The Audi experience & results

On Tuesday (27 Nov), Amit and I had signed up for some spirited driving, thanks to Audi. It was a wonderful working day and we were both out of office, headed towards some exciting event.

The first time I sat in the car, the instructor was demonstrating the correct technique to use ABS, and going over a sharp left and a sharp right at the next instant. I was petrified. I sat in the car, knowing what was about to happen. My whole body was tense, every muscle had braced for the ride ahead, my hand clutched the door support and held on for dear life! Of course the moment this first ride was over, Amit and I decided it's best not to tell the folks back home about this :-) It would definitely not fetch us any praises.

The ride was less than spectacular. The main reason was we didn't get much feedback from the coach. Not sure why, maybe he was simply impatient, or running out of time, or I was so far behind the other drivers, he didn't see any point in giving us positive pointers. Anyways, the good thing about the event was we got a chance to race on the track, I think 2-3 rounds each. Infineon raceway in Sonoma is a nice track :-) Of course I wouldn't know a good track from a bad one, this was just the first one I'd been to!

The "most improved driver" selection happened without us knowing anything about it. He got to be a passenger in the wicked R8 with a pro driver.

I can't say that I loved the cars too much either. We got to drive in an A4, an A6 wagon, a Q7, an S4. The Q7 was a disappointment. There was way too much roll in the car on turns. A slow driver like me on a course in the parking lot definitely didn't do much to it, but Amit sure took it to its limits especially on the turns. The G forces were way too much for me! We drove the S4 on the real track, I liked the car. Fast & responsive. Hated the helmets they made us wear though. The only use was they protected the head while getting in and out of the car :-D

The BMW autocross that we attended back in Feb '04 was a totally different beast. We had only one vehicle, the X3. There was no race track. The instructors were looking at each of our runs and giving us constant feedback. There was a "proper" pit race and we were individually timed. They matched up the times and made a good decision on the "best driver" and of course I was the "most improved driver" in that session :-)

Social networking

After days and weeks and months of resisting the social networking sites, I finally succumbed and signed up for Orkut. It was instant addiction! I found many of my old school and college friends, colleagues. I spend hours finding old friends, updating my profile, and mostly scraping to other friends.

Keeping in touch with friends is really easy with Orkut. Profiles let you do that - give you all the material to talk about. You can selectively export info about yourself to your friends, friends of friends, or everyone :-) In addition to this, the concept of "scrapbook" pretty much is the antithesis of emails: every message to you is publicly displayed on your profile. Scraps are not private.

It is easy to see why Orkut is popular: you are there, you are everywhere. You can access it from anywhere. Your friends can reach you from anywhere: another country? sure. Another continent? definitely! It is so easy to use! (Just like Picasa, but that's for another post!)

Now, I'm not really a fan of everything that Google and Apple do. But one thing both companies seem to do very well is make these complex things easy to use for anyone. That's one place where M$ fails miserably. But then I guess others learnt from M$'s mistakes.