So dopey

Goa team building trip

2012-01-24T18:54:00.001+05:30

Goa team building trip, a set on Flickr.

Went to Goa with the Life Tools team I helped build here. Can't think of many better ways to get closure to my two years here professionally. It was my first visit to a north Goa resort and some of the scenery was pretty special too, which hopefully these snaps convey...

Like running on ice

2012-01-06T16:26:00.000+05:30

I've been a bit lost in terms of aerobic exercise choices now that we're back in Finland. There's no ice or snow trails yet so skating or skiing is out of the question. The trails have a thin layer of show and ice that makes running a very uncomfortable experience even without my history of calf muscle problems. The winter will be over when I get my bicycle here so I needed an outdoor activity for the typical neither here nor there winter weather that's so typical for Southern Finland.

Winter running has been gaining in popularity and there are more brands now selling shoes with metal studs in the soles. The nearby sports superstore had Salomon Spikecross 3 CS shoes on sale so I got these yesterday. I went to the store wearing pretty thick socks not to buy them in too small a size for colder conditions.

I went for a test run this morning and the first real challenge came almost immediately as there was a north-facing wet and icy downslope early on on the run that would've been impossible to even walk down with normal running shoes. I didn't even have to concentrate on each step - once I trusted the grip was there I could run completely normally. Packed snow that's turned into ice is still not a perfect running surface as it's uneven and very hard, but dealing with that is a lot easier when the grip is always there.

Otherwise exercising in the cold felt OK, but going out was a messy affair. I put too much clothes on for the zero degree temperature and kept remembering stuff I had forgotten as I was going out the door. This is a bigger problem with the metal spike studded shoes than normal, because walking with those inside will immediately kill the hardwood floors - you have to either crawl on all fours or remove the shoes and feel ridiculous either way :-).

Why friends don't let frieds fly Blue1

2012-01-03T19:22:00.001+05:30

I'm in Finland, but just had a very Kingfishery (an Indian airline teetering on the brink of bankcruptcy) no-fly experience with a local airline, Blue1. I arrived to the airport early, e-checked myself in, went through the security check and camped beside the gate 14A to fly to Oulu. The scheduled boarding time came and went, but I was much more alarmed when suddenly the gate label was changed from Oulu to Brussels.

I went to have a look at the departures board and saw that my flight was cancelled. Sure the weather was not perfect, but mine was the only red blinking island in a vast sea of green.

There are other airlines flying to Oulu every morning and my cancelled flight was the first one to go, so I went to the transfer desk to get a seat on either of those. Not much luck there, as you can see.

I went to ask the SAS/Blue1 lounge if there was anyone who could help me and they kindly told me I need to exit the airport area and go back to the Blue1 ticket office only to find that I was hardly the only person with the same problem.

The flights I could've taken took off well before the queue even inched forward for the first time. Blue1 took great care to make sure every person on their cancelled flight missed every one of those - of course this way they save money as their worst case scenario turns into a re-schedule to a later flight of theirs or full refund - a ticket on any of those competitor flights is undoubtedly the dearest option. They'll refund the flight tickets, but the lost time, groupwork and 90€ of cab money are mine and my employer's losses. I'm not holding my breath to hear back from them, but I've posted a link to this post to their feedback form in case they'd like to comment or compensate.

Companies nowadays try very hard to define an identity. Here's an excerpt of Blue1's lofty corporate goals, which financial realities seem to have thrown out the window:

Blue1's more than 400 employees are actively and daily involved in thousands of passengers’ everyday life. With Blue1 a new era of air travel is created of the courage and passion to our own work and importance in our customer-focused perspective.

I must say I'm pretty pissed off about the airline now - it's one thing to cancel a flight and at least make an effort to take of the affected passengers and another to cancel a flight and make absolutely sure no customer gets any help to keep their commitments.

Last time playing a tourist in India

2011-12-24T09:59:00.001+05:30

Kumarakom, Kerala, a set on Flickr.

We spent our last weekend in India in Kerala. We styed in Kumarakom Lake Esort, which I must say is one of the best resorts I've experienced. We did take a backwater trip by just three of us and went on short sunset cruise on Lake Vembanad, but otherwise stayed in the resort enjoying the facilities.

As I'm typing this, we're already in Finland preparing for Christmas - unortunately without snow. Merry Christmas to all who've kept reading!

All the picture post-processing was done on the iPad with Snapseed, even for the DSLR RAW pics. I'm seriously considering bypassing the PC alltogether.

A rare Finnish bat seen in India

2011-12-04T18:45:00.001+05:30

A rare Finnish bat seen in India, a photo by Dopeyrizer on Flickr.

Once I get to Finland I really should figure out what's wrong with my back. It's bothered me on and off for almost 20 years, but nobody's been able to tell me what's wrong with it, exactly. I originally injured it inthe gym doing leg presses but nowadays it gets sore if I don't stretch my posterior chain often and hard enough.

I've provided the local kids plenty of amusement by hanging upside down in the nearby playground. I got these hooks a long time ago, but they've served me well over the years. I can really feel the lower back stretch a lot once I can get all the muscles to relax. I hang for a maximum of 60 secs at a time. I don't know how long I should be upside down to pass out, but want to stay far from the limit.

It's better to do these without too much stuff in your pockets (speaking from experience).

A humbling big number (for me)

2011-11-28T20:13:00.001+05:30

My flickr photostream recently passed 1,500 uploaded photos and today it crossed the 50,000 picture views mark. Now I know full well, that in the grand scheme of all things Internet this is very, very little, but for this amateur photo snapper it's an amazing number. Thanks to all who've gone there to have a look and even a bigger one for those that took the trouble to write a comment.

Here are the stats in more detail:

Photos and Videos	39 672
Photostream	5 427
Sets	4 901
Total	50 000

Rajashtan

2011-11-06T14:07:00.000+05:30

We did a 6-day mini-tour of Rajashtan last week. It was more "mini" than it was a "tour", actually, as we flew to Jodhpur via and only spent time there and Jaisalmer. Rajashtan would've offered a lot more in Jaipur, Udaipur and so on but this way we didn't have to spend the entire time sitting in the car driving miles and miles under the scorching sun. Two words about the weather: quite hot. It was sunny all the time with not a lot of humidity. The place is inhospitably hot in the summertime but this was pretty close to optimum.

We flew uneventfully (lucky!) with Air India via Delhi and had our driver from Car Rental Rajashtan meet us at the airport. We had booked a car with English-speaking driver for 6 days and everything went as planned. Well, almost at least. To say the driver was fluent in English would've been quite an overstatement, but we understood each other enough. We also booked a guide through the same company for our first and only full day in Jodhpur and Mr. Asfrah Khan who took us around for a day was a real find. If you want no-nonsense info about Rajashtan and Jodhpur do give the good man a call, his number is +919829022090. In true Indian style he did get his pay hiked with commission by taking us to Maharani Art Exporters. They told us an unbelivable story, the same show they put on everyone else, and while we didn't really believe in the pitch we did buy some fabrics for the home. Always makes you wonder if the whole business model is based on lying - in the age of easily accessible information their days must be numbered.

The main part of our tour was to see the Merangarh Fort and it's definitely worth the visit. Not only are the views to Jodhpur fantastic, especially to the old city with it's blue buildings, but the inside of the fort is a real sight to behold as well. The grandeur always makes me cringe a little as everyone knows the coffers of the successive maharajas were filled by taxing the poor to near starvation. We also visited the Umaid Bhawan Palace built by a recent maharaja, which was nowhere near as a nice - while the palace is very nice from the outside the museun only covers a minuscule portion with the rest begin occupied by the last maharaja's living quarters and a Taj-run hotel. We stayed in a Taj hotel as well, but a more traditional setting in the city than the pompous palace.

From Jodhpur we drove to Jaisalmer. We had an idea of staying a night in the desert in a tent camp, but booked into the wrong resort. We stopped for a coffee in Manvar but had pre-booked to spend the night in Mirvana resort. My first impression when arriving to Mirvana was to turn back to Manvar and in retrospect that's we should've done, pre-booked or not. Don't make the same mistake if your trip to Rajashtan is still on the to-do list...

We survived the night however and completed the trip to Jaisalmer the next day with a short stop in Pokaran to see yet another fort. Forgettable. We made our way from there to Jaisalmer fort, which is definitely is not. The setting is great like in Jodhpur, but instead of a museum the fort is an integral part of the city with houses, shops, temples and restaurants. Tourism hasn't been kind to the original way of life here with more and more buildings turned to serve the influx of visitors selling handicrafts, serving Italian food and providing comfortable accommodation. We decided not to stay in the old fortress but lived in a modern replica instead; Suryagarh is a five star luxury sandstone hotel some 10km from the city centre. Despite being almost brand new you can easily forget that with so much detail resemblance visible everywhere to the great palaces we had just been around in. We also toured the Jaisalmer fort museum, which is a far cry from the carefully arranged display we saw in Jodhpur: it's a cramped setting made worse by the hordes of visitors pushing and yelling their way around it and the artifacts on display are not on the same level of wonder either.So after two nights in Jodhpur, one night in-between and two nights in Jaisalmer it was time to come back. Doing it back to back to back meant a 13-hour journey with car and plane - uneventful again but tiring at least for my back. Saw this nice sunset though:

All the pictures are available in here; click this is you want a slide show instead.

Another cool time-wasting activity on the iPad

2011-10-19T12:07:00.002+05:30

A facebook friend from Finland (or FFFF for short) introduced me to Snapseed app on the iPad. I've fiddled with similar quickie photo retouch applications in the past on many platforms, but they always had the same problem: you would have a few cool filters and lots of ones that just ruined the pictures in an interesting way. Thus after a while all the images would come out looking almost exactly the same. The more flexible option was to shell out hundreds of $$$ for Photoshop and then hundreds of hours learning how to achieve something that looks cool. Snapseed seems to find the happy medium - there's a finite amount of filters but each come with enough configurability to fit the filter to the image in a natural way. One can also combine the filters like layers on Photoshop for even greater variation.

The number one differentiator to all the other photo retouch apps I've tried as well as to Photohop is the UI. It's just extremely natural and things that take a lot effort on a PC with mouse can be done in seconds with the multi-touch UI on the iPad. You can always quickly compare the filtered image to the original (or product of the previously applied change) and there's never a feeling of losing the image in the process - you can tweak a filter a lot and still decide to go back and not apply it. All changes are visible on the image in real time and the app is really quick on the iPad 2. There's a limit of 16MP on the image size, which should definitely be sufficient. I've played around with the app with images I've already resized for web consumption, but Snapseed is turning out to be such a powerful tool I might start to transfer full-resolution versions to it. Well, almost full as my DSLR (550D) has a 18MP sensor.

The big problem with iPad is Apple's walled garden and how difficult it makes to move files to and from the iPad. I flatly refuse to install iTunes to my Windows machine due to how craptastically bad the software has always been. The only Mac in the family is with my wife so that's not an easy solution either. Luckily Snapseed supports iCloud and there's a Windows 7 iCloud client available from Apple. The client is pretty simple to use - I just copy images to the designated upload directory when I want to make them available for Snapseed and the finalised pictures from Snapseed arrive another - firewalls permitting. Snapseed is also able to publish pictures in flickr and facebook directly; I use the former.

Finally, Photoshop CS5 costs $699, whereas Snapseed is $4.99. Notice the decimal point. One's an investment, the other an impulse buy.

I've only just begun to learn this fantastic tool, or play thing, but I'm definitely hooked already. You can follow the results here.

Dasara festival

2011-10-06T20:44:00.001+05:30

Dasara festival, a set on Flickr.

Took our fully blinged Innova to northern Whitefield for the local Dasara festivities. Reminds me of 1st of May festivities in Finland - colorful decorations, lots of loud noises and (so I heard) boozing the night away. Slide show link.

Ayudha Puja

2011-10-06T19:28:00.001+05:30

Ayudha Puja, a set on Flickr.

Our car gets pimped with veggies, fruits, flowers and painted symbols for Dasara. Click here for a slide show with all the point & shoot pics of the event, sans any post-processing.

New lens, new possibilities

2011-10-02T22:16:00.002+05:30

Macro photography is one of the reasons I got myself a DSLR in the first place. There's just something so cool to look at the eyes of a spider or wings of a butterfly in extreme close-up. I thought this could be done on the cheap so I got myself a set of macro extension tubes. You can take macro pics with those, but man they're a handful. You need to fit the tube between the optics and the camera body and once there, you'll only be shooting macro. That is, if you fit the right size of tube for whatever lens you have on - for some lenses the focus point moves inside the objective when you fit a too long tube on making it impossible to focus on anything. When you can focus you normally can forget about AF as there's a fair bit of light lost in the tubes. Thus by the time you're ready with the equipment, the butterfly will have flown away and the spider died of old age.

So having tried the cheap way, I decided to try the expensive way next and got me a Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 L IS USM macro lens. Canon also makes a "non L" version of the same lens with the same aperture and focal length, which costs about half of the price of the "L" version. The more expensive version is weather-sealed, comes with a lens hood as standard and has slightly better optical performance. Most important difference is image stabilization for those moments when the butterfly refuses to come near your tripod. Both of these act as a normal 100mm prime lens with reasonably large (f/2.8) aperture, but can seamlessly also focus very close to offer macro level magnification. You need IS with long lenses, so it's a bit counter-intuitive why you'd need it for things that are close, but believe me it's the same thing.

The Canon IS system can compensate for camera movement (up/down, left/right) as well as camera tilt. What it can't fix is movement towards or away from the target, and this even at f/2.8 would definitely be needed as the focused distance is extremely short. You sway a bit towards the target or away from it and all you get is blur.

So I went for the whole enchilada and walked around the house yesterday with the new lens looking for things to shoot. You can see some samples around this post - I'm simply amazed at what kinds of pictures came out even on my first time test shoot. You can see all my macro photos here - the same set includes also the ones I took with the tubes early on so it's easy to compare.

The best part about this macro lens is that it's also a very good short telephoto objective. With a crop sensor it's a 160mm equivalent, but with f/2.8 aperture. My telephoto zoom lens can do no better than f/4 at that focal length and render less details. I can see myself walking around town with this lens attached to take building detail pictures as well as people action shots too. Canon does have a f/2.8 telephoto zoom but that's just too much - too pricey, too heavy and too large to carry around all the time. Finally, if I ever do switch to a full frame body, I now have at least one lens that won't be out of place. There's these rumours about Canon making a full frame enthusiast camera with lower pixel resolution and fantastic high ISO performance. If they do that I will be very tempted...

The rat snake incident

2011-10-02T11:36:00.001+05:30

My wife Tuija was shocked found a rat snake chilling out on our garage-top patio / balcony last Friday. She had to put this out of her mind while she went to yoga, but once back, it seemed the snake was gone. After careful inspection from safety of our home she and our maid noticed something one of our cane chairs to be more lively than the others.After a few calls they managed to get a hold of a guy called Mohan, who catches snakes as hobby in-between hours logged in at some Bangalore IT company. What an interesting hobby!

Once the Mohan the snake-catcher-master came in, she had calmed down enough to click these picks with old & trusty point and shoot camera. The snake catcher fellow was bitten by the small snake a couple of times as it wasn't going in the drinks bottle voluntarily.All's well that ends well tho as the snake apparently found a new home in Bhanneghatta and our balcony is now snake free. I think there's hope now the maid will not forget the doors open anymore as she's really scared of snakes - even small gecko's make her jump. All the pics as slideshow here.

Farmer's market in Varthur Village

2011-09-25T19:56:00.001+05:30

Farmer's market in Varthur Village, a set on Flickr.

Varthur is a little village on the outskirts of Bangalore, situated on the shores of an ever shrinking lake by the same name. Every Sunday they host a popular farmer's market.

Usually I just ogle at the proceedings from the backseat of my car, returning from the golf course. This time I spent an hour walking around with Tuija and my camera.

Slide show link.

Who said Bangalore traffic is slow?

2011-09-15T14:04:00.001+05:30

Time-lapse video of commuting to work today morning.

Camping in Kabini

2011-09-13T12:35:00.000+05:30

Last weekend we went for a trip in Nagarhole National Park. The trip from Bangalore took us some six hours, with one stop for breakfast in an utterly forgettable hotel in Mysore, one stop to change a deflated tyre and final stop in a place called Handpost to have the deflated tyre fixed. While our driver was fixing the tyre, I had a chance to take pictures of the beautiful paddy fields surrounding the spot where the tyre let go. These make up a pretty constant scenery after passing through Mysore.

Our target was a campsite / resort called Bison right on the border of Nagarhole. The accommodation is in tents similar to those one would find in high-end wildlife resorts in Africa. Ours was a triple-accommodation affair, set high on stilts, with 2 bedrooms inside the tent and bath room outside of it. We were a bit worried about mozzies, but needlessly so. I must mention the owner / manager of the place, Shaaz Jung. His leopard pictures decorate the common areas and they're amazing. Things went slightly downhill from here, however. First we were told that it would be unlikely to see animals from the resort itself as the monsoon had grown the lake so big it reached into the jungle.

Secondly the government had banned the resorts in the area from driving tourists with safari jeeps in the park. Finally there had been a shooting incident between the local people and park officials and the park was deemed unsafe for tourists. At the end we went in for a short drive on a normal vehicle and just on the main road passing through the park and saw some baby elephants and spotted deer that had ventured outside the thick undergrowth.

In the evening there was a bonfire in the resort with all the guests attending and Shaaz let us know that a boat safari was organized for the morning despite all the hassles mentioned earlier.

Off we went and were immediately surrounded by sights and sounds of the jungle. On the water there were a lot of birds to see and take pictures of. On land we saw one more deer and a big elephant lumberjack cutting his way through a thick growth of bamboo to reach the juicy leaves growing near the top. We stopped to admire this big a determined animal for a long while before it was time to head back to the resort, have breakfast, pack up our things and start the long drive towards Bangalore.

I'm really happy with how many of the pictures turned out. Especially in the jungle it's a difficult balance between aperture, ISO and shutter speed with so little light available. In retrospect I should've gone for bigger ISO value and dealt with the noise in post-processing - the models refused to stay still and with 300mm focal length it's difficult (at least for me) to get truly crisp handheld shots even with the image stabilization. You can see all the pictures as a full-screen slideshow by clicking this.

From coffee coupons to kettlebells - buying stuff on-line in India

2011-08-30T14:38:00.003+05:30

I recently started using foursquare. This is not to fulfill any basic need, I was just curious to find out if this was something fun, useful or both.

So far the first tangible benefit I've found in foursquare is with Cafe Coffee Day: if you check-into one of their cafeterias they'll give you a discount every third visit. In theory. In practice, they don't. The address they give where this discount coupon is to be collected is not responding and I am willing to bet money on the local barista having no clue about any coupon discount even if the address worked at some potential future date.

This is not a huge surprise, unfortunately. Bad consumer experiences are everywhere in India. Domino's pizza can be ordered on-line and a couple of times I've actually managed to do it. A couple of times out of many more when I tried and failed. Movie tickets are sold on-line by all major theatres but I've never completed the process with any of them successfully. Something is always, inevitably, broken.

This is why I've been so throughly impressed with eBay. Their service simply works and even when a merchant misbehaves they automatically refund the money. Most brick and mortar shops in India don't really have any meaninigful information in the Web and have pretty poor selections on sale, which makes the advantage eBay has vs. conventional merchants even bigger - I can choose from a big selection and compare prices between vendors. Finally, the competition inside eBay really seems to bring out the best in these entreprenours.

Earlier this year I tried to buy some kettlebells. On eBay there was just one local merchant with too light ones and due to the weight using Indian eBay as a proxy to the US one made no sense as the shipping would be too expensive. I sent a message to the local merchant to message me back when heavier ones became available. I continued searching and found this company, which manufactures kettlebells near Delhi. Only thing is, while they can make 'em, they sure can't sell 'em. At least to me. I gave up trying to make business with these guys after a few phone calls and emails. Fast forward to yesterday and I get a message from the eBay merchant I mentioned earlier announcing that he's got the sizes I'm looking for, some 6 months after I sent him the question.

It seems that there's still hope for on-line retail in India.

Long August weekend in Goa

2011-08-23T15:10:00.002+05:30

Long August weekend in Goa, a set on Flickr.

We went to visit Goa during the low season (Monsoon). Despite our fears of continuous heavy rainfall the weather was quite OK throughout our 4 days there - overcast and light drizzle at times.

We stayed at Lalit Goa, which was a fantastic change from the hustle and bustle of Bangalore with few visitors, beautifully landscaped surroundings and the waves of the Arabic Sea hitting the deserted beach.

Latter half of August is a real cluster of Indian bank holidays at least where I work here. Yesterday was Janmashtami, next Wednesday is Ramzan and next Thursday Ganesh Chaturthi. In other words, respectively, Lord Khrishna's (Hindu deity) birthday, end of Ramadan (I think) and Ganesha (Hindu elephant deity) celebration.

All pics as a slide show here.

It's getting wet

2011-08-17T15:36:00.003+05:30

Road, not a lake, a photo by Dopeyrizer on Flickr.

It's been raining cats and dogs for a couple of days - close to 200mm of rainfall. This has eroded many roads to almost undriveable condition with deep puddles and potholes everywhere.

As you can see from below, farmland is drenched as well.

Bangalore is on a plateau, so water should in principle flow away from here to every direction, but at the moment it's just wet wet wet everywhere.

Flower show at Lalbagh

2011-08-07T21:33:00.002+05:30

Flower show at Lalbagh, a set on Flickr.

Went to see the independence day flower show at Lalbagh gardens. The place was packed with people and with flowers and veggies of a million kind too. The flower dislay at the old greenhouse was a bit too packed for my liking, but there was more room at the other displays, some of which we hadn't seen before. Here's a link to all the pics as a slide show.

Afterwards, we went to Sunny's on 100ft Road for lunch, which was yummy as usual.

Household pet

2011-08-05T21:05:00.001+05:30

Latest pet, a photo by Dopeyrizer on Flickr.

Let me make this very clear: I'm really not into dogs, cats, rats or other kinds of furry domestic pets. I might be okay with an aquarium, but wonder if I'm really cut for such commitment, either.

Here in India these fellows provide us live entertainment every night chasing insects. Some dare to come in, some stay outside the window and benefit from the light shining through and attracting prey. They're cute, require no attention and we even share a common enemy in the form of mozzies.

So I'm quite happy to let them roam around in the house too. There's just something about their twisted pose with wide spread toes that just feels non-treatening and and fun - even for a non-animal lover like myself.

Restaurant discovery

2011-08-03T14:01:00.000+05:30

This post won't mean much to people living outside Bangalore, India. It's just a restaurant review for The Fat Chef restaurant in Whitefield, right next to Palm Meadows where we're staying. The Burrp reviews are mixed, but we really like the place and it's become a regular weekend dinner-slash-lunch destination for us. The food tastes good, there's plenty of it, the menu has a good selection of appetizers and main courses for all tastes (i.e. not just spicy Indian food) and the ambiance is nice. With the place a mere walking distance away from our front door, what's not to like?

The menu is not fixed (even to the wall) so I doubt we'll grow tired of eating here before our time in Bangalore comes to a close. It's already been over a month since we came back from our vacation to Finland so the time left in the expat hourglass is diminishing quickly...

Summer vacation '11 in Finland

2011-07-01T22:22:00.003+05:30

Summer vacation '11 in Finland, a set on Flickr.

Last full day of our summer vacation is coming to an end. It's been wonderful to have the almost stereotypical Finnish domestic summer vacation.

The pictures are from my parents' place in Kerava, a rental summer cottage in Hauho, Parola Tank Museum, Häme Castle, Hämeenlinna Artillery Museum, Finnish Aviation Museum, Sääksi lake beach and from around urban Helsinki. The pics can also be viewed as a slide show.

The military theme with the museum visits is because of our son has reached the "weapons age" - things that don't go "bang" are just not very interesting at the moment :-).

Now it's time to fly back to India for the final quarter of the expat assignment. It seems one needs to spend time away to truly appreciate the things one has at home...

A day at the races

2011-06-05T10:27:00.004+05:30

A day at the races, a set on Flickr.

The Overseas Women's Club organized a charity event at the Bangalore Turf Club. What a great day! The theme was to dress posh for the box section, eat and drink there, bet on the fine horses and generally have a good time with like minded people. For me, also take a lot of pics of something I've never seen with my own eyes - or through my own lenses - before.

The drinking bit probably had a somewhat negative impact on the picture taking aspect, but some of them turned out OK anyway thanks to having the camera on continuous shooting mode all day. I also got quite excited about the betting, which was a surprise - but a fun one. I also won some money in a couple of races, which meant I ended up just shy of break even.

My expectations going in were pretty low. In Finland they organize trotting horse races, which are almost as exciting as drying paint whenever they show highlights on the TV - which is often.

So, this was an activity I never would've done on my own, but if there's another opportunity later in life I'm definitely game for another day at the races.

Malaysia / Kuala Lumpur

2011-04-13T06:42:00.000+05:30

Right after a vacation we took another. This time we went to Kuala Lumpur for an extended weekend trip timed around Malaysian Grand Prix in Sepang. It was my first GP viewed live since the 2000 Montreal GP. In KL we visited Chinatown, Petronas Twin Towers, various shopping malls, a big walk-in aviary, a beautiful but scorching hot orchid park and took the hop-on, hop-off tour around around the sights. There were many more things to see, but there was limited time with 3 days spent on viewing fast cars scream by.

In Sepang I roamed around the various grand stands during the Friday practice and then on Saturday and Sunday we watched the qualifying and the race with the whole family. We were in grand stand F which gives a fantastic view of the complex of fast corners 5-8 as well as the straights and the hairpin between them. You can follow about half a lap from your seat, which is pretty amazing. The challenge with F is logistics - it's time-consuming to get there and even more difficult to get back. We took the KLIA Transit train on all 3 days and on Saturday going back to KL was a disaster with the airport to circuit shuttle buses stuck in traffic. Took over 4 hours to get back to the hotel...

Anyway a great race, a great track and a great city. Much recommended!

Island paradise pictured

2011-04-01T09:35:00.006+05:30

We spent 5 days in Maldives and the only negative I can think of this vacation is that it's over. Best holiday destination I've been to, ever. I'll be adding more pics to the same set later when I have time. Click here for a full screen version of the slide set.

How to like a Symbian^3 smartphone?

2011-03-25T19:11:00.000+05:30

I have a Nokia N8 and while some aspects of it are awasome out of the box, some others are downright poor. I think I can say this now even though I work for Nokia as our CEO has basically said the same thing in public.

Most of the frustrating bits have to do with the built-in applications in N8. Luckily there is a pretty good offering of 3rd party apps as well as innovative Nokia ones that have, at least for me, turned the thumb firmly towards the sky. So here's my advice on what to get to whoever wants to live life to the fullest (heh) with N8, C7, E7 etc.:

Social networks: get Gravity. Gravity is an awesome native Symbian application for all kinds of social networking needs. I use it for Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader and flickr image uploads. The version of Gravity on Ovi Store is great, but that's just the starting point. Jan Ole Suhr (@janole) releases frequent updates that have made the great into fantastic since I bought the 1st version. The gret thing is, one can follow @janole in Gravity and get 1st hand info about what he's developing next as well as where to download the latest and the greatest.

Music: I live in India now so this will not help the natives, but Spotify has transformed music for me. Admittedly the Symbian client is awkward at best, but the overall service experience is so good that it almost doesn't matter at all. I would especially wish for better support for headset controls and such.

Browsing: in all the N8 reviews the biggest downside complained about has been the browser. Yes, it's slow and the zooming doesn't really work like it should. After the release of Opera Mini 6.0 this is a moot point now as there's a fantastic browser now available. In India the proxy browsing is fantastic as 3G was just launched and coverage is spotty at best. With Opera Mini GPRS is enough for fast browsing of full-fledged desktop sites.

Profile management: I am one of those people who forget to put the phone on silent when going to bed or entering a meeting and leave it silent for the rest of the day once the meeting is over. Now it doesn't matter anymore as the beta-available Situations does all that automatically. If you tried the first version and got tired of restarting it, try the latest one. It's much better and does what it promises.

Outdoors: Whenever I do any kind of sports outdoors (except swimming), I use Sports Tracker. Sadly they don't ship the heart rate monitor to India so I need to pick one up when I am next time in Finland. Even without it this is a fantastic app-slash-service and I've used it from day 1 when it was a small science project in Nokia. They just announced that they're coming out with iPhone and Android versions too - good for them!

Gaming: there's plenty of good, even great games in Ovi Store. The latest Angry Birds is coming to Symbian with only a few weeks delay :-). Sky Force Reloaded is great too, but I go long back with that game so it's probably just me.

E-mail: here the built-in mail app has developed into a really usable tool. I use it for Gmail and Outlook access and have no major complaints. If I sometimes need the full Gmail UI, I use the iPhone version with Opera Mini.

Maps: in most parts of the world Ovi Maps is great, but not here in India. Here addresses don't really matter or make sense and everything works with points of interest. The PoI database on Google Maps Mobile is a lot better so that works better here.

Bubbles: you don't you need Bubbles before you try Bubbles. I couldn't use my phone without Bubbles anymore.

Consumer complaint power and the Internet, or "Don't get mad, get even... and then some"

2011-03-24T19:44:00.002+05:30

So it's probably obvious by now that I'm a little more than slightly pissed off at DishTV for delivering me a service some 3 weeks later than promised and then cutting me off from it less than 1 hour after finally getting it. Oh, yes, and for constantly promising to fix it without actually doing so. That too.

I can complain all I want to the care personnel, but those people are just earning a pittance listening to people yelling at them so I'm not too hard on them - I can't help but laugh when they again promise me what their workflow system tells them to promise - I'd bet knowing full well that the problem will still be there tomorrow.

Blogs like this are actually suprisingly effective for getting back at companies who treat their customers like crap. Consider this post of mine from 2008. Google Analytics tells me that 908 separate people have viewed the rant 1059 times since I posted it. If I managed to convince even 50% of those people to buy something else the companies I complained about lost over 25k€ / $35k in sales, some 150 times more than I lost buying their crappy products. And counting. People find the post through google searches and it still gets a steady 30-50 pageviews per month - I've cut my losses a long time ago, but they aren't done with theirs.

Cricket looks fantastic on DishTV TruHD - NOT...

2011-03-24T18:52:00.003+05:30

So I have this problem with our bricked DishTV set-top-box. DishTV customer care has a standard promise of 24-hour service restoration, but it's based on, well, apparently nothing more than a hope and prayer. The care center personnel do a pretty good imitation of being surprised that no technician has showed up with a laptop to revive the bricked device, but I have a hard time believing I am the only one with this experience.

The funny part is, today is the quarter final match of the cricket world cup with India playing Australia. I had actually thought that I might watch this as the DishTV installation came with the cricket WC package included. I've never watched a game and thought this would be a good opportunity to start and maybe understand the rules even. For me the fact that I'll miss this is not really a biggie, but imagine if I was Indian and could not watch the big game in my spanking new HD super duper package? I'd be suicidal.

Well they told me, again, that with 100% certainty a technician will come within 24 hours. I'm not holding my breath...

Why not to become a DishTV subscriber in India

2011-03-22T22:40:00.003+05:30

Many Indian companies feel that no punishment is severe enough for people who dare become their customers. Satellite firm DishTV seems to be one of these. After 3 weeks of patiently trying get the darn thing installed it finally came today in the form of and old guy and his rusty scooter. The joy of joys getting HD service again was short lived - after about an hour of use DishTV proceeded to brick our new HD set-top-box with an OTA firmware push.

They tell me that a technician will come in 24 hours but that's what they said about the installation too (which took 3+ weeks and required an interpreter because the technician was illiterate and spoke no English).

I think it's a very good thing that the Indian government restricts foreign companies from coming here to do business because most of the successful local firms wouldn't survive a day in open competition.

Supermoon, in auto focus

2011-03-18T21:30:00.001+05:30

Supermoon, in auto focus a photo by Dopeyrizer on Flickr.

Picture of full moon at close orbit to Earth, or super moon, as it's also called. Given that Bangalore is almost 1km above sea level and pretty close to the equator, I wonder if this is the closest I ever will get to our only natural satellite.

I had my auto-focus optics calibrated in the local Canon service center here in Bangalore and based on the pic above, at least the 70-300mm is now right on the money. All my previous moon pics have been taken with manual focus, which is fiddly to the extreme due to the focus ring being both really fast and not damped at all in this otherwise nice lens.

Spongebob Squarepants

2011-02-23T21:07:00.001+05:30

Spongebob Squarepants
Originally uploaded by Dopeyrizer

There's nothing I can write here to make this post more funny.

The concert we almost missed

2011-02-23T20:34:00.000+05:30

OK, here's a story on how the simplest thing in India can get really complicated.

I bought 3 VIP tickets to a Bryan Adams gig in Bangalore many months ago from Kyazoonga, which is like a local Ticketmaster equivalent. Our driver runs a lot of errands for us so I chose venue pickup as the delivery method. On Tuesday of the week of the concert my wife went to pick-up the tickets. "No tickets, come on Thursday" was the reply. OK, on Thursday our driver went and the reply was: "No tickets, come on Saturday". The concert was on Sunday, so this was cutting it a bit tight. On Saturday morning we sent our driver again, and got the reply ... wait for it ... "No VIP tickets, come after 5 PM".

At this point we were a bit worried. I had looked into the matter and the going rate for VIP tickets was 8,000 Rs. while our tickets had cost 3,500 Rs. a piece. The tickets sold for 3,500 Rs. were now called Gold class tickets, but when I called the ticket office they said those had been sold out. Ouch.

On the morning of the concert I went to the venue either to collect the tickets or to get a letter to prove we had not been given tickets. After a very short wait I walked out with 3 VIP tickets. Cool! Well, not quite - we had made 4 trips to the venue at this point and it's an hour's drive - one way. MENTAL NOTE: next time take couriered or print-at-home ones...

All's well that ends well, however - the concert was very good. Adams has built a good playlist over the years and has found an enthusiastic and loyal fan base in India.

License to shop

2011-02-08T10:29:00.000+05:30

We finally managed to find a way to buy sporting goods with reasonable prices in Bangalore. The place to go to is Decathlon on Sarjapur Road, but they have this extremely odd membership scheme that until now has completely flummoxed me. They require your employer (the legal company) to register and only thereafter can employees register themselves to be allowed do some sports equipment shopping. In India it seems to be quite normal to require your customers to make piked double backflips with 1.5 twists to agree to sell something to them but until now this was the most extreme case. Well, apart from Airtel, obviously.

Well, my employer wasn't interested and that meant that e.g. new sports shoes for our son were really difficult to find. It's again Overseas Women's Club to the rescue as their members now can register in Decathlon. Yippee! Just need to remember to empty an ATM machine on the way there as paying with plastic is limited to cards with the OWC member's name on. Really, go figure as is usual, but finally our son has tennis shoes that fit again.

OWC has been really helpful in many ways already until now. Coming to Bangalore as an expat single man would be so much harder due to this fantastic resource not being available.

My first cover shot

2011-01-12T13:50:00.003+05:30

My first cover shot
Originally uploaded by Dopeyrizer

"A good photograph is knowing where to stand" - Ansel Adams

A picture I took made it to the cover of a magazine published by a Bangalore expat charity organization. Can't help feeling a bit proud after only a few months with a proper camera.

Southern Splendor on the Golden Chariot

2011-01-05T08:39:00.000+05:30

Pictures from our trip on the Golden Chariot train to see sights in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Yes, we all got sick at the end and yes, because of overenthusiastic A/C use the temperature in the in train restaurant was near freezing point of nitrogen but there were some better moments too as the pictures hopefully convey:

Merry Xmas from India!

2010-12-21T19:41:00.001+05:30

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

2010-11-29T19:05:00.001+05:30

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

2010-11-21T19:14:00.002+05:30

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?

2010-11-21T19:10:00.001+05:30

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

2010-11-20T17:32:00.001+05:30

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

2010-11-14T17:03:00.000+05:30

... 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...

2010-11-07T13:59:00.000+05:30

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

2010-11-07T13:54:00.000+05:30

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!

2010-10-30T08:23:00.001+05:30

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

2010-10-30T07:48:00.001+05:30

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

2010-10-26T11:02:00.002+05:30

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

2010-10-17T18:13:00.000+05:30

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"

2010-10-02T11:37:00.003+05:30

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

2010-09-21T21:33:00.004+05:30

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

2010-09-19T18:56:00.002+05:30

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

2010-09-15T14:52:00.000+05:30

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

2010-09-04T16:01:00.000+05:30

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

2010-09-04T15:52:00.002+05:30

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

2010-08-29T19:14:00.002+05:30

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

2010-08-28T14:42:00.000+05:30

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

2010-08-22T22:16:00.000+05:30

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

2010-08-20T21:10:00.001+05:30

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

2010-08-20T21:02:00.001+05:30

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

2010-08-15T14:27:00.000+05:30

Eye of the tiger

2010-08-14T23:10:00.002+05:30

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

2010-08-14T09:09:00.001+05:30

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

2010-08-12T09:47:00.000+05:30

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

2010-08-08T21:23:00.000+05:30

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

2010-08-05T09:32:00.000+05:30

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

2010-08-02T21:58:00.000+05:30

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

2010-08-01T21:44:00.000+05:30

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

2010-07-26T18:52:00.000+05:30

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

2010-07-26T18:45:00.000+05:30

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

2010-06-15T21:15:00.000+05:30

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

2010-06-15T21:07:00.000+05:30

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

2010-06-05T18:49:00.000+05:30

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

2010-06-02T20:48:00.000+05:30

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

2010-04-27T06:09:00.002+05:30

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

2010-04-24T18:48:00.002+05:30

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

2010-04-17T20:02:00.002+05:30

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?

2010-04-17T19:58:00.002+05:30

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

2010-04-15T20:40:00.000+05:30

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

2010-04-14T09:42:00.002+05:30

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

2010-04-13T21:38:00.003+05:30

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

2010-04-02T00:45:00.002+05:30

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

2010-03-29T20:45:00.002+05:30

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

2010-03-27T16:41:00.002+05:30

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

2010-03-26T21:37:00.002+05:30

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

2010-03-26T19:22:00.002+05:30

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

2010-03-21T08:35:00.002+05:30

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

2010-03-20T08:35:00.002+05:30

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

2010-03-20T08:10:00.001+05:30

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

2010-03-03T19:50:00.001+05:30

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

2010-03-03T19:37:00.001+05:30

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.

Time to not fly through Delhi

2010-03-03T18:52:00.001+05:30

India is a hot place most of the time, but winter in the north can get bitterly cold.
In Delhi the cold January weather translates to a thick layer of fog that seems to effectively block all air travel. This doesn't seem to be reflected in any airline schedules, tho.
In the future I'll make sure I'm connecting elsewhere come new year.

Spicy flower

2010-03-03T18:41:00.001+05:30

I've been scratching my already bald about how on earth can I update the blog with my mobile. I only now decided to try Shozu. Test dummy picture is a fiery flower arrangement from Park Hotel, Bangalore.

Indian Idols

2010-01-19T21:40:00.001+05:30

Indian Idols
Originally uploaded by tormave.

9. tammikuuta 2010 6:39:51 If you put an ad in the paper in Finland to search for senior Java programmers, you don't have to be prepared for a tidal wave of applicants even in this economy. Nokia in Bangalore put a half-page ad in Times of India and 5 000 people arrived over two days for interviews. In Finland the only try-out that would gather such a crowd would be for the Pop Idol contest and the chance to become a famous recording artist.

New blog phase: Expat in Bangalore, India

2010-01-19T21:07:00.001+05:30

New blog phase: Expat in Bangalore, India
Originally uploaded by tormave.

5. tammikuuta 2010 9:55:31 Next 2 years this blog will mostly be about Southern India and how it feels for a middle-aged North European guy to live there with the family. I think this picture is the perfect starting point. India has a very optimistic vibe to everything. Given how traffic is in Bangalore, by no means is one safe just by wearing a helmet (especially the helmets they do wear, but more on that later). To be really safe you shouldn't be on the road or anywhere near it. On the other hand for me, the safety of my family is the most important thing during the next 2 or so years. Maybe we should just wear helmets...

Warming up by the ice fire

2010-01-02T21:57:00.001+05:30

Warming up by the ice fire
Originally uploaded by tormave.

29. joulukuuta 2009 15:58:38 One more snap from the Lapland visit. Ice arm chairs in front of ice fire in an ice room in the ice hotel. If you've followed this blog (unlikely, I know), you know I've been to the same place two years priot. Except that it wasn't the same place as they have to build a new hotel every winter...

Polar bear scare

2010-01-02T21:50:00.001+05:30

Polar bear scare
Originally uploaded by tormave.

30. joulukuuta 2009 13:57:35 Mock stuffed beast horror in Arktikum museum in Rovaniemi. The museum is definitely worth the visit for anyone visiting Lapland - much more so than the different Santa Claus attractions.

Winter wonderland

2010-01-02T21:44:00.001+05:30

Winter wonderland
Originally uploaded by tormave.

31. joulukuuta 2009 6:49:17 Rental car in front of the rental cottage in Pello, Finnish Lapland. Snow flakes slowly floating down in the nippy early morning air.

Heat escaping

2010-01-02T17:39:00.002+05:30

Heat escaping
Originally uploaded by tormave.

22. joulukuuta 2009 10:29:27 It's been really cold for a while, but a couple of warmer days in between decorated out backyard views quite beautifully.

Unbearable darkness of being

2010-01-02T17:33:00.001+05:30

Unbearable darkness of being
Originally uploaded by tormave.

28. joulukuuta 2009 10:41:54 Taken on a recent trip to Lapland, this is as light as it got at any time. Most of the day and of course the night time too were pitch black dark. Kinda weird to plan the day around a few hours of some kind of visibility without artificial lighting. The difference to southern Finland even is big.

Neste Rally Finland, 2009

2009-08-18T23:47:00.002+05:30

This is something we already did a couple of weeks ago when there was a World Rally Championship event in Finland. We drove some 300 kilometres (200 miles) northwards into a forest to watch cars slides and jump through narrow gravel roads at speeds close to 200 kilometers per hour (120 MPH+). When I was a kid we lived nearby the annual event and went everytime. 25 years later the cars still seem travelling at warp factor 9...

... until things don't go as planned, like in the end of this video of a Russian driver Evgeny Novikov. His co-driver must be the bravest man in the world.

Dolphins jumping

2009-08-16T18:04:00.005+05:30

Here's some more material from the Särkänniemi dolphin show. I must say I was positively surprised after not really expecting that much going in. I've seen such shows in e.g. Orlando Sea World and I think this smaller-scale Finnish version more than held its own.