Fast forward to next day I get a call from satya saying his bus is slow and that he has still not reached goa and that he might reach goa a bit late and will then inform us about his lunch plans. I have a early meeting next day i wind it up by 1 and am back to the office sarvesh comes to pick us up at the office and then we head off and we have not heard from satya yet who was suppose to reach goa that very morning so we call him up he says bus was delayed and he has just reached home and that he wont be able to make it for the lunch and that he will meet us in the evening.

So on the way we have to pick up abhimanyu and saurabh both of whom are down to goa to collect their transcripts from the college since they are both headed to the US for higher studies they recently answered the GRE and scored pretty well on it so we pick them up from their college at PCCE and there is all sorts of confusion at this point will the kitchen be closed at martins corner and what will be our back up plan etc etc etc and all this time am cool because I know the kitchen wont be closed

Finally after a long drive and missing quite a few accidents on the way yes sarvesh was driving and even though he was not drunk he still tends to be a hopeless driver hahahaha
finally we are at martins corner it is a bit quite and less people are there because we are a bit too late for lunch but well we place our order
we had martins special mocktail since everyone was ordering those even i decided to go with that instead of my usual order for some refreshing beer. then we had some starters fried mussels, french fries, squid calamari and then we moved onto main course most of them ordered chicken pepper steak and I ordered myself some nice roast tongue (must admit I left 2 small pieces of it though as I was full with the mocktail and the starters) and over the lunch our conversation was mostly about tech since we were all techies there and am sure all this talk must have bored my bro hahahaha.

After we finished lunch we just lazied around a bit sitting there then we decided to take the long drive back to panaji on the way we just filled petrol and then got in touch with satya and told him to meet us at CCD miramar so on the way there we dropped fonda back to office and then we headed to CCD to lazy around some more
there also we talked about many things like google , interesting opportunities in video startups etc etc and then finally satya showed up and then we had a good time pulling his leg because of his recent US trip then we talked about work there and here how it is different etc etc and then finally we all decided to head our separate ways but before that sarvesh had to pick up some cashew nuts for his office colleagues since he was leaving for pune the next day and he wanted to pick up some stuff from the dollar store too and he was not the only one who picked up stuff from dollar store even i picked up a can opener needed one for the office pantry and abhimanyu picked up some stuff too am sure he could not help it as he is a real shopaholic ( yes he is sick and needs help he spends a hell of a lot of money on shopping so all of us should start praying for him to get well soon )

After that shopping spree it was time to call it quits for the day and I headed back to the office to get some work done and some surfing done

well about martins corner I don’t think we will be heading there in the near future since we need to find another place to check out but the food and the rates there are both good but till we go there again am still trying to figure out another place to sample when all of us meet again in december maybe it will be chef fernandos

1)What if I live till i am 50?
That means I have already lived half my lifetime (scary thought ain’t it)

2)What have I done so far?
well nothing that I wanted to do have not seen most of the places in the world,not been to disney land, not gone skiing or see snow or learn swimming(I have to get myself enrolled for the swimming classes),not started my own band (yep always wanted to start my own band),not tasted most of the cuisines in the world (yes am a foodie and a total sucker for pickles)

3)Where is my life headed?
this is a scary thought as have recently resigned the comfort of a paid job (to turn entrepreneur) well the job was going as far as I could push the company and it looks like I am the only one pushing a heavy load up a hill and was one of the main reasons for me to take the gamble with me and have a start the way I want it with my own startup.

4)What do I do now?
well my first priority is get my ventures on track and second is do some of the things that are there on my to do list. second thing is push myself more to meet the targets set by me.

5)What have I accumulated in the last 25 years?
well a good family,great friends don’t have any enemies(none yet if you are one leave me a comment and will get back to you to sort things out between us hahahaha),well I have a younger brother even though he is a bit too relaxed but has a good creative mind (I have to push him to achieve great things),a good education(yes I had great education I loved science from a young age and ended up graduating in a branch of science If I had not stopped I would have gone all the way to a Phd yep I would have been Dr Fritz D’souza ),have found a true calling in the tech world and really love my work and am looking forward to working with a bunch of people who are as excited as me about technology and am happy have found some of them to join me on my new venture.

6)Well what do I have to accumulate in the next 25 years?
A good person to share my old age with yep someone smart,funny,caring,passion for travel and passion for food(when I will start the hunt for that person I don’t know). Accumulate decent amount of worldly wealth (the normal stuff every hard working person wants a yacht,private jet,private island etc etc),See my younger brother reach great heights in the creative field (I would be the happiest person in the world when he says my name at the oscars during the acceptance speech well he has the potential but have to do something about his temper and attention span),well for quite sometime now my mom has been looking forward to seeing Las Vegas,Jerusalem, Florida and Rome have to send her to this places she too has a great passion for travel and I guess I have got that from her and the passion for food and technology from Dad.

Well most of the things are achievable with a bit of good luck and lot of hard work I should be there.

• How much I love Arabic Music
• I am not a early morning first thing I will eat is whipped cream person (I threw up after I had some cream) but later I did manage to finish the rest of the shake though
• I like to just sit and lazy around and talk to friends once in a while

So after the Tobelorone shake and a honey glazed chicken sandwich we headed back to the abhimanyu’s place to collect the movie tickets which abhimanyu’s bro saurabh had collected from a friend who had booked the tickets and saurabh dropped this tickets at home for us to collect and head for the movie. We just lazied around for some time after that we went to inox pune for the movie read all about it here after the movie we headed to another mall there I tried my hand at a playstation game and instantly realized what a miserable life I am living with no true love so now have to get myself a PS3 asap hahahaha.
After some fun with PS3 and ogling at some of the Sony Bavaria TV sets there We headed out of the mall and then I went and got some KFC for myself for the return trip and dinner.

After getting the KFC said good bye to the guys caught a rickshaw and came to the place where I was suppose to catch my bus there I bumped into an old college acquaintance anne marie she was there to see off her mom and sis who were in the same bus on my journey back to goa. At this point it was drizzling slightly and I got a bit wet while getting into the bus.

Well this is how my three day vacation ended with mixed feelings and was glad was heading back to goa and work.

The day started with us rushing to find the place where we were suppose to catch the bus to attend the event. We finally did catch the bus and all our fears of missing the event were put to rest hahahaha nope if we had missed the bus I would have taken a rickshaw and gone there but would not have missed the event.

Well have written a lot about the event so lets fast forward to the evening part after the bus brought us back to the city and we then started our hunt for an ATM as sarvesh wanted some hard cash in his hands then we had a long walk back Abhimanyu’s place this gave me time to explore pune roads more and then on the way we had bhel puri at spencer’s it was close to abhimanyu’s place (the bhel puri was horrible and nothing like the one I have at Miramar beach here in goa). After this sarvesh did a bit of shopping at spencer’s and then we headed to Abhimanyu’s room there we rested for some time before we headed out for my return ticket to goa and dinner then after resting for a bit we headed off for my ticket got that done and then we went for dinner and we came to a place where we had dinner and for dinner I had nachos with salsa sauce and fried beans and carrot juice. It was filling and I could not finish the nachos and had to parcel the left overs and get them home.

After dinner we came back to Abhimanyu’s crib and then we chatted for some time about many different things and then we got some sleep as I could hardly keep my eyes open was too tired with the walking and event for two days so as soon as I shut my eyes voila was in dreamland .

So this is how my second day of vacation in pune ended.

Well in one line I can sum up my experience at this movie "Good superhero movie with a romantic plot".

Plus points of the movie(in my opinion)
+good story
+some very good jokes
+good mix of romance and action (not a boring mix like Superman Returns)
+keeps you engaged during the movie
+good chemistry between human torch and thing (hahahaha)

Negative points of the movie(in my opinion)
-a bit less action for a superhero movie
-the ending could have been crafted well

overall I would say a good movie and recommend it to my friends

Well bloggingtofame is another startup related to blogs they are looking at publishing a blog magazine by pulling in content from ace bloggers and at present they are hunting for ace bloggers they have a contest running now more info click here the first prize is a cool 25k $$ a nice pocket change to have I must add.

The teams visit there was to promote bloggingtofame.com and I Guess they must have done that well for me nope I don’t think I have the makings of a fame blogger so will stay out of the contest hahahahaha

Every talk and every veteran was interested in giving the new people the feeling that if you want to blog then the ultimate nirvana is to become a celebrity blogger and get yourself interviewed on TV and print media and that is what you should aim for which was quite shocking actually since there is a segment of bloggers like me who don’t do any marketing for their blog no link building, SEO,SEM etc etc and are happy with just a few friends and family members who keep themselves updated about you from your blog. All this must have been a definite turn off for the newbies as it will make them weary of getting onto the blogging bandwagon with fears like my english is not good, what do I write etc etc

I think the notion that a blog is a personal diary is lost somewhere in the web 2.0 social media hype that is building up now.

The walk out attitude is still not there in India if something is being discussed which you don’t think is adding a layer to your intellect you should walk out and attend some other talk that is the basic thing everyone attending barcamps do they jump talks, jump threads and since this was the first time such a event was held there should have been like a 5 mins break between talks which gives people (who think it is impolite to walk out when someone is talking ) the time to leave gracefully.

The reasons I attended the blogcamp are I am working with a few others on Two products which will be a great in assisting bloggers everywhere and I wanted to feel the pulse of bloggers their fears and their doubts and what do they want and the other reason was to see if anyone got any demos of any blog related products they were working on. I was so tempted to give a demo of my product there which is in late alpha stages now but then it would have been premature but one thing I Learned from the rediff launch of their blogshowcase was HOW NOT TO LAUNCH A PRODUCT(the blogshowcase will be a seperate post)

But overall a few things done right would have made this event a success I guess this same mistakes wont be repeated for the barcamp to be held at pspl pune more info found here (this also I will try to attend if time permits)

We were a bit early for the event (by the indian standard but according to the clock we were on time) as when we reached most of the people had not reached and we reached there on time mentioned on the wiki when it would start the sponsors were putting up their banners and setting up their banners. so we just moved around and finally got ourselves registered for the event and got my t-shirt.

The event started with the introduction of all the attendees it was very informative and nice got to know that a few bloggers were born recently in the blogosphere and few were about to be born (one blogger who was born on that day is abhimanyu the photoblogger hahahahaha his blog can be found here now the blog is looking more like a one night stand with no further involvement on the side of the blogger hmmmmm).

The sessions that I attended that day

• sulekha portal peoples talk about blogging on their platform
• rediffs launch for a new product for bloggers
• how to grow you blog traffic
• podcasting

Yes I just attended four events and rest of the time went in interacting with other people outside in the corridors and sponsor stalls met a very few interesting people met akshay who maintains a very popular photoblog/ blog on blogspot called trivialmatters and is in the process of organizing some event now called the rickshaw run (I had never heard of this till I met the guy but apparently sarvesh is very well informed about the happenings in indian blogosphere and knew much about this race)

Also met another blogger who’s blog I read on and off and sometimes when I have a few minutes to spare just go to her blog and read some of her new post whichever ones catch my attention this blogger is apparently a mini celebrity blogger hahahahha and wants to become a celebrity blogger she does have all the ingredients for making it into the blog celebrity hall of fame (all the best) and the reason I stumbled upon melody’s (yes she does have a sweet name and a cute face too and not to mention she is a d’souza too now they don’t come any better then that do they??) blog is because she has goan roots and I talked to her about it she said she don’t know much but she believes she hails from divar (a beautiful island located in the mandovi river) Melody’s blog can be found here .

The lunch was sponsored by Rediff.com as among all the sponsors they were the biggest in terms of moolah the lunch was good and I was not the only one disappointed with the fact that the lunch was only pure veg there were others disappointed too.

During the lunch time got some free time to interact with a few other people and met another fellow goan working as a techie for a startup in pune called bookeazy his name is Nigel Fernandes he was proudly wearing his bookeazy t-shirt and (yes it is easy with a ‘z’ in it ) when I saw him I was a bit sad for not wearing my Intelgrate t shirt (damn I missed a great oppurtunity to promote intelgrate well there will be many more oppurtunities for doing just that in the near future) also interacted with the divya uttam of bloggingtofame (yes it is another startup in the blogging space). The other person I met was Rajiv Dingra the founder of WATConsult it is a startup to guide other startups (yes It sounds odd but that is wat they do ) he seems very enthusiastic about what he does which is very good for a founder but the success depends not on enthusiasm but a very sound business model and good core team for execution about the business model am not sure(this is topic for a seperate post).

At the end of the day it was a nice experience and all thanks to the sponsors and the organisers the organisers were a bunch of fun guys with whom I chatted with for a few mins met tarun during lunch break and parag at the end of the event
but there is no such thing as the perfect event or a perfect day out I was disappointed that the wifi was not working, the event was held at a educational institute and was totally disappointed by the fact that there was minimal participation by students considering the fact that Symbiosis Center for IT (the venue for blogcamp pune) is suppose to be a place for IT people who should be curious about the waves sweeping in the IT space.

What did I lend up with at the end the day

• it was a mixture of good and bad outing
• met lots of people got some new ideas and met people from far off places like chennai, bangalore, noida etc
• a t-shirt of blogcamp pune
• a fropper cap (yes fropper was one of the sponsors giving out caps)
• a notepad for taking notes at blogcamp
• a free lunch
• a free ride back to the city (yes we took the bus back but while going for the event we were charged 20 bucks a person and while coming we were not charged at all so I guess the ride back was on the house for the three stooges)

After the shopping we headed of to mc donalds as I was suppose to meet a friend there and she was there on time and I was late but then it all turned out well we met near the watch thingie in the mall and still had to call and ask where she was near the watch thingie (hahahahahaha) later on we had a sumptous happy meals three of us and abhimanyu had just two burgers and the toys the rest of us got were two donkeys one for me and mesmerized and sarvesh got the ginger bread man. so finally I had the donkey in my hand but it didn’t say "I am Adorable" damn but still it is nice for my collection of toys on my office desk now it will go well with my ogre baby and a top.

Well after the dinner we chatted a bit and all of us dispersed for our respective destinations mesmerized went to her friends place where she was crashing and us three guys decided it was CCD time and we headed there and none of us had coffee there hahahahahaha after that we headed straight to abhimanyu’s place and chatted till about 1 that night and then we all hit the sack as we had to get up a wee bit early to catch the bus for blogcamp and at this time mesmerized was enjoying fantastic four with her friends friend and her friend and they had a gala time and mesmerized loved the movie she said it was fast action packed super hero flick (hahahahaha)

This is how the first day of vacation ended in pune it was an eventful day had two happy meals and finally got the donkey but was disappointed with the phrase that it says but still it is a cool toy and also met mesmerized plus spent some nice fun time with old friends and new ones

Have come all the way from goa for this meet the last blogcamp which was held in chennai. I could not attend so this time I made sure that I attended and one day I hope events like this happen in goa also maybe I should take the initiative and do something regarding this in my spare time

The things that I am looking forward too for tomorrows meet are

• meeting like minded people
• having fun with friends (sarvesh,abhimanyu and mesmerised)
• coming across some killer startups and their demo’s
• knowing if anyone else is come down from goa for this
• and offcourse using sarvesh’s laptop to blog from the site since mine is in the office and will be going for repairs

Ok I just can’t wait for tomorrow now and I am more excited about my meeting with someone today evening then tomorrow’s meet.

hopefully the evening meeting can happen and I can get something to forget my heart breaking happy meal experience