Raju Alluri’s Personal Blog

I headed to Vijayawada on Friday night to visit Jayababu. His father expired unexpectedly last week. Since this is a last minute travel ahead of a 3 day long weekend, there are no tickets in overnight trains to and from Vijayawada. So I booked my tickets in the bus service offered by Kesineni. The bus is Cerita make and offered decent comfort. I (along with my mother-in-law) boarded the bus in the night and expected to be in Vijayawada by 4.30am or so. When I woke up at 5.30am (that is a decent enough deep sleep) the bus is still moving and I headed for a nap again. At 6.30am, I realized that the bus is still in Suryapet, about a third of the distance from Hyderabad. Looks like there is an accident on the highway and traffic is backed up quite considerably. Due to the noiseless air-conditioning and may be due to fatigue, I didn’t realize that the bus stopped so long.

We reached Vijayawada a little past 9.00am and hurried to Jayababu’s place after getting ready at another relative’s place. We stayed there till 1.00pm and headed to train station. We reached Hyderabad by Krishna Express. The chair car service is good. We reached home a little after 9.00pm. I was pretty much sitting all the time in a 23 hour journey and it is very tiring.

Got one of the presentations completed while watching the India-Pakistan hockey match today. Cool win for India! A well deserved win.

Watched the last couple of overs of Australian innings in today’s Aus-NZ T20 cricket match. What a match! Enjoyed every bit of the super overs. Congrats NZ!

Managed to watch Avatar after about a couple of months of its theatrical release. Got tickets for the 10.30pm show on Saturday at Prasad’s IMAX-3D. The movie impressed all eight of us that went together, my family and my brother’s family. The visualization of Pandora is amazing. The name Unobtanium felt like a spoof on Asterix comics. There is a continuous feed of well intertwined story and visual effects, making the entire 2:46 hour movie enjoyable every minute. The price paid for IMAX-3D version is worth every single Paisa. No wonder the show is full house even after two months.

Finally, the vehicle registration process is done and we got the registration card. We completed the registration on Jan 30th and it took 15+ days for RTA to process that and send the card. Looks like they mailed the card on 16th Feb and we received it on 17th Feb. The time taken for this process is much larger than what I heard (others said they got it in about a week) but there are no issues with the process.

In the entire registration process, there are no bribes involved. It is a very simple process, provided we have all the paperwork.

ఈ రోజు సాయంత్రం ఆకస్మికంగా మా తోట నుంచి పనస తొనలు ఇంటికి పంపించారు. ఎంత ఆకస్మికంగా అంటే ఈ రోజు హైద్రాబాదు లో అక్కడక్కడా కురిసిన చిరుజల్లుల్లాగ అన్నమాట. జేఏసీ లు బందు ప్రకటించినంత ఆకస్మికంగా అన్నమాట. సీజనుకు ముందే వచ్చిన ఈ పనస తొనలను భోజనానంతరం (బుడుగుగాడు ఫక్కోడీలు తిన్నట్టుగా) లాగించాను. వేమనగారి “పంచదారలకన్న” పద్యంలో పనసతొనలు మిస్సయినట్లు అనిపిస్తోంది. కోర్ కమిటీ ప్రకటనల్లో క్లారిటీ మిస్సయినట్లుగా.

Facebook went through a bit of facelift. Layout changed a bit. More convenience factors like the left side column having more activities. Overall, it looks more useful.

Only concern is that my daughter found out the change earlier than me .

And the moment I wrote about Dow’s stay above 10K, it sinks 1% to close at 9.9K range. Bad!

Spurthi’s class celebrated their annual day at Meridian School on Saturday. The day’s event is a musical play based on Ravindranath Tagore’s Chitrangada. It is a very well orchestrated play by a cast of about 300 school children. The visuals are great, the preparation is very good and the overall play is superb. A couple of hours well spent…

Headed to InOrbit mall this week, to celebrate Rishita’s birthday. It is my first visit to the mall and felt that it is very well maintained. Still lot of construction though. Roamed around in the mall for an hour and then settled for dinner at McDonalds.

In addition to all the nice shops there, I really like the parking facility. I also like the open food court.