Tenosynovitis

WTF. That's exactly what I would have thought had I heard this term before 1 month or so. But now I know that this is a kind of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) now becoming common to software professionals. It started suddenly.. no knocking on the door, no formalities, no early symptoms, nothing, just started. I was driving my bike for Yercaud and when we took break on our way, I felt my thumb got stiffened and there was pain in bending it. I tried to ignore it because it might have happened for any reason. But this pain continued for a week and sometimes my thumb was used to stuck in a stretched position and I had to use my other hand to bring it to normal position. Now, I thought, was the time to visit some doctor. I googled a bit and found Hosmat is considered to be hospital for orthopedic problems. I went to Hosmat and waited for my appointment. Here's the conversation with doc-

Doc: Hi Ashok, What hapened?
Me: I'm having pain in my thumb near wrist.
Doc: For how long?
Me: I think a week.
Doc: Did you hurt it? any accident?
Me: No, not that I remember.
Doc: (held my thumb in a stretched position) Now try bending your thumb.
Me: It pains.
Doc: Operation karna padega.
Me: OPERATION????
Doc: See Ashok. Aisa hota hai ki there are these tendons passing through this tunnel. By some reasons sometimes this tunnel gets blocked. so.......
Me: But OPERATION?
Doc: It's not that BIG operation. Ok. Let's get an X-ray of this incase you having doubts.
I went and got my X-ray done. Returned with the report.
Me: Sir, report.
Doc: (Looking at X-ray film) See, there is no problem in bones.
Me: (Saala, I have seen only frog's internals, how the hell I can comprehend anything on this x-ray). Ok sir. But operation???
Doc: (Smiling) So you want to be sure about this. Go and get ultasound report.
I left and got my ultrasound done. In that report, it was written in BOLD CAPITAL letter "TENOSYNOVITIS of abductor pollicis is suspected". Returned to doctor and showed him the report.
Doc: See. It is the same thing. So when do you want to have this surgery?
Me: Is there other option?
Doc: Hmm.... I can do the plaster but then It may return again.
Me: OK sir, Let me think. By the way, what will be the cost of this SMALL operation?
Doc: If you have shared room, it will come around 16K bucks.
Me: Ok sir, I will think and decide. Thank you.
Doc: Ok.

Well, I left and did some googling on tenosynovitis and found a lot of stuff there. Some interesting ones were from handsuniversity and wiki. Finally I dropped the idea of having surgery so soon as one of my friend told me that in Hosmat, they prescribe surgery for everything... Rest story I will write some other time.

Muthathi, Bheemeshwari / Cauvery fishing camp trip

It was Ugadi's long weekend... Nothing planned... then on saturday, at 10:00AM DK called me if I would be interested in going to Muthathi... With no weekend plan at hand, I immediately agreed.
At around 10:30AM we started from Bangalore, took Kanakpura road and had lunch after we were outside the city... With me and DK were Jimmy and Shrine. Road to Kanakpura is good... and from Kanakpura we took diversion towards Cauvery Fishing camp... Road from Kanakpura onwards is not good but not bad either... After around 15kms from Kanakpura, took a left turn for Cauvery Fishing camp(had to watch for direction)... After that, the ride was very refreshing.... It was around 15Kms of stretch in hills.... The view at Muthathi was scenic... A lotta locals were also cooking and eating there... dont know if it was picnic or some of their rituals......

Fast Facts about Muthathi:-

Distance from Bangalore: 100 Kms
Route: Kanakpura Road -> Cauvery Fishing Camp (NH209)
Road condition: Till Kanakpura good, after that OK types last 15 kms goood..
Destination type: Riverside picnic
Days: 1 day

Fir milenge Ankur aka Ranga aka Bade Bhaiya....

So, finally yesterday was the last day of Ankur aka Ranga aka Bade bhaiya in Bangalore... First time, met him in Philips when he joined our Audio team there... became colleague... then table tennis partners.. then friend.. roommates... good friends... and then byebye at Bangalore airport... but that's what life is all about. He is joining a firm in NCR to be at home.... Wish him all the best for his future... As they say world is small and round so fir milenge...
Waise among other things, we, B2waasi, will miss his puliogare rice...

Bike trip to Yercaud...

Last weekend was a long one as we had friday off. Myself and Dorjee were earlier planning to goto Kanyakumari but the fact that it's very far and unavailability of train-tickets made us to change the plan. It had been long time since our last bike-trip. So we decided to go on a bike-trip and we chose the place to be Yercaud. 230 kms from Bangalore, situated in Tamilnadu, this place is called poor-men's Ooty. Initially, we were only 2 people but then Ankur, Atul, Body, Paurush and Shankar joined us totalling 7 of us.We decided to leave from Bangalore on friday early in the morning at 5 AM so that we can beat frustrating city traffic.

At 4:30, when I got up, weather was really nice and sky was very clear. I called everyone to get ready but by the time we started from Thippasandra, it was already 6AM. We picked Paurush from Silk Board and started our trip. We had 2 Unicorns, 1 thunderbird and 1 Karizma on this trip. By the time, we reached Hosur, it started drizzling but we thought it as Bangalore rain, very localized and we keep driving. But it started pouring heavily later so we had to stop for sometime and waited for the rain to stop or slow down atleast. It slowed down after a while and we hit the road again. Now it was great road NH7 ahead. It was still drizzling and we were all drenched still our speedo was reading atleast 80. A very exciting drive till Krishnagiri. There we decided to have breakfast and then move. We stopped at a very small Dosa stop had breakfast there and started again. Now the road was not good. A lot of construction work was going on. At many places the road became single lane. It was the same till milestones started reading Salem 30kms.. From there again it was great road. We reached Salem (Pronounced as Selam) at around 12:00 in the noon. We had our lunch there and there started to climb for Yercaud. From there it's only 24 kms of climb with 20 hair-pin bends. This drive was very pleasant with a lot of picturesque scenes on the way. We stopped at 2-3 places to admire the nature and of course to capture it in our cameras.

We reached Yercaud at around 3 PM and decided first to see Kiliyur falls and then look for accomodation. It was 3-4 kms away from Yercaud lake and we had to walk around 0.5 kms. Since it was raining, all the way it got very slippery and only Dorjee, Atul and me decided to climb down. Others went to look for hotel. Killiyur fall was good but not worth risking our lives that we did while descending that slippery way...:). By this time other guys had settled Hotel Shevaroys for staying. We went to hotel, rested for sometime and then went to see Lady's seat. We reached there at around 7:30PM .The night view of Selam city from there was very beautiful. After that searched for daaru but only to know that this was a dry day. Still we managed to get it from Shevaroy's Hotel.

Next day, all daarubaz got up early in the morning to see sunrise from Pagoda point. We reached there but it was a lot of fog there and there was no chance of sunrise before 8 or 9 o'clock. Still it was very nice walk in the foggy weather. We returned to hotel and again went to Pagoda point at 8:30. It was magnificient view from there. Then we went to Shevarayan Temple. This was the highest point in Yercaud I think. Again it had got great view of the Hills around Yercaud. After this we went to Yercaud Lake, did some boating. After that we had lunch at Silver Oak restaurant in Shevaroys and started back. Downhill ride was great. I turned off bike's engine and rolled down. Till almost 20 kms I didn't have to turn it on. After that we had a small break in Salem, then Dharmapuri. After Dharmapuri, there was a Y junction where I took the wrong road. DK was with me. We asked a few persons if the road goes to Bangalore, they all said YES.. but we knew this is not the road we came by. It was painted like car rally road. All the trees besides the road was colored in black & white checkers. After quite long distance, we got a signboard that was written also in English. By that we came to know that the road surely goes to Hosur and Bangalore but not to Krishnagiri. By the way road was great, far better than the NH7 stretch between Krishnagiri and Dharmapuri and very low traffic on that. But we decided to get back to NH7 because of 2 reasons. First was that we dont how long this is gonna be a good road. And secondly it was getting late and there was no traffic, very few people. So if something happens, we would have had a problem. So from Palacode we took the diversion to Krishnagiri thinking that it was only 16 kms of diversion but turned out to be 31kms. We joined our gang again in Krishnagiri and started for Hosur. In Hosur it started raining again but didn't stop. We finally reached Thippasandra at around 8:00PM. Overall it was a great getaway for a change.

Fast Facts about Yercaud:-
Distance from Bangalore : 230Kms
Route : Bangalore -> Hosur -> Krishnagiri -> Dharmapuri -> Salem -> Yercaud
Road condition : Hosur to Krishnagiri Great expressway. Krishnagiri to 30kms before Salem (not so great but still good)
Destination type : Hill stationTrip type - Weekend getaway

Fly 2080, My new phone...

I had Motorola V3i Razr earlier but lost it. Thanks to the Junta of Bombay Junta mail express. Then I thought of buying a rather cheap phone instead of going for another Razr of the like of. I sort-listed a few within the range of 5k bucks. These are Sony Ericsson w200i, Motorola w230 and Nokia 2630. I went to the shop and asked the person to show me w200i but instead of showing me w200i, he started saar there is this new phone Fly2080 and started showing all the functionalities of this phone. I found it quite kool for 5.8k bucks so bought it. Here is my experience with this phone.

This phone's got kool looks for it has a quite big screen and a thickness of only 12 mm. Keypads are also quite kool and easy to use. Comes with 256 MB memory card and is expandable upto 1 GB. Featurewise it's quite loaded for this price range. It has got touch screen, Mp3, mp4 player, video player, 1.3MP camera, GPRS, Bluetooth, unlimited (of course limited to memory size) video recording, e-mail client and ofcourse all basic phone features of sms, mms etc. Has support for Java. Touch screen is quite fast and reponds very well to inputs. Speakers are quite loud for audio and video player.
What I don't like about this phone is it's interface. It's so user-unfriendly. For example, If you have to goto next image while viewing images, it's 5 way process.. goto back->back->down->options->view. Although there is an Image viewer program in this phone that can goto next picture just by pressing down key, this is not set as default program to open the pictures and atleast I didn't find a way to set this as a default. Second bad thing about this phone is the HandsFree quality. It's really bad. You almost can't talk in loudspeaker mode by this phone. Here's how I'd rate this phone...

Design 9/10
Features 8/10
Voice quality(ear phone) 8/10
Voice quality(speaker phone) 4/10
Ease of use 4/10
Value for money 8/10

So overall I think it's a good deal for the price it comes.