Put on your dancing shoes and dance away your blues!

It's almost a year now since I started taking dance lessons. I wanted to learn salsa for a very very long time. I don't know why this particular form of dancing came to my mind but I am sure its mostly because of its fun and sensual nature. After searching a lot for a decent class, I found one close to my house. I was extremely apprehensive about the idea of me dancing. The reason was simple. I sucked at it! (I think I can say that I used to) It had actually come to a point where I had put it in my bucket list and made a resolution to learn it. I was googling away to glory when I chanced upon Conrad's dance class (www.conradcoelho.com). It was at Vashi, it was on a Saturday evening and you didn't require a partner to join the class. What else could I ask for?

I still remember the first day. Scared as shit I was. On reaching I realized that he starts with Ballroom Dancing (Rumba, cha-cha-cha, Rock-n-Roll, Waltz) and then after that had an option of either continuing with Ballroom or move on to Salsa. Though I wanted to start of with Salsa I thought of giving Ballroom a try. Now as I have mentioned before, dancing is not something I am comfortable with. To top that I had to do it with a girl. I didn't realize the graveness of the situation till I actually faced the situation or rather a girl :P I had heard of cold feet but I think I had probably gone cold all over. In fact I don't think I registered any of the girls I danced with. Being conscious was an under statement. It was more like being unconscious as far as I was concerned.

I thought I would be like a laughing stock out there. But fortunately all the guys sucked big time! Within the next couple of classes I felt at home. In fact I had also started looking at my partner while dancing. Though it wasn't before six months that I actually stopped looking at my feet and started looking up. By the end of Level 1, I had got pretty excited about Ballroom, to the extent that I went on to do Level 2.

Its been along time since then and I have now completed 2 levels of Ballroom, 3 levels of Salsa (LA Crossbody) and a Bachata workshop. Currently we are doing Casino Rueda which is basically a Cuban form of group Salsa where people dance in circles.

I swear to God, in certain aspects women are more intelligent than men, dancing being one of them. I know men who feel that dancing is nothing but epileptic attacks (Nabdu Anna) and for a long time I thought so too. Now I feel that I should have done this a long time ago. Its super fun, a good workout and a big stress buster. Though remembering all the dance steps is a tough job. I guess practice is the only solution and that is something I don't do much. That is something I need to work on.

Cliff Richard rightly sang, "Put on your Dancing Shoes, and dance away your Blues..."

PS : I am yet to do a public performance but I think the time is just not right, maybe one day soon :)

Ghost Adventures

I am slowly coming back to my usual routine life... office-home-gym. Almost missed gym thanks to Ghost Adventures on AXN but then pushed myself to go.

If I had to compare between Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures (both shows aired on AXN), I have to say that I prefer Ghost Adventures. This is one show that actually gives me an adrenaline rush watching it. Another show which is pretty scary is Haunting on Discovery (based on true reported cases though it is enacted). Ghost Hunters is a little more scientific and analytical in spite of the fact that they have got interesting footage too. GH tries to debunk hauntings and tries to explain the owners as to what could be the reason for the phenomenon, while GA is a little more dramatized. I do not know about how authentic GA is but GH is done by a recognized paranormal investigation group called TAPS (The Atlantic Paranormal Society). What can I say? I love watching horror films but its been quite sometime now that I have actually felt scared watching a movie. I am not talking about being startled. I mean actually sweating, heart beating faster, feeling anxious type scared.

I find it very difficult to concentrate nowadays. Its not like I am listless, just that my brain's meandering a lot. Can't seem to focus on anything for more than 10 minutes. I think I need to start meditating. Never have been very successful with it but I don't see a choice. Or am I confusing it with impatience? I can manage impatience if I start painting. hmm.... now I have got myself confused. Damn!

Polaroid Photos

Today has been a good day :) Work was good. I managed to get my mouse interaction with openGL canvas working! Yay!! A lot more work needs to go into it but it was exciting. It was really nice catching up with my ophthalmologist friend today. It was equally fun to take nabdu anna's case after that. hehehehehe!!!

Went to the gym after a long hiatus. Felt really good and was pretty happy to see that I had not gained much. Half a kilo is hardly any thing :P That's a figure I can live with.

I have always found Polaroid photos very interesting though I have never used one or had my picture taken in the format ever. I had tried to get it done yesterday but thanks to my great achievement I couldn't :P. Well I managed to get the Polaroid effect done today. I have attached the result for a preview. Not bad eh?I hope no one minds the tag though (not that I give a shit). I plan to make more of these and use on my site. I just might put them up here too just to get some feedback.

The problem with going to the gym is that I just don't get any time to do anything else. By the time I get back home it is 10:30pm and then there's hardly any time to do much :( I think I'll probably use my weekends to write something a little more interesting instead of my mundane day-to-day activities. Aching to write some heavy stuff.

The second thing that kinda bothers me is that I still haven't figured out exactly how much should go on the net. It seriously inhibits one's writing when one is not sure who his readers are and whether they know him personally. I have decided not to use any names (atleast for the time being) on the blog without prior permission. They would be referred to by absolutely random names. It's how in mathematics, we wanna talk about a value and we start by saying, "Let the number be X". Something similar :) The name doesn't matter.

Crashed Photoshop!

It feels good when you crash a software like photoshop. It feels better when you can reproduce the crash. That I haven't tried yet. Here I was, trying out a Polaroid effect on some photos and it crashes. Something tells me it probably ran out of memory but then they usually manage memory pretty well. The down side to it is that all my work went down the drain :( I had not saved the file at any point. Bummer! Gotto do it all over again tomorrow.

There are times in life when you wonder, "Is this thing that I am doing currently, going to be of any use in my life ever?". At such situations, your wildest imagination can't come out with any idea to convince you otherwise. But then again, life is wilder than your wildest imagination right? You never know what it's gonna throw at you. I have realized it through various incidents in my life, that whatever happens, happens for a reason. Whatever I have done will someday, somehow bail me out. There are times when the act is not as important as the lesson which basically accumulates as experience.

And "experience" is a safe word! You can include a lot of stuff within it, at times convincingly, and at others, just as a reassurance. Thing is, the "experience" does help you, the context being irrelevant. :)

PS: Got a pretty interesting idea for the cover page, but will have to wait till the weekend to actually attempt it

Interesting stuff at work :)

I skipped gym again :( I had planned not to but this heat is killing me! Anyways that is not the point of concern right now. The new prospective project at work is really getting me excited. I am actually pretty happy about the prospect of creating a GUI with elements of interactive designing, form filling and low level user validation. It'll also consist of a basic database with some sort of encryption (not decided on it yet though). The best part is I have no idea about the underlying science of the program for which the GUI is going to be made. Which makes it that more interesting cause I get to learn about a new topic! :D Joy!

I haven't been able to think much about the site today, though I think I should include a section on general fundas of life that I have found interesting. Its always nice to hear different view points on the same. Sometimes actually helps in understanding it better. I think the About Me section is going to be the toughest of the lot. I really get confused about the thin line between promoting one's self and losing all modesty and blowing one's own horn.

*Need to read up a bit on web-mining. I have always wanted to get a certain idea implemented but never got down to doing it. Gotto atleast find out if it is possible.

PS : Was watching X-Files:I Want To Believe, and it brought back so many memories of the X-Files series. I was a die hard fan. Was totally in love with Scully and wanted to be just like Mulder :) I should dedicate an entry to X-Files one of these days!

Stumbling at the start line!

I spent most of the day checking out personal sites of various people and also fundas regarding what and how one should be. End result... zit! null! void! I have realized that I have no idea what I should put up on the site. I have been juggling a few ideas but have not been able to focus on any one of them yet. I might just end up putting them all in. But then again I wouldn't want my stray visitors to get confused and never return again. I think it'll be sometime before anything gets up. I don't even want to start talking about the design (truth is there is absolutely nothing to talk about it :P)

Even though I said that I spent most of the day on it, I actually had guests coming over the whole day and as a result I have been shuttling between my computer and entertaining my guests. Which has got me seriously tired and with a new week starting tomorrow, I would like to start it fresh. And as my weekdays are sickeningly packed, leaving me with little time to do anything creative, (I plan to change this now), I seriously hope that I'll be able to blog and at the sametime work on a roadmap to get my site up.

www.shubhayu.com

Ever since I first learnt HTML (it was around 1999) and put up my homepage on Yahoo geocities, I always wanted to have my own site. It just seemed so elite and unachievable then. Well things have changed for the better and after a decade I suddenly had an urge to do it. Call it self indulgence or just ticking off another item from my bucket-list :)

So after a little looking around and contemplating whether I should just stick to the first-name or the complete name, I finally got my own site registered.... www.shubhayu.com.

I have still not made up my mind as to what I would actually put up on it and as a result, have not really sat and designed anything yet. Nothing compares to blogging as far as new content is concerned. So a link to my blog would always be there. It actually gave me the idea to use it as a sand box for my ideas and also track my website development.

So that is what I'll do, update the blog about all my evil plans concerning my website and also try and get back into the habit of writing. I have like 5 blogs lying around on the internet, all meeting their inevitable ends. I have decided to continue this one and give it a lease of new life :P

Lets see where this takes me, rather lets see how far this goes :)