Weathering the storm

I’ve been bitching about the weather here in Perth for the past few months but learned a lesson on Monday. There has been a lot of stuff on the web about this, but I thought I’ll write a small account on my experience just for the sake of it. So here goes.

I was in the office being my usual busy self. At about four in the afternoon the power was fluctuating so I left early. This is only because I didn’t want to damage any of the computers and not because I didn’t want to work anymore :-). All the traffic lights were out from the office to the freeway, but I was able to get on the freeway pretty quickly. Once on the freeway, I have to drive past the city and there’s always bumper-to-bumper traffic out of the city at this time. As soon as I pass the city, the rain started. First, it’s pretty ordinary then it starts getting more and more furious. In about 5 minutes the rain is pummelling down so hard that I can barely see 10 feet in front of me. Then it started.

Bang, bang, bang. Hailstones started hitting the car. Huge hailstones are falling all over the place like crazy. It’s like someone is throwing rocks at the car. I was freaking out not knowing what to do. Should I keep going? Should I stop and try to take shelter? BANG, BANG. The hail is now much bigger and consequently the noise they make much louder. I must say it is the most scared I’ve ever been in my life. I was so sure that the windscreen would break at anytime. I could even see hailstones hitting the windscreen and break into small pieces. I kept on going since I could see the clouds breaking up ahead. A few more minutes of this and the rain and hail eased up and I felt so relieved. By this time I had reached to the exit on the freeway. Ah, only 2km to home.

I take the exit and before getting far there’s a huge number of hailstones spinning around like a tornado. I had to literally drive through it and was freaking out even more than before. Luckily these hailstones were much smaller than the ones that hit the car before. There’s zero visibility but I somehow managed to keep going. As soon as I pass the tornado like thingy it’s calm again. Before long I got home and breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Turns out it was a good thing I left the office when I did. The cars that were left in the office car park looked like someone had taken to them with a hammer. There are a few dents on the hood and bonnet of my car as well. But they are almost insignificant compared to what some of the other cars looked like.

All in all it was a very exciting experience. Although it was nothing major like a Tsunami or earthquake the damage from this storm is in excess of a hundred million dollars. I must commend the locals for being very patient on the roads in the midst of the storm. I like to think of it as prelude to 2012.

Should have been a duet

‘Oba Hinda’ the follow up hit to ‘Chanchala’ is a pretty cool song. Iraj has done a brilliant job with the composition and Samitha does a good job on the vocals. But there has always been something that bothers me about it. No, it’s not the inappropriate product placement in the music video. It’s just that this song was written to be a duet – the lyrics make it so obvious. I can’t see why they decided to do it as a solo ‘cos it would have been so much better as a duet. Oh well, you ‘ve got to live with what you get. Here’s the vid:

from behind….

Well, the weather here in Perth has been terrible with this being the hottest summer on record ever. EVER. I mean what’s up with that? Did that have to happen when we are here? Grrrr….

Anyway, that’s all the whining about the weather, for now. This is about something that happened last week. I was driving down the street after work, on my way to the Chiro. Now, don’t go imagining that I am a pansy for going to the Chiro. I went to see one after years of lower back pain and failing everything else. Turns out it’s a good thing I went ‘cos he found that my spine has a small bend to one side in middle and this in turn was causing the lower back pain. So he will fix the problem in the middle and it will fix the pain OR so he says and keeps taking my money for ‘adjustments’. But I digress.

So as I was saying, I was on my way to the Chiro after work. There was a the usual after work busyness and I was coming up to stop light carrying a little too much speed. The car in front of me stopped and I had to slam on the brakes to stop without hitting it. But I got a feeling things weren’t quite right and looked up at the rear-view mirror to see the car behind me coming up and hitting me. Well, hitting my car that is. BAH… The second time I was in a road accident, (the other being just after getting my license in SL. And technically this would be the third time if I count the time I backed up dads car into a pole) and the first here in Kanga land. I didn’t really get excited, turned the engine off, stepped out and just went around to see what the damage was – imagining the worst. The guy who had hit me was looking distraught and apologizing profusely. There’s broken glass and plastic pieces all over the ground and the front of his car looks, well, like a car wreck.

So expecting the worst I take a look at my car and viola there’s no damage at all. You see I have a tow bar on my car. Which means his car took all the impact and mine was fine (well not ‘all good’, but in much the same condition as it was before.) Here see:

So the bottom line is that you SHOULD get a tow bar attached to your car. Even if you never plan to ever tow anything, ever. In fact, residents of the land of the lions should get a few of ’em. Well what are you waiting for? Go get your tow bar.

Who visited your FB profile?

Facebook or FB is the one and only social networking site that I’m on (and it is quite enough). Like anything in this world FB has its pros and cons. A lot of crazy stuff happens on FB all the time and I saw one that’s crazier than usual.

I’ve noticed a lot of people joining groups such as the following, and then inviting me to join too.

• Petition to receive notification when someone visit your profile
• PETITION FOR FACEBOOK INSTALL APLICATION FOR WHO VISIT YOUR PROFILE
• Who Visited Your Profile? Get a Notification Everytime!

Now why would I care who visited my profile? It’s there on a public place for other people to see. That was the whole point of creating a public profile. I simply don’t get why anyone would create a public profile and not want other people to see it?!?

It also adds another complication to my usual FB roaming. I have a habit of randomly visiting profiles of my friends to see if they’ve been up to anything interesting and also look for new material for my album ‘Mud glorious mud’ :-). However, such roaming now comes under scrutiny due to the whole ‘who visited my profile’ thing. Then again, what are they going to do? Sue me? Fat chance.

In conclusion, this post really has no point to it. I am just writing to keep myself from falling asleep at work today. But, I will be glad to find out the motivation to request for/add a ‘who visited my profile’ tool after creating a public profile…

Voting, Doomsday and Weather conspiracy

During the past week I spent a lot of time promoting Educate Lanka for the chase community giving program. Well, that sort of fell through with Educate Lanka getting only about 9000 votes (while the winners got ~100,000). Funny how so many people jump at the opportunity to take all sorts of nonsense quizzes, ask Aunt Anita for advice and vote for politiccas on virtual polls but cant bother to spend half a minute to cast a vote that will help an underprivileged student. I know they call the land of lions a developing nation but with this sort of attitude it’s probably an un-developing country. But, it’s not the end of the world.

Speaking of the end of the world, 2012 is the hot Armageddon topic these days. Apparently, the Aztec calendar ends in 2012, so the world will also end. Of course this isn’t the first time us humans predicted doomsday and I have a feeling it won’t be the last. On the bright side, if the world does end in 2012 we won’t have to wait around for global warming to wipe us out. That’s a consolation, right?

Global warming or not, it’s hot as hell in Perth. It’s summer time here in Aussi land (yes, the weather patterns are up-side-down here – among other things) and a terribly hot one at that. What bothers me is that the heat reaches a maximum during the weekends and it cools down on weekdays. Last weekend it reached 43 degrees and then it dropped down to 20s and 30s after Monday. This weekends’ forecast says it’s going to be the high 30s and it will be humid as well. It will again drop down on Monday. Why can’t it be hot on the weekdays (when I’m at work and inside an air conditioned office) and cold on the weekends (when I’m at home with just a fan). So, my grand conspiracy theory is that the air-con companies have control over the Perth weather. Do you agree? Leave a comment to let me know.

Wish everyone a nice and cool weekend.

’tis the season to be ……

jolly? Doesn’t seem like it. Sure you don’t have to go to work for a little while but you’ve got heaps of other stuff to do. Getting suitable gifts for the family, visiting family, wining and dining, the works. At least everyone else is. But not me, I’m at home without a thing to do and it is a bit boring. Nothing to do but watch movies and TV all day long.

This sort of got me wondering how hard it is for a good time to come by around here. Back in the good old land of the lions you just had to go down to the grounds and there was a good chance some people will be there and you can join in on whatever game they were playing. But here you have to make appointments for everything, sport included. To make matters worse, both my social and club touch rugby teams (which I have made appointments with) aren’t playing in the next couple of weeks. Those guys had better things to do unlike me. 😦

So, I guess I’ll have to make the best of now. Maybe, I’ll update my website. Something I’ve been putting off for quite some time now. Anyway, looking back 2009 has been quite bleak at most. I do hope 2010 will be a better year.

I wish everyone a very happy new year.

Hello world!

Well, here we go……….. I thought I’ll leave the title alone as it is the first thing all programmers write 😀

With this post I join the millions of other people who own a blog!! yippeee……..

With thoughts of writing something interesting soon, I’ll wrap up this small Hello to the World.