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 !!!


~ ~ ~


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 ....

Blinking my Past

Its been long since I read a book. So was trying at my company's shelves and came across the book called Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. I finished reading this book in two sittings.

I don't want give long review about this book, and for that matter even the review in jiffy won't do good. It's not that the book is bad, rather I don't want my reader to get distorted image from this wanna be voracious reader!!! Better, you can get more info about the book here, here and here.

So just let me give the what this book is all about: The book is about the decisions taken in split seconds, our insights over the issues by our instincts, in many of the cases can yield better results than the one's which are taken with deeper scientific understanding, with lot of experience and expertise and great deal of research. The book speaks on more on these lines with interesting real time examples.

In short you get the funda from its tag line: "The Power of Thinking Without Thinking".

Many of us, have taken split second decisions that might have changed us in someway or other. Some decisions or insights might have saved us from serious problem, some might have given happy endings. I would like to share one incident I encountered few years back.

I am kinda guy who shy away girls since my childhood. This was there till I was in my college final year. The usual teenage syndrome which affect all teenagers, except few abnormal mammals, affected me too. It wasn't love at first sight or not even love at all. But it some kind of craze or crush or say something on one girl. She wasn't Ash of our college nor I am Salman of our coll. But I was attracted to her. Never spoke to her. Never asked intro from my friends. Never tried to do anything to tell her. I just kept watching (staring), in other words, sightifying her. This continued for a year. All the usual filmy acts followed but never allowed anything to put myself under bad impression before her.

Basically I was very innocent guy who thought all girls are good, good and nothing but good ideally. I pocessed some of the adolescent straits, like "I know everything", "I can solve all problems", "I am the best" attitude. Bit egotist!! So every incident I encountered with her, I was appreciating myself for my own actions. I thought my actions produced all the incidents. In short, I found myself as the reason for all causes. This looks very funny when I think it over now. But thats how the life was then. No wonder, I learnt the realities of life in very hard way. Thats another big story.

Coming to the point, the following went some time. Few of my friends came to know about this and started to tease and all. I was enjoying all these and life seemed easy. I thought everything going good, until some day I started to realise that something going wrong. Something wrong with myself. I was idealist teenager at that time. I want everything to have purpose and seeking meaningful result for all actions of mine. This started to take beating during this period. I started to realise that things are going without any clear point. The theories I made by myself, which I found later has no hard footing on ground realities, started to give me troubles.

I was in utter confusion. Chaos with all the complexities I bought myself around me. This might not be understandable in words. Just take it, I was in total mess.

This total mess bought cyclic mood swings and in between deep insights how I took things wrong. Thats when I started to mature and got the hang of realties of life. In between these cyclic swings, I had many profound insights. At one time, I felt very strongly to drop everything about the girl I was fond of until then. The Blink happened here.

I don't know what made me to take that decision, but I took it very blindly without any thinking. I made my friends to know about this turn.

Sooner, the girl got committed with some other guy. I felt no hard feeling at all. I felt all was well and went well. Days went, I totally forgot things. After two years, she ditched the guy she was in "supposedly in love" and got into relationship with another guy. How easy it looked??? uh?

I don't say it is blunder or wrong that Indian girl or especially Tamil girl shouldn't do like this. Rather my beliefs and the philosophy would have taken hard hit if this had happened to me. The timely Blink saved me.

Now, all this looks very comical flash back. Never mind Life is like that. :-)

Insipirations from Scott

This is very inspiring story by Scott Adams, the author of the famous Dilbert. In the post, Scott wrote about his miracle recovery from Spasmodic Dysphonia.

This is another story from Scott on "Knowing when to quit?". Take your time and spend on these pages and also look out the comments. Really worth reading.

Thanks Giving

Today, I kinda experienced things which I did while I was in final year farewell. I was with the team working on a new product for my client. It happened that, due to some internal resource changes, I was shifted to the different product of the same client.

Though it is not a big bid adieu, still it feels some where in corner of heart of departing team members I was working close to six months. In fact, we all felt the same way. Some how my team members manage to cling with the same project, but my move was inevitable.

I was moved, overwhelmed and inspired with the thank you mail I received from the client. Though I didn't do anything remarkable, but the appreciation from the client in the form of thanks giving really moved me. I feel elated. At the same time it reminds me more responsibility I would be carrying........

Coding - Its never been so easy!!!

This perhaps can be a blessing in disguise from the mother of web - Google. Imagine thousands of software engineers banging their heads for their delivery, are relieved from coding work. They can now perhaps concentrate on how effectively one can do copy and paste, do cosmetic changes and impress their supervisors. :-) It seems possible now. Already, the Google search engine is helping many souls. Now, the mother has made the life still more easy.

Ladies and Gentlemen, now introducing, the new product from the mother - Google CodeSearch. Check it out.

The Monster Disk

This Hard Disk from Seagate carries data of whopping 750 GB!!!. Now, all your media content, avi's,wmv's, divx's of the films your were watching from childhood, all thiruttu vcd's, matter movies :-) , Actress pics in all formats(I know each one would have at least 100s in numbers), thiruttu thanamaa edatha photos, everything from sky to earth your mind can imagine, all can be dumped in this single Disk. More on this here.

Namma Thalaivar

Namma Thalaivar World Popular!!! :-)

Can Cinema change our lives?

I haven't watched the latest movie Laghe Raho Munnabhai. But the reviews and discussions about this movie over the internet, news papers and TV channels have driven enough curiosity in my head. This movie particularly done something where no other movie never did. Perhaps the director would have never imagined the kind of impact he is getting now (hundreds of responses are pouring it seems after the movie release).


Couple of days back, I saw a video footage, where a group of medical students in Lucknow adopted Gandhigiri principles and they started to plant trees wearing Gandhian attire. This is what happened after the seeing this movie. I read in one newspaper that the numerologists and astrologer in mumbai are having difficult times, as this movie expressed on the superstitions. In one instance, according to this site, an old couple revoked their decision of seeing Vasthu for their
new home!!!!



The trend of this kind of moral preaching movies is in vogue perhaps. Our Tollywood too has something to offer through the Chiranjeevi's latest movie Stalin. There the philosophy is each one help three people. This movie too made some transformation like Sanjay Dutt's latest flick. Heard about some reviews like the people out of the theaters saying like our lives have been changed by this film. Of course, the Cinema, particular hero worship is much embedded in lives of people down the south than other parts in the country. The organizations like Stalin Chain, have been started by Chiru's fan clubs across Andhra Pradesh. This organization helps Orphaned poor children. It is transforming some lives. Very heartening to hear. Isn't it?

But I have one fundamental query. Whether this kind of change will have impact in long term. It just seems like ephemeral stories popping here and there in larger public domain. Why should we dictate our lives through cinema which is most of the time so unreal? Don't we have enough knowledge through our ancient wisdom or contemporary thinking to implement the transformation we would want?

The questions could be asked in these lines in 'n' number of ways. But where are the answers?? Only one thing is for sure, Cinema is very powerful medium (we have made it that way). I think it will have impact on our thoughts and actions in our day to day life. Its up to us, to find out how we would want cinema to be and how to use it in more constructive ways.

"Be a Citizen ????"

Now-a-days, Open Source Journalism is in vogue. The kind of potential the net users all over the world have is simply mind boggling. The best example would be Slashdot. In one instance, Jane's Intelligence Review, known to be internationally respected magazine, submitted its article to Slashdot readers for review. The review comments from the Slashdot users were enough for the magazine to ditch that article, without publishing. Read more.

Desi versions are also out. But in peculiar yet innovative way. The desi English News Channels have rolled out their own version of Citizen Journalism. "Be a Citizen Journalist" by CNN-IBN. "Be an I-Witness" by NDTV. And the Times Now webportal has its version called "Be a Citizen Reporter".

This strategy seems to be cool. You encourage your viewers to participate in news reporting. This strikes two-in-one deal. Viewership invariably goes up and the news content comes free with video footage, in some cases!!!

But there are many points to ponder on this concept which has very wide scope. This is one such example. It surely deserves a separate post.

Bholu-Lalu :- The Management Guru

Our own Lalu Prasad Yadav has become talk of the town. When I read a small column about his recent venture in ET, I was very curious to know how things actually are. Googled and found quite a good number of stories. Every one from blogs to news papers to TV portals talking about his latest avatar: Teaching management lessons at IIM A!!!

Few months back, he might have worried about his poor amount of attention he was getting in public. Now, the spotlight turned on him. He did some magic perhaps, the loss making railway made a complete U-turn. Some say, he has became darling of corporate houses. Find more here and here and here.

This made a professor at IIM A to do a case study on him. So he is taking management lessons at the prestigious institute.

This the mascot of Indian Railways: Bholu






Perhaps in the future, this bholu would be replaced with our Lalu, waving the green flag. :-)

The caption would read like this:

Lalu The Guard

Position Alternative III
Lalu, the guard showing green flag to the train.

In the name of Religion

To start with, in defensive mode, I am not in any kinda expert or scholar like to talk about on this sensitive issue like religion, God, theism and in the lines. This is my very personal opinions and beliefs.

Today, I read an article in The Hindu, regarding an Anglican priest, an priest of CE (Church of England) converted into Hindu and continue to officiate as a cleric. source.

There's so much hype all over about this issue. This might trigger digging of stories, studies, research papers, expert opinions on religious practices and global scenario. Discussion on things like: is it right to practice dual religion? would rise and there could plethora of discussions going on. After some time this news will die down for sure. It could vanish quickly or less quickly depending on the media coverage given to it and probability of making celebrity news item.

Why so much hype and importance given to an issue which is a personal decision and effects only one individual. Why wasting so much time and energy? There are many issues that need global attention.

No one is given chance to chose one's religion when he/she is born. When I was born in an Hindu family, my religion became Hindu. I am not given chance to choose the religion I like to follow. Same is the case with every one. This is not in any case of deprivation. Because we never worried about the chance that is never given to us. We accepted what our elders have given to us and followed it consciously or unconsciously in our lives. Few consciously realize and trend their own path like David Hart, about whom this issue is all about.

So its an individual decision and blowing this matter in any size (if not in positive way) , in my view, is just wastage of time and energy.