Testing video

Here is a little video I am testing:

New clothes!

Just in time for summer eh. Somehow it actually feels like spring is overdue, with all this rain and cloudy weather here in Oxford. I went to Bicester yesterday, and got myself some new clothes, since some my other ones were realllly worn out. Bicester seemed like a nice, quaint little place, with a good shopping village. The prices were much cheaper than in Oxford anyway, but it can't compare with the volume you'd get in somewhere like Birmingham or London. I got a nice brownish Diesel hoodie, a few tees, and a great looking Ralph Lauren black jacket, which looked sophisticated and cool at the same time! ...that still cost me an arm and a leg though, even at Bicester prices. Didn't need jeans, so I didn't get anything else.

Raining again. This weather...

My first post since I got back to England. Well, whats been happening over here? Finished all my coursworks and now just getting ready for the finals in June. Hopefully they will go well. ( I REALLY HOPE SO!) I can't believe I miss driving around so much now! Although I did manage to get seriously darker than when I got there, hehe.

I started watching a new anime series (for me), which is quite popular now, known as Naruto. I think its brilliant. Its got a good plot line, great animation and artwork, also some nice humour and fightscenes in it. Although sometimes the flashbacks get a little too much, I realise that you needed them to realise a lot about each character's history. And its also one of its finer points that almost all the characters are connected, either by just a coincidential meeting, or something even more significant. Right now I'm on episode 130, and its still going strong! Its got quite a fan base now. If anyones interested in it, try Naruto Chaos.

By the way, what episode is Smalleville upto, I wonder. I'm on 4-16 myself.

Pictures?

I should probably post some more pictures. This place is getting pretty drab eh. Soon...soon.

We had a suprise birthday party for my cousin Rani, who just turned 14. I'm pretty sure she was quite oblivious to the fact that there were about 20 ppl running around the house getting everything ready! Must have been the sleeping pills mum popped her with. :D We actually got the wrong cake first, and I left with another cousin (yes I do have many cousins, its a lot of fun really) to get our actual cake. On the journey to the cake shop (appropriately named Nice In Ice, or Ice is Nice..I forget which) I almost dropped the cake as another motorbike almost hit us! Stupid idiot (the other guy) was wavering from side to side on middle the road, and then mouthed off at us afterwards...

Luckily it all went without a hitch and Rani was quite surprised (shocked more likely, that we would even get a cake and let it stay that way without tasting it) and we all enjoyed cramming 20 people into a table for 6. Good fun I say!

In a few minutes....

....I'll be getting my driving licence! Whoooo! They'd better have it ready by the time I get there...or I'll...just have to wait I guess. Went for a ride in a mate's new car last night. It was a Hyundai some model, a nice car really, handled really well.

Also, counting down to when I have to leave again. Its only 4 days left! (or 5, depending on how you count)

Too common for my own good?

As per regulations, I'm contracted my (almost) monthly dose of Rhinovirus, resulting in another meeting with my life-long companion, Common Cold. Sigh. I wonder if I have a defective immune system, or maybe it just doesn't exist as far as colds are concerned! I guess I'll just have to wait till this passes, just in time for the next. AAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTCHOOOOOOOOO!

Good news. Passed my driving test on thursday. It might be a while before I get the licence though. I'm also still waiting to retake my motorbike test. I committed a slight error on my first try. Don't ask. :D

Easter Holidays in Maldives..and what do you know...

Its been ages since my last post, I 'think' I was busy. Maybe it was my Internet Connection. :S
Anyway, I decided to come back home for Easter Hols, so I arrived on the 26th in Male'. Barely 4 hours ago, I heard that there had been an earthquake in Sumatra. It's now 2 am and I still can't sleep. Strangely I was downstairs at the time of the quake, at about 9.40 pm, but I didnt feel it, although my brother in law and cousin upstairs said that they did. Either way, I'm just grateful that we haven't heard about a tsunami on its way, or one having struck Indonesia.

It's just a coincidence, that I happened to go back home just two days before the asian earthquakes, twice. One of my friends actually told me not to go back. Hehe. How was I supposed to know? :)

When the news first started to spread in Male' there was a widespread concern, as people scurried for their phones to call relatives and friends. And the ever reliable Dhiraagu Mobile Services made sure that half the calls didnt make it through to their destinations. Typical. They disgust me. I immediately looked around online for any reports, while watching BBC out of the corner of my eye, while my family was dialling madly on the phones. I admit, so was I. Scared, a lot of people were. And there was reason enough to be. It had been only 3 months since the last disaster, and I think that this was the news that all those survivors had been dreading all this time.

There was an expectant wait, as everyone in their homes crowded around the television, continuously switching back and forth between BBC and CNN (the local TV station just telecasted the CNN reports until they had received a statement from the President asking for people not to panic) trying to get any information about the possibility of a tsunami. Maybe it is a miracle, that there hasnt been any reports of massive destruction as of now. The last time I DIDNT expect huge waves, they came. We were all being just careful. When I looked around my street, I saw people hurrying to carry sandbags out to their front doors, to try and block any icoming water. It would have been but pitiful in the face of a tsunami, but it was all the protection that we would ever have, not being a country with any ground higher than a couple of feet above sea level.

In the midst of all this, I remembered the conversations I had with an Italian couple I met on the plane journey on my way home. They had been frequent visitors to the Maldives, and were horrified at the news of the tsunami in December, while they were in Rome. They were coming back because they loved Maldives so much. I can't imagine what they would think when they got the news about the Sumatran Earthquake, after having thought that most of the risk had long passed. They must have been so worried, as were countless other thousands.

I can only know now that just for now, we are safe. Hopefully tomorrow will reveal itself as a safe day too. I shudder to think what might have happened, if a tsunami had come thundering into all these coastal villages and communites dotted along the asian coastlines, while they were peacefully sleeping at two in the morning. Here's hoping that it never happens. I guess now we have to learn the lesson that nowhere on this world, can we be safe from the unknown suprises of Nature's destructive power.

Ah, the wonderful world of wireless...

Wireless LANs are great aren't they? Ofcourse, if you haven't used one before you wouldn't know. Well, when they work fine, I think they are brilliant. Right now, I've got a Wireless Router/ADSL modem from BT, which gets me my internet, and my notebook connects to that wirelessly. Cool. Allows me to walk around with my notebook (as if I run about lugging it around. There were a couple of problems setting it up. Well, actually, just one. The really fancy 'user-friendly' installation wizard (which also tells what you have to do out loud, hence asking you to increase your speaker volume)crashed right after restarting the computer...big surprise. So I ended up having to set it up manually, which actually wasn't that hard.

Then my landlady asked me to help her with HER wireless LAN for internet. Yay. How could I say no, I was living in her house! No really, it was fun. :) I thought to myself, how hard could it be? I've already done one! So. on and on. I got it hooked up to the main computer and got the connection working, but for some reason, I couldn't get any of the other laptops to connect to it. They could connect to mine downstairs, but not this one. So..troubleshooting..there we go. I ended up spending about 3 hours on the whole thing, even installing WinXP SP2 on the computers that didn't have it on. Also, one of the guys upstairs, Christian, had a german laptop, naturally, everything was in German on that one. So my SP2 installer didnt work. Hmm. Just to speed things up a bit, I decided to connect to a neighbouring house's Wireless network, (Ah, the wonderful world of wireless..now you know) and download a German version of SP2. It was only for half an hour anyway. :)

So SP2 on. Still no good. Grrr. Still more time spent on it. My frustration grew. I tried everything....and then, suddenly...VIOLA! It worked! Turned out that there was a wrong digit entered at the beginning of the installation that identified the router exactly, and when I rentered all the ID keys and WEP keys..it began to work. Whew! I actually felt a certain sense of elation at having managed to get it to work. However, my Wireless Adventures (as I'd like to start calling em now) were not over. There was a lovely Powerbook that needed to be connected to the LAN wirelessly and I couldn't even begin to start to understand how to get that to work lol. That's in my 'IN' tray now.

That done, I wanted to get my Linux OS to connect to the internet too. Wirelessly. Now that is, frankly one heck of a task, as far as my skills are concerned. I'm still working on it, and will be updating when I have actually accomplished something more than reach the closest hurdle (which is obviously just waiting for me).

Long Weekend

Nothing to do..