On a rather low gear ;-)

Back in 2009, I used to listen to a few of my friends talking very animatedly about Top Gear and having heated discussions regarding the identity of “The Stig”. I never gave it a second thought. I like cars. As in, on seeing a nice looking one, I will probably go “Hmm. Nice if I can buy one like that. Nicer if it has automated parking”. But I don’t love them and is not the type to spend hours reading auto magazines. So I had assumed Top Gear was not my cup of tea till I actually saw one episode of Top Gear UK on TV. I don’t know whether it’s the British accent or the very charming Jeremy Clarkson, but I was hooked.

Hooked enough to do my version of a Top Gear in my mind when I have to rent cars for my site visits. (Disclaimer: I have driven all of 6 or 7 different ones during my driving adventures and the ones I get to drive are a league apart from the ones they cruise around in. Let us not even go into the charm department.) .The one would never forget is Nissan Micra. Felt like I was in a toy car, the blue paint just helped the feeling I guess. Had a Gulliver-in-Brobdingnag moment when a huge truck passed me by 

Now that I have shifted to a new job, my site visit days are behind me .So no more of the 2-night stands (with rental cars that is)  I am definitely going to miss those days.

A trip or two

Last month this time, I was so eagerly waiting for my office Xmas-New Year closedown. 10 days of not having to worry about ironing your shirt and yes, not having to work too. We were expecting just a long weekend break for xmas and had planned for a 4 days trip and since we came to know of the 2 weeks closedown too late to book flight tickets (without causing heartburn) , we went ahead with our original plan. And off we went to Coonabarabran – The Astronomy Capital of Australia. I spent 30 minutes trying to learn how to pronounce Coonabarabran because the way I did made it sound like one sleepy little village somewhere in Kerala. Haven’t really learned to roll my tongue the way Aussies do :-)

And as usual I had an excel sheet for it.

Sample entry:
24-Dec 8:00 AM Start drive (450km , approx. 6 hours)
24-Dec 4:00 PM Arrive at Mathew Flinder's Motor Inn , Coona
24-Dec Drive to Coona towncenter and dinner

Is this normal? I am starting to get worried about myself :-) And I am definitely not getting into event management.

The trip didn’t start too well. The weather forecast showed thunderstorms for the whole week, my music player broke down the night before (The Husband (TH)’s song collection doesn’t really suit my driving mood) and I got a weird haircut the day before (fringes on curly hair!!!Seriously Anphy, what were you thinking?).

I had actually been looking forward to the 450km drive, but have to admit that driving on long stretches of a deserted highway is not much fun. And we arrived at Coona to find only a Chinese restaurant open for dinner :-) The Inn we stayed at is owned by a sweet German couple and I would stay there again just for their breakfast and the free wifi.

But Day 2 went better. My music player mysteriously sprang back to life and my collection of songs cheered up TH so much that he took to ‘actually’ listening to the GPS lady giving instructions instead .For the first time in my life , I did absolutely nothing conventional to celebrate Christmas. We went to the Sandstone caves and Sculptures in the Scrub in Pilliga forest. I got very excited about the 30km dirt track we had to drive on; but if I were to do the same in India I would have been more pissed than excited – me and my double standards. Hehe. And came back to find that all restaurants were closed for Lunch on Christmas. So we had Pita Bread and yoghurt followed by a packet of prunes for our wonderful Xmas Lunch :-( The plus - I didn’t have to cook :-)

Next day , we headed to the Warrumbungles. Saw a couple of Emu’s crossing the road- I never thought they even existed!!!The best part was the 12km Grand High Tops walk we did there. Breathtaking- literally and figuratively. We had the place, by which I mean the whole park :-) , to ourselves – not many people crazy enough to go bushwalking the day after Christmas, I reckon. I am not complaining since we had kangaroos for company. It took us around 5 hours and it was raining for the first 1 hour or so but it was so much fun. We had planned for a night time telescope viewing but it got cancelled because it was too cloudy. I was secretly hoping that it would get cancelled since my leg muscles were creaking and groaning after all the walking. By then we were already feeling so bad about the trip coming to an end that we ended up planning our next trip to Canberra right then and there.

And Day3 , we drove to the Siding Spring Observatory and then headed back home .Managed to see 7 planets in the Virtual Solar System Drive .

Would love to post some photos but then I deleted the whole folder by mistake as part of my ,ahem ,weekly laptop de-cluttering. Now I am really starting to get worried about myself :-)

Note : we did make it to Canberra 2 days later , but who wants to read about driving around in crazy roundabouts ? :-D

Of fire alarms and Google

From here on the husband will be referred to as TH to save me some typing since he is making more than a cameo appearance in this one.

We were in deep slumber when a series of shrill beeps woke us up. We sat up in bed, looked at the clock -3am (That’s when your body needs the most rest or so I have read somewhere – yes, I that was the first thought I had on seeing the clock).
We decided to investigate, that is me sitting in the bed, sleepy eyed, mumbling this and that and poor TH walking around the apartment. The first suspect was my laptop which had been giving strange error messages of late. Maybe it decided to give in finally, we thought – but no, the beeps (increasing in frequency and shrillness by the second) were not from there. TH said it could be the fire alarm and I was too sleepy to put my brain to any exercise and come up with any alternative theories. Though I remember saying something about voltage surges causing it , I am supposed to be an electrical engineer after all.

Once outside the bedroom, TH found the source of the beeps to be a small plastic box mounted above the bathroom door in the hallway .We had seen this box every day for the last 6 months but never gave a second thought to it. To our defence, smoke detectors and alarms are not common objects inside a house in India. The only fire alarms I am familiar with are the ones on office (heard during the routine tests) and they didn’t beep. But we checked all the appliances just to be sure and sniffed around for smoke. And then we started hearing similar beeps from other units around us and we were convinced there was fire in the building but nobody was running out. Poor brain, this level of confusion at 3 am:-D My brain had started functioning by then and I realized that if it indeed was a fire alarm, the fire brigade should have been outside the building by then – we live a few hundred meters from the fire station after all.

Anyway TH pressed some button on the box and the beeping stopped. That is when we decided to call for help aka Google (Dear Google – what would I do without you). I typed in “beeps from fire alarm” and came across a number of discussions on the same. Normally the beeps occur when the battery is weak and needs to be replaced. I even found the operation manual of our alarm online to confirm. But what I found interesting was that more than one person had reported the beeps starting around 3am – a conspiracy or what to catch us off guard when our body is at its weak!!
So TH removed the battery. The chance of a real fire happening when our alarm was down and out against the very depressing thought of losing more sleep in case it started to beep again – we took the risk and went to sleep again.

But we were too excited to sleep. So we ended up talking very serious stuff – for example, how we need to have an emergency response kit with us to take in the event of us running out of the apartment in case of an emergency. If there really was a fire at that moment, TH said he would take the passports and a laptop and his wallet. I said I would take the tablet (to play angry birds which can distract me enough to avoid any panic attacks in emergency situations) and my jewellery (I can sell it in case we run out of money right?) and drifted off to sleep. On second thoughts , my wallet and the car keys as well.

And then we sat bolt upright – 4 or 5 beeps. Or did we just imagine it?

Update : came across this in a site-"Smoke detectors go off between 2am-6am because the ambient temperature drops considerably then. This causes the battery voltage to drop below the smoke detector’s low voltage warning level and bingo, off she goes!!!"

And I am not alone in my conspiracy theories :-)

So fickle

I look out of my office windows and see clear blue skies, but the weather forecast for today says “thunderstorms developing during the afternoon” . And I have a 3.5 hours drive ahead of me. My colleague is so concerned that he has checked the weather some 3 times already and tells me not to get deceived by the oh-so-pretty skies. The weather outside is hot and humid and that apparently is highly conductive to the development of a thunderstorm. And by 4pm , I might see heavy downpour after all or it might just stay the way it is. And Sydney had heavy rain yesterday evening.

Come on dear weather gods , please make up your minds ,fast.  I tell you, I hate(am scared , to be honest) to drive in the rain 

Update : The rain gods took pity on me. Not a drop on Wednesday :-)

Further update : But it rained the next wednesday and then the next :-(