Social Networking Phenomenon

Alrite! Alrite!! I'm admittedly late here. But yep i killed a couple of hours today to get on all the possible social networks my friends and family have been wanting me to. So you can find me on myspace at http://www.myspace.com/vaibhavb, Friendster at http://www.friendster.com/profiles/vitraag and on Orkut. The demographics of the whole _social_ phenomenon quite clear all my indian friends are on orkut while many of my American friends are on myspace and friendster. I still have to send invites etx for my buddies to link up, but i'm not really sure if can keep up with all that. So largely this blog is going to be my little window to the world! Yeah some-day i'll update my homepage and integrate all this but until next time, so long.

Excursions In Mountaineering - Snow Camping and Glacier Climbing

TheBaricade
Originally uploaded by vbha.

This weekend I enjoyed amazing time overnight blacier climbing around stevens pass. I learnt some basic techiques for glacier climbing like stepping, using the ice axe, demo of cravasse rescue and knowing snow you are climbing on.

Here are picture of the trip by rockymountain.

In this picture I'm standing next the bunker tent myself and David (my tent-mate) made up with advice and help from Rayner (our trip leader). This was the first time I camped in snow. Tricks like putting snow between raincover and tent to form an insulating layer, assiting tent access using feet hole and building a brick baricade around tent for protecting - are some of the things we learnt with this.

UMD Soormay - Gabroo in action

UMD Soormay

My sister, Vaidehi in her quintessentail dance action! go!! gal!! :). Here is the maestro in action.

World Economic Forum - India and the World Scenarios

World Economic Forum - India and the World Scenarios

So thinking on a global level!! Preaching to solve world problems! well so what the hell World Economic Forum does? Rallies the confederation of industries in every nation? Do we really have numbers on effective measures by such organization?

Anyways the link points to the scnerios which deam the future of India for next 25 years on two axes - Integration with world and Inclusive growth and development. This slide was used by Microsoft India MD to lure back folks of Indian origin to Microsoft India from the Redmond campus. The strong points he made was that India's 65% GDP is from Individual spending and Microsoft will get to 1 billion $ revenue share by 2009. Well! yeah and come back to India for glory and family!!

So to the point - what do the axes say? To me it makes no sense. If India makes "Integrated development" Then i think the battle is won!! Integrating the varied and diverse cultures in India itself is a bigger challenge than integrating with world! Infact i would contest that its a superset of the world challenge!!

Rappelling

Rappelling
Originally uploaded by vbha.

Boooya~! My third climb, I climbed up mainly using the cracks and nice footholds with a backpack and extra water :). You can see me here Rappelling down from this climb, it was awesome, sunny and 1500 ft above sea-level :). Rock-on i would say ...

Rock Climbing Mt. Erie!

Patrick trying rope three
Originally uploaded by vbha.

Yesterday i did my first rock climbing ever. Through Mountaineers Rock 2 field trip we did some runs on Mt. Erie. It was awesome to do three climbs using techniques like edgeing, manteling, crack climbing etal and the weather was a lot better than I expected. Just couldn't get enough of this thrill. Watch out for some rapelling pics and more of climbing stuff as i learn the ropes of this ride :).

Mathilda Reinvented

Mathilda Reinvented
Originally uploaded by vbha.

So yep finally i got a bike. Its SV650S copper color !! I rode it to work today and i so love it! This is an awesome mechanical horse, gives a real high!!