Tuesday, August 04, 2009

cycling and shopping at Decathlon

Harsha, Priya and I had planned for a 60km+ cycle ride on this particular Saturday. It was really long since we went cycling together. So as usual, Harsha chalked out a plan and made the route as well. In addition to cycle ride, we also had planned a shopping stop at Decathlon , a new sports related wholesale outlet, on Sarjapur road. Harsha had made a list of items to be bought at Decathlon. We were to leave at 6am in the morning from Harsha's home and take Bannerugatta-Jigani-Chandapura-Dommasandra(on Sarjapur road) and then back to BTM layout. We anyway got late and left at 6.45. With the stops for break fast and tea, by the time we reached Decathlon, it was 11am.


The first thing I did after entering Decathlon was verifying if my membership card was activated. Yes, you need to be registered member to be able to purchase at Decathlon. I was happy to see that the card was active. But I did forget to verify one more thing, which resulted in a spree of sprints, which will follow later. I was issued a new card, with my name printed on it. Unlike Metro's membership card, the Decathlon's membership card did not have photograph of the person. The Decathlon shelves were filled with lot of new goods. I was interested in some if the things like saddle cover, mud guards. I added them in to my cart. Harsha and Priya added few bags as well. We took around 1 hour for this. Even though I had not thought about buying anything from Decathlon that day, I ended up buying 4-5 items from there. This is what typically happens when I go shopping for my friends. Or this is what happens I go shopping with Harsha :D. Decathlon is really tempting! We also observed that many things like sunglasses, mud guards etcetera cost less here than the other outlets. So we ended up filling up our shopping cart with more things.

After out cart of full to the brim, we promptly went to the billing counter. Happily flashed my new membership card. Since we were not carrying any cash, we said we would pay by card. Harsha offered his card. They did accept cards, but there was a small glitch here. The credit or debit card had to be in the name of the Decathlon membership card holder! Since I had no plans of shopping that day, I had carried neither the credit card nor the debit card ! Harsha and Priya stared at me as if each of them wanted to be the first person to strangle me right then and there. I felt helpless. Then we recalled that on a last visit, we were able to make payment using non member's card. The lady(pretty?!) at the counter grinned and said, the rules had changed. Well, this lady had the same answer for anything we asked: "when was it? oh! rules have changed now!". Another girl at the counter suggested that we could go to the ATM at Sarjpur-ORR ring road junction and get the cash. We felt even more helpless now and explained her that we were on a cycling trip then. Now she offered to lend company cab to go to ATM. We happily obliged to her offer. Priya and I hopped in to the cab.

We reached HDFC ATM in 10 minutes, and were greeted by the long queue there. Spotted a State Bank ATM and ran towards it, hoping against hope that there might be a smaller queue. But it was even worse there. Came back to HDFC and stood in the queue. There were lot of stares, owing to our cycling gears. I keep mentioning about these strange stares, every now and then, please do pardon me, if you get bored. After 20 minutes of waiting in the queue, we were in the beginning of the queue, just 1 minute away from cash! To our luck, the bank personnel turned up promptly to fill up the ATM machines with cash. And the security guard shouted "after one hour!". We pleaded him to allow at least the people then in the queue to withdraw cash. After he turned down our request, we returned to Decathlon cursing him and our luck as well.

Never in my life earlier, had any of my shopping plans gone so much haywire. Now that we had no other choice, we informed the cashier to keep the things selected by aside so that we could go back later in the day and buy them. Harsha seemed to be determined to get the things on the same day at any cost. So we decided to cycle back to his home, have lunch and come back to Decathlon on motorbike or car. After all this circus, I had sprint back to home, as I was already late for an appointment. I was facing the music for same through my cellphone :D. Don't ask me more about that! I decided never to stop for shopping at Decathlon while on a cycling trip ever again. I also made a point to myself about carrying my cards where ever I may roam.

It was a indeed a 'sprint'y day!

Sunday, August 02, 2009

funny thoughts of a kid, continued...

This is the continuation of the earlier post where I had recollected the funny thoughts which used to crisscross my mind as a kid. While going through the earlier post, it occurred to my mind that I had forgotten to mention one more interesting thought. It was about "dairy/diary". Now, when these words are pronounced, they do sound same. Don't they? DD used to air a serial called "Raju's diaries" or someones diaries. I was expecting this Raju kid to be owning or working at a milk dairy! Every timeI watched it, I used wonder what is the relation between the title and the actual story in the serial. I watched all the episodes of it without fail to find out if anything related to dairy would be shown in the new episode!

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Tagged – Sixth of the Sixth





I have been tagged by Chethana Aachar. The following paragraph tells what this being tagged is all about.

Here are the rules:
1.pick the 6th picture from your 6th photo folder (on your desktop/laptop).
2.tell the story around it.
3.pass it onto 6 other people you like.

Well, before I post the 6th picture from my 6th picture folder, I must tell this. The thing is, I did not find even a single picture there! What do I do now? I found a work around for this situation. Interestingly, the 6th of my picture folders contained another folder :). So, the 6th picture from it is what you see below. Well, please do not take the pain to appreciate my photographic skills. Just read on , and Tag on (remember the rules!).



Sudhi had given his new D300 to me. Yes! The brand new D300, in my hands! The reason why I have taken extra care to put all these punctuation marks is, lot of people gave me a surprised look at this. Now, where would generally any person aspiring to be a photographer would try his new camera in Bangalore? Yes, in Lalbhag. oh.. what? Did you just say Cubbon Park? May be. Now, I wanted to shoot pictures and so I went to Lalbhag on this early morning, instead of my usual jog. Now, I hardly knew to change any settings on this camera. I tried calling him up, but that nocturnal wouldn't care to wake up and answer me. So, I tried in all possible ways, and some how figured out how to change few settings like, ISO, exposure, white balance, aperture etcetera. Those who would have used other DSLRs , would be at ease with this. Then, there I was, shooting pictures of all the things I saw. The trees, the violet flowers on the green lawn, yellow flowers in blue sky backdrop. I am not posting them here, due to earlier said rules.


Some how I had managed to change the white balance to sunlight, also managed to increase the warmth, and result was that all the pictures I shot appeared reddish, as though shot on planet Mars, just as shown in Star Trek kind of Hollywood movies. I saw this nice morning light falling on few of the people sitting on benches and tried to capture it. So, there it is.

I am not sure if I was supposed to tell a fictional story about this picture. What I just narrated is the real one. I tag the below 6 people:

SreeHarsha

Eshanye

Rohit Urs

Prashanth Urala

Surya

aneeskA

Lets see now what stories they would come up with and hope that one fine day, I would be tagged again!