An august month

The month of August in 2005 has been very eventful.

1. I aquired a new toy called Inspiron 6000d, a dell laptop with a wide ultrasharp screen, 1.86Ghz Centrino M, 512MB DDR, 12bMB dedicated graphics card,wireless b/g, bluetooth, a 60 GB 7200RPM hard disk and a 8X DVD +-RW. Now all I need to do is to decide which OS (s) to run on it.



2. I met with a few of my engineering school friends (Lt.AmrithRaj ,great grand son of Chathu kutty memon who killed tigers in Wynad by hurling stones at them and Raj Telukuntla who was the captain of MIT,Manipal swimming team(I didnt know that we had a team until he told me)) and went on a 3 day canoeing/kayaking trip on the Delavare river. We rented our boats from here and started on a saturday morning. The 34 mile river trail starts from Milford beach access and ends at the Delaware Water Gap(Kittatiny visitor center).The plan was to cover the distance in 2.5 days and then if we have some steam left in us at the end of the trip, cross the road from the Kittatiny visitor center to the Dunfield Creek Parking lot and follow the the Appalachian Trail up the mountain to Sunfish pond! We had 2 glorious days of sun and shade (and of course the nights were cool too except for the bear that circled our campsite) and on the third day, 20 minutes before reaching our destination, it started raining heavily. We were drenched,hungry and tired by the time we loaded all our stuff into the car and so decided to skip the hike. The people we met on the river were quite friendly and on Monday we literally had the whole river to ourselves.The water was so clear that we could see the fish, river bed and occassionally a beer can resting down there. There were a few rapids (all level 1) that provided some thrill, especially when we'd lose control of the canoe while blaming each other for not paddling right. By the end of the first day we got the hang of it.










I have wondered why but being closer to nature always makes me feel good. And after these kind of trips, I feel alive and rejuvenated. You end up having a better appreciation for life, yours and of other living beings. When you eat a burger, you realize that the piece of meat ,when alive in a primitive setting, could have made you break a sweat hunting it down. The fast food restaurants of our age do a good job of desensitizing us!



3. I have been playing with Konfabulator and created a New York Times news reader. I will post the link to it as soon as its uploaded.

4. On the marriage front, I decided that the girl I was talking to was not the right person or vice-versa and the girl I was interested in decided that I was not the right person. Sweet irony of life :)


Note: I made up the bear circling the camp story for the effect.But, we indeed were in bear country and we had to haul up the food on a tree every night. I am sure there was a bear near our camp but it most probably was in my mind.