How is it to be back to India?

Life is like that

It is going to be a month since I am back from Belgium. I was in Belgium for more than 4 years, so I cannot avoid comparing things between Belgium and India.

Probably India remains the same in many aspects, but I have changed. I am looking with different eyes.

I am staying with my sister’s family. When I get back home, there are people to talk to, make jokes and have fun, though the time is seldom more than an hour. My sister and her husband come home not earlier than 21h00. When I walk on the streets, the games that kids play are familiar. I can understand what they talk to each other. Anywhere I go, I dont have any language issues that I had in Belgium. The betterness of being here stops there. I am especially annoyed by the way people are treated. There is no respect for human life. May be it has to do with the huge population. Power or money or position commends respect. If you appear to have none of these, then forgot about being treated well. Even at office, I was asked to wait for three days before meeting my would-be project manager. No timing was given. “Just wait, whenever he has time, he will call you”. For god’s sake, I am an employee of this organization for 5 years. Bottomline, dont expect respect. If you get it, be happy. When I say thank you or just be polite, people look at me as an alien. They are amazed. I am relearning the concept of integration to be one with my own community.

Another day trip

Travel

As part of the deal, we went on our second trip yesterday. It was not that exciting as the one before.

We left at 5.30 in the morning. We reached Courtalam waterfalls at around 8. There was good waterflow, but heavy crowd. So we couldnt enjoy as that of in Thirupparapu falls.

After that we went to Papanasam. Here too there was only disappointment left for us. Due to heavy crowd, we couldnt go neither for boating nor under the falls.

Then we left to the town, Muttam in southern tip of India. This place became famous after a movie ‘Kadalorak kavithaigal’ was shot. But it became a symbol of danger as well. Too many people visited here. This town is on the coastal side with a ferocious sea. There are many rocks on the beach side as well. So the tourists wanted to climb on these rocks and pose for pictures. But time and again, so many of them fell into the sea and lost their lives.

When we went there, indeed we saw how beautiful the coast is and how ferocious the sea is. Now the police has made enough preventive measures to keep the crowd away from dangerous areas. (It is a pity to see one police acadamy student crossing these barriers to climb the rocks and posing for pictures) We sat on the beach and talked ‘family matters’. As usual we played on the water for a while.

We started back around 6 p.m. and reached home around 10 p.m.

Waterfall, Palace and Beach – One day trip

Travel

As we (my sister, her husband and I) came to my parents house we decided to go on a trip. Because my dad had to go for a wedding on Friday, we couldnt make a long trip. Rather we decided to make two one day trips.

We started at 5 in a Tata Sumo (an Indian Jeep). It was a comfortable vehicle for 5 people. It has two rows of seat facing front and another two seats perpendicular to these seats. We stopped for Tea at 6. Then we continued our journey. Our first stop was Thiruparappu water falls. We reached there at 8. It was right time. There was not much crowd. There was separate section for ladies and gents for shower. We took a long and pleasant shower. The water fell with force giving a feeling of a good massage.

After the shower, we left to Pechiparai Dam. The dam was completed in 1906. But it is a pity that there is no water at the moment. Then we left to Mathoor Thottipalam. It is the longest and the narrowest bridge that I have ever seen. There are 129 pillars for the bridge. The surroundings is full of banana and coconut grooves.

It was already 11 and we rushed to Padmanabapuram palace, which was built by kings who ruled Travancore region. It was completed and dedicated in 1744 AD. The palace is geographically situated in Tamilnadu but managed by state of Kerala. The palace ground is around 200 acres. The main attraction was the wooden carvings in each hall. The mirror for the queen was brought from Belgium. After spending enough time in the Palace, we proceeded to Kovalam beach in Kerala. There was not much of crowd when we went and we played in the water and had such a good fun. By around 4, crowd started coming in. We left the beach around 5 and started heading home. We reached home by 10.30 in the night. Albums are found in my home page (www.jjude.com)

Abusing parent’s PC

General

I installed all the software tools needed for programming in my parents PC including FOW. I installed firewall and anti-virus too (one good act compensates other abuses). I created three albums – Italy, Paris and Holland. I wanted to create one for Belgium. Having stayed for four years I have accumulated hundreds of photos and choosing what to publish is difficult. So that is for a later time. You can view the albums from my homepage – www.jjude.com.
If possible I will install linux as well in this PC.
Today my sister and her husband are coming to my parents house. I am not sure whether my sister will permit me continue the abuse (she wants to play PC games).

FOW continues in its popularity. Now it is one of the top 100 freewares in webattack.com. I modified the styles and CSS to get little bit professional look. If time permits, I will create more CSS.

Finally there is something working

General

After so many things going wrong, I made this blog working. I will post here time to time what I am doing (except what I am doing with those Indian cuties 🙂 )

There are two reasons behind this blog. I always wanted to write. So this will be a holding place for my thoughts, and a practice ground for my writing. Second, it is difficult to type the same information about what I am doing and what is happening in my life to all the friends. Here I can put in the common things, so that if they want they can follow it. Then when I type a mail to a friend, I can describe those special things.

With so many changes in my life recently, I am not sure how far I can keep with this idea. Hopefully I can continue it with frequent updates.