Ice Skating

This is wat I was doing tis weekend, we.. that is a couple of guys from IDC along with whole lot of other IT people from India went for Ice skating. I must say it looks a whole lot easier than it is, sure walkin on solid ground is easy and “walking” on ice with the skates is relatively easy too. It gets tricky when you actually try to skate, I was doing well with the first two.. without even falling down but then I got bored since I was not getting any of the high speed thrill which the others are experiencing. So I tried actual ice skating, final result being that I can now skate at a slow speed and that I can get up on my own after falling down (something which I did around 6-7 times). I have none of the natural look (which I guess will take a while) instead a I look more like an active Penguin, as they say practice makes perfect.. so looks like I will be going for it again.

After Ice skating we went to an Indian restaurant, during the time we were there I actually tot tat I was back in India (never heard so much Hindi here in Germany). Then it was back to the apartment n a bottle of wine.

Today .. I finally realised that falling down on my hand all the time took its toll since my left hand still feels quite numb. So today was more of a “resting” day for me.

Madrid!!

 Ola!!.. This entry is more of a travel description.. since I ve to tell it to many people.. better for em to read bout it. Last weekend I went to Madrid… as usual i was stuck wit work as soon as I came back.. and really lazy.. which is the reason y tis blog entry is rather late.. anyway back to madrid..

We (as in me me n my colleagues) went to Madrid on Lufthansa on Friday. .. the flight was delayed…we reached our hostel around 2am.. surprisingly the roads were still teeming with people.. yup.. the city has got a pretty gud nite life.. Nearly as soon as we touched down we came across the biggest problem in spain.. hardly anybody over there knows english.. The same can be said bout the germans n the french… though the problem is MUCH worse in spain (in Germany few people know english.. in France people know english but wont speak it..n in spain people just dont seem to knw english). On arriving at the airport we got our first communication problem (a problem which was there throughout the trip) at the ticket counter for the metro. I must also say that the spanish are VERY helpful people.. else we wudnt have gotten the ticket at all.

anyway on reachin the hostel we decided to call it a nite.. the gud thing bout the hostel was tat 1) the guy there spoke english..2) it was a coed hostel 3) the room price 4) you meet people from all over the world.  I can only recommend staying in a hostel.. since they are pretty ok.. n fr the 4 points mentioned above. The next day we decided to see old Madrid.. so we went on a walking tour of the old city.. where we saw tis n tat (lots of old historical buildings n churches which had mix of arab n christian architecture). After the tour we went to a restaurant to have tapas.. its the local..pre lunch snack.. the lunch in spain is considered as late n loooong lunch lunch (more on tat later). After the tapas we went back to Plaza Mayor..where some sort of rally was being held..during tat same week they were celebrating the rights for gays n lesbians in the city…maybe the rally was bout tat but cudnt be sure coz there were many foreigners there in their traditional clothes. Next we headed for lunch which was an adventure in itself coz we had no clue wat we were ordering or wat we were told.. when we ordered Paella we guessed that it wud take some time.. didnt have a clue tat it wud take 45mins… we cudnt even tell anything properly to the waiter.. none of the other guests in the restaurant knew english either..( i guess tis wud be kind of the scenario if I went eating in the old city of hyderabad-no wonder tat i never go there). After lunch we were walking around and went to the Palacio Real (Real in spanish seems to mean royal.. so think bout Real Madrid)  and the Cathedral de Ntra. We then went walkin … n ended up in burger king where I learned the hard way the meaning of Chicko n chicka..coz i ended up going to the girls bathroom. When I came out there were like 15 girls out there shoutin like crazy.. one of em was nice enough to point out tat I was in the wrong place after seeing my shocked expression. We then took a bus to see some of the sights of the city by nite such as fountains n the like. We also headed to the Hostel bar where I got introduced to Sangria for the first time.. I was told it was wine.. but its awesome!! Its cool.. sweet n delivers a kick. We then went to a Flamenco bar to take a look at the spanish dance form.. (weird thing is.. i cannot see me tryin to do the same with Bharatnatyam) where I had Sangria again (i must say again tat I like the stuff – though on the last day i came to knw tat there is vodka along wit the wine.. but who am i to complain) we then tried to hit a nite club only to realise that we werent dressed for the part(which was possibly the only disappointing thing about the trip) – but seriously.. who wud expect u to carry around leather shoes when u r on a vacation?

The next day we went to the fleamarket.. one of the most crowded places I have seen in the city. Then saw some of the city sights n finally headed to the Prado museum. I m not much of an art guy.. but some of those paintings were cool!! We also noticed that the city isnt so big.. even though there are lots of metro stations.. we usually walked from one location to the other without realising that we cud have taken the metro.. but then of course we wudnt have seen the city.

Next stop was the Real Madrid stadium were we tried to get tickets for the Real Madrid – Mallorca match.. unfortunately we missed out by 5mins .. coz they closed the counters by then. We then headed back to the hostel where we decided ot retire in the bar.. n listen to the band n down a couple of Sangrias. The next day we went back to the Real Madrid stadium to take part in the tour.. we then went to the Plaza de Torros the place where the bull fights are held…unfortunately.. the season was over.. so we had to be content wit seein the bull statues outside.. n then headed to Retiro Park. the park is just another big park.. nothin special bout it..I kinda like the van which was parked in front it from “Bago.es”.. its a spanish community site which did its promotion by puttin a girl in the van for one week and removing her from the outside world .. with  the exception of internet and connection via the Bago site..so for one week she had to do everythin in the van,,from cookin to sleepin …to takin a shower.. n the van was made of glass so the public cud watch her(except the shower section of course). There was also a local rock group playin outside the van.. so it was kind of a charged atmospere. We then headed back to the hostel n retired for a while in the bar before callin it a day. The next morn it was back to Frankfurt. Where we were greeted with low temperatures n a grey sky… after all I forgot to mention that that the weather was gud over there..sunny n warm.. as long as we were not walkin in the shade. 

I also got a renewed interest in learning french now.. 1) coz knowing the french numbers helped me a bit when shoppin

2) dont wanna get into a language problem when I head to France.

As for the next trip… hmm maybe its gonna be Belgium or Amsterdam in a couple of weeks

The accompanying pics are here http://picasaweb.google.com/robinson.george/Madrid10th12thNov?authkey=ds0ay6k8Tb0 

Gracias!! Adios!!

Dubbed movies

I hate dubbed movies, in fact I used to laugh at the fact that Hollywood movies are dubbed into languages such as Tamil and Telugu and released in Theaters (in fact I still find it funny), but these days its more of a past tense. Here all movies are dubbed, I mean all Hollywood movies are dubbed into german and released here. In fact the dubbing was so good that when I was smaller I used to think that the Hollywood movies are being made in German.. came as a shock when I realised the truth after returnin to India. Well… in my opinion dubbing Hollywood movies into German is still OK…(whereas it it weird when the same happens for an Indian language.. twisted logic… that I agree). Maybe I attribute this to the fact that whenever somebody comes to Germany he/she is kinda expected to know the language, whereas the same is not exactly true in India.. been there for half my life and still cant speak any of the regional languages barring Malayalam which is more or less my mothertongue (survival in other states is purely based on english and courtesy of my many friends who know the language..at least hindi..which is also not added to my list of languages though I am working on it)

Now however come the killer, I do not knw to apply this to Bollywood movies coz yesterday for the first time I saw a Bollywood movie “Kaal” dubbed into german and broadcast on TV. The dubbing was gud, and seemed kinda natural to me, of course the use of certain german expressions in the dialogues which I wudnt expect in India seemed weird. But who knows.. since I cudnt understand the original version, maybe those dialogues are there.But this was probably the only time that I’ve ever seen a hindi movie on my own .. and understood at the same time without the help of subtitles.

So maybe I shud change my attitude on dubbed movies, but I still hate the fact that in Hyderabad dubbed Hollywood movies are being released before the Original English version, I dont care it is to “increase” the sale of the dubbed version, which is just a load of crap, if they wanna release the dubbed version at least at the same time as the english version, by this I dont mean that the english version shud be delayed!

I have already seen to “german” Hollywood flicks while I was here: “Chuck und Larry – Durch Feuer und Flamme” and ”Nach 7 Tagen Ausgeflittert” which wud be “I now pronounce you Chuck and Larry” and “The Heartbreak Kid” respectively. Both movies are comedies… which target sensitive topics. I expect the movies to be shortened when ad if they reach the Indian screens, also considering that there is no dubbing required in India for these films I may already be late and the movie has already been screened there (in its shortened format)…damn do I hate the censor board. 

OpenSUSE 10.3

Ever since I got my hands on the new version of OpenSUSE I’ve been trying to get a system to install it on. My own system is running 10.2 but is a couple of thousand kilometers away from me. So little wonder that I volunteer to all my friends that I can install it in their system IF they want it… I always accompany this offer with a video of linux running berly/compiz. The first attempt was a major disaster ..

I tried it on a Macbook..only to realise that a Macbook doesnt even have a regular button to enter the BIOS where I can change the Boot option. So I tried it by using the Mac software (Boot Camp)..which was also missing on that machine and which we cudnt find to download anywhere (I know that it is a default install with the Leopard release.. but I cudnt find it for Tiger.. since Apple decided to replace the free download with a link to their new OS download site). So much for the freedom to choose which OS you want…  Granted that the OS X Leopard @129Euro is a steal when compared to Windows Vista Basic which starts somewhere at 299Euros with free bugs. For the time being the project of dual booting a Macbook is on hold until I can get my hands on Bootcamp for the Tiger release of OS X.

Next attempt was on my friends Laptop running Windows.. which I had only recently reinstalled…it was sooooo slow.. that after opening 5 windows its best that you shut it down….which is Anyway, here I got a chance to install the system from scratch .. so I made sure that I left ample space for Linux when the time comes.. I agree that 15GB is overkill.. but u never know. Currently my friends system is installed with Windows in German (the importance of this comes later) and nothing else.. some Internet apps.. but not even MS Office..You must realise that here everybody ACTUALLY pays for their software.

So.. on to Linux.. I installed it on this machine. Installation was easy..configuration however is not. Since my friends Laptop has some kind of softkey to enable the WLAN… I was not able to configure the internet access. Donno where to get the drivers for that softkey from. The graphics drivers which were installed during the installation process were jacked up, the screen was continuously flickering and it was not able to get the correct width of the screen (which shud have been 1280), instead the right part of the screen was cut of and left black. I downloaded the latest drivers from the ATI site and tried installing them.. no success so far, however after a couple of restarts the system managed to get the display in order on its own (with no 3D acceleration support however).. I wish I knew what I did to get that result. Once OpenSUSE started displaying stuff properly I noticed a couple of things immediatly:

1. Boot time is much lesser than in 10.2

2. Compiz is part of the package now, no separate download required like in 10.2, also.. there is a help on the basic compiz controls available. I wonder how Compiz can run without 3D acceleration?

3. OpenSUSE still cannot write stuff into a NTFS partition, it can read for sure, but now all the Windows partitions are effectively wasted from the Linux point of view when it comes to saving stuff.

4. Even though I installed openSUSE in German, the language support is only semi-supported. U suddenly see popups or message boxes which are in English.

 On the whole I think that it was more of a success.. since openSUSE already comes installed with an Office application, and since my friend hasnt installed Office in windows yet.. he might switch over..for him its all about eyecandy.. of which Compiz has plenty . As for me, I still need to figure out how to get internet and hardware support working on that machine.. if any of u got any bright ideas.. please let me know. 

Ruedesheim at last!!!

Ever since I came to Germany and 2 months before that (where I dreamt about coming to Germany) I knew that I had to visit Ruedesheim am Rhein, the place where I spent my life till 1994 before a twist of fate relocated me to India. Finally I managed to make the trip last Saturday. I went with a couple of friends to Ruedesheim.

First thing I noticed while on route (we drove with the car), was that the scenic beauty was fabulous, the fact that it was autumn and that the leaves changed color also helped. The second thing I noticed that the drive from Wiesbaden to Ruedesheim is rather short another thing I noticed is that I’ve never before stayed awake for the entire trip.

The town in itself hasnt changed much, it seems much smaller than I remember, cud also be tat my perspective was different then since I was smaller. The apartment building where I used to stay has been repainted, also Elektoglock has been replaced by a Turkish vegetable shop. I tried to meet Berndt, our previous landlord, no luck there since he wasnt in. I wasnt the only one who was full of memories… its been a while for my Friend as well.. since he hasnt been to Ruedesheim since we moved.

We next went walking along Geisenheimer Str to the church. Along the way we noticed that the place where HL used to be has been replaced with some sort of a Galleria. The Opel Showroom is now selling bed cots. The tree which used to be in front of Plus is gone and replaced by a younger still growing one. The photoshop and optics shop on Geisenheimer Str have been replaced with a restaurant.

Once we reached the Church area it was almost like time stood still, the entire area looked the same. I went to the church, where I was the first foreign alter boy, yeah.. i used to be a good god fearing kid back then . We next went to the towncenter.. just outside of the church where I tried Gluehwein, the first time that I drank hot wine, “hot” as in Temperature. Next we went to a wineshop where I wanted to buy a bottle of Asbach Uralt, its a wine brand which is produced in Ruedesheim, since we were small kids back then these things were denied to us, so I tot let me buy a bottle and enjoy it with my Bro when I am back in India. In the shop I got into an argument with the shopkeeper whether the biggest Asbach Uralt bottle is a 5L(I was sure it this) or a 3L. Will have to confirm the same again by checkin at home. If I am wrong I blame it again on the perspective thing.

Next we were walking along Rhein str., I also bought a box of choco which is filled with Asbach Uralt, one of those other things which were denied to us when we were smaller. We finally ended up in Drosselgasse, one of the most happening areas in town during tourist season (did i mention that Ruedesheim is a tourist town??). There I went to the Drosselhof, the place where my Dad used to work. I decided to have a Ruedesheimer Kaffee, which is against all naming conventions, a coffee with a large amount of Asbach Uralt in it and topped with Sahne (cream). Now I also know what the Porcelain Icecream mugs at home are used for. He was in fact surprised to see me there and was wondering whether I did not return to India (as I like to say.. I’ve come full circle now). 

We even had a plan of taking the Seilbahn to the Niederwald Denkmal (Statue), had to opt out of it since it was already late. I made a quick stop at one of my old classmates place and then it was a return trip to Wiesbaden.

The decision to have dinner was solved easily coz we opted to eat typical German, the problem was getting the food, so we ended up going to 3 restaurants before we finally found a place, where I had Schweizer Schnitzel which I must say I like more than the Wiener variety.

It was a great day and at the end I realised a few things:

1. I still know my way in Ruedesheim with my eyes closed.

 2. Coming to India was probably one of the greatest decisons my parents ever made.. provided I get to come back to Germany again.

3. I’ve to figure out this perspective thing, a lot of things are a lot smaller than I remember.

I will be uploading the pics …

Here are the pics: http://picasaweb.google.com/robinson.george/RuedesheimMyOldHometown