It was confirmed today - Ankur had won the “Best .Org Mela Stall” award at Linux Asia 2006.



Apart from that, the rest of the day was pretty uneventful - and we came back to the hotel at around 5:00 in the evening.



In the evening, we went to the nearby community centre and had dinner at a small, but very crowded place called Al-Bake. We had a Lebanese preparation called Shawarma, and then followed it up with Tandoori roti and Karai Murgh. It was simply delicious.



Tomorrow, we go to Agra and Fatehpur Sikri. I’ll try to blog about that when I return. We set out at 6:00 in the morning. Ugh!!!

Day 3 began with my talk on GNOME Deployment at the technical track at Linux Asia. We were running behind schedule, and so I could not demo Sabayon and Pessulus as planned. However, there were a few people interested in migration and deployment related strategies, so I guess, overall the talk was OK.



I decided to look like a PHB today - and here’s a sample of what I looked like ;-).



During the afternoon, we had a meeting of Ankur volunteers (Runa-di, Jamil, Suzan, Kushal, Soumyadip and myself) - and we managed to clear up a few pending issues that were holding up a lot of things.



In the evening Runa-di called me up to tell me that the Ankur stall had won some kind of award at the Penguin Party - I’ll get the details tomorrow. Kushal is staying with us tonight, and at 9:00 in the evening, we decided to go out an see a movie. After making some enquiries, we headed out for PVR Cinemas. When we reached the place, we bought ourselves tickets for the 10:45 show of Rang de Basanti. After dinner at McDonald’s (we couldn’t arrive on a consensus - so the we had to go with the default choice ;-)), we watched the movie. It was pretty good - or maybe I’m biased, since we are having Linux Asia at the India Habitat Center, where a large part of the movie was shot.



The movie ended at 2:00, and we took a autorickshaw back to the hotel (with me on Kushal’s lap, as he needed a shield from Delhi’s cold) - much to the disgust of Soumyadip - whom we woke up, and started a whole night session on Knoppix remastering :-P.

Amir Khusrau says:

Khusrau darya prem ka, ulti wa ki dhaar,
Jo utra so doob gaya, jo dooba so paar.

We woke up late today, and reached India Habitat Center slightly behind schedule. However, since I turned up late, I somehow managed to escape the marigold garland treatment all the speakers were getting at the registration booth. SDG with a marigold garland would have looked terribly odd ;-).



I helped setup the Ankur Bangla, the Koha and the Debian Indic stall at the .Org mela, and after a pretty good lunch, some of us decided to go and here Mark’s keynote address.



We decided to leave at around 6:00 in the evening, and at night, Jamil, Sujon, Soumyadip and I went to the Nizamuddin Dargah, and then had some fantastic biryani at a local shop. I wanted to listen to some qawwali performances, but a local shopkeeper told me that the qawwali would start at 11:00 - which was too late for me :-(. But the experience was really memorable, with the serpentine alleys, crowds of beggars and street-vendors, bazaars with cheap eateries hawking biryanis, kababs and other delicacies, people selling caps, rosaries, religious posters, etc.

The journey from Kolkata to Delhi was a nice experience (except for the fact that IDG and Soumyadip had missed the train - and they flew to Delhi by Spice Jet), and I had an interesting time, beta testing the new coaches. I found the new folding doors of the loo in these new coaches to be pretty confusing, and when I finally managed to open the door, I was really annoyed to find a nicely written manual for the toilet (which included instructions on using the door) inside!! Some people can come up with some really twisted logic. However, the good news is that in these new coaches, there are two power outlets for every six passengers, so I can remain connected to the internet for most of the journey.



At Delhi, we met IDG and Soumyadip at the hotel, and then I made myself busy, trying to setup a wifi network between our rooms. It required some intial R&D (I’ve never configured a wifi router before), but now it’s working pretty smoothly, and IDG can effortlessly get Internet access from his own room.



In the evening, Jamil, Soumyadip and myself decided to do some exploring, and we went to India Gate. We took a stroll in the Gate’s neighbourhood, took some pictures, and then we decided to go to Connaught Place for food. We had a burger at McDonald’s, and then had pizza at Pizza Hut. Ultimately, at around 11 ‘o’ clock, we came back to the hotel and right now, everyone is busy checking their mails, and setting up their laptops for their presentations/stalls.

I’m leaving for Delhi on the 6th (Monday) for Linux Asia 2006, and will be returning to Kolkata on the 13th. Jamil is coming from Bangladesh to join us - and we are having a stall for Ankur Bangla (as well as for FSF India) at the .Org mela @ Linux Asia.