Suggest the beast!

Planning to buy a new bike. Suggest me between these two!

On-site laments

Whenever I hear people going to US, UK, Canada or some damn place outside India regarding their on-site assignment, it bugs me off. Every one in the Indian software industry knows, the on-site assignment opportunity is just a lucky affair, due to number of reasons. I don't want to pour my heart on them (did enough pouring with my friends).

Now, people (friends) have found new way of informing about their trip. They forgot the age-old telephone to mails, chat and newly Orkut updates! Thanks to Orkut, now people get updated when their pals change their profiles. Now, on-site ppl just update the country and city fields and the mass broadcast to friends happens. Take a look at the following pic. The top portion of the image is a mail and the bottom ones are Orkut profile updates!

Nothing beats having to see places, where most of us plan ten times before deciding, at the expense of employer. Few of my friends told me thats a pleasure to go, except when your are fumed by your official work! It doesn't need genius of a mind to guess the correctness of above fact. But when a person is lamenting as I do, and then if that person get mails like below ones from his so called US returned friends, it #&%@# you out of life.

A snapshot of Inbox

P.S.:

To those people whose names are included in the images: Enjoy your stay and keep sending whatever you want to. :)

The burglary - the feminine touch

It was 29th August, evening 7 pm. Me and my friend returning to our rented cum shared (by four people) house in Bangalore. We were the first to arrive from work. We could see bedroom light bulb switched on from the road. My friend was in all form of mood to rip one of our another living mates for not switching off the light when he last left the house. The light bulb was all burning for the whole day.

When I reached for the lock of the main door of our house, I could sense something odd. The main lock pad was covered with a plastic cover. I removed it and searched for the lock, only to find the lock missing!!! In fact, lock hook was broken half. Me and my friend got shocked at the very moment. The Initial thought of burglar still inside the house with some country side weapon (thought inspired by many tamil movies) instilled chill in our spines but we dismissed it since the padlock is locked from outside. Next we rushed inside to find out what all missing. We could see the burglar had tried his/her hand on everything available in the bedroom shelves and left things untouched in the living room.



* The quality of the pics are not good.


The rest of our two living mates came and checked their belongings. The things went missing left us amusing. Few things were stolen and few very valuable things were left intact! Three things were stolen - a gold coin, Nokia 1100 phone & Sony digital camera. The gold coin was in a box along with couple of silver coins. But the silver coins were left as they were. Along with the silver coins, a Sony Ericsson phone (high end model), couple of unused Gold credit cards, pen drive, TV, passports, packaged computer devices and a brand new pair of Reebok shoes left untouched by the burglar!

We are happy rather than grieving about this burglary since, if things like credit cards, passports were stolen it would had put us in big trouble, since some of us are to travel to US in few months time. The thief had very good snack filled burglary, cos the plastic bag I mentioned, was filled with remains of Pistachios, which were brought by one of our friends from US to have them as side dish in Friday nights boozing. Unlucky dude!

We were affected by the incident to such an extent that we started to crack jokes like this.

The thief must be a woman cos the stolen things and their intentions behind are:

1. Camera - Might be this female thief is an aspiring model.

2. Mobile Phone - According to an unknown survey, the average hours spent on phone by women are greater than men. You might ask men also spend equal amount of time on other end. But what I meant is the time spent talking on the phone! So this female burglar had her own obvious reasons to have mobile phone (and that too Nokia 1100 and not the higher end model of Sony Ericsson).

3. Gold coin - No explanation needed.

Ask Misbah-ul-Haq whats running in his mind after this.....

What a World Cup final it was? One wrong shot, World Cup slipped away! I think, both teams deserve to be champions of this format of the game.

“There's such a thin line between winning and losing.” ~ John R. Tunis

72 posts.....

Its been two years, I started blogging. So far 72 posts (not bad number!). It started with a post describing an unique experience in one of my college days. Down the time, I declared, re-declared in many of the posts stating that I have re-started blogging after long time giving an irrelevant reason of my return after a gap! I have changed blog page themes and the topics many a time. The topics ranged from super flopped 10K PC to Einstein's childhood photo post to latest Google product introduced to new broadband technology - BOP to a more serious post about Gandhi to personal experiences on teenage crush, learning table tennis, priceless real time learnings from real people, last day post and thanks giving to an insane post....... the list goes on to 72. I generally feel and also admit that I need to improve a ton in terms of quality and style of my writing. And more importantly the types of content I pen here should also be align to interests of mine and yours!. Hope, I will better myself in every post in coming days.

Karan-struck!

Most of the time, when I see Karan Thapar interviewing an important person, I will be immersed in awe due to his vast repertoire of knowledge, his unique style of questioning coupled with his charisma. I have been seeing his shows, earlier HardTalk India in BBC and now Devil's Advocate in CNN IBN, though not regularly.

Last week, he interviewed Mr. Sitaram Yechury of CPI-M about the latest & hottest topic - Indo-US nuclear deal. This is most happening topic, which perhaps decides our government's future and India's energy needs and it is the headline grabber in almost all the newspapers and TV new channels at present. I think, this will continue until some outcome emerges and before it fades away from the short term public memory. After watching the interview, you will be struck with two things. First, you will be awestruck with how Karan Thapar blasts his guest with pertinent questioning backed up with his wide knowledge in Indo-US N deal and second, you will be lightning struck how really, our political leaders want to bring positive changes to the country, setting aside their ideologies.

Mr. Yechury went on lambasting during the interview, at one point he asks Karan Thapar to speak like an Indian! Obviously, he lost his ground in the interview and at the same time Karan Thapar also showed unusual but subtle motive to 'prove a point' on the show. A mixed response in the comment section of the video says it all.

Renting your idea

Recently one of the stories being well discussed, written, pondered & argued is about NetFlix vs Blockbuster. You ever wonder what in the world those terms meant? If yes, then you are in the same position as mine few days back. Here goes, what they are and what they mean to you and me. Netflix and Blockbuster are online DVD rental service companies. I think, this must be barest introduction one can give. Anyways, I will pour more info on that, in coming lines. (check out the link, on their business model).

I have good number of feeds in my Google reader to spend a wonderful Sunday afternoon as a information miner, mining about 60 subscriptions. I recently went though couple of blogs and websites feeds using Google Reader, these companies (NetFlix and Blockbuster) often showed their presence for number of reasons in these sites. Check here, here and here for more gyana on what exactly going on.

To give you a snap shot of what is this all about, here goes my bodhana:

Netflix has been in DVD rental business for a long time. It has innovated a new way of doing rental business. Making the business completely online. Whats the big deal making a business to e-business one might ask? Here is the real difference Netflix had made. It introduced one of the coolest ways of renting DVDs online. It has vast range of DVD movies and offer customers number of plans like - keep the DVDs for any number of days and watch them as much as one wants. It made the model so simple that even a common person with enough common sense can copy the model and run his/her own DVD rental business. All the DVDs transported through postal service with no charge on customer side! Two DVDs (in some plan, unlimited DVDs) at a time! Free Delivery to home! No late fees! and with voice customer support too. One might expect it should be ruling the market. Guess what, it had ruled once, but not any more. It seems, it is having worst days in recent times and losing its customer base due to enormous competition by the relatively new player Blockbuster.

Ambani in making

By looking at these stories, I think DVD rental is a huge business in USA. If this statement is true, then there should good reservoir of market potential in India too. The tiger (Indian market for DVD rental) is in hibernation state now. It should be awakened and tapped. World, I started to think in these terms..... beware! ;)

So I thought to, up my sleeves and there came a sweet shocker. There are lot of companies in India doing online DVD rental business!. In fact, these companies long ago well established. This is what we call in economics as Opportunity Cost! I read it somewhere in one of the economic courses I had during my engineering. (See, how well I am informed. Actually the term should be "Opportunity Lost".)

Copy Cats

I went through couple of sites (Indian versions) - MovieMart & Seventymm, which are the same old stories. They have copied from the success stories of Netflix and Blockbuster. I could find the same mantra - Two DVDs at a time! Free Delivery! and No late fees! in their sites

Companies like Clixflix, serves its members through stores, the phone, sms and the Internet. Apart from this deviation, the story and model are very similar. There is no innovativeness and it is just "follow the leader" concept. Only inspirations and no creativity. Just being copy cats. See how simple to pin point someone and say things which you will be trying to say when other people have had already implemented your idea (or inspiration)!

Disclaimer:

All the information given in the post is theoretical experience only. That is, the information processed & digested, given in the links and other online sources only. Yet to subscribe to a online DVD rental service. :)

Story of "what made me to learn Table Tennis".

It was some day in Feb 2007. It was around 7:00 pm in the evening. After a day of hard work, I ventured out to play Table Tennis (TT) in my employer's campus with my friend, who has the same skill as mine in playing the game. Our TT skills are at the best you can call it as "newbie" skills. While me and my friend trying our hands in the game, two people came near us. There were couple of tables present, so we got to share the table in round robin basis. Those two people - I guess one is Project leader and other his subordinate. The subordinate was a new babe of the campus at that time! They came and proposed an idea which made me feel like earth shaking.

Me and my fella formed a team and that girl and her supervisor formed another. Then the actual story started. We started to play. Initially, I thought at least the girl would be in my level in terms of TT skills, so I should be competing with only one guy. But in reality the story was different. She was just kept hitting in the right areas and scoring points with her quick reflexes. The earth shaking feeling was no more. It was replaced by "earth devastated by an asteroid" feeling. We played 5 matches and our team lost all of them thanks to the way me and my poor fella played and to her serves and returns. I wont say she was the best, but better than her supervisor. After one agonising hour, the show finally came to an end.

Men's DNA make-up is such a way that it is very hard to digest a defeat at the hands of women unless they are proven exceptionally talented. I fell prey to this so called male ego and it hit me like anything. There were lot of questions running in my mind, like "what would she think of my no performance?", "what on earth made me to play like this and fail to give a fight?" and things like that. And my fellow pal is no mood for it. He displayed no emotions. No regrets.

That moment something drove me to take up a challenge. A challenge to learn and play TT. From the next day onwards, I started to stay late in the evening in office, though my work demanded in some days, and practiced TT. I started to watch how good players play and then tried to implement in my game. Me and my friend practiced TT whenever we got time. We played with lot of good playing people. We lost many matches, but we were improving our game. This made me to play and practice more. As days passed, we actually started to win matches with our good play. Our own game and my skills improved greatly.

The wonderful thing is, more and more I started to play well and appreciate the game, I also started to forget the incident which triggered me to learn the game. Eventually, one fine day, by pure chance, we played against the same girl and her supervisor. This time, we overwhelmed them with our range of shots and serves. We won good number of matches against them and with lot other people. And I can say I have improved my game to a great level.

Success is a relative term. If I consider the level to which I have improved my TT skills is a success, then behind this success, that girl is the reason. So I should thank her for this little success of mine! No wonder this saying is so popular - "Behind every successful man, there is a woman" :)

Place-O-maniac!

This is first time I started to live without my family (Parents & siblings). Recently I left my home town (Chennai) & came to the silicon valley of India. I never expected to be home sick or feel senti of having left my family. Expectedly, I never do, till now. But I have some kind of attachment to the places I live and breathe. For the one last time, when I left my previous employer & the bus - I used to travel to work, some kind of separtness I felt. When I left my home, I felt as though I will never come back. For that matter, I was put up temporarily in a guest house in bangalore. When I left that place to move over to a somewhat permanent place, I felt the similar kind of "separtness". I wonder why it is not the same way with the people I move with!

Is this kind of mania or phobia? or it just my cerebral mapping with the places I visit? or is it due to the by-product of my zodiac sign feature? or is it just I like to live blissfully single (as my friend puts). I don't know. But soon I should sniff out the cause. If this is the effect, then there should be definetly a cause to it, as there is no effect without a cause according to some Indian school of thought! (Wow, what a ending! Pat my back. Few of you should have smelt blood flowing in your ears.)

I am leaving to my hometown this weekend after Ages! - a long gap of 13 days!

Alluring CVs!

These photos are some of the snapshots of one of the funnier and creative resumes I have come across.




This guy uses HTML tags for the headings & for endings!! I Also I heard from one of my HRs, that one of the resumes she got is actually a C++ program. She said that if you execute the program (resume), you get his resume in actual proper format as output!!

Isn't it creative way of expressing and showcasing your skills to your prospective employer.

P.S.: I did that hiding of CTC components in second photo. :)

Four stories and the priceless takings

Recently I met with four people. They gave me insights on things I never cared to give a glance at. But there are true learnings waiting for me.

The four people from four different walks of life. One is a software engineer, one is from Indian Navy, another working in an orphanage and last person is a plastic article vendor.

Each one is unique in terms of their background, their aspirations, their priorities in their lives and their attitude towards life. I had enough time to interact with all these people individually, to get good insights. The platform for all these meetings is a car-driving school. All came (including me) for one goal, to get a four wheeler license!! Let me tell you about these people before going to my insights. This may stretch the lines of this post a longer, pls bear with me till then.

Software Engineer:

This guy is at very comfort zone. Good job, bulky wallet, went couple of times for on site assignments, married and well settled. Man from stone age never satisfied with what he has. So as this guy. (Incl me, but few are exceptions). From day one, I were discussing with him about how he is working, how much he earned during on site assignments, about his esops, projects he had handled and other things related to his job. He is some kind of confident and displayed "knows all" attitude. He is in some kind of thinking like what life can give him back as though he has given out all his best.

The Indian Navy Personnel:

This person is basically from Kerala. He is in thirteenth year of service at present. I think this is quite an achievement by itself, given the fact the kind of jobs and the packages comes with them, now a days in the market. He has his family in Kerala. Once a while he goes to his native. Half of the time, he mixes Mallu (Malayalam) with English while speaking. Had bit of hard time in understanding him. This person is working in Indian Navy. I had poor knowledge to differentiate between people working in navy , cargo and passenger line, until he enlightened me. He also some kind of not satisfied, and some kind of complaining about how his companions being payed handsomely in Cargo and in passenger ships and about his poor paying. He also did similar complains and blabbered about his job. For the first time I understood why Navy exercises are executed between the countries. His aspiration to get early retirement (15 years) and look for a good job outside to take care of his family for rest of his life.

The Plastic Vendor:

Couple of times, I saw this person bribing the trainer which irritated me. Once I caught him after the training, asked him why he is bribing, though he paid 2k rupees for the training. He answered that by bribing, he could get special attention. I condemned him saying that is not necessary and explained him that he can always demand from the trainer. This stuck this 44 year old (Age defies him, in this situation). Next day, I asked him why he want to go for a license. He wants to drive auto-rickshaws or taxis for his daily bread. He also told how he lost his money in all the small businesses he had done thru the years and landed up this way. He declared the amount he is spending (2k) for license, is huge for him to bear (This made me think how carelessly we spend money without knowing its true value). I can observe from his speech, how much financial adversity he had gone thru. He calls me as "Sir", to my embarrassment, as I am at least 20 years younger to him!! So ignorant, so unexcited. Life looks burden for him.


The "Orphanage" Teenager:

This person's story really moved me. He is used to be very punctual in trainings. One day, casually I asked him where he is working? He said he is working in Indian Railways. "Huh?" was my initial reaction. He looks like "just entered" college student. Asked him, what he is actually doing? He explained which I took good amount of time to re-ask and to understand. His actual work is to find children working in railway platforms, trains and stations. He tracks them, keep records on them and report them to his supervisors. He used to find children who are orphaned and handover them to their parents if their correct whereabouts are found or hand over them to a children orphanage nearby. Worst thing is, he informed me that if he finds the orphan child's parents, he or the orphanage people have to convince some of the parents to take their children back. I asked him, if he has given any designation to the job he is doing, just to find out he is really employed in Indian Railways. To my surprise, he never understood what I am trying to ask. He studied up to 9th std and after that he discontinued to take this job. I asked him why he haven't continued, for that he replied that he is not interested. I was thinking that his parents were responsible and asked him where he is put up with, for which he replied that shook me. He was brought up in the same orphanage for which he is working now. When he was telling this, I could see the pain not having some body to take care of, in his eyes. For the first time in my life, I understood that my so called problems are nothing before him. He is trying to get license as he wants to go to Dubai ( for applying passport, he needs proof. So this driving license will get him to get that). He is paying the training amount in installments.


India is certainly, a land of contrasts. There are people who never understand what starving is and there are people who have to fight for the same starving throughout their lives. Most of us, in comfort zone, never knew the real value of money and spend unnecessarily on extra foods, flashy clothes, films et all. The fraction of the amount spent on this can feed many families in our country.

We always compare ourselves with our peers. If we are not up to the mark with our peers, we complain (I am very good complainer. Ask some of my friends, they will tell you big stories) that we didn't have this, that et others. The software engineer always pours his lament on how his company not giving hikes, appraisals and other things. Though he is very much in comfort zone, he still laments. If he gets something, the lamenting won't stop, but it will take into some other shape. (My personal experience too).

The shrewd Keralite spent most of his youth to the services of Nation. And also he has his own expectations and lamenting. Though, much I didn't get from him, but he displayed courage and positive attitude towards his coming days.

Ignorance is bliss, says many. But this plastic vendor's ignorance may not be so. I understood life is unfair game. What made this person as he is now - ignorant, oblivious to the fact to the extent the external world is changing..... But this person is driven by one thing - his family.

The orphaned teenager really made me to realize two things. First, none of our problems are nothing if we face it. Second, I am very fortunate of not having to go thru the ordeal as he is going thru.

I am no more complainer from now on. :-)

'Yes' Parking

This is definition of "No Parking" in our country!




I have seen in many places (in Chennai), where the vehicles are parked right in front of "No Parking" zones. The pictures shown above are private displays, but even the public "No Parking" zones are no exceptions, except at some high profile places. This gives good idea how space crunch our country getting into, especially in cities. The number of vehicles increasing exponentially but the space (for parking) decreasing at even greater pace. I think, at some point of time in the future, the roads will be laid exquisitely for parking only, unless something is done about it.

The last day at my first company!

The last day at my company, started with hectic schedule of clearing all the reliving processes. At the same time it was last time to bid goodbye to my friends. I expected the day would be an emotional one. I thought it would be a day, where I spent almost 2 years of my life, full of memories coming back and hit me like a boomerang with the moments cherished in happiness of making new friends, excitement of meeting challenges in projects, bitterness of making mistakes, senses of achievements, sharing of jokes with friends and colleagues, hectic pace with which many projects completed, hundreds of hours of office-gossips, lamenting on things which happen once in a year like appraisal, pouring all our vaitherichaels (stomach burnings) about our bosses, discussing about new babes joining in the team and many more.

But to my surprise, nothing struck me as described above. When I finished all my formalities, while I was leaving for the last time, some of my colleagues gave me a small farewell. It overwhelmed me. It is always good to feel when people respect you and give a send off. I have seen people who never got a even single good bye on their last day. But for me, it was different. It made me acknowledge myself that I have done something to these people. Something special without my knowledge. :-)

When I got down the company bus in my stop for the last time, I felt heavy. Burdened to leave all my friends. Something felt, that was tearing me apart. Tomorrow morning, there was no more job I was doing, no more canteen meets with friends, no more gossip coffee breaks and many no mores.......

I understood how Life works. :-)

Plush seats!

This is the pathetic condition of our MTC buses!!!

Bus route no. M116 (TN02 N 0376)

How do you expect use this seat for sitting purposes - The seat is at an angle of 120 deg, with its cushion, half buried and hanging with a rope, which in turn along with the seat connected to a supporting rod (second foto, not clear though), which has its loose base i.e. base not connected to the floor of the bus at all !!.

The Gr8 Indian Workout

Today morning , I had one of the unforgettable workouts in my life. Usually workout done by individuals, but today I did along with 70 odd people. Imagine, you as a single person doing all those running, jogging, lifting, cycling, biceps, triceps building and all those punny (funny) things as though you are going to become Arnold the next day. You watch the boys working out around you and they try to lift the unthinkable weights, until the previous day, when they see our own traditional girls coming in right fits. You also watch how girls project themselves as extremely self conscious, only after they step in to gym. And all these hoopla things got vanished in today's workout. The entire bunch of people are in right fits and the wonderful thing is that we never tried to do anything ourselves. The machine on which we did our workout did everything for us.

Few people would agree that all those sweat-drenching workouts could be replaced with Yogasanas. People who do asanas know, that only few postures (asanas) will stretch and relax all the 23,000 nadis (some yogic terminlology) in our body. But in today's session, that machine with the help of a trainer, everyone stretched all the possible nadis & vadis in our bodies. Amazingly everyone felt complete relaxation after that numerous stretchings, twistings, pullings and pushings. Few of us got 180 degree twist that ensured life time free of constipation. See, single session, so much effect!!

Usually, while doing workout, the person's entire mass with the speed acts as momentum. If I am not wrong momentum of one person has = mass of that person x velocity with he/she does workout (speed). In today's workout, the complex forces like gravitational, frictional and pseudo forces came into the effect. This scenario is well worth of giving as a question in physics paper of IIT-JEE. Some times, the forces are so complex, they cannot be measured. Some forces repel you away from other person, not because of principle of magnetism, but because of the chemical principle (formula) of the deodorant used by other person around him/her.

So complex the forces are, exerted by the people, but the trainer was at ease as ever. He controlled the machine which produced so many intricate forces, which you can't even name them.

The machine I am talking about is a bus plying in Chennai as route no 21H. The bus was jam packed with humans, animals, agriculture things, radios & faces full of sweat. The main cause for this is, the bus (in that route) was plying irregularly this morning, for the God's sake, I got into it. Ironically, this route number bus (21 H - between parrys corner and kelambakam) has the highest frequency of operation among the city buses!!!

Finally, I got an answer for a long time unanswered question that how do Indians have higher immunity power. This is because due to the gr8 Indian workout like this.

My fone upgraded

From this

to this

Rusted Security

After a long time, I went to a government bank today. In my school days, during summer hols, I used to go banks for my father’s business work. At that time, most of the banks are government operated and hardly single numbered private ones existed. You can describe the Indian government offices like: shabby outlook, 1930's furniture, poverty stricken dressing, and don’t-care, some times arrogant attitude officers with crumbled official papers strewn all places. The same picture I can see now. Nothing changed. Perhaps, only positive note is attitude of the officers’ now went thru a tiny change like ripple caused in puddle of water by a big stone.

One thing I noticed that never changed over the years is the security guards’ gun in govt. banks. The security guard in almost all the govt. banks, carry the same old, unused, never fired, light years long rusted riffle. I wonder if any bullets are loaded in to it!!

I heard that some old British Raj rules still holding true now, without changing to the times. For example, in our Indian laws, if I recollect it correctly, it is allowed only couple of liquor bottles to store at home to serve guests and not more than that. You are eligible for prosecution if you have more bottles of liquor than allowed numbers!! This anarchic rules still existing in law books to date. Similarly I guess, the security guard have mandatory rule to have one or two bullets in their gun which I think will never be used. Imagine, only couple of bullets and a couple of tens of looters, poor guard and even poorer customers!! Even if security guard tries to use it in emergency situations, I guess he might have forgot to how to fire, or he might not able to fire, after getting confused whether bullet is loaded or not, or the gun might not fire at all, due to physics of prolonged rusting process.

Tagged

This is first time I am completing tags. Though couple of times I am tagged, I didn't try cos of laziness for completing them.

This time, I am tagged by Nirmal (and in the past too!)


1.Pick out a scar you have, and explain how you got it:
No scars I have.

2. What is on the walls in your room?
I would love to have couple of fotos of aiswarya rai, but cos of parental pressure, my room walls are clean.

3. What does your phone look like.
My phone is basic one- you can make call & send SMS. Thats it. I like it cos its faster to access than any other high end phones.

4. What music do you listen to?
Tamil songs.

5. What is your current desktop picture?
Apple MAC pic

6. What do you want more than anything right now?
Get myself out of here and escape to unexplored places on earth

7. Do you believe in gay marriage?
No opinion.

8. What time were you born?
1 45 pm

9. Are your parents still together?
Yes

10. What are you listening to?
I am not listening to any music.

12. The last person to make you cry?
I never want to make other person cry. It so happened couple of times I made my close friend cry of silly reasons of mine. :)

13. What is your favourite perfume/cologne?
I use lot of them. It does not go with any brand name. I change them often.

14. What kind of hair/eye colour do you like on the opposite sex?
Black/brown

15. Do you like pain killers?
No. I never used.

16. Are you too shy to ask someone out?
Many a time it happened. Good news is, I am over coming it now a days.

17. Fave pizza topping?
Rarely I eat them. Not much interested.

18. If you could eat anything right now, what would it
be?
Paniyaaram, paesaru atlu (andhra dish).

19. Who was the last person you made mad?
Luckily, no one. :)

20. Is anyone in love with you?
No. :(

Weekend Time Killers

Come Saturdays, its time to watch movies. The whole week my comp is busy downloading the movies and in the weekends, busy playing it for me. Last weekend, I saw two movies - Sweet November and Fight Club.


On recommendation of my friend, I saw the movie - Sweet November. I would say this is one of the worst movies I saw so far. The story is similar to our kollywood movies, where heroine tries to teach the stressed-out, money minded, egoistic and insensitive hero about life! Eventually they fall in love, at the end hero finds out heroine, suffering from cancer and the same guessable endings. The only savior in this film is those intimate scenes here and there. Except that, there is nothing special and no wonder the leading actors were nominated for worst actor and worst actress at the 2001 Golden Raspberry Awards!!!



The other movie I saw was Fight Club. This movie is brilliantly directed and acted out. In initial stages of the movie, there were lot of disturbing scenes which made me feel like irritating and some times nauseating. The bloodshed and the terrible fights out of sheer enjoyment by the characters pictured terrificly. At the middle of the movie, I was clueless which way the movie was moving? But during the end of the movie, the brilliance of story telling revealed itself. There were repeated scenes like Helena Bonham Carter approaching Edward Norton for intimate actions and Norton refusing it. (I think this is worst way of describing this scene!!) This lead me to think something odd, but at the end, these scenes played a great role in making the viewer to understand about the Norton character and the movie plot itself. This is "must watch" movie, if you are one of those who claim themselves as "Pure Cinema" lovers.

Like smoke in air

Long ago, not so long ago, but some 10 years ago, I was studying in 8th std. One day, my english brahmin teacher, took a class on vegetarianism. I wont say his speech made me numb and speechless n all but good enough to sow seeds deeply in this invincible mind. At that time I decided to be veggie until I finish my schooling. I successfully accomplished it and I continued to do so for the years to come, just for sake of doing it. Now, ten years still I am going great without the so called brown foods.

Many a time, I amuse about how well I managed without eating or not even getting tempted to eat non-veggie all these years. This sometimes make me proud and display to my friends that I am veggie for a decade still going strong.

This got broke like an amused cyclist breaking his jaw, knocked down by a speeding PTC bus, while watching Mallika Sherawat on roadside billboard . That day, that brown day I call it, that hot afternoon, our team went to eat hot food in a hotter restaurant but not with the hottest chicks :-(

My instinct says that restaurant guy woven a conspiracy against me. Because he was responsible to break my 10 year vow! We were waiting for starters to come. See, people with me are part of bigger responsibility of making the poultry population equal to the people population on earth. You got it rite. They ordered those brown items along with the green items.

The conspirator placed the items on the table. All the arms were elbowing each other to get those greens and browns. Lot of competition you see, so I was jumping in the crowd and found one item that set my eyes sparkle. It was tagged as "gobi manchurian", so my hands went down, collected handful and went in my mouth.

I ate them and shared with all my veggie friends. While eating I found something odd but I never want to know, as I was focusing on the delicious items. After some five to six pieces went in to my stomach, the conspirator changed the label of the dish I was eating to "chicken 65"!!!

Arghh!! My vow was broke. Decade long vow broken. It was broken like breaking 10 sticks at one go.

Later, it was very amusing thinking about what had happened to me after eating something I didn't eat for such a long time. But it felt like smoke in air. Up she goes (down she goes I should say) and disappeared. I felt as everyone would feel, all food make sense up to our end of the tunnel called tongue, once it goes down the pipes, all are nothing but the mesh of some complex organic (some times inorganic) fibres.

Image.Makeover

Change is perhaps the only thing that is permanent in life. Life itself, is a changing tide, so as this blog :-)

This blog is changed from this one,



to the one you are reading. One obvious mistake you would have found, is title of the blog. The spell change, that I fail to find it so long. what's a big deal, here lives are changing (or exchanging!!), what's in a spelling change?

All this time I want to dirt my hands with the HTML changes in template section of blogger, to get better presentation. But, blame it on my webpage design skills, every three months are so, I feel compelled to change to default themes given by blogger. This might be the main reason (de-motivating factor) for not posting regularly. I think this time I got a better one and now I will concentrate on the content and share the muses of this invincible mind!!

Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass. - by John Steinbeck

Happiness - A Deja Vu?

I always wonder, why we should grow in life? How one's life would be, if one always remain as a child??!!!

Always playing, no responsibilities, no bothering of anything, no competition, no ego problems, no expectations, no failures, no work, no something.....

Just feeling happy at smell of soil after rain, happy at seeing rainbow, happy by thinking our virtual friends, happy whenever flower blossom, happy at seeing puppy, happy at seeing sun set, happiness at everything and at all time. So much is missing now!! Whenever I see a child, I amuse about how happily they are enjoying oblivious to the chaos in outer world.

Will this happiness out of nothing, that is so natural in children, which we have experienced and forgot completely, return to us??? Well, if I am given some boon, I would choose my time space return to my childhood days, so that I would change the events whichever way I like it. May be that machine shown in the film DejaVu, I need it. Fantasy is driving me. :-)

Best Ad ever seen!!

First time I saw this commercial, I said to myself, this is the best creative one I have ever seen so far. The guys behind this are really, really, really creative.

This commercial is done for this company. Their product is basically a chewing gum. The idea of any ad is to convince the customers to try their products. And then comes the user loyalty, customer base, market capitalization, brand awareness fundas. This least bothers end consumer. All any company wanted to do, is to drive the point to the targeted audience about their product.

Some Ads like this one, in my opinion, might not do its purpose. Common audience like me, is so engrossed in the Ad, and talk about its creative aspects rather than that of the product it is advertising. Viewers are more interested to share the idea behind the Ad rather to try out the product. In fact, I have seen this Ad couple of times on TV, appreciated much but, never tried the chewing gum.

This kind of commercials gives Ad agencies a lot of reputation among its peers and in the industry. It also brings accolades, awards and much of limelight. But these are all cost of what?? -- The Actual Product!!

The product will be much spoken about not for its characteristic, rather about the commercial which introduced it to the public!!! This is the last thing that a company wants.

Travel to Eat!!!

While I was coming back from work in bus, I met a guy, whose natural look gave me hint that he is basically from north of vindhyas. And, actually he is. I observed him for sometime. He is very new to the city. So he was asking, when will I reach Marina Beach?, how far is beach from here?, At what time bus will reach central? and things like that.

This obviously pushed me into thinking that he got some important work to reach his destination, sowcarpet - the famous for saettujis, marwari, & gujju gals and of course pani puri.

He was very eager to get down nearly 5 to 6 kms ahead, to avoid the traffic jams, bus suttifying the singara chennai. This made me really curious to find out what actually he is upto.

He recently joined the company I work for. He came to city just 2 days before. And he is staying at Tambaram - a sub-urban area, which is over 25 kms away from the city.

Interestingly, his visit to sowcarpet is not for any relative visit, or temple visit. His sole purpose to visit this part of the city is to have his Dinner!!!! Interestingly, he is doing this, two days in row and planning to continue for some time in the near future.

God, he travels nearly 50 km (to & fro) to have his dinner!!! This doesn't mean we have great hotels or restaurants in this neck of wood. Rather, hardly few single digit numbered ones (not even good ones) exist here.

He said he is going to one Gujju hotel to have rotis and sabjis. He is having one heck of a time with our idlys, dosas, sambar and rasams. He complained that he could not eat south Indian dishes even once in a day. And naturally, he starts to ponder on the physics, chemistry, biology, sociology, culturology of eating habits of people...... Thinking, how desperate he is to have his usual food!!!

If I were in some part of Bihar or Punjab or UP, perhaps, I might be blaming on rottis and sabjiis!!!

Patience is Virtue!!

Updated (05/01/2007):

Yes, waiting may be virtue. I got what I was waiting for. I was waiting for this. I saw, not-satisfied, as many souls decide, me also looking for Nov'2007 !!!


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Patience is Virtue. It is an old adage. Waiting is Virtue. This is a new one by me. At least for today.

Am Waiting for this ....