Boo. There was an Earthquake today near Indonesia. 8.7 on Richter Scale == A damn big one. It was so big that, people in India felt it .. and me, I was looking at an awesome tilt shifted video on a suspended particle display and was thinking about how amazing technology is .. and didn’t even realize that there was a quake. So, the only Quake I saw today is Urban Terror game which is built on Quake 3 engine.

I hope everyone is doing good after shaking a bit. Well, I know ‘you’ all will be good. That’s what I would want. Leaving you with a shaky pic of one of my favorite sights here .. building of School of The Arts.

Last Saturday was brilliant. Bloody brilliant. This one “ooh, haha, ouch”. This was a very tough week at work. Me and my team mates, technically my previous team were working on something kick ass at work and most of us were slogging to get a great result. Most of us were putting more than 18 hours a day on the product we were building and I was one of those few slogging like work horses.

The completely week I worked mostly out of home so that I would get few extra hours to work that I wouldn’t be wasting in traveling and other useless things. Today we had reached our goal by morning, and I decided to go to office as I won’t have too much work.

Its a damn sunny day. The MRT was crowded than usual at an odd timing. I kept wondering uhmmm, thats odd. Then I reached the university, yeah, I work at a university these days. There was small kid walking down. I was like okay, that odd. Then I reached my seat, sat there for couple of hours, wondered where is my team mate, and I called her up and she didn’t answer her call. Then I want to her cabin, and it was locked. Wondering whats going on, I realized the research bay where I sit at was not much crowded today. I waited few minutes and I called up my team mate again and she answered call this time. The call went like this

Her: Hey
Me: Hey, where are you? Your cabin seems to be locked
Her: I just woke up (time is around 12.15 noon), I had partied till late night yesterday
Me: Oh okay, aren’t you coming to office today?
Her: Today? Why would I come to office today? Today is Saturday.
Me: WHAAAAT?? TODAY IS NOT FRIDAY?
Her: WHAAAT? TODAY IS NOT SATURDAY?
Me: Erhmmm … Today looks like Saturday, most of univ is locked
Her: *Laughing hysterically for next minute
Me: *Wow, today is a Saturday*

That’s when I realized I lost sense of the week because of my slogging. I decided to stay for some more time before heading back for home. I want to a tiny Indian restaurant on my way back had a nice vegetarian meal and came home all embarrassed about going to office on a Saturday on a sunny hot day. I took a nap and all of a sudden I startled and woke up to a thunder. Its raining heavily. Ouch.

TLDR; I went to office on a Saturday assuming its Friday. A sunny day became dark and gloomy with a heavy thunderstorm.

For the last few months I had, days like today are the reasons for me to look forward for every tomorrow. It started like a usual boring day. I slept at 6 AM after playing over night game of Urban Terror, dealing with work, watching a documentary on Gengis Khan. Important piece of information that I forgot was that I told a friend of mine that I will join him to visit Jurong Bird Park today. I got the call at 8.45 AM that he has started and he will meet me at 10.00 AM from a place which is around 50 minutes away from me. Well, in a hurry I got ready reached the place and we have enjoyed the shows done by those colorful birds. And still, the day is a very normal day.

We’ve seen a parrot telling “I love you” to the trainer for a bribe of a nut, an eagle munching over a piece of chicken treated by its care taker, a huge ostrich looking weirdly as if its wondering what the hell is happening around, a pelican landing gracefully on water, a penguin taking a swim and still the day is a very normal day.

We went to a local Indian restaurant and I had yummy vegetarian meal. From there we went to Singapore Science Center, and watched a small cute kid playing happily with water at a Kinetic Garden and yet the day is a very normal day. By noon my eyes were stressed due to lack of fever and I couldn’t stop tears, so I had to go wash my face to further enjoy the science center, and still trust me, the day is a very normal one. My friend and I bought tickets for the Science Center and an IMAX movie, a documentary on Coral Reefs. The show is at 5 PM and we started from science center to the adjacent building which is the theatre, and then the day took a twist and became one of most memorable days in my life.

We were leaving for the theatre, and at the atrium of the science center was an installation of Tesla Coil, which was about to be started for demo at 5PM. I told my friend that I always had great admiration for Nikola Tesla more than Einstein or Newton, I don’t care about the IMAX movie, but instead I want to watch the Tesla coil show. Well, a good decision, which I didn’t know at that time. The show started, and the lady presenting it asked audience for 5 volunteers to hold tube lights in the air to show how the those tube light up when the tesla coil is switched on due to the radio frequency power emissions … I guess. Well, the next minute, I was holding a tube light powered up, wirelessly, imitating a light saber. Wow, that was just wow. I was happy. I was part of the Tesla coil experiment. The next minute, the lady wanted to try something even bad ass, the “Tesla Cage of Death”, I had no clue what happened next, but all I remember is her asking for a volunteer and I was the only one with a hand up among 50 other people around. I was happy to be chosen, and I walked to the Cage of Death as if its my throne. The second I sat on it, the thought in my mind was .. wow, I was the only one who wanted to experience Tesla coil there. Well, I din’t care, I was sitting inside the cage. Gentlemen, next are few of awesome, awesomer, awesomest seconds of my life. I was sitting in Tesla Cage of Death and 3.5 million volts of electricity playing around me. My friend took a video of this, I didn’t take it from him yet, but well, a simple search on Youtube gave me this and this as results, videos taken by someone else on some other day.

2010 was an awesome year for me. It brought me lot of happiness through every possible channel. Had a great year, great time with friends, learnt to drive, went on lovely drives, good experiences, encouraging things at work. And 2011 took everything away from me. But, yeah, it doesn’t look as bad as I say for an outsider. But, nevertheless 2011 sucked bad for me. I’m so glad that its over. So, wholeheartedly here I say 2011, GTFO

And 2012, please don’t be as bad as 2011.

/* RIP Dennis Ritchie, author of C, co-author of Unix. */

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
  printf(“Goodbye World\n”);
  return 0;
}