Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts

Monday, April 6, 2015

noraebang

Any guesses what noraebang means?

In some of the east Asian countries especially in Seoul, South Korea, people are crazy about singing songs in mike with speaker system. They have lot of places like our internet browsing centers which will have separate rooms with speaker system and lyrics book for Korean and English songs. A small group if people can go there and spend their time after paying on hourly basis. They also serve soju and other drinks with snacks and dinner based on the order. People like to spend their time in these rooms happily singing songs throughout the night.
They call this place as Noraebang which in Korean means song room.

When I was in Seoul, I went to a noraebang with my colleagues over there. It was a nice room with a display system to display the lyrics. We can search for a song and select to play the music and display lyrics. Then pick up the mike and sing the song. After couple of songs sung by my colleagues they asked me to sing a song. I told them I do not know English songs. They asked me again. Suddenly I remembered the song sung by vadivelu in a Tamil movie - sing in the rain, I want more in the rain... I told them this song and we searched for it. It was available and we all sang that song
together. Thanks to vadivelu for exposing me to at least that song otherwise I would have known none.

Monday, March 30, 2009

The journey

" That day, My manager woke me up early in the morning around 04.30. That is usual during a weekend since when I joined him. We started at 05.15 and rushed through the Bangalore roads. As we progressed, the road looked very familiar to me, yes its the same Bangalore-Mysore road. I don't know why we are going through the same route every now and then. I can just follow my manager's instruction, but not speak a word.


I could hear some good music of different languages changing often as per my managers wish. Being a kannadiga, I preferred the kannada songs. It was a tiresome ride with lot of high beam headlights approaching ahead. After some small breaks here and there, we reached Mysore at 07.30. We all charged up with the required food here and I could take some rest too.



We continued our journey towards the south. The road was very poor for some distance before we reached Gundulupet. In few minutes, I could sense that we are entering into TamilNadu. We posed for a number of snaps captured in Nokia Coolpix S10 and Cannon digital cameras on our way. The ride was very exciting as the route was very scenic with lot of trees around. While enjoying this ride, I did not realize that there are also some tough ride waiting for me.



We could spot some deers, lot of monkeys and also a couple of elephants by the road side. It was nice to see them under their natural habitat staring at the vehicles. Especially the elephants with big tusks playing with the mud & bushes around is nice to watch. We silently passed by without disturbing them other than few clicks.


As we moved we started climbing uphill - its OOTY hill. It was dangerous to go near some of the speedy vehicles especially the innova's around. Also difficult to climb the steep hill. My managers never bothered about me. As I have told, I can just follow my managers instruction, but not speak a word. There were about 36 hairpin bends that we need to cross. Atlast we reached the hilltop at around 12.30. Now we are at 2500m high from MSL." speaks our dear yellow color maruthi alto.

more photos here

Sunday, October 19, 2008

skandagiri

Hi.. this post is about my second trip to skandagiri. Blog on my first trip is here


18th Oct, 2008 mid night (aka early morning) 02.30 hrs I got up as per the plan. This plan has been postponing for almost two years in our team. Kiran would be happy to see this happening atlast:) Nine people decided to start off early in the morning. Saji and SMS brought their cars and picked everyone.



We all met near Hebal flyover at 4am. Few ppl had some energy drink then and we rushed through the hydrabad highway. Suddenly SMS car got some coolant problem and we had to go slow for the rest of the journey. We took a left turn at chikballapur to reach the base of skandagiri aka kalavarahalli betta. There was enough parking space and we could see lot of vehicles already there. Most of them do night trekking and be at the top of the hill to see the sunrise and the floating clouds below them. Yes we could see lot of clouds below the top of the hill. We wish we were at the top at that time. Its 6.00am.

We started the walk and all our cameras started clicking. Gokul captured some interesting videos throughout the trip. The climate was excellent quiet different from my first trip:) This made us relax while walking and also induced lot of rest on the way. Narayanan asusual was the talk of the group, but this time he could take some revenge on Gokul. Veena and Senthil could not walk slow and they were ahead of us all the way, sometimes narayanan joining them.

Deepa (sorry sakshi) brought bf (breakfast) for all. Eating the aalu parota and snacks we walked slowly throughout the trek. SMS was searching for his water bottle throughout the trip though we provided him enough water. It was fun all the way with music playing in any one of our cell phones. Sakshi would start dancing whenever she sees the deep valley by the side. Sapna was the one who could pull sakshi and saji whenever they stopped for a music.



We all reached the hilltop by around 11am. Relaxing over there with noone else around was amazing. As the cellphones started some wonderful songs, we started dancing. It was fun & we ate good amount of snacks, feeding some to the doggy over there. Coming down was bit faster but still we maintained the relaxations all the way.

As we started back from chikballapur, we stopped by a highway dhaba to have our lunch. It was almost 3pm now. Though we were very hungry we could not eat much, thanks to the excellent food. After reaching hebbal flyover, it was again the bangalore traffic and heavy noise around. We dispersed in respective cars to reach back home.

photos are at http://picasaweb.google.com/vijayakumar.balasubramanian/Skandagiri1

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

From Seoul to Bangalore

Disclaimer: All the points mentioned in this article are based on my perception. There may be as many points as I have written here that are wrong according to other people.


It was a great return trip for me from Seoul as I had a three day break in Thailand. I could witness the culture of three Asian countries in less than a week. I was very happy to start back from Seoul after a eight week long wonder full and experience full life at Seoul. Packing everything that I need including lot of memories, I started from Seoul at 06:30 on July 15, 2008 and reached Bangalore at 23:40 on July 18, 2008. Sharing some of my observation here...

In Seoul, I could feel that the people have high trust on other people. They are very kind and helpful to everybody and they are very friendly with everyone. As I move towards Thai and then to India, the people trust decreases. I could hardly see a foreigner in Korea. But in Thai one could meet people from almost every country.

In Seoul even if I have bundles of currency notes in my pocket and walk in the crowded or lonely road at any time of the day or night, I need not worry about the money. Apart from me misplacing them, there is no threat of someone stealing them. But as i move to thai and then to blore, the situation changes and I need to pay more attention to my belongings to safeguard them.

I feel that communication is one of the important things in life. The Korean people use their local Korean language for their all means of communication. That allows them to express better, but only to fellow Korean people. Though most of them can read and write English, they hardly speak or understand the English speech. One has to talk slowly and include body languages to communicate with them. Thailand being a tourism place, everyone is able to talk and understand at least the minimum basics in English. Indians speak many languages :)

Work culture – I feel Koreans are one of the most hard working people around the globe. The software engineers whom I have interacted with works for almost 14 hrs a day, 5 days a week. But they really don’t have any passion towards the work. They hate to work, still manage to work (or act like working) long hours. Hence they might not be productive. Most of the Thailand people’s job depends on the tourism. They do an excellent job in that. Indians are diversified in work culture too.

The electricity supply in all these 3 countries is 220v, but there is a little difference in the typical plug point pin used. In Korea, it is 2 point round pin with no pin for Earth. In thai, it is 2 or 3 point flat pin. And in India, it is 2 or 3 point round pin. Luckily I got the pin converters for my laptop charger in the hotel itself.

Food - Excellant need for people, without which life would be very boring. Korean's eat spicy food contradictory to what I had thought before going there. Also they take well cooked food, except for few dishes at few occasions. As both men and women go to work, there needs to be many restaurants and there are lot. Thai food is good, usually with lot of coconut. I didnot eat a Thai dish in Thailand, but I have tasted home made Thai dish while I was in America. The Indian dishes especially the veggie stuffs are famous all over the world. One of the Korean told me that he has become vegetarian after tasting delicious Indian veggie dishes.

From this article you can understand (or just take my words) that I miss lot of stuffs from Korea, but I really love to be in India.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

airports

Following are the Airports that I have used for boarding/ landing in the last 14 months:

Madras International Airport, Chennai, TamilNadu, India (MAA)
Hindustan International Airport, Bangalore, Karnataka, India (BLR)
Frankfurt International Airport, Frankfurt, Germany (FRA)
George Bush Intercontinental Airport, Houston, TX, USA (IAH)
William P. Hobby Airport, Houston, TX, USA (HOU)
N Kentucky International Airport, Cincinnati, OH, USA (CVG)
Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, cleveland, OH, USA (CLE)
Canton Regional Airport, Akron, OH, USA (CAK)
Hartsfield International Airport, Atlanta, GA, USA (ATL)
Suvarnabhumi International Airport, Bangkok, Thailand (BKK)
Incheon International Airport, Seoul, SouthKorea (ICN)
Hong kong International Airport, Hong kong, China (HKG)
Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, Taipei, Taiwan (TPE)
Bengaluru International Airport, Bengaluru, Karnataka (BLR)
Phuket International Airport, Phuket, Thailand (HKT)

15 airports in 7 countries in 14 months. Hope I am an eligible international traveller.

Saturday, April 26, 2008

day 26th april, 2008

26th april, 2008, Early morning 4.30, I got a mobile call from Praba in next room- wake up call. We had plans for going to Skandagiri. We managed to start from home at 6am. Skandagiri is a small trekking spot near bangalore, which we were planning to trek for the last 2-3 months. Six of us drove through hydrabad highways in three motor bike to reach chikballabur, with some breaks for relaxing and fueling motor bikes & ourselves. Around 5 km from chikballabur, we parked our vechicles and started the trekking at around 9 am.

Initially it was a flat walk through the basement of skandagiri hill - nice moon light walk, though the intensity of sunlight was bit more. Then we climbed through small passage between rocks and plants. Though it was hot, there were lot of kotages on the way for taking rest. There are also some wells on the way where one can ring bell :) But there is no water. We carried only 1 bottle of water which was very less.

After walking for about 1.75 hr, we reached the hilltop (10.45am). The sun's heat was overridden by the cool breeze. We took some nice photo's and started back at 11am. Actually, sharp 12 noon one could see moon, sun and a star with tail from the hilltop. But since praba had to travel in the evening, we could not wait for that valuable view. Coming down was not so difficult, but we were starving for water. Without water we din't even want to eat biscuits which we carried.
It was once again a good drive through hydrabad road during the return journey. As we entered bangalore we stopped at Eden park for Lunch, and with heavy stomach we reached home at about 3pm.
photos at http://picasaweb.google.co.in/vijayakumar.balasubramanian/Skandagiri