Soo.. WHAT!!

What has God got to do with your fork!?

2011-12-07T12:20:00.002+05:30

Most days that went by, of late, I would say were quite philosophical, a little more than the normal dose. I'm not sure if that has got something to do with the Sani peyarchi that's coming the week next, like what my mom claims. But after all that which happened in the recent past and with a set of astrology followers around, I'm driven to give it a frequent thought, the topic that I always wanted to stay away from. More so because like a lot of other family mine was into misconceived astrology, way too much! For me astrology was always equal to fear. The fear of knowing mishaps of the future, with a few 'made-up' good things added by the 'incomplete' astrologer just to see some good profits. And therefore, to stay out of fear astrology became a blind-belief. Whatever bit of sense that I could make out of it is the cause of the 'sani peyarchi' statement above! :)

Getting back to the topic, more often than not I hear 'why is the most honest and ethical people are tested by "God" badly before they can taste success or even happiness, completely'! the keyword here - GOD!

I go back from here to remember Robert Frost's words,
"
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
"
While these are the commonly remembered words by a lot of us around, what impressed me now and always from "The Road Not Taken" were these:
"
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
"
All of us would have been taught various meanings of this poem, after all the school teacher has the authority ;) They all perhaps converge to the same idea.

It's like, in life there are going to be numerous such forks that you'll hit and it will solely be on one person, and that is you, to be responsible for the path that you choose and decide to traverse all along till the end with all the ups and downs, come what may! You may never be able to come back to a fork and try treading a different path than the one that you chose before - most importantly not without losing anything!
For me, pondering over this had let me realize the depth of decision making and the amount of responsibility an individual should take for a decision made by him/herself. So please, let's spare God alone!

If not anything else, let me strive to give him back the satisfaction for showering all his blessings on me through this one thing called 'life'. For no one can ever give back God anything for this gift of life - He is unconditional!!
For you the reader, I wish you get all the wisdom and be a better human everyday and thereby gratify the Almighty God!

1 Madhav Baug

2011-11-21T17:44:00.005+05:30

Yesterday was a very fulfilled day after a real long time. Well not because my husband was out of town, not really. Somehow I could catch up with this 'far-fetched' concept in my dictionary - 'punctuality'. Starting my classes in the morning to being available for the get-together in the noon, I could make myself present on time. And to wrap all that up, a pleasant visual treat - impacts created by 1 Madhav Baug, at Ranga Shankara, ended my day in full contentment.

So whats all about this: Putting aside the story of the Play, which more discussed about the relationship between a Mother and a homosexual son, what impressed me was "Other Voices" and how the theater went on to conceptualize such an amazing idea! More here!
The play was at 9.30 in the night, Bangalore's weather contributing to the mind's chillness. It wasn't conducted in the auditorium where usually all the play/activities happen, which came across to be a sweet surprise. We climbed close to 4 floors up the building, lit by huge scented candles all along the path way. And there we have this cozy rectangular room at the corner set up with dim lights, mattress covered with a white bed linen and a couple of chairs on the sides., for the audience to sit... sit so closely to the actor. A very simple ambiance, dark wood table, a chair and a couple of lamps, created for the play, it added up to the richness of the idea. Revathi was all around the space, performing, the roles of the son and more of the mother. A role well done that she could push a few of them into tears and touch the emotional Q of a lot in the crowd. Hats off to Arundhathi Nag or whomsoever who contributed to all of it.

The play had a quite a lot of simple yet strong ideas to be conveyed. 'Everybody is unique and just someone, because it's a blood relationship, cannot be taken for granted';'Why is your children not growing up to be someone whom you expect them to be is a wrong question, have we all grew up to be what our parents exactly wanted us to be!' - they came across like a hard slap on my face - it felt very timely!

They had a simple Q&A at the end of the play and Revathi answered everything. During the play she often reiterated that the play has got nothing to do with her personal life that evoked this 'why' thought in me and 'whats wrong just if that's the case' which I asked her and was answered partly. What I liked the most is, when someone in the crowd confessed that he is a homosexual himself and his parents accepted him the way he is, she said its also about drawing a midway, before turning to be rebellious or accepted completely - how true!

It was a totally different experience, and I agree, it did create an impact to an extent that I did not expect it to!
Job well done! Kudos!

The best way

2011-11-07T16:56:00.003+05:30

to kill time as I discovered is behavioral analysis. As in finding out the answers for the five magnificent "W"s in your own way. On that note, penning down a few funny and curious behaviors of people as I got discuss with 2 of my favorite friends over the weekend.

1. The previous generation, moms/dads and sorts, are so poor at covering up stuff.
- My friend explained an incident with his Mother. Like they planned to go out somewhere where his dad did not want them to go that day. They come back home with a Spencer's packet and his dad got to pull out some eatable, upon tasting he commented 'where did you buy this from, it tastes so bad. You must get this exchanged'. His mom answers curtly, 'the Spencer's next door.... NEXT DOOR na beta errrrr...'. The friend smirks wondering if he was on his dad's shoes, it would have just taken zero effort for him to get the situation so well. Now that's the previous generation for you. This is funny!
Another example: there is something about you that your relative knows already and they just want to open it up with you as if they had no clue about it while you can so very well make out the lame attempt! Now this is annoying!

2. The kind of people who just want to prove their point. As in a point that would be of no use proving it.
- A set of relatives (very elderly people - higher risk if they are in-laws) at home and then there is this someone who stays opposite door, that implies the one who can just watch your moves day in and day out. The previous night before the relatives arrived, I was "out" partying crazily. I was home late that the neighbor had noticed. The next morning while all the relatives are around, she pulls up this topic "so it was verrrrrry late by the time you were home last night, I peeped out at 11.30 and could not find your bike". I was like damn, is it so important to be talked now kinds, "not really I guess I was in by 11.30". Her: "no no.. not at all". Me: "Hmmm... may be 11.35 or something then". She says "Haaannn that's what! I checked exactly at 11.30" like as if she can NEVER be wrong. I mean I just could not make any sense out of the whole act. Or is it that the point proved is I was put at risk and there's some fun behind that? And this is more annoying :P

Onto, this set of elder generation who can never agree to what the younger ones say, well at the least not as a counter argument or as a "suggestion", not even while you have a general conversation. I'm unsure if I should call it ego or stubbornness or a time pass. Really. I mean there are people who want to make an argument, for the sake of passing time.
And then you find these people in town who make random comments. What's funny is that the amount of satisfaction they feel by doing that, how foolish! They can know that thing that doesn't even exist anywhere in the world, I mean that so random and then they can give you great ideas on all that if ever you tend to try that out!
Okay, its not that I want to create a Revolution 2020 that I want people to start thinking into stuff and work towards harmony. Just some passing thought, and of course, for the records ;)

So I wish you, the reader, to meet people who are that random, at some point of time in life, just to have some good laugh when you look back :)

Steve Jobs

2011-10-11T14:25:00.003+05:30

Like so many others around, on the 6th of Oct '11 I too did not wake up to a good morning, rather its a sense of emptiness!
Emptiness is something I define to be an intense thought, that half of the crowd out there bump onto, when there are too many things for us to work on while we can never be able to connect the dots! Everybody would have a push to make it big in life. We work, live, fail, succeed.. and when the taste of all of these is known, we hit this point called emptiness. I mean, the point where I do not anymore be able to make sense out of all those things that I am doing.
The very first time I read this Stanford Univ speech that Steve delivered was in 2007, sitting at my cubicle in MindTree.. and firstly, I felt pathetic to not know the world that so much that I got to come across it after 2 whole years after it was actually done. Ever since, for lack of a better synonym, I'm a great fan of Steve! cuz like what I learned in MindTree, working through this life is not just for money and fame, its more about adding values to my own life. He did that. Through a lot of other sources, I have heard that he has been a very authoritative leader, that some people call him rude and hostile. I still believed what he does is right, for I'm a person who is actually of the same sorts and I always felt there is nothing wrong in being that way when ever its required!
I felt so insane upon hearing the news, that I went on to change my DP on FB to black and tagged it Steve Jobs and I was fuming so much that I just had to make up my mind that the darkness is something that I feel in my heart but the mind should know he lives forever some way or the other.
The past couple of months, there has been a highly agitated mood prevailing in and around me. And I have not been able to figure a good way out. I'm through with the struggle for money and love. Now everything has reached the 'maintenance and support' phase by software jargon. I'm unable to think like what if today is the last day of life, for I aint diagnosed with some incurable cancer or anything neither that I'm so old to think that I must now start living life for people around me rather than myself for that, I believe, is a parallel process at any point of time in life.
That's when the Stanford university speech is something that I ponder on over and over again. For a lot of us, life without the 'i' today would have been quite a threat. While a person who could make a remarkable change to the world only could connect the dots after few long years, how highly applicable such a thing to me is what I have realized.
The recent trip that we did to Rome, when looked back again gets a rush under my stomach. I'm unsure if Leonardo DaVinci or Michael Angelo would have ever dreamed of doing what they actually did or believed that they would bring in such a positive change to the whole of Universe. So much so that the Human civilization today would have been nothing without them.
While everything I believe is about the inner sense and about a person self to get the way your life is going in the first place, the push to living this life is undoubtedly, a lot outside you. Very much!
Wish the reader, there is going to be a time in your life when you can completely feel the positivity of emptiness and that brings in a new dawn into your life, the kind that you've never seen so far!
Kudos Steve Jobs!

Learnings from the Bhagavad Gita - I

2011-06-15T11:09:00.004+05:30

Buying a 'Bhagavad Gita' remained a long time wish until I had been to Iskcon a couple of months ago. After I bought it, I "wanted to" & tried reading a few portion at least every day, later realized that it was becoming an unfulfilled agenda. Slowly I tried becoming a regular reader, currently at an average extent. And wanted to record the learning from what I read!
The edition that I have is the 'Bhagavd-Gita As it is', by the Abhay Charanaravinda Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the well known founder of Iskcon and it encloses the Sanskrit, Hindi and tamil version of the phrases with a detailed description of the intent and meaning of every phrase. When I first started, reading both the Sanskrit and tamil scripts was the motto, but later reading only the Tamil phrase. As I wanted to read the Gita all over again once I complete reading the full for the first time, it would make more sense to read through everything the second time than doing it now. Needless to mention, the day is more peaceful and the mind is more stable through the day.

So, in the initial few portions before Krishna starts the Upadesam, the war field formation of the Kurukshetra with all other nuances involved along with the ability of the soldiers on both the sides, the Dhritarashtra and the Pandavas is described beautifully.
Coming to the learning, I was at a complete awe to read about how fear encompassed Arjuna, when he looked at the war field, and to fight so many of them considering the dharma. He slides away the bow and tells Krishna, this is not how he wanted to make this life of his. There are so many soldiers, elders, relatives etc and killing them becomes the greatest sin. It also shows up the wrong path to the next generation that's growing up in the Raja Vamsam.
- I realize, the greatest of human, the Arjuna, would also feel 'fear'! Being afraid of something at some point of life is no wrong. Without that, life doesn't run into the right path.

So, to this question of Arjun, Krishna replies, 'the most powerful, ambidextrous archer, Arjuna! this is not what I expected out of you. Being the most skillful, I thought you knew to differentiate between the permanent and the temporary. All of those who are going to be killed by you in this battle of Kurukshetra would lose only the life (athma). It is only their body, that's temporary, will be destroyed; the athma is permanent, it will stay back and get transferred to another body.'

- All the good and bad deeds in this life, has no destruction. They will stay back with your athma. Being more careful about one's every action is vital for a human!

On a side note, when I was on my way to office in the morning today, I thought through point #2 and felt, 'so what about the athmas that are not yet transferred to another body! Are they just strolling around here. there are so many people dying each day and is this world full of athmas. suddenly I imagine around me a set of white human structures, without legs, floating in the air like what we see in the ghost movies, phew! whoaaa!' :P

Credit Card Skimming – Beware (June 2011)

2011-06-08T16:32:00.006+05:30

- From my husband -

I’m one of those who has multiple credit cards and have been using these for close to 6 yrs. One of those cards (from a bank which claims to never sleep) has given me sleepless nights from the past 2-3 days. While I had the card in my possession, I suddenly got an alert for a transaction from my card. I immediately called the customer care and got the card blocked. I usually check my online account every 2-3 days, but the transactions reflect only after 3 days. In the next few days, I realized there were 29 transactions totaling to an amount of Rs. 45,000 which weren’t made by me. All of these are swipe transactions and not online. The bank will now investigate this and settle the amount in my account if these are found to be fraud transactions.

The fraudster who used the fake credit card number with the same number as mine made merry with the card in just 5 days. The guy started from a wine shop/bar, bought some goggles at an optical shop, some food at a super market, had a sumptuous meal in a restaurant, got himself some nice boots, went on to buy some mp3 players, filled fuel into his cars 6 times full totaling upto 15k, bought another goggles for his friend, had the best sweets in town. Finally when he decided to treat himself with a mobile phone worth > 5000 – it triggered an alert and I guess he moved onto the next card. All of this in 5 days.

I intend to fight this and get the charges off my account and I also believe it will not be very difficult for whoever it is to apprehend this guy given that he had the audacity to shop all of this in & around just one locality – Jayanagar 4^th block, Bangalore.

Reason for this mail though is to give some Dos & Don’ts to all those smart ones out there using Credit Cards. Here goes:

Dos:

1. Ensure card is always in your possession
2. Memorize your credit card numbers
3. Have customer care numbers stored on your phone
4. Opt for lesser credit limit on the cards
5. Configure transaction alerts for any amount greater than 500
6. Have online account access and regularly monitor the transactions
7. CVV should be scratched out

Donts:

1. Swipe your card in shady places (Bars, Petrol pumps)
2. Convey credit card details to anyone over phone
3. Give Xerox copies of your existing cards when applying for fresh ones

BR hills

2011-05-10T15:56:00.009+05:30

This is one helluva experience I probably had waited for, in a real long time. And this post is one thing that my husband would've waited for, for long now :P

BR hills, the abbreviation goes Biligiri RanganathaSwamy hills. There is one neat, sweet temple at the hilltop, Ranganathar statue, one of the smallest Venkateswara swamy idols (by size) I have so far seen.
For the good Friday weekend, we were planning for a while for a good drive out of Bangalore. We were inquiring Ooty for long and slowly decided to not venture out during Summer, as the season is peak and everything gets too commercial around this time. We thought of Bandipur, but were too keen on hill stations given the weather. Finally came up with BR hills plan, close to 170+ km from Bangalore, that says a good 2-3hrs drive.
If I had called Horsley hills to be offering a different reality, what should I say about this place - fantasy? fear? fun? should be a mix of all of this.
Quite a "lot" of research, to check the weather, stay, routes, safety, activities etc and we ended up with just carrying nothing [on the head and hands ;)] other than a print out of google maps with the routes. Route goes very easy and defined, unlike the HH experience.
6.45 AM leaving home without any concrete plans. Tank had to be filled, ATM stopover etc, managed to set out, at 7.30AM, towards Mysore, 100+kms and then a diversion near Malavalli circle, (I was checking with my hubby dear if its the same as the M from MTR that stands for Mavalli, he says this is different and MTR history is based out of Udupi - both the hands up, I agree!)
Though we had all this clearly defined routes, we took a left near the circle and went into some gully in Malavalli and then came back to join Mysore road to hit the circle again hehe :D Got to notice a sign board ahead of the circle, only now, to take this diversion that ahead of the circle and not the free left at the signal, just at the circle! Anyway.. now the next 20+ km is a real challenge to your patience! The roads were bad, to say the least, the gears dint go up above 3. We stopped for Chai at a small shop between Malavalli and Maddur. It was so funny how the -walah's son wanted to show me some heroism on the cycle only to not notice the cycle stand was broken and his father had actually tied it up with a rope to the cycle. He pulled the stand off and the rope tore away, and then to see his father screaming and running towards him was a mischievous incident that my husband missed seeing, as he was away for his nature call :P
We then continued driving towards Kollegal, thats another 10-15kms from here, say. Kollegal is a decent town with a few hotels, looked like an important place for business for all the villages around. We went into a road side hotel for breakfast, that's when we decided to come back to this town by night for the stay. Picked up water, juice, chewing gums etc and then set onto the actual drive, 35km towards BR hills. 11-11.30AM at BR hills checkpost, we started driving upwards. The security at the checkpost told us that we would get accommodation up in the hills itself and they were telling us to goto the temple first.
The drive up was enjoyable. There was just nobody around for a stretch of say 3kms!? Both of us were scared like hell. I was trying to make some conversation - I got to read somewhere i' we have good luck, we will spot some wild-animals', to receive this bouncer back 'if we have bad luck!???!?' he continued, 'oh wild animals will spot us!?'
We carried on ahead the fear, thrill, excitement and everything, drove a few kms ahead, spot a view point. We just tried stopping to take a good view of the valley around, only to realize that it was a good amount of slope and then to get moving ahead in 1st gear became very tough. We did not get off the car and wanted to continue, the car engine went off a couple of times when he tried getting ahead and then he threw such a scared look at me, n then I went off for a while :P
Another 5-6km of good slopes, good roads, a very few hairpin bends and this implies the roads were steep. We decided to reach the temple first and 1/2 a km just before reaching the temple, the slope of the road was almost 70+ degrees. He had a nightmare, I could simply guess it!
We got into the temple to find the main sannidhi closed, only then we realized what the guys at checkpost were trying to tell us. We got to see a wedding, may be the most simple wedding I ever got to witness - can't skip mentioning that the groom was shivering like anything when he was tying the knot! We had the darshan of the amman and then decided to leave and look for an accommodation on the hills itself We decided if we get a good acco, we would stay put there itself and that we din't see a point anyway to go back to Kollegal for the night stay if only we find a good acco here itself. We left and went to a nearby hotel, as some of the shopkeepers suggested us to check with that hotel people. Its called 'Giri Darshan'. They were suggesting us to check out 'Gorukhana'. But before leaving I had checked their site and did not want to go for such an expensive accommodation for just 24hrs. So we were asking him for other options and then he showed us a building nearby which seemed like some Government quarters. We went there and the security guard/supervisor told us to check with another place closeby and to mention his name. As we entered the gate, we saw an i10 entering along and then those guys have approached someone before us, so luck just skipped favoring us.
We then decided to go back to Giri Darshan for lunch and then leave to Jungle lodges resort to check for acco. When I checked online, there were no availability, we still wanted to take a chance. Upon inquiring around about the location of JLR, we got to know its a place called K.gudi, that's another 20kms drive from BR hills. We got curious after reading all the reviews about JLR and wanted to check it out at least to know what's so special about it even if we are no going to find an acco there and as there was nothing much to do in BR hills, the time was only 3 or so, we did not mind doing a 40 more kilometer.
After a very very cheap lunch, by taste as well, we set onto the drive towards JLR. The route throughout was apt to the name, Jungle lodges! Completely into the jungle, very deep and dense, with no bit of human heads around, God what should I say, if we were scared climbing up BR hills, me calling this experience "chill-down-the-spine" or "lump-bobbing-up-and-down-the-stomach-and-throat" would be way too less than what we actually experienced. Fear, thrill, excitement multi-folded and what's more interesting was to just know nothing of what was ahead of us. As we continued, at several stretches, it was close to playing roadrash game, as in how the roads and everything seem to be formed as we get ahead, its just the same! So by plans if its like having no clue what was ahead, with the drive it was like literally we did not know what was ahead! The music player did not work while going, so it was more of random ruffled thoughts within and exchange of few stories and experiences, convincing each other that it was worth the experience and everything. After an absolutely wild 20km drive, we reached JLR. We got to check out their loghuts and tented rooms, and as expected they did not have any availability. We sat there in our car for a while listening to songs, got to spot elephants and deers. And then left to reach back BR hills to check out Gorukhana and decided if we aren't finding acco there, we should start driving down, max by 5PM as we read in a few reviews its absolutely dangerous to drive down the hills after dark.
When we hit Gorukhana, the manager there told us that they do not have anything available but they can provide some acco in their sister concern groups, V.G.K.K, who seem to run a welfare centre for the tribals, that includes school/college/hospital/hostels etc. They can show us a few rooms in the hostel rooms in that campus and we can pick if we like something. We went back to check at around 3.30. I must say the campus was so beautiful! A big lawn in the middle surrounded by round shaped cottages and a few buildings. So quiet and pleasant and then jungle view from everywhere! We checked out a few rooms and decided on some room and then planned to stay back there that night. The room we picked was amidst the cottages where some girls who were studying there were staying. I wanted to go for this one, because if at all we shout out for some help in case of emergence, may be there are people to respond.
After leaving our luggages, we went out again to the temple and came when it was just about to get dark. We got into the room, it did not have water, they were running with a very low-lit CFL tubes. There were some people to help. We paid a guy and asked him to get water. He wanted to rest for sometime and then we went out just to take a stroll in the campus given the beautiful lawns and the forest surrounded atmosphere. We sat on the staircase talking stories, a sudden thought 'they say it gets very dark in the forest soon, but its not the case here' and before we completed this statement, it got dark, so heavily dark. We walked back to the room and he wanted to take some rest before dinner.
He was just getting on to the bed, meanwhile noticed this moth what they call Gypsy Moth Caterpillar (kambali poochi in tamil). We got so allergic and then slowly the next one to next to next! We changed the position of the cots and then noticed a few of them up above the roofs, the rooms had this thatched roof. As it was getting darker, more of them started falling down and then we decided to get out of this room. Before that, I just told my husband that I would go, check with those girls as they might also be facing similar problems, so that we might find some solution. In parallel we were discussing, if at all they are not going to give us an other room, we should just sleep in the car, its way too dangerous being there overnight!
While coming back from the temple, I heard those girls chatting and then there was this girl who knew Tamil, to a very lil extent. I went near their room and was finding out. A few of them came out and were suggesting something to turn the lights off and that they will go away. My husband could hear the conversation from that room and when I went back to tell him what they suggested, before I started he said they did not understand what kind of insect you were referring to, the light logic won't work for shooing these off, go bring one of them and show. There were no signal in the mobile phone to reach out to anyone to ask for any help! Then I went and got 2 of them and showed, they got to know what it was and they went in search of their supervisor.
Before going ahead, I would want to write a little bit about the condition of this place and these people who live there. I went to meet those girls to check if they can help us by giving one of their rooms for us that night. The ones that we were given/shown had 3 cots, and we thought there would be 3 people living in a room and with so many rooms around, they might be able to accommodate themselves in the other rooms and give us theirs. But came to my shock was the clumsiness of those rooms with more than 8 girls stuffed into one room and all that! Phew! I simply gave up the idea of even asking them about it. I'm not sure why should that be the case when there were so many vacant rooms available in the campus! These girls live without proper electricity or water. They have to live up with the singly CFL lamps that they are given, to study/work/do anything! The question 'Aren't we blessed' should have an answer in superlatives was the only thing I had in mind after seeing all that!
Going back, we hear the supervisor's voice after a while in Kannada, shouting at them for trying to help us rather blaming them for giving such a room! He was shooing them away. I let my husband talk, and he decided to do the talking not by words. That guy was starting to explain, 'this is a forest and getting a room itself is tough here .. blah... '. Hubs' gave back the keys, implying if you have a decent room, let alone a good one, get me that, else we'll get our way out kinds. The supervisor was then yelling to one of the co-workers to show us the other rooms and then we went back to the very first room which we saw. The first thing was to look for the worms and then we found just one, this was way too better compared to the previous ones and we noticed a loft under the roof, fortunately. This is now the neatly laid cement one, as compared to the thatched roof that the room has. So even if there is going to be some on the roof, we can sleep under the loft and the probability of one falling down from there is too less. We were fine. With all the scary thoughts, we delved into a 4hrs of disturbed sleep, listening to the thunder and lightning outside, we just then knew what is it called 'forest rains' and a 2hrs of deep sleep to save us from so much of tiredness after the drive, skipping dinner. Okay, life can be like this too!
We were up by 5.45am and then saw it was just into dawn. We couldn't resist getting into the nature again. Went out to take a stroll, doing some research on the way that place was constructed and the lawns and garden that they were maintaining and everything. We sat on the rocks and clicked some pictures, chatting and yapping a lot. It was close to breakfast time and those girls were out for their day's start. We joined them along, did the morning chores and were ready to bid good bye to this institute. Now if I call it just an experience, I should be under rating it. We paid some money which they said will goto the institution's fund and we can claim tax for it. With a total new outlook towards the environment, we bid adieu to BR hills and started driving through the forest again to reach Kollegal for breakfast at Annapurna, if I remember correctly.
We started driving towards Bangalore, now via Kanakpura road, no potholes/manholes, a complete smooth drive, with a fulfilled holiday and a happy healthy mind.

Noticed this contact number for accommodation at a house which we missed getting. This might be helpful for some of you. 09036809218.

Isda Thai

2011-05-06T12:20:00.003+05:30

I'm not sure what's driving me to write a review of this cozy, peppy restaurant now. But this one was long pending in my 'restaurant reviews' diary.

So this is yet another place on this porsche lively Banjara hills Rd no -12, rather they call it Jubilee hills, rd no 36, not very sure. Its above the Volkswagen showroom, the top 2 floors. Part of it on the top most floor is open roof decorated with some Thai style statues and other similar decors. I recommend visiting this place for dinner and make sure you get a table on the roof open area. The lighting is just perfect to the mood and sit with you favorite drink, under the moonlit sky with some simple lanterns lit all over, does it need anything more to life! I think no!

Being spent close to 4 years in Bangalore before going to Hyderabad, there wasn't one restaurant that I would tag "Ultimate" here though there definitely are some swanky, funky hang outs But Isda Thai, I must truly say is "Ultimate". Its a Thai based design, though the food is Indianized Thai! This place is not for those people who would want to take a plunge into the Hyderabadi briyani or want to eat till their stomach starts aching - their quantity is limited, taste is very very different! It might not fit into your budget if you're a person who is looking out on some cool deals with buffet options. So far, whenever I have gone, I have only seen the Audis VWs & BMWs decked up, okay so typical of Banjara hills. You can go by i10/zen as well, like what we did :P

There was this coconut based soup, with lot of cream and cheese, I don't remember the name, but I still feel the taste at the tip of my tongue, its crazy! May be the other Thai restaurants have similar menu, but after visiting this place, I just did not want to venture out on Thai style anywhere else.

Banjara hills, Hyderabad. A place I would love for life and every time I think of all that we got to do here, it takes me to heaven! Wish life has a rewind button, so hard!
If you're in Hyderabad, and haven't been here yet, you sure are missing out on something.

Kapil Chand

2011-05-06T11:56:00.003+05:30

A guy, who was my school junior on and off since my nursery and later never been in touch with him. A week back, one of my close friend who was his classmate got to be in Bangalore and we got to talk after long on phone for a while. Came to my shock was the news that Kapil met with an accident. Slowly I hear my friend saying, he was on his bike, on the day of Mahaveer Jayanthi; on this curvy stretch of the road that connects my native to a nearby town from where he started, got hit by a lorry, fell down; had to call the ambulance, to reach the hospital, only to know that he will have both his legs no more. And then he tells me he is married for a year now! The moment I heard it from him, I did not react too big though I was very shocked. We spoke for another couple of minutes about fate and related things and how these play in someone's life & likes. We hung up.

Gradually through the day, the seriousness of the news that I heard started getting into my head, and it thumped very strong, that I just could not forget or come out of it for real long. I was thinking of this guy so badly, how we used to play together when in school. He had been our tuition-mate as well. My cousin's parents and his parents had common friends in the town and all that. The kind of nightmare I went through thinking of him and his nearest family and friends.

I could not just digest why should God be so unfair to not just answer some of life's question!
The next day I called up my aunt to find out if she had any updates on that. She was convincing me saying that he can have artificial legs fitted in a while, he would be able to do his things himself. Most of all she said that she heard it from his relatives that his wife is very strong more than everybody. She tells people not to worry and that they can live life like this without having even a least bit of problem. What worried me more was the kind of mental trauma these people would be going through, the frustration and then this "why ME"! And when I heard about his wife's reaction to this whole hardship she is exposed to at this small age, I really felt She is like a God-sent! Later my friend told me that even Kapil is very strong and that he just wants to focus on the future and getting ahead, rather than being stuck with what happened and waste time worrying about it!

What should I say! Was such an incident really need for us to realize 'life is about how we look at it; its a mirror that reflects back what we show it'!

God give them more life, more love, more maturity, more happiness all the time going ahead. Not just because they are going through something very tough in life, but for the way they have taught us what life actually is! Love 'em n hats off!

10 things that happen when the managers from US visit the Indian teams

2011-03-18T16:33:00.003+05:30

1. More than half your day goes in meetings
2. In all the meetings, the US folks who are by birth/brought up Indians puts a lot of US accent while they try to explain all the statistics and timelines that they have for the next 5 years in those useless power point presentations.
3. You get to hear all those list of verbs/adjectives related to team work/hardwork a million times a day.
4. For once in a lifetime, you will get to hear thanks, thank-you, without-you-it-wouldn't-have-been-possible that you will be overwhelmed with your own performance
5. You will be given all the courage and strength to talk out on the thing that you've been thinking that gates the productivity of the team or yourself after the presentations in the so-called "Questions?" slide.
6. You will be beaten up almost to death if you had the guts to talk of the issue that you have actually been thinking through your work!
7. A few senior members in the team, only in terms of the number of years completed in the company/team, will get "rewards" that they were waiting for, all these years.
8. You see your managers/a few over enthusiastic peers' energy levels multiplied by God-knows-how-many-calories!
9. And then if there is a lady in the visiting team, the female counterparts get added attention. All of a sudden the woman in you is appreciated for just that reason, that you are a woman.
10. And beyond all this, if you're a service provider aka consultant aka contractor the dog's treatment still continues!!

Indian Breakfast Blog.

2011-03-15T12:35:00.003+05:30

Cooking was one hell of a thing that I can ever be put into. At home, I grew up in a very strict environment. Mom is the most strict lady in the world, as a consequence I was always looking for a chance to get out of home, only to know what it is being away from home!! It gave me all kinds of experiences - whacky, funny, zombie, moody, angry and not miss anxiety! And at the end I just did not want to experience any of them. However, beyond all the restrictions I was put under and over, mom had never let me get into the kitchen. Be it anything, anytime, when guests are around or nobody at home, she never wanted me to get into the kitchen, well never for cooking. I did not like it. Mom did not enforce it.
So someday, when something called marriage happens and when you were always under this nice impression about a guy who has been a boyfriend for 4.5yrs, that he'll be the most helping lad turns out to be a cooking-hater only to your surprise, thence does not want to share the pain called cooking, that you have to go through everyday, this is what happens -You hit the google search for 'Indian breakfast blog' and there turns up nothing that exactly matches your phrase and I end up in this whole blogging story with this title!

I'm gonna quickly make a jist of all the simple breakfast items, with ingredients, that can save some precious time of your lazy mornings.
1. Idli/Dosa with some simple chutneys.
2. Upma
Rava/wheat rava/aval - fr respective upmas, Onions, Tomatoes, Carrots, Groundnuts, tadka.
I mess up Semia upma and rice sevige big time.
3. Pongal
Rice, moong dhal, pepper, cashew, ghee.
4. Ragi Rice porridge.
Cooked rice, Ragi, (Onions/Chillies - not a must)
5. Bread toast.
With(out) omlette. Jam, Butter, Chocolate
6. Variety rice.
(Tamarind puree/Tomato Onion/Lemon)- with tadkas/simple tadka.
7. Soya Dosa.
I get the mix from the nearby supermarket. Add onion/tomatoes whenever time permits.
8. Rava Idli
Again, buy the mix. Curd.
(Ragi balls -Haven't tried so far. But one of the easiest menu as my friend suggests.)
9. Pancakes
Maida, Rice flour, any fruit(s)/sprouts, Nutella, Lime,
10. And someday when you are bored enough to do any of this, just shoo your husband off and let them enjoy their freedom for a day with their most loved breakfast menu at the office canteen :P

*This post will have updates as and when I come across/remember/think of some menu*

Horsley Hills - A drive in tranquility

2011-03-15T11:35:00.011+05:30

Wikipedia says ‘Horsley Hills, elevation 1,265 m, is a famous summer hill resort in Andhra Pradesh, about 160 km from Bangalore, India’. History goes back to 1840-43 during which a British officer W.D.Horsley chose this place to be his summer holiday destination and the place supposedly was named after him.
The drive to Horsley hills offered quite a different reality. Our trip was made in a Ford Figo Exi fully crammed with food, clothing and an Ego laptop that had the directions for us. Thanks to Tata photon that picked up network even in some of the remote villages of AP. A little bit of reviews from team-BHP helped truly.
At 6AM, on a Saturday we were ready with our bags with the notion of blindly following the route that Google maps had in store for us, that took us via Hoskote (after KR puram) to NH 4, then the entire length of Kolar on NH 4 till Nangali after crossing KA border. Then a left to hit NH 219, follow the road to Madanapalle and thence a diversion on the left to reach Horsley hills.
We managed to do 80-100kmph constantly on the NH and the best part of the connecting roads was that there was hardly any civilization found except for a very remote village or two in say, 25kms.
The estimated driving distance was 160km, while we ended up doing 190. Blame it on politics, as the ex-CM of AP was visiting Madanapalle at around the same time. We missed noticing a sign board, which was royally hidden behind the billboard (his portrait), that indicated the diversion to Horsley hills, that which charged us an additional 30+km. We discovered this whole obscurity while driving back only when we got to notice the rear side of this sign board.

Nevertheless, the additional drive gave us another stretch of beautiful scenery with a lot of fields and some forests and mountains on both the sides and a million other stunning things of nature which I really needn’t strike down, most importantly no human lives. The roads throughout the drive were smooth and neatly tarred. The drive from the mountain base till the hilltop is 9km with 6 hairpin bends, that are not so dangerous, covered on both the sides by dense forests at some segments and a lot of Eucalyptus trees grown on the slopes. We reached at 11AM with a couple of stopovers.

Once you reach the hilltop, AP tourism’s picturesque resort awaits you with variety of cottages, lawns and parks surrounded by giant mountains, foggy valleys, plains, forests with a lot of peace and solitude. Into the resort, there is a big banyan tree that marks a history. The whole land area of the hill station would be covered within approximately 1km radius. There is only one restaurant that serves quality food, and beverages. There are a few chai-walahs and shops that sell the most basic stuff required.

We enjoyed the striking sunset, sitting on the plains that slopes down to the charming valleys. The plan was to stay put that day and start driving back the next noon. We picked the cottage that had the best view out to the heaps and the one enclosed by good number of trees. They had some basic adventure activities that come for nominal rates. With a complimentary breakfast and a long chit chat under the banyan tree, we packed up our baggage at 11.30AM and started to leave.

The drive back was through the SH99, a left from Madanapalle and 100km straight down the single lane highway towards NH9, with a couple of villages alongside and villagers selling lot of fruits and veggies here and there. We stopped several times and piled up a lot of them into the already loaded car. Back in Bengaluru at 4.30PM and this time only 160km.

Pros:
- Best for a weekend drive, actual driving time - ~3hrs.
- Leisure holiday - Lot of nature, peace and solitude.
- Good weather. Ideal time to visit: Nov-Jan
Cons:
- Expect nothing beyond nature and yourself.
- Not ideal for family outings.

Beyond the land of Hattamala!

2011-03-05T20:45:00.006+05:30

Got to watch this at the Jagriti theatre in Whitefield last night and I must say it was worth a watch. It's one of my friend's debut Play and I just couldn't miss being there. Its was very hectic ride at the peak evening hours of B'lore traffic through the outer ring road, total distance of about 35kms, as it was a sudden plan. The show was at 8PM and I had called a friend of mine to check out for the route in Google maps and as per what I heard from him, it sounded the theatre was not on the main road, and then a big sigh of relief to just bump on it on the Whitefield road itself came up totally to our surprise.

Coming to the actual play, it was quite an experience.

The initial 15 minutes, before the actual start of the show, they did some formations which was a slow motion thingie. Good try and should have been a good warm up to the casts. Once the play started, it was a mix of Kannada, Hindi and English. Kenappa, the main male cast's whole script was in Kannada, and a ton round of applauds to him to deliver it just real. A lot of times the audience caught up with giggles for all the funny dialogues he had. The experience showed up. I have got to see a small piece of his monoacting once before in my company, and if I remember correctly, it was in English. A very good one. Becha was no less, I still remember the way she was throwing up some stares. So funny. Hers was complete English script. She did greater than what's justice to the role. Both the main cast were great actors, and all their efforts seemed to have paid. The other characters that come as a part of the play too did the best of theirs. Each of them had to play multiple roles for different scenes. I just keep wondering how could they manage remembering the sequence and all the dialogues in addition. A job too greatly done. And then there was this guitarist, an old man. He had the excellent skills of singing and that promptly made up for what a lil that was missing here and there.

So now coming to what dragged me to the show. This guy, I almost went on the verge of calling him a pester for all the marketing he was doing all over. He was living with the play, I guess for more than 2 months, whenever we got to speak wherever it is, all I could hear from his was Beyond, BTLH etc etc. He was on this instrument side. Playing some 3 different kinds of instruments namely Bongo, Rainstick and Agogo. A great opportunity to show up his skills and according to me he had used it really well. His debut show and it just did not look like that at all! Kudos.

On the whole the play had quite a good impact on the audience. We went on to remember the dialogues and started relating to them at certain instances. There were no real flaws found except for one or two here and there, which might definitely not a big deal when you come out with this whole sense of gratification for a time well spent.

And beyond that hattamala, moneyless world is quite a fantasy. How I wish we all get to experience that in the real world.

I would upload the poster that I made for this soon, as I dont have the originals with me right now. After all, even I had put in some of my 2 cents for this, you see ;)

- *Poster uploaded on Mar 08*

Godspeed to you good people!

Saraswathi Pooja - 2010!

2010-11-03T14:13:00.006+05:30

Been through a very very hectic schedule over the past few weeks. starting pooja holidays till date. Cant imagine how time ran by! This year Saraswathi pooja was a whole different celebration for me. Gollu (as we call it in tamil) had always been a hidden fascination for me. When I was a kid, I used to see it in some of the relatives house and a fewer times have helped them setting it up too. And in the famous Chidambaram temple, this has been followed religiously ever since I was a kid. Visiting the temple every year around this time just to see the gollu is like an important outing that every family does to actually feel complete of that year's pooja celebrations. I have personally seen a lot of aunts and grand mothers who have missed seeing gollu talking about missing it and feeling bad till the next gollu.
This year, my mother-in-law had set it up at our home in Hyderabad and she asked me to goto the neighboring houses and invite everybody home to see the Gollu. This was the phrase I had to memorize for that 'Maa inti-lo bommalu pettamu; perantaniki randi' ;) And my husband's cousins, 2 of them (Sindhu n Vandhu :D) helped me memorizing that. 3 of us went around the streets talking stories about the 'Vangipuram' family and of course, a lot about my husband :) When friends and relatives visited, gave them thamboolam and took blessings from everybody. The gollu that I had always wanted to celebrate at my own house and God had blessed me with that this year. Feels so glad and a lot of excitement still. Planning to do this at my Bangalore house next year, let's see how things go!
We visited few of the relatives for lunch, dinner etc ;) Lot of relatives, neighbors, cousins and friends I got to know in person, now my world is a little more bigger that consists of those people whom my husband had known from his childhood, a complete different feeling that can just not be described, learnt how important it is to be in touch with relatives and how actually the relationships of those kinds work in real time. At my husband's mama's house they had kept gollu too and that weekend being my mother-in-law's mother's thidhi, we were called there for lunch after the pooja. After lunch, I was asked to sing song. I sang ennavale, alaipayuthey kanna and kurai ondrum illai - all tamil numbers, but the 2 krishna genres actually has a series of his names and so not considered completely tamil tho'. And found out that the best moment of applause for a girl is when her husband tells her, "after a few years of knowing each other" (why this - is because applauds happen very often during the beginning years, but the same thing after a few years down the line is of a total different level of maturity that exists in the spouse and that was unfound all these years - something that strengthens the marital bond!) that she has done quite a good job and that it was more than what he actually expected. Yes, experienced that! that too for him, it was a bigger surprise that I could sing some devotional numbers, all by myself ;)) Thanks to the Veena classes and the early morning prayers my mom used to involve me in!
Had done my part to satisfy everybody. It was a great vacation and thanks to my husband for helping me be the way everyone there wanted me to be. After coming back, seems like my mother-in-law had got feedback from people around that she had got a good daughter-in-law that she went on to tell my mom that everybody there liked me and all the praises that they seemed to have poured. Mom was yet again a proud mother of this daughter and for me nothing in the world is worthier than that!

My husband and our marriage.

2010-10-18T14:41:00.002+05:30

Firstly, I wasn't sure of starting to write on this title today. But then I did not want to wait anymore. So, the twenty second of August, two thousand and ten.. the day that was yet another beautiful entry to a whole new entity of life. the day I/we got married! I must say it was a very long preparation that went on for four years right from opening it to parents to getting them say a 'yes' till here. The wedding talks started on the third of April, two thousand ten between both the sides and since then it was all like what happens in any other arranged marriages. A lot of talks, lot of doubts, so much of confusion, anxiety, misunderstandings but what ruled out all of these is that both the side parents were concerned most about the happiness that him and I would share after all these things that are getting messed up.
So, further about the wedding as such - it was a bilingual communion - tamil and telugu. The customs and traditions that were followed in the wedding was completely Telugu Iyengar ways of wedding. Starting from the pre-wedding rituals that they do for the groom, then the edhirkolal and then the oonjal sevai, jilakara bellam till tieing the knot.
What impressed me the most was the oonjal sevai. I have got to experience this before in some of my friend's relatives' weddings and have always admired it. They made us sit in the oonjal (swing) and swing it slowly, do some aarathi, sing songs - seetha kalyana vaibohame, the traditional one. Once all that usual ritual was over, they asked a few of them in the crowd who are known for singing to sing. Then came up the 'kurai ondrum illa' and then the alaipayuthey kanna and a few more of krishna genres like 'krishna nee begane' etc :) As such I love music and listening to songs, devotional ones generally elevate my energy and that moment of the whole occasion was like "THE" moment for me! Thanks to my sister's friend Priya who had nominated my side singing 'kurai ondrum illai' which was such a memorable and intelligent pick. Needless to mention his sister and brother-in-law who are a family of singers to add up to the colors and happiness.
Finally for them keeping the jilakara bellam on each others heads is the most important part of the wedding, though that did not give me much of a wedded feel ;) and then when he tied the knot, I will definitely run short of words to explain what/how it was, I can only feel it, the feeling that's most special to me, the feeling that only both of us can understand.. I couldn't control the gush of tears and emotions, mom next to me and periyamma opposite to me, I saw them crying too! All of us finally left a sigh of relief and the whistle was removed to let out the 3 hrs of pressure that was built up inside my head! I don't think I had ever gone through such a tension filled situation in life before!
The moment my boyfriend became my fiance and went on to become my husband. We went on to live together, in the same house, together day-in and day-out. Its quite different! The amount of patience we had to hold on to. the kind of rights we exert on each other. Yet at the end of the day, we realize, all only because of the kind of love that lives up amongst the two of us. My husband, definitely is the greatest, The smartest! There are only a very few people in the world who are lucky to get a balance between in-laws' and parents. And he definitely is one among them, intelligent fella! ;) The Mauritius trip - worth a mention. That's an amazing wedding gift, likewise there are only a very few ladies out there who are lucky enough to find a husband like mine. My convenience before his needs. I can go on to sing a My-Husband-greatest purana. But for now, I'm just leaving it here.
Thank God for such a wonderful gift for life.
And for the readers, may you have someone who loves you crazily enough and several years down the line, may you look back to realize that the love this person showers on you, is multi-zillion times more than what you feel today!
God bless!

F.R.I.E.N.D.S

2010-09-16T19:28:00.003+05:30

A little bothered me since two days, not sure why, about my recent past, I mean my past 1yr or so life at Hyd with these 2 Ss! Friends I have ever met in this very very mean and competitive corporate world. The best of their kinds!
That 1 year was just a total bliss in this life. Enjoyment more and more day by day. There is no one place that I can list in Hyd that we have not visited and each place has its own special memories. This kind, probably everyone out there would want to go through, atleast for a fraction of months in their lifetime. Our day begins so late in the morning and goes on really late in the nights. Frankly, a lot of people were so envious of us and the kind of friends we are, through the thick and thin. There is no difference that we saw amongst us. There is no one thing that bothered any of us during those times. Laughter, laughter and laughter - that filled our life and it was so blissful! I don't remember there was one time when we let one of the three cry, rather cry alone. The amazing plans that we used to make every evening, restaurants, pubs, coffee shops, icecreams. the colorful weekends, and the times we used to simply wait for those lazy Saturdays and then we sit for a late evening lunch with the biriyani from Hyderabad house. And then there is this one warm bear hug from the big S ;) that encloses the other 2 of us and the indescribable happiness that encloses the 3 of us. That crazy thing when we used to put on music in S's 10x10 room doing some electrical work to connect those old speakers ;) and then it was all heaven. Do not know what got us so close. Not sure why we did not have a second thought to fill our life with just the 3 of us. No selfishness, no variations. Movies list was endless! The times we used to run at 2.20 for a 2.25 show; the night shows after which I used to get dropped in my PG, the locked gate and my shrill voice 'watchman watchman', the phone call I make after I enter the house and that's their go-ahead to leave from there. Conference chats in the office communicator where we tease and rip the whole lot of those nutty heads at office amidst the hectic work. The way they used to be behind me to make friends with some new girl in the team. Those long drives in the night, we talk about the most useless issues in the world and then end up drawing stupid conclusions. The way I was teased for being girlie at times and how they used to fulfill those girlie wishes like visiting Shilparamam for a mehendi with no other go. The times we used to sit in the pantry, talk and laugh like nuts that the whole office could hear us. 'Never-mind-everything-is-ours' attitude. And then the way we planned the birthday surprises. How I loved to see Sud saying that it was the first time he had put cake on his face in life on his birthday! And how I wish I can be lucky time and ever to give you that. Anything that we did was right, there were no restrictions. One of us do something, there are these 2 other heads to nod. No one time you are allowed to feel low. When we are away during vacations, that was only a break we used to take and we just used to get back and be the 3 of us. I'm realizing all these simple things now, when they have actually become memories. Times that went by was so light, mind used to think so serious of anything. The number of times we had visited the airport must be countless, regardless of the local/international trips that any of us made! And the tough time we used to have with KL-11 still admire it for living through the tortures I used to give it. I was pampered, loved, admired, scolded, irritated, all at once like never before/after! I do not know how was I ready to miss that side of life. I'm sure there is nothing like it again anytime. I need them all back. I need my Friends back. I yearn to live with and feel the selflessness yet again. Probably, the first time I'm missing a friendship this worse. I dont remember a time before in life when I have missed friends so much. Gone by times and all that I'm left with now - memories! We will live that way all through our lives, I'm sure.
And here, for you the reader, from the 3 of us, I'm wishing you that you feel such a friendship atleast once in your lifetime. And may the mix of emotions that leaves my throat constricted now fills you someday that you realize what real happiness is!

2010-07-26T12:23:00.002+05:30

Not sure what to put up in the Title space. Wanted to pen this incident down here that happened when I was in Chennai over the weekend that went by.

Dad and myself were walking towards Panagal park, T.Nagar from Pondy bazaar while someone came from the other direction smiled at him and took him by hand. Dad gave a confused look. The man was quite old, as old as my dad and was asking him if he remembers him. Dad said that he was not really sure, yengeyo kadai vecchurndhapo paatha nyabahama irku (that he remembers vaguely that he had visited dad's shop years back). This man took him away from me and was telling him a story and I could make out that he was wanting some money and he is simply putting up a weird reason to extract whatever cash possible. We were just done with our shopping and was rushing to mom who was waiting in Nalli for us. Dad was telling him that he was left with only a few notes as we were just done with some shopping. I was watching all this from a lil distance from him and being a person who does not believe in people that so quick particularly when it comes to some cases like this, I jumped into the scene and pulled dad by hand, common lets go, mom would be waiting. This man was then telling me to give him sometime. We were in a different tension meanwhile and hurriedly I told him that we had to leave immediately as my mom was alone there. Dad told him, I'm not sure what's with this, but I'm sorry and we walked away.
I was a little bothered if I was heartless to do that and I'm sure dad, being a person who cannot stop himself from helping people for whatsoever reason, irrespective of he has or he doesn't have the source to help, was quite bothered.
Later, I was checking with dad what was he upto and dad told me, he said he was working in Annamalai University as a professor and currently settled in Chennai. His family had gone for a death and left the house locked and that he is left with no money to travel to Chidambaram and so was asking for help. Dad is not sure if he should believe that or not. He had no clue where in Chennai he lives etc. I could make a clear stand that he was creating a complete story there, a simple thought how a professor who had been out of touch for years with a person can ask for help and the way he had put it up with not even a little bit of hesitation.
What bothered me most was how people take advantage of others' who still are ethical and have the morality to help someone regardless of reason and the relationship. Several times I wonder at mom for being in touch with a lot of relatives who do not wish good for us. She says that is how relationships work. You cannot expect everybody to help when in trouble, nor expect everyone to feel good when we grow. You have to be selfless and that is when you truly live united! (they say in Tamizh 'Oorodhu othu vaazh')

Engaged :)

2010-05-24T18:11:00.006+05:30

Something that I awaited for more than 4 years. It happened, in the most amazing manner, on that bright Sunday morning, with the loved ones around, so pleasing, so joyful, such a momentous occasion. A week after that, it feels even more amazing today and it will keep multiplying with time, I'm sure.
For me, everything seems different now. Life, mind, nature, people.. Love, hopes, days.. Those roads where I had gone around with this person, so lovely and unique, they look extra beautiful. Those days that I spent with him, with myself, with friends, they all seem completely refreshing. The blissful feel that tells me that I achieved something wonderful! I feel a new sort of respect towards this sweetheart now. I'm not able to address you in singular fashion, I do not feel strange there, I'm not sure why. With all that he does, he makes me understand and believe what he does is the right for "US" together, not just me or not just him! He tells me often, "I look at us as a single identity, not you or me alone". I suddenly feel I realized the right meaning of it genuinely at that moment you put on the ring on my finger, assuring me you will never leave me alone anytime after this. Touch wood.
Lot of things went for a toss over the years. But with the dawn of this new life, I'm back to square 1. The moment when I felt that I should put you before me in all that we are going to encounter after this. I would not simply talk, you will see me live by this definitely, now and forever Sweetheart.
I wouldn't say thanks, I know what it took for you to come all the way till here, I value that. If only anything, you showed me what is being unconditional in love. I pray for the abundant love, plentiful satisfaction, copious joy, eternal care, ceaseless trust, heights of loyalty, ecstatic happiness, bundle of hopes, incessant pleasure, everlasting purity, perpetual wisdom, incredible modesty, relentless morality and a ton of good things more.
I feel all new and fresh now. Lets rock again together. Trust me Sweetz! Love U!

Comedy show :P

2010-03-09T19:00:00.002+05:30

Another incident to record. This time about my interstate, inter language (Tamil-Telugu) affair and how funny the scenes are coming up between the families, while preparing for the wedding and how me n my fiance are enjoying the show amidst all the filmy, funny happenings.

Made my mom and mother-in-law (would-be) to talk on phone and I joined on conference. MIL wasn't aware that I was online (was what I thought). MIL being a school teacher and given that her ancestors hail from some part of Tamilnadu, she can understand Tamil quite well, but respond very minimal. Mom went on in full fledged Tamil, trying to sound sweet by thanking them for inviting me to their place, about fixing up the dates and ensuring that I would be a good Daughter-in-law etc etc while MIL had a nightmare with mom's Tamil!! She tried so much to blurt out words in Tamil, responding in single words like 'aama, sari, Ugadi-ku apram, engluku kooda' etc etc. lolllzzz :D :D soo sweet i tell u! but mom was so heartless that she did not even think of giving her a break to complete a sentence, as always! :P ;)

After listening to ten minutes of continuous 1000 wala 'saravedi' from mom's end, MIL handed over the phone to my fiance and told him that she knows I'm online and listening to her. He told me that and that she wants to scold me and gave the phone back to her, she started again telling me she knew that and I was laughing so much and was making fun of her. Told her that it sounded so sweet and her Tamil was definitely better than what many Tamilians actually speak and that I should have recorded it so that I could have laughed for lifetime ;) She said "haan ok ok you will come here and talk in Telugu know, that time I'll record and tease you big time" and all that!

Totally a happy ending! Looking forward to the families to meet over soon and decide on the wedding dates! Love the in-laws family, definitely very nice people, and I must say very high-profile! Lucky me!! :) Touch wood.

God bless us!

Irreversible

2010-02-05T17:23:00.003+05:30

Yesterday, as a first thing in the morning, got to read a blog post from a dear friend, whose grand dad had passed away 2 months before and what's it for him since then! I was touched emotionally and remembered a lot about my grand dad, 'thaatha' as we fondly call him!
Though there were a few things that I was not able to digest about him, he really was a passionate soul, a man who lived with a lot of love and dignity, respect and good will and loads like that. Till his last breathe he got up at 4 in the morning, read baghavatham and Mahabharatham. He is one man who is a strong cause for me to be a fervent admirer of Vishnu. The first words of "Om namo Narayana" that I learned was from him. The slokas that I quote in my everyday prayers were from him.
I remember he taught me a tamil slogam on Lordess 'Abirami' which was part of the 'seyyul' (part of the subject that has series of poetry) in my 11th std Tamil subject and I was the first one to recite it out in the whole class. And it was just a year after he passed away. Meanwhile I had a childhood friend in my class who knew that I already knew that slogam. She asked me 'Hey you know this already right!? You grandfather had taught you, you have told me'. I can't just put it in words how proud I felt of him that moment!
Mom never takes a single rupee extra for anything from anybody. Any kind of money related transactions she does to more than an extent of perfection. A lot of people have praised her on that. But, mom keeps saying that she had got it from her father, ie my grand father. Mom is just a 8th std passed out and she does the accounts for me today, just so perfect and efficient. Without her I'm not sure if I can do well at my finance!
Thaatha's business was lending money for interest. He had lot of customers from different banks. As the tradition goes in those days, most of those people who worked for banks were Brahmins and they used to come home sometimes. When we used to go there for quarterly/half-yearly/annual holiday, we used to see them when they come home and they talk so much about my thaatha's spirituality, dedication and commitment towards God and his work. Why I mentioned about Brahmins is that, we are non-Brahmins and the tradition says, brahmins are those people who are close to God and they are highly spiritual. So getting such a compliment from those people was really rare in those days!
Thaatha had 4 big bungalows out of which 3 he sold out for 3 of his daughter's weddings and the 4th one is where he lived during his last days. The house was so big and kept reminding me of his eminence, given that he started from scratch with nobody's help! All the houses were at Saidapet and mom used to tell me that thaatha during his initial days of business used to walk all the way from Saidapet to mylapore to meet customers. It did not take him too long to buy a car or earn loads in life, he was a lot smart and intelligent! He had seen the best and worst in life!
I can easily write a min 300 pages book about him. You may think why do i write all about it now, simple reason is that this really takes me all the way back to my childhood and I'm enjoying myself writing about him. After all, for everyone thinking about their childhood is a blissful feeling.
Thaatha was a regular alcohol consumer. He can't do without a quarter bottle of brandi everyday. Paati (grandma) used to collect all those bottles and we used to play with them sometimes. End of the year she used to make a good amount of money by selling them off to those people who come on bicycles to collect bottles, papers, plactics etc I'm not seeing even one on the roads these days :( His routines start at 4AM. He gets up, does the morning chores, prayers and depending on the season he reads the epics/gita/thirupaavai/thiruvembavai etc. He has his filter coffee, reads paper, goes out by 7-8AM to meet the customers for collection, comes back at 9.30 for breakfast. Our breakfast used to be the hot full meals with sambhar, rasam and poriyal. He goes for the next round of collection and comes home for lunch. Lunch used to be chapathis or some tiffin. Post lunch he does his accounts and then takes rest. He again gets up for his cup of coffee by 4PM, gets ready after a chit-chat with us and paati and then goes out for work by 5-5.30. Sometimes for work, sometimes with family.
Weekends he used to take time out for paati, takes her to the beasant nagar temple and beach in the evening and they come back home for dinner. When we used to be there on holidays, we used to replace paati if we are more than 3, else we used to accompany them, "on his bullet"!! His built was nothing more than what you see in Rajinikanth. But he rode his huge bullet till his last breathe.
The most enjoyable part of his routine for us was the after 8PM sessions, when he sits with his glass of brandi and the mahabharatham, with all of us around him. He reads out phrases and explains, while I write this, I can hear his voice and the modulations he used to explain us the various stories from the epic.
Mom and her bro and sisters had done their 60th wedding in chidambaram temple, at this particular place called 'nadana sabai**' inside the temple. One of those beautiful weddings that I have ever seen in this universe was that, when I was in my 6th standard. They looked so awesome together. I wore a red color pattu paavadai (silk skirt) in the wedding, I felt so elated to be there in the temple watching them getting married. And it was one of my shallow wish to do my wedding also in the same place in the chidambaram temple in front of Natarajar. There were a lot of people that day who came in to get their blessings. I wonder at the crowd that comes in for a wedding or any function that happens at home for that matter. It isn't that easy to earn a lot of people in life who would be willing to join in when you celebrate/regret something that's so personal to you. Thaatha made sure that he gifted paati an expensive silk saree for their wedding day till he was 64. The lesson that he taught us that love doesn't fade away with age.
I was one of the closest pethis(pronunciation: paythii; meaning - grand daughter) thaatha ever had. Next to Aishu, he liked me the most when it comes to studies and grasping things. given that we were the high scorers in our classes always. He points out Aishu to me for her calm composure, respect and sincerity. He used to tell me so much that I should do my IAS and become an IAS officer. I somehow could not do it for him; regret that I'm not sure if I can do it in the future also :( The other thing that I deeply regret about is that he passed away just before my 10th std public exam that which earned me districk rank! he admired me so much for my studies, but he couldn't stay back to see me winning the first laurel that I earned for my studies in life. Life is so unfair sometimes.
Even after he turned quite old, visiting Chidambaram and us was his favorite activity and he considered that was his foremost duty. He was very close to my mom, given that my dad did not so good at his business. He had felt bad several times to me that he got my mom married to an irresponsible person and that was the biggest mistake he had ever done in his life! I felt bad for thaatha, but I felt worse for appa :( Whenever he plans on outstation tours, he made sure he included me along with my cousins, but he never took money from mom for that whereas all my aunts used to give him. Madurai Meenakshi amman temple was one of the temples I definitely wanted to go and it was only because of him. Not sure otherwise if I would have got to go ever in life. The place that I liked most was the kumbakarai falls at theni that I visited with him. Thaatha had a customer by name 'Rammohan' who was working for Indian bank, theni branch. His house was so close to director Bharathiraja's house and all the 4 days when we stayed there we used to take a walk around that area. There was one old lady whom people claimed the director's mother and the same lady who acted in the movie 'karuthamma'.
Mom feels bad that thaatha had seen us only suffering in life and when we could actually be doing good and better in life, he could not be there with us. She also consoles us and herself saying he is there with much more powers and much closer to God now!
As I mentioned, there is loads and loads to write about him. But I'm stopping it here for I'm not able to wait to read this blog post myself! I wanna see how it has come out!
Amidst those people who just take a few hours to forget the months old friendship in this materialistic world, my thaatha is one person who had taught all of us, me, amma, periyamma and everybody at home, what it takes to be bonded with people in this world. How important is it to love and care for people! Hope I do it atleast to the least bit of extent what he actually wanted me to! I miss you!

** - Puranam says that nadana sabai is where Natarajar and Parvathy had a competition (dance - to be specific bharatanatyam); Parthvathy lost, got angry and became kaali and went and sat at 'oor ellai' (extremity of the town) where they built another temple for her.

Closing the year on an Amazing note!

2009-12-31T17:22:00.004+05:30

Last year I made it a point that every new year ahead, just before the dawn of it, I would write about a person who had made the heaviest positive impact in my life so far! Result of it last year I wrote bout my sister, and this year, all this while I was actually thinking of whom should I be writing about! The answer drops down to this amazing guy who knocked my door 4 years back and equipped me with 40 years of experience! the time thats so short, yet so great!

He was this small cute guy, at the 1st shot nobody thinks he is so capable. But there is loads of incredible stuff hiding within this 5.8' long human body!
His birth was ordinary!
His brought up was much more normal!
He did not see much of trouble in his brought up! Yet he knows the best of lessons in life!
He never ran short of money in life! Yet he knows the worth of every single penny that's spent!

For me, I learn whats perseverance in life from him! This guy has got loads of patience towards the hardest of things! except me! :P
Right from the year long preparation for your IIT and 4 years of slogging for an IIM seat, you made it! Atleast I do not know someone personally who had this so much of courage to go behind something this stubborn!

There had been so many instances where you proved how strong you needed me! I know there would be 100 people in the world to love me! But the only guy who had the burning desire to give me a life.. and a future! Something which a normal guy in your situation doesn't care to do! I would be grateful to you for that all life! There is loads to learn from you, my sweetheart!

Its easy to learn things in life when you are exposed to worst of situations. Its easy to follow a certain things after you have really been through it! But what actually means is when you have NOT been through the toughest of times, yet you know how to handle the worst of things! - There, you are an iconic example that I see!

Hope this year brings loads and loads of happiness and colors into your life! And wish I would be one of the sources amongst a thousand that brings peace and joy to You in this wonderful year!

To the readers: Wish you feel the same amount of joy as what I do at this moment! Wish you get to meet a person who is as great, understanding and lovable as what God has blessed me with! Wish you get to go through the same magic in love as I do everyday! Have a safe, happy and prosperous new year ahead!
Godspeed to you good people!

been quite a while

2009-12-15T19:04:00.003+05:30

occupied with so many things. now and then I kept peeping into the blog page and every time I do 'something' in life other than work say, I think that I must write down about that. but time just flies away and nothing goes the way I want it to! well at least with the blog!! the more I want to be a good blogger, the more I realize I'm bad at it for some reason! ;)
wanted to write about 2 states. like every other blogger who turns into a tweeter, I have been one too off late and that 140 character update about your day-to-day happenings gives, though not greatly, a lil bit of satisfaction that keeps me going! so coming back to 2 states, a lot of them had read, enjoyed and commented. everything about the book is awesome. having base in one of those 2 states thats portrayed in the book, I could thoroughly enjoy it over and over again. that was yet another hell of a thing for readers from CB!
been to places in hyd plus weekend trips to Madras and Bangalore. How-much-ever you do, whatever you do, you cant get enough of those places. Apart from all this, had some great night outs, dinners, movies etc within the city. Learnt some lessons for life. Been feeling blessed to get a good set of friends here, each one is THE one. Its so amazing how the wavelength match happens only with a very rare set of people and even more amazing is that when you are in a group, how it goes along well within all of them - getting a bunch of people and even better, getting along with the whole bunch, man life is worth nothing else. A set of friends, a dinner out, a small car, a continuous chat, a lil bit of daaru, a lot of laughter, a sense of life - Wonderful! Life is good.
I read here and there people live with loneliness and they feel great about it. they can live with only nature and the world in itself and they say rest of it all is materialistic. How weird! whats with life when you don't fall in love with somebody. when you don't get into fights over nothing [Like what Ne-yo says;)], when you get out of the web that you got caught into and fly through the deep blue sky. forget yourself, feel enthusiastic, break free, have fun, enjoy the way you want to! the thing called 'life' has got lots to do.
On the other hand, we tend to get confused between things. I wonder if there can be somebody who is really living life the way it takes you over, and not make a big deal out of anything. do what you feel like and move on, is there someone like that who is not bothering to repent a wee bit about any of the actions/reactions!? And probably is that where a person is defined good/bad. I have always wanted to read the BhagavatGita, but I could not really do it religiously. All I understand is its really mean to break someone's trust. But time takes you nowhere.
New year following, there is gonna be a good break. I have no plans in hand yet. A little worried about it. Let's see how that's gonna go.
All is that for now.
Hope for you to see a better moment every second that you live. Godspeed.

Mad

2009-12-04T14:59:00.004+05:30

Mmmm Shez starin at me, I'm sittin wonderin what shez thinkin...
Nobodyz talkin cuz talkin juz turns into screamin :(
And now it's I'm yellin' over her.. she yellin' over me!
All that that means is neither of us is listening :O
And what's even worse.. that we don't even remember why we are fightin! :(

So both of us are mad for nothin, fightin for nothin, cryin for nothin...
But we won't let it go for nothin, no not for nothin, this should be nothin!!
To a love like what we got -o- baby,
I know sometimes it gonna rain.. :)
But baby, can we make up now cuz I can't sleep through the pain!! :|

Girl, I don't wanna go to bed.. mad at you!
And I don't want you to go to bed... mad at me!
No, I don't wanna go to bed.. mad at you!
And I don't want you to go to bed, mad at me!! :|

And it gets me upset girl when you're constantly accusin!
Askin questions like you already know..
We're fighting this war, baby when both of us are losing! :(
This ain't the way that love is supposed to go............!!!!!!!!

What happened to workin it out???
We've fall into this place where you ain't backin' down and I ain't backin' down..
So what the hell do we do now?
It's all for nothin, fightin for nothin, cryin for nothin... :((

But we won't let it go for nothin, no not for nothin, this should be nothin!!
To a love like what we got -o- baby,
I know sometimes it gonna rain.. :)
But baby, can we make up now cuz I can't sleep through the pain!! :| (Girl, I don't wanna...)

Oh baby this love ain't gonna be perfect!!
And just how good it's gonna be....
We can fuss and we can fight, long as everythingz all right.. between us...
Before we go to sleep .....
baby, we're gonna be happy!!!!! :) :)

... baby I know sometimes it gonna rain.. :)
But baby, can we make up now cuz I can't sleep through the pain!! :| (Girl, I don't wanna...)

"Night"-mares

2009-10-22T19:10:00.003+05:30

the list of those that I have gone through over the past 6 months on Rd No-1 Banjara hills ;) ya.. 90% of the time I have spent in this city is in and around this place.
I have been literally waiting to post about these, been crazily busy with so-called work but!

.. so .. It was a jam packed weekend, spent completely at office. Sunday 9.00PM, I could no more stay up with it at this desolated office. Mind thwarted to touch that no-mouth-watering dinner back home, though was hungry like a mad dog that starved for years! filled the tummy with something, (I do not want to say crap) for that moment meanwhile roomies planned on their cooking hunt. We decided to go for a round of Cream-stone icecream, i beat nothing can get better than those! By the time we, 3 of us, left home it was almost 10-10.15PM and me suffering from shoulder pain decided not to ride with 2 people behind (that we tried before and came out with flying colors) ;)
Some unbreakable hopes, we had, that chances of finding a rick at that time of the night is as high as a herbivore eating meat, cant get any more weird huh.. both with the hopes and the analogy!? :P
Anyway, hit the main road was waiting for a rick near the signal, almost 10 minutes passed by and to freeze our blood, a car at whatever maximum speed that you can imagine racing in a zig-zag manner towards us, with a bunch of crazy drunken maniacs inside. 3 of us stood still having the final thoughts, it came close and zoomed away, we were saved!
And within no time, came by a lady in an Indigo with another lady accompanying her, asked if we need a drop, 3 of us were totally distracted of the incident that just happened and without an iota of hesitation, we got into her car.
as soon as we got it she said, 'do not take drops like this at this time of the night, its ok with me, but its not all that safe, just a word of caution'. that was enough to confuse us if we should trust her or not.
And then she said, meet this so n so, she is from Somalia. the next shock for us. we got scared the hell out! 3 of us were sitting together luckily at the back and we held each other firmly listening to that.
She could intelligibly read our faces through the mirror and said do not get scared, there is no problem. And added that she had to deliver an icecream tub to someone on the way, so she had to take a different route. she got into a road that diverged from the main road which was completely residential, all dark and no signs of humans out on the streets.
We were almost pissing on our pants, dreaded, eyes protruding out. Suddenly some God thing hit my mind that I have to do something about the situation, so I picked up my phone (loads of thanks to this saviour) called up nobody and was talking, explaining the whole situtaion and pretended as if there are people waiting for us at the parlour and they are not far away.
She was speeding highly and there came a sudden pause at a corner of a street. We thought that was the last moments of our lives. I was meanwhile thinking if we should just jump out of the car and start running like what happens in some women oriented stunt movies.
She paused for less than a minute and took a u-turn and stopped outside a booth bungalow kinda house and said she got to get off the car to drop the stuff in that house. We said nothing, she got out and came back, started off, I again started my random calls but this time no faking, called a friend of mine who lives in the city and confused her to the most possible extent, but she could get the hint quite a bit. I said that I would call her back before hanging up.
This lady, not sure why, drove back and joined the main road and we gave a sigh of relief, not huge though! She was trying to make a conversation on the way. But we were $hit scared and completely frozen that none of us were operating on a normal mode.
We, however managed to ask her where does she live and when she said Road no 3 which is completely on a different direction from rd no 1, we asked her if she had come all the way to just drop us and added she couldn't have taken so much trouble for this and that we would have managed somehow. She said just because we were girls, she thought its unsafe to be waiting at this time of the night, not realizing that we have already realized how unsafer it was to accept her offer to drop us.
We finally reached cream stone, and in no time after we got out of the car, she just zoomed past that we couldn't notice her car number, we were even unsure of the color and model of the car. She probably did not want any of our imaginary friends who were supposedly waiting for us at the parlor to notice her!
I called up my friend and explained her of the confusing call which I gave her a while ago.
And then.. we started discussing and tried to connect the dots to realize how risky it was to get into such things and be in such a situation, hogging our favorite icecreams, that's worth of the whole risk that was taken! :P
Assumptions/blunders made:
1. We took the drop because she was a lady, and after the car that passed us leaving us alive just by a matter of luck, we definitely thought it was unsafe to be waiting on the road anymore. Indian mentality, that thinks women are less dangerous.
2. General matter of fact is that nobody (should I say no girl) would bother to drive an extra mile just to give a drop for some unknown tom, dick and harry on the road.
3. And because Cream-stone is just at the end of the same road as we were waiting at, we thought she must be driving somewhere ahead, that she must be going via this place only!
4. We failed to ask her to stop the car as soon as she said she had to take a different route, because if shez gonna say that its ok and rubs it off, we cannot go on arguing with her. It might either heat up the argument and she could get furious the same moment or its like we are giving her more time to think of what could she really do with us.
Only good thing that we could do to help the situation was the random phone calls that I made, pretending of informing people about what was happening. Probably made her think that there are people around for us to take care if something goes wrong. My friends went on praising me for this :D
End of it, I don't say I was 100% sure that she tried to play a trick with us. But... there certainly seemed to be a wary of negative intention with the whole act of her. Particularly when she zoomed past as soon as we got off the car, there was a pinch of frustration that was seen on her face, might partly be because of the way we were acting or it really is that she couldn't see any profit for driving down that extra mile!
And now, to show that we genuinely realized what was with the escapade, we did not take a drop. Also we were ready to pay the auto-wallah 1.5 by meter instantly, forget the fact it was 11.45PM then! ;)

This was my 3rd adventure and the 1st was something similar, around the same time of the night, at the same place, I was actually riding back home after office on a weekday and someone started following, which I noticed through the rear view mirror, only after half a km after he actually started off. I saw that fellow with a bike, standing there at that signal and just a stranger on the road. But luckily my flat was very close by and I reached soon after I saw him behind. Worst thing was I stopped outside to open the latched gate to get in and bloody bugger, he stopped too, but thankfully at a distance and cried 'baibyy'! I gave a stare and just entered ignoring that a**e!

2nd one was the mistake on my part, I was driving down from the wrong side of the road even after seeing the cops standing there arguing with someone. I was clever enough to think that they wouldn't notice me :P but he started running towards me as soon as he saw me coming, I took a U-turn and sped away, he was almost there catching me. Escapeeeee :P

Alright. do not scream at me now. I have realized how risky being there! But at some point of time, somehow mind doesn't really fail to take risk!

Celebrity

2009-09-11T17:48:00.005+05:30

few days back this post here caught me thinking into it, somehow.

Now after this I go back and check the theoretical meaning of Celebrity and it says "Famous person". I, in turn get more curious, go back and look for the theoretical meaning of famous and that directly says first-rate or excellent. Anything that's excellent is viewed as a benchmark, so why not with humans. When a person is so well known to the world, we get curious about them, we look for news about them, read about them and try to look up for good things from what they do. Its not now, yesterday or day before that we are into this logic. It just goes with the time starting right after this word was invented.

Taking a simple example, every kid in each family picks up something from parents/relatives. So looking upto someone as a matter of inspiration is something genetic. Now, not everything that a person expects can be imbibed from within the family and that's where the outside world enters one's life. After all, Popularity is a matter of how many people know a person and how much they talk about him/her! Its a very human tendency to observe and follow what a famous personality does. And thereby the word role model!

Agreed imitation is a one whole big thing to be ignored. Being oneself is important. And for the wise that makes what is called life - Be oneself and try to pick up the good things as you move on with time and life. So celebrities are probably one of the sources from where things "could be" picked up.

Yes. there should be a line drawn to everything and so is to this too.. That is why, I mentioned 'wise' here. And the point "we look for news about them" - note, not gossips! Because, wise men might criticize, but they do not intend to pick a fight with you. Its just about the freedom of speech. Anyone can talk out or comment what he/she feels.. If a celebrity is gonna take it too personal, then there is an little extra mile that needs to be travelled beyond this pessimistic line for you to get optimistic and define things to yourself. But it, end of the day, is upto you, if being a celebrity you want to care about that or not!

Going an extra line about it, being in limelight also means being open to the world, open to the fact that a lot of people can know/see/talk about you. there definitely is a better word to describe this whole fact than saying 'Public Property'. Think that the person who commented so probably did not have a good English :P

Above all, nobody can stop you from being your'self' and so you still can live life in your own terms. Spread your wings and fly more heights! Have fun :)

Democracy!

2009-09-07T14:27:00.006+05:30

The death of YSR did not give me any little peace, I just though wish he got some.
A complete weird (should I say incapable?) management that I work for, that could not predict things in advance, after we entered office on Thursday, the 3rd of Sep '09 calls for an urgent meeting something like what happens in the parliament and says, people who think its "unsafe" to stay at office, please feel free to leave. You may probably work from home! Note the word probably here. And in no-time shoots out an email, following the death of the honorable Chief Minister we are declaring it as a holiday today.
Everybody is happy, most of them decide to leave office. I clearly see no point. Given that it was Ganesh Visarjan on the same day and the CM missing story since the previous morning, how could the management that runs business since years with the so called eminent people in the world be so inefficient that they had to wait for the death news to utter this 'P' word (I mean the 'probably' point above)! So much of inconvenience people would have been saved from! And around the time when no one even cares to check their mails, there was yet another mail saying that continuing whatsoever blah-blah, we have holiday tomorrow, Friday, the 4th of September and we would be working compensatory on some Saturday for this. And if this going to be the Saturday of the long weekend, for which I have my tickets already booked, then I do not bother if they are called the highly disordered people.

Now this instance early in the morning was a lot more to trigger my anger sense and then adds to it the house arrest ceremony that went on for 2 full days. Yeah Agreed! someone who is holding a high position, supposed to be ruling the state, all due respect given for him, his done's and not-done's to the country. May God bless him to rest in peace!
but whats with this whole drama of shops/offices/name-it its all closed, is this the way of mourning for someone!? Is this the way we must show our gratitude/respect for the lost soul!? Or doing all this would bring back the dead, alive!? I fail to understand what the heck is wrong with this whole system. Is it just that people all panic for no reason? is it that we are giving away our routines as a condolence for the dead? Or simply the educated whole lot is scared of the behavior that the illiterate yet called the workers/fans/enthusiasts of the party/YSR? Is it simply that the common people find no other reason to just take a day or two off and sit at home!?
After all this I must vote, I say its democracy and the whole bunch of useless vocabulary to define this single word and I have no damn freedom, being forced to not even get out of the house and do what I may wish to!
What do I have man, to do with his funeral. After all a person like me, who do not even belong to this state, Is it that I have sinned so much living in this city just for the past insane 4 months that I have to go through it. My grandfather passed away just the day before and I was all here, continuing my routines except for the few hours after I got the news, working for this clueless organization and thereby the nation, paying this huge bunch of my salary in the name of taxes for the wellness of this whole country. What irks me is that I do not connect to this guy even an ounce, whats the need that I have to spare my day and night and yet called as a citizen of this most non-progressive country!? So far, in my career, I have seen close to 10 fatal deaths and the company asks to observe silence, if not anything, for a minute or two and we close it there! So he is the CM and why the country had to go on a 2 day long mourning!
Long live the opportunists that my money passes through, before it reaches the Government, and the Government that fails to take care of a simple bit of this and even cares to educate such a crowd, if it really exists, that the so-called public is afraid of at circumstances like these, the sense of humanity or awareness or anything else that is required to handle things like these. Or change, may be a single man who usually is behind all this inducing violence and stuff!

The other annoying part was the weekends coupled up, I call up every damn travels to find out if they would operate buses out of the city, and I right royally hear, we are 'mourning' tonight. Now I ask you, did you sit at home all night and kept mourning for the departed soul!
This still extends and reaches the TV channels. Curse those who have got satellite connections, sit at home and happily watch TV, a minimum time pass. The cable TV operators also do nothing other than what is called 'mourning'! But spare the news channels, Way to go! So this plainly means I watch TV and its only his LIVE relay of cremation and other related things and then they call it 'mourning' for 2 days! B-U-L-L $-*-*-*!
The death of 140+ people, another great news for the media to make all the hue and cry and the hype that they support all this madness! Yet another money making stunt for them!

All this is not new for us for that matter! I have been in Bangalore during Rajkumar's death and I completely remember how the whole city went deserted again the long weekend glory! Given that both of these occurred naturally, where are we heading. We would never change! The Change, we need! Get me a US visa, let me fly and get out of all this madness once for all. I just hope situations are better there at stances like these! I have nothing more to lend for this country. Enough is enough!

After all this, adding to my annoyance, the 93110 score in the cube crash, just 60 more points to go and I was all crashed up! What a way to celebrate my weekend! :D

Jai-Hind!

one of the

2009-08-20T17:49:00.006+05:30

best time pass for me these days is playing games on FB. thanks to FB n Mindjolt! plus Dee, its like i try so hard to beat him in this game called cube crash n bugger, in no time he kicks my a$$ back! so it starts all over again! but believe me its a lot of fun and the best part is you require no brain usage!!! ;) in fact lately i had deactivated my FB a/c and a friend told me its good to play games, after my recent Idr visit and seeing 'V' stuck wit 'bouncing balls', i was so tempted to play it, that it went on to become our family game, hihih that's how Y n D tease us! ;) so i re-activated my account and now its just going great!! in someway or the other my family is connected to 'mind' since beginning is all that I can think of! :D
leaving Mindjolt, orkut and the list of othe blogs, off late its the galatta.com that got added to my bookmarks. seeing pictures is another thing that I can do for hours and hours and never fall tired of! like this, there was yet another good news for the foodie in me from galatta, Actor cum Director Suresh Menon has started this new restaurant called Crimson Chakra in our very own Singara Chennai (Adyar). Hope Adyar crowd got a good option leaving the 24x7 jam packed Sangeetha! Though as an actor I have never liked him much, he seems to be one of those wise men with varied interests. A lot am I looking forward to visit this place!

Getting back to life in this new city, Day before there was this good news that 'S' is gonna be traveling soon, something to celebrate about :) and I had some particular gift in my mind that I thought I must find. one of the team mates had suggested that there is this nearby gift store where you can find a variety of good things etc. So went hunting for it to this place only to find they have all this stuff exported from somewhere like china or something, typically those stuff that you find in the local exhibition, just stacked up neatly in glass cases and just because its on Banjara hills, the prices are hiked up twice/thrice, probably they charge us for the rent that they pay and not for the actual worth of the things.
I must not miss out writing this, its long pending in fact. There was this icecream parlor, Ice & Jelly in the Jubilee hills area. the 1st time we visited this place, i just fell in love with it, not just because the place was quite too awesome but the owner too :D this young man, i dont know with what mission had got into this business, seems like he has everything on his own, the place, funds, the choice of icecreams and not to forget looks :D but to my shock my 2nd time visit was his day of wedlock, the misfortune in me was too happy to know this! Damn :P anyway, thats one beautiful house not on the crowded road to hitech city, but just a little down the lane. its an icecream parlor, so i really have nothing more to write about. I do not want to put up the pics here. all that I can say is they have set up the parlor on the clean grass lawns and you must visit to find out what it is! I'm sure you would feel like visiting over again n again! my 2 cents: the quantity is pretty less (and mosquitoes are too high) for the price charged, as I know this guy is not in a need to pay any rent as he owns that house as well, so I'm not sure why he charges so much! weird point eh! ggrrhhhh :P

List of places to visit for now, provided I have the company and time (not mine)
1. Yellow chilli on rd no 12.
2. there is this coffee shop which I saw near the Banjara-Jubilee junction, seemed quite interesting from far. let me see.
3. if possible, a shot on the midnight biryani at Ohri's, though my system is not supporting the 3/4 legged stuff anymore is a totally different issue!! ;)

Over the years... a few

2009-08-10T11:34:00.007+05:30

Changes that I happened to see in myself. Good or Bad .. I'm not sure. but just thought penning them down would make quite an interesting (at least for me) read! ;)
so here.. the mutation process that I underwent, say before and after teens, rather some of those that I remember..

i was so restraint opening up in the public. say stage fear or whatsoever. its like i go up on the stage, for some competition and i remember the whole world went dark and blurred
- i grew up to be totally opposite. I opened up so much. there is no fear in me anymore!

i used to get so irritated with those school teachers of mine who were biased towards particular students
- with time I started taking it light. it just adds up to my tensions and nothing else.

competition was such a hard thing for me. like every other parents, my parents wanted me to top the class since KG (except for a fewer times, I could satisfy them all through) and the day when the progress report shows non-1st rank was the most cruel day that I can ever go through in life. its like there was a girl who used to fight for 1st rank when in my 3rd class and literally I prayed for her to move out of the school then. Luckily her dad got transferred and she moved out :D later someone else took her place was a mystery! I was seeing every problem as a hurdle
- i realized life cant be interesting without this rat race that each one needs to go through! I could see the problems as the stepping stones!

I used to hate Mathematics. Hate to the extent that beginning of the academic year my tuition teacher used to ask me to bring my cousin's old books, cuz he was just one year elder to me, and that particular year I would be reading the same books as he did in his previous year. cousin's dad owned a sewing thread manufacturing unit which required a lot of paper, so I used to generously lend off his Maths book alone to them so that I can get rid of it once for all. But it never worked as I planned was a completely different story to write down!
- Some tsunami hit me in my sleep some day I guess, that I woke up to find Mathematics was my favorite subject and somewhere I was deeply connected to Einstein was how my college mates used to tease me.To add some more, when in college class rep used to call us once the semester results are out to sort out the toppers list.. and it was like default Rosh and myself used to join rest of the junta for that process. We start with instrumentation, electronic devices, electricals, machines .. blah blah and when the subject hits control systems (for those who dont have a hint bout the control systems paper, its heart flesh and blood is Mathematics), Rosh used to blindly shout my name out. For good, my controls score has never gone below 90s. Proud moments! :)

I was too serious a person who wanted to do every bit of the inhale/exhale process thinking only of life's principles, ethics, morals, values.. close to a saint's life.
- I got to know easier goes the mind, better for the heart. the deeper the curve, happier the life!

Following that, I used to think a lot, a real lot. Every thing that I do, I wanted to see a meaning, I carve out the right/wrong, good/bad, rational/irrational part of them
- I've become more of 'do what the heart says and do not think too much'! Live life king size! Bindaaazzzzz

I did not hesitate to go myself to someone when I knew that I can get done what I want
- I've stopped asking for help. 95% of the time.

I had the minimal patience to sort out any problem, I used to pray like crazy to get over the problems that I used to face, I get tensed so easily and even tougher was not showing it out.
- Now I can wait to resolve a problem at its own pace and can just think of anything that's bothering to be 'soooo what' ;) and can keep it out of my routines at least for that time-being!

'Making friends' was a thing that I could never imagine of! Not sure if I thought I did not need anybody
- It took no time for me to realize what an(y) individual would mean in one's life at any given point of time.

To start with, I was so much 'for' the male community (given that there is no boy baby at home), so much as in its like I would fall in love with every other boy I used to meet as a kid ;)
- Some day I realized it doesn't work this way anymore [;)] and wanted(ly) started going against them.
- But the process did not end completely there, I have got more logical that I grew up finding a perfect life partner :D

I was God-fearing. ya.. sometimes even superstitiously.
- I definitely am not superstitious now, happy that I could wash it out of my life completely. On the other hand, I don't know if I have lost the fear or I've got logical or analytical or rational. Don't want to think too much over it!

So far.. so good!

After all this, How can I not get the 'B' word.. Here it goes.. ... But....
'The One' thing that I cannot change in myself is the ghosts that I know of since childhood. You can't find me sleeping in my bedroom alone a single night (get it right) :P I have tried and experienced the scariest nights!

Shades of a faded rainbow!

2009-07-21T15:55:00.016+05:30

This is one of those things that I wanted to store it in a place where I can hit back every now and then and feel the same good way as I did the first time I saw it! Like how you feel happy whenever you remember the colors of a rainbow that just peeped out and vanished away..

Its nothing but a one liner from this uyir thozhan Neo. He kavidhaihal ((poetic) quotes) are some of those things that I feel like just reading over and over again! Brilliant boy! :)

So the occasion was, Neo's bro was blessed with a baby girl recently. And on a celebrating note, he had taken sweets to office (we were ex-colleagues fyi). As usual there was an update in my inbox of the daily happenings and that day about the sweets!
I replied back, 'mummy.. wherez my share of sweetsss!!??'
Know what the reply was!!? Read on..

"
Oru sweet stall sweet kekirathey. Aacharyakuri :D
"

Pardon me non tamilians, that literally translates to:
"A sweet stall is asking for sweet. Exclamatory mark :D"

Don't ask me if this is a compliment for myself or Neo.. I do not want to know ;) Probably its a praise, that's so flattery and that is why I wanna put it up here, if you think.. I say Mebbe! :D

P.S: I'm not sure how good it sounds in english. the feel in tamil is definitely different! Its Ossummmm :)

paradox/kismet/serendipity ??

2009-07-20T11:43:00.005+05:30

just check if you are able to correlate this post with the title line ;)

you get out of the house,
you are in a clothing on which you look if not sexy, at least not bad :p
you think meeting someone even by chance might screw up your entire evening
you land in the most crowded hangout..
you skip the lift and start climbing the stairs
now..
you see the person whom you thought is the screw-er :p
you realize you met that too just right on the face!
you know not react
you move no muscle for a second
you jiggle out acting as if nothing happened absolutely
and then..
you start praying this news shouldn't spread over
you have the weird(est) night with that instance flashing back at the back of your head!
you try to get back to routines..
.. ...
you then get to know now that became the 'talk of the whatever'!
after all that...
you feel like banging your head on the 20'' monitor right in front of you!

So with all this.. what should I call the whole thing!!? Paradox!? Fate!!?? Or Serendipity!!!???
I know not what!
But.. definitely something that would mess your peace for quite a while!

OsmanSagar..

2009-07-07T10:54:00.013+05:30

This one was a long (if you call 2.5 weeks is long) pending post and it was my first worth-a-mention weekend at Hyd.
So enough of cribbing/repenting/crying/cursing.. Now I've started looking at the positive side of life (read Hyd) yet again! :)

And there.. we went on finding some of the places in Hyd which would definitely make a worthwhile weekend. One of them is this lake called Osman Sagar, looks like the place is known around as Gandipet.

'S', 'U' and me started around 4-4.30 in the evening on 2 bikes from Banjara hills. I must say it was a great ride.. around 30 km from here. We stopped over for a cup of chai on the way for 5 mins and continued. We crossed this place called Mehdipatnam and continued on the road that goes towards Golconda, after which God knows the route, I completely lost track. 'S' was clever enough to remember the long forgotten route and after all that we landed there happily.
Getting inside the water was strictly prohibited, there were threats of crocodile and some such things. No no.. we did not see any. The place would be a good time pass if you have some interest on photography. There was a good garden, and not to forget, its also a dam, though my dumb brains took a long time to realize that ;)
So if you are with friends, its like a must visit on a Sunday evening, to just chit-chat, spend some good time. And if you love driving, you will definitely enjoy it.

Let the pics do the talking.

P.S: The good ones are S's IP and the bad ones mine :D

NewYork!

2009-07-02T11:52:00.007+05:30

My twitter status would have given some insight about how I found it watching the movie!
So.. if you are one of the kind like me who got appealed by the trailers and were waiting for the movie to hit the screens, I really pity you, cuz that's what I did to myself too! :P
Yes.. for me it definitely was a non-entertainer except for those clips that run around the NYSU campus and these people's friendship. Probably friendship and fun are like two things that fascinate me no-matter-what, not just me perhaps everybody and that could be one reason why I could park my a$$ for 3 hrs out there in the Banjara hills Cinemax.

So.. coming to the storyline, most of you who were waiting for it, just like how we did would have read enough amount of reviews in the web and the manual reviews as well from people around.
Let me still give my 2 cents over it.

John and Katrina seem to be the most loving couple. And there comes this Neil Mukesh's Omar character. A typical Hindi movie sorts where you cannot just find a 'single' hero-heroine characters, there 'has to' be a 3rd person giving company to one of the genders. No wonder all these northis are so much behind group dates :p
Few things take a strong stand in the mind.. like when these guys talk of what we refer to babes in India -'tota', When Omar meets Kat after years and looks at her kid and says 'oh his eyes resemble Sam' and Kats giving an immediate reply 'Is that so Omarr.. But I'm not married to Sam' that part puts us into a shock for a moment. Omar getting into the beer guzzling thingie ending up running to the loo and John following him only to come out carrying Omar, I was reminded of a lot of those notty things of my friendship over the years :)

They have tried their best to pull the movie towards the theme 'false victims of 9/11' that they have actually wanted to incorporate into, otherwise its all like a series of not-so-relevant bits and pieces of things happening one after the other.
Some of the scenes stay undisturbed in the screen for as long as 4-5 minutes, just to give a highly puking sensation in your abdomen, one example could be, what happens in the detention centre when John sits with that plate of food, 'trying' real hard to cry thereby bringing in sympathy, whereas the audience just start shouting 'ohhh phulleeeezzz enuf of it, next scene plz'!! hard luck dude, we are sorry.. looong way to go for you when it comes to acting!
The sooper cute thing that anyone do not want to miss in the whole movie was the kid character Danielle! The baby just makes us fall in love with him by the time the movie gets over. At least I just went on remembering some of those cuddly dialogues that he utters like 'so.. do you like pastaa' and all that :)
The FBI role done by Irrfan Khan is worth a shot. Some of the truly funny scenes gets you into the laughter mode! Kudos :)

So.. 'S' told me just before going that he got to read the review and it was wayy too below the expectations, still you can enjoy watching John and I would not take my eyes off Kats. The later though is very true and ultimately even I couldn't resist turning my eyes towards Kats, just get it straight guys ;) no pun intended :P :D The 1st time I liked Kats on the screens, dunno why, she reallyz damn.. soo sexxxyyyyyyyy :) ;)

This fella, Roshan, who was one of those false victims and who works with Kats had done quite a good job. It was touching when he goes behind that policeman who bodychecks Kats and kills him and finally kills himself too, so some Indian touch in NY!
The director/producer had saved a lot of money that must have gone to the Music Director, guess there were some 2 songs in the whole movie. But, ya.. One did made us hum the tune after you come out of the hall.

Overall belongs to the below average kind. Just to kill time over a weekend, you may try buying a CD on the roadsides and sit at home watching it with a good gang of friends around, you will have good time passing whacky comments on every scene of the movie ;)

Blessed!

2009-06-29T15:10:00.018+05:30

a lazy Sunday afternoon..

a long to-do list...
cold weather...
a cup of coffee..
loved one besides..
some peacocks around..
an unseemly chat..
And... loadsa smiles!

With all this, one would love to stay ignorant of what's happening in the world outside! And that's when you feel Blessed!!!

I am one! :)

I need U!

2009-06-26T10:40:00.007+05:30

I was in the bend,

Life was about to end..

There I was dying,

And I saw u coming! :)

U gave me your shoulders,

That .. wiped off my tears..

You love me with all you have!!

For my broken heart, that is the salve..

And then everything is fine,

With all the sun and stars shine!

In all the life’s rhythm..

It’s you I fathom!

Now I need you.. for the rest of my life...

Without you I walk on the sharp edge knife!

My heart bleed,

And Mind agreed…

You are my hopes!

You are my love!!

You are the God-sent!

I need U!

**********************************************************************************************

P.S: I Suddenly felt Life's so beautiful.. that turned me a poet! This is my poetry venture, after long years!

Love Ya! :)

Stay Hungry Stay Foolish - Book review

2009-06-22T12:17:00.007+05:30

this has been a long pending one to update.

I read this book around 4-5 months back when I saw it at a friend's place. Having no other thing to kill time, I just thought I would borrow it for a weekend and it might be a good time pass.

So for those who have got no clue about it, its completely about entrepreneurship, written by an IIM-A Alumni, Rashmi Bansal, about 25 IIM-A grads, how they started out on their entrepreneurship ventures and what all it took for them to make it big in their life, who had passed out of IIM-A since 1970s and the list goes on till what you call 'quite' some years back.

Let me point out the good things first.

It certainly inspires you, no-matter-what unless you have no bias towards the author. At least I had the after effects of it :D
The book would perfectly make a valuable read to those guys who grow with a criss-cross net around them, with all the IIM dreams and of cracking CAT etc etc. You get inspired like crazy and go behind your IIM dreams even more ;)
You get a hang of what is entrepreneurship and how it mostly works inIndia. Each of the 25 grads have gone through lots, and ultimate things each one of the problem, very different.
You definitely get to learn about all the jargon that co-exist in an IIM grads' life.
The price of the book is only INR 125/- Perfectly affordable for a dull weekend.

Cons:

Each one of them, I mean the 25 grads say 'money shouldn't be the motto' and ultimately all of them hit the same goal of making money. some way or the other.
Too much of IIM stuff hyped up, and for a normal non-IIT-IIM reader, it turns out to be quite irritating after a certain point.
Things get too monotonous after about half of the book is done reading, the same "don't expect money, do what you are passionate about, work with a smaller-larger firm for a while, before starting on your own". Common, what was different you trying to convey!? Nothing!?
A definite amount of thought should have gone into shortlisting the 25 entrepreneurs who got a place in the book. Well I see some strategy on that here, which I don't understand, rather I don't want to understand ;) Some of the very well known guys from IIM-A are found to be missing, the one that hits my mind right away is Chetan Bhagat, is he not an entrepreneur!?
Instead some people who are very less known, especially in India, like those guys from Mumbai-the software people, and the San Jose based fashion designer lady, I forgot their names. Does it contribute to the cost-cutting part!? :P
And the entrepreneurship cell contacts that are mentioned at the end of the book to get in touch with, for all those who have their entrepreneurial dreams, does not work. I tried them and found absolutely no responses!
Rest of the damage is done here

But after all, we should give everything its time and so is to Rashmi! Let her get the hang of writing books and not just journals. Lets wait ;)

My first 3D experience

2009-06-15T15:32:00.006+05:30

it was worth a mention weekend for me after landing in hyd.
the very 1st time i've heard of 3D movies was when I was studying 3rd std, my cousins were taken for 'My dear kutti chathan'. They came back and told us they watched a movie with some goggles and all on, and that althrough the movie they could sense things as if they were happening so close, they felt everything so close and all that. Me and my other cousins went on wondering how could that be possible, but failed realizing.
Later in my 7-8th std physics we got to read about the Polaroids and then could crack that which was a rocket science for so long.
Anyways, now I'm out of school 8 long yrs back! And the weekend had a special friend's budday, so something to celebrate upon, you see! :) Anyway finally managed to watch 'Monsters n Aliens' at the Prasadz IMAX 3D hall. Thanks a ton to 'S'.. for making up my weekend!

The movie was awesome.. Great dialogue delivery by each of the characters.. especially the Monsters! I just loved them. Susan, B.O.B, Dr.Cockroach, the Missing link and the Insectosaurus. Their friendship sounded one of a kind. Its not just me like this, I realized, thanks to Susan.

Some parts of the movie that impressed me greatly
1. When Dr.Cockroach experiments on Susan to get her back to her old form, the apparatus bursts, putting us into a lot of laughter. Susan with that sad face says 'its ok Doctor. Please try tomorrow'.. only hoping that things will somehow get back to normal. Awesome!

2. The Gallaxhar's computer is set to destruct, Missing link says "its anyway nice meeting you Mr.Doctor". I have heard of this before in some American based stories, I still was stunned.

3. When the insectosaurus was dying, Missing link says "Do not close those eyes.. Do not.. dare .. close those eyes" n all of them cry for him! How sweet!

4. And Susan after getting to know about Derek's real character comes back weeping. When friends ask "so howz Derek", she says "Derek is a selfish jerk! why should I cry for him, expect anything out of him. It was me who saved California all alone, I'm so powerful. After all.. why. why should a meteor hit me to know what he really is!". I could relate so well to her emotions! The way she was regaining her confidence in no time is ultimate!!

5. When Gallaxhar takes away Susan, these 3 ppl rush to save her and the tricks that they play to cheat the clones in Gall's planet. Kudos. I simply loved their friendship!

And the much notable comedy pieces every now and then.. On the whole, movie was ultimate!

Also, the 3D experience was great! given that I haven't had one such so far.
But... Needless to say, the mall was crap. the toilets were stinking, crowd was wayy tooo local and wotnot! Hardly any couples or educated ppl! And most of the crowd were with their purdahs on, those that haven't seen the washing machines for yrs, n the ppl who haven't seen the bathrooms in yrs with some stinking perfumes on.. n the weather doing its part, the sweating souls.. yack!!!!

Airtel Super Singer 2008 ... and the disappointment!!

2009-06-10T15:56:00.004+05:30

So.. the show has finally come to an end after all the hungama.
Me having been shifted to this nothing-for-good land missed out so much on watching the show live. All I could do was following it up on youtube, a bigg thanks to imran53000 for uploading all the videos, you made my day.

RAVI, Mr.Consistent, was the only person, without any doubt had to become the Super Singer.
Some of my friends have that Ravi is also Mr.Attitude etc, you do not wear a smile and always have a "Big deal" attitude and all that. Just a smile would have helped a lot when it came to the votes I felt. Or at least ask the crew to project ur smile more in the shows. That's all it is!
Srini in one of the shows long back had pointed out 'perhaps Ravi would bag the Super singer award one day' . There definitely was no person who can compete Ravi in the whole show, he has the voice, he has the talent, above all he knows Music!! and what not!
This dumb concept of public voting, just for the producers to make money, took it off the line. I'm still not able to believe it.
But man, the world knows when it comes to pure music, YOU are the Super Singer!!

Renu, as Srini always says has an astonishing voice.
And the title winner Ajeesh did a good job towards the end. He wore a smile since start till the end and that's a good thing which did wonders for him. Your music too was definitely soothing to our ears. But then its in no way can be compared with Ravi's. Anyway congrats people.

Its an amazing initiative from Vijay TV introducing all these people to Rahman. But I really hope Srini would introduce Ravi to Rahman personally one more time, and this guy will definitely ROCK ! and the time is not too far.. No Doubt!

Something for Summer

2009-04-24T15:19:00.004+05:30

Since the time I happened to visit one of the Squash'd outlets in Chennai, I've been wanting to write a review post.
Now that the sun God is completely into action, thought a post of this sort would help the crowd out there.

Squash'd:
I have read about it quite a long time back and wanted to check it out since then. Till the time I was in Madras, I was only aware of the Gream's road Fruit shop and Squash'd was started out soon after I left Madras.
And my personal thought is that Anu Hasan has been more of a lady of venturous sorts than an actress, considering her hosting in 'Coffee with Anu' and Idhayam Manthra 20-20. She is not a stunning beauty to be an actress, but honestly I have liked watching her in these TV shows several times.
So with all that and more, I was expecting something huge out of this place, as its an independent venture of an ex-Bitsian.
We had been to this outlet at the Mayajaal Food court and ordered for Skinnie Minnie and a Mango drink (the name I had forgotten). The latter turned out to be good, as mangoes by nature have the pulpy texture. But then Skinnie Minnie (a strawberry, sweet lime admixture) did not come out so great. I went on wondering if it was a Smoothie at all. Considering the fact the both the fruits are highly juicy and lacks sweetness, they must have given some consideration at the fact of declaring it as a smoothie in the menu. Along with that considerable amount of whole milk was added which turned out the drink to be extra watery and less tastier.
The prices ranged from 25-85. But correspondingly the less costlier ones are less preferred.
It would be good if they redefine the menu and revise the price list based on the quantity and availability.
I'm still not sure of the ambiance at their stand-alone outlets as I said the one which we visited was just a part of Mayajaal food court but then I must say the yellow and green color are very soothing.
The concept of employing more number of gals from the lower class of society is quite appealing, though we could find both male and female employees working at the counter with only females dealing their hands at the juicer.
I wonder why has she still not laid out an exclusive website considering the home delivery part of their objective.

Pure n Naturals:Several times in my earlier posts I have mentioned about this place. We frequent at the Jayanagar 7th blk outlet once a week minimum. They are an unit of Pazhamudhircholai and a chain of salad and mocktail bar located across bangalore (Kormangla, Vyalikaval, Jayanagar), I heard they have it in Coimbatore too.
The Jayanagar outlet is one of the finest places filled with a good crowd and a quite ambiance, with the walls painted in green carrying a pleasant design. The menu is laid out in a decent manner and the prices are highly reasonable. The menu runs for 5-6 pages with a variety of soups, hot and cold salds, mocktails, fresh juice, milkshakes and icecreams. I have been there with so many of my friends and a lot of them who despise to try green vegetables have started loving it after trying their salads.
Except for only one annoying waiter at this place, rest things all would bag good appreciation. and the worst part is no owner/manager available to complain about such illiterate workers. u can find only employees who though understand other languages insisting us to talk in Kannada. Highly irritating.
And the website part of Squash'd holds good for these guys too!

Got sometime? Try them out.. a good option for this summer, I beat!
Have fun :)

...

2009-04-20T15:03:00.003+05:30

couldn't really think of a title. before whenever i used to write a post, i think so hard to get a title.. even a simple mail for that matter. and few years back neo had taught me of this simple yet fascinating idea of using dots.

over the week i had spent quite a lot of time traveling in and around the Singara Chennai. 3 things i could figure out about this horribly hot place:
1. the only place where people ask couples to go spend romantic times in temples
2. lovers hardly find places to go around in the city particularly considering the sun@work part.
3. the places that should be marked as 'okay' types are being hyped like anything! crowd still sleeping!?

here goes some explanation for the 3rd point. not knowing how to kill time we thought of heading to mayajaal on an as usual hot sunny day! that was the first time i watched a movie at mayajaal. thinking of the hype it has and through word of mouth we burnt 240 bucks and picked up ayan tickets, only after entering i realized how heavily people are being cheated out there! the seats are the worst kind i have ever seen in life. PVR cinemas has reduced regional language movie tickets to 120 bucks on weekdays. i couldn't stop wondering on the versus part!
Last time when I visited Satyam I kept cribbing about the seating comparing it with the PVR, but now I say Satyam does a great job there, no doubt!

We ventured at the Inox box office someday, how could a place that has set such high standards in the movie world be modeled in such a stupid manner.. unbelievable! the entry to the movie hall, box office + exit to box office is all through the same lane. On top of that some 3-4 people stand at the same entry point adding to the already existing crowd 'with no uniforms' and keep shouting on people coming. Ridiculous!
city centre definitely requires a huge amount of redesigning. So much of space is wasted, I still doubt if the construction is yet to be completed. V and Y went on applying their IIM concepts at every other thing we encountered in this place.

With all this plus half a week stay at home turned to be a great revitalizer to the slumber mind.

Iniya thamizh puthandu nalvaazhthukkal!

Ayan

2009-04-06T12:46:00.009+05:30

Its been quite a while, though I tried penning down some of my random thoughts, thought nothing is worth publishing and so just kept quiet.

Finally the much awaited Surya Starer Ayan had hit the halls and being some of the die-hard Surya fans, we decided to venture at an inox @ Blore.

Hope this post helps some of those guys who haven't watched the movie yet to get an idea before shelling out some bucks from ur pocket!! particularly amidst all this recession hungama!

Hero - an English speaking dude coming out of the airport, turns out to be a local 'galeej' guy - enj oyable intro. Heroine's intro is an usual tamil cinema one, with the hero dashing the half-clothed heroine. Not sure why they had to show glam when there was no need for it at all! Heroine was uppuku-chappani just so like most of the Tamil movie.

Hero wins an applaud in so many scenes like when he says 'namakku epavume 'Jo' dhaanga'. The deductive surya series in the whole film gave a feel of watching some old Vijayakanth style. The 'citi' character that comes as Tamanna's bro in the movie mattered for some good laugh.

For the 1st time I enjoyed a fight sequence in a Tamil movie, special mention goes to that which happens at Africa. They ha ve tried to spread some awareness on whats going on in the poverty proven fatigue country. The scene stands in memory where those kids continue playing football after a shooting spree happens on the road, its like what we read in those fiction novels. well shot. But I'm not sure why the lighting goes dim when they show Africa every time, a lil wierd!

The beginning 40-50 mins rushes like air. And then starts the real patience testing spree.

There were tooooo many characters that just comes and vanishes off in one scene. Here and there, a lot of disgusting things including Tamanna visiting Surya's mom's shop, not-to-forget the cruel murder of citi (Once you go back home, this scene flashes at least every time you go to sleep), hero goes to the pub to just take the photographs of the villain's crew, its so indigestible when we think of the hero just taking the kanaku pillai's daughter's snap and coming back while he sees her being raped by the Villain, in fact this is the place where they should have applied the usual Tamil movie logic but leaving this elsewhere it is all only that.

I'm not sure if this is what is meant as success for a Villain - making people feel irritated.. With the long hair and an ugly face, overaction althrough the movie!

How can the guy at the customs sector can be so dumb!? He takes hero's help and finally end up recruiting him with an Amma sentiment in the last scene, a typical Tamil movie style again.

Surya speaking in 'peter' English to the customs guy and him saying that he knows what he really is, dialogue delivery with the expressions and stuff there was really awesome from both of them!

In the whole of the movie what mattered the most to me were the songs! 'Vizhi moodi Yosithal' asks for couple of once-mores, Karthik where were you all these years man! Improper placement of 'nenje nenje', it comes as a condolence duet for citi! How absurd! The title song was well composed, its worth it considering its release directly at the theatres and not in the audio release. Chinmayee's voice in Aayiye Aayiye was cool as always!

Some additional concentration could have gone into Surya's costumes. He belongs to a decent middle class family, but the green and orange lungi-shirt in Pala pala was completely crap! Some of Tamanna's clothes were really good.

We expected the movie would be utter crap when it came to Sun pictures. The movie title 'Ayan' is nowhere relevant! In spite of all this, it will make good revenues as its an usual commercial one and taking into account the time period its been released. Its a Surya's movie and accepting him in a local get-up after the Vaaranam Aayiram and Kaaka-kaaka was hugely tough.

Overall, a line below than time pass category.

Rating: **

back!!

2009-03-04T10:53:00.003+05:30

After quite a long hiatus, going through some of the wierd times of life, I could make a successful come back! Over the period I have tried my hands writing in some of the websites and for a few nobody-knows-magazines, but nothing is like pulling out 20 odd minutes out of the closely packed office schedule and scribbling down some crap in our own blog.
Though I fell sick repeatedly and streched to the extremes for seeing a doc, somehow managed to read two books (Stay hungry Stay foolish and a part of the tamil novel) which are reasonably inspiring and watched quite a few movies (Slumdog, Ghajini, Dev D, Delhi 6, Abiyum Naanum, Mahesh Saranya Matrum Palar and some of the missed out old old Rajinikanth movies and the rest were 2nd 3rd time watch like Santhosh Subramanyam, Kandu Kondaen, Ejaman etc) and the one n only tv show that we watch 'Airtel Super Singer 08' though the 'Shabba Khair' wishes have gone off, the only driving force for us to still keep a watch of it is Srini and his wonderful comments, the way he talks is absolutely awesome and he truly is a man of enthusiasm and professionalism.
Visited home for Pongal, one of the lovliest times I could find with all my periyammas, chithis, cousins gathering for 4 golden days and going around place. I keep revisiting the pictures I have in my mobile album just to get a hang of it continuously for I do not want to get rid of that hang over! ;)
Missed my best friend's wedding for which I repent off the times esply when I get into the 'I'm-so-lonely' mode. Reading yuvi's blogs these days as only these days he got into regular blogging, this guy has really got something in him. ATB dude!
The entire week passed by was full of Rahmanism. Frankly speaking, I was so so obsessed with all that he could do to the world with his music. Hats off!
And like what Yuvi says, this blog doesnt add value to the readers, rip it off that case, its just an update. Hope to write something useful in the coming days!
:)

Closing the year on a good note!

2008-12-31T12:53:00.007+05:30

2008 - A year full of promises, surprises and changes for me. needless to say some of the unfortunate moments as well.
This post will be about a personality who has made a huge difference to me and my life.

She was born in a small town.
She was the eldest in the family.
She grew up in a royal environment.
She studied well;
She became a role model for all the other kids who grew up in the family.
She made friends who went on to become friends with the entire family.
She was pious; She obeyed her parents.
She taught me what is prayers.
She was cheerful.
She was beautiful. She is Aishwarya but not Rai.
She was logical.
She was disciplined.
She was calm.
She was the first to goto college from her home.
She kept in touch with all the childhood friends. She valued each of them.
She worked as a teacher.
She became poor someday.
She had a very rich aunt.
She got married. (or her Aunt got her married)
She became rich again.
She adored her husband.
She lost her father.
She became a mother of 2 kids.
She loves everybody like her own.
Later...
Her aunt became poor.
But she is rich.
She is high on status now.
She is being abused for that by her aunt.
She still trusts on God.
She still loves all of us.
She still is calm.

She is my Sister. Saying 'She is my cousin sister' does not take me any far from her.

This post is very important to me as she is one of the most inspiring person in my life.
She means a lot to me.
Touch wood, we are the closest of sisters now and her kids love me and I love them like mine.
She is sweet.
May God give her all that she needs in life.
May this new year bring all the wonders to her life.

Extending my hearty wishes to all of you for a very very happy new year!
Godspeed to you Good people!

Take care.

A disgusting bid.....

2008-12-26T11:43:00.005+05:30

its been a sort of emptiness within me.. for the past 2 days. 2008 was a great time spent in a much greater way. a lot of remarkable things amidst the other hard path that i took through. pretty more friends made along the way. some very new ppl, some of them who were known before as just hi-bye friends were added to 'good' friends category.

sometimes mind thinks why things move so fast. this fast moving life, is it really required.. so many rattling thoughts. why things start so fast and end within no time. are all those that i do over the millions of seconds make sense? at least to something or somebody somewhere in this huge world. sometimes i think if I'm over doing things, other times i doubt if I'm doing anything at all. at times I'm so stingy at making a single phone call while that evening i go out and spend on something thats so materialistic.

why not life is full of only good things, fun times and happiness, why would the sad part emerge in, why do i get so depressed at nothing, why do i not hesitate indulging in fights, why do i pretend being cool when I'm really not. why do i object showing love in front of others, why should i get the hell out of what I'm working on, why should i even care at making my deliverables, damn it, so prefect.. they all gonna bring in what!? money or only they make me a prefect human or what i am. Am i not good as just me. why do i have to do a hell lotta thing to prove what I'm capable of. or they are just gonna make up for those times when i had hurt people.. life is meaningful only after all that!? heavy or light, why should such feelings ramble over the good night's sleep. its a lot of craziness.

i have to read the words 'live life' to realize that i'm living something called life and i have to live it, across the mountains and valleys that i cross to work everyday. the mind is silent and wants to not think of anything, but shallow breaths queue up and tells me that 'you are uncomfortable listening to few things'. it is when i get to embrace the feeling of loneliness. why should i feel lonely even after being in the bird's nest like a place. its disgusting to know that i 'have to' live life so far off from my loved ones. why do i not simply live life at the place i like, with the people who make a difference to me and stop running around aiming at achieveing something, running all around towards nothingness. i have to damn it hope that tomorrow will be more colorful, tomorrow will carry something which i really would want to take it up and not couple up those disgusting things which i ever was scared of. its shameful to even say that i am SCARED of thinking if i would have a way ahead. a standard that i have to maintain for myself. a dignified standard!

it just goes on.. on and on.

sometimes its better to spit out those bitter herbs rather than clubbing it inside, cogitating, because of the medicinal effect that it has which would be helpful at later point of time. i do not want it.

Barbeque Nation - Awesome!!

2008-12-18T16:31:00.003+05:30

One of the wonderful restaurants I've ever been to!
What on earth they don't have! I really wonder.. Right from the ambiance to food, service.. 'Awesome' will be way too less a description for this place.
You are a non vegetarian lover.. then this is the place to be!!

There have 3 outlets in Bangalore Kormangla, JP Nagar and Domlur. I got to venture @ the Domlur outlet as I heard this is the bestest of all. We got to occupy a table at the rooftop and with Bangalore weather rocking in this season, an absolute treat to ur eyes and ur taste buds..
They had both sofas and chairs for seating and as always, my choice was sofa! The arrangement was pretty spacious leading to a nice ambiance. Being a Sunday lunch, the crowd was perfect, not in excess neither less was it.

Coming to the food, it was a buffet lunch and they had lovely barbeque's starters made right on the table. The helpers come and neatly arrange the oven for you. They leave the masalas and oil (some 4 different types -mustard, soya bean blah-blah) on the table and you can add them to the taste you want it to be. Then they start leaving the items one after the other. It hardly any veggie food, but a whole different amazing varieties of non veg.. I'm restricted to consume non veg and so could just take a look at it.

the bowls placed on either side had the chutneys and the oil varieties.

What I could observe is that the food is already cooked in the kitchen and the whole process of leaving it in the oven etc just goes to the entertainment part, meaning it just gives a different feel and probably u can keep your food hot for however long u want them to be. Apart from the tandoori stuff, they had something made out of baby corn and fried fruits which had apple, papaya, pineapple and grapes. a lot of fried stuff in vegetarian, i simply loved them.
The starters part is the best in fact, its unlimited and they keep serving until u go ahead put the flag down indicating that they can stop serving starters. I was literally done here itself as we continued with just starters itself for more than an hour.

The main course had good varieties, but nothing was special as such, just the names were different and the food was the usual taste. they had an egg salad with boiled eggs soaked in some mild sauce and tomatoes (cut in big pieces), a different dish which I never came across, that was the highlight amongst all. Macaroni, pastas and the rest were as usual, the breads with paneer curry, fried rice, briyanis etc.

This was followed by desserts. 1st and foremost thing about this part is the arrangement, that itself brought a lot of temptations. There were decent number of varieties. rasmalai, a custard, ice creams with different sauces- chocolate, pista and mango. they made a wonderful combination.

I'm not sure how clear is the pic below. its anyways here for you!

I must mention about the customer care. we had ordered for a drink separately and I went for something called 'chocolate monk'. i was almost about to finish the drink and I could find a piece of plastic, its not even of the size of a pepper, but still I just called the guy there and showed it to him, note: it was not a complaint raised. But still he went ahead and changed the drink for me immediately. Ultimate service right!? And this is what I would call Value for the money!!

My 1st drink:

The replacement:

Awesome right!!?

And that's the end of the story.

The cost part was pretty ok, it was 500 bucks per buffet. I have paid 300+ in some of the average restaurants so many times. And considering the replacement drink factor, I was ready to pay even an extra 100 bucks :D And people said if we would have gone for La'Carte its not easy getting out without a min cheq of 1000 bucks.

Overall rating from my end- :) :) :)

A lil extra:

Awareness/Value-add/Just another business motto!?

2008-12-15T11:28:00.023+05:30

Yesterday.. being a Sunday, we got to venture in front of the idiot box sometime.
Amidst the interesting programmes were the annoying ads! and that's where I got to watch this disgusting one.

the one for co*do*. a lady comes in n she, by her looks, is like the biggest B! people would do anything and everything for money n India would be the No1 country in such a list. she goes around preaching that co*do* is not a bad word, the mind that thinks irrelevant things when it comes across this word is perverted. Wat a crazy logic! anybody in the world who comes across this particular word (is, was) will think of the direct implication which could be nothing but s**!

Particularly in a country like ours, I do not understand the need of it, when I have got to study about this in my IXth class science studies, XI th class Biology and when the boys entering the so called 'teens' start talking about the C word, F word, A word etc right from their say VIIIth class. Such things when not realized by the current generation via all these forms, they think this will be an effective way to spread the core idea.. In such a form, is it really adding value!?

Okay, u tend to say that 'we want people to understand that it is not a bad thing to know'. Exactly! I go with you. But it puts me into disgust when I sit in the big hall with so many people around, in my living room with my family and suddenly such a thing of 'no bad' is being so explicitly declared that its not a bad thing at all. There were several ways of spreading this awareness in the past. I could find 'we 2-ours 2' posters in every street of my town @ my 15. Are they not decent words!? Did it not bring in change!?
For instance- I was a 1984 born. My parents (not a doc, not an engr) had this basic thing in those years itself and we are just 2 at my home. I can count the number of my batch mates who were more than 2 and it definitely is way too less, probably in 2 digits. I would even say, the servant maid at my home who had 5+ children, 2 of them were daughters and they were married sometime during the end of last century AND they stopped with 2 kids. I seriously think the current generation, to which I belong, is way too ahead of things. A lot is planned and is being properly executed.

You preach it to spread logic of safer se*!? Bull $hit! I even know a batch mate of mine who conceived just in a period of 3 months time after her wedding. She is an Engineering grad. and the reason she gave was that it was accidental. Do you think she did not know what is CO*DO*!?

So let's stop getting such things so public, and only this is when I start analyzing what's really bad about it, rather than just taking what is being directly conveyed! Let this 'awareness spreading logic' stay as decent as it ever was!
Bottom line: I condemn this whole CO*DO* ad logic being relayed particularly in TV channels!

Kare... Really!?

2008-11-25T11:25:00.008+05:30

this is about my recent experience with some of the salons in the city, n they belong to CavinKare groups.

a Sunday noon n with 'v' visiting me over the week coming, i thought it was high time i got to do something about my messy hair.

Green Trends, the Unisex Spa & Salon, the CavinKare group companies, just half a km away from home, thought it may be a right place to try it out. i had visited them before several times for relatively smaller services n was satisfied with this lady who used to attend me. though i knew that they cost double for just a simple threading compared to the normal salons, i felt its ok. cuz i found the place to be pretty spacious. cleanliness is ok, i wouldn't say it is great, they don't keep mopping the floor or whatever, particularly the manicure/pedicure room inside - no comments about it.

being a Sunday noon, the salon hardly had customers. the moment i entered and asked them for a straightening, there were a bunch of gals around me, recommending me to go for rebonding.

For me all that matters then was the cost. A simple straightening costs around 3k plus tax (for medium hair), 2.5k plus tax (for short hair) and rebonding was like 3.5 + tax for short and 4.5+ tax for medium.

there was a female who does the receptionist + service work there and she went on stressing me to go for rebonding and that would give me less post process maintenance efforts. i did not really want to spend so much over it. and after a few mins of calls, discussions with friends etc i decided to go for straightening.

moreover, the length of my hair then was just an inch or 2 down the shoulders and they strictly told that they would consider it as medium length. half minded the service person started with the work, the first wash n now again she told me to go for rebonding. i asked her then that case consider it as short, i ll go for it and not medium.
having a razor cut already my hair was dense only on the top layer. she said she will trim it a bit and so they would consider it as short. i agreed n my so-called medium length became short with just less than half an inch of trimming.

the receptionist was not 'for' this infact and the attender spoke to the person on phone who is like the supervisor there i guess. I thought of the phone conversation what it must have been like and I'm sure this is the word of the attender "Rebonding short is still a profit for us compared to Straightening medium, almost around 500 bucks". the receptionist still kept cribbing over that lady for nodding to this whole deal of small-medium thingie and that's a different story.

after that she went on n the whole process took a whopping 6+ hrs to get over. but after all that, at the end i was happy with the way they've done it. its almost 2+ months now and still the texture is maintained. with straightening i don't think it lasts this long. the main difference that they say between straightening and rebonding is that the latter is a 5 step process with 2 extra creams being used. they use something called 'finisher' at the end which settles down all the minutest hairs that usually pop up and make it look ugly, particularly during travel or even after a small drive for that matter.

the best part was they said they will give a hair spa free after the first wash. and ya.. the first wash comes for free as well. whatever smallest amount of math brain that I have started calculating then, that a hair spa would cost anywhere around 750-1000. so if I'm paying 4K, it works out to almost around 3+ with the complimentary. but only after I went for the first wash I realized what they meant by hair spa. this lady first washed my hair applied a conditioner and washed it. then she brought a potful of cream and she applied that, left it for 20 mins and that's it the spa is over. how bloody cheating!! Did I ever ask for it!? so this is the effect.

this is one part of the story.

next comes limelite. I've seen an outlet in Jaynagar 5th block. but never felt like trying it out. it looked more like an art gallery rather than a salon for me. i must say Green Trends that case is better by looks, they have the decent posters, banners or whatsoever, which make us realize 'ok this is a salon which I can enter with some good feel and come out without it being spoilt'. when I got my rebonding done, i was meanwhile enquiring about Limelite cuz its again a CavinKare Group of companies. the guy there told me that its an executive parlour, when I asked the difference he told me 'the rebonding that costs 4K here would cost 8K there'.. darn.. what a lovely explanation that a supposedly Marketing person could utter!!

another thing is that, the newly arrived Barclay-Times credit card came along with 5k gift vouchers which could be used at different outlets most of which were carrying off of different %. one of them were limelite. i had a 250 bucks limelite voucher, now that i can work out something with that, I decided to venture there over a weekend.

went for a bleach which cost a damn 325 bucks.

the point is, i was told that its an executive parlor but i literally had to search for executives there, not in numbers but by carriage. the hair cuts all happen in the ground floor and they have every variety of human kind dumped in like what we see in internet cafes, there is not even a screen placed between two couches. thankfully i was put in a room, where the inside furnishing was decent, completely made of wood. the flooring, the walls, the cot and dark brown varnish on them was an added beauty. the attender was not at all friendly! again language problem. i just left it to her, let her do whatever experiments she wanted to do from her childhood. outcome was not all that effective. but i was happy she did not spoil my face at the least.

things that dug my heel:

1. suggest me what is good and what is not, you may tell me the benefits of going for a particular service probably twice and that is also for you to have the satisfaction that you have done your job. this is the true meaning of "stakeholder's delight" that you talk about in my pov.

2. why do you have to go on telling me to go for the one which I have decided once that I'm not gonna go for it. the problem comes when this particular thing which you suggest is of higher cost! I only tend to think that you are simply greedy and making business out of me. ok.. That too is not a problem with me unless until you make such strong statements on consumer benefits.

3. needless to say the cheating part. spoiling the brand name. I agreed for something and if you are not happy with it, just tell me it doesnt work this way. what non sense! you tell me something and not do it. better they take care of the people whom they post at such important positions! otherwise you stand too good a chance to get your brand name spoilt overnight!!

4. the beauticians there are not that great! somewhere close to the mark, but not there absolutely. i have seen a couple of people who runs their own and do a fairly good job. 1st and foremost thing: they don't speak English. and even if they speak its pathetic! the lady who attends me can talk tamil, so i'm saved.

CavinKare.. they do so much of branding, have the highest ever pricelist, talk so much about quality and quantity, but things just stop with words is what I could observe.
they don't get quality people to work for them, the plain reason I could imagine is the pay that they should offer to hire people of such grades. stingy guys!Both Green trends and Limelite need to improve a lot infrastructure wise. cleanliness is ok compared to the other local/non-branded ones, but its in no way upto the mark.
price, as one of the points above suggest, just 1:2 ratio, but this 1 here indicates somewhere close to 10.

And if we have to pick the better one out of the two, I would say its Green Trends and not Limelite definitely.

hang-over!

2008-11-19T17:25:00.005+05:30

title makes you get high.. is it!? :p thats how it should be!!
this is just gonna be the continuation of the prev post, the 3, 4 and 5th day @ planet I.
after getting the overdose of the tech stuff, i was already at this 'oh!-is-it-not-enough!?' state.. so the 3rd day had to be different, otherwise they gonna make no difference. now to add up to the gang 3 of k's friends arrived. this day had the Ashwa finals + a lil bit of 'ghoom'ing the city etc etc.. did quite a hefty shopping, a pair of Puma shoes (swept off v's pocket :D), some more at our favourite Globus outlet + the one n only McD :) 'Y' joined in the middle. Rushed back to the campus wanting not to miss the Ashwa finals. It was a time worth spending there. Then came the 'werz the paaaudyy tonyt!!'. I was almost dozing off, back at room after Ashwa, but somebody woke me up and pulled me on to the dance floor.
Omg!! Wat an environment! Nobody was 'self' there. The beer guzzling competition was an add-on to the already prevailing heat. 5 great girls against 5 dumber guys!! how could u ever be ready to compete against girls mann.. huh! n the gals lost just in a matter of seconds! i wonder.. 'dare' n 'guts' for such things, is it meant only for Frenchies!? to save the 'maanam' there was a punju gal in the gang.. n they rocked!!!! it was so much fun and lotsa giggles around.
So many of em enjoyed the F-Ks. V n D dint give up too after which 'v' got some Kick-a$$ shots from me. thats a different story. (for now i'm leaving it; but u knw me, someday day u gonna mess up wit me and thats when u'll c the real impact of it, bugger.. just take care haan! :p) but i must admit, if somebody has missed it tat day, then u ll never knw wat 'haute' means!!
the hips n hops went on till 5 in the morning!! that was the night!!! whatever i missed over the 4 years of my dumb college life.. made up for all that. it was a sooper night!
i was up by 10 again.
n the prev day purchased 'bloody' puma shoes had manufacturing defects!! i decided this is the last time I'm going for this brand in life! .. so had to run to the city again today to exchange it.. not to miss the McD burger ;) they are just so great yaar, c'mon..
lunch was at a rest called 'celebrations'! i never expected the pizzas and garlic breads to be tasting this so great in a place outside 'Pizza hut'! no doubts, they had them greatly made ever! hope one of these stupus from this IIM gets into their marketing division, i'm sure they have a great future for their quality.
then this day had the silkroute band coming in and a few minutes of ramp up show from BIG fm. the gal who had done the anchoring was a food to those bunch of geeky eyes out there :) 'D' went n participated in some of the word game which they were doing and won it! Cool fella!
by then the roaming quota for my tiny foot was already exceeded, it was badly wanting to take some rest. went to the room after which 'y' called for dinner. it was a lovely time, those 2 hrs, dinner and post-dinner. when in the mess, another prof made an entry and took everybody's attention. boy, this man was again in his 40s and the enthu he could show, ultimate!! i got a lovely chance to pull v's leg n along joined 'y' n 'd'. but then it was not a tat-so-happy-time wen i went to bed tat night cuz i had to leave the next day :(
by this time i have a bunch of friends. who knows no difference, all the fun, care n affection!
its been a great time with all of them! i sure miss them all.. the next morning i may not be meeting everybody, they wud be rushing for classes. the flight take another damn 3 hrs to put me back on my crazy land + no 'v'. crap! it feels sick somehow!
but then most of them made sometime to say a 'bye' before they left. these 5 days in my life was upside down. it wont make up if i say i never experienced such a life. a great break i could get before my new job.
the next morning went a lot drowsy. k + 3 of his friends were the company, obviously, the 4 hindi-walas, wat can i expect. time anyway flew. v bunked last class and dropped me @ the airport. then the same kingfisher, the same window seat, the same boring time n finally the same old land, but i can never get bored of it! the damn volvo took 2+ hrs from airport to put me @ home. i curse that person who decided to have the Airport so far off from the city. such a dumber!!
anyways.. its over! pude pude..
P.S: the 'pude pude' meaning is left only for those who were @IRIS. hahah.. another new term in our vocab.

the fest!

2008-11-08T13:41:00.011+05:30

I'm here @IIM-I.. for this fest IRIS '08

the whole trip was a lot of fun and enjoyment.
few of em would be worth mentioning..

1. met Anil Kumble in d onward flight from b'lore to Indore on Thursday! boy believe me, this guy seemed to be one of those coolest chapos on earth. wat an attitude! whoa!! Der was a stop over at Nagpur and he got down there. ppl say, he must be visiting Dravid. anyways it felt a bit drifted up inside :)

2. campus is not like the A/B campuses. pretty far off from the city.. crossing all the villages, plains n fields it took around 25 minute to be inside the campus by car. the typical north Indian villages which i haven't greatly observed during my Calcutta trip (Oh sorry, its Kolkata.. somehow i don't like to get adapted to these kinda new names, Chennai-Mumbai-Kolkata .. n d most horrible Bengalooru!!! :x) seemed to be a treat for the eyes.

3. Thursday noon-eve wasn't much.. meeting friends, walking through the campus. i must admit the campus has some great buildings which exemplifies the real IIM feel.. hihglight the dinner with his 'gang' here, at 'Mashaal', they said that its one of 'the' restaurants here. but only after i landed there i could weigh the real standard.. prolly of the entire city's :p yep .. n d dinner went with the usual questions. 'tell us something about 'v'', 'where do u see urself (both of u tog) 5 years down the line' and such typical MBA Qs :D n then came this b$ Q: 'how can u ever go for tis.. tis.. after al tis face'. n tis smart 'D' came wit an spontaneous reply 'cuz of course, she dint meet me before him' vevev.. when i told em, 'mann.. its such a tough q to take' 'v' came back with an immediate damn 'was it so tuf' :p.. but then, to talk it over. particularly people who are of pretty higher standards is kind of tough and being the typical Southie we are not really used to such things, at least tats not my cup of tea.

4. ok.. now the real fest experience:

mann.. i must tell u, this place is al lit up, alive n running only after 10 in the night. the real participation, enthusiasm and to a greater extent partying all sees a mid night oil being burnt heavily on the floors. when they say 'chalo.. lets do tat in the evening'. it simply implies that they would start it at 12AM n that's their evening.

alright.. my day as well started at 12PM just like the other junta here. me n 'Y' went for the guest lecture. some senior manager from JP Morgan was there talking about 'slowdown- opportunity or threat for the Indian IT/ITES industry'. the guy concluded saying, its an opportunity when you look at a long term. still i couldn't gather a great deal of info out of it.

n in the evening, went for an event 'cerebrate marketing' - a case study stuff. man, i felt like kicking tis fella's a$$ out who belonged to tis event's organizing committee, a pgp2 guy, listening to his intro of the chief guest, a marketing manager from Conagra. wat a poor compering skills one can possess. I just remembered a moment after my English recitation in my school competition, a teacher told me 'when u talk.. when u talk, the person who is dozing off should get up.. upright n sit back listening to u; shouldn't take the highly alive guy to a zombie mode'. the intro was as simple as the later part.

n then came the participants- 6 teams of 2 each. the teams had horrible presentation skills. like they had PPTs and i had to really go, search for the points there. many of them have written stories and were just trying to read out what was return, felt a lot lack of preps. and the English.. it sucked except for a gal from IIT-D and another guy from Great Lakes.. there were so many fillers, grammatical errors, so on and so forth. there was team from xl and these guys had done some great great analysis, a row of block/bar/Venn diags, a lot of strategies, so much numbers etc etc but the judge commented that the analysis-problem solving-agenda in isolation is good, but then they are not able to draw a thread through those 3 and get a conclusion for the actual prob stated. btw, one of this team members was an ex-colleague of mine!
i get highly irritated when people don't have even the basic communication skills, this happens a lot at my work too. i mean if u can't even talk it out properly why try all such stuff man, just be at home.. i actually doubt the whole Indian standard itself when it comes to this, i mean commo' man, where are we heading to! lacking even the simplest things, u gonna be a future leader, how many laloos the world would want going forward. it was highly disappointing considering such facts.
the best things in this (class)room were:
1. the seating, split AC
2. the neatly made curtains
3. the digital clock right opposite to the projector wall, so that the profs can know the time while in class.
4. the laptop cases etc..

now something on a good note.
we just came out of this room and took a walk towards the Audi and there was this game going on. Each participant will go on stage and they will be played a video. the guy will have to come up with a title and the idea behind it relating to the video shown. it was simple amazing, spontaneous and creative. i could see a lot of brains except for a real few crap. the prof who gave an ending note was worth a mention. this guy spoke and that's the standard. i could see the amount of experience and knowledge and the reason why are these instis put on the head everywhere still. he mentioned that he is an avid reader of historical stuff and going to such places. man, i could see it in what he spoke. Great!
n then came the CULTicon. this one was one of the most expected events among the auds.. the final round it was and the event is actually, people can show the talents they have and how much could they impress the judges and auds, with humour, of course. there were 4 finalists and each of them had done a good job. A guy from IIM-S took away the trophy and the prize money of 1L. cool bum :)
the part that needs a mention here is the prof who gave the ending note yet again. he seemed to be in his 40 something. and the enthusiasm he showed on the stage. hell. would such things too happen somewhere!? i have never experienced at least. like.. he sings a song from some 1960's and with so much of energy, passion and enthu.. the whole audi follows him, singing like the rhymes being taught.. ppl enjoying their a$$es out. cool show.
meanwhile there was a video competition, wherein ppl got to make videos and submit. 'v's junta with 'k' as dada took up this as 'k' is a man of video making ;) so the video revolves around how a highly frustrated guy taking up things ahead in life. they had a small shot where this guy should be rejected by his gal friend and that's where i went in. it was so much of fun and the video won the prize with 5k cash award :D
after which i was back to the room to hit the bed. cuz it was already past 12. n me and this mid night oil have broke up pretty long time back. 'v' had something going on til 3 in the morning it seems and these guys bounce back on the floor by 8 8.30. something really great. i mean once in a while thats fine. but tis is the routine, then its really not for me!
so.. overall a great experience so far.
I'm signing off with a lot of expectations :)

Diwali / Naraka chaturdhasi

2008-11-03T12:26:00.003+05:30

This post is after a recent ( in fact a few mins back) 'big fight' with one of my colleague cum friend. He is a northi and just returned to work after his Diwali vacation. while we were discussing how/why is this festival celebrated, I told the only legend which I knew that 'Krishna killed Narakasura'. Bugger he started laughing on me saying 'how ignorant i can get'.
I was re-assuring several times that this is the actual reason atleast in the South. He was not ready to believe and along joined my manager as well.
He told a story that there is a faith after Ram killed Ravan (which is what is celebrated as Pooja), the day Ram reaches Ayodhy is celebrated as Diwali. That may probably be true which I'm not really sure of.
So now, as always, just did a google search and found this. what i told makes sense n I'm happy :)

Damn it!!

2008-10-31T09:25:00.003+05:30

Its been a while since i wrote.
2 reasons:
1. a software Engineer style : Time constraints.
2. Some instict kept telling me that somebody whom I know is keeping a watch over this space. n found it to be true. If u r reading this, Senthil its you! n i dont really know how many more are there like this.

The 2nd reason went more prominent and so I started blogging in a different place. Now that's my world, the world where I do not have people whom I know personally. I want such a life.. to write all that I think. I'm happy!

Nothing like I would not be posting here anymore. But no more of free-flowing thoughts.

ok thats 1 part of it.
Next, the recent visits to my native gave me quite a few shocking news.
1. there were around 4-5 good movie halls in my place. but now most of them have been closed down. The power of DVDs!! Everytime I go home, I always wanted to goto the theatre for atleast a single movie, now everybody at home says, u should be jobless going all the way there! n so I have no company to go around!
2. a Marry brown outlet, after B'lore, Coimbatore, Cochin, Chennai, its now in Chidambaram! Wonderful!! I'm so curious to dig more into this n find the source behind this idea.
3. the only thing that stays green still there is that the only road which gets crowded the pre-diwali-evening. Its the same amount of crowd which I saw when I was in 7th std.
4. the inflation effect is seen in quite many places of such a small town as well. I dint expect this.
5. the bomb blast scare has spreaded down all the way there and the 3 entrances of the temple is closed (only great place which stands significant there) -> eventually even on diwali there was no conspicuous crowd in the temple. bad!

Otherwise quite a lot of things happening with me. Lemme think over on what to post n what not :) Belated Diwali Wishes!

the first.. I Love You!

2008-08-12T15:47:00.010+05:30

from whatsoever routines that I'm doing, it was a special day.. we had the bestest of fights ever and it lasted for more than 2 days. third day i logged in - gtalk - he popped up.. 'patch up!?' - yup. patched up!!
over the evening somewhere around the time when i usually get back home. this was a call after 2 days from the sweetz. blah-blah-booh talks continued for around 20 mins. then popped in those three words!
mm.. m..mmm... I love you!
I was dumbstruck. Did not know what reactions to give. ended up with this nonsensical monosyllabic word.. hmmm.... (my logical brain inside shoutin - 'stupid.. have u gone mad u don't even know how to react at such moments! after all u r destined to such romantic hits only once in a blue moon n u screw it up with this ever-disgusting zeroical replies.. thooo ...); [a 'shot' pause] with that i continued 'what happened all of a sudden, you tellin what u have never told!' probably this is what he would have expected the last thing from me to be asked. its such a hard question sometimes you know! anyway there was a different nonsensical monosyllabic reply followed my q, 'simply'.
i left it there wanting not to screw it up anymore!
ok bye..
had to splash some water on my face and tweak some part of my chin to get back to normal from the dumbstruck state. i shrugged, it took 2.5 whole years to blurt out these 3 words to me!! Why on earth was it so tough only to you among the whole bunch of all the male sick-twisted-freaks!!! Is this the simple reason I'm stuck to you as if you have emptied bottles n bottles of fevicol and kept me glued to you forever of all the odds!
and then it kept coming back at the back of my head.. i still wondered, after all this IIM guy is really true or just trying to fake to a dumber sitting miles away with his thoughts filled up all over the mind body and soul! (my logical brain jumped in again 'u perverted mind, why on earth only u get such creepy thoughts') ok.. i bounced back to the original non-suspecting me.
though your first proposal was not like what came in this '3 mistakes of my life', while the blue-orangish sky collected all the clouds together and the flames of candles danced to the boyzone music, on her special to-be-adult birthday at the dark rooftop with nobody around, they exchanged the first romantic fronts, yet it meant a lot to me! a slight awe-filled, stunning, holding a marvellous meaning which would stay green forever at the same place, I mean the back of my head.
I do not remember the exact date or time or whatever to see if all the stars are matching to keep us together althrough, which I usually try to do, say when the college crush first spoke to me or when I first received my lucky pen and some such things - I dont know why, or atleast try to set a fake date and time and remember it, like some sort of adding fancy to the events occured when narrated to others. Here I dont. Its just a centimeter away even now for me, I mean if I just scour through the sms list on my phone I can easily figure out, I still don't want to do that. Let it stay as it is, the original natural flavour to the very best thing that can happen to me! I would not disturb it!
i know that he cares the most for me and trust he can be the only one everlasting, yet i fight 'why do u care the least for me'. i know he is going through the same whats goin on wimme, I still cry and fight and do the craziest thing that gets him pissed off so often. he understands that i very much understand his routines, yet cribs on me why am i being like this not even an ounce-of-understanding.
we are going through such things almost everyday over the past 2 months after he left for an IIM MBA! Yes of course I'm proud of it! its not just an MBA. Its an IIM MBA. I feel like telling it over and over again.
but all those fights are just passing clouds. Beyond all this something that keeps us glued, (not the fevicol stuff) that something will carry us a long way, recommending to the Lord God to bring us back together in union for any number births that follow-up. even the 'newbie' that comes once in few months keeps reminding me of giving you the whole lot from within, its so tough to overcome that you know! This bond is made of so such tightly packed molecules that can never be shattered by anything or anybody. It will stay as this forever and ever.
After all that money could do in my life, the amount of trust i had on money-power more than man-power has been broken down. Now all those trust has been transferred on you [hey, not on ur hefty pay checks believe me ;)] just on you, the very unique, the cute cuddly you!
I love you too :)

guyish...

2008-08-06T10:55:00.005+05:30

hmm.. whatsoever you thought from the title is not correct. you asking me 'how would you know what we thought' anybody who can think as normal as a santa/banta or a tom/dick/harry would think of course that it is going to be about a guy's typical characteristic trait or a thing which would be guys' interest or something of similar sort. that's where I said its wrong.
anyway cutting the crap and coming to the point, today, a fine wintery Tuesday morning, I got into the cab 7.48AM. the usual oldies in my cab were having their own chat and me with my sweet 6500 gifted by my sweet sweetz, playing sweet early morning kinda songs (too much influence of sweet huh!! ya just after his last visit to Chicago. never mind!). the guy next to my bumped into my heavy duty ears. 'u belong to which group' blah-blah.. then the talk continued. he went ahead chatting with all those in all possible directions around. it had hit this talk of traffic/pollution/malls in Bangalore. suddenly from somewhere within the well, a cat peeped up and told, a recent survey had found that the selling rate at the malls are very very poor. (meaning the number of items being sold). that's when i thought, whenever I ventured into this thirvizha kootam (festival crowd) in our malls, the most crowded places would be like these stores which sell guyishh/tom-boyisssshhhhhh stuff, like the jeans, sport shoes, trousers etc etc, say the Nike, Reebok, Levis, Pepe kinda stores and the rest of the girlie places would almost be empty. simple reason is that the varieties for them is very very less, poor souls, one of these probably - a jean, a tee or different names of those in different materials stitched in a different manner.. and they try to dissect the same things into formals, cargoes, casuals, nonsense etc :p
Unlike the girls who have a wider range of clothing, they would always like to venture into places like commercials or the wide variety of boutiques available all over Bangalore and go for the taste which suits them, costwise they are pretty reasonable (note i don't say they are cheap, not all that we find are cheap as you see), reasonable for the work/handwork or the fabric paint made on the cloth, the way they have stitched it etc etc..
so bottom line, its only because of those boyfriends/husbands/dads/uncles and whosoever in the neighbourhood who belong to this male kind with a lil huge pay checks the environment is being spoilt. they all barge into those 3-4 malls available all over the city and get them crowded like anything :p ahem ahem!
at least for my boy, we pay only for the brand, the comfort and last comes the look/color or the sweet as he says :D

Some photography mis (oops) -adventures!!!

2008-04-16T17:24:00.017+05:30

I'm just so bored of writing stuff.. So this will be a photo blog overall!
A birthday cake to a Friend who is popularly called 'thundu beedi' :) What a funny title one can carry!!

The Diyas that I got home for last Diwali :)

My first Mehandhi Escapade.. Poor sis, had to be the victim!!

Diwaliiiiiiii :) busvaanam :))

EBONY EFFECTS!! (the next 4)

B'lore MG Road view from Ebony!!

Just another view

What are you lookin at!!?? Now common.. look at the lighting effect :D

Its a lil blurred.. thats ok adjust maadi

Ernakulam Express

Morning Sun at Bengalooru

Chikubuku chikubuku railuuu... kalakudhu paar nama styluu

Cool view, isnt it!!?

Kalyanamam Kalyanam

Honk Honk

2008-03-22T20:00:00.005+05:30

I was out with a friend recently, a ride on his pulsar. It got me into this cynical thought of an average drive/ride-r's mentality while on road when caught in a zig zag, cross-wired jam.
The first thing that hits the mind is to Honk.. honk honk as if the other person aage peeche saamne is waiting to barge on him and put a knife on the neck or probably the 3 legged cat/dog at home is dying without milk or there is too much sun on the neatly grown grass lawn outside the apartment and this person will be rushing to save one of those!

If this is one side of the coin, there is the side, that has people who honk for no reason, just on a plain quiet road the way this person honks is way too weird.
Reason being this person is too scared if somebody would fall on his way and that he may land up spending the rest of his life eating only the salt less porridge in vellore jail!

This person has a chart of where how and when to honk which I think should most be following.
How to honk? - a hard, full deep press on the button (a trumpet picture is the indication) on the bike for a continuous 2-4 non stop minutes until the pillion rider's ear drum tears off.
When to honk? - Say you are driving at a time, when only those zombie state creatures wander along the roadside, around 2-3.30 AM of the night-day, a gush of air piercing your ears and no other noise could be heard apart from your vehicle's.. never mind honk!!
Where to honk? - on a clean plain quiet road where you do not find anything of a similar kind to you for about a 30ft neither in the front nor at the back of yourself.. could even consider residential areas of the city.

Now there is another friend who says that in foreign countries honking is considered as too big a thing to do on the road. Think a training or a 20-30 days of drive with the person I mentioned above would improve this guy's trait. Truly speaking, even I have noticed such a stuff while in Soton.

So, What I think is there would be 3 possible reasons that a person end up on this continuous press of his trumpet button
1. Annoyed by the congestion, madly angry on almost everybody around including those who have parked their vehicles on all 8 directions around him in a so called cross wired layout of traffic
2. Too scared of the not-existing-somebody turning up on his way
3. kya bada reasons chahiye yaar.. time pass simply! Bindass :):)

******************************Added Later**********************************
I was so happy to know this. "Mumbai's police marked World Health Day, April 7, as a "No Honking Day."
They were trying to build awareness of the effects of noise pollution in India's financial and entertainment capital, where it sometimes seems as if the city's 1.5 million vehicles are honking their horns at the same time. "

WoW what an after-effect of my post :)

yuMMy!!!

2008-03-11T15:54:00.012+05:30

Its time for an yummy post this time from my side. a long promised one in fact..
yeah.. Daily Bread - its all about pastries /ice-creams chocolates and of course the bread varieties here.
the first outlet which i visited was one in JPnagar near Dollars colony, the place was serene, richly interiored and pastry-hued :) and the second one was in Jayanagar, not so great an ambience like the other one, still worth a visit.
Actually the total variety of food has been cut into 2 here.
The daily bread part of it serves mouth-watering yummy pastries, sandwiches, breads and some squash kinda bottle liquids predominantly. And my choice always are the chocolate cakes, the ultimate ones! But we even have this experience - screwing up the order once when we opted for a salad, ended in some highly mintish-chilly dish that was not-so-appealing to our taste while some whites in the next table were enjoying the same food. so be careful while doing your mix and match, that's really important for the taste you expect!
The ice-cream shop is named Deluca's. I believe its the same authority who runs both just with two different names. now they have one in Forum too. There is one in Sigma mall as well, since around 2 years in the corridors, immediately once you enter towards your left.

It was of pretty unusual kinda history of finding this place for me. a slightly drizzling Saturday evening, weekend mood as an icing on the cake, i was lazing around while 'v' was busy with sis who had been hospitalised then.
the previous day or so, a message from him that there is something which would excite me and its kept as a weekend surprise for me! i was happy and just the glance of the message gave me a trigger and i was keen to know what's such a thing.
so now the surprise has been kicked open, around 6PM v asked me to get ready for reaching out to not too rich a place closeby. we were there within no time, then on I'm a fervent admirer of Daily Bread !! And know what, he got to see this place on his way to the hospital one day then it seems.
A portion of the credit goes to me as well! because it was me who found another branch of it, and this too carries an amazingly unexpected story of landing up. Just another day on a casual ride to the JPnagar outlet, i got to notice this one in Jayanagar to my surprise, near the Oxford book store, opp Barron's Inn. uhuh!!! we were screaming the gush out, totally instigated! We together have several such sweet memories of exploring/spotting variety of places in this city!
And that was his first and foremost finding of such a thing over the 2 evergreen years!! Boy believe me, it will always remain an overwhelming memory to me!!! :) Later he too started becoming an expert in this field! Of course when you are with a great mind, there minimum would be a slight influence of it in you :D

Now i let the pics do the talking for you..

so go, get in, get impressed!! :)

Sale Sale Sale...

2008-02-01T11:15:00.000+05:30

So much in the city! End of Season Sale all over...
Globus, Pantaloons, Central..
Our favorite Tommy ..
In Lido, the new mall, now fully constructed - off MG road, Fame, a 4 screen multiplex attached with sofa seating within!! I'm expecting a lot out of it :)
sofas are something so elegant n comfortable that interests me like what an Aishwarya Rai's call sheet would do to Rajnikanth :) At least this one is lil unusual instead of what the usual pvr/inox holds for us..
Everyday I get to cross one of this busiest roads in B'lore city, looking out of the car window just to add to my mournful stint! Now this is what I call paradox!!
Weekends having so much for me n With Feb 14th in pipeline..
I'm missing it all :|

Waiting for the new re-arrival :)

All

2008-01-25T11:04:00.000+05:30

One thing I realize quite often these days is that I tend to forget so many things that has happened in the recent past/present, so much that I had to surf back through my previous posts to put my writing hat ON :D Also reading back those posts told me that its been a long time since you've given a juicy post! Hoping to give one this time..
One side of life seems like those nocturnal zombies of I'm Legend which keeps haunting this lonely survivor, Robert Neville, in the streets of NY city. I wish he gets to come across this KR Puram traffic atleast for a week/month in his life, I'm sure he would prefer gettin on with the years long lone research, though the lady in the book stall refuses to tell him a hi even after he cries on losing his 'Sam'. But its highly dumb when it comes to risking their own life for the pets. I'm sure no indian will do that!! On the other hand, there are quite a few things that look as cool as him reciting about two minutes worth of dialogue from Shrek with even the simplest sounds like ahh, uhh... n al that. Yes, I'm so impressed!
Now, those that fall under this 'cool' category are tend to be forgotten so easily i feel. For example, a small lesson learnt from a not-so-prominent incident, though it is of high value and reveals a unique culture, some kinda good proverb or saying from a not-so-popular source, yet so meaningful.. few things even if u forget it doesnt matter, but der r a lots that I've been forgetting, so much.. so soon!! planning to start writing diary as a daily practice. but if something happens like what it comes in the real 'Billa', then things will mess up. will find a better solution soon :)

now am back to square 1, running in the morning to catch the cab, walking cut, skipping start; listening to fm which most of the time roars at a higher intolerable pitch, next time I goto his shop, will ask him if he's related to Rani Mukherjee by any chance, without which there's no chance of it singing so, may be he'll direct me to Philips for that query. work is ok, yet not started so seriously. client has put it on hold, waiting, till then let me blog. Dunno why this waiting and me are glued so well!!!

celebrated our 2nd anniversary (don't ask 'of what') on Jan 15th. I was getting ready big time for yet another D-day! yep! Jan 15th dawned with a big question '2nd anniversary is here, will there be a 3rd?' Still it was a moment of pride for us that we've carried each other so well all along through 365 days = 8760 hrs = 525600 mins = 31536000 seconds, Yes, we lived every moment of it!!, without letting down each other at any cause!, though I was bloating up at certain point making it tough to lift with something like what would resemble a Karan Johar's physique :p, you dint let me down anytime. Good try! The exuberant dinner @ Ebony groomed our day, + is that place is on 13th floor and of course, our presence was an added honors to the place :) the feel is really awesome, sitting atop, physically & mentally, that too with someone who is even more wonderful! No.. we dint make everything :)
took several pics which one by one is getting on into his gtalk display pic ;) will write a review on the place soon with the pics. my hsbc bill 1700 waiting to be paid off :D
As I always say life is so shrunk without *, not much of IIT-IIM stories, no discussions on those public issues/figures that only both of us talk bout on the entire world, NDTV n CNN IBN trying to fill your absence.. life eez tuf n when is soon!? hoping (moi) shall try.. ppl r busy with so many things right from work - onsite blah-blah, don't know if i'm cheating myself. but 1 week time can be of big help when it comes to 1 lifetime! Just noticed your blog is opened to invited readers only!! ATB.
will be off soon...

Days ... 2 dark days!!

2007-12-19T19:09:00.000+05:30

The Monday dawn of 17th Dec ’07 did not do good to me. The dark layer of the dusk prior night stayed… an abrupt hiatus that we had to put for this uncertainty, solution-less problem, the gorgeous nightmare… the love - supposed-to-be eternal love!
3 months time to get over 2 years of affection, kindness.. the happy days.. mischief, grace, charm, poise… trust, dignity, composure. the two-in-one feel!
those 2 days, your strength, character and spirit were my reason for waking up in the morning till drifting off to sleep.. every inch of my thoughts carried something so light being so heavy, it kept shouting at me “Let's go back to the way we were”! For me you’re my better half and we make each other whole! But tell me your side of it--I'm listening.
I felt so lost and wondered how you would have handled the same! But I could find you matured enough unlike how you were in our early times. I dreamt of scrapping somebody in Hindi, you were my reviewer there and opened my eyes to see everything empty around. Hassan buys Amir a handbook of Quoran on his birthday, and Amir would read stories and the poems he writes to Hassan, under a pomegranate tree - I don’t know the correlation but somehow remembered you in each word of this part in Kite runner…
I missed you! To the core. To the extent that no one could envisage!
tho the cute lil candle that I tried to lit in the shell where I dumped myself gave a room full of light, yet I could see just the shade that was leftover.
And in the shade, it was You whom I could spot… along with myself! Now the one (me) has broken into two :(
It dint take me more than 2 days – to break this dreadful silence between us.
The moment I saw a message creeping in my mobile phone, 'I'll be late today' tears gushed out and the moment next it was me back, I couldn't control asking you to come to me!

But whatever, its this we know, we have to take it. Now the rest life is for crying, cribbing those who were not for us. The amount of respect that we give them to the level we try not to hurt them, they don’t really deserve it. They are just old, so though they do injustice to us, it’s their age and we are not supposed to hurt them now. Let them be contented for the rest of their lives that we dint go against them. Here, we stand taller than what they do! at every aspect of life… spoiling our own selves to see them smile! and this life, its pathetic to fathom what it would be like without you in it!

Belated Birthday wishes!!

2007-11-02T14:41:00.000+05:30

Fortunately or unfortunately, all these days I could/did not write a post due to the usual glistening reasons that include work schedule, jammed weekends, some of the mysterious happenings with life, laziness, Freecell (ya, the ever existing windowsXP game! for some good-own reasons I'm pre-occupied with playing this, on my dumb-lil so-called office pc these days which eats up most of my time and getting me big-time addicted to it!) etc.

Two important dates to mention here:
1. Sep 26th - Belated Happy Birthday to this wonderful blog!
2. Oct 23rd - Belated Happy Birthday to the most-wonderful creator(never mind :p) of this blog! :p

I'm sorry, my dear chotu 1year-oldie! Though late. please do accept my hearty wishes. It was a fine sunny-rainy morning, a small seed sprouted in this blogger's brain for not-so-big reasons to develop a good habit - writing! The blogger is not a serial writer who belong to the family of J.K.Rowling's grand-old-mother who had born back on earth as his daughter-in-law's hubby's intermediate friend's cousin's brother's sister, but a decent-damselic, good quality(tho not of 1st grade) writer. A post which was written to an internal web-based article zone, after getting rejected by another biased bugger, landed in this blog page just to prove that it worths getting published across some corner of the world! Gradually the blog got few guides, few fans, some insights, several thoughts, some fun and lots like this, once the blogger realized what exactly the blog posts do to those who dare to put their fingers in even here! Though there were several stormy hindrances to the blogger like hectic releases, tiresome times after 14 hrs of short nap a day, a foreign tour-nothing but my so-called onsite etc, the blogger coped-up to be in the list of true, dedicated bloggers, managed dropping in 33 posts on-the-whole!
So, here is wishing you many more years of life! with few more crooked posts!!

Next turns out to be the birthday blast of the proud owner of this blog! Secondary are the analysis if good things happened or not so far, but the not-so-pleasing thing is that I'm growing older and getting matured more by looks. The day started with the unusual cake-cutting ceremony. ya, it wasn't an usual one, cuz this time the cake had come from a special person! and this person is not so appealed by this kind of cake-cutting or whatever surprises, i don't know. but somehow managed to put in some effort in buying a huge yummy creamy Black-Forest, along with a Fast-track watch, and dropping it at my room that too without me knowing it. It was truly a surprise for me as I never expected such gestures from him anytime. Many Thanks to You! few friends were around and I cut the b'day cake with more of them ending up back on my face. And all the birthday blast was over with that. Rest day could get as dumb as I expected. thanks to my friends for taking time to remember and wish me then. I dint even have my bike to go out or do something, bike came along with somebody almost when the day was over with good amount of showers which managed to spoil whatever little plan that existed. Ultimately a crappy day to remember! after all the confusions that someone could give, v's mom had sent a birthday greeting text.

Did You Know!?

2007-09-13T18:23:00.000+05:30

Hmm.. its sort of the Did You Know column that you get to see in TOI everyday!
Wonder what can be the info!? Obvious every software techie's love towards Google. But how many of us have really observed this -- Not sure.

While my engineering brain was too hungry, I was venturing for some unknown how-many-times-will-you-pop-up-stupid-error into the holy Google, it all of a sudden hit the cute, little, round, orangish apple on the home-page! And again its the engineering brain, went ahead R&D-ing on the major blocker P1 critical issue ;)

A 2 liner on this would be: Roald Dahl (13 September 1916 – 23 November 1990) was a Welsh novelist, short story author and screenwriter of Norwegian parentage, famous as a writer for both children and adults. His work includes Children writing, Adult fiction, non-fiction, Plays, Filmscripts, TVs etc.,
And a more detailed blah-blah here

And ya.. who can come up with such a wonderful logo other than namma Google :)

Happy B'day dude!!! :D

On land!!!!!!!!!

2007-08-14T20:06:00.000+05:30

After meddling around with my login id for a few mins, I landed here. after a dumbu here asked me ... 'hmm.. mm.... y our machi has gone into hibernation period?? or is it the regular bloggers 2 night enthu - no updates' its a prestige issue for me, while 'v' stayed back for work, i decided to sit and pen down a line or few to bug you al again!
On land- i meant the usual on-site enthu, was jumping and flying althrough and finally got back, came down.. zzzz... landed!
Few things to mention:
1. London - more of a mixture of colors.. grhhh in any sense u take. full summer and holiday mood and of course, was totally busy!
2. Southampton, a wonderful, calm quite place! loved my stay there. ppl wimme called it a 'dead city' tho.
3. Dunno why people there are in such a big hurry to get back home by 5PM (a very good habit to be followed). Infact we Indians slog so much at office, still our population is high :p :p
4. Daytime: 4AM-10PM. and needless to say, very short nights (think the above point goes clear here). summer and they really look for it!
5. Will be greatful (This word outta ma mouth for the 1st ever time :D)if I get another chance! Could see not so much but a lil heavy pay-slip, month end! :)

some pics out of the 3GB hola ones which we carried back along!:

Cutie and the fishies behind :)
Day before leaving for UK, dinner with mom and cusins @ Inchara! Worth a time :)

The most expected Journey begun! Wonder if this is called heaven!!??

The blue sky and me together! was fun :)

The awesome Southampton! zmmmm... d max no of signals at a single junction!

My Photography skill! A click from my room window- 3 miles away Light house!

Naughttieeeeeeeeee :D Don't you really get it. Ok try finding seven markable spots!!

Food -- The most essential thing of life! This story that I gotta mention here. 1st day - sponsored lunch from the client side.. tho i'm not from somalia, was in this big enthu to fall into the fry pan n finish the entire dish! a quick walkthrough of the menu... decided on la'tish-pish-tush (plz dont ask me wat it was) looked spicy yummy hot - nah hautche!! took, ate, suddenly like what comes in Jackie movies, wanted to go puke. asked what really was it after finishin half! got to know thats the most ever crappy food :( BEEF!! :(( was runnin to the loo and cube 100 times in 4 hrs stopped experimentin there. The standard dinner menu then on! Doesnt it look yummie tooo!?

Should spend a part of life there atleast for these 2 things! The variety cars and not-to-mention, the clean roads!!

Travel to London - A fresh weekend mood, Saturday morning, 14-Jul-07 8.30AM BST! A view of the train from inside.

Tubes: The so-called underground trains!

The lovely never-halting clock -- Big Ben!

Dunno y this wierd name! The London EYE... nope! not my eye.. london eye :p

A view from the cruise (ya.. can call it the motor boat)

Falling down.. falling down!
whats falling down!!???
London bridge is falling down!
My fair Lady!!!! :)

blah-blah-boohhh.. a good view!

Dont look at the mottai boss! Look behind the boss-cruise. The city cruise which we took to go around so that we can cover most of the places in 1 day!

The semi-circular building. Great sense of architecture

Queen was in?? sad... tat she couldnt get my invite! she was out! yup.. The Buckhingham palace!!!

Dudes showing their cycling skills! I have a video too. But no time and good means to upload :|

Bubyeee London!!!

Thats ... ... hehehehhh Meeeeeeeeeeeee :) Naaahhhhh.. me not really that so short :|

Final summarizing point about the whole experience: "!"

hurrah.. hurrah... hurrayyyyyyy!!!!!!!!

2007-07-10T21:36:00.000+05:30

07/07/07 Saturday 5.30PM IST
Cab at the door step.
'januu.. did u pack the gloves and socks? take care.. luggage should not exceed 20kg' - ya ma ok.. take this.. take that - ok ma. on and on.. mom kept giving me instructions.
5.40 - luggages in the cab, with few car exchanges pushed in everybody and started.

5.45PM IST
Tring tring.. tring tring.... my awesome oc 1100 ringing.
'temme sweetz, wru. have you guys started?'
'v' said 'no, tis dabba mahesh macha said he'll be late. so have you started? wru?'
'ya, started. its me, mom and s in this cab'
'v' - oh then even i can join you in the cab only instead of driving 15 km.
'come then.. fast. i ll be der at the signal in other 10 mins'
'v' - then i gotta ruch, catch ya..
5.55 - at the signal 80, 79, 78 .. ... 8, 7, 6.. . 'v' over the phone. bugger, rushing into the moving car, tunnnggg (dumb lil head got hit). seconds going down and my pressure was raising. anyways with me now, other 1.5 hrs max together :)

6-7 - me mom v and s chatting in the car happily.

7.00PM IST
Bangalore airport. zzmmmmmm.... (too much confusions)

7.30PM IST
got to check in at domestic entry since there's a halt at mumbai.
v acting like a big man, giving major directions. but all utterrrrrrr flop... :p

9.00PM
Boarding, security check-in all through. without any problem. Jet Airways to Mumbai.

9.30PM IST
First step into the flight for the first ever time!!! My heart wonders. it was lovely in all the ways I could imagine :)
9.45 - Ears getting blocked. 'V' had already instructed, dump cotton buds. Up above the beautiful hep city, Bangalore. was trying to count each and every building that I could see. not bad, atleast from such height I felt as if the cars are alligned in a neatly scaled lines :)

10.30PM IST
supposed to land @Chatrapati Shivaji International Airport. But common mann, we are Indians. come what may we cant follow timings!
Flight to London from Mumbai @ 1.25. But we'are still in the air :p

08/07/07 12.40AM IST
zyyoiiinnnn.... Landing! Got into the bus to reach the Imigration building.
Another handsome was waiting already.. 'Anybody travelin to London?'
(Gush inside) yeah!
come wimme.. quick quick..

12.50 - @the immigration
1.15AM IST -
Rushing for 9W 0120. Jet Boeing it is. But could find no difference from the usual Volvo A/C sleeper that runs here.

08/07/07 Sunday 6.45AM BST
Hurrah hurray hurray.. Landed.. London Heathrow!!!!!!!!!
The longest ever dream has true! A cute lil smile deep inside the heart:) Lovely weather welcoming us!

Me here @Southampton, UK working on-site from client's place. will be soon back to India. Will upload pics once I copy them all :)
ciao...

dunno-what-to-name

2007-06-05T15:56:00.000+05:30

the title line and my previous post would make you wonder what I'm upto! If not, then you should soon reach out to a psychiatrist.. or may be an astrologist to get tips on how to grow your thinking line as huge as a banyan tree!

For the past 1 year, I was caught in the hands of a lady animal, as crude as a mother-in-law who comes in this story which you would've read in newspapers often.. "girl set herself on fire... prolonged harassment by mother-in-law!". No, you are wrong! I'm still single. I'm freed from my previous house owner Bit**! Now New place, new roomies, very good food. May be I'll blow up a lil more in the next few months, Hope so.. Need to get married yaar; For how long only can I be single :D So tough you know!!

How tough is telling a 'no' to people. that too to somebody whom you are really close and show utmost respect to! I'm not able to believe when some story like 'RHTDM' happens with myself. No, the guy aint Madhavan, for I'm not Diya:p but ya.. better than him in all possible ways! Me like a fish out of water. I used to wonder when people say that they are not able to have good sleep, proper food and blah-blah if they are really crazy enough to do all that. Now I wonder if this is called being closer to this four letter word H-E-L-L!
One thing I can beat upon is that few people say on few things that they would never do it, but nobody can ever be stubborn with this funda. Every damn soul on earth is pushed to a situation where they have to break this ward and come out doing what they beat once that they would never do it on earth!

Yet another farewell, my lovely way of referring him 'macha'. Gone for his MBA to SIBM. A meaningful mail he wrote to me when I asked him why would he go for this institute and that if he is like a dog starving for the bone, just getting in somewhere while he deserves something bigger than this. Though I know his lovely character before, the mail increased my love and respect towards him. Lots of people live a real meaningful life too not like just for the heck of it!
check this out: we gifted him a Fast Track watch on his farewell. we love you mann! miss you lots.

There is this guy here who is now a father of a 3rd child! For the first 2 kids my manager sent a mail to the team saying that 'Mr.X is blessed with a baby so n so. congrats'. But this time nobody seemed to ever remember and our Mr.X mailed all of us himself saying that 'My wife delivered a baby blah-blah'. I'm sorry, not tryin to make fun. Just that when things happen repetitively people tend to forget the importance of it and this case its really too much!! Loll :))

I see this guy and wonder always why dont I write a post which speaks on one single thing! Tough to achieve it, anyways will keep trying. Hey I'm not a jealous goose :|

Keep Jumping.. Keep Beating!!

2007-05-29T15:23:00.000+05:30

For a change I've decided to put up a health tips column here!
So.. check this out. a forward which I got over the mail..

The content of the forward went like this..

Dear Friends,

Just check this out and think about your healthy body......
The Organs of your body have their sensory touches at the bottom of your foot.
Typically they are shown as points and which organ it connects to. If you massage these points, you will find relief from aches and pains as you can see the heart is on the left foot.
It is indeed correct since the nerves connected to these organs terminate here.
This is covered in more details in Acupressure Studies and Natural Health Textbooks.

God created our body so well. He made us walk so that we will always be pressing these pressure points and thus keeping these organs activated healthy "if we are walking regularly at all times".

Keep Walking!

Take Care!

Summer.. Where are my holidays!!??

2007-05-11T14:37:00.000+05:30

These days I'm being way too jobless. Around 2 weeks back, I was jam packed with work that I could not even take out time to breathe happily. Now the project has come to an end, so I'm in dunno-ho-long-to-wait state! Trying to do some self study and learning though being like this I'm not really for it :| So what! I'm spending more time blogging. A never ending story, life of too many people who belong to different race, style, culture. Lacs of views, thoughts, ideas, opinions and what not! I'm liking it!
And this is now summer, every school-going kid is in the state of immense pleasure waking-up late and no school, no books, no teachers, no rank sheets. I miss those wonderful days when I used to hide my mathematics book to escape from the tuition classes which my no-holiday-giving-guru used to conduct even in summer :( though we plan and escape to my granny's house only to have this luxury of living in a 3 storeyed building, running to the terrace to watch those planes, knowing that Maniratnam is sure gonna direct a movie called Rang-de-Basanti within a short period of 10 years, to give him a front page scene we used to jump and try over to touch these planes when they cross just above our lil heads! play the most traditional Indian game which any highly disciplined people would play with granny, grandpa, amma, mausi, aunty with 52 cards till late in the night. Rent the Hamam girl's chotu cycle from the cycle-wala who had his shop for rent in our home, ride it like Michael Schumacher to teach the cycle-wala 'parts of a cycle' lesson! I can count the number of time I would have seen the sunset in the past one year, I miss those lovely evening walk in the Besant nagar shore pinching the tails of those butter biscuit eating dogs which travel in A/C car.
Now I think like this and pass my days "If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older -Abraham Sutzkever"
Most of my summer now goes in "improving my digital and analog skills, for an Engineer to survive these skills are way too important" for this is the comment my so-called supervisor had given in my last appraisal!
One other friend cum colleague of mine got engaged recently. There's this guy who had a huge crush on this girl and who is a good friend of mine! We both decided to go to the venue together. When he came to my place to pick me up he gave a comment on my make-up 'U look good while coming to office yaar!' What to say.. I kept wiping my face all the way till we reached the hall. Embarrassing comment yet so polite :p (that's how I consoled myself) But many over the party commented that I was looking good.. ok!!!??
Reading a series of Sydney Sheldon novels! I wonder why this person doesn't know to write a story without involving se*, whereas these novels are this popular may be only because of this matter inside!! I manage to finish 1 book per day. But that doesn't mean this matter inside is making me read at the rate of air!

Home Sweet Home :)

2007-05-10T15:22:00.000+05:30

This post is on the new house which I had bought recently. I had mentioned the same in this blog few days back.
So i had gone home over a long weekend 2 weeks back and could capture some part of my dream house with a Canon cam that 'v' had got from his US trip. Now don't let your dream horse fly & imagine this Asian paints ad, 'new house, new cam.. ...' there's nothing like that, cam he bought it for himself:( i think its a 6mega pixel one, so slim n cute, awesome clarity and i simply love it!
Find some of the pics below:
Entrance:

Living room:

Dining hall:

This is the first property which I have bought on my own after I started earning. Ours is a small family of 4 including me & my sis, this house is the only biggest asset for us today! I'm too emotional about it for each piece of the house tells me how/what all i had to go through to bring up this! I know I speak more like this usual senti characters that appear in Karan Johar stories that he might come to me for his next movie. So why to upset the dream of many guys in my company, let me stay here only :D
Area: 885 sq ft - 900rs/sq ft
Now if I come to the 'M vitamin, It costed me around 8.5L (so you can imagine which city I would have bought it at;)) wherein 7L is from the home loan by ICICI, Floating interest started with 9.25% in Nov '06 and now its floated upto 10%, tenure is 20 years. One greatest benefit out of this is the whole amount gives us tax exemption, therefore this year I would tend to pay only half of the amount what I would actually have to pay.
Few of my friends ask me why did I go for floating, this is cuz of 2 things:
1. The fixed interest rate was considerably high around 13% whereas floating was only 9.25% while I took.
2. I was told that anytime I wish, I can convert it into fixed anytime. So my mom suggested to go for floating for the time-being and once it soars to 13%, convert it into fixed!
I found this idea better and went for floating. But now the biggest doubt is the time I wish to go for fixed, would they give me the with 13% interest, cuz when floating interest goes high, even fixed will increase. So now God knows what! Let it be that anda-ka-kasam matter, I don't wanna think bout it!
Also few told me that HDFC had got good deals and that Home loan = HDFC. But I did not find things that I found convenient about ICICI. Another colleague of mine has recently taken HDFC home loan and he said its good, his is again floating but the interest is 11.5% :o
I think 3-5 years down the line, one should be a crorepathi to buy a property particularly! ATB for all the future crorepathis!! ;)

chameleon!

2007-05-08T17:59:00.000+05:30

Unless you are from a different planet where you do not get to see any human beings who always do this back stabbing, you should be knowing the meaning of this word 'chameleon'. Though it is a noun & decades back God had named some poor animal as chameleon, it well suits several human beings these days!
I wonder if this is what 90% of humans do, they are not able to see somebody living happily. They cant see the other person smiling or bright. They have to get your life screwed for you causing no harm to the next person, for you staying happy with what you have!!
Oh Life! Whom would I question. I'm being kind of disgruntled here. Is there somebody called an Almighty really existing! When we learn to take all the bad things that happen to us in a positive way, why should there be a God existing. When something that went wrong sometime is put right after a huge time gap, does God's power really come into picture!? When a man with some more hard work can get a thing happen in the same time gap, does God really play a part in day-to-day happenings that affect someone physically and mentally!?
Funniest part here would be whatever it is I cant cease trusting Him! Its something like asking a baby to stop loving the mother:!

Friendship - Persistence!

2007-05-02T16:14:00.000+05:30

This post is after a recent visit to my native over the long weekend.
Attended a friend's wedding, she was my school senior still we shared a very beautiful friendship. she had given all the help, care, affection, advice which i always needed. we've spent lot of time together, going out, talking over nights, exchanging secrets, what not!
i was kinda stunned during the wedding.. partially out of happiness and rest cuz of the way our friendship is gonna be after this!
i do not really imagine a great bond physically after this, meaning exchange of phone calls, meeting up whenever we find a small chance also and a list like this. in fact once she got engaged only, i could find a major difference in our friendship. I'm still not convinced with the fact that this happens only with girls or it depends on the individual. i really see greater number of males who continue friendship over life, but real less number of girls.
so what about me!? i want to speak to my friends well like how it was when we were together. but i don't find the same enthu or response from the other side due to which i lose interest too.
this girl has been telling me from the time she got engaged that this will go for only few days, that I'm not finding time for other things, but later things will get normal and everything will be back in place. I still feel chances are very less. Is it that girls turn too responsible after the wedding, too busy taking care of family that we forget to take care of ourselves?
For the moment, I wouldn't call this greater range of contact as being together always, but juz having regular phone calls, the time which we take out to call each other, sharing things, laughs, happiness thereby letting each other know that the friendship we shared once is always alive n that We'll be there for each other always!

(W) eekend/aynad

2007-04-11T18:25:00.000+05:30

after my pathetic trip to coorg, went on a really outrageous trip last weekend!
I really loved this place. total 9 of us, tat shud be an obvious no, considering the fact that i prefer traveling by car (most times qualis) Planning & arrangement was done by another friend of ours, so was quiet a costly trip. stayed in woodlands inn.
Remarkable place was Yedakkal caves, an awesome, breath-taking trek! It seems the place was named after an earthquake which caused a huge rock struck between 2 other rocks. Otherwise was a huge mountain, which is 5000ft high from mean sea level. crude way to climb up. it was getting hot like furnace by around 11AM itself, was wearing black-t and so i came out like a fried chicken. i cant get the pics explain you better, cuz it'll just be a mountain, you can come back and ask if i had juz taken it from some website!
next was a falls called Meenmutti falls... but it wasn't like we were going towards water, cuz we never reached the falls. While going from B'lore, we heard that people cant get into this falls. but after going there, the localites told us that there will be guides and they'll take us through short cut so then we can reach the water and get into the water directly! we couldn't deny believing it, so we took a guide. the short cut route was really horrible to climb, you need to have a very good grip in ur foot/shoes cuz the way was full of hot dry sand and it was very much slippery. still 8 of us were climbing with much difficulty.
But there were 2 culprits,
one was this female who thinks that she has been living a queen's life and that she has never put her foot on the ground it seems! she was crying, cribbing the guide and what not. poor guide, i pity him. looking at us, he must have thought that we're youngsters and so can climb without any prob and in full josh, (of course he must've been thinking that he can make nice money too) and took us into that forest. but it was juz totally opposite.
i couldn't really see his(guide's) face when these people were shouting at him! He couldn't leave it all and go, cuz he'll be losing cash, he must also be concerned that he shouldn't leave us in the middle of some forest and go, though we were in a position to trace back the route. Anybody after getting such humiliations from another human wouldn't prefer being there in that place. Sorry mann! I apologize for it all. Be careful next time!
the other was this fellow who never does any kind of adventures in life, but that day was in full enthu, like this cat which sees the milk. he was walking while the guide was with the queen trying to bring her up safely and few of us were following him. after reaching some point, we said lets sit here and wait for the queen to reach down. by then there was a set of guys who were crossed us and went down, within no time they came back saying it was a dead end and so we need to take a different route. they were all climbing up while we were watching them, it was a really narrow route, only one foot can be kept at a point of time, the other side there was nothing. if you juz slip by mistake also gone will you be, 600-700ft down i guess! that was the last point, there were few rulers who decided to come back! Over is the falls story turning into a trek story!
thats it for day1. day2 went almost well, a lake, another view point, a speed boating and finally some place called kurva island. went decent. let me put up few pics along. enjoyyy
Yedakkal caves:

Pookot lake:

Kuruva Island:

and a lot more like this. total of 4 cams, showed all the photography skills that we possess, around 3GB photographs. superb time!
totally it was an adventurous one! enjoyed really. 2 days with 'v' & other friends. awesome time. we were playing dumb charades althrough in the car and room. was real fun!
end of the day it was worth spendin time and cash! was dead tired and there felt the happiness!
would love to go on more like this :)

Courageous.....thup

2007-04-03T15:45:00.000+05:30

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."
mine is shrinking now..
add "after" before every point
1. working on a never ending project, call it a huge learning experience
2. listening to a set of same 300 songs around 100 times a day,
3. walk for about 4 km, for a change not in the morning or evening, but during this time 10AM-1AM, between my cube and my lead's.
4. doing approx 10:1 night outs
5. getting out of this no-onsite frustrations,
6. being in this prolonged wait-gonna-continue-till-june
i've grown kinda courageous.. courageous enough to lose my mobile, ya may sound like no big deal! fate of this cute, greyish 2600, with only 2rs balance in it has got over around 11:30AM IST today! but i dont afford losing it at any point of time. so..
1. no more hutch care/postpaid/credit card request calls
2. no more messaging till mid night and falling asleep in between a hot conversation, ending up in irritating the other person more
3. no need to be conscious in malls/any crowded places that case
4. no need to carry a hand bag while wearing a salwar
5. no need to check for missed call/message in an infinitely longer interval of 2 minutes
6. no problem of mid night buggers
planning to stay without a mobile for next 6 months atleast, atmost 6 yrs!
killer is "Mr.Angry".. i was angry, angry like mad. i couldn't hit myself or him, i was hitting the poor mobile. threw it down twice in full anger, both the times it shattered into pieces! Third time threw it and walked off, just in 2 minutes i went back to take it, but couldn't find it. searched, searched for around 3 continuous hours. there were only 2 females in that place when i was fighting, in just a single moment i'm not able to believe how can somebody jump in there and flick it! i'm so depressed thinking of it!
like what this Chinese Proverb says, "If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow".. i'm caught in this 100 days of sorrow now!
what do i think of myself i don't know. anger killing me spoiling my life. shit, get the hell out of it!
need to realize this "If we practice and eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, soon the whole world will be blind and toothless"
causes of anger are reasonable. but whatever it may be, one moment of silence and patience is all needed. else unfit to live a human life!! Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we're here we should dance!
in the middle of all these commotions, a good thing to get a relief! promotion.. for this 2 yrs of life/death thing!!
nopz.. next month increment... definitely not on a new mobile purchase!!

Sometimes it comes back to us!!

2007-03-06T14:55:00.000+05:30

This is a forward which I got over the mail. when analyzed with one's philosophical skills, there's a lot of meaning that can be imbibed in different aspects.
Read through and find my analysis at the end.

At the 1994 annual awards dinner given for Forensic Science, AAFS

President Dr Don Harper Mills astounded his audience with the legal complications of a bizarre death.

Here is the Case:
On March 23, 1994 the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a shotgun wound to the head. Mr. Opus had jumped from the top of a ten-story building intending to commit suicide. He left a note to the effect indicating his despondency. As he fell past the ninth floor his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast passing through a window, which killed him instantly. Neither the shooter nor the deceased was aware that a safety net had been installed just below the eighth floor level to protect some building workers and that Ronald Opus would not have been able to complete his suicide the way he had planned.

"Ordinarily, " Dr Mills continued, "A person, who sets out to commit suicide and ultimately succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be what he intended, is still defined as committing suicide." That Mr. Opus was shot on the way to certain death, but probably would not have been successful because of the safety net, caused the medical examiner to feel that he had a homicide on his hands.

In the room on the ninth floor, where the shotgun blast emanated, was occupied by an elderly man and his wife. They were arguing vigorously and he was threatening her with a shotgun. The man was so upset that when he pulled the trigger he completely missed his wife and the pellets went through the window striking Mr. Opus. When one intends to kill subject "A" but kills subject "B" in the attempt, one is guilty of the murder of subject "B".

When confronted with the murder charge the old man and his wife were both adamant and both said that they thought the shotgun was unloaded. The old man said it was a long-standing habit to threaten his wife with the unloaded shotgun. He had no intention to murder her. Therefore the killing of Mr. Opus appeared to be an accident; that is, if the gun had been accidentally loaded. The continuing investigation turned up a witness who saw the old couple's son loading the shotgun about six weeks prior to the fatal accident.

It transpired that the old lady had cut off her son's financial support and the son, knowing the propensity of his father to use the shotgun threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that his father would shoot his mother. Since the loader of the gun was aware of this, he was guilty of the murder even though he didn't actually pull the trigger. The case now becomes one of murder on the part of the son for the death of Ronald Opus.

Now comes the exquisite twist. Further investigation revealed that the son was, in fact, Ronald Opus. He had become increasingly despondent over the failure of his attempt to engineer his mother's murder. This led him to jump off the ten-story building on March 23rd, only to be killed by a shotgun blast passing through the ninth story window. The son had actually murdered himself, so the medical examiner closed the case as a suicide.

Analysis:
There're three things involved here.
1) The power of Almighty - your conscience!
Opus wanted to kill his mom. But it came back to him. As a son, if he had realized his responsibilities and obeyed his mom's words, he never could've come under such situation that he got to think of committing suicide. Though there were safety nets installed, he couldn't escape. so, one should pay for the cunningness that he carries inside before/during his death. There comes God judgment for all the good/bad things you've done in your life.
2) Who deserves the punishment?
Who can be the killer!?
Is it Opus' father that he shot knowingly/unknowingly, nobody can take a chance of killing someone, though unknowingly for which you carry no rights too (a lawyer can explain you this better) or
is it Opus himself (the reason being explained in the 1st point)
or is it his mom who cut the tips for him, who made the son think of crooked things. if at all she would've carefully watched his son after that atleast, she could've prevented Opus from doing it or rather his life!!??
or is it all three of them who is responsible in 1 way or the other for the ultimate happening!?
3) Can you play safe althrough!?
Whatever/However bad you've been in your life, if you play safe in all the steps you take, you can really escape from the bad things. Is it.. cuz if this is not the case there're too many souls walking around this place who need to be killed on the spot!

All three factors sound fair enough. Coming to a conclusion -- God knows! So the 1st point:)

kit kat

2007-02-22T11:10:00.000+05:30

have a break.. have a kit kat!
ya.. was eatin kit kat all month long aft feb 1st :p u think of me silly!! no comments!!!

gone with the wind is the frequency of me blogging! as often as this roomie of mine washing her clothes.. ya my room stinks sometimes too :x
three significant things to write about.
doing some meaningful work
Valentine's day
(best)friend's wedding :)

so.. work now is kinda ok. got to know even my company does some amount of meaningful work other than just giving ads in paper and attracting people emotionally and do something internally for employee retention! but its again cat on the wall. cuz this project goes till other 3-4 months max.

Valentine's day.. some great resolutions and realizations!
this another assami here says (from his nose)'in my lo(u)ve(u) naaaa.. there wouldnt beeee any s(hhh)acrifice from both the ends'.. i smile (n think inside.. oh poor chap, no wonder u yet to have a girl friend!!)
so this is the resolution: come what may, adjust n move on..
now i have a serious problem here. when on a fight with him,

1) i should not keep quiet
he says: spk somethin, dont make me more mad keepin quiet. i think inside "areyy, i know na, that u've reached this never-reachable-heights of madness already :p"
2) i should not talk back
wth (so 'wth' is 'what the hell'; cuz even i was this innocent girl before not knowin all these bad words:D) anyways so, he says 'wth, why do you 'speak' like this!!'
3) i should not defend myself
says how selfish you're; dunno what is really expected.. so u ll go on & on about me (of course all bad things) and i'm like this buddha 'that's life my son'.
4) i should not get angry
says oh God, I'm really scared where you'll kill me 1 day!!! i say 'ya.. u torture me like this and i'll really kill you 1 day'
5) i should not cry
do you know anything other than crying!!!?? (when u cry, guys cry too)
6) i should not even laugh
are you crazy!!?? how can someone ever laugh like this when in this case. i think its even more funny n laugh ROFL... hehehh

if there're any experts out there on this topic, plz pen down some suggestions. so that i can try out even that on next fights and get back with the impacts :D
the amount i confuse myself is more than this 419tmc of cauvery water to tamilnadu..
(what a major observation these people here have, i wonder why just the figure matters. fine i'll stop here. i wont blog on politics. anyways thats an utter $hit to me..)
so important thing is with few of my friends went out on Val's day to a restraunt. had good non-veg food. and got a major bulb. the conversation went like this: (only the traditional bulb-givers can understand this joke; others plz dont try it)
will sound better in tamil (wil write the eng version too)
friend: tamilnadu-ku bus odlayam (no buses running bet'n tamilnadu n karnataka)
me: tamilnadu-ku bus odlaya!!!!!!??????? (no buses running!!??)
friend: (before i shut my mouth) indra gandhi sethutaangla!!!??? (indragandhi died)
me: :p :p

(Best) friend's wedding
naahhh not the movie.. not my best friend also. but good friends, infact colleagues (plural cuz both the guy and the girl) ya its a love marriage, how happy they were! wow.. caught up with few old colleagues there, was fun meeting them. best part was wishing the couple. when you wish somebody from deep inside the heart, only good for them. how good it feels inside! thats a real awesome feeling ya.

in between over the weekends got to catch up with few friends whom i've just been knowing from months but not gone out with before. its nice meeting people once in a while and being in touch.. that entire day went good. attended a party at would-be in-law's place(heheh no comments again) nice people!

also my someone feels i'm getting kinda dumber these days and thinks that i really dont know to talk over chat and i only say "nthng to say" da; "wt for me" da; "avlo thaan da"; "mm ya" da. and frankly speaking i'm really poor in making a conversation over chat! :(
i dont know why, my mind tends to think in different ways over a single context. may be this is how innovation begins!! :D

there are people who promise 'something' but come back and repeat the same 'something'... cant help. hope i'm not gonna be a dead meat :)

ridiculous!

2007-02-01T18:12:00.000+05:30

this is one of a major problem that we come across in this internet world these days.
i was kind of surprised once when 'v' asked me whoz this 'x' friend of yours as to how he got to know 'x'. 'x' was a childhood classmate of mine, after years i got to meet 'x' in this site called ringo. this site is somewhat similar to yahoo photos/flicker, ie., it is dedicated to upload photographs.
the process as far as i know went like this: if somebody wants to view your album, they need to add you and after your approval, they will be able to view your album. but several times I've been stunned that if i goto one of my friend's album and i was able to access some of his friend 's(who is not a friend of mine) album. i did not take it that big a deal in the beginning.
but when i dug how 'v' got to know 'x', i was truly shocked, yet a lil surprised. cuz i dunno what hit 'v's' brain that day, 'v' had given a google search for my name and the first result was the link to ringo with several photographs of mine and a person who accesses this link was able to view clearly all the photographs in my album or anyone's that case!
i had deleted my ringo account after this, but another shocking thing is my photos were copied to 'x's album and wen i approached 'x' on this, 'x' was not sure as to how those pics of mine had reached his album!
annoying...!

happy republic day!

2007-01-25T13:55:00.000+05:30

this is a post aft around 17 days. Pongal went really well, along with few similarities bet'n happenings at my present town then and my home (ya, the curfew and fights i mean) over the end of last week. but no imran was involved ok!?
this is gonna be a long weekend. though the state of city was worse till sunday, i hope nothing would go wrong tomorrow or on the days that follow.
work seems to take a curve which follows Simran's market in tamil film industry! leavin for home kind of early since 2 days, happy:)
so, what is that which is pendin from my side to shit in here!!! ya, my new year trip. two solid days 31st and 1st that covers few places in coorg and nearby place called kushal nagar. it was awesome and that was expected as there was a set of replicas of charlie chaplin who kept cracking jokes which was of course funny, though pjs most!
2 things were really pathetic, input which goes through mouth and the output that comes from a$$! there were no proper toilets, though there were some, think they must've been built during Indra Gandhi times! there were few, think which're waiting for the indo-pak war to get over, so that they can call mussharaf to open them! whatever, end of the day, had to $hit on the forests which we found to be most undeveloped and so the chances of lifting the skirt-up was as bad as Govinda dancing for some tamil pop! think Karnataka government is deeply in demand of oil and natural gas. Kalam should recommend for growing indo-emirates relationship.. most places food was uncooked.. but still enjoyed the trip with the set of 9 pirates, who did not at all find anything to rob out there.
so anyone who is planning to visit these places, i would recommend for a trip of not more than 2 days and plan well in advance.
today im in a mood which is as crazy as the mad dog which eats only vegetarian food in kfc. quarreled with that poor chap. sorry for that dude!
time for me to leave! happy weekend!

1-One-Ek-Onnu-Ondhu-Okka

2007-01-08T16:31:00.000+05:30

'1' equivalent in any other language that you know, kindly add..
ya.. this symbolizes just the first post of the year 2007 that I'm dropping in my blog. I started writing in sep '06. around 16 blogs in 4 months. if not as decent as the material length that malika's costume-designer decides, pretty ok for my level, i guess.
i would want this post to be a thanks-giving one!
US celebrates thanks-giving day on Dec 20th i suppose. but v dont have the custom of celebrating all that. now i dont intend to do any sort of imitation over here, so u might as well stop thinking, 'u indian, what do you know other than copying!' we of course do many innovative jobs too.
these days we're pulling in several foreign customs, only motto should be that those would increase the bonding level for whatever relationships the day is meant for.. in a +ve way.
i find this start of the new year to be the best time to express my thanks to people whom i'm indebted to all life long.
First thanks goto this Dood. One fine day He was given the RS (for you all non-softwares RS is Requirement Spec) of giving life to something that has two cute small eyes of ant size, a narrow sharp nose resembling a plane's fin etc etc which as a whole looked like a soft toy (something of tweety's girl friend sort). And there existed a Fighter-Cock-Couple (FCC-may i) of this kind : the man does everything on earth other than earning, the woman does nothing else on earth other than crying. So, He thought this sweety should be gifted to this sweet FCC so that it'll be good for her to grow stiff! thats how was born on this earth -- meee :)
A big Thanks goto our Dude God followed by the fighter-cock-couple.

now i should tell about this aunt. she is of this old sri devi types. wears a thick red lip stick always with a sweet broad smile and a caring nature. when I was in kindergarten, I used to stand in the dress which God first sent me on a tour to this earth, staring at the mickey mouse pencil box my cousin(aunt's daughter) was owning. my aunt who had as big a heart as Mother Teresa called me and gave me that pencil box. i asked her, what for sugan(thinking inside, now sugan you shut ur garb, dont say 'uuvaahh i want it, i want it' cuz i want it idiot). aunt said 'i ll buy her another 1'. i blurted 'oh, then sugan can have this, buy me a new one:p' what a cunning bum me!!! my aunt gives me whatever she gets for my cousin. she had served food for me & my sister several times. she is one reason for us to be alive today!
Thank you periyamma (thats how we call her)!! ya ya, im coming home with your ever-expected gift this time. you gotta wait for 3 more days:)

this is the time i put myself into this circle of seriousness like abhishek bacchan in D2 for the 1st ever time in life. took a decision as bold as Jhansi Rani. so, this is about my X std class-miss. she is my Guru, care-taker. without her I wouldn't have had a better education in my life. I passed out my 10th class from a Government school with the District 1st credit and wanted to get into a Matriculation school for my higher secondary. I did not attain enlightment like buddha then not to have any desires in life! Being from a very poor background, mom couldnt help me accomplishing my desire. so i went to my teacher, explained her everything clearly. she being the correspondent of a popular matriculation school out there, took me in with '0' fee absolutely! i passed my higher secondary from a decent school with decent grades. my college entry fee was paid by her.
You're literally Saraswathi Devi's ambassador for me. A great thanks to you Miss!

then comes this teen. one way when i was into this superb mood of reading woman's era and femina and explore things, the other way i had to hit my bio-maths-physic-chem books of my higher secondary. my mom had to record these lines as they've become the most used ones during this time 'janu kanna.. you've to really stop looking at the guy up-stairs and start studying. you need to crack the board exam, then only you can buy lot of jewels for me.. etc etc'
i somehow managed to get admissions in a decent college and there came the same old villain again - 'the fee'. what will i do? this was but in one way good for me; most days my college Director would ask me for an appointment and so I'll be in the admin building bunking classes! while every other soul in college used to look at me as how they look at a poodle starving from years and waiting for a piece of bone with all the mercy on the planet, i used to carry the thoughts 'i'm the cheif financial advisor of the college' and wait at the office for an incredibly longer period! God is making me stiff you know:)
so this guy used to see me everyday, waiting there and thinking seriously how to improve the collge finance. he called me one day and said 'as i have been noticing you thinking deeply over the college finance, i'm giving you this benefit of paying your fee to me once you find a way to move out of this place and another company to spoil it to the core. i gladly accepted it. I passed out as a university ranker atleast a little that I could do for the gretest gift i got!
now thanks to the Director!
After comin to work, I found my jaan-e-mann who could accept me the way I am (add 'and always scold me for my carelessness':p). The kind of person who makes me proud with his IIT-IIM calls, a great philosopher and a philanthrophist:) Frankly speaking, I have got no words to describe him! I did not find a meaning for the life I'm gonna live except for the materialistic things which I've to give others around till I found him. The feeling sprrrrrrouted cuz of that abbayi:p
Thanks to my jaan-e-mann! I love you for what you're:)
Today I feel I'm blessed and that's really an awesome feel!
Life is not that easy, one of the senior guy whom I used to report to at work always says this! I would say its all in the way we're gonna take it. Don't tell God how big your problems are, instead tell the problems, how big your God is! I Thank God for bringing me up as a bold, strong, decent human. As He expected I'm pretty stiff now. Thanks very much!

ok... now a combo!!

2006-12-29T11:35:00.000+05:30

yeah.. hmmm
its not the normal mtr combo-pulav+jamun+curd bath-just 20rs-awesome taste & served hot most times!!!
its not the McD combo where u save 20 rs for a burger, coke and fries altogether!
then what is it!!
correct this is gonna be the combo of dunno-what-all. just go ahead reading! i assure you, it wont be boring sure!
weary wait
this is how it is after 'v' flew to the US. it so happens that i get to spend lot of time at home, most thinking about him. still trying to involve myself in other things around, meeting friends, attending my veena class, speaking to roomies, reading paper, ya taking bath, taking revenge on the owner and all other daily stuff too! but always those memories with him accompanies me. i feel little insecure at times. i don't know why, am not able to live my old life (before meeting him) yet again!
i wait.. wait and wait.. for an irresistibly longer period to speak to him. Thanks to technology, Google talk helps me a lot! i can speak to him through GT and its as good as speaking over the phone. everyday i speak to him.
but most times it ends up in a fight like this. we speak for sometime and somebody comes online by then. he gets busy with them and i try to pacify myself that this is the only time and only way of him getting in touch with the other sides of his life! later when he gets back to me, we absolutely lose interest in speaking and ya we don't have anything as such to speak also.
a weary wait!! weird too.
my whole point about

successful relationship always stayed at spending time with each other physically (take it in the right sense); other ways it turns out to be a flop show

most. i hope that day would come back soon and v both spend time together exploring my hep city and doing all crazy things:)
a crazy wait again!
plans for new year
this new year we(9 great minds; my office junta) are planning to go to coorg. all the arrangements are done! hope its gonna be a great vacation+a prosperous year's start.. will write more about the trip once i'm back.
the last trip which we went to munnar, ooty, kodai for 4 days had taught us innumerous lessons, we hoped for a better bonding between us after the trip, but it turned out in some other way! the gang was of course different. only 2 of us from that gang are there now this time for this trip. ya, we ignored others!
bout my previous trip:
we were 3 girls and 3 guys. out of that 2 couples (:) sort of going around) there was this me and another guy, of which i felt so left out amongst the couples gang there. the best of buddies whom i thought will give me good company though gave ok types company, were busy with their partners more.
out of those 2 couples, 1 was worse. they were all the time in their own world, pampering each other and going around. when we started planning for the trip itself, these 2 were not willing to come, but we forced them only because we didn't want to leave them and go. everybody knows that this guy is usually behind this girl for every other $hit thing on earth. but when this continued while on a trip people went mad. it was so awkward!
girl in the other couple tried not to make me feel alone and she was with me all the time. she thought that she should give company to everybody and the trip should turn out to be a fun-filled one. she tried something and something else happened. its like the rest 4 of us were together, but the guy of this 2nd couple wanted to spend time with his girl alone and so was pissed off! overall wasn't a satisfactory one.
when all this is going on this way, i started crying for we left another buddy of mine as his parents didn't allow. but i started missing him and i wanted him to be with us very badly. one another reason would be that he would be the only one who can wash away my loneliness that time.
the first place we hit was ooty. i told people there that either he should come to ooty or i'm going back home. get me a train. everyone were shocked. this guy (of 2nd couple) really helped me. somehow he brought him(pal) there and my pal joined us on the 3rd day in munnar. after that all smiles only!
but till date nobody will ever forget the way the guy of 1st couple behaved and he is still like that. Good or bad God knows!
totally an adventurous crazy one. its ok, great lessons learnt. that's important! one biggest lesson is that we should never plan for a longest trip of 4 days anymore.
i hope this trip wont be that way! there's one fellow this time whom most people hate for his behavior but cant leave him and go. its some kind of situation like that. hope i wont face a bad time with him!
so.. now from all these what!
what, kya, yenna..
nothing, kucch nahi, onnum ille... shut up, halt der, close it and
Enjoy your new year!!
with your favorite
party all night.. dance, sing, get excited. enjoy as if its your 'big' day!
Have a great year ahead:)
Wish you all a very happy and prosperous 2007!!

Merry Christmas!!

2006-12-27T15:30:00.000+05:30

actually... Santa's truck ran out of fuel and so took a lil late reaching you all with his wonderful gifts. Sorry on his behalf!
now here's my Santa wishing you a merry merry Christmas and a great blessed year ahead!

what to do.. though it was a long weekend, after i squeezed in between a pile of books, stacked up clothes, my barron's, one cute nice small pic & a great album (of me & him:)) all on a decent black color bed spread neatly covering a 1 feet high bed, though it was a supple yoga-practiced, jogged, walked body, was totally busy keeping my eyes closed and dreaming (ya ya duet also) for an incredibly longer period of 18 hours, was more than lazy to leave my sweet bed and stretch myself to do anything else.
thanks to sun tv! for showing kannathil muthamittal and thillana mohanambal (ya, i watched it:D) without which my holidays would've been much boring and sad! still managed to get up & get ready; went out only after 6 in the evening on christmas, didn't want to scare anyone on the road with my oil dipped head!
mid noon thought this Christmas i will miss going to church, but Thanks Jesus! just went out with the plans of meeting friends, with one corner-house (that's an ice cream parlor, they give real good icecreams) maniac in my gang thought will land up in the same old corner house (may be some good soothing, new faces around this time). but somehow the talk deviated and the place of visit became the nearby church! prayed nicely. then went to an ice cream parlor, had strawberry passion after that planned for dinner in chungs. enjoyed christmas with good non-veg food.
2 things sucked that day:
1)hutch messages were charged; 1 rupee per message that too. called up customer care to find out that they've brought a new rule 'on all the government holidays local messages will be charged' it seems. this is a good idea when it comes to prevent message jam! but when it comes to time pass, its really tedious.
2)house owner f***er was trying to pull out my byke that too without the keys, ass hole it was not late also. damn! felt like catching him by collar and giving to a butcher.. no no not to chop and sell, but to feed the goats/cows before killing them. such sick people, really wonder why God creates! sad

Part II : how has the id been hacked!

2006-12-16T17:44:00.000+05:30

This part will speak about the way I explored gmail and got to know the various ways of hacking it!
so.. this is how i started. go through each and every section of gmail. check out every field, say secondary email and stuff like that.
if you go see, in the settings page you have some option called forwarding and pops.. there you've got this option of forwarding, when you enable it and add a mail id, a copy of every mail which you get in this particular id will be forwarded to the id which you specify in that field!
so, when I was finding out such things, I was stunned to see this forward option enabled with this mail id from which I had got 'adult' related mails during certain period, say that was the time when I got into this internet world.
That was the time when I was not aware of these junk ids and crap sites which try to earn through getting people into the adult world! So, one day i got a mail of this kind:
Dear user,
you're one of the lucky winner who has been selected by our core team. You can anytime come back to us regarding any advice or help which you would require in your day-to-day life! We're here to help you.
your user id is 'blah-blah'
Thanks
Core team,
OKsharethis
Me who was as innocent as moondram pirai sri devi went ahead and first wrote a thank you mail. Then never wrote to that id. After few days I again got a reminder mail which was almost like I have to ask something. I again, a stupid wrote back, what is 'engineering' :D
crap..
got a reply which was a big damn story, thought they've really written back about Engineering and went ahead reading! Damn it..!!! it was an adult story; believe me.. i read only the 1st four lines which clearly defined that the story is about the adult relationship between a son and a mother!!
fuckers! i'm getting real bad words which are the worst in the entire world of vocabulary...
stopped reading there. then too i was not aware that it was an individual who was trying to ruin my life! wrote back to that id, please unsubscribe me..
damn reply was full of porn pics! somehow got rid of that $hit later then..

now coming back to the story of finding the enabled forward option, i immediately disabled it. and later also i was not very confident with this case and have the passwords changed continuously. all strongest passwords :D

ps:keep reading part 3 continues!

jobless jack ass

2006-12-13T19:40:00.000+05:30

some jack ass who didn't have any better work on earth sat and hacked my mail ids! Bastard, he'll rot on hell for that.

Discovery of the alma-matter!
few months ago sometime there was this ex-colleague of mine (let me refer to him as dhe) who pinged me on messenger. the conversation went like this:
dhe: 'yenna, 2 days back nalla thanni adicchutu mapp(bb)ula olariniya (what, 2 days back you've boozed nicely and blabbered over the chat to me).
me: (thinking inside .. this guy is always like this and so kidding as usual) machaa.. yenna olarra, nee mappula irkya (what are you blabbering, you're out of sense now?)
dhe: heyy, no. i'm serious. tell me do you booze!
me: man how can you even ask me this question! of course, i dont
dhe: hey try to remember properly. where were you day before yesterday night
me: at home only.
dhe: again try to remember properly. were you at some of your friend's house and did you guys went for a booze?
me: are you crazy! never. infact i was working from client's place that time and i was at work till around 10pm and then straight took a cab and went home
dhe: i'm not able to believe this. ok tell me, did you send any me mail recently.
me: from which id?
dhe: gmail/yahoo
me: anything recently.. mm... i dont think so.. anyways lemme check
(checking gmail/yahoo.. after 2 minutes) no.. nothing recently.
dhe: hey check properly!
me: (taking a print screen of the gmail/yahoo sent items page; sent it across to him) hey check your mail, i've sent you my gmail/yahoo sent items view, i havent sent anything recently. you can check out!
dhe: (after 5 mins) hey why you doing all this? did i ever ask you to prove anything to me?
me: but you refuse to believe that i havent done anything like that. ok tell me what was that mail which you're talking about?
dhe: that.. thats a mail from your yahoo id full of porn pics!
me: (fuccckkk shittt) how can this ever happen. i wonder seriously!
dhe: i do the same! (logged out!)

i was very much shocked.. confused what only was going on! i couldn't figure out. i really couldn't. thinking over it for around 3 days, no clue absolutely.. who would've sent what would've happened... almost like kaka kaka surya not knowing the gangster pandya till the later 2nd half!
i had few problem from some jack asses when i was in college and even after coming to work.. but i did not mind much. i thought everything will subside soon. but things did not take my way! it had started affecting my social life. i had to do something seriously about it!
so.. after 3 days of serious thinking, i landed up to my 'v'... i explained things clearly; did not reveal my entire life, but what could be the root cause for all this! 'v' listened carefully. as usual! applied his IIT brains, took my mail ids and passwords.
v: first we need to change your password!
me: ya.. ok!
v: fine let me do that!
(both of us went back to work)
after 2 hours..
v: (pinging me on messenger) it is all done! dont worry. lets take care things after this.
me: what's the new password
v: its *******
me: ok alright.. (accessing gmail, its all working fine)

next day..
i again accessed my gmail, not able to access with the new password. called up 'v' again to find out if he has again changed it.
me: did you change the password again?
v: fuckin damn!! no.. God what's happening with your gmail!
me: shit, i don't know. i'm not able to login with the new password which you gave me yesterday!
v: try with the old password
me: (tried) its logged in!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
v: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
me: ok anyways lemme see. (hung the phone)

i started exploring gmail. the way no one else would've explored before..
got the clue!! got it.. got the hell jack ass! Bastard he'll rot in hell for this..

ps: part 2 will bring the story about the jack ass and the rest problems which i had to face.

rejuvenation

2006-12-12T19:43:00.000+05:30

ya.. i've rejuvenated recetly. after a tiring work of 10 continuous months, facing almost all the crappiest things on earth..
a series of things happened, dont know if it is all for good or all for bad. i laugh at life now just because i dont want to cry!
1) a 'kadhal desam' friendship.. friend away from my life all of a sudden. not able to take it. he is just a friend, thats it. not a boy friend of course, trust me!
2) didnt give a satifactory performance at work, so out of the project! anyways into another project!
3) biggest doubt about future.
4) old friend trying to patch up again as he doesnt want me to know what is loneliness. even i know how cruel it is, but i dont want to get into this again only to hurt him after again few days.
ok this would be all confusing to read at a single stretch (as confusing as aish's :p) but free it, keep visitng, you might correlate some real soon!

vitamin 'M'

2006-12-02T10:23:00.001+05:30

this is a very vital vitamin anyone need to live life their own way! people say there are many other vitamins which are more important than this to lead a happy life. but i swear those should be of the kind who must be suffering from over-availability of this particular vitamin. ya.. exactly! the value of 'x' is felt only in its absence!
now here 'x' stands for any materialistic or non-materialistic objects on earth!
so.. the value of vitamin M will be felt only in its absence!
now i dont want you guys to land up at any psychiatrist clinic after thinking for an incredibly longer period 'what 'M' stands for'. 'M' doesnt stand for Manju not Munna-bhai neither Michael-jackson nor Marriage.. 'M' stand for Money!
few days back i happened to meet some star of a big software firm who addressed to this vitamin as 'money-shani'.. this flashed in my mind within no time:

a general gyaan which comes out of everyone's stinkin a$$ is 'u should be happy with what you've'.. what a great phrase to be told(only to others)!
lack of 'm' leads to lots of chaos & depression. this is where lose-something-to-get-something funda comes into picture. see this & you'll know what it is:)

sometimes i feel if i would find some way out like this GP-pay-award-wheel.

if somebody like this exists in India, no need to depend on bosses for leave. everyday in a year will be a holiday!

but finally know what!! end up like this:)

***************************Added later*****************************
got to meet a friend yesterday.. who is of this heavenly nature.. next to Gandhi & Buddha. the meet was as good as salman meeting abhishek.. just had to pass time, so as usual i started yapping something! finally it ended up about the work..
i have been working on blah blah blah..
there i have to interact with blah blah blah!
people around me are like blah blah!
right now i'm earnin blah blah booh..
next year i've to earn blah blah much..!
if thats not the case, then i ve to blah blah..
PS: you can guess what all these 'blah-blahs & blah-boohs' stand for.. let your thinking waves flow & take all the directions! but its unfair if you close this page without penning 'em down:)
my heavely friend was listening to all my crap like how sonia would be listenin to musharraf.. n do you know the final word!!!!
"you've to be happy with what God gives you! if you stay unhappy this way He'll take back what He had given you also!"
my inner voice "WOW!! mann... idhadhaan tamizh-la solvaanga. yaana thaan thalaila manna vaari potukchunu!"..
as because there should be some pass time, i started telling all that, i sure wasnt cribbing about anything. like big piece of $hit sir started giving gyaan! ok what to do.. happens. took that also and walked-off!
Moral: Do not discuss things happening in your life with every other friend. That'll create wrong opinions about you! Be choosy.. else even you would tend to walk-off like me!

weekend

2006-11-24T17:25:00.000+05:30

its friday, the last working day of the week. thinking of tomorrow usually drives the rate of my adrenalin secretion high. but not this time! dont ask me why.
i have no mood to work now. (now stop thinking google'll give 'search not found' when you type 'no of times a software guy thinks about work')
mann, its so wierd that from the past 2 hrs i've been feeling like an indian lion in the US fed only with bananas as it went there on a monkey visa!
i'm feeling half sleepy half stressed, like that Wil guy under all those mess in WTC (for my friends who are of this holy nature, who doesn't know to spot any part in the world map other than their own house, WTC is World Trade Centre - an english movie) holding his life in hand still manages to laugh.

i really have no plans for the weekends. now dont ask me for a date (ok i DONT think i'm aishwarya rai) may be i would be drowned in the sea of tears cuz 's' is flying to the US to bring a hair straightener for me.
like somebody said 'u like changes or not,who cares! God sure does!!'.. dont think who has said this. this might be an IP of MG (P) Ltd. will let you know once i make it sure!
life will take a complete change from next week. unfortunately the gal who has been working with me is also shifted to our good old office and so i'll be boarding the auto n then the cab alone, will be sitting alone in the cube. hope i would do some innovative work. cuz when there's nothing entertaining around you, you might have this possiblity of becoming a cracked pot and do something as crazy as a mad cat! heyy.. but i have this blog! hurray!! thank you dear God for saving me from becoming a mad cat:)
ok all these are atleast fine. i sincerely pray to God for not putting me in this particlar situation: there's this dumb fella who thinks inside that hez as sexy as Brad pitt, capable of beatin hrithick in Mr.Arms show n who doesnt know anything on earth other than asking 'so, shall we catch up for lunch today' making a crappy (i dont have a better word than this; u can suggest if you've got any) smile which is as handsome as a monkey's (sorry Mr.Monkey for insulting you); me standing dumb struck, thinking inside 'gosshhh y r some guys so crazy like this!!', giving this look like a blue whale which got trapped in a fisherman's net, saying 'no, i've promised Mr.God that i'll not enter the cafeteria zone today, if He gets me a wish done.. will catch you later' (a crazy smile back) and running away like this arvind swamy who comes running when those terrorists released him in roja..
i should be soon finishing off my assignments as i'm already lagging by a week time. let me better get into work now.
so people i wanna declare few things before closing this post:
1) software engineers do work; atleast towards the deadline
2) when a lucky star bumps in front of a software engineer and asks for a wish to come true, he'll say 'plz puncture my boss's car tyre, so that i can be late to office 1 day'.. well! atleast i'll ask
3) the worst comment on earth could be the one a software engineer gets for his best work from his boss.

now dont pity my boss.. i'm more pitiable than him!

CAT 2006

2006-11-19T10:46:00.000+05:30

dropping 'V' at the centre, i'm the most tensed now, sitting in an internet cafe. not feelin like doin anything. i've never felt this way before, so tensed. heart is beating as if i'm juz back from the marathon field.
even when i was giving the most difficult papers (actually i havent found any this way) during coll, may be i can say electronic circuits which got me into this history of arrears for around a month until i got my revaluation results which again got me out of the same history!
another 2 hours, house around 20km away, dont wanna go n come back. cuz i myt meet with an accident if i ride at this stage.
there were around 500 ppl in this centre (Bangalore - MES college, Malleswaram). media press and what not, converting those tension-oozing-out-faces into a compact disc. the no of ppl who are giving this CAT today will be in some thousands(sure 5 digit no). all carrying this hall ticket, looking at the next guy and think "sucker, dont you really have any better job! giving this damn exam and increasing the competition by some fraction of percentile for me"
the next guy would be thinking at the same time, "God, let the graphite of all the 4 pencils that he carries should be of the worst(est) quality and the pen should have a fake ink so that within a min after he writes, it should vanish like what comes in a old rajini kanth movie"
me tensed than ever; my fingers crossed from past 2 hrs. i've lived life this way 'ant in a boiling milk'.. only goal is coming out without getting hurt and then live happily ever after! once i was placed in a pretty decent company during my 7th sem, i felt this way. life is not harder anymore. its all gonna be easy and filled with only happiness.. ya.. it has been like this since then.. but after my electrnoic circuit results i'm feeling this way today. guess delivery pain would be better than this!
the dream, hope, life, work, everything of certain ppl lies in this.
God! Bless them with the best!
I pray for the no of IIM seats to be increased this year! I pray for lower cut-offs.. most of all i pray for the easiest paper ever!
dont worry buddies.. u will all come out with flying colors:)
All the very best!
ok.. now i'm runnin outta time. my 1 hr limit in the cyber cafe is getting over! i was given this very imp work of taking my 'Bajaj Wave' to the nearest petrol bunk and filling his stomach else he wont carry us back home then. so now i gotta do it and prove how responsible i'm! (mann, y dont i live in iraq or saudi that i dont tend to spend too much on this fuel; when i first flew on my TVS-xl, 1ltr petrol costed 26rs. today its double that amount!) God save this Mother India!

somthing~~

2006-11-16T10:02:00.000+05:30

well.. long time since i've logged into my blogger a/c which made me meddle wit ma p/w for awhile.. finally ended up like tis: "God.. y u makin me work so much tat i remember only vcdpluson, tapsm, jtag, clk, rst (some techni crap, don mind eh) etc"
okies.. so i'm back ryt here to write some $hit aft readin a lot many $hit from too many blogs. cuz u know my 'V' told me tat its better to read thru lot more bef writin 1!
n if u c the story of this blog sprouting up, its a real funny 1. the birth time was juz 5 mins (oops, got occupied wit setup,hold time, again a techni crap; forgive me) .. so 1 fine monday morning, sittin in front of 15"/17" or God knows wat monitor n thinkin y am i so jobless these days.. apart from tat, hell lot of frustrations inside n decided to put up everythin in 1 single page n there the damsel sizzled. hahahh. funny huh! stop laughin u dumbo:x the amount i thought over this name would be as good as a kinder garden kid practicin to write the alphabet 'O'
still when i started blogging, i have this own rules of mine, that it should be in a professional way, not too many shortcuts, basically not like this sms lingo of few hep city guys'.. but in the past few days got to know that this blog world is too vast and wat i write here will reach ppl only half the no which i have in mind .. that which is explicit from the no of dudes who had seen me so far.
anyways.. lots had happened over these days since i put something that goes out of tune..
that includes
celebrating a beautiful b'day for the 1st time
buying a new house which got me into a huge debt al of a sudden
being away from the hep city for almost around 2 weeks, particularly weekends
V's departure confirmation
workin from a place which i prefer
facing a lot of issues at work which makes me feel like a refugee in the middle of pacific ocean whoz tryin to reach the shore crossing those huge tides hitting his face
ya, mainly readin IIMC's blog n got impressed towards funny writing..
listenin to radio city n got fascinated towards sunaina..
very recently children's day:)
n a list goes this way!
PS for non-b'loreans: sunaina hosts a program in the popular fm radio city here at 19:30 everyday, atleast i'm sure on working days. cuz the change in workplace has brought me a long distance travel and everyday at this time i get to sit in d cab with a pale, worried face. sirichu sirichu the way she speaks if not excites me atleast managed to scare me n the callers bring a smile on my face even if not on hers, but she ll sure be fed up of sayin this 1 day "u brought a smile on my face n thanx very much"!
apram konja naala oru doubt.. does this 'good' in good morning has only 2 'o's or like this 'gooooooooooooooooooooooooo......d' some 'n' no of 'o's!!! that too u shud listen to this on a wednesday morning.. nammale yenda ipdi oru life-nu frustrations-la 7-o clock cab odi odi pidichu office vandhut irupom.. ivanga boost panren paervazhinu "gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood morning bangalore"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this is radio city '/2 coffee' (name of the program-spell it as 'by 2 coffee') n we're exactly in the middle of the week n the clock ticks 8:00AM IST apdimbaanga. kadavule-nu irkum sometimes!
sari whatever. a very good time pass. sometimes i think even i can goto some work like this.. lively job to do but.
ippo don ask me whether i'm cribbin or praisin them.. even i dont know!

everyday i think i shud write sth, but too busy to catch up wit too many things at a time. but read few blogs which went like i got up at tis time, brushed at tis sec, then velila ponen, yen mela kaaka $hit panidthu apdi yellam.. so thought wil juz write absolutely "something" n thats how this was born:D
fine now try to change the bright red color of ur ears n face after reading this blog and chill maadi.. (yethana paer kitta adi vaanga poreno therla, God save me!)
anyways keep a watch.. u ll find much more soon & often after this:)
ciao..