Dog is really man's best friend!

I never doubted that, but I just realised how very true the saying is. The dog is such a sweet and faithful companion. It loves you more than you love yourself! If you're reading this blog post and have a dog at home, do give it a pat, scratch its chin and rub its stomach.

Say hello to Cookie and Benji, our new family members.

They're now 3 months old. These little bundles of joy/mischief taught me something new in life; that dogs are really precious. I'll explain what happened.

Earlier I used to get annoyed with their excretory habits, having to take them out whenever they wanted (and leave everything else behind) regardless of whether they "wanted" to answer nature's call or not. Also with Golu around, it can be difficult to keep an eye on all 3 at the same time to make sure noone gets hurt, including me.

It was getting difficult to handle both pups. I mean, when we're not around, the only ones at home are my grandparents, and it wouldn't be fair for them as they are in their 80s. So we asked the vet and a trainer about it. We were advised to separate the pups as soon as possible, so they'll be able to adjust. We were advised to give away Cookie (female) and keep Benji, as Cookie was aggressive while Benji submissive. If we gave Cookie away, she needed to be in a home of dog lovers only! Someone who will love her, take good care of her. So after making enquiries, a Christian family happily agreed to keep Cookie. As soon as they heard Cookie would be theirs, they went and brought toys for her. Cookie would now have toys, good food, a better place to stay and roam around, a terrace and so on (paradise for any pup if you ask me).

The night before that day, mom and Supa cried a lot. So did Ammama (grandma). I was sad too though I didn't shed any tears. That night it was like Cookie realised what was happening. Before going to bed I patted her. She saw the sadness in my eyes and gave a little bark. She was sad too. Those gentle marble eyes were sad. All that mischief and loud barking had disappeared and all that was left was a sense of loneliness, sadness.

The next day,we visited their home. Cookie seemed happy there. She sat comfortably near the coconut tree they had planted. She rolled into some muck. She even pooped there. Guess she liked the place. If Cookie would be happy there, then I'm happy. With a heavy heart, we parted and went home. Benji seemed to search for Cookie but was cool about it. That night I wondered if Cookie was happy there. Guess what happened the next day.

We got a call from them saying Cookie was really very very unhappy that we left her there. She didn't eat any food. She didn't even sleep that night. She cried the whole night-she literally had tears in her eyes! After hearing this, mom and Supa rushed to bring her back. I didn't feel like going. Cookie was so excited and happy and super relieved to be back home. Wow. She gave up all that just to be back with us. Talk about devotion.

It certainly was a touching reunion. Welcome back, Cookie!

Dost itne kamine hote hain!

That means "Friends can be such idiots!" in Hindi (Hinglish rather). This post is gonna be about how you make plans to meet up with friends, and they probably don't show up and waste your time, effort, money, patience, tolerance, etc.

If one of your friend's a heavy sleeper, he's probably snoring. Ok that was off topic. But the point is, your friend is probably a night owl. Never rely on night owls to wake up in the morning. Never! Never! Never! It would do you so good to follow my advice. The only way to wake up your lazy night owl friend would be to blow him with dynamite. Seriously! Or how about pouring some boiling oil? Muhahaha!

Has this ever happened to you :- You plan to meet up with a friend. I don't care how long the plan was made, but you better be prepared to get a last minute "sorry its not possible". Oh I understand, "FRIEND"! Now how would you like a present from me? Yes, do open it. BOOOOMMMM!!!! Oh yeah that was so worth it. NO, I'm not saying you should kill your friends. A punch to the nuts would suffice. That would be so satisfying.

I guess that does seem to happen at times; plans being cancelled and stuff, when your preparations and planning get ruined. But do they feel guilty about it? Depends. If a meet up plan got cancelled because of me, I'd feel guilty. But if someone does it, feel free to give gaalis (rude remarks). Giving gaalis in real life is something I rarely do. But yes, if by chance I cancel a meet up plan, feel free to give me gaalis. And if its you who does it, then be ready to get some from me.

I was actually gonna make this post even bigger with examples that really puzzled me about the stupidity of so called friends (human beings). But let's leave it at that. That is one reason why I have stopped expecting things from friends. I don't expect every meet to be cancelled lol. However, I won't be disappointed.

This post was because my 2nd meet up plan with Huzaifa got cancelled, thanks to him again. If there will be a meet in future, I'll be ready...with dynamite in my pockets.

Game Set and Match!

The Vishals are back (after a long time and hence this blog post!), but I think I'll also mention what happened yesterday.

I got a call at around 9:30 AM from Kunal saying that if I was free he would come along. I wondered if Kunal would ever come if he didn't have work on the internet. Its always been that way lol. "Hello Abhinav, if you're at home, I'll be coming to your place." In other words it meant: "Hello Abhinav, if you're at home, then I have some work on the internet. My money for the cyber cafe will be saved and after my work's done, let's download some stuff I want. And maybe while that's happening we could watch some WWE videos on youtube? Or let's play Dynasty Warriors 6." How convenient is that!!?!

So in a couple of hours, Halo-man showed up. I was watching some DBZ when he showed up. Wow, he actually watched a bit with me? Knowing him, he's never had the patience to watch anything! I'm talking about dialogues! Skip the dialogues, skip...skip...skip; with the exceptions being love scenes and fighting scenes. Seriously, Kunal! You need to be tied up in a theatre and watch some 'pakao'(boring movie with lots of speech) movie!

My online bud Hoodcom was online, so I asked him to show us his gaming accessories on MSN. I had seen them before. He has a lot of awesome stuff there. But I wanted it to impress Kunal so I asked him to show how he connected his Dreamcast, Gamecube, N64 and PS2 controllers to his PC. Hoodcom happily agreed. Kunals' face was a sight to see!

Then it was time to get to work (yeah, right!). Kunal had brought Ghajini over. He was asking me if I could find a tool that could convert it into DVD format. It was in codec format and wouldn't run on his DVD player. So while searching around, I installed the latest version of DivX. Holy s***! DivX rocks! The video quality you get is so good! Impressive. Its like an HD player. :D

So anyway, while the stuff he wanted was being downloaded, we played Dynasty Warriors 6. Here's an update, Kunal returned Twin Shock back to me. He said he had only wanted to try it for a few days. He also felt that the keyboard owns controllers. N00b!! Well, anyway, good thing I got Twin Shock back. :P He had also cleaned it for me. That was nice of him. Muhahahahaha!

So in DW6, there is this annoying mission where you have to save the refugees from being killed. But how? Its easy to do it for perhaps, during the first half of the mission, but later on, you have to run across the entire map since there will be refugee camps in places all over the map. We just couldn't complete this mission. If its hard in 2p mode, its hell doing it alone. We decided to skip that particular story mode and play a new one. That's how we spent our time.

Coming back to Ghajini, I used this tool called A-one converter (the full name's actually pretty big!). I converted it to DVD format for Kunal. While it was converting, I felt it would be better to watch something rather than playing. "Open Youtube! Watch WWE!" Oh boy, here we go! Hey, I actually enjoyed a few matches, especially since most of the matches had old wrestlers and that took me back to childhood days. Lex Luger, Bret hart, Ultimate Warrior, Yokozuna, Papa Shango, Kamala...lol.

After the file conversion was done (I admire Kunal's patience!), I opened the output folder to check the video. There were 2 DVD video files. Weird. Shouldn't it have been only 1 file? Here, this was part 1 and part 2, and both wouldn't fit on a normal DVD. "Convert it to VCD format now Abhinav". You're killing me!

The Vishals came to the rescue. I was happy and relieved to see them. Now we could actually have some multiplayer fun. Another friend was gonna show up too. While all this happened, I got a call from my sister saying there was this limited scheme offer of getting Rs 900 talktime for only 25 bucks, and valid upto 6 months if you got a Reliance GSM card. The offer was upto 6 PM only and it was 5:30 PM. I was annoyed at first. I mean, my friends are showing up and I have to go out and do this. -_- So I reluctantly left and registered for a new Reliance GSM card.

By the time I got back, Kunal was ready to leave. After he left, I was told he had a nasty virus in his pen drive and the Vishals didn't let him access my PC. Wow good going guys. Lol. We had some bhel and we watched a bit of the third Mummy movie. After that I showed them the Dolphin emulator and showed them Twilight Princess and the Windwaker on it. They were impressed. We played some Mario Tennis. I recorded a match while playing. I'm playing as Mario with the computer partner Pattapatta while Vishal 2 is Wario and Vishal 1 is Waluigi.

Part 1:

Part 2:

That's it for this blog post now. See ya!

Let's rumble!

"If Kunal can fix my gamepad, he can keep it!" Oops! Did I actually say that? Me and my big mouth! Seriously, what was I thinking?

Anyway, here's what had happened. I had taken my Twin Shock controller to a friend's room for some smash bros multiplayer. One of my friends got careless and pulled the wire real hard. Darn it! My controller had this annoying loose connection problem since then. Move the wire a bit, accidently or deliberately and the gamepad would stop responding for 1 second. Finally, Windows stopped detecting it no matter how much I shook the wire! Frustrated, I took Twin Shock to an electrician. I thought he would fix the problem. Hmm not quite...Windows still wouldn't detect it. I had given up hope. Then came Kunal. Kunal told me he had the right equipment that could fix my Twin Shock. I had given up so I told him that if he could fix it he could keep it. He grinned. Uh oh.

A couple of days later I went to his place. Kunal took out his soldering rod and other stuff. I watched in awe as he tinkered around. He is a genius! His parents are very experienced in electrical stuff so I was impressed. Kunal's dad also offered some advice during the post mortem and resurrection period. There was a ray of hope. After plugging the gamepad to his PC, Windows detected it. Alright! Way to go buddy! Uh...now Im supposed to give him my Twin Shock. -_-'

I decided that Kunal could keep Twin Shock as soon as I get another controller. He agreed. He also asked me to keep it reserved for him at my place. (We usually play multiplayer at my place.)

Right, now the hunting would begin. I opened Justdial.com. The site rocks. Search for something and select a city (India only). I got the contact details for Compuciti. I called em up. I had been to the one at MG road so I know they didn't have it. I called up the one at JM road (at least that's what Justdial had said.) The controller was available but they had shifted to a place that seemed pretty far away. So I called the Aundh branch. The one at Aundh had it available. I was about to leave. Oh, what's this? The pups were causing havoc. Some Archie comics were torn apart, 'slaughtered' I'd say! Thanks to my sister for leaving them around carelessly! They had pooped too. Sigh. After cleaning stuff up I quickly left. Had to wait at the bus stop for about half an hour. Finally I was on my way. I felt like listening to some music in the bus so I put on my earphones. No sound was coming from the left earphone. I opened to see that there was no wire there! It was broken. I remember my sister had last used it. Grrr! Well at least the right earphone works, but that still had me grumbling.

Reached Compuciti, Aundh. Went in. Got the controller for 400 bucks. A Dualshock USB clone from SVB. Mission accomplished, I headed home.

I tried Okami, Devil May Cry 4, Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters, Dead or Alive 2 and DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi 3 on it. Rocks. Now I look forward to beating Kunal to a pulp in multiplayer. Keyboard owns eh? Now let's see you sing a different tune!

While I was typing this blog post, my very good online friend Hoodcom (we've been buds since 2001) showed me his awesome Sega collection on MSN. Sega Genesis, Sega Saturn, Sega 32X, Sega CD, Sega Dreamcast. Man, I think the Dreamcast controller's sweet! I would like to try it out someday.

And now to conclude this wonderful blog post, "Kunal, I vil own j00 in Budokai yoooooooooo!"

Game point!

Yesterday was a very enjoyable day. One of those days I looked forward to. I got a call from one of my friends saying that their exams were over and we could meet up and have some multiplayer fun. I agreed to the notion and was looking forward to it. The plan was that they head to my place by 1 PM. They did. Met 2 good friends after a very long time. Time to have a blast.

When they came over I was busy playing Onimusha 3. One of them was like "Dude! Give me this game!". (Both their names are Vishal; let's call them Vishal 1 and Vishal 2; so here Vishal 2 asked me for the game.)

I hadn't configured project64 so started doing that. I couldn't find the proper plugin for Mario Tennis, since it was on my old computer and I was lazy to connect the hard drive here. I thought it would be easy to get it on the net, but nope. So we decided to play some Mario party first.

Booted up Mario Party. I chose Mario, Vishal 1 chose Wario and Vishal 2 chose Luigi. If you're looking for a fun party game, Mario Party's the name; Trust me. Loads of fun and laughs. One of the plus points of offline multiplayer is that you can laugh out hard at friends when they are screwed and vice versa. And we sure had a lot of laughs. A lot! Laughter is the best medicine. (There you go lol; I always wonder why people use proverbs in statements; Is it to show how smart they are? Or just showing off?) So were busy for around 1 hour trying to collect coins, stars, steal some and overthrow the other fellows. I was going to win, but Peach (computer opponent) got lucky and won.

After that, Vishal2 revealed his 8 GB pen drive (virus included) and plugged it in. He took some stuff from me. While the data was being copied, we watched a bit of Bruce Lee and Shaolin Kung Fu and a bit of Dark Knight as well. We also had some nice hot tea while we watched.

4 PM. Time for a power cut. MSEB didn't forget. We expected the power to be restored in about an hour, but it came back in 15 minutes. We decided to go out to get a snack. We met up with another friend, Sameer, who also joined us as we headed to Foodland. Burgers? Rolls? So close to my place? Wow. Had no idea and hadn't bothered earlier until now. So went inside and ordered 3 veg rolls and a chicken roll. Sameer and the Vishals got into a discussion about CS and LAN. I told Sameer to bring his laptop after my exams and we could have some LAN gaming. Ah, our rolls were ready! Yum!

Next, the plan was to have burgers. 3 veg burgers and a chicken burger that would be. I went to collect my burger. ~Static~ Ack! The moment I touched the plate I got a static shock and I let go of the plate. Damn. The burger fell with cutlet and stuff on my jeans. Damn what a mess! I lost a burger there. :( But the owner was kind enough to get a me a roll in place of the burger. Lol this time I was a bit hesitant to take the roll from him. "Don't be scared. Take it." I was bit embarassed about the incident though. Might have been the plastic chair I was sitting on. He was kind not to charge for the wasted burger. Next time I want a burger or a roll Im gonna get it from Foodland. Its so close by. Anyways...our tummies filled, we went back to my place. I again looked for the plugin for Mario Tennis but in vain. After browsing through my CD wallets, I finally found a backup CD. Ah good! We finally enjoyed a few matches. It was real fun. Lots of laughs, solid gameplay, multiplayer fun, funny comments and 100% enjoyability; everything that Mario Tennis offered. Awesome game. Vishal 2 wanted Populous: The Beginning badly so I torrented it and found it. 308 MB. Downloaded in about about one and a half hour. Wow. My net's speedy nowadays. We played some Smash Bros rounds while it downloaded. Vishal 2 played as Kirby while I played as Mario and then later, Link. Vishal 1 chose to watch. After the download completed, we gave Populous a try. Pretty cool game. At first I found the sounds and voices funny but its a pretty good game. Mission accomplished for Team Vishal. 8 PM. Planning to have more multiplayer fun and LAN gaming after my exams. After they left I had dinner. Aamti, rice, fried papad and batata bhaji with onions and garam masala. I was happy. I look forward to more multiplayer mayhem after my exams.

Childhood fantasies

Nostalgia feels good. Takes you back to those innocent childhood days, where even the stupidest jokes seemed funny, where 'action' in your favorite shows did not necessarily mean 'killing'. Remember the old TV shows? Remember the cool action figures? Gone are those days but they will always hold a place in one's heart.

Childhood, puberty, adulthood...one's way of thinking and tastes change in time. Still, the classics remain classics and you could always go back to enjoying them. Makes you feel glad that you had enjoyed it back then.

Yes, I regret giving my toys away to the neighbour kid. That was considered a part of being 'grown up'. If it was not your decision, it would be your parents. True, if I still had my favorite action figures around, I certainly wouldn't play around with them, but instead, I'd probably stare at them, recall the fantasy stories that we used to come up with when we were kids and smile at the nostalgic goodness, no matter how embarassing it might be. I could have used them for stop motion animation too. Its actually similar to the childhood stories; the hero beats up the villain; even if he didn't do it in the cartoon (censorship issues), except that here it has more of a professional feel.

Last night I was browsing Wikipedia and checked out the classic He-man and the Masters of the Universe (MOTU) article. There was a picture of He-man sitting on Battlecat. Back then that was pure awesomeness! Remember the cool He-man comics that used to come free with your favorite character? You wouldn't throw the box away. You'd just stare at the cool artwork and drool over the 'Collect them all' range of characters shown on the backside that you didn't have and wanted to buy.

Back then the He-man line of action figures were being distributed in India by the collaboration of Leo toys and Mattel. So if you purchased your favorite He-man episodes on video cassette, you'd also get to see those cool He-man toy commercials (epic back then) as well Leo toy's cool range of indoor games. You can watch the cool toy commercials on Youtube. A friend and I were watching those the other day. It was just awesome.

Do you recall how awesome it felt when Prince Adam raised his sword and said "By the Power of Grayskull" and the music and the cool effects that followed? And when he went "I have the POWER!!" and turned Cringer into Battlecat?

Not just He-man but Gi-Joe, TMNT and others too. The cool accessories that you'd get and the vehicles that the hero would drive to stop the villains? Didn't that just make your day?

I sure wish they continued the new He-man animated series. It feels good when you get to see cool remakes of your favorite shows. The TMNT animated series follows the story of the comics, so I welcome it in my collection. However, you can't keep everyone happy. Case in point; Check youtube comments, forums or even ask your friends. You'd probably get to hear "The new show is not so good. The old show is the best" etc. Now don't get me wrong. I enjoyed the classic shows back then but I also enjoy watching the remade shows. Tastes and interests change and we move on. I do watch a couple of classic He-man or TMNT episodes from time to time, just for old time's sake. But...some of the shows feel kinda corny. Last night I was browsing youtube and I saw this video clip; "He-man vs Skeletor" from the episode the Arena. The video description said "The best action moment in the episode" or something like that. Curious, I got that video loaded. Now, I can't help but laugh at it. I don't know and I don't mean any offence, but since violence was restricted back then, I guess that was how it was. Not a single fist fight. All Skeletor did was use his magic and create some stuff that He-man just jumped out of the way to avoid. Now I know older people would consider this awesome or would complain about the level of violence in TV shows and games these days but that's how it is. We move on. I would watch the classic He-man shows just for old time's sakes and recall those days. But it just won't satisfy one's adrenaline rush. Know what I'm saying? That's why in terms of action I'd prefer the newer shows, but I'd also like to go and watch the classic shows. Think about it. Old may be gold, but "new can be silver". And silver is valuable too.

IAD '08

OK this is like, my first time at blogspot. I never really bothered writing stuff on my life but now, I feel, why not? Oh well, better late than never...

This is gonna be a very long post.

I was checking my mail the other day and received an invitation to IAD '08 (International Animation Day 2008) which was on the 4th of November. I intended to preregister for the event. Last year was too tiring. So I got me and my buddy Kunal preregistered. I was looking forward to the event. I got us registered for the noon session. Evening would be too crowded and it would get late and would be double tiring. I remember last year having to stand in queue for like 2 hours! (3:00 PM to 5:00 PM) So better safe than sorry!

Yesterday (4th Nov), I played some Project Justice aka Rival Schools 2 before leaving. Awesome Dreamcast Fighting game that's got me hooked. Then I headed to the station to get my train pass renewed. The so called IAD ticket printouts were ready. Very small font and even the 'print ticket' option got printed? WTF. I was thinking of cutting the printout to make it look like a ticket! But screw that I decided to just tear it using my scale. Didn't tear well...wtf. Oh well...so I wrote the details on another piece of paper and kept my torn printout with me in any case. Kunal's printout was intact.

I was beginning to feel a bit down while I stood at the station waiting for the local to take me to Shivajinagar. I called up the Samsung center and my mobile is finally ready. I'll be collecting it soon. We were planning to take the kinetic to the mobile repair center and then head for IAD at Senapati Bapat Road, but Suparna had her classes. It can get annoying that she always uses the kinetic for college, classes; I mean, I rarely get to use it. And she doesn't even maintain it well. So we stuck to the previous plan; to meet up at Shivajinagar station. I smsed Kunal informing him that we'd meet up at Shivajinagar as planned, but he didn't get my sms, and was confused. The stupid local was late. I was beginning to feel sleepy as I sat in the local. Received an angry call from Kunal. Sigh...

So I got down at Shivajinagar. No sign of Kunal. Ah, there he was, on the other platform. I didn't feel like waving at him, so I just quietly walked across the bridge to the other platform. Kunal didn't seem as annoyed as I expected. Phew.

We couldn't find a bus and eventually took an auto to take us there. I handed over Kunal's ticket. He read the ticket instructions. Along with the ticket, some ID proof was needed. Gave him another reason to get angry with me lol. I always carry my ID card along so it didn't occur to me to tell him to bring his. Damn...

We got to the International Convention Center. We went in. The A.C felt good. Yeah it was pretty hot that afternoon. We waited for the elevator. It was crowded. We waited for it to come back. Going up , up, up.......coming down. Elevator doors opened. WTF? The same people again? The doors closed and the elevator headed up again. Ridiculous. We decided to take the stairs. Fifth floor. My legs were feeling heavy that day. We finally got there. I was worried that they might not let Kunal in because he had no ID proof. Fortunately, they didn't bother about asking for some ID. We just got our ticket numbers confirmed, and received some brochures from various animation institues. The DSK one was pretty cool. The campus looks awesome.

Last year, things were badly organised during IAD 07. Thankfully, we had preregistered for the afternoon session. Huh? The ones who hadn't registered were being let in first. WTF is going on? Took us about half an hour to wait until they let us in. Finally we were inside! Just like last year, nowhere to sit. No fucking chairs! We went inside the projector hall and sat there comfortably as we watched short films made my students, some game trailers, movie trailers, and Pixar short films. It was great. The projection was being showed via a MAC. I wish Yash was here. The mac reminded me of him. This was the best part of the event. Even Kunal enjoyed it. I'm glad he did. We were then told about a workshop on acting was about to start. Acting shmacting! We left the hall to take a break. A lady called us and asked me if I was interested in taking part in their competition. This was very interesting! We just had to draw a human with an animal showing friendship, and the winning entry would become the masot for IAD '09. Pretty cool. Took me a while to think about what to draw for my entry. Kunal suggested I draw a face with half man half leopard. I wasn't keen on drawing a leopard's face though. So it was decided to draw half man half ape. (Gorilla; ooga booga give me banana!) This part was awesomely fun. I was given pencils, an eraser and a sharpner, but no place to sit. My legs were paining but it was fun so I didn't mind. Kunal was getting impatient but I wanted to give it all I got. He helped me make improvements. Lost count of time as I got immersed in making it. Wish I had taken a picture of it. Oh well...I submitted it with my name, address and stuff. I was happy with my entry. Half negro, half ape man. It was cool and fun. After that,we checked out some other stuff. There was this guy working on a cyborg ape with his tablet in Photoshop. It was pretty badass. The gaming section sucked this time. No Xbox360, no PS3, and certainly no Wii [:(]..but two stupid Bollywood rip offs to Dance Dance Revolution. Graphics were good though. Kunal was interested in trying it out, but I was like "screw that dude, my legs are already killing me!" Then there was the stop motion section. It was interesting but like I said, tired to try stuff out. I checked out some books in the books section. They were gems, but not in my budget. Time was running out. We decided to leave.

We checked out Crosswords which was in the same building. Boy, the Crosswords here rocked. Ah, there was place to sit! The collection here was amazing. I was planning to get Batman Bane of the Demon and Spider-man Wolverine specials, but I decided to go only for the latter. I also got six Archie issues for just Rs 99/- for my sister. I checked out some other stuff. Manga Shakespeare? Oh wow. That was tempting. There was also Bone! The 2nd coloured volume of Bone. Lots of cool stuff. I'd like to visit Senapati Bapat Road's Crosswords again sometime. :)

It was nearly 5 PM. I hadn't had lunch so my stomach had begun sending me notifications. We took an auto to Shivajinagar stn. I ate some Kacchi Dabheli. Ah, happiness is made by the stomach. So true so true! Kunal had some 'famous Bhel' there. I had no idea about it until he told me. It was very tasty. Then we waited for the local. I was getting thirsty so I had some Frooti (feels like a waste now!). We talked stuff till the local arrived. We then said our goodbyes and took the local home. A very tiring but undoubtedly great day!