New Things!

Started a new photoblog a couple of days ago. This one is solely targeted for my landscapes.
http://daman.shutterchance.com

Another new is that I finally started the P90X extreme workout program yesterday. This is going to go on for 90 days. Hopefully i'll be able to get some extreme results once the 90 days are over. The workout is very gruelling as i found out last evening, but i love challenges, so bring it on!

Christmas is here and it's a fascinating time to be in the US, everything is beautiful and decked up in red and gold and green. We had our first Christmas tree in our new house, Shweta really wanted one for the kids. Shweta has been busy shopping all weekend for everyone in the house and today we unwrap the presents(even though we know what they are now). Simar surely would be very excited as she's got a lot of different toys and games for him, this is his first Christmas celebration.

Things on my mind today..

- when would this bloody winter end...
- how many more times would we have to shovel the damn driveway.. maybe we'll finally end up buying that snowblower..
- lot of work at office..
- need to charge my bikes battery.. the poor thing must be feeling left out since i haven't ridden her in 2 months and would probably have to wait another 3 months before i could.. when would this bloody winter end..
- i need to get out and shoot some landscapes.. my camera is picking up dust..
- why is the damn dish reception blown after a snowstorm, i hope i could catch the Pats- Dolphins game tomorrow... when would this damn winter end..
- would be starting out on a new workout program from monday- P90X, hope i can see some good results once i'm done with it.

Found out that i can type in हिन्दी which is really cool। I must try to type in more words in हिन्दी one of these days.

These past few days have been lot of fun as well as hectic. What with the 2 kids in the house needing all the attention. Shweta and her mom do most of the kid management honestly and im grateful that her mom is here otherwise we would have been driven nuts by 2 kids constantly crying or shouting in the house.

Hopefully by the time mom goes back to India, Iresha would have grown up a bit and Simar would be more understanding about his little sister as well. At least that's our wishful thinking :)

We got a christmas tree today, would be cool to celebrate the first christmas in our new house with the kids :)


Coming to the new stuff I bought, here's a quick review

== I bought a couple of Diana Krall SACD albums and what can i say, I absolutely love the voice of the girl, its the next best female voice i've started loving after Norah Jones. I'm also getting more and more interested into Soft Jazz genre of music as well.

-- Eric Clapton's Slowhand on SACD which is a great album as well, i need more time to explore it in detail.

-- Zeppelin's Mothership which is a new album compilation of all their greatest hits. Some absolutely fabulous numbers on this 2 disc album.

--Boxset of all the 5 Harry Potter movies made till date on Blu Ray today, great packaging and the quality looks promising.

== Bourne Ultimatum that was a great action flick we had seen in theater. Hope to watch is soon in our basement theater.

== Die Hard all 4 movies on Blu ray(boxset), great video quality, cant want to hear it in surround sound.

-- Cars and Ratatouille, again stellar video quality and supposedly great sound quality in uncompressed PCM.

recent movies

Quick list and review

Ratatouille - Great Pixar movie, one of the best though i still rate Incredibles and Cars above it. Maybe ill grow to love it more after repeated viewings.

Happy Feet - One time rental worth.

Frailty- Was recommended by a co worker. Very interesting premise and a twist in the end that i realized the next day after watching it :) Not for the light of the heart though.

Meet the Robinsons- First really good animation from non pixar branch of Disney. Looks fascinating in blu ray and a really good story to back it up.

In the Line of Fire - Great Clint Eastwood action movie, has all that you expect from him. One of the finest actors and directors ever.

Dhamaal (Bollywood): Laugh Riot, much watch and buy!

the little photographer

Decided to post a recent picture of Simar. It's a very interesting phase he's going through right now. He's discovering lot of things and really picks up new things very quickly.

Amongst the other things that he goes after,probably his favorite is the camera. If he manages to see it even from the corner of his eye he would start shouting camera camera and throw a tantrum until he gets his hands on one :) He's even learnt to switch it on and take photos(mostly of ground where hes pointing normally). Thankfully this is the smaller compact camera of Shweta we are talking about and not my SLR :)

I do hope once he grows up he can appreciate and learn this form of art :) Here's a photo of him with Shweta's camera.

Pats win over Colts!

Being a football fan(american football that is) i have been eagerly anticipating this matchup from quite a few months now. The best teams from both the divisions slug it out.. and what a slugfest it was!

The patriots were behind probably the first time at the end of 2nd quarter this whole season, but in the end our boys in blue and white pulled it off with a 24- 20 win over the Indy Colts. To give due credit to Colts, they are a very good team and after seeing today's game, im even more certain that when these 2 teams meet its really upto who plays better that day. But we pulled it off today and victory sure was sweet! So if we have to play against them in the AFC Championship well have them come over here instead of going to play in Mr Manning's safe zone of RCA Dome :) Bring it on baby!!

PS: With the Red Sox victory of last week we hit the jackpot with our day bed that we bought from Jordan's :)

Photos of Iresha

Finally i have some photos of Iresha to post :)

This are the first batch of photos from our studio lighting setup in the basement that i tried out for the first time today. Hopefully i'll get better at studio lighting with time.

We are really thrilled with the addition of the little angel to our family and Simar just wants to play with her all the time. We have to control him and make sure he doesn't go overboard while trying to cuddle the 'baby' :)

The little angel has arrived!

Finally!!!! She came exactly on the date the doctor predicted, not a day earlier or after. Our little daughter has finally arrived into this world as of November 1rst 2007 and its a very proud and special moment for the whole family.

Shweta has been in lot of discomfort from almost a month now with irregular contractions but last night the contractions were very intense and we knew that the moment had arrived at last :) She delivered our cute little baby girl at 3:33 am after we went into the hospital at around 12:45 am or so. The little one looks very much like Simar though she's an inch taller when born(20 inches/19 inches) and a little lighter than him(5 pound 11 ounces/6 pounds 5 ounces). It still has to sink in with us fully but there's a lot of work to be done around the house and hopefully we should be back at home by tomorrow. I thank the Lord Almighty for showering us with his blessings and a second bundle of joy and really hope that we can be good parents to both these lovely angels.

I'll try and post up photos of Iresha(yes that's probably gonna be her name) very soon!!!!

Yea babY!!!

We finally managed to buy the speaker's that were on my wishlist from a long time!! I cannot say how excited i am at having these babies sitting in my home. They are one of the most beautiful speakers that i have ever seen and heard. We also managed to get a really good deal on them as they guy i bought them from needed to sell them to change his system.

Ah.. in all this excitement i haven't even mentioned the speaker type.. we've bought a pair of Danish made DALI Helicon 400's along with the matching Center Channel model C-200 in rosenut finish. Since these are 4 ohm speakers and my receiver's (marantz) amplification is for 6-8 ohms i won't be able to drive these with it as i was hoping.. so ill have to find a decent stereo amp to drive it once we can get some funds together. I'll post up some photo's of these babies as soon as i can.

Looking forward to

There are quite a few things that im looking forward to currently in life..

First of course there's our little one due on 1rst November. Myself and Shweta are very anxious about it as the date draws closer. This being our second one though helps a bit, since we have gone through this whole process before. We just hope she's not delayed in arrival like Simar was 2 weeks late.

Next i'm looking forward to adding some new high end speakers to our home. A few months back we had extensively demo'ed some high end speaker offerings from Dali, B&W, Sonus-Faber, Dynaaudio, Theil, Ariel etc. and had finalized upon the Dali Helicon's for the home theater we plan to build in our basement. But as luck would have it we ran out of funds due to the new home etc.

But now Dali is going to upgrade that particular speaker line and up its cost by a considerable margin so Shweta has agreed to my proposal of getting them at a cheaper price while we can :) Let's see how this develops..

Then there's the studio lighting we ordered last week so that we can take some family photos at home and setup a temporary studio in the basement or one of our spare rooms. Since i've been mostly involved in landscape shooting i'm interested and excited to see how this would turn out. It sure would be a bit of learning process but i'm confident of picking up the technique's of studio lighting quickly since i've dabbled a bit in it before. The equipment arrives on monday via UPS so i'll be waiting :)

Ah.. finally i manage to post again on my blog after forgetting it exists all together :)

It's mid October, fall is almost in full bloom here in Nashua. October chill has also set in. There's beauty all around, just wish i had some landscape subject's to shoot with my camera. I'm too lazy to go hunting around for photo op's these days and i really donot want to go out and shoot fall colors again this year just for the sake of it.

I had a lovely ride on the Rocket to work today morning in the fog. The misty weather brings out the contrasts in the leaf colors fully and they just pop out at you. GOD is a wonderful creator of all things.. thats what i think everytime i see the beauty around me. I also thank him for giving me the chance to witness and experience it as well.

On another note, we(Shweta and I) are very anxious these days about our second child and when she's arriving. We already had 2 false calls of labour and went to the hospital the first time too, only to find that the contractions stopped as soon as we reached the hospital :)

We still haven't finalized the name for the baby girl either.. its a toss up right now, i do prefer Iresha as a name and so does Shweta, but her brother and mom aren't so sure of it. Oh well, if nothing else comes up that catches our fancy, Iresha it would be :)

There are a couple of other things happening in life too that ill try and post in the next blog!
Adios Amigos!

Finally i get the time to do another post. These days we are busy trying to find a name for our to-be baby girl and just cannot decide on one. If one person likes something, the other does'nt. Man, i hope we can zero down on at least a couple of names soon. When we decided on Simar's name we didn't have such difficulty.

Coming to what else is new in my life, i'm finally back totally into what was my passion in my college days and the intial few years out of college. Im back to blasting weights and hope to tone up soon. I used to weigh 216 pounds back in feb 07. From March I started out by doing cardio 40 minutes each day at high intensity and now in September i weigh 163 pounds having lost more than 50 pounds and back in decent shape. I still have a bit of belly fat left that i need to burn but im getting there. Going from plus 36 waist to a below 32 feels awesome though i have to change my wardrobe now :) I've started doing weight training finally combined with cardio excercises to burn the fat. It's a great feeling to get all those compliments and look and feel how i used to 6-7 years ago :) Here is a before and after photo for comparison!

Here's a look at the countryside Maryland. This was a snapshot from a overlook enroute Deep Creek Lake, MD.

Trip to virginia & maryland

A long weekend finally!! We took a trip to washington area to meet our cousin and do some sight seeing around. We took saturday early morning's flight and are finally back home on tuesday.

There were a few first's for me on this trip. I took my first jet ski ride.. i wasn't thrilled much as i was on the back seat and my cousin was riding the jet ski real hard. All the bouncing about and the thought of falling into the big lake at any moment didn't really appeal to me somehow. Moreover im not a big water person even though im a piscean (fish sign).

Simar managed to get covered in mud from top to bottom at the beach and had a great time. Another first for me was rock climbing. While this was a simulated one actually(tall wall at a park) i still had a good time at it. Having lost so many pounds of wieght helps a lot. I started with the easy climb and then finished the medium one as well.

We also visited Luray caverns in virginia that are millions of years old. Fascinating formations under the ground. Ill post a few pictures of it as well as others from the trip soon..

Simar rides papa's bike

Simar takes his first ride on papa's Triumph Rocket III outside our home.

My First post!

It has been a while since i typed anything coherent as i mostly write run-of-the-mill emails at work or do mechanical coding. This is my first post and I'm a bit skeptical of how long ill post at the blog, but I'm giving it a shot nevertheless.

I would describe myself as a daydreamer and romantic at heart. The world is beautiful and i want to explore it all. Thats why probably I'm very passionate about Motorcycles and Photography...

more to follow..