my mid-week holiday

We had a holiday today, in the middle of the week, on a Wednesday. I was initially happy about this mid week holiday thinking it would be a welcomed break from the usual boring routine in the office, but later I realized that it's just not the same as a weekend holiday. For starters, none of my friends had a holiday so i was left with no plans at all. Thus begin the task of killing enough time to waste the day. This blog post is one of those attempts.

I woke up at 9am, a bit too early according my standards. Apparently I was not the only one who had woken up early, my constant companion 'boredom' had woken up early too and it had already started to creep in, so i decided to complete all my pending chores with hopes that time would fly. I serviced my bike, washed it, polished it and came back home and looked at my watch - 2pm. Still having a long day ahead of me, i decided to watch the movie 'forgetting sarah marshal' on a friends recommendation, The movie was good, certainly good for an afternoon watch. The movie was soon done and it was still 5pm. In an effort to rub salt on my wounds, fate would have it that my mom had guests coming over for a prayer meeting which was to go on till 7pm. Now i had to get out of the house for 2 hours, or face the risk of greeting guests. I quickly got ready, grabbed my bike keys and ran out at sharp 5pm. With nothing to do, i decided to go to the nearby mall and look for a pair of good earphones for my cell. I found it at the first shop itself, looked at my watch and it was only 5.30. seemed like time was against me. After pondering a while on how to spend the next 90 minutes, I happened to glance at my fuel gauge and found it was on empty. So there was the next item on the agenda, go to the ATM, get cash, fill fuel. All this took an hours time and i was still left with half n hour so i decided to go on a short ride around the western suburbs. I was starting to think that it would have been a better day if i were at the office instead. Luckily the end of the day wasn't as bad as the start. I happened to chance on the sun setting in an orange sky, the first sunset that i've seen during the monsoon season. I stopped to take a few pics with the only camera that i had at that moment, my mobile camera, and i left the place thinking, "well, atleast the day wasn't a total waste". Here is the pic that added value to my day.

My newest posession

After the incident with my sony ericsson, I was facing a few problems with the phone so i had to get myself a new one. It took me a whole week to decide which phone to go for, I wanted a phone that wasn't too bulky, which had decent multimedia capabilities , A GPS receiver to help on all those bike trips and more importantly, it had to fit in my budget of 10k. I had shortlisted the Nokia 6210 navigator and the new samsung star. I visited a couple of shops to look for any other good phones that fits my budget. At one of the shops i found the Asus p320, it had all the options i was looking for, and that made the decision even more difficult. I was forced to resort to the oldest method of problem solving - the pros and cons list

Nokia 6210
Pros

• GPS

Cons

• Same old boring nokia interface
• A little bulky
• It was out of production
  

Samsung star
Pros

• Very good interface with touch screen
• comes with an accelerometer which makes it more fun to use
• memory expandable upto 8gb

Cons

• No GPS
• Audio quality not that good

Asus p320
Pros

• supports GPS and WLAN
• Touchscreen

Cons

• Very bad reviews
• Not a multimedia phone, so music quality won't be good

After a lot of debating against myself, i finally fell for the samsung Touchwiz UI and got myself the samsung star. I must say that I don't regret the decision at all. I brought an 8gb card along with it and loaded it with my favorite music.

From Random Thoughts Of An Idle Mind

The output from the earphones are not that good compared to my sony walkman phone, but i read that there are adapters available in the market that let you connect the standard 3.5mm earphones, I need to get myself one of those. The Touchwiz UI that the phone comes with is a delight to use and I can't stop myself from playing around with the menu and applications every now and then. The camera is good in day light, but it's of no use in low light situations. I am not complaining about the camera because i already have a cannon camera that i use for photography. The panorama mode of the camera simply blew me away by it's simplicity of use. All you need to do is set it to panorama mode, click the first pic, and then as you move the phone around, it automatically detects when the alignment is right and it clicks the next set of pics for you. The music player has decent output, Although i wish it came with a feature to search for a particular track since it gets difficult to scroll through your entire collection when you have 8gb of music. The phone also comes with google maps pre-installed. It can show you your location based on the cell tower you are connected to, this makes up for the lack of GPS to some extent. I found it to be very accurate within the city, I still have to test it during one of my trips. The phone also comes with an innovative tracking feature. It lets you store 2 numbers to which it will automatically send an sms if someone puts in a new simcard, This will help in tracking the phone incase it gets stolen. these 2 numbers are protected by a pincode so that no one else can change them. It will send the number of the new card and a few more details of the number. It also comes with a fake call feature that can help you get out of a tricky situation. I am still exploring the different features of this phone and will update this post if I find anything new.

Tales of my selfless sony ericsson

While i was trekking along the hills, enjoying the natural surroundings and the lashing rain, little did I know of the turmoil that was unfolding deep inside my backpack. There were 3 of them, my cannon camera, a friends brand new nokia, and my trusty sony ericsson. Everything was nice and cozy for a while until the tragedy started to unfold. All of a sudden, out of nowhere came the enemy, drop by drop it tried to infiltrate the strong hold of the polythene bags that these 3 brave soldiers called home. The 3 soldiers could easily tackle the enemy at first, but soon they were outnumbered. Mr Sony Ericsson knew that things had started to go bad and that someone would have to sacrifice them-self for the good of the others. Mr. SE also knew that the other 2 were still young and had a long life to live, he selflessly decided to brave the enemy all by himself to save the other 2. He was quick to find his way to the bottom of the bag where the water was fast accumulating. He summoned all his strength to provide support and a higher ground to the canon and the Nokia. He managed to keep them safe but he was growing weaker by the minute.

I could hear the phone ring every 10 seconds, I was wondering who was it that was calling me so often. Little did I know that it was Mr. SE's last cry for help. He was inundated with water, all systems were failing. I stopped to check after finding some shelter, but I was late. He was no more responsive. I quickly saved him from the enemy's hands, drained all the water out, removed the battery and put him in a dry place to rest. Miss canon and Mr Nokia were safe, they were grateful to the courageous deeds of their dearest friend. That very night he was admitted to the service center. The service center guys stood by him all night and opened him up to dry. He finally started to show signs of life, All he needed was a new display to get back up and running. Unfortunately he still bears scars of the epic battle, his eyes, the camera could not be saved. He will forever be remembered as the hero who put others safety before his own.