Opium, was pretty dismal.

The 2000 bucks row section was way too large. They should have estimated the number of tickets sold in that section and made an appropriate demarcation accordingly. Several people began crossing to the other side soon after the program began since there was a yawning gap.

Suman won a Rs 500 ticket and was told at the venue that there was no entrance for that denomination!

The overhead screens were not up till Satriani was into his 3rd or 4th number.

Even after they were up, they kept blanking out. The camera man also seemed to be confused as to what he was supposed to focus on. So each time Satriani created magic with his fingers, we had to look at the black screen. I think it was an episode of ‘The Revenge of the Cameraman’.

They sent policemen to the barriers making us feel like criminals on the wrong side of the fence. Security personnel manning a few junctions would have been just fine, thank you.

All in all, if it wasn’t for the music, these folks would have gotten some major flak. They definitely need to pull up their socks if they’re planning to manage events in the future.

But we’re glad we got to see Joe Satriani. There’s nothing like watching these live-wires, in the flesh, performing on stage.

Afterthought:
This is something I have to mention. We went to Millers 46 for a bite after the concert. It took them about 20 minutes to serve us water! And we waited another 20 minutes and no one came to take our order. Not even a ’sorry’, but we’re crowded today, so don’t mind the delay. We walked out (something I don’t do unless I’m really pushed to the limits and I do understand that restaurants can have their stressed out days!). What was disappointing was the attitude of the folks there, especially since I like the place.

We went to Coconut Grove on Church Street and had some spicy chicken, fish and appams instead. I’ve been to this place a long time ago and I must say that if you like your food steaming hot and spicy, you know where to head the next time you’re in the vincinity!

It turned out to be quite a marathon meet after all.

19 20 bloggers attended and we had a nearly 100% attendance!

There were 2 of womankind and 18 of mankind. Hmmm.

Some old faces and loads of new ones.

Kiruba was our special guest. A special thanks to him for being there inspite of the aches and pains and bruised body parts (you don’t want to know!) after the marathon :)

Three out of them finished the whole marathon – 42 kms. Kribs, Sathish and Shyam (who are incidentally brothers).

Shubh and Bhaskar ran the 7 kms and Sam ran the half marathon.

Congratulations to all you cool people!

We effectively blocked the entrance to Barista for a while and it took us a lot of rearranging tables so we could all hear each other.

One blogger even decided not to join in and later sms’d me saying he was a little taken aback when he saw the crowd.

The meet progressed to Koshy’s where we had another round of juice, beer and tea.

There were so many folks from Chennai that we thought of calling it a Chennai blog meet in Bangalore.

One blogger suggested we do an activity based meet next time around. Any ideas are welcome.

In attendance (in alphabetical order):
- Adel
- Aditya
- Ambarish
- Anand
- Arnab
- Bhaskar
- Kiruba
- Kishore
- Krishna
- Madhu
- Muthu
- Prabhu
- Rahul
- Sam
- Shubh
- Sathish
- Suman
- Shyam
- Venkat

My pictures will take a while. Meanwhile, check out Anand and Krishna’s blog for more pictures and Muthu even has a video!

Thanks to all you folks who made it, and for those who didn’t - we hope to catch you again, at another edition of the meet.

UPDATE:
The blog meet was covered by Global Voices Online.

A couple of photographs, taken with Anand’s camera by assorted bloggers.

Make way for us. Filling up a great portion of the available space at Barista’s. Coffee places are a little unsuitable for these meets now! Left to right: Shyam, Madman, someone cut off, Adita, Anand, Suman, Sathish, Krishna, Shubh, me, Prabhu, Samuel, Muthu, Kishore and Arnab.




Before getting thrown out for disturbing Barista’s peace, we shifted to Koshy’s next door for some beer and juice.