It's a Love-Hate Relationship.

With Firefox that is. Although I love Firefox and prefer it over You-Know-What for nearly-infinite reasons still sometimes I feel like kicking Firefox on its behind, an idea that would have surely materialised if Firefox had been a walking-talking personality and not just code that patiently waits to be ordered around by the person sitting at the keyboard. Now, why would I hate Firefox when over 70 million people sing its praise? Well, for some reason Firefox doesn't come (atleast the one I have didn't) preloaded with an eclectic array of plugins that are required to tranquilly display a website and not irritating boxes that innocently tell the user to download that particular plugin. As I am too impatient (perhaps lazy too) to download each and everyone of those plugins, I usually switch over to You-Know-What Ver. 6 that predictably devoids the need to download plugins and displays the website without any ado.

Condoning such trivial issues in Firefox, I would like to share with you one of my more positive experiences with the same. Football fanatic that I am, I usually feel the need to know the scores while I am at my PC. So, I downloaded the Firefox-Google-Joga Fifa World Cup enhancement for my Firefox. This enhancement not only displays the scores in the taskbar but also provides a serene football theme to it. Also, whenever someone gets a Card or some match begins, it pops up a window that proclaims the same. It all happens in real time and accentuates the dynamic nature of Firefox.

-| AG.

The Baby. The Party. And the SAT Score.

Many interesting and blog-able things took place over the week and I must say that it has been perhaps the most blog-able week, what with my cousin having a girl child, me attending a very entertaining rain dance (yes, I actually danced in artificial rain) and the announcement of the notorious SAT scores.

Beginning with the baby, it is a very cute, lively and tiny thing I have ever seen. Once you stand beside her crib, you simply cannot move off without snapping a couple of photos and recording a couple of videos. As of now, she has been named (and rightly so) as "cutie pie" and her actual name is yet to be decided upon. I suggested a couple of, erm, un-common names: Tarini and Himangini (both of whom I know personally, so it wasn't such a brain racking job to comfortably suggest the most unique names from the lot). Her mother and the baby were moved out of the hospital (or should I say "nursing home") yesterday and both are healthy and fine.

Moving on to the Rain Dance (which took place on Saturday at Vasant Vihar Club): it was an event which was decided to be attended at the last minute, when I stepped into the house at 8 pm (after gym) and distractedly suggested to my parents that we can attend the Rain Dance which is supposedly a worth visiting event. So, after a hurried change of clothes we left at 8:30 and found ourselves in the Club. Although I was intially reluctant of dancing under the towering sprays, but when I came back to the "dancing area" after looking around, I saw my parents dancing so I plunged in as well. And it really was refreshing and invigorating. I danced with my mother (my father kept dropping out of the "Rain" to take pictures) for the next hour till a "walk the ramp" segment started in which 7 guys and 7 girls (chosen from the crowd) were made to walk and dance on the ramp in order to compete for a couple of stupid titles. On the whole, it was a memorable event.

Now, the SAT I scores which were announced just yesterday. I got 700/800 in Critical Reading and Math. The National Percentiles being 90% in both, which actually means that I am in the top 10% of all the people who gave SAT. I was expecting way more in Math. Anyway, they are okay for me.

-| AG.

I said there will be a post on Robots. I lied.

Car lessons began a few days ago after a week's delay and I finally get to drive around town at 60 Kmph. 4 days into the lessons and I can already drive smoothly without any apprehension about breaking the gear by changing it without pressing the clutch. By now, I have cruised around (in the Learning Car, ofcourse; without the Learner's License, ofcourse) India Gate, Shanti Path, Vasant Vihar, Saket, etc. Let's just say that actually driving a car on road is way off than driving it on a PSP. On a PSP you don't have to worry about getting deported after snuffing up someone. When I asked my driver-teacher about it ("What would happen if I rammed someone's car while learning?"), he distractedly assured me by saying, "Satija will take care of it". Anyway, on the whole it has been a memorable experience and lets hope my father allows me to drive the family cars (1 Indigo, 2 Esteems) soon.

In other news, I bought a Nokia N70 and it was worth every penny spent. For the un-initiated, what makes this mobile really articulate is its twin cameras (one on front, other on the back). Although the front camera isn't very clear still it is useful while taking pictures of yourself; and Nokia programmers have rightly named the behind camera as the "main" camera. Apart from the cameras, the mobile is useful in other ways as well (Yahoo Go!, Mobile Blogging, for instance). The picture and video quality is excellent, and I really mean it: It is excellent. I recently recorded a better part of the Ecuador vs. Costa Rica match (from TV to Mobile) and while watching it on the mobile, it seemed like I was watching it on a camcorder. Perhaps this makes the mobile's worth of Rs. 18,000.

- AG.

This old, tattered copy.

I recently went to Himachal Pradesh, and to Chandigarh on the way back. The trip was originally supposed to be one of my father's business-car-trips but he decided to pull me and mom in this time, so that we could "enjoy" HP. Himachal sucks. Thats the only conclusion I come upon after spending 1 day in a deserted hotel which sits facing the road which is frequented only by majdoors and juki-jopri wallas. Anyway, the trip wasn't such a waste because we went to Chandigarh on the way back, and as most of you must already be knowing, Chandigarh is a nice place. A nice standard place with a lot of nice girls. Father had some work in sector 17 and while searching this particular sector, I enjoyed myself by inwardly laughing at my driver's pronounciation of "17" as satara. While Dad spent his time at the office, me and mom looked around the shopping area. We went to a nice fast food resteraunt and ordered pizza and burger. After eating, we looked around a bit more and I bought The Godfather from a sidewalk seller. Yes, I am referring to this novel as the "old, tattered copy" which it indeed is. I am just glad that none of its pages are missing for that would have spoiled the fun of reading this intriguing classic. The novel comprises of 9 sections which have been categorized by the author as "Books". It tells the story of Don Vito Corleone and his powerful Italian Mafia Family settled in the New York City. The book is highly interesting and I must advise each and every one of the voracious readers to devour it in peace. I would advise the soft readers to keep off it as some of the incidents in the book are pretty brutal. Sarkar is loosely based on this epic and now that I am in the middle of completing this book, I am looking forward to watching its critically-acclaimed movie version.

A bit about Mission Impossible III:
In sweltering heat, I went to watch the highly anticipated Mission Impossible 3 with my brother. PVR Priya was swarming with teenagers, all lining up to watch M:i:III. I met a lot of my friends from school. The movie was good and sported a Lost theme, which was to be expected of J. J. Abrams, who is the creater of the same. With an enigmatic start, the movie soon rolled into action, with Cruise jumping around either shooting or cutting wires or wearing masks. It is a nice movie and I would recommend any Cruise / M:i fan (or otherwise) to go and watch it.

- AG.