The Soapbox » Travel http://www.niyogi.org/surojit Public ramblings (an anti-diary) Sun, 30 May 2010 05:59:38 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Intuition applied. http://www.niyogi.org/surojit/2007/04/13/intuition-applied/ http://www.niyogi.org/surojit/2007/04/13/intuition-applied/#comments Fri, 13 Apr 2007 00:28:46 +0000 niyogi http://www.niyogi.org/surojit/?p=63 Cleartrip has this great feature called Cleartrip Calendar and it’s damn easy to use.

You plug in your two cities of travel and it just generates the lowest price on all days.  I’m sure I could find this somewhere on the large US air travel sites but I think the simplicity of this site is unmatchable!

]]> http://www.niyogi.org/surojit/2007/04/13/intuition-applied/feed/ 0 Married and in Bangkok! http://www.niyogi.org/surojit/2007/02/11/married-and-in-bangkok/ http://www.niyogi.org/surojit/2007/02/11/married-and-in-bangkok/#comments Sun, 11 Feb 2007 16:21:53 +0000 niyogi http://www.niyogi.org/surojit/?p=48 Well – I’m married now and currently honeymooning in Bangkok.  (I know. I know. Only crazy people bring their laptops with them and blog on their honeymoon; fortunately, I got permission from my wife and we cut a deal which I won’t mention here. :-D )

I had a traditional Bengali wedding + reception (pictures to come soon although you can find a few taken by friend and Tripodian Soumyajit Batabyal here).  My mother flew in from Houston in late January to for a massive list of pre-wedding shopping and my father, brothers, girlfriend, and niece and nephew joined in early February.

Bengali weddings (and Indian weddings in general) are like big family projects – and their very nature determines whether or not the groom and bride are compatible.  Almost everyday I or my parents were in communication with Ritu’s (my wife) parents or brother discussing wedding plans.   We pulled it off smoothly but I’ve heard of cases with others where the weddings were called off at the last moment because of discrepencies and/or disagreements that precipitated during the wedding arrangements.

More (pictures) later!

]]> http://www.niyogi.org/surojit/2007/02/11/married-and-in-bangkok/feed/ 0 Da Vinci Code, and being back in Kolkata http://www.niyogi.org/surojit/2006/06/03/da-vinci-code-and-being-back-in-kolkata/ http://www.niyogi.org/surojit/2006/06/03/da-vinci-code-and-being-back-in-kolkata/#comments Sat, 03 Jun 2006 16:33:47 +0000 niyogi http://www.niyogi.org/surojit/?p=16 I am now back in Kolkata, India and am now being reminded just how hot and humid it can be here!  I believe I will be here for the next few months as I restructure the company to be more product development oriented (instead of being service-oriented).  There are many reasons for this – the largest being that employee attrition is just Too High.  It’s not really our fault.  Over the past week, I’ve received resignation notices from employees that are leaving our company for Hewlett Packard, Computer Sciences Corporation, and Mahindra British Telecom.

It’s flattering that they are heading to larger companies and are taking a step up as opposed to sideways or down but the question is: where does that leave us or what does it leave us with?  Services companies are made of people – if people are leaving to do bigger things at bigger companies, it’s just an uphill battle.  The goal is to get to products so that developers are designing and building software/SaaS applications that remain assets of the company even if the employee were to leave.  Building software is also just plain more exciting!

Business stuff aside, I went to watch The Da Vinci Code with two cousins of mine.  We all read the book already and I must say – what a lousy picture.  They cut out so much and it just didn’t flow like the book did.  Tom Hanks was a poor choice for Langdon although the dress sense and styling of his character was fairly impressive I thought.  My suggestion is that if you haven’t read the book yet but want to see the movie, go ahead and see the movie and then read the book to catch all the details that were left out.

]]> http://www.niyogi.org/surojit/2006/06/03/da-vinci-code-and-being-back-in-kolkata/feed/ 0 Disneyland, Sequoia National Park, and a little brain illusion http://www.niyogi.org/surojit/2006/05/22/disneyland-sequoia-national-park-and-a-little-brain-illusion/ http://www.niyogi.org/surojit/2006/05/22/disneyland-sequoia-national-park-and-a-little-brain-illusion/#comments Mon, 22 May 2006 08:19:14 +0000 niyogi http://www.niyogi.org/surojit/?p=13 Disneyland – a magical place that’s fun for the whole family; also a place where you can get a 20oz Diet Coke for $2.75 and all sorts of sugary treats (churros, cotton candy, and fruit-flavored slushes).  Overall, it was a splendid trip and we covered all that was humanly possible with a 4 1/2 and 3 year old in tow.  The trick is Fast Passes – if you don’t know how to use them, learn!  The Resort essentially implements a system that allows you to wait for rides without having to stand in line.

I’m too lazy to post a link to the tricks behind Fast Passes – but Google search and I’m sure you’ll find them.

My brother and I spent the entire day traveling between Los Angeles and San Francisco.  We detoured to Sequoia National Park which is home to the largest trees in the world.  We’re talking about trees with diameters the length of two SUVs that are pull nose-to-nose.  They are massive and majestic and there are hundreds of them just standing there.  It reminds me of the “trees” in Lord of the Rings.  Other than that it was a fairly rainy day, driving

Side visit was Moro Rock which is essentially a Vista Point in the Park at around 4000′.  A few shots are at the following link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/45331547@N00/

And to top off everything, how about a little optical illusion for you folks that take precious time out of your day to read this blog!  Try the following:

http://www.johnsadowski.com/2006/05/lil-color-illusion.html

]]> http://www.niyogi.org/surojit/2006/05/22/disneyland-sequoia-national-park-and-a-little-brain-illusion/feed/ 0 Disneyland, Los Angeles, and a $2,000 car http://www.niyogi.org/surojit/2006/05/20/disneyland-los-angeles-and-a-2000-car/ http://www.niyogi.org/surojit/2006/05/20/disneyland-los-angeles-and-a-2000-car/#comments Sat, 20 May 2006 05:39:11 +0000 niyogi http://www.niyogi.org/surojit/?p=12 Drove to Los Angeles with my brother and his family yesterday after finding a fantastic deal on a hotel on Priceline.com ($50/night at Hyatt Recency Disneyland Resort).  Picked up the parents from LAX and will be heading to Disneyland tomorrow.  I can’t tell if I’m too excited about going.  It’s a strange thing growing up; all of our innocence slowly vanishes as we experience the loss of trust whilst aging.  A side effect of this is that we lose our imagination as well.   Kids, however, are able to live it up and enjoy it to the max.  That is what tickles me the most and makes it all worth it.

Completely unrelated is a bit of news that managed to make Yahoo’s home page: Tata Motors (a very large company in India) is going to start manufacturing a $2000 car – and in West Bengal no less.  West Bengal is the far eastern state of India and home to Kolkata (a.k.a. Calcutta).  It’s also where my company resides too!  Considering the overly Marxist state of West Bengal, it is exciting to see these kinds of developments happen in Bengal.  Read more here:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060518/ap_on_bi_ge/india_people_s_car

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