Category Archives: Personal

My experiences out in the mega pixel real world, rides to places where my bike takes me, and 360° images of beautiful places, you will find it all linked at this place.

Meeting Team LLA

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It was an ordinary weekend like any other weekend. I was caught up in putting my new born baby to sleep, when student suddenly my phone vibrated to show a notification which I found quite interesting. It was RJ on the Jagruk Journal community intimating that they were in Delhi hosting a meet and greet event in collaboration with Stable Money team and that if we were interested, we can come.

RJ, aka Rishabh Jain, CEO of a famous Youtube channel, Labor Law Advisor and also the host to many videos and shorts, is someone I had greatly come to appreciate over past few years. I also wrote about LLA being one of my favourite YT channel few years back! I find their videos on finance highly educational and greatly unbiased, and together with Mandeep made me along with millions highly informed.


So it was very unexpected that I was given the chance to meet them. But was as I reading it right? Was I dreaming? Was it a scam?
It wasn’t! It was actually RJ posting himself! While I knew about the event, but I was not formally invited. Apparently, it was a wild card entry! One last chance to attend the event!


First, I hesitated. Had doubts to go due to family commitments. But an opportunity knocked on my door and I wasn’t going to miss it. So I discussed it with my partner, packed my JJ Journal to get them signed and got ready to go. Event was in Crown Plaza, an hour away from my home but I was determined to meet the LLA team!


Reached an hour late, but better late than never I thought. I was surprised to see that there were more than 400 people at the event (Yes I counted the chairs afterwards). First, I was impressed at the gathering and soon a bit sad. I thought that no chance I am going to meet team LLA in person with so many people around!


I saw Harish on the big stage, one of the co-founders of Stable Money on the stage. And while I invested in FDs for my father through their app, I had no idea about the person behind the recent start-up. So it was fascinating to hear his story and they have come up with more products like bonds with a clean UI and fresh approach for next gen investors!


But then Mandeep announced that RJ and Andy were about to perform a skit and I was excited to finally be able to see them. Entry of RJ and Andy was something out of a movie. Great ramp walk! And the skit was great. Especially about the bit where we personal finance guys loves sharing our gyan and making an excel sheet before deciding everything!
After the event, I was totally surprised to see how RJ, Mandeep and Andy stood with the crowd to let people have selfies with them. They made sure no one goes disappointed.

RJ, the Man Himself!


RJ kept asking the community who they were, what do they do, and having lovely exchanges with them. He even took selfies himself and videos for those who came in groups. It was totally different and surreal watching him online. His voice sounded more commanding in person and aura more real. I felt special when he took out time to sign my copy of the Jagruk Journal, mentioning that we were on the same boat, as we both became recent parent.


Mandeep kept discussing personal finance queries from the crowd while taking selfies. He was also more grounded, was making everyone jealous sporting great hair but not shying away from anyone who wanted to interact with him. His signature was short and sweet to keep learning, which I greatly admire.

Money Minded Mandeep


And Andy was every bit straight out of his shorts! An appearance everyone was waiting for, after his apparent lack of performance in new shorts. A little secret, he did whisper that he’ll “be back”!
Andy, even when he was getting late to catch his flight to Jaipur,  took out time for signing my copy or JJ and write a lovely message!

Anari Andy!


Overall it was fascinating to meet everyone standing just inches away and talking to the “fans” face to face. In never felt that they were a personality. As RJ said in one of the skits, being “kinda famous” has its ups and down.


I remained in the hall right to the end, till RJ had to literally step down from the podium as stage was started to get dismantled by staff. Shook hands with RJ for one last time as he departed, and I exited from Crown Plaza, with a big fulfilling grin over my face.
I had taken a metro on the way to the event, but took a cab on the way back. Not because it was the best financial decision, but I had to just sit for a while and contemplate my amazing experience meeting the team LLA and what I can do in my life further to make me and my family more happy.


Also honourable mention to an acquaintance I made with one of the community member, with whom I got a chance to sign the copy with RJ! (Name withheld for privacy reason).


To conclude, I am taking a big inspiration from team LLA, after meeting them in person, and hoping to meet them again and have more conversation than remain star struck!

Big thanks to the staff of Jarguk team LLA and the chance to meet them in person! Until next time…. Be Jagruk!

Suzuki Gixxer – 155cc of pure love

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Story of the day I bought the Gixxer

Years of wishing, months of making up my mind and weeks of planning, the day had finally arrived. A day in September 2017, when I will buy my first ever motorbike.
The day was exciting for me. I had a plan. I had a shortlist of bikes that I wanted to try. I went to a showroom of Yamaha to try Yamaha SS RR, a bike which I found to be good. Alas, it was a bit over my height and so I dropped the idea of buying it. Next I moved on to a showroom of Suzuki, where I was about to test ride Suzuki Gixxer. My friend was also with me to test ride with me and to help me find my perfect bike.
So I did a test ride. I was a bit apprehensive since I was about to test ride a completely new bike on a busy road of Delhi. But as soon as I started the bike and hear the engine road I felt an ecstasy. I throttled a bit and felt a sudden rush of air on my cheeks. I felt good. The throttle was very powerful and the bike snappy to my commands. I was happy that all went according to plan. I returned the bike back to the showroom. I knew this was a perfect bike for me. Talking over the price details, I found that they were not really ready to give any sort of discounts. So I went to another showroom of Suzuki. Continue reading Suzuki Gixxer – 155cc of pure love →

Year 2016 at a Glance: An year of experiences

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So Year 2016 proved to be a year I saw snow peaks for the first time in my life, went to a road trip, ascended to PC Master race and also went on to be a gamer, full throttle. This article is an account of things that shaped the year 2016 for me and the places I traveled to.

Rocket League became Life!

Right of the bat in Jan 2016, I was introduced to this game that was about to take my life by storm. I have wrote about Rocket League earlier. The most played game I played was Burnout Paradise which clocked around 137 hours. But as the year ended I reached a bit shy of 1000 hours playing this mother of a game. This game is the single most constant thing that happened to me in the year 2016. This was the game I looked out to play almost every night after I returned from a busy day at work. This was the game that taught me competing. This was the game with a steep learning curve, that made the wins deserving and the losses feel bad. It’s easy to get carried away, but I can’t ignore my experience of around 1000 hours that I poured in this game. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that this game ignited the real gamer out of me. Continue reading Year 2016 at a Glance: An year of experiences →

Kanatal Trip

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Kanatal, a city in the state of Uttarakhand is nearly 300 km from Delhi. I made the trip there in mid December 2015 in hopes of experiencing snow. But alas all I got was this spectacular panoramas instead. I am not complaining since I did see snow, albeit it was possibly in far distance, stretching on Horizon.
In this first panorama you can see the sun about to rise. It was freezing at this time and I was waiting impatiently for little sunshine.

Click the full screen button on the down right of panorama to go Full Screen.

Continue reading Kanatal Trip →

Jaipur Trip

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I went to Jaipur last year. And got these amazing Google Spheres. These are not perfect but I love the view.

Click the full screen button on the down right of panorama to go Full Screen.

Continue reading Jaipur Trip →

Lodi Garden

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Lodi Garden, a city park situated in New Delhi, India is a prime destination for many joggers, developed and “developing” families for a retreat.
From Wiki:
… It contains, Mohammed Shah’s Tomb, Tomb of Sikandar Lodi, Shisha Gumbad and Bara Gumbad,architectural works of the 15th century by Lodhis, an Afghan dynasty, that ruled parts of northern India and Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of modern-day Pakistan, from 1451 to 1526…

I took these google sphere when I visited it first time. It shows the Bada Gumbad domb.

Click the full screen button on the down right of panorama to go Full Screen.

Continue reading Lodi Garden →

Recap: My Year in Blogging in 2015

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My year in blogging in 2015 was a good one. Specially the start. I posted 2 posts every month for at least half of the year. Total of 27 posts were written in the year.
The first post, “Year 2014 at a Glance” was a good attempt in summarizing my experience gained in the previous year. I hope to write something about the year 2015 too, although not much have changed. I started to post the Google Spheres (panorama in 360 degrees) of the places I uses to visit. I found out that Google Spheres are a great way to look the places and as a evolution to traditional images. Its better than even a video, since Google Sphere is like a moment froze in time that you can view at your leisure. Only thing that supersede this are 360 degree videos that YT recently started to support.
In entertainment section, I wrote about few movies which made me awe. The Theory of Everything was a good movie on Stephen Hawking which I loved. Bajrangi Bhaijaan was a pleasant surprise from Bollywood. While the film Ugly introduced me to the direction of Anurag Kashyap in a good way. Predestination was one mind blowing film too. Since Heroes came out with a new season with Heroes Reborn, I recollected my love for the original Heroes in a blog. I felt pretty good about it too since I shared that on Reddit and got good response. I watched Star Wars in the last days of December so I may write about it soon, but only in 2016.
A lot of stuff happened on the technical side of my life. I migrated to a new host for my site. This year I created a series of posts about Ubuntu and aggregated them under a page “The Ubuntu Guide“. I felt pretty good writing about Open source and my understanding of how Linux works grew considerably. I reviewed the phone YU Yuphoria which my cousin bought. While on the other side, Microsoft also came out with a new version of its OS, Windows 10, which made up for all things wrong with Win 8. I helped my friend Ankur assembling a new desktop PC and I wrote about our experience in buying from Nehru Place and assembling it.
I wasn’t able to write about any new places that I visit, since compared to last time I only went to two places this year. Jaipur in April and Kanatal in December. But I intend to post a few Google Spheres about them soon.

Year 2015 in Blogging: A Report
Year 2015 in Blogging: A Report

Here’s the report from Jetpack summarizing my blogging in 2015. It’s certainly to see Aaruni being one of the top commenters on my blogs. I say thanks to the readers of my small but diverse blog.
Overall, leaving behind the last couple of months, where I became super busy, my year in blogging went good in 2015, and certainly a one notch up from last year. I wish I can write more blogs in the coming year.

Weird thoughts on a Monday night

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My dear friends,
When the clock struck 23:23 today on the 2nd last day of March of the 15th year of 21st century since the time we started to measure time in positive numbers, I started to have these weird thoughts. I started to think how I am inside this box made up of concrete and mortar, and sitting on top of an industrial plastic moulded in the shape of a chair.
How am I pushing my fingers on buttons made of plastic which is passing signals to a box built with metal and semiconductors, which is translating electrons to photons on screen and being represented as a character.
I am not really sure why am I here on this 3rd rock orbiting around the sun also rotating around on its own axis, in this milky way of millions of bodies like our own sun, which itself is among millions of similar kind of galaxies, separated only by time.
I am a product of a countless number of impossibilities, few among which are the impossibility of life, impossibility of my parents being met, impossibility of my selection among thousands of sperms, and impossibility of me being conceived successfully in the womb of my mother.
Here am I wondering what is the purpose of such a product of life, which statistically doesn’t even exist in all it’s form, like so many things which doesn’t exist, like straight circle, or colorless red orange, or Mobius road on a 2D plane.
Here am I wondering what is the purpose of Time? Is it really to prevent happening of everything all at once, or for us to make sense of the only constant in our life, the change. Just like it’s hard for an ant to think about 5th dimension, can Humans really think about higher dimensions, dimensions that we can’t even think of? For us, to be a part of a simulation is a highly probable scenario statistically, but can we even think of the possibility of something we can’t even fathom to think of?
With all these thoughts in my mind today I can safely conclude that I haven’t even begin my journey towards understanding the rationale behind trying to understand the fact that I can probably never truly decide whether I have started my journey.
I probably don’t even exist, which begs the question, does my creator feels the same way, that ‘it’ can’t really ever know, whether his creator feels the same way about it’s creator?
What if I have lived this life, sat in this exact box made of exact same concrete and mortar, sat on this exact chair made of this exact industrial plastic, pressing the exact same keyboard buttons, and thinking these exact thoughts before?
What if this continuum of time is repeating itself again, and again and again.. like a pendulum moving to and fro in vacuum so that no single continuum can know what was it’s origin, and when would be it’s end? What if the big bang and big crunch were to be the two ends hanging at the either side of that pendulum motion?
Can we ever escape this reality? Or simulation? Can we ever be ‘free’ in the truest sense? Can we celebrate ‘Independence day’ where we would have achieved the freedom from motion of this cosmic pendulum?
I probably will never know and will probably write these exact things again after the big crunch, and the big bang, and even after that. I don’t know if whatever I said, make sense, but I do know, it must make sense to ‘something’.
Maybe if we can just find a way to pass information during two cosmic pendulum swings, after the end of one ‘period’? I will be searching for a way to do that. Would you?
– Your’s weird, Vineet.

Lotus Temple

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Lotus Temple, also called Bahá’í House of Worship is a construction which is famous for its architectural design which is in the shape of a Lotus flower. It’s located near Nehru Place, in South Delhi, which is widely considered as major information technology hub of South Asia.
I have visited Lotus Temple many times before, but this I was able to capture this 360 degree sphere, under cloudy sky. Caution: A few legs would be missing in the panorama. As it turns out I am still a newbie when taking a Google Sphere is considered.

Click here to open this in Full Screen.