stone pellets from the heavens

It seemed as though the stage was set for the rain Gods to show me what a 'real' Indian monsoon meant.
"ok dad, I'm on 'the bridge', will be home in 5 mins" & hung my dad's call as I was riding my bike, still partly dry in the drizzle. No sooner did I put my phone in my pocket, the clouds increased their downpour. It initially hit my helmet & I felf as though someone from the top were throwing stone pellets at me. As the visibilty became worse, I lifted the trasparent face protection of my helmet & continued riding. I felt a sudden chill on my chest as the near-freezing rain poured on me. All this happened in a matter of 10 seconds. A relatively dry me was completely drenched just in a distance of 100 meters.
It was at that very moment I felt that the rain Gods had decided to show me the 'real' Indian monsoon. Never ever in my 4 years of bike riding had I been so completely drenched.

Anyway, I slowly chugged along & reached home & dried myself. The only causality of this entire ordeal was one of my most dearest & faithful friends - my Sony Ericsson K750i mobile phone. This dear friend had been with me through my thick & thin from the past 2 yrs. I dried it & removed as much water as possible, but it simply wouldn't switch on.
There is no power now, as I ended this post, I instinctively picked my mobile up to switch on the torch, but remembered the cold reality. So I am off to my bed now in the cold darkness. Good night.

of salsa & jugalbandi

Hi there,
Recently I had been to a Kadri Gopalnath's live saxaphone performance. Now....am I an Indian classical music fan? I
I donno. But I what I know for sure is that I am really mesmerized by the way in which a western musical instrument has been adapted to play centuries old classics such as Krishna nee begane or Nammamma Sharade..
Its said that the Vedas have it mentioned somewhere that "let the knowledge from all over the world come to us". I am really impressed with those Carnatic music gurus who under the influence of this hymns went on to use the violin or the sax instead of the traditional nadaswara.. Isn't that innovation in every sense of the word?

Anyway, lemme jump back to the main topic that I wanted to talk about. In the program, there was a jugalbandi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugalbandi) between the sax and the violin was so amazing to see each musician playing a strip (as defined by the lead) in his instrument and after each consecutive turn, they would get closer to each other's strip & in end both their music culminates into a single song and they continue to play their piece of the song. The high point of jugalbandi is the moment of culmination of the two independent pieces. If this culmination happens in synch, a huge of roar of applause from the connoisseurs explains the electrifying effect of that moment.
As I was sitting and imbibing such "WOW" moments, a part of me started thinking of a similar pattern that existed in an activity that I was into from past few weeks: salsa. I think there's a bit of jugalbandi in salsa as well. Here too you have a lead performer. Both the individuals are allowed to dance in their (male/female) style, but the overall flow, duration & culmination points are controlled by the lead. After a series of "cross-body leads", "inward spins", "outward spins", etc, both the performers meet again & then dance together. I haven't seen many pro-style salsa dances, but I am sure the "wow" moment even in salsa would be when the two dancers hold each other & then continue to dance together..

after a long time..

Dear friend,
Its been quite a long break after my last post, apologies for that. This is an humble effort revive this "just another" temporary past-time of sorts into a life long commimment..
Commitment ?? Isn't this 1 scary word for all you guys? Ok, I havn't committed to any Bengaluru girl but committed to myself & you that from here on I'm gonna make atleast 1 entry into this blog every week.
(Only HE knows how long this ಶಪಥ is gonna stay)
So, what to write on this newly renovated terraintamer.blogspot.com?
Why not start off with telling what was I upto in past one month or so..
I finally decided that its gonna be Rotman (http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca) to pursue my MBA.
So currently running around, looking for funds & Visa processing.
For the funding part, a far-relative has agreed to sign as a co-signer for the IEFC loan (http://www.iefc.com/intl/intl_index.cfm) that I'm applying for. Seems the rate-of-interest here is much less compared to Indian banks. Still lot of work needs to be done on this end. Will keep you posted on this.
For the Visa, currently I'm skimming through some docs in CIC (cic.gc.ca), or in otherwords, just doing time-pass.

In the meanwhile, I'm also into a lot of fun stuff. (Frankly, this para shld have been 1st, coz I've spent abt 8೦% of my time here)
Have also been exercising my taste-buds a lot by experimenting with some high-dining as well. Had been to 100 ft. Italian Restaurant with my gang to celebrate my birthday.
birthday cake from LJ Iyengar's bakery = Rs 110
spiceless Italian food after the cake = priceless

Hope this communicates what the general feeling abt this cuisine among my friends.. :)
Later, we tried other food such as Managlore style in Kudla, Thia-Indonesian style in ASEAN, etc.
I've also started reading novels of late. What better way to start of than reading the ever-evergreen Malegallalli Madumagalu from Vishwamanava Shri. Kuvempu? More about this in later posts.
Last week had been to Vinay's native Dodda Tekala Vatti (well, an interesting name indeed).

Salsa classes are going great, had missed out the last 3, so seems like of covering needs to be done.

Its bye for now..all the best for this week..
see u soon..