So I went rock climbing. On real rocks. In the mountains.

And I loved it.

Yeah, it's been a couple weeks since I did this and I had wanted to write about it earlier but, you know, school came in the way.

It was my *first ever* outdoor activity and for that I think I did fairly well. No, I didn't manage to go all the way up the "beginner-level" (my ass!) climb, but half-way up wasn't bad considering the bike ride up Baseline Rd. killed me before I even got to the Gregory Canyon trail head. And I promise you, I could've gone a lot higher had the drizzle not made the rock as slippery as it was. At the end of the day, if you ask me, I was surprised I could lift my weight at all :)

I want to thank my classmate Ryan Mazer and his friends for organizing this awesome outing for us. I totally need to do this again.

I'm hoping for more Boulder awesomeness as my life here continues. I really couldn't be happier. And I promise I'm going to post more often.

http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=39.997278,-105.29269&z=15&t=h&hl=en

Boulder has amazing clouds. And amazing sunsets.

I'm going to consolidate all these pictures in a common tag on my blog as well as a single album on my Facebook which I'll very appropriately call 'OMG Boulder'. In fact, this set will include shots of everything that fascinates me about Boulder and probably Colorado in general. These pictures will also be on my photo blog (http://photolog.posterous.com) and will also be linked through my twitter.

#24

So earlier this week I turned 24. Didn't realize how soon this birthday crept up on me, but when it came really close, I couldn't help get excited, although I kept it real low. For some reason, I hate to expect good things on birthdays, especially when there are no real plans. Expect less, hope for more is the way I go. And more it was!

I had a couple of good old friends surprise me at midnight with some pastries (no, not cake, pastries!) and then went out for some ice-cream. In the day, after a relatively grown up lunch with my closest bunch of friends (including a couple of great surprise show-ups), I did what I should've done on my 13th birthday. Hours and hours of arcade games - air hockey, foosball, Ferrari racing and bumpin' cars - my God it was so cool!

I missed the race that day, but check out this Ferrari fanboy supporting his team even on his birthday (they needed it!). Anyway, this birthday was about friends. This birthday was good :)

P.S. - I just realized - no gift last year, and none this year too. Damn!

Happy Birthday Yahoo!

So Yahoo! turned 14 on Sunday (1st March). We cut an awesome cake today at the Mumbai office; too little for all of us at the Andheri dugout but it was bloody delicious! =D

Yahoo! Mumbai

Here's a glimpse into my new workplace. This is one of Yahoo! India's offices in Lower Parel, Mumbai. Nice, cosy place. Not huge - only about 70 people working out of this place, including me. I've heard that we might be moving out of this place to another, larger facility in Bandra-Kurla Complex, which will consolidate the teams at both Mumbai offices. That'll be a huge relief to me since it should cut down my travel time by a good 40 minutes. Let's see about that.

Directi Times

A brief flashback into my past two-and-a-half years at Directi. These are some of my favourite images that represent the sheer randomness, eccentricity and fun that is Directi. May it always remain so!

I got Flickr Pro!

So, I'm only a work week into Yahoo! now and I just used my first employee benefit :) I've been thinking about getting a Flickr account these past couple of weeks and yesterday I learnt that Yahoo! allows all its employees to upgrade to Flickr pro for free. Thanks to the Yahoo! Internal Upgrade Perk you can now find me at http://www.flickr.com/photos/avirajsaluja.

I'm not sure how much I'm going to use this mainly since I don't know where I'll find the time for it. The sucky broadband speeds at home don't help my cause either. But photography is something that I really want to get into big time, and I'm hoping this is just one step towards building my motivation to start ASAP. I really need to buy my first DSLR before I turn 25.

Anyway, just for the sake of putting something up on my photostream, here's some pictures of my trip to China earlier this year. I'll try and put up the pictures from the Great Indian Punjabi Wedding sets that I blogged about earlier.

Cheers!