iBlog: Nishit Shah

All set for the Iron Maiden Somewhere Back In Time concert tomorrow. My tickets are here, have taken an off from work tomorrow. The concert is at MMRDA grounds, Bandra Kurla Complex. Gates open at 4pm with opening acts by Parikrama. The tickets are cheap at 1000 and 1650 as compared to other concerts that I have attended. I have bought the Rs.1650 one and will reach the venue very early to grab a place to stand very near the stage, something that I had done for the Roger Water’s Dark Side of the Moon concert last year. I would be wearing my traditional rock concert T-shirt. Its always the black Tee with Cannabis leaf design on it ! Will write more about the show and post few pics on my flickr account after the show !

Was a part of the BarCamp TechFest held at IIT Bombay on 27th January . John “maddog” Hall director of Linux International and Atul Chitnis among others were present. Maddog’s talk on Linux in Education was too good and he was carrying a cool OpenMoko fone. Waiting to grab hold of one once it available. Didn’t attend many sessions in Techfest as it was going in parallel with the TechFest.

I had been to the Techfest @ IIT Bombay and there was a huge stall of Tech2.0 They had setup Nintendo Wii there and one could play a game of Tennis with it. I have played on XBOX 360 and Play Station 3 but never on Wii. After the game, the guys from Tech2 asked me how was the experience et al and recorded it. This was never aired on Tech2.0 but they have this video on their site. View the video here.

BTW it was not a once-in-a-lifetime experience as I mention in the vid !

Dream On ….Dream On ….Dream On…
Dream until your dreams come true..

Dream On this is what Aerosmith had said way back in his 1973 ballad and the same was the theme of this year’s TechFest @ IIT Bombay. There is something about this event that draws me towards it year after year. I have been religiously attending techfest since 2002 every year (skipped it last year as I was not in town) and will continue to do so year after year. One thing that I like about IIT’s Techfest is that it has kept improving its standard and the variety and level of competitions, every year there are new set of innovative challenges to overcome. Since only college students with a valid ID card can take part in these events, I have become a mere spectator now ! Since I had weekend off, I took leave from work on Friday, 25th Jan, so that I can be a part of this for all the 3 days and believe me its worth it! The most interesting events were: Micromouse (an autonomous self contained machine designed to get to the centre of a maze in shortest possible time) Vertigo ( a manually controlled machine which picks up blocks from the ground and places them on a platform and an autonomous machine which collects those blocks and dumps them in a pit, within a stipulated period of time) Prison Break (a wired remote controlled machine which comes out of a pit of depth 45cm, survives a fall of 45cm to escape The Prison) SolEx (an apparatus which uses only solar energy to heat flowing air and flow water to certain specifications)

As the sun sets on another glorious day at Techfest, lights come on in the Open Air Theatre [OAT]setting the stage for an awe inspiring sight. One which promises to blow your mind away; in other words “Technoholix: Techfest @ Dark”. I was present for all the 3days for the Technoholix event and believe me its worth standing 3 hours in the never ending Queue to get into the OAT for this. This year’s highlights were Lumen (A high energy techno juggling show with 3D projections from Switzerland.) I was totally blown away with the installed lasers, and the colourful optic fibres’ pulsating light change in tune with the fast paced music. I had never seen anything like this before in my life ! Pyromania (A dance and acrobatic show with pyrotechnics and fiber optics from Israel) The performers used laser like dance sequences, using fire-spinning, light and laser effect to produce a spell-binding show. With the Pyromania team especially flown in from Israel, the event was too good. Laser Floyd (A laser show on Pink Floyd’s music) This was the LARGEST laser show in India, simply in terms of the number of lasers used. The scintillating sights and sounds produced were absolutely beyond this world! Featuring digitally re-mastered sound and breathtaking visual laser effects. The best part was the crowd at the OAT. We usually had to wait for an hour for the event to start and the wait was really killing and the junta @ IIT always finds innovative ways to keep themselves entertained. I was a part of most amazing Mexican wave, almost everyone from the 10000 odd people in the OAT had their cell fones switched on and were waving in complete dark. This scene was too good. Check this at this Tech2.0 Video to get an idea of what I am talking of. Hats off to the folks at IIT for their efforts. C ya next year !

Strand Book Stall is one of the most famous shop for every bibliophile in Bombay . It has biannual sale of upto 80% off every Jan & Oct. I always keep aside 1K for good books every month. I am a regular at Strand and its sale is one thing at I look forward to just for the gr8 bargains. I reached a bit late at the venue and could get buy only few of them as it was closing time. Hope to go there again b4 it ends. A small pic of the books that I bought.

The spirit of one of the greatest cities in the world was seen on its streets on 20th Jan during what is called as The Greatest Race on Earth. And boy what a wonderful experience it was. The last time I had seen so many people around me on the road was at the time of Mumbai floods on 26th July 2005. My previous attempts to run this race failed as I was too lazy to enroll and last year I signed up too late ! But this year I learnt from my previous blunders and had signed up well in advance and also ran 5kms every day (err.. almost everyday) for almost 3 months to prepare for the event ! I had taken part in the 6km dream run along with my workmates. We had decided to meet @ Bombay Gymkhana near fashion street at around 7:30am. By 8 everyone had gathered and had a gr8 time taking pics and fooling around. I was surprised to see around 95 odd people turning up from 110 registrations from Directi. I hope that we have a much bigger turnout next year ! We had made arrangements for Directi gas balloons and by the time the race began each of us were carrying atleast a dozen balloons and were running with me. It was funny to see small kids coming to me and saying uncle uncle ek balloon do na! I ended up distributing all of them and even took from my friends and gave them away. Did my bit to make some kids happy !

Then we all moved to Azad maidan from where the race was supposed to begin. It was gr8 to see soo many people around running for a cause. There were people all the way on the road cheering us. I can’t write how wonderful that experience was, to see the spectators clapping, motivating and cheering the runners. We completed the race in no time and saw many celebrities on the way ! After completing the race we all gathered near the exit and danced for almost 2 hours on the tunes of DJ Megha from MTV.

Looking back it was a gr8 experience. Will prepare myself to run for half marathon (20km) next year!

After almost couple of months of preparation for the marathon, I am all set for it. I can now jog for round about 10km at a stretch. Though, I am running in the Dream run which is of 6km. Its gonna be gr8 fun. Will specially designed T-shirts for the Marathon and around 150 of us from Directi running, am sure we gonna make some mark ! Will write more about the event once its over and upload some pics later if I manage to take any. Meet u there !