Upma Italiano

Ingredients (for one)

1. Upma - one measuring cup
2. Onion - one or two
3. Oil - Olive preferred
4. Sauce - Prego Napoletano (not negotiable)
5. Water - 500 ml

Steps

1. Shallow fry the onions until light brown
2. Add two tablespoon of sauce and fry for another 30 seconds
3. Add upma and mix well while frying for another 1 minute
4. Add water and keep moving to avoid lumping until the desired consistency
5. Enjoy.

After almost two years of holding onto Ubuntu 10.10, I finally gave up my love of Ubuntu/Gnome2/apt and moved to OpenSUSE 12.2 (rpm!). This is coming full circle for me as I started with Mandrake in 2002 which used rpm as the package management system.

Rpm has come a long way - no more dependency hell. But the star of the migration is KDE4. I have to admit that it has transformed from clunky and over-complicated to beautiful and refined in a most unexpected way (more so since I stayed away from it for nearly six years). I can clearly see KDE's refinement reaching new heights in a few more iterations.

After couple of weekends of tinkering and fine-tuning my desktop, everything works the way I want it to and my level of comfort is comparable to (if not more than) Gnome2. I can say that I'm content and settled with my new computing environment.

End of life with Maverick

Couple of days ago, Ubuntu stopped support for Maverick Meerkat 10.10. This is the last decent version of Gnome2 and I refuse to move until something better or atleast matching comes around (Mint is still evolving).

Canonical has given us a great distro but Unity is the worst thing they have inflicted on advanced users. I'll stick with my Meerkat.

Upgrade

So, my laptop was creaking with the weight of files more numerous than ants in an anthil, partitions more complicated than back-alleys of Banaras and symbolic links worse than a junction box in a sleepy town in Bihar. And all that accumulated over 5 years (no wonder my shoulders hurt when I carry it).

It is considered remarkable for a hard disk to last beyond 3-4 years and this one is positively a 100GB Fujitsu veteran. Therefore, I decided to upgrade to a new Western Digital Scorpio 7200 RPM 500GB disk and after multiple sessions of clonezilla (thumbdrive based open source disk cloner), many whirrs of Ubuntu 10.04 live cd (it is best to figure out the partitioning before dealing with gparted) and wrestling with bootloader (I'm staring at you Grub, you fithly beast), its finally up and running. No time spent on reinstallation/confiruging either Windows or Linux, no data loss and loads of space with additional 100GB unused.

I used to enjoy this kind of stuff. Now I feel I'm getting too old for this.

To know

When you are a baby, 
    Swirling and swimming in joy,
         You don't need to know.
Then you reach teenage, 
    There is so much to live and see,
         And to know.
Slowly you get older, 
    Today is nothing what you dreamed it to be,
         And You wonder if you at all know.
At last you are frail, old and lonely,
    Life has shown you so much,
          You just don't care to know.

 
Well, what do I know.

Roots

The faint smell of yawning sunshine,
fills the idle stream,
In the shower of twirling dry leaves,
the wind rustles unruly green.
Amidst the wise old sanguine hills,
another of countless mornings unfolds,
I steal quiet sips from the calm cup,
aware yet helpless, watching,
the roots of Chiang Mai sink deeper in me.

Thailand-2

There is something intangible about this place that manages to draw one in - repeatedly. Someone asked me why go to Thailand again if I've already been there once. Come to think about it - thats counter-intuitive. Why would you not go to a place you like already?

Of the tangible things, I've been able to isolate a few things I really like. One of them are Wats. Wat is "Temple" in Thai. And they are simply stunningly, achingly beautiful. I come from a land of temples and my city is pretty much in the top 10. However, the sheer beauty of Thai temples just takes my breath away. The colors are incredibly vibrant and excellently co-ordinated with perfect contrast. Adding to that are the architectural aspects which are so integral to their beauty - the arches at the corners of the roof. They are distinctly Thai - Japanese arches are pretty but the slender fire-silhouette of the Thai arches is something I find most appealing and never tiring.

Another lovely aspect of the Wats are the people who visit them. Thais kneel down on their knees in front of Buddha with their hands in Namaste - but instead of keeping the hands in front of chest, they slightly bow their head with the hands slightly lifted to touch the forehead. Then while remaining on their knees, they bend down with the forehead touching the ground - thrice. Somehow the utter devotion and humility of posture is something I find unparalleled. Yesterday I spent almost the whole day visiting the Wats in the main Chiang Mai town. Initially my aim was to just get great snaps and I was doing my begrudgingly-delivered-quick-nod-to-god thing (old habits die hard). But as I kept visiting the Wats, I found myself adapting the posture. After a while, instead of just a case of when-in-rome-etc, it felt natural and the more I did, the better I felt. I also bought a little Bronze Buddha which is distinctly Chiang Mai design (atleast thats what the sincere-sounding seller-woman told me). Maybe there is a shred of religion still left in me. Or maybe I'm just getting old.

Anyway, I think the main barrier which I must overcome is that of language. I gotta learn the language. That would be a new start - both in a new language and re-discovering the place I've come to love.