I have been stretched to my physical limits with very long days for the past few days before this 1st. However it has been more than compensated by a series of unproductive days since then. Not that I am unhappy about it :). I needed the break and this has helped me recharge my batteries.

May 1 being a holiday, I woke up late (as usual on holidays) and got ready and went straight to the engagement of one of my friends. There i met a few of my friends who work in/around Trivandrum and then parents of a few other friends who could not make it to the function. After the engagement we went for the second function of the day, a marriage of another of my friends. It is tricky going to marriages and engagements of friends and meeting parents of other friends. Inevitably they will bring up the topic of my marriage. I wonder why people are so concerned about marrying me off. Perhaps they are jealous about my peace of mind :).

After the marriage we dispersed and I went to one of my friends house. Both of us went for the GNU/Linux meeting at Kanakakkunnu around 4:30. Meeting lasted till around 6:30 and updates have been posted to the ilug-tvm mailing list. After this we went back to his house and played some carrom. Carroms is one of my favorite games and I am reasonably good at it. I must have had a bad day since he beat me at the game. I had dinner at his house. In between we both went out to see two of our friends, one of whom was the would be groom whose engagement we had attended that day. We met at Cafe Coffee Day although I did not quite like the place because of my own reasons,

The next day I was planning to get a lot of work done. I have been planning to get all the internal processes documented and publish on Zyxware.com for some time. Joju, Manager Operations, had sent me the draft documents and I had to review them and publish them online. I had a dentist appointment the morning. Friday was effectively a holiday because of the harthal called by the opposition parties against the price rises. They must have felt that they would be able to play their part in bringing the prices down by bringing the system to a stand still for a day.

In the afternoon, I went out with Joju for a drive because he had to brush up his driving skills to prepare for a driving test. En route we got down at a friend's place where I had installed Ubuntu and where there were a few problems with sound. We upgraded the system and the problem with the sound was resolved. However the process took almost 3 hours as the cd drive was semi-functional and the downloads were slow. By around 9:30 we came back. We had dinner from a Thattukada. We had 6 dosas each and Joju had an omlette. The total cost us only Rs. 20. I confirmed twice with the shop keeper that we had 12 dosas but he pleasantly affirmed that it was only Rs. 20. I still cannot understand how the person is going to recover the cost of his labor after taking out the cost of the materials from such small prices which would probably afford him only small margins.

After I reached home I had to finish some chores at the office. I have to sleep early as I have to wake up early to go pick my sister and brother-in-law from the railway station tomorrow. So effectively I have spent two days without getting much work done.