Microsoft Most Valuable Professional south Asia meet was held from Nov 15-17 at Kenilworth resorts, Goa. I had attended the event and had a good time there. More details on this event is available here. Below are few photos which were taken at the South Asia meet.
Group Photo of MVPs and Microsoft officials
MVPs from Kerala- Raj, Shyamlal, Me and Jayakrishnan
Bloggers: Me, Shyamlal and Anand K
Last week my sister had come to Mangalore for a vacation and we decided to visit Kollur Mookambika Temple which is located 135 Km (approx) from Mangalore at foot of the Western Ghats. We started our journey from Mangalore around 7:30, although we planned to start early. The road stretch from Mangalore to Suratkal was really in bad shape with four laning work in progress. Apart from this there is another 2-3 Km stretch near Kundapura which is in pathetic condition. After a 2.5 hour drive we reached Kollur by 10:00am.
We visited the temple directly and had all the Pooja at the temple. There was pretty good rush in the temple as it was a Sunday. By 11:30 am, we came out of the temple and headed to a restaurant for breakfast, we didnt have anything in the morning. By 12:00pm we started our return journey to Mangalore.
Few stretches on the N17 are in bad shape, except for that NH17 is a good to drive
Finally we reached Mangalore back by 14:30 hours and had our lunch. We returned home by 15:00 and to a deep sleep after a 5 hour drive.
Trip Details:
Total Distance Covered: 270 Km (Up & Down)
Total Travel Time: 5 hours Road Condition: Bad on few stretches in Suratkal and Kundapura (as of Oct 2008).
Other Facts: Beware of bus drives of Express busses, they tend to come to wrong side without any warning especially when you are driving a small car.
Traffic on road: Medium, low in the morning.
Road: NH 17 (Edapally to Panvel)
Well, I was thinking of getting an .IN domain which is exclusively for India. I searched the domain boss GoDaddy, but they do not have .IN domains and so I had to settle for the Indian site Rediff. I found it very difficult to find out how to register for domain from Rediff. In between I found another site which offers .IN Domains and compared the rates. The advantage of getting the domain from Rediff is that the price is shown in INR and it showed me 800 Rs for .IN Domain, at the same time the other site showed me 19.9 USD. The problem in paying in USD is that the exchange rate keeps on fluctuating and currently its somewhere near 49Rs =1USD.
Finally I selected my domain (which I’ll reveal later, I have some big plans with it) and paid the amount. After payment, it said they will sent me a mail confirming the purchase. I didnt close the purchase window, till the time the mail arrived in my inbox.
The mail said that the purchase is successful, but the amount is not yet paid from the credit card company and domain will be available only after purchase. Half an hour later, I got another mail saying that the money transfer was successful. I was in the hope of setting up the domain, but when I logged in, there is no mention of domains purchased. I checked my mail again, it said domain will be activated only within 48 hours, now what is that?
When you register with GoDaddy, domains are available the next moment payment is made, may be this is Indian company and they might have many more formalities before activating the domain.
Anyways I’m waiting for the domain activation.
Kerala Microsoft Users Group is launching on 25th October 2008 at Kozhikode, Kerala. Event is planned at Ashirwad Lawns at Kozhikode, and the expected participants are 1000+. The function will also be honoring the Kerala Microsoft MVPs (Most Valuable Professionals) on the same day.
The launch function will have sessions from Microsoft and also career guidance sessions.
You can get more details on the event here. You can also register your seat for the event for free.
It has been more than a month since I wrote something here. My busy work schedules and blogging on my tech blog has keeping me away from this blog. I’ll try to update this blog with more contents and interesting happening in the coming days.
So what all happened in the last one and half months? I took a break from blogging and work schedules during the Onam holidays. Onam was celebrated in the second week of September together with my cousin’s wedding.
Next week its festival time again with Diwali coming in. Hoping to write more on this blog in the coming days.
