Merry Xmas from India!

Wimpy Xmas tree meets funky disco lights
Originally uploaded by Dopeyrizer

Words don't do our tree justice. Play that funky music white boy!

Trident Gurgaon, water feature

Trident Gurgaon, water feature
Originally uploaded by Dopeyrizer

Sometimes a hotel can be too fancy for it's own good. Here we have an Olympic pool sized water feature from Trident Gurgaon. Looks and sounds nice when you're on your way from the car drop-off area to the reception, but is not visible from anywhere else in the hotel. I like architecture - a lot even - but here's it's just concrete sculpting on a massive scale (can you spot the lonely employee mowing the lawn?) without really any point.

India night

IMG_1700
Originally uploaded by Dopeyrizer

Was in Taj West End with a bunch of expats in India last night enjoying local culture, food and drinks. All the westerners were dressed in Indian formals for this OWG charity dinner, but the performers still managed to outcolor us.

Future Raikkonen?

IMG_1759
Originally uploaded by Dopeyrizer

Went to the local go-kart track to celebrate our son's birthday. He's not as timid as he used to be, but it's still his friend who managed a most monumental crash to the tyre barriers. No bodily harm done, confidence slightly bruised...

I like palm trees

I like palm trees
Originally uploaded by Dopeyrizer

I've always wanted to live in the shade of palm trees swaying in the wind. In that sense living in Palm Meadows is a winning proposition. Today was especially nice with a slow wind rustling the foliage in bright sunshine.

Creatures of light, creatures of night

... and the latter eating the former for dinner. Saw this in Sri Lanka: a skylight was drawing insect in large numbers and every night a swarm of bats would whoosh back and forth hunting the same. It's amazing and a little creepy too how close to people walking underneath the bats would fly and how silently they zoom past.

Shot with Nokia N8.

Mmmm, Marabou...

Yala - Mmmm, marabou
Originally uploaded by Dopeyrizer

Never so true this old advertizing slogan for Swedish chocolate from my youth. A crocodile patiently waits for the dinner to pass through it's mounth. This time the stork walked by a bit too far, though.

The Yala National Park, where this brief play took place, is an almost 1000 sq km home to hundreds of more species, many of which can be seen from Jeep safaris organized daily.

Back from Sri Lanka

Went on vacation last week, this time to Sri Lanka. The country has been through a lot as of late with the 2005 tsunami and the 25 year civil war that ended only last year. Even forgetting this context, Sri Lanka is a fantastic destination. Compared to India there's hardly any traffic, the roads are perfect, every place is clean and people are really friendly. One week of beachlife, some sighseeing and a wildlife safari just whizzed by.

We spent our time in the southwestern coast, which is the traditional tourist area in the country. I think we need to go back to see the mountain ranges mid-country before leaving India.

Happy Diwali!

Happy Diwali!
Originally uploaded by Dopeyrizer

Festive rangoli floor decoration courtesy of our maid. Next week India is celebrating Diwali. We'll be escaping the massive fireworks displays to Sri Lanka, hopefully to properly unwind.

Our villa, as seen from India

Our villa, as seen from India
Originally uploaded by Dopeyrizer

This is where we live as non-residents of Palm Meadows see it. Or rather, don't...

Thank you for the music

Thank you for the music
Originally uploaded by Dopeyrizer

Our son Joona's school staged a Mamma Mia musical show the past Saturday. I had bought a Nokia N8 the previous Friday so this was a good opportunity to try both the still and the video camera in pretty challenging lighting conditions.

Here are the results. If you're into the technical stuff make sure to check out the picture in large or original size as well as view the videos in 720p resolution.

I must I was really amazed at the student body talent making this musical happen, but the geek in me was equaly in awe of the camera and camcorder performance as well. During all this I was also following play by play on atpworldtour.com from Stockholm Open where Jarkko Nieminen was playing in the semi-final. Convergence happens.

Streetlife in Bangalore, part II

Ventured out of Palm Meadows again to practice photographing moving subjects. Tried to get some motion blur into the motorbike shots with some success. When the streets are where many people live it's amazing how much life you can capture by just sitting still and watching for an hour...

On the state of tech "journalism"

Engadget-vs-reality
Originally uploaded by Dopeyrizer.

As marketing has gone to Internet and people's purchase decisions are more and more shaped by influencers and bloggers, the temptation must be great to start leaning towards a particular brand in order to enjoy preferential treatment and perhaps some funding as well. Case of Eldar Murtazin and Samsung is a prime example. I should think every consumer brand now has their list of friendly sites and this is I think quite okay. The fiercest battle has for a couple of years been in the smartphone space - there is no bigger prize today in any business than selling the leading smartphone.

For me the boundary of brand-friendliness is crossed when one starts to tamper with the evidence to get a desired result. Engadget published a comparison between Nokia N8 and iPhone 4 cameras and to the surprise of many the results seem to favor the iPhone.

That's an interesting result, as the N8 should from hardware point of view have a camera that's miles better. The N8 has a 12MP sensor while iPhone sports a 5MP one so it should be able to capture a lot more detail in each shot, unless constrained by the optics. N8 The Carl Zeiss optics are claimed to have a great resolution too, so what gives? For reasons only known to Engadget, the comparison shots have been resized to 800 by 450, so almost all the additional details in the N8 original shots are obviously lost. It's like comparing the topspeed of a Lada to a Lamboghini and running the latter only in reverse gear. So obviously the comparison is rigged heavily towards iPhone from the start, but still I couldn't get over how bad the N8 pictures looked.

For some reason Engadget also included the N8 (but not the iPhone) originals in the article. I took one of them and resized it to the resolution used for the comparison shots with Photoshop. If you click on the pic and view it in the original resolution can clearly see that the comparison shot published by Engadget for N8 has been heavily softened compared to the original. Just look at the flags and flagpoles in the building in the background, the water of the fountain or the pigeon behind it. Or the leaves in the trees, which in the Engadget comparison shot are just a dark green mush. The added details were not invented by Photoshop, they were there in the original but got somehow misplaced by the person who made the comparison.

The Engadget article states, that "Naturally, all the images are entirely unretouched (but for our masterly watermarking)". Haha. I don't know if this true for the iPhone shots as they neglected to post the originals, but for N8 I call that statement BUSTED...

Fly me to the moon, part deux

IMG_1122
Originally uploaded by Dopeyrizer.

I'm happy to see I'm getting incrementally better at this. Taken from our balcony with Gorillapod tangled to the railing.

Almost Zen-like

IMG_1085
Originally uploaded by Dopeyrizer.

Leela Palace Hotel in Bangalore has a fantastic Asian restaurant, Zen. Their Sunday brunch has become an essential part of at least every month for us here. The space is nice, the service quick & friendly, food sublime and the background music... utterly horrendous ancient Euro disco, loud enough to be distracting.

Bailando, anyone?

China cherry broken

Somehow I had managed to avoid going to China all these years. I've visited most Asian countries for business, pleasure or both so it's weird that there was never any reason to go. Until now, that is. I had the opportunity to participate in a leadership course that was held in Sofitel Wanda Hotel and to do some limited sightseeing squeezed in-between. Here's them results...

Bike trip around the nearby countryside

Went on a very relaxed bike ride with the whole family and took these pictures. Many people when they visit foreign places try to find the "real" experience. In Bangalore it's not very hard - all you have to do is pedal a few kilometres out of town and the feeling gets very real quickly going through rice fields, villages with hens running around and schools full of children who behave if you're first white-faced camera owner they've ever seen...

Anti puncture

IMG_0879.JPG
Originally uploaded by Dopeyrizer.

Off-road biking in India means lots of sharp spikes from bushes etc. going through the tyre like a hot knife through butter. The remedy was supposed to be an inner tube with liquid sealant inside. Granted, there was no punctures as the valve broke in half the second time I tried to pump air into it after about 20km riding distance.

Life inside the gates

palm-fisheye-hdr-bilateral.jpg
Originally uploaded by Dopeyrizer.

An HDR fisheye view to Palm Meadows community under cloudy skies of dying monsoon season. About 500m in each direction, India.

Saturday morning outside the Palm Meadows gates

Sat down outside the Palm Meadows (community where we live) gates to capture a little taste of India. The contrast between life inside the gated community and what goes on outside is truly striking - smells, sounds and sights are totally different. While I definitely like the real India it's also nice to be able to escape from it when there's just too much of everything to digest. Some of the "models" that noticed me taking pictures were less than amused by the photo shoot, but most people just smiled.

Mysore photos without a clever title

A slide set of photos from our trip to Mysore this weekend. More explanations to follow when I'm a bit less tired. Zzzzzzz.

Fly me to the moon, let me sing among the stars

moon-1080p.JPG
Originally uploaded by tormave.

My DSLR photography 101 continues with trying to get a good picture of the moon. I've been taking quite a few moon shots this week with the 70-300mm lens and this is the best one yet, shot from our upstairs balcony with the camera on a monopod.

The moon is surprisingly bright so that even hand-held shots come out allright. This was shot at shutter speed 1/320s, focal length 300mm, aperture 1/8, ISO 200.

Our house, in the middle of our street

IMG_0606.jpg
Originally uploaded by tormave.

Got a Samyang (although my lens says Rokinon) 8mm F/3.5 fisheye lens delivered yesterday. I got it from USA through Indian eBay, which offers a sort of overlay on US eBay to order stuff to India. The prices shown are in rupees with taxes, customs, shipping and everything and payment can be made straight from on-line banking. It seems to work amazingly well considering how many things here really don't.

Got home before dark and took my first photo with the lens. The result is quite heavily photoshopped as there was just no way to get the lighting correct with such a big viewing angle (almost 180 degrees horizontally). While I was getting the sky show some colour I decided to go really overboard with the rest of the picture too. It looks like a HDR image, but it's really all from one exposure. I did try exposure bracketing and HDR software, but the surface texture of the house and the palm trees swaying in the wind made this a ghosty, noisy mess.

The picture somehow reminds me of Charlie and the Chocolate factory, in a good-ish way.

Bhannerghatta slide show

Eye of the tiger

IMG_0361.jpg
Originally uploaded by tormave.

Visited Bannerghatta Zoo today with the family and carrying the new 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM zoom lens that came yesterday (Indian Ebay)., While on many photos I made silly rookie errors some came out pretty amazing (to me, at least). This one I like the best by far.

Here is a white Bengali tiger disturbed by the safari bus full of pretty loud Indians and us of course. Tech details: ISO 125 (auto), aperture 7.1, shutter speed 1/250, focal length 150mm. Having a good camera to the zoo makes the whole thing that much more interesting. The Tripadvisor reviews on the zoo were a bit of a mixed bag but at least I really had a blast with all the photo opportunities.

The whole album is visible at http://www.flickr.com/photos/kindadopey/sets/72157624598828147/.

Something Finnish winter and Indian summer have in common

08082010070.jpg
Originally uploaded by tormave.

Winter cycling in Finland is a major drag due to the sharp stones spread across the roads and bike paths. Flat tyres are a constant nuisance. Mountain biking in India surprisingly has the same drawback - there are very sharp needles on some plants and trees and once you run over fallen ones punctures tend to result.

The ride I was on was quite fast that for me after almost a year off the saddle so the stops to fix punctures were welcome breaks to get my breath and legs back.

Crosstown traffic

You're just like crosstown traffic 
So hard to get through to you 
Crosstown traffic 
I don't need to run over you 
Crosstown traffic 
All you do is slow me down 
And I'm tryin' to get on the other side of town...

Me and the farmer

The papaya tree in our yard is soon ready for fruity harvest. For a Finn (or at least for me), having fruits grow near where you live is a pretty special thing. A couple of the papayas we'll soon be eating are properly huge too.

Playing around with DSLR

My father used to have and SLR camera when I was young. It was fully manual of course and usually the feeling when getting the pics back from the photo shop was that of at least a mild disappointment even when trying to shoot normal scenes.

After a couple of hours of playing around with the 550D it seems the automation makes much better settings choices than I do, but it's still fun to have the fully manual features there for old-fashioned tricks like this, new way being achieving the same with Photoshop of course.

Water + sand = art

Here's a couple of beach snaps from our recent visit to Khao Lak. Tidal waves make interesting things happen to the sandy surface. Just chilling out on the beach away from the office gets at least me into the right head space to notice these things. Good thing I was carrying a camera.

Taking more and more of these kinds of pseudo-artsy snaps got me all geared up to buy a DSLR. Then last Friday I figured out that the longer I am without one in this part of the world where every day something special seems to be on display, the less value one will eventually have when finally end up buying one. So now I'm anxiously waiting for a courier to show up with my 550D with 17-55mm optics so I can  spend the evening pressing all the buttons to see what they do. I bought one from Indian eBay, which weirdly feels less risky than getting one from a camera shop on the street. Somehow an online shop feels more solid in this place than one made or bricks and mortar.

This wouldn't really be me if I didn't research this online first. At length. I want to do video too so the options were luckily a bit limited, but there aren't many reviews on the net about either of the two products I haven't read before making the purchase decision (and re-read since).

Which brings me back to the topic of art and photography. Being and engineer the whole thing turned all techie as soon as I really got going, which I guess is OK for an engineer. I think despite lugging much more gear I'll be stuck with the pseudo-artsy genre. At least there's going to be all those buttons to keep me occupied.

Sneaky pic

A picture taken of a cool motorbike rider dude from the backseat of a car through its' tinted windows via the rearview mirror of the scooter rider in front of him. The silly American-style safety warning was an unforeseen upside :-).

The missing link

Here's a walking, breathing freak of a fish we saw while canoeing near Phuket.

The lagoon we saw him (or her?) in is only accessible through a narrow tunnel full of bats. During low tide the lagoon water flows back to the sea, so this species learned how to walk (using front flippers) and breathe on the dry lagoon bed.

Hello, Darwin.

Sun setting in Khao Lak

We spent a wonderful week in all-but-deserted Khao Lak a week ago. After one week back in the office it does feel like we were there a year ago.

Our hotel was opposite to a small island lighthouse, which was accessible by foot during low tide. The locals used the opportunity to go pick up clams from the rocks.

Silly western tourist only took a moody picture.

Bike with a roll cage

I don't think there is any limit to what people will transport with the light motorcycles so popular here. Self preservation instinct just doesn't exist and/or people don't play what-if scenarios in their head before mounting the bike and taking to the road full of huge trucks, speed bumps, potholes and so on. I mean, just look at these two heroes riding with a fixed A-ladder that looks pretty heavy. They were happily riding at 70km/h along with the rest of the traffic (downhill).

If these guys did end up in an accident (and I'm certainly not hoping they would) it would probably be very interesting to try to figure out afterward what had happened.

Life, all boxed up

Our stuff was delivered a week ago and tomorrow they're supposed to take the empty boxes away. It's amazing how attached to stuff you can be. I didn't really miss a lot when the house was empty, but now that all the familiar things surround us, the place does feel a lot more like home.

I had heard horror stories about the customs process, but it was quite pain-free and didn't cost half as much as I was told to expect.

The best bit is nothing's broken. A couple of power cords are still missing and critically the other one is for the Wii console so Joona is not a happy camper about that. Come to think of it, wouldn't mind to bang the drums with Guitar Hero myself...

Itsy bitsy spider

I've only lived in the villa for what, couple of months and I've already got a sub-tenant. Fortunately this green mutant spider lives outside and rightly so - I definitely wouldn't want to share my bed with the creature - it's legs are about 5cm (2 inches) long and it's poison green color tells me it's, well, poisonous as hell to boot.

But outside on top the front porch I've no issues with him (or her?). Looks like he's doing his bit in the fight against mosquitoes and ants so he's (she's) welcome to stay. Outside.

A set of wheels to call my own

This is my Innova. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My Innova and it's driver are my best friends. They are my life. My driver must master it as I must master my life. My Innova, without me in the back seat, is useless. Without my Innova or it's driver, I am useless. We must ride my Innova true. We must drive faster than the traffic that is trying to dent us. We must pass them before they pass us. We will...

My Innova and myself know that what counts in this traffic jam is not the passes we make, the noise of our diesel engine, nor the smoke we make. We know that it is the rate of progress that counts. We will find a way...

My Innova is human, even as I, because it is my life. Thus, my driver will learn it as a brother. He will learn its weaknesses, its strength, its parts, its accessories, its dials and its folding rear seats. I will ever guard it against the ravages of monsoon weather and collision damage as I will ever guard my legs, my arms, my eyes and my heart against damage. My driver will keep my Innova clean and ready. We will become part of each other. We will...

Before the Ganesha idol on the dashboard, I swear this creed. My Innova and myself are the defenders of my family. We are the masters of Bangalore roads. We are the saviors of my life. So be it, until roads are ours and there is no traffic, but peace!

Royale with cheese

There's a constant queue when McDonald's opens in Whitefield mall. Had to go in and try the Maharaja meal, which seemed like the closest thing to a poultry Big Mac.

The most interesting part for me turned out to be the background soundtrack. I guess the McDonald's brand in India tries to represent western decadence, because during my brief stay I listened to "smells like teen spirit", "the wall" and "cocaine"...

No more sleeping on the floor

Now finally there's a bed to go under the mattress. Functionally this is still the same thing, but the feeling is of something a lot more organized. On the downside I was expecting a celebration of wonderful woodwork craftsmanship, but the details dont really stand up to close scrutiny. Live and learn, I guess...

Anyway the adventure of having a euro-size bed & mattress tailor-made in India has reached the finish line and I am happy to report they fit!

Power, uninterrupted

A couple of days with the broadband connection were enough to convince me I need an UPS. The backup power takes about 30-60 seconds to kick in and once the outage is over, there's another power cut when the compound is reconnected to the main power grid.

There were 3 outages during a lengthy meeting I took part in remotely on Friday. That meant that I had to drop out 6 times, wait for the router to come back online, reconnect the VPN and so on. Really annoying. Let's see if this setup works better.

It just occurred to me that people are forced to use a lot more power here because the network is so unstable and unreliable. In the western world there is concern over standby power with home electronics, but here all appliances of any value are protected with power regulators or UPSs out of necessity that consume at least 10x more juice. Not very green...

Ant eater?

I noticed today that there are a couple of really small geckos sharing the house with me. Cool!

I've had a slight ant issue that seems to be improving by the day. I wonder if it's these guys keeping the population at bay, or is it due to me squashing every ant I see? Probably it's due to the house being kept clean now, but the idea of geckos feeding on the ants is much more appealing :-).

Broad broad band

After 2 weeks of waiting, having ordered broadband access from 3 different operators one finally came through. To my great surprise, this thing is really speedy. All my previous "broad"band experiences here in India have been a trip on memory lane with download speeds up to 100 kbit/s or so. Not so with this one - I am paying for 2Mbit/s symmetrical connection and based on the test results, I'm really getting what I am paying for. Fantastic!

The next obvious question is the Internet links out of India - well, while some speed is lost it's another happy surprise. I tried a speedtest site in Finland a few times and the results were between 500 and 1200 kbit/s. The previous connections I've had in serviced apartments, hotels and even at work struggled with SD video from YouTube - this plays HD without any need to buffer beforehand.

The incredible Hulk

Yesterday on the way to the gym I almost stepped on this dude playing frogger on the main street of our gated community. He was so slow that I could snap an image even with my phone camera (focusing in the dark takes ages).

I am predicting reincarnation very soon after a brief encounter with an Toyota Innova (the official expat-mobile) front tyre.

So close, but yet so far

In the middle there is Bogmallo Beach in Goa, where we spent a few days a week ago. Or a month ago, who knows? The days are so packed at work that it feels like the mini vacation happened in a previous lifetime.

It wouldn't be India if the holiday happened without incident. Our original destination was the Zuri further south, but on the morning of our departure we suddenly had no reservation anymore. Now I'm told this happens quite often in India when the later comers pay more and on a long weekend the hotels in Goa were fully booked.

Note to self: from now on insist to get hotel confirmation id from the travel agency and double-check it's valid with the hotel after reservation. I am still looking for any example of a working and trustworthy service in India - so far no luck...

LH 754 Arrived

Here we are, in the middle of the night. Some waiting for customers and others, like me, to see a loved one for the first time in ages.

Rendez-vous...

Unfurnished to furnished in 10 seconds

If this was MTV Cribs, I'd say: "This is where all the magic happens", with a big wicked grin on my face.

In this case magic would have to be the minimalist, sticking to the essentials, barebones, finding the core, clutter-free, grassroots, non-accessorized kind.

I had a 160x200cm mattress made by an Indian company Snoozer. I don't have a tape measure so I've no idea what size I really got. I really hope it'll fit the bed because it's dead comfy.

The A/C in the bedroom blows the master fuse when turned on, so there are some teething issues, but me happy nevertheless.

Home empty home

I'm in the house waiting for a mattress delivery. That's the 1st piece of furniture to come and probably also the only one for almost a month.

The whole house is echoing the phone keypad beeps as I type this entry. The quietness is deafening compared to the noisiness of the Sarjapur Rd place.

Stuck in the middle with you

Friday night at 9:30 and coming back to the temp housing at 7 km/h. While in Finland peak traffic hour is between 4 and 6pm, in Bangalore you're pretty OK until 7pm. After that you're screwed until late at night.

But not this badly. I wonder what is going on with all these people having to spend their Friday night on this forsaken piece of tarmac? Driver is making jokes about us both sleeping in the car, but soon I'll continue on foot to get my fix of family skype chatter.

No beer tonight

I'm a good restaurant for a change to have dinner so a cold bottle or two of Corona or Kingfisher would've been nice.

However there is an election on Sunday so the ruling party apparently wants to make 100% people remember who they have to vote and has banned all alcohol sales for the entire weekend.

What a joke, really, but didn't seem to be negotiable with the usual incentive even though I don't even have a vote.

Target practice

Every outdoor driving range I've been to has a machine driven around the grounds to collect the balls. In India labour is so cheap that buying such a machine apparently doesn't make a good business case.

The alternative is to hire men with buckets and for safety equip them with umbrellas. It must be over 40C where they're standing so I hope they also get water now and again.

It was pretty obvious that some of the Koreans practicing there were aiming at the ball collectors. I will admit to having tried to hit the collector machine once or twice for fun, but actually hitting one of these guys would just be so wrong.

Good morning Bangalore

First morning as a resident sounds like the previous ones; once the stray dogs stop howling the car horns take over. Despite traffic being light on a Saturday morning the noise is incredible.

I can't wait to move into our rental house, hopefully some time next week.

On a completely different note, I haven't been too happy with the layout of the Shozu Blogger posts. Hope these settings produce results that are easier on the eyes...

Registration

Once you arrive to be an Indian resident, you need to register in the commissioners office. Didn't take pictures inside, but it's a scene from Terry Guilliams Brazil.

Outside in the heat there's priority queue, with the people coming alone in the bottom rung and the others very unofficially ranked by the merits of their handler.

Some animals truly are more equal than others as I was in and out of there in no time...

Tranquility bay

A cozy corner for 2 in Leela Palace Hotel, Bangalore. Sitting by the window overlooking the fantastic garden it's easy to forget the noisy and dirty Airport Rd neighborhood the hotel is in.

The flipside of all this luxury is evident in the pricing. Expect to pay more than 10x the going city level for meals, laundry, etc.

Record in the making

A huge crowd has gathered around a TV set in the office park lobby to witness Sachin Tendulkar become the 1st player to hit 200... runs in one-day international cricket.

I must confess I know absolutely nothing of the sport, but it must've been a special achievement as the whole office felt electric.

Geek goose bumps.