Its been just over an hour of being 18 years old, and similar to last year, it doesnt feel much different. However, I do realise that I am legally responsible for my actions now, and I can vote, get a license, sign contracts, drink alcohol, get a proper bank account and lots more things, or atleast I hope so. They disadvantages of being 18 are not too much I suppose, I can be sent to prison and will no longer be able to get away with things as easily since I’m not a ‘kid’ anymore. I’m still one of the youngest people in my friends circle so I can somewhat continue to  have the benefits of being the youngest.

I’ve got about 3 texts, 2 calls, 3 online and 3 real life wishes for my birthday so far, my thanks to all of them for remembering my birthday and dutifully wishing me on time.

The last week has been good fun, I’ve been showing Hyderabad around to one of my good friends from England which has also given me the opportunity to see various places in the city which I otherwise would not have seen. The city has certainly changed for the better over the course of the year but not too drastically, which is good since I like it the way it is. Some places that I quite enjoyed going include the Chowmahalla Palace and Ramoji FIlm City. I also met up with the Photography Club a couple of times and got some pretty good shots, all of which I have/shall be uploading on Flickr. The more eventful of the meetings being the time when we went to the newly opened Panjagutta flyover the night before it was inaugrated to get some shots of the flyover which we probably wont be ever able to get again since it’ll never be completely empty ever again.

My sincere apologies for not having posted on the site for over a week and in order to compensate for this absence, I have a surprise in store for everyone tomorrow so make sure you visit the site sometime late on the 15th of July!

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I got back to good ol’ Hyderabad early Sunday morning and had Biryani for the lunch on the same day without wasting any time. It feels good to be back home where I belong with the various elements that make Hyderabad what it is.

I had an interesting experience near Heathrow airport where I was spending a night before catching my early plane on Saturday morning. I was happily taking photographs with my Carl Zeiss 135mm f/3.5 when I was approached politely by a police office who wished to know whether I had permission to take photographs there. As expected, I replied ‘no’ and then he requested to see the photographs that I’d taken which I promptly did. He asked for some to be deleted which I also promptly did and once that was done, he talked to me about how taking photographs near the airport is illegal without permission and that I shouldnt have done so. I plead ignorance since I knew of no such law and there were no boards pointing that out. He was kind enough to let me go off with a “friendly warning” to quote him, and said he would have to arrest me if I continued to take photographs. Following this, I thanked him and left back to my hotel counting my blessings for having gotten off, thanks to the friendly cop.

And in other photography related news, I have fallen in love with both my Carl Zeiss lenses which are just insanely sharp beyond belief. The 135mm is sharper than the 35mm and these have become my favourite lenses now. The 35mm is my walkaround lens now, replacing the 18-250mm which I use solely for wide-angle and sports now. My 50mm had the misfortune of being dropped once and now has problems in manual focus but auto focus seems to function perfectly well.

I met with some friends today and a couple of days ago and have been catching up on things that I missed over the past 6 months. It felt nice to meet them after a somewhat long time and socialise once again like the good ol’ days.

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Its been a splendid year at Essex but its now time to go home for the summer. About this time next week, I’ll be home, most probably enjoying a meal of Paradise Biryani with my family and friends. I do look forward to go home but I will sorely miss my friends here for the 3 months back in Hyderabad.

Its been a boring yet busy week. I’ve had various things to get done regarding the various societies that I’m part of. I’ve finished a majority of these things but a few still remain which I plan to get done in the following week.

I’ve also finally sorted out my accommodation for next year and will be living in a beautiful house with 3 of my friends very close to the University.

Over the past week, I discovered that the photography society had a darkroom which hadnt been used for over a year. I, being the president of the society for the next year, opened up the room and realized that it was a fully equipped darkroom. I’ve been messing around there for sometime and tried out different things. I havent been able to process a photo yet due to the fact that I do not own a film camera but its been very interesting to understand how film processing works.

I’ve also been cooking quite ardently simply due to the fact that I want to try and finish most of the food that I have before I leave.

Blackadder has been another great source of passing the time. Every episode is just so witty and amusing, I can never get enough of Blackadder and Baldrick.

Life over the past year has certainly affected me as a man. I have changed for the better, by life in a different country, away from home…

I shall most probably be back in Hyderabad the next time I post here, so good bye till then!

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Term starts tomorrow, the past literally whizzed past me. I didnt do anything majorly productive over the last week although I did manage to get some stuff done which I had been wanting to do for a long time.

My dad came to visit me over the weekend which was great, I got to spend some quality time with him, talk about random stuff like the good ol’ days, it was felt nice to meet him after 4 months. Today’s photo of the 365 Day Project is a dedication to him.

I went to London on Thursday and spent about 12 hours there, taking some photos a majority of the time. I was helping a friend out with her project. The photos came out amazing and I shall be uploading them very soon.

International Shutdown Day is back with a bang this year, and it is the 3rd of May 2008 which will be the day that people all over the world shutdown their computers. It is an optional event, as always but I hope there will be more participation this year. I successfully managed it last year and it was quite refreshing to see how many things one can achieve sans the computer. I personally feel that its something everyone should atleast try to see whether they can achieve it or not. Getting addicted to computers is probably not the best thing that can happen to you and this is like a simple sort of test for that.

Some interesting news around the world,

A mouse at the University of Iowa successfully managed to navigate a maze in less than 30 seconds, on which scientists had spent more than a year to construct. I have to say that I were one of those scientists, I would pissed as hell right now.

And some good news for all bloggers, Britannica has said that it will offer its online version for free to anyone who can prove that they publish regularly on the internet and this includes bloggers, webmasters and writers. If you are one of the above, you can submit this form to them and if approved, you can avail this free service for a year.

For all of those who have struggled to solve the Rubik’s cube, fear not for Gizmodo has put up up a 6 step (yes, you read that right, only 6 steps) guide to solving the Rubik’s cube. Take a look at it here.

The most anticipated game of the year, GTA IV, has gone gold and the copies of the game have started shipping to retailers. The game releases on the 29th of April for the Xbox 360 and the PS3.

Sony always manages to make innovative and unique ads and they’ve proved their skill once again by making an ad in Miami by filling the city with foam. They had to custom make the world’s largest foam machine for this advertisement for their line of digital cameras. You can watch the ad and its making here.

And in somewhat sad news, the Aston Martin used by James Bond in the 007 movies has crashed into a lake by accident after the driver lost control in the rain while delivering it to the shooting area.

And thats it for now, more photos coming up soon!

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Its been exactly two years since I posted my first ‘Hello World‘ on this blog. Two years. Its been so long but it feels like it was just yesterday. I can honestly that my blog has progressed a lot in the past couple of years and has indirectly affected my life to quite an extent.

My first anniversary was less exciting when compared to this one, maybe because my life was more or less the same that time.

And in the past year, my internet addiction has decreased by a lot, which is a good thing. Earlier, I used to have the urge to sit in front of the PC and do nothing useful. I used to waste a lot of precious time, simply refreshing and going to random websites. But in the course of the past year, I’ve learnt that that the internet is nothing spectacular. I’d rather sit and ponder in real life, instead of spending time of the internet. I’ve also learnt that internet is just an useful means of fulfilling your needs, but not an end in itself.

If someone had tried explain the above, to me before, I would’ve looked at them with disgust saying that they don’t understand the importance of the internet. But infact, I would’ve been the ignorant one, not understanding the importance of life. Even today, I have several friends who are in the situation I was a year ago. I sincerely hope that the truth dawns upon them too. You cannot explain someone about it, but the person has to go through the experience personally to realize it.

You should note that I’m not abusing the internet in any way. Its been highly useful for me in several aspects of life, made me meet new people and taught me many important things and it will continue to do so, until it dies.  It is an important resource of information, yes. I’m not opposing that, but simply that one should minimize the time spent on the internet unless it is essential. I’m sure a lot of people who read this post are going to deem it as utter bullshit, but in the course of time, they will (hopefully) come face to face with reality.

Life has certainly changed over the past 2 years, and this blog has been a witness to all that gradual change. It will continue to be a virtual record of my life and the experiences that I will have. I would like to thank my family and all my friends for having influenced my life in someway or the other and made this blog more interesting to read. Thanks.

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I spent the whole of Sunday in London. It took a while to get there, and both the train and tube journeys were extremely boring and monotonous. I tried to walk from the hotel to the Heathrow, quite unsuccessfully and ended up walking in circles and finally caught a bus. Once in the main city of London, I took ‘The Original Tour‘ in an open top bus for about 3 hours. It was a good ride as I got to see most of the tourist attractions in a short span of time. London was an interesting city, with lots of places to visit, possibly in the future. And as with other English cities, the sun set at around 1630hrs and after some more walking around in random streets, I went back to the hotel.

My plane was on Monday morning to Dubai, spent a couple of hours there, walking about. My plane to Hyderabad landed at around 3 in the morning.The baggage was delayed infinitely and I had almost given up on my suitcase arriving when I saw it tottering along. I grabbed it, and ran out to be greeted by my dad. Meeting my family after 3 months was a pleasurable experience.

Being back home is a great feeling, although I do miss Essex. I met up with school friends day before yesterday, you can see the photos in ‘18-12-2007‘ under ‘Everyday Photographs‘. And yesterday, I went to Lotus Park along with friends from the Hyderabad Photography Club and we had a great time there. You can see the photos from the trip here. I also got a chance to try out a friend’s Canon 100 - 400mm lens which is a fabulous lens, but a bit too expensive for me. I tried out another friend’s Canon 50mm 1.8 too, and its pretty amazing for its price. I’ve decided to buy one before going back to University.

I played on my Wii today after a long time, it was quite fun and I had almost forgotten how fun it was playing the Wii. I also played Warioware: Smooth Moves which is a lot of fun and quite amusing.

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I went to school today and finally got my Transfer Certificate, I am now no longer a student of The Hyderabad Public School. It was a sad moment, leaving my caretaker of 9 years and moving on with my life. After spending a few precious moments in school, I left, with heavy thoughts.

While coming back home from school, I looked out and realized that I would be leaving all this behind tomorrow. Every person who walked on the road, every building that I passed by, every bus that moved like  it could move no more, everything which had  I had taken for granted as a part of my everyday life, all of these seemed so significant today. They were all an inconspicuous part of the society which had made me the person I am today. The Kishor Krishnamoorthi you know today, is not a result of his own efforts but rather a product of the wonderful city of Hyderabad.

And tomorrow, I will be parting with this beautiful city which has provided with delicious Biryani whenever I felt like it, great friends who have been with me during good and bad times and most of all, it has given me a mind blowing experience which I could not have achieved anywhere else in the world.

I will be departing for London tomorrow night where I will pursue my BA Economics and Politics course from the prestigious University of Essex for the next 3 years. I will leave my motherland behind in search of greener pastures, and I hope that this education will help me serve my country better and also make me a better human being.

I will miss my friends, Sambhav, Isha and Krutika, who were always ready to spend time with me regardless of their personal situation, Aravind, who laughed heartily at all my jokes, no matter how lame they were, Bhagyalakshmi, who I rarely met but had interesting MSN convos, Suren, who always amazed us with his talk, although we rarely understood it, and of course, Fatik, who was always there for me for the past 9 years, and provided me with enormous moral support. Forgive me if I have forgotten to mention your name but also keep in mind that I’m in a confusing situation right now since I have lots of last minute work to do.

I also thank everyone who has been a part of my life in Hyderabad for supporting me in my ventures and making my life a little bit better everyday.

PS - My sincere apologies for not posting on the site for so long but I’ve been quite busy getting ready to leave for London.

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Life has been pretty slow the past few days, hung out with friends a couple of days but we didn’t do much anyway. I’ve also been playing Half Life 2 Deathmatch quite frequently. You can find me hanging around at the GamesArena Team Deathmatch server. Its one of the better servers I’ve played on and it has one of the lowest latency levels(that means its faster).  Basically, I haven’t been doing anything other than sitting on the PC and watching TV all day, very boring.

News,

Top 10 Rejection Lines Used by Men and Women (And What They Actually Mean)

The invisible cursor - Flash Game - I got 37

Lego Aircraft Carrier - Spectacular!

10 Strangest Weapons Throughout History - No.1 is from Kerala

Red Steel 2 announced!

The 20 Most Ridiculous Action Movie Sequences

The History of Photoshop

Steve Jobs to make a rare company-wide speech tomorrow

Facebook Private Profiles Not As Private As You Think They Are

CIA ‘Family Jewels’ Document in Full

The Woolly Mammoth can now be cloned but should we? - YES!

What the iPhone Doesn’t Have

NY Times: Hands-On With Manhunt 2

The 25 Most Ridiculous Band Names in Rock History - Some famous ones here

Why Humans Don’t Have Fur Anymore

Fake iPhones: a retrospective

The baby on Nirvana’s Nevermind album is now 17

Would You Believe That Some Women Can See More Colors Than Most of Us?

The Giant Penguins of Old Peru

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Almost everyone I knew was telling me that our 12th ISC Exam results would be out today. Unfortunately, or rather fortunately, they werent released today and nobody has any idea of when they will be out. We can only hope that they are out on Monday.

Today, at approximately 1:30 in the afternoon, there was a tragic bomb blast close to the Charminar where thousands of people were having there Friday prayers. It is a very sad day for all the citizens of Hyderabad and I feel sorry for those who have been wounded and those who have lost their lives due to this cowardly act of terrorism.

News,

Wii sales hit the 7 million mark worldwide

EA is a great place to work

Microsoft Starts Banning Xbox 360s on Live

Top 10 HDTV Myths: Fact vs. Fiction

iTunes and Coke to give away 2 BILLION free iTunes downloads!

Two chat bots, Alice and Jabberwacky, converse with each other

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We’ve got Commerce tomorrow, the most boring subject in the universe. It might have been intersting if had a better teacher. Anyways, no use thinking about that now. I started studying properly today, my brain was on rest yesterday after the Maths exam.

News,

World’s Largest Passenger Ship - This thing is HUGE!

25 tips for a better sleep

Sea Squirt regrows entire body from one vessel

9 Laws of Physics that dont apply in Hollywood

Pictures of the BMW M3 Concept

Are you stupid?

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