Sausalito = (Art + Beauty)++

Sausalito10 thumb Sausalito = (Art + Beauty)++

That’s the techie way i would describe the town of Sausalito.

It’s a small town by the bay, north of Golden Gate Bridge. History says that this place started as an artists’ colony. Well most of that is visible in the way this small city has been decked up.

Now think of a town, so small that you can walk from end to end through the heart of that place, before you even finish reading this line.

Sausalito21 thumb Sausalito = (Art + Beauty)++

Ok, may be that was an over-exaggeration, but the town area is less and the rest of the place is mostly residential. But it packs enough beauty which makes you want to spent a whole day there. The place now has a very Italian taste to it, both with the people and the cuisine.

After the view of the bay from the street, the main attraction of this place include –

  • The Harbor Walk
  • The ferry ride to Ferry Building, San Francisco
  • The Yacht Club

AlcatrazSF01 thumb Sausalito = (Art + Beauty)++

If you’re in San Francisco, take the ferry ride to this small town it’s worth a visit, by all means. During the ferry ride don’t forget to get a glimpse of Alcatraz Island and a breathtaking view of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Golden Gate Bridge must be photographed! You can’t resist it!

It was last Saturday that we, my roommate and me, decided to go to Golden Gate Bridge and couple of other places in San Francisco. To be frank this geek has seen enough and more photos of the Golden Gate Bridge, that visiting the bridge was one of my last items in the ‘When at San Francisco’ to-do list. But either way having nothing much to do for the day, we decided on that small ‘get-you-ass-out-of-house’ plan. Now that photography has become my immediate hobby, the camera follows me to all places except a few, that i guess by now you would’ve guessed.

Yes, it’s the most photographed bridge in the world. Given that fact, i was wondering how much of different snap could i take from what has been already taken? Well there were a few shots that i could’ve taken by risking my life or falling into frigid waters below – I opted not to. But nothing could prepare me for the view from the hill adjacent to the bridge, it begs to be photographed.

There were a lot of people at that spot, everyone had a camera in their hand, and i was quite proud that i had the best camera. Yes just the best camera but not the lens for the job. All i had was a 18-105mm kit lens that came with my D90. There was a guy who was having a D3000 with an even more ‘gigantic’ lens. But i did make the best out of what i had.

jerry05 thumb Golden Gate Bridge must be photographed! You can’t resist it!

More photos here

Next stop would be to walk on the bridge…

10 Ways To Waste Time When Jobless At Work!

Many of us might have been in a situation where there is nothing much to do in office and you are practically jobless at the job. The most creative ones of us will spend that time learning, researching and innovating. But what about the lazy bunch. They don’t want to do all that. They just want to spent the free time that they have doing nothing but un-productive work.

But what if you’re totally in a fix? What if you just don’t know what to do with the time that you have and you’re just as confused as a blind man at a strip club?

Here is the Top 10 things that you can do to waste time at office, in the order leading up to the least productive activity, in what so ever manner to the company or to you -

10. Do blind surfing

10 10 Ways To Waste Time When Jobless At Work!

Now is the time to open Google or Wikipedia and type in something that you wanted to search for a long time and just couldn’t get the time to do it. It could be the photos of Barbara Mori or the latest flick of Jenna Jameson. Just do it. Read about the gossips about celebs that you wanted to know all the time. Once you are at that page, there will be some other link that will capture your attention, click on that. Sure it will be something that you might be interested in. Else why would it catch your attention. Question nothing .. follow your instincts…

9. Watch YouTube videos

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Ever since YouTube has come into existence, there has been no shortage of interesting videos. Search for F1 Crashes, Football, the latest episode of your favorite tv program, watch America’s Funniest Videos. What was the new song from Shakira? Find that on YouTube. Take a look at the related video links it will sure lead you to more interesting videos.

8. Read and Update your blogs

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Read blogs, check the blog roll of that blog, follow the links, read more and more. Don’t know what topic to read on checkout Technorati and search for the top blogs under your favorite category.

Once your think you have read enough and has been inspired enough, why don’t you start a blog for your self. Well that’s exactly how yours truly started his first blog. At least it kills the time.

7. Tweet

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Follow people on twitter, re-tweet and tweet anything to everything that comes on your mind. Follow conversations on twitter. Who knows you might even win free tickets for a movie. People whose real work is to update twitter, read this as Google Buzz and skip to 6

6. Play Online games

06 300x160 10 Ways To Waste Time When Jobless At Work!

Tons of sites out there that offer free flash based games. Play them find out which of those are worth the time spent (like that matters). Send them to your friends. Playing such kind of games is one of the best ways to spent time. You really never know how time flew by.

5. Use office phone to talk to friends

05 10 Ways To Waste Time When Jobless At Work!

Stay connected. When you are not using the office phone for official work, call up your friends. Sure there would be someone who is interested in talking to you. They say at work you need to grow you network. So call up that fellow who joined with you 2 years back and you couldn’t keep in touch. The advantage of this being, when the boss’ looking you are busy on the phone. If he asks tell him you were explaining something very technical to a co-worker.

4. Chill out at the cafeteria

04 10 Ways To Waste Time When Jobless At Work!

P.S. You would be required to find like minded people for this.

Just chill out at the cafeteria. Sip coffee, chat, enjoy the snacks, just spent time. There is nothing more rewarding than spending quality time with your friends. Get to know couple of them. Who knows they could turn out to be real jack asses. Then stop hanging out with them, find new ones and just chill at the cafeteria. The advantage of this being, the cafeteria owner might start giving you ‘frequent customer’ reductions.

3. Being active on social-networking sites

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Orkut, Ibibo, Facebook, MySpace, IndyaRocks etc. etc.

There are a many that you can just select from and be active on. Pick one at a time. Build a network of 200 people. That should be your aim. Try and build that network as soon as possible and then move on to the next networking site. Build again. As i said before there is nothing more rewarding than networking with people. Once your are done with almost all the networking sites available, why don’t you write a post in your blog telling your readers why a particular networking site is better than the other.

2. Sleep

SleepIsGood 263x300 10 Ways To Waste Time When Jobless At Work!

You don’t have the habit of snoring, then sleeping is the best activity to do. This requires minimal effort. The flip side being that if your boss catches you in the act its really hard to explain. So think about something very clever before you decide to doze off. Beware there might be other jobless people around that might take this opportunity to take a pic or video of yours and post it on their twitter / blog / social-networking sites etc. After all you are not the only one jobless.

1. Play Farmville and Mafia

01 300x224 10 Ways To Waste Time When Jobless At Work!

Totally meant for wasting time. It really doesn’t matter if you have work or even a job. These games on Facebook are build for only one purpose – waste time while in no way being productive. You can be glued on to it for hours, without really making any sense of things. Compared to conventional games these games are never ending. Once you have build something on Farmville or your Mafia rating is high enough you can gift items to other people on the network. Its an all in one total time waster package rolled into one.

Namma Bengaluru Awards 2009

Have you ever felt the need to recognize a person from you locality for his or her contributions to the society, may that be big or small?nba logo Namma Bengaluru Awards 2009

Have you felt the need to recognize a Govt. employee that goes beyond his duties and sets an example by outright commitment to his work?

How about recognizing an NGO for its public service or a Residence association for its diligence in waste management, maintaining the greenery or its initiative in having a rain harvesting project?

Bangalore is a city that is vibrant because of its people that make so. There are ordinary people among us that do extra-ordinary work to help the society and each other. How about recognizing them? Wont that be an inspiration for them to continue doing what they were doing and for others to come forward, making The Garden City, truly a great place to live in.

Namma Bengaluru Awards 2009 is aimed to do that.

Straight out of their site  -

An initiative by Member of Parliament and Convener of ABIDe – Mr. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Namma Bengaluru Awards is launched with the vision to inculcate a sense of optimism and interest in the minds of the common man and bring to the limelight ordinary citizens for their extraordinary contributions, recognize exemplary contributions made by individuals who have contributed to Bengaluru’s developments, for those who have enriched the lives of common man, to the ordinary citizens for their extra ordinary contributions and to create Ambassadors of best practice who set standard for the rest to follow.

The citizens of Bangalore will be recognized under two major categories -

  • Namma Bengaluru Awards for Public Officials and AgenciesTo recognize public officials and government agencies (Like MPs, MLAs, MLCs, Officers & Staff of Civic agencies like BDA, Bescom, BBMP etc)
  • Namma Bengaluru Awards for Private Citizens and InstitutionsAimed at recognizing efforts of citizens and private institutions including NGOs, RWA, Companies, schools and others

I know what you’re thinking. Why would you ever want to recognize anyone from BDA, Bescom or BBMP or any Govt. Official for that matter. Thats where you’re missing the point. Inspite of the fact being that we all hate the govt. officials and brand them as lazy 9-4, job secure, bribe-demanding people there are some really gem-of-a-characters among them. Why cant we just recognize them? Why cant we honour them? Dont belive me?

Well if u ask me i would love to recommend the BMTC Volvo bus drivers and conductors for their courteous behavior. Every time i have travelled in one of them, they have always had service-with-a-smile motto. Same goes with the Bescom guy who turned up on a Sunday evening because there was power out-age at our area.nominate Namma Bengaluru Awards 2009

Last day i was at Namma Bengaluru Foundation‘s office, which is more or less the same as Mr. Rajeev’s office, to be briefed about the whole initiative. I was joined there by Balu and we were both surprised with the magnitude of responses that Namma Bengaluru Awards 2009 has received.

The nominations were opened on 14th of October and closes on 14th of November 2009. Guess how many nominations they got till now. Well Balu and me guessed somewhere around 250-300. No, they have so far got close to 2000 nominations. Yes thats right – 2000. And in one case, all the students of a class wanted to nominate their teacher for the award. Thats the beauty of this. Only two categories, Govt. or Private sector and you can nominate anyone!

Go ahead Nominate! Spread the Word!

Read more here about the awards and how to nominate.