My First "Post New Thread" Hello all,
After trying for more than 3 times and lurking on this site for almost over 5 years, I am now more than proud to be part of this knowledgeable group. So, with this logic 4 is my lucky number. Before I start going on about me, I would be honored to thank the moderators for accepting my membership and allowing me to be part of this group. I am not what you call a motor-head or an over-enthusiast, but I'm a common man who likes to hear the engine revving, likes the smell of petrol and burnt rubber and someone who admires this community with awe.
I hail from the princely state of Baroda (Vadodara), Gujarat. But I now stay in Pimpri, Pune; since I have a job here.
I started with a diploma in Mechanical Engineering before changing my track towards a more attractive software world. I completed my MS in Software Engineering from BITS, Pilani in 2008.
Engines have always attracted me since my exposure to them. It was during my school days (I think, 7th or 8th standard onwards) when couple of my neighborhood uncles and friends used to open up and repair engines of vehicles that we used; like Luna, Sunny and the lesser known but more than powerful for our age and use - Mofa. Our activities were limited to cleaning spark-plugs and carburetors and only under vigilant guidance of those ‘uncles’ were we allowed to help in opening up the blocks and that’s when I first saw an open assembly of the piston and the cylinder working in tandem to generate what we call the ‘horse-power’ which is generated by rotation of the closed fist on the knob that we call the accelerator. But then life moved on and my contact with engines got lost in the books of C, C++, Oracle, Java, VB and software testing.
I started to drive or learned my driving in our first car – Premier Padmini or the Fiat 1150. That was at an early age of 17 and hence was restricted since I still had an year to get the license to drive. During vacations, I used to clean the car for my dad and as an incentive I got to take the car out of the garage (or the compound) of our house in the mornings and park it back in it in the evenings when he returned from office. That I believe is the best way to learn how to drive. If you know how to park the car in tight areas, you know how to drive it anywhere in the world.
I just love to drive cars, be it during peak traffic hours or empty roads, ghats or straight express ways, muddy village roads or crampy streets. But I would say driving on the Ghats or the curvy, up and down roads, would be my pick if given an option. My best driving experiences are as below (not in any specific order of preference):
1) Driving through the ghats of the Dang forests while going to Saputara from Bardoli (a small village near Surat, Gujarat)
2) Driving through the ghats on the way to Mahabaleshwar from Pune
3) Driving to Mount Abu from Baroda in a Maruti Omni which was fully loaded with 8 people and luggage – it pulled through all the steep ghats too albeit in 1st gear
4) The Baroda-Ahmedabad expressway – it is almost a straight line
5) Drive to Diveagar from Pune
6) Drive to Goa from Pune
7) Countless Mumbai-Pune drives via the old highway and the express way
I have a dream of owning and driving the big beast or SUV, and 1 day will come (sooner than later) when I will get to fulfill my dream.
My other interests lie in cricket (watching and playing), going on treks, socializing with my near and dear ones, travelling, and the list is long and goes on…
I am once again grateful to the team here and hope to be part of this group, actively, in times to come.
Last edited by GTO : 11th June 2012 at 14:22.
Reason: Removing FONT tags. Please do NOT cut-copy-paste from other softwares. It results in a formatting error
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