the last fleeting seconds

I’m currently on a plane to Bangalore, writing this post on my iPod using the Wordpress app.

(I just spotted a scratch on the screen. This is why I shouldn’t have shiny, breakable toys. Drat.)

Goa is an amazing place. As I remember from previous trips, and as I learned from the people I met this trip, north and south Goa are very different places.

For example, in south Goa is the Leela hotel, where we stayed with my grandmother about ten years ago and stopped for a drink on this trip. While having our drink, after clearing security at the gate of the hotel, we mentioned that my aunt hadn’t seen the hotel. A stretch golf cart was immediately produced, and off we went, around the golf course, across the man made streams by the villas and down to the absolutely pristine beach where assorted beautiful Europeans were in various stages of turning bright red, or into beached whales, as my sister and I have called them since observing extreme exhibitions of them in Playa del Carmen, just south of Cancun.

Thank God I’m brown.

So that is south Goa. Beautiful, clean, expensive. And as one of our cabbies pointed out, far apart–south Goa revolves around the resorts and those are spread out.

North Goa, by contrast, is where we went to Sunburn. And seems to be largely dominated by a combination of hippies, rich Indian tourists, and what seems to be a minority in terms of the number of local people.

And an endless stream of parties. I had never really heard any psy-trance before, so Goa trance was definitely different. And the dance scene that goes along with it–very chilled…or drugged…out, with everyone very much dancing in their own bubble, often with eyes closed or dark glasses. But still dancing very intensely–it seemed that as long as there was a beat, people couldn’t stop moving. As it was Goa trance, there was always a beat.

And since it was Goa, these parties are on the beach, where you could walk over and there were literally drum circles on the sand and fire dancing people.

I think fire dancers are incredible. If I wasn’t so clumsy, I’d move to Goa and become one. Instead, I’m a CS major.

Basically. Goa=most fun New Years I’ve ever had. Even with my scooter accident and subsequent tetanus shot and subsequent vomiting.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your perspective, the crazy Goa parties are only in mid-Dec through the first week of Jan. The rest of the year, most of the shacks close up, the people with second homes leave to escape the heat and monsoons and our 4000/night hotel drops to 500/night, for a suite.

Welcome to Goa.

PS: You iPhone/iPod Touch people out there–get this application. It makes Wordpress blogging incredibly easy. You can get through App Store–just search for Wordpress. I’ll post a link when I’m back on my computer.

I’m currently in Goa, with basically no Internet. I’ll be here till the 3rd.

I just attended Sunburn

I have extensively listened to Goa Trance 

More when I get to Bangalore.

Happy New Year, all.

Term ended last friday. After a few days of putzing around, setting up my birthday present, and hanging out with Stacey, the last person left in my residence after Sunday, I decided to install my new hard drive, a Western Digital 160gb 7200RPM, for all those technically inclined.

It went relatively well, in terms of moving my data over. However, I encountered a strange error about not enough disk space remaining while using the Disk Management to partition in Windows. As I had previously decided that I wanted to dual-boot, and wanted MediaDirect to work (which was an adventure in itself, involving several calls to Dell Support to get them to send me the actual CD with the MediaDirect software and then some adventures to get the partition for it to be the right size) AND wanted a partition for my pictures (27 gb) and music (20 gb) I already had four partitions, and I think the Windows partitioner was running into problems because it was trying to make them all primary partitions, which, it seems, you cannot have more than four of.

Anyway, so failing to get Windows to create another partition, I just left the space unpartitioned and used UNetbootin to install Ubuntu, and then used the Ubuntu installer to create the partitions needed and go from there.

All well and good. Except UNetbootin has stayed in the Windows boot menu, even though it should have deleted itself or still be visible in installed programs, and I haven’t yet got Ubuntu to work with my SigmaTel sound card. Both solvable problems, eventually.

The power just went out. How I love India.

Anyway. Now having a fresh start, I’ve decided to go forward with as few annoying programs as possible. So I’m installing Mulberry instead of Outlook, and trying to use that for both my Calendar and Mail purposes. I’m using this guide to get it set up…we’ll see how it goes. Despite its internal flaws, I’m quite attached to the Outlook interface.

And the power goes again.

Just as a side note–when the power goes out India, its just for a second or two, until the generators/inverters kick on. My aunt, whose house I’m in right now, lives in a “residential colony,” which is basically several apartment buildings in a gated community with a pool, a park, grocery store, drug store, etc.. The colony has backup power, so when the power does go out, its only for 5 seconds or so until the backups kick in. There is no UPS–it would be too expensive for the whole colony. Hotels, on the other hand, and office buildings will have UPS systems.

Other than Microsoft Office, I’ve installed Lightroom and Pidgin, both of which I could not live without. And iTunes, because I didn’t want to deal with getting my iPod to sync with something else. Of course, iTunes did decide to erase 2-300 songs in copying them back into my library, so I haven’t done a sync yet.

We are off to Amritsar tomorrow till Wednesday, then going to Goa on Saturday, then Bangalore on the 3rd, and then I’ll come back to Delhi to fly out to London on the 10th. I haven’t been to Amritsar or to Goa within recent memory, so I’m excited. Will update as things come.

Best wishes for the New Year, all.

While the attacks in Mumbai are at last over, information is just starting to emerge about those who did, usually at the cost of their own life, save those caught up in the attacks and prevent the catastrophe from being even worse than it was.

Here is a PDF of “Heroes of Mumbai“, sent to me by my aunt, the general manager of 5-star Fortune hotel in Delhi.

Also, Suketu Mehta has written an Op-Ed about the attacks. A powerful piece, it is definitely worth a read.

I’m currently trying to teach myself IEEE single precision value and related computer architecture stuff.

Term ends in a week.

Emily, one of my friends from high school, is arriving today to visit.

Fall has just about ended. Winter is almost here.

I leave for India in 14 days.

everytime I see this xkcd, I say, “aww”:

Whenever you need a moment to de-stress, read xkcd.

There are hostages and coordinated terrorist attacks in Mumbai, going on currently.

Live blogs: http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/27/mumbai-attacks-updates/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7752003.stm

Streaming video report: http://ibnlive.in.com/videos/video_streaming.php

Below is a picture of the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. These hotels are among the most expensive in the world. Currently, Members of the European Parliament were staying at Oberoi Hotel a few miles away, also engulfed in flames.

I pray our generation is not the last.

I’m leaving for Connecticut in about 15 hours. I’ll be there for Thanksgiving. Hence, I will have my US phone on, so feel free to give me a call. I’ll get in mid-Tuesday, EST.

In the meantime, look at this and laugh:

I love Penguins. Thanks to Muz for sending it to me! :)

Washington’s voter turnout this year looks to be at least 84%.

In 2004 (2008 numbers aren’t calculated firmly yet) national voter turnout was 60.7%. Which was the highest since 1968, which was 61.9%.

While it doesn’t have information over time, this map compares margins of victory versus voter turnout, state by state.

Clearly, smaller states are more likely to have higher turnout. But this doesn’t seem to hold true in the South.

Different notions of civil duty?

update: Here’s a handy chart, with historical data. Not only does Jeffrey send me happy websites, but his brother saves me from making my own bar graphs! woohoo.

http://www.booooooom.com/2008/11/11/project-5-submissions-part-1/

Thanks to Jeffrey for sending it to me.