Since this is one of the first few blogs (actually 2^nd)
that I am writing from my Macbook even though I am having Macbook
from more than 6 months! My personality has real hight swings, I
generally write a lot when my personality has swinged to the
direction of a ‘blog writer’. It looks like that’s happening now!
Also over the past 6 monhts I was in India mostly and traveling
around and involved with too many things that I couln’t really
contribute to my blog. “Ho sake to maaf kar de na”

Let me start this new season by writing something about Apple.
I have really become a very big fan of apple after buying my macbook.
Not that I did not like Apple before, but now it has taken over the
number 1 position from Google in my lists of favorite companies. Here
is my current prediction – ‘over the next 5 years apple will become
the biggest technology company in the world overtaking both Google
and Microsoft’. Well it definitely is a very bold prediction, but
Apple fans will know why

Let me put out some reasons for it. Coming to my Macbook. I
never had imagined that I will be such a satisfied customer of
Macbook. I used to have a Dell Inspiron E1505 before. I used to
always curse both Microsoft and Dell because the machine used to have
bad performance (even though I had Core Duo proessor and 1 GB RAM). I
have no such complaints with Mac. Mac is blazing fast. They give the
best hardware for the money they charge. Even though the Macbook
price looks like its on the higher side, believe me it’s worth every
penny. And the software, I can tell you that ‘Mac OS X is by far the
best operating system ever made till date’. Since most of the people
have always been using Windows, they don’t know that Mac OS X is
actually a better operating system.

1.It’s much more easier to use (it might take some time for
windows users to get used to it, which is very much understandable).

2. Its much more stable than Windows. Very rare that the OS will
freeze and you don’t really need frequent restarts.

3. The OS and all the software which comes from Apple (including
Mail, iTunes, iWork, iLife, etc) are all written in a very efficient
way. They don’t really need to used huge amount of memory space like
Microsoft Windows and other microsoft applications.

4. There is a feature called ‘Spotlight’ in Mac which makes
searching anything and everything in Mac very easy. This includes
files, mails, songs, videos, etc which are on the hard-drive. This is
similar to Google desktop but it has much better features than the
google software and since it’s integrated with the OS, it doesn’t
slowdown the system. Also it’s integrated with all Apple applications
which makes it very productive.

5. Mac comes with free software package called iLife which
includes Mail, Address Book, Calendar, iTunes, iPhoto, iDVD, iMovie
etc. These software so so useful that I was wondering how I missed
them all these years. These softwares makes my macbook sooo much more
productive than my previous Dell.

6. And not to miss, the look and feel, ease of navigation etc
which are apple specialties. This will leave any person in awe.

7. The battery life is awesome. It always lasts me for at least 4
hours.

I am sure there are lot of elaborative article. There are lots of
reviews available for Macbook. And there are also lot of videos
available on www.apple.com which
shows details of features of Macbook.

And coming to rest of the things from Apple. I am sure you would
have heard about iPhone. If you have really used iPhone or an
iPod Touch (which I proudly own), you will really know what the hype
is all about. If one looks into the market there is no product
anywhere close to what an iPhone is. I have even checked out Samsung
Instinct personally which is supposed to be the iPhone killer and
boy it just sucks. One can’t use it after having a look at iPhone!
iPhone is really getting $325 subside from AT&T for every iPhone
sold. And the subside becomes $425 if it is sold by Aplle stores. Can
you imagine the kind of money apple is going to make out of iPhones!
Since it’s priced at $200 for the 3G GPS phone, it will sell like hot
cake and Apple is going to make tons of money out of it! And now they
are also challenging Blackberry with new features which also makes it
a good business phone which can be used in Enterprise!!

They have also started an amazing web based feature called Mobile
me. This also shows how good Apple can be at making web applications.
They are not really far from Google in creating great web
applications.

Apple always know where the money is, Apple products never come
cheap. But they are always worth every penny paid for it. Out of the
3 big technology companies Apple, Google and Microsoft I think
apple is rising the fastest. If you just check the rise of Market cap
of Apple since Dec 2006 you will understand what I am talking about.

If you don’t already own any apple product you will soon come to
know what you are missing all these years. Do check out www.apple.com
& don’t miss the videos there!

For now you can enjoy the Macbook Air Video!! Trust me it’s
amazing!

[This article has many photos]

The transparent columbus landing beach

Shesh under-water!

Click here for the entire photo album of my Caribbean Vacation

This is a long pending post. This actually happened in April 2007.

This should be one of the best vacations ever for me and definitely in the most beautiful of all places!

My cousin Harsha called me and told me that we can plan to go to visit Murali Mama in Virgin Islands. I never knew where it was located. Then I saw it on the map to realize that it’s part of Caribbean and it is much closer to Venezuela than the US. That was enough to make me determined to visit Murali Mama at any cost!

Murali Mama works at the Hovensa Refinery in the tiny island St. Croix which is part of the Virgin Islands. It is so small that it’s maximum length is 45 KM and width is 11 KM! It’s a small Island but has lot of variation in the type of beaches and vegetation found there. One can find calm, still and completely transparent waters and few beaches & one can find wavy waters at few other beaches. There are mountains and Rain forests at one side and dry land at the other end! The Island with lots of coconut trees has a vegetation that reminded me of India.

Murali mama stays in a large colonial house. The most surprising part was that the house is owned by an Indian doctor whose grandfather hails from the same tiny village that my grandfather hails from - Arkere in Mandya District of Karnataka!!! That world is really a small place!

Murali mama had given us a big room in his house and we had his car with us to roam around. What more to ask for!

Just behind Murali Mama’s house there is an amazing beach with total transparent waters. Columbus landed in this beach during his first journey! The water is so transparent that when I was swimming I felt as if I am swimming in a giant swimming pool! Even when I had swum away very far from the shore I could see my shadow on the deep ocean floor!! That was an unbelievable experience!

The island has lots of amazing restaurants next to the sea.

The goods and services on the island is completely tax free! So, we used to get food and drink at great rates. We spent lot of time swimming around in different beaches. We did Jet Skiing in the transparent waters. The water at the Jet Skiing site was as transparent as glass and I don’t think I will ever have such a nice Jet Skiing experience in any other place!

Click here for the entire photo album of my Caribbean Vacation

Picture perfect

Harsha & Shesh Jet Skiing

With Elizabeth, my scuba diving instructor

St. Croix island from the sky

Shesh at the Phili Marathon

It all happened finally on Nov 18th. I had been looking forward to this day from long time.

Just 2 weeks before the marathon my friend Monna also decided to run a half marathon at Phili. So me and Chendur hopped on to his car and drove down to Philadelphia. As all marathon runners we had a pasta dinner the previous night. We were with the Lend A Hand for India team for the dinner.

2 weeks back the weather prediction for Philadelphia was pretty bad. The highest temperature was supposed to be 1 Degree Centigrade and there was supposed to be ice and rain. Thankfully the weather finally turned out to be slightly better. But it was still close to 0 Degree Centigrade, it was drizzling & was windy. But it was not enough to stop us
We got up early and reached the marathon start location. We could see a huge crowd of over 10,000 people. Apart from the runners there were so many people all around to cheer the runners. There was lots of excitement all around.

Finally the run started. I and my friend Karthik were planning to run the full course together. But even before completing the 1st mile both of us decided to use the restroom. There was a huge line in front of the restroom and guess what we both lost each other there! So I was running all alone for most of the time. I lost some 10 minutes due to the rest room. Due to this and also due to the fact that I started my run at the end of the crowd, it took almost 10 miles for me to cross the people who had come to walk half marathon. All along I was wondering where the runners are?
I ran at a relaxed pace as it was my first marathon. I did not want to risk getting an injury. I crossed the half stage after 2 hrs 50 mins & guess what the winner Timothy Psitet had completed the run well before I could even complete half. His timing was 2:25:01. He said he it took more time for him due to the rain and windy conditions!
Anyway I was not running to win the Gold and neither the silver
The track was such that by the time I finish half my run I can see the ones finishing the full run at the other side of the road. I could see lots of people finishing full run. Most of them had amazing body and I watched them with awe! I could see quite a lot of people of age over 50 finishing the run at around 3 hours time!
Maybe someday I can also try finishing in less than 4 hours at least (well I guess I am not going to aim to finish at less than 3 hours, that’s a bit too much!).

I took some inspiration from these amazing runners and continued my run. I saw lot of interesting runners along the way. There was a lady who was completely dressed like a panther. There was a guy juggling 4 balls while he was running! He was doing it all along. First I thought he was doing the half marathon, but later I saw him at around 20 mile mark & was quite amazed that he was still juggling the 4 balls and was on his way to complete the full marathon!!
For some distance before I completed the half marathon I was running with a lady who was probably 70 year old! I later came across a mother and son running together. The young son was cheering his mom all along saying ‘Common mom’ & the mom was saying all along ‘Coming son’!
At around 14 mile mark I came across a guy who I am sure was at least 75 year old! I came across a group of around 6 people with a lady holding a balloon and a board saying that they will complete the run in 5:30 hrs. They were doing the run at different pace, the lady would instruct everyone to run faster they will all increase speed, then she will tell everyone to decrease speed they will all reduce their speed. I thought I could do much better and I overtook them and went further. After crossing mile 15 I was quite tired and my pace started varying. I was running quite slowly also at several distance & later the group of 5:30 overtook me. The 75 year old guy had also joined them. I decided to join this group & later I realized that running with a group was really very helpful! I came to know that the lady leading the group was a professional pacer!

Philadelphia is a very beautiful city. It is an old city with lots of history. It has lots of colonial style buildings with marvelous architecture. That made the run more memorable.
There were lots of volunteers at multiple points along the track offering water, Gatorade and energy gel. Not to mention there were people all along the 42.2 KM track cheering the runners. ‘Go runner go’! At some of the places there were people playing live music along the track. And at many places where the track passes through residential areas people has put loud speakers on their window and were playing music loud for the runners! One more interesting encounter was to see a group of people who were offering beer to the runners! What a spirit the Phili people have got!
After finishing mile 20 I was so damn hungry. Few volunteers were offering cut pieces of Oranges. I could only grab one piece of it because I was wearing leather gloves. Man! That was the best piece of orange I have ever tasted! I wished I should have grabbed more. After running for half more mile I even thought of running back to grab more oranges! But that would have been a real silly thing to do!

And guess what, at mile 24 I met Karhik with whom I was planning to run the full marathon. He joined my 5:30 group which had grown to a sizable number by now. He had developed severe knee pain as he had expected before. We ran the last 2 miles and finished the run together. My chip time was 5:27:55 which is nothing great to talk about. I think I really need to better this record by running one more marathon!

I should thank Lend A Hand for India for all their support. Charu took my photo on the way. I met Raj at mile 8 and 20 and even he took my running photo and video! I will post them on my blog once I collect it from him.

We collected the medal and went to the food tent to have some food. It was only after I stopped running that I realized how cold it was outside. Few minutes after I stopped running I started shivering. I had to wait in the cold for 2 more hours for all our friends to finish running and complete all the formalities of the marathon. Those 2 hours were actually much tougher for me than the marathon run itself. I thought for sure that I am going to fall sick due to the cold. But thankfully nothing happened and went to sleep that night with a great sense of achievement!

Finally, thanks for all those who supported my cause by contributing to the fund that I am raising for Lend A Hand for India. There has been a good collection in my fund and I will soon post the details on my blog.

Dear Friends,

First time I heard of the concept of Marathon was nearly 6 years back when I was doing my Engineering at REC, Surathkal. I still remember, Times of India had a big article with heading "Run Anil Run". This was about Anil Ambani & how he took up Marathon to trim down is 100 KG plus body! It was an inspiring story for me & boom I also started running. I inspired many of my hostel mates to take up running and many of us eventually ended up participating in the 10,000 meters run in the college. Running a full Marathon was always a hidden desire in me. I always knew that New York is a place where lot of people train for Marathon. And now life and brought me to New York and given me an opportunity to fulfill my long cherished dream.

Running a Marathon is not just a personal challenge to me; I am also doing it for a cause. I attended one of the Salsa party of Lend A Hand for India and got introduced to the kind of work Lend A Hand for India. There is a famous quote by somebody

Give a poor man a fish to eat and he will have food for one day. Teach him fishing and he will have food for his entire life.

This is exactly what LAHI is doing. LAHI is giving Vocational Training and Career guidance for young boys and girls in rural and urban India to make them employable and to help them find job. LAHI works with lots of schools and helps them reduce the school drop out rates. LAHI has several other activities. You can get the complete information about the organization on www.lend-a-hand-india.org

I am running full marathon at Philadelphia on November 18th. I am running 26.2 miles and I am trying to raise $100 per mile that I am going to run which would be $2620. It would be really nice if you can contribute some amount and support my run and help Lend A Hand for India. These are few of the ways that your contribution to LAHI can help–>

- $100 pays for the tuition fee of two boys / girls for a vocational training program
- $400 pays the one-year salary of a trainer at the school
- $1500 pays to purchase a PC and internet facility for a high school
- $4000 pays for the one year of operating cost of a batch of students for training programs (includes teacher’s salaries, consumables, coordination, and monitoring) or meets the capital cost of launching a vocational training center at a high school.

Lend-a-Hand India is a 501(C)(3) organization, and all donations are Tax Deductible and eligible for company match programs. You can contribute by sponsoring me online through PayPal (click on the button below - no PayPal account required) or by check payable to "Lend-A-Hand India" to the address below. Most of the employers do match your contribution, which means that your contribution gets doubled! Click here for a selected list of companies that match donations.

Thank you!

Shesh

Please use the below button to contribute.

For a contribution by check, please make the check payable to "Lend-A-Hand India" write "Sponsorship for Shesh Paplikar" in the memo and mail to:

Lend-A-Hand India
784 Columbus Avenue #10G
New York NY 10025, USA

[This article has many photos]

Lights representing the WTC twin towers…

WTC lights are reaching the sky…

Well it’s 09/11 again. The world has changed a lot from the past 6 years! The security at New York was much higher today as expected. One could see NYPD every where. Since, I have to go though the World Trade Center station everyday, I had a chance to catch some piece of action. From past 5 days, lot of people can be seen in and around WTC. There are lots of activists going around with different agenda. Some say that "WTC attack was an insider job. Investigate!". Some are there to say, "Ongoing war should be stopped". Some are there to pay tribute to the people who died in the attacks!

One can see US flags all around. There are couple of gaint US flags flying over the nearby buildings. For me the most eye catching part is the two strong beam of lights reaching the sky. These two beams represent the twin towers which were destroyed during the 09/11 attack.

I had a long wait for this. When I was planning to buy an iPod last year, my friend Spot told me about the full screen iPod that Apple is planning to launch. Since then I have been waiting for the full screen iPod. I was very exited when Apple announced the iPhone with full screen. But, I didn’t buy an iPhone due to reasons like–>
i. iPhone comes with 2 Year contract with AT&T. So, if I move to India anytime in between I will be forced to pay extra money to break the contract.
2. Also, I am already having a very good contract at a great monthly rate with Sprint.
3. iPhone cannot be used with other service providers. It doesn’t allow the user to put a SIM card into it. So, the phone will be useless for me when I visit India for vacations.

But, today my wait is over. Steve Jobs finally announced a new generation of iPods. And the hot launch of today is the iPod touch. This new iPod is very similar to the iPhone except that this is not a phone. So, this doesn’t come with a contract with AT&T which is good for me. The pricing of the new range of iPods looks pretty good. The touch screen with lot of patented technologies makes iPod touch (like iPhone) way ahead of any other competitor product. And not to miss, this comes with Wi-Fi capability with a built in browser. Now one can easily sync one’s iPod to get latest podcast like news etc which can be downloaded from iTune built in the iPod touch. One can easily buy songs, movies and TV shows directly from the iPod!

As always Steve Jobs came up with a great Key Notes today & I placed the order for a 16 GB iPod touch after watching the wonderful Keynotes. The product won’t be shipped until the end of this month, so I am eagerly waiting for it.

The large screen makes it so much more easier for me to watch movies on the go, especially when I am travelling long distance in flights or trains. Also, now it’s much easier for me to share my photographs with my friends when I meet them! Since, I am training for Marathon, the music part of the iPod will be much more useful than usual for me.

[This article has many photos]

Shesh, the ultimate Gambler…

The theatre of Wynn where ‘Le Reve’ show was held.

Click here for the entire photo album of my Las Vegas trip

New Year celebration has been pretty amazing for me from the past few years. While I was enjoying the beaches of Goa last year, this year I had a chance to visit the Heaven on earth, the Las Vegas. The Casinos are so amazing and so Royal out there, sometime it becomes difficult to understand whether it’s dream or reality!

After many years, I had the chance to catch up with my KREC classmates Mohit, Divakar, Dharmesh & Vasanth. What better place to meet than Las Vegas!

Las Vegas is the true Maya Nagari of the current time. Every moment there was so absorbing. One can find the greatest gambling dens like Wynn and Bellagio over there which have been built at a cost of over a billion dollar! Visit any of these Casino’s and you will have to keep pinching yourself to check whether you are awake or dreaming! LV has everything that a pleasure seeker can ask for. Beautiful women, great bars with amazing bartenders, great shows, unbelievable live shows and the gambling dens which are open round the clock!

We were there for couple of days. Initial period we spent on top of the 1149 feet Stratosphere. There were lots of truly breathtaking rides on top of Stratosphere! We spent lot of time doing Casino hopping. Each Casino has been built on different themes. I was just spell bound at the grandeur of each of the Casinos. Whoever visits Las Vegas must and should visit a high profile Live Shows of Las Vegas. We visited the ‘Le Reve’ show at Wynn. It’s a show on waters! The show was so much out of the world that most of the time of the show I couldn’t believe that something like this was happening in front of my eyes.

Whats the fun of visiting LV if one doesn’t gamble! We started gambling at the Stratosphere Casino. My luck was so good at Roulette that at one point I had made so much profit that there was no place to keep the $5 coins that I had one. The whole table was following my moves. I got so absorbed on the ‘Roulette’ table that I played for 24 hours non-stop without even taking a break for food. I started on 31st morning and left the Roulette table on 1st morning. The only time I went out of the Casino was for 10 minutes when the 12:00 AM New Year fireworks was going on outside! Me and Mohit implemented so many algorithms on the ‘Roulette’ table and it was great fun implementing the algorithms!

Click here for the entire photo album of my Las Vegas trip

I know that my blog has gone dead from quite a long time. Busy life! Let me not give too many reasons

To give a few updates, I have been through quite some movement. I moved to Charlotte from Bangalore in Oct 2006 Y then to New York in May 2007.

I have been doing lots of things, so there are quite a lot of things to update.

Had been to Caribbean, Las Vegas & Niagara Falls in between!

For the time being, I’ll at least give link to some of my new photo albums.

Click here for the entire photo album of my Caribbean Visit

Click here for the entire photo album of New York photos taken right next to my house

Click here for the entire photo album of Niagara falls

Which car are you planning to buy?!

Long awaited Swift Diesel is finally out linky

Here is a detailed review of the car –> linky

Guys, this is supposedly an amazing vehicle. This is based on a technology purchased by Suzuki recently from Fiat. This car will supposedly give a mileage of 20kmpl !! So, it should work out to something like Rs. 2 per KM!
(An interesting fact about this diesel technology developed by Fiat is that in India this technology will be used by Maruti, Fiat, Tata and General Motors!)

Also, look out for Santro diesel, Getz diesel and Zen diesel which will be launched soon.

i. Diesel is cheaper than petrol in India (Petrol Rs.55 & diesel Rs.40 per litre in Bangalore -Jan 2007)
ii. Diesel cars give more mileage (distance per litre of fuel) than petrol.
iii. Diesel technology has improved a lot in recent times.
It looks like the era of diesel cars has arrived in India!

Skoda (they have amazing diesel engine technology), Toyota and Honda (will launch a small hybrid car also) will have their small car (hatch back) in India in in another year or two.
In 2007, 50 new car models are being launched in India.

Also, Mahindra-Renault, Nissan, Fiat-Tata have lot of plans for India and not to speak of Audi, BMW and Merc with their own plans for India!
Lot seems to be happening in the Indian car market!

[This article has many photos]

Rang De Basanti! -Click to Zoom

I love convertible… -Click to Zoom

Click here for the entire photo album of my Smoky Mountain visit

www.flickr.com sheshagiri’s Smoky Mountains -Thanksgiving 2006 photoset

This was a Thanksgiving I’ll remember for a long time.

I went to Smoky Mountains with my roomie Rahul. We had booked a cabin in Gatlinburg, the most famous town in Smokies. Man, the cabin was amazing. It had a really large TV, DVD player Playstaion, x-box……billiards table, foosball, jacuzzi. It was a truely amazing wooden cabin. We were joined by Rahul’s friends and their friends in Gatlinburg. Our gang was made of 18 colorful people!

We started the first day with Jacuzzi and beer. We later played poker till late night. Poker can be a very interesting game with lot of people around. The next day we went around for long drive around in the smokies. The traffic was real slow in the mountains. Along the drive we stopped for our Rang De Basanti. We had real fun while driving. Rahul’s car was top down most of the time. We were going on with full music. That day evening we had good food in a restaurant and then we had the highlight of the day. We went for bull ride. Even though it’s not exactly a real bull, the ride can be pretty tough! It’s a machine which looks like a bull. We are supposed to sit on it with only one hand on the rope. This bull shakes us off and believe me it’ll throw you off in 30 seconds!

The last day we went around for go carting and other games. We ended the day with Horse riding. We were a bit late and we had to ride the horse on the mountain track in darkness. Nevertheless, it was a wonderful experience.

The best part of our holiday was that the weather was great on all the four days. It was sunny thoughout.

The cabin where we stayed  - click to zoom