I am (on) roaming!
Visited Matheran, Goa, Sinhagad in pune, toka near nevasa and am currently in Bangalore. Out of which I had only been to Goa and Sinhagad before.
What I liked about Matheran was its unique red soil, its proximity to nature and the beautiful artifacts you get there.
I also got a chance to ride a horse for the first time in my life and although scary I loved it. He was a 3 year (looked quite huge for its age) old, jet black horse and was carrying people from only last six months (His inexperience scared me even more). I learned some tacts about riding a horse.
The horses were busy working, carrying tourists up and down the Matheran hill, while monkeys and chipmunks didn't have to worry about their food with the tourists feeding them (directly or indirectly). Lots and lots of these animals, least bothered about the tourists around.
Even though there were pictures of a variety of birds on the way uphill, I didn't get to see any of them.
I guess I need to spend more time in Matheran to be able to get to see those birds. The only thing I missed was the toy train ride and thats okay I guess coz I had already spent 24 hrs in train a day before and there were 48 hrs of train journey ahead of me in the coming few weeks.
The Goa trip was a laid back one, with time spent going to beaches and staying there the whole day. The beach looks lovely at night with moonlight shimmering over the water, the music of the waves, cool breeze giving you chills, the warmth of a friends talk, catching up with her and pondering over life...the past and the future. I tasted ice cream soda (chocolate flavor) for the first time after my friend had boasted about it for quite some time by now, and I liked it moderately. I had a very bad cold a day before and I guess the ice cream soda, ice pani puri and lots of other junk food cured it [:D]
The reason why I mentioned Sinhagad, although it was a very short trip was, nature was at its best when we were climbing up. We did not trek, coz we had no time and no energy, however the trip was worthwhile. I do not like what they have done on top of Sinhagad, with loads of tents of people selling eatables at soaring prices. The place dosen't look like having anything to do with history coz whatever is left of the fort is overshadowed by these tents. So what I did like about visiting the place was when we stopped on our way up, we saw the view below and it was amazing. We were amist clouds, it was drizzling a bit and everything looked so beautiful.
I went to Ahmednagar after this, my home town. From there I went to toka with my family. Toka is near nevasa around 2 hrs from Ahmednagar. There was a bhajan arranged there in a small temple. It was a small temple, where Meher Baba stayed for some while and nothing much is left of it now besides a small hut. To reach that place we had to travel through fields and small pathways taken by cyclists and pedestrians and cows, buffalo, sheep etc. We had to cross a river in a boat to finally reach the temple.
Well and now I am in Bangalore.
I came here for attending a summer school organized by Microsoft Research in Program analysis and verification. The workshop is held in Indian Institute of Science (IISc). This is the first research related workshop I have ever attended and I am very impressed by the way it is held. One out of the two weeks of the workshop is over and we had lectures by 3 prominent researchers of the field. The other 3 will be giving lectures in the coming week.
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June 16 Preparatory lectures
June 17 – 21
* Shaz Qadeer, Taming Concurrency: A Program Verification Perspective
* Dan Grossman, Programming-Language Motivation, Design, and Semantics for Software Transactions
* Jeff Foster, Improving Software Quality with Type Qualifiers
(Today is 22nd [:)], So I can say I am here on the time line [:P] )
June 23 Preparatory lectures
June 24-28
* Tim Harris, Implementing Software Transactions
* Nikolaj Bjorner, SMT solvers in Program Analysis and Verification
* Hongseok Yang, Program Verification Using Separation Logic
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I got introduced to a lot of new ideas and I can say this has been a great learning experience. The workshop is being attended by 65 people. The crowd is a mix of undergraduate students, postgraduate students (mostly), doctorate students, faculty from prominent institutions and some industry people.
I liked the IISc campus coz of its greenary, pleasant weather and beautiful buildings. Most of the buildings were built in the pre-independence period and this style of architecture is rare today. There are many unusual trees here, and they are named too (elephant apple tree is the one I remember) I hope I get the time to go around and see more of these trees.
I am thinking of visiting some of the famous places in Bangalore today, like the lal baugh and Government Museum.
This has been my summer 2008 so far and will be over in the coming week. I wish I had something like this to write in my school essays about "What did you do this summer vacation?". This used to be the first essays the teachers used to ask us to write when schools reopened. Guess its too late for that [:P]
